“Innovation Past and Present” Showcases Great Choreographers with The American Ballet Theater

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 25 October 2024 15:14

Written by Jack Angstreich

Scene from La Boutique. Photo: Kyle Froman.

At Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, on the evening of Thursday, October 17th, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend American Ballet Theater’s marvelous program of three dance works by different choreographers entitled “Innovation Past and Present,” featured as part of its fall season.

The event began splendidly with the enchanting La Boutique, which received its world premiere with these performances and was choreographed by Gemma Bond and set to the wonderful music by Gioachino Rossini orchestrated by Ottorino Respighi for Sergei Diaghilev’s famous 1919 Ballets Russes production, La Boutique Fantasque, by Léonide Massine, to which the new work is very much an hommage. (Ormsby Wilkins—who conducted confidently—and Charles Barker contributed to rearranging the score.) The attractive stage and costume design is by Jean-Marc Puissant, with effective lighting by Clifton Taylor.

The excellent cast was headlined by principals Isabella Boylston—who was superb—and Thomas Forster, along with Chloe Misseldine, Michael De La Nuez, Breanne Granlund and Jake Roxander. Also, notable in secondary parts were Sierra Armstrong, Jose Sebastian, Remy Young and Jacob Clerico, with strong—if maybe slightly underehearsed—support from the stellar corps de ballet, which shone in all the pieces on view.

Another striking world premiere was Kyle Abraham’s compelling Mercurial Son, which also employed a classical vocabulary although to avant-garde, rather than nostalgic, ends. The unconventional score is by Grischa Lichtenberger, with costumes by Karen Young and lighting by Dan Scully. Another superior cast included Skylar Brandt—who was especially remarkable—Léa Fleytoux, Granlund and Roxander again, Kanon Kimura, Melvin Lawovi and Calvin Royal III.

The event closed stunningly with the magnificent realization of a seldom produced, underappreciated masterpiece of 20th-century classical ballet, Harald Lander’s Études from 1948, which is set to delightful music by Carl Czerny brilliantly adapted and orchestrated by Knudåge Riisager. The choreographer has said about it:

Études means so much to me, because this ballet is an expression of myself, and of my thoughts on dance. Dancing is not just delivering some steps to the audience. The purpose of ballet is, increasingly so, to combine spirit, dance, and music!

The amazing ballerina Devon Teuscher shone at the head of a dazzling slate of dancers that also included the indelible Jarod Curley and Andrew Robare.

Ballet Theater’s fall season runs through November 3rd.

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