A visit abroad by a major American ballet company is almost always interesting; after so much pandemic upheaval it deserves appreciation just like a logistical achievement. For the first time in six years, Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet has come to New York for a full season, originally scheduled for June 2020. The company even brought its orchestra along.
Presented by the Joyce Theater Foundation at the David H. Koch Theatre, the brief includes two mixed repertory programs. The first of these, on Thursday (after a special Joyce gala program on Wednesday’s opening night), featured Ulysses Dove’s “Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven: Odes to Love and Loss”, Crystal Pite’s “Plot Point” and the New York premiere. from Twyla Tharp’s “Waiting at the Station.”
While New York audiences were introduced to some fantastic West Coast dancers, the two-and-a-half hour evening (including two long intermissions) felt oddly anticlimactic. Maybe it had to do with the sparse crowds on Thursday. Or maybe it was just the choice of repertoire, much of which seemed selected to brighten or illuminate our collective mood, but it didn’t quite work out.
The most gripping and emotionally resonant work came first, “Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven”, Dove’s prayer-like ballet for six dancers, and Arvo Pärt’s spacious and somber “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten”. Created for the Royal Swedish Ballet in 1993, in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, the work shows a series of relationships marked by desire, within a framework of communal ritual. Dove would die of AIDS-related complications just three years later, and it’s hard to look at this work without wishing we’d had more time with him.
The dancers—three men and three women, all in white unitards—start in a circle in the center of the stage, joining hands around a bright white spotlight. They repeatedly spread from this arrangement to other pools of light, flowing back to them, their foundation.
Against the echo of loud bells, angular poses and penetrating pleats conjure up their own urgent rhythm. And as much as the dancers stretch out toward each other—with outstretched hands darting forward, or bourrées contracting back—we also see their wholeness as individuals. At the intersection of two light corridors, Jonathan Batista pirouettes with breathtaking equanimity. Juliet Prine executes every move with precise certainty, and Amanda Morgan’s long limbs bloom from her center, communicating both freedom and devotion. When the dancers end up in separate spotlights, they are isolated but still together.
“Plot Point” (2010) swings in a different direction, an intentionally exaggerated extrapolation of film noir, in which 14 impressive dancers form a double cast of “real” characters and their shadowy “replicas”. Set to Bernard Herrmann’s score for Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (with additional sound by Owen Belton), the work accentuates the comedy of horror, scene after scene of exaggerated conflict and intrigue, sometimes resembling stop-motion animation. It’s fleetingly funny and — thanks in large part to Jay Gower Taylor’s stark, evocative set — visually handsome. But for all its meandering and doubling back, little seems to lie beneath its stylish surfaces.
Choreographed for the troupe in 2013, “Waiting at the Station” doubles up as a more wholesome kind of fun and transports us to 1940s New Orleans through colorful costumes and sets from Santo Loquasto and a soulful medley of music from the R&B artist. Allen Toussaint. While you might not know it without the program notes, the ballet tells the story of a father (James Yoichi Moore) who teaches his son (Kuu Sakuragi) dance steps before he dies. Both dancers nail their roles with brilliance and charisma, and the highlights of the ballet are their solos and interactions.
With plenty of heady ensemble work, ‘Waiting’ plateaus in a sort of relentlessly upbeat tone, even in the funeral scene. Sometimes it feels more real to lean against loss, as Dove’s work does.
Pacific Northwest Ballet
Through Sunday at the David H. Koch Theater; joyce.org.