[Review] New York City Ballet in London – “A Stellar Return”

Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel sees the New York City Ballet in London in a mixed bill: Rotunda, Duo Concertant, Gustave le Gray No.1, and Love Letter (on shuffle)

This week New York City Ballet (NYCB) return to Sadler’s Wells (07-10 March) after a long absence since their last visit in 2008. Much has changed in the artistic direction of the company since their performances at the Coliseum: a new artistic director (Jonathan Stafford, associate artistic director, resident choreographer and artistic advisor Justin Peck, and the recent appointment of artist in residence Alexei Ratmansky. For London audiences, this week’s performances marked a huge shift in programming – just one ‘taster’ of George Balanchine’s choreography in the form of Duo Concertant, and more crucially none of the Jerome Robbins repertoire. The other three works on the programme were choices that affirm NYCB’s creative vision and commissioning new works by contemporary artists in the 21^st century: Peck, Pam Tanowitz and Kyle Abraham. For any ‘alien’ who encounters this kind of ‘ballet’ for the first time (and for any seasoned balletomane who ponders on these contemporary voices in ballet), these names shout out ‘This is New York’. And for those of us who haven’t been able to see the company live since pre-pandemic days, the London programme reaffirmed these points as clear markers that New York City Ballet is first and foremost a visionary 21st-century ballet company whose recent (and now becoming ‘regular’) contributors include Jewish and African American dance makers who are revitalising that thing we call ‘ballet’.

Rotunda (2020) is a pleasant opener, in which Peck attunes his connections with the legacy of Jerome Robbins. Daniel Ulbricht, one of the longest-standing members of the company, opens the ballet; as Nico Muhly’s score commences, Ulbricht is alone on stage, lying down in a pool of light (Peck constructs the structure of the ballet around Ulbricht’s presence, and the work concludes with Ulbricht alone on stage and a snappy blackout as he runs to centre front and turns his gaze to the audience). Ulbricht is joined by eleven friends, each finding their spot in a circle that marks the light from the opening. In addition to his innate ability to work around the musicality of the score (on several occasions, Peck has outlined that the choice of music is everything for each piece he creates), Peck is a maverick when it comes to structuring a ballet. Like Robbins before him, Peck manages the group (more like friends having a great time of stage) with intense clarity; the dancers traverse away and towards the circle, and the regroupings, like vignettes of group compositions, in this ballet become not only a metaphor for the dancer’s connections as a group of individuals or dancers, but also a complex, textual recurrence of duets, trios and solos that culminate in the repetition of the opening phrase at the end of the ballet. On opening night, company veteran and enterprising, altogether ‘tour-de-force’ of a dancer, writer, mother of three, Megan Fairchild shone with stellar quality in both her solo and duet. A trio (Indiana Woodward, Victor Abreu and Jules Mabie) is beautifully crafted, and showcases the combination of younger and more established company dancers. The welcome return of Adrian Danchig-Waring, who in the past performed at Sadler’s Wells with Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphosis company in 2009, brought much interest to his duet with the celestial Miriam Miller. Fairchild and Gilbert Bolden III’s duet reminded audiences of Peck’s inclusive choreography; he leads her, despite towering over her, but she is as bold as any of the taller principals in the company, like Sara Mearns (whose appearance on Saturday evening suggested she was not altogether on her usual form).  

In Duo Concertant (1972), Fairchild and Anthony Huxley offered a masterclass in Balanchine’s repertoire. The 17-minute ballet, which included Elaine Chelton at the piano and Kurt Nikkanen on the violin, conjured up many references to Balanchine’s masterpieces: there is the opening hand gesture from Serenade (1934), and other references to the interlude of Agon (1957) and the semi-frivolity of Who Cares? (1970). Huxley is sublime in his performance, matching Fairchild’s clarity in pulse and rhythm; the opening moments of the choreography, where the dancers alternate in high/low and away/towards movements, were resplendent and dazzling in their simplicity and counterpoint. Together their performance reflects a symbiotic understanding of Duo Concertant: the dancers, who share the stage with the equally sublime performance of the musicians, narrate a short narrative that moves across different moods and vignettes.

On a similar vein of intense clarity, the four dancers in Pam Tanowitz’s Gustave le Gray No.1 (originally produced in 2019 for Miami City Ballet, and premiered in 2022 by NYCB), moved through the shifting patterns, and the unique ‘pillar box’ red costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung. Danchig-Waring, together with Noami Corti, Ruby Lister and the statuesque principal Mira Nadon, bring sublime clarity to Tanowitz’s choreography. Cutting extensions to second position, followed by quick shifts of weight, work like direct red brush strokes across a golden canvas of lighting by Davison Scandrett. Stephen Gosling’s scintillating performance of Caroline Shaw’s compositions of the same title heightened the attention to and experimentation with musical forms. What remains elusive, and somewhat unclear, is why the dancers shift the piano while Gosling continues his performance. Despite this redundant theatricality, and if there was any doubt, the second part of the programme took a musical leap from Stravinsky to Shaw, signposting reminders of the essence of music composition and its relationship with choreography at City Ballet.

Love Letter (on shuffle), also produced in 2022, concluded the programme on an altogether different choreographic and musical note. Since The Runaway (2018), City Ballet has had an affinity to the Pennsylvania-born choreographer, largely through Wendy Whelan’s Restless Creature connection in 2016. Abraham’s recurring commissions for the company, which typically are set to the unfamiliar use of recorded, popular music, bring an eclecticism that also shout-out the essence of ‘New York’. Love Letter, like The Runaway, commences with the sublime principal Taylor Stanley’s undulations between and beyond ballet steps. Stanley’s three solos in Love Letter are central to the ballet, and culminate in a male duet that reflects Abraham’s affirmation as a gay, creative artist. The contemporary ballet is structured by a playlist of James Blake’s contemporary music, a trendy use of Blake’s album which William Forsythe’s Blake Works had first used in 2016, the same year as the album was released. I could have seen Stanley’s three solos as stand-alone components, but these well-crafted works were propped up by group pieces and two other duets (one shorter than the other, the longer, and more developed in nature, performed by principal Peter Walker and soloist Emily Kikita). Fashion designer Giles Deacon’s costumes and Dan Scully’s lighting designs coloured the sections of Love Letter in ways that sometimes bordered onto gimmicky – for those familiar with Forsythe’s lighting in the 1980s (remember Artefact?) or Christopher Wheeldon’s stark lighting (Tryst, or Polyphonia, anyone?). The ruffles and play with (un)gendering costumes in Deacon’s designs were playful, but at times distracting. The full ballet skirts felt like a great addition to the contemporary designs. Given it was created for the 2022 Fall Gala, this final ballet reminded audiences of the company’s branding and unique identity as a company driven by creating contemporary ballets.

City Ballet’s presence this week was much appreciated by its London audience. Hopefully, it won’t be another fifteen years before the company returns to share its stellar quality.

Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel

Dr Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel is a dance scholar, educator and published author. She is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dance (2003), the Universities of Durham and Surrey, and London Metropolitan University (2013). Her doctoral research focussed on Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (1923), and the re-imaginings by contemporary choreographers Angelin Preljocaj and Mauro Bigonzetti. Kathrina is a former director of the Society of Dance History Scholars (now Dance Studies Association). Her scholarship on ballet histories has been published in peer-reviewed anthologies and journals, as well as newspapers, high-end magazines, and online blogs. She has authored a book on the legacy of Nathalie Poutiatine and ballet in Malta (Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 2020) and co-edited an extensive and pioneering anthology titled The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet (Oxford University Press, 2021).