Above: Troy Schumacher, photo by Matthew Murphy
Wednesday October 29th, 2014 – The dancing tonight as Troy Schumacher’s BalletCollective opened at The Skirball was fantastic. Drawing from the roster of his resident Company, New York City Ballet, Troy presented an ensemble of dancers with spectacular technical and communicative gifts.
The program opened with the impulse wants company (premiered in 2013), set to a score by Ellis Ludwig-Leone, and drawing inspiration from a poem by Cynthia Zarin. The music was played live (as in fact was the entire programme) the contemporary ensemble Hotel Elefant.
Above: Claire Kretzschmar, photo by Matt Murphy
Long-limbed and with an innate sense of the dramatic, Claire Kretzschmar launched the evening in a solo passage. This distinctive NYCB ballerina really made her mark tonight, Troy’s choreography showing her off to fine effect in both the opening and closing works. (Meet Claire in this video, in which the Collective’s Taylor Stanley also appears.) She is soon joined by Ashley Laracey, Lauren King, Meagan Mann, David Prottas, Taylor Stanley, and Troy Schumacher. This dynamic group highlighted Troy’s inventive choreography with propulsive energy mixed in with moments of pensive repose. A spectacular solo by Taylor Stanley left me feeling awestruck.
Above: Ashley Laracey and Troy Schumacher, photo by Matt Murphy
Following the interval, the premiere of a new duet, dear and blackbirds, was danced by Ashley Laracey and Troy Schumacher to music by Ellis Ludwig-Leone; again, a poem by Cynthia Zarin was the frame of reference. Troy had not originally planned to dance in the performance this evening, but he stepped in on short notce after a colleague sustained an injury. This pas de deux had a Jerome Robbins flavour, the couple exploring the possibilities of mutual interest, alternately hesitant and impetuous. Romantic partnering with touches of playfulness give way to the two dancers trading short phrases. Ashley Laracey displayed the lovely qualities of lyricism that have kept her shining in my dance firmament since I first saw her onstage.
Above: Taylor Stanley, photo by Matt Murphy
In all that we see, the addition of wind players to the strings and piano gave the sonic landscape a fresh vista. Meagan Mann, Lauren King, Claire Kretzschmar, David Prottas and Taylor Stanley all danced exceptionally well. Claire again made superb use of the space and she has a restless angularity that draws the eye. There’s a very nice duet for Lauren and Taylor, and Meagan at one point enters in a tip-toeing motif, adding a sense of mystery. David and Taylor came face to face in a dramatic moment: I thought they might punch each other…or kiss.
In an evening so well-danced and featuring choreography which reaches for new combinations in a familiar vocabulary, a lack of contrast in the musical settings was a minor drawback. The composer of all three works has definite skill and his music is appealing, yet a whole evening of it doesn’t quite hold up. The musicians of Hotel Elefant were excellent and warmly acknowledged by the audience.
The Skirball stage was stripped back to the bare back wall and wings, giving the ballets an industrial look. The lighting design produced some striking moments, but at times the dancers were too heavily shadowed. The costuming had an every-day feeling in the first two works; a credit to artist David Salle for painting the clothes for all that we see piqued my curiosity but from where I was sitting I couldn’t get a feel for his work. The big projections that were a key element in the Collective’s inaugural presentations weren’t part of the current presentation, but the dancers and the dance successfully held the stage in this rather stripped-down setting. The evening drew a real New York dance crowd, laced with celebrities and keen in their attentive focus.
All photography by the marvelous Matthew Murphy.
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