Author: Philip Gardner

Saturday February 27th, 2016 – Miro Magloire’s New Chamber Ballet presenting five Magloire ballets, including a premiere, at City Center Studios. Exceptional music, played live, is always on offer at NCB; then there’s the bevy of ballerinas: five distinctive dancers who bring Miro’s classically-based but sometimes quirky – and always demanding – choreography to life.

Tonight, the house was packed; extra chairs had to be set out, and some people were standing. The program was one of Miro’s finest to date – and he’s had an awful lot of fine evenings. Two classic French violin sonatas – Debussy’s and (part of) Ravel’s – were in the mix, along with some Schoenberg (the more Schoenberg I hear, the more I like), and works by Beat Furrer and Friedrich Cerha (who just celebrated his 90th birthday). 

The opening (premiere) work, RAVEL’D, is still “in-progress”; tonight we saw the first movement, with Miro promising the rest of it for his April performances. Doori Na and Melody Fader played beautifully, and Sarah Thea’s fringed tunics added an unusual flair to the movement. Stylized motifs – eating, praying, biting – are woven into the dance. One girl’s toe-shoed foot rests upon another girl’s head: this is one of several unexpected balancing devices. A space-filling unison trio stands out, and the closing section finds Sarah Atkins in a reverential pose as Amber Neff and Shoshana Rosenfield ‘converse’ in a series of mutually dependent balances. 

The space was again well-utilized in GRAVITY; we were seeing the finished version of this work that Miro had started on last year. Doori Na’s expert playing of the Cerha score was something to marvel at: great subtlety and control are called for, and Doori delivered. The three dancers – Elizabeth Brown, Traci Finch, and Amber Neff – are engaged in extended paragraphs of the partnering vocabulary Miro has been exploring of late. Extremely challenging and movingly intimate, the intense physicality of these passages push the boundaries of what we expect from women dancing together. Miro’s dancers have taken to these new demands with great commitment: watching some of their improbable feats of balance and elastic strength gives us a fresh awareness of possibility. Adding yet another dimension to the work: when not actively dancing, each ballerina curls up on the floor to sleep. 

Pianist Melody Fader evoked an air of mystery with her superb playing of Arnold Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces for the ballet QUARTET. Here Mlles. Atkins, Brown, Finch, and Neff appear in elegant, backless black gowns. They take seats at the four corners of the playing area, facing outward. With her hair down, a waif-like Shoshana Rosenfield dances in the center with a feeling of halting insecurity; her character seems dazed, perhaps drugged. Periodically, the four seated women move their chairs towards the center, slowing encroaching on Shoshana’s space. The four become aware of the lone ballerina as a potential victim: they turn and observe her intently. In the end, the four women have Shoshana trapped; as she sinks down in surrender, they caress her and run their fingers thru her hair. Eerie, and leaving us full of questions, QUARTET is as intriguing to watch as to hear.

In VOICELESSNESS, Beat Furrer’s mystical score was performed by Melody Fader; her playing had a fine air of somber quietude. Dancers Amber Neff and Shoshana Rosenfield, in Sarah Thea’s sleek body tights, become fervently entwined and mutually dependent in a duet that develops further elements of Miro’s intense and engrossing partnering technique.

For a revival of TWO FRIENDS, Doori Na and Melody Fader had the lovely experience of playing Claude Debussy’s violin sonata, the composer’s last completed work. Wearing black gauzy tunics and black toe shoes, Elizabeth Brown and Sarah Atkins are the eponymous duo; they partner lyrically, and all seems right with the world. Then Traci Finch appears out of nowhere and the ballet’s dynamic shifts and splinters, with fleeting pair-ups as alliances form and vanish in a trice. The subtexts of attraction and jealousy are very subtly threaded into the movement; an in-sync duet for Elizabeth and Traci is one outstanding moment, and the sonata’s final movement calls for large-scale virtuosic dancing from all three. But then Sarah impetuously rushes off. 

True to life, TWO FRIENDS often finds multiple narratives developing at the same time, and over-lapping. There is so much to watch and to savor: I especially relished a brief passage where Elizabeth Brown, suddenly finding herself standing alone, quietly runs her hands up and down her arms in a caressive gesture. Elizabeth, a dancer who always lures the eye with her confident technique and personal mystique, turned this fleeting moment into something of deeper resonance.  

Having followed Miro’s New Chamber Ballet for several seasons now, what I’ve come to appreciate most about him is his musical integrity. His tastes are eclectic, but always sophisticated, and he’s able to win us over to some very unusual and not always ‘easy’ music thru his own personal enthusiasm for the works he presents. The benefits of having the music played live are numerous, and greatly enhance the atmosphere at NCB‘s performances. And Miro’s excellent dancers take up each new musical and choreographic challenge that he sets for them with a wonderful mixture of strength, musicality, willingness, and grace.

The dancers tonight were Sarah Atkins, Elizabeth Brown, Traci Finch, Amber Neff, and Shoshana Rosenfield, with the music played by Doori Na (violin) and Melody Fader (piano) and costuming by Sarah Thea. Kudos to all, and to Miro for yet another fascinating evening of dance.

During the intermission, I really enjoyed re-connecting with Melissa Barak, the former New York City Ballet ballerina who now runs her own Los Angeles-based company Barak Ballet. Melissa is currently here in New York City as the inaugural Virginia B. Toulmin Fellow for Women Choreographers at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. We shared an awful lots of news and ideas in our 15-minute chat. I love her energy!