Category: Ballet

Above: Audrey Crabtree-Hannigan of Columbia Ballet Collaborative; she appeared tonight in works by Dan Pahl and Donna Salgado

Friday November 22, 2013 – Columbia Ballet Collaborative danced for a packed house at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center tonight; extra rows of chairs were set out to accomodate an over-flow crowd which included many dancers and choreographers. Enthusiasm ran high for the six new works which were offered: well-contrasted pieces in a well-lit production and featuring an energetic ensemble of dancers, many of whom appeared in more than one ballet.

Claudia Schreier’s Harmonic opened the evening: yet another success for this choreographer who has an instinctive gift for movement and musicality. Her pas de quatre, to vividly danceable music by Douwe Eisenga, was well-danced by John Poppe, Rebecca Green, Sarah Silverblatt-Buser and Claire Wampler, each of whom has a solo passage woven into the fast-paced ensemble; John partners each of the girls in turn. Strong individual performances and good eye contact between the dancers held our focus, with excellent use of space and interesting patterns evolving in this seamless dancework. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing this piece again.

Dan Pahl set his new work The Sum of Its Parts to music by The Shanghai Restoration Project. The score opens like a giant machine, progressing to elements of rock, electric fiddle, and club music. Six girls filled the space with so much energy that they seemed like a dozen dancers: some really fine individual work here. Wearing metallic silver tops, the girls look like contemporary Valkyries with a suggestive sway in their movement. Two chairs are sat in, danced on and vaulted over; there’s quite a bit of floor-work and it’s very well integrated into the ballet’s overall structure.

Above: Rebecca Walden danced in ballets by Ja’ Malik and Richard Isaac

Ja’ Malik created an on-pointe ballet to Philip Glass’s exciting four-part suite ‘Company’; the ballet is entitled Brief Company. Ja’ makes excellent use of the classic ballet vocabulary in a contemporary setting and his dancers met all the demands of Ja’s choreography with both energy and artistry. Rebecca Walden opens the ballet in a beautiful solo passage; clad in pale aquamarine, she then begins to circle the stage in silence. In the darkness she comes upon the prone body of a man: guest dancer Joshua Henry. He rises as if from deep sleep and they dance a duet with complex partering motifs. Mr. Henry, tall and powerful of physique, was a good match for the impassioned Ms. Walden. Four girls form an integrated ensemble around the central couple. Mr. Henry’s expressive solo is danced in a patch of light, and then the ballet seemed poised to end in an agitated ensemble movement; but instead Ja’  interestingly clears the stage, leaving Ms. Walden to circle the space, resuming her silent, questing walk as darkness falls. Ja’s ballet elicited a whooping ovation from the crowd.

Richard Isaac has created a contemporary ‘white ballet’ with its title Night Music drawn from Mozart’s immortal ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’. The piece has a formal feeling, the dancers stepping out of a line-up to perform solos in the opening passage which is set to an Alexander Rastakov Mozart-hommage. As the lights blaze up, a spacious quartet ensues, danced to the Nachtmusik proper. After a structured walkabout the dancers re-group in a row before erupting into movement again. An especially intriguing segment finds Rebecca Walden being manipulated like a doll by her fellow dancers (Dan Pahl, Delaney Wing and Ms. Silverblatt-Buser).   

Above: Rebecca Green appeared in new works by Devin Alberda and Claudia Schreier

A relentess pulsing rhythm marks the opening of Devin Alberda’s pas de trois entitled Sissy Fists, the title a play on ‘Sisyphus’ but loaded with other implications. To music by Anna Meredith, two tall boys – John Poppe and Taylor Minich, in sleek body tights – are joined by Rebecca Green, dancing on pointe. The boys seem to be bonding but Ms. Green tends to intervene. Tension and traces of levity thread thru this dancework; as the music turns ominous, the boys’ mutual partnering becomes more fervent. The choreography’s dynamics reflect the music; there’s a darkening quality that I really like. It’s a ballet I want to see again.

The evening’s largest piece, A Portrait of Growth, is an all-female ensemble work by Donna Salgado to music by the husband-and-wife duo Houses, is the programe’s finale. Exploring the development of self-identity, this dancework seems especially suited to a college-based company. The ten girls break from unison passages to individual expression; solos danced by Audrey Crabtree-Hannigan, Julia Davis-Porada and Melissa Kaufman-Gomez draw us to their distinctiveness. And there is a line-up from which each girl momentarily steps forward in a brief phrase with a personal hue. The ballet reflects a period of time when life seems fulls of promise and possibility.