“Choreographers of the 20th and 21st Centuries” at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 28 October 2024 13:20

Written by Jack Angstreich

Devon Teuscher in In the Upper Room. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor.

At Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, on the evening of Sunday, October 20th, I had the considerable pleasure to attend a superb mixed program—entitled “Choreographers of the 20th and 21st Centuries”—presented by the extraordinary American Ballet Theater.

The event opened magnificently with its strongest work: George Balanchine’s glorious Ballet Imperial from 1941, staged here by Colleen Neary, with exceptional stage and costume design by Jean-Marc Puissant and effective lighting by Mark Taylor. The piece is set to Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s second Piano Concerto—here admirably performed by soloist Emily Wong and wonderfully conducted by David LaMarche—a distinguished Romantic opus that is seldom played and is overshadowed by its enormously popular predecessor—I have some ambivalence about the selection of such a concerto as the basis for choreography but Balanchine nonetheless achieves a characteristically brilliant spectacle even if this may rank just below his very finest accomplishments. The production featured a marvelous slate of dancers—amongst the primary cast, Christine Shevchenko above all and Chloe Misseldine were stellar, ably abetted by Calvin Royal III. The remarkable secondary cast included Sunmi Park, Fangqi Li, Sung Woo Han and Jose Sebastian, with enchanting support from the fabulous corps de ballet.

Also compelling was Neo from 2021 by Alexei Ratmansky—probably the greatest contemporary choreographer that employs a classical vocabulary—which is set to music by Dai Fujikura—here performed by Sumie Kaneko—with costumes by Moritz Junge and lighting by Brad Fields. A brief duet, the piece does not have the grand ambition of Ratmansky’s greatest works, such as his glorious Namouna, but it was dynamically danced by an exquisite Isabella Boylston, confidently partnered by Jarod Curley, here replacing James Whiteside.

The evening concluded arrestingly with Twyla Tharp’s mesmerizing In the Upper Room from 1986–here staged by Shelley Washington with Blane Hoven—set to a incandescent original score by Philip Glass, with costumes by Norma Kamala and lighting Jennifer Tipton. The work is a worthy counterpart to Jerome Robbins’s astonishing Glass Pieces, even if it is not quite of the same eminence as that supreme masterwork. An amazing cast was especially noteworthy for the dancing of Devon Teuscher, Gillian Murphy, Hee Seo (here replacing Boylston), Hurlin again, and above all Aran Bell, who was truly superlative.

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