If one wanted to sample where ballet has come from, and where it is going, taking in the Jacob’s Pillow performances of The Royal Ballet last week and Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève this week would not be a bad starting place. Last week, The Royal Ballet featured ballets by Petipa, Fokine, Balanchine, Ashton, and MacMillan (among others) from ballet’s notable past, and works by Tanowitz, Wheeldon, and McGregor representing one branch of ballet’s present and future. This week, Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève at the Pillow most definitely represents a categorically different offshoot of the present and future of ballet, and of dance in general. The company is now under the artistic direction of the pioneering and innovative Belgian and Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and the programming reflects it. One thing that was entirely consistent between the two companies, however, was the technical excellence of the dancers. The dancing these days, in these companies, is outstanding across the board.
This week, Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève had a hitch in the production it planned to present at the Pillow. It seems that, due to shipping delays, parts of the set (and other critical items) for Cherkaoui’s piece “Noetic” failed to make it to the States in time for this week’s performances of the piece, the U.S. premiere of the work. Thus, Cherkaoui and the company had to restage the piece, taking out certain sections which could not be performed without the sets and technical gear. It is remarkable that Cherkaoui and the company, in such a short time frame, were able to put together and present the fully realized excerpt from “Noetic” which they did. The piece included recorded music, as well as powerful live drumming by Shogo Yoshii and a song beautifully sung live by Ana Vieira Leite.
This version of “Noetic” unfolded with an unusual tableaux of tight trios of dancers, back to back to back in triangles with shoulders touching and facing out, spread out around the stage. Indeed, notable throughout this piece was Cherkaoui’s use of the ensemble, particularly in the spacings and directions. Cherkaoui regularly had the ensemble of dancers facing in all different directions, often while they were doing unison movement. However, rather than this exploding the choreography visually, Cherkaoui somehow managed to keep the ensemble unified and integrated throughout. It was intriguing.
In one section, Cherkaoui describes (in the program) that the dancers “seem to be part of a complicated clockwork, the building blocks of the inner workings of a society.” This section of the dance followed a short address to the audience by one of the dancers which seemed to be about technology and the future. This viewer thus saw the dancers as the “zeros” and “ones” of a computer; the incredible simplicity of the two states, zero and one, turned into the incredible complexity of a computer motherboard, and all that a motherboard can do.
Mason Kelly, who had a solo in the piece, was particularly notable. He was technically very strong, but he did not distance himself from the audience with his dancing. Rather, he was open and he let you in.
“Faun,” a duet for Madeline Wong and Oscar Comesaña Salgueiro, was also choreographed by Cherkaoui. It is an homage to Vaslav Nijinsky’s famous—and infamous—“L’Après-midi d’un Faune,” which he choreographed in 1912. If one has never seen a piece at the Ted Shawn Theater at Jacob’s Pillow when the back doors of the theater are open, this is absolutely the piece to see. It is the perfect setting for the piece, and the ideal use of the open back doors. Adam Carrée’s lighting, both of the trees forming the backdrop and also of the dancers on stage, was superb. I have rarely seen dancers, and a dance, more perfectly framed in light. Composer Nitin Sawhney also took the score, the renowned Debussy orchestral work “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune,” and manipulated it in an extremely interesting and stylish way. Toward the end, the piece took a turn which this viewer found unnecessary, but thankfully it did not diminish the overall potency of the work.
One benefit of the shipping snafu noted above was that the company added Sharon Eyal’s piece “Strong” to the program. It may seem a little strange to reference Bob Fosse when discussing a piece by a company with the word “ballet” in its name, but this viewer was consistently reminded of Fosse when watching the piece. The way Eyal used an ever-so-slight turn or tilt of the head; the relationship she created between the chin and the shoulder; the subtle force and power generated by a small shift of a hip; and, in general, the minimalism of the movements were all reminiscent of Fosse. But this was Fosse on steroids. When 17 dancers of this technical caliber, who can connect with each other as an ensemble so beautifully, and who can be choreographed on by an artist who has the maturity not to take the easy way out when she seemingly purposefully choreographs herself into the proverbial corner, are let loose on stage, the results can be jaw-dropping. This was a modern, powerfully stark, repetitive kind of trance-dance. It was most assuredly not Fosse’s Broadway, or the ballet of old. It is, one guesses, part of the present and future of ballet and of dance.
The Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève will be at Jacob’s Pillow through Sunday, July 14.
