Dancing in the Kitchen, and a Final Waltz

This week, American Ballet Theatre performed James Kudelka’s “Cinderella” at the Metropolitan Opera House. I’m sorry to report that the production, which premièred here in 2006 and was originally performed by the National Ballet of Canada in 2004, is not one of their best. The sets and costumes, vaguely inspired by the art-deco designs of Erte, are so cumbersome and  busy that they actually distract from the choreography. The clashing prints in the first act (set in the kitchen) are especially egregious, making it difficult for the eye to follow Cinderella’s movements, clad as she is in a drab house-dress. To make matters worse, Kudelka keeps Cinderella in her bare feet for almost the  first act, further limiting the visual effect of her dancing; at both performances I saw last week, with two different ballerinas (Gillian Murphy and Xiomara Reyes) in the lead role, Cinderella struggled to hold my attention amid all the zig-zaging lines of color. It doesn’t help that the choreography is all starts and stops; no sooner does Cinderella (or the Prince, or anyone else for that matter) begin a phrase, but she is interrupted by a bit of stage business: flopping on a chair, playing with a mop, gazing dreamily, crying. The costumes don’t help: the prince’s suit at the ball, a tuxedo with tails and loose trousers, obscures the effect of his split-leg jumps and arabesques. Even David Hallberg, with his endless legs and luxuriously pointed feet, was not able to fully project the radiance of his line or the amazing amplitude of his jumps.

It doesn’t help that Kudelka seems to have trouble telling the story. Instead of clear mime or well-constructed episodes leading up to the main event–the ball–we get busy to-ing and fro-ing, the meaning of which the audience is left to fill in from memory. When does the invitation to the ball actually arrive? Unclear. Nevertheless, the two stepsisters engage in cartoonish slapstick, prancing about, making faces, and contorting their bodies into garish, and strangely humorless, poses. The step-mother wanders in and out, tippling without interruption. Instead of fairies sent to prepare Cinderella for the ball, we get “creatures from the garden” who go by the name of Twig, Blossom, Moss, and Petal, dancing fussy but non-descript variations that reveal almost nothing about their individual qualities or their gifts to Cinderella. (One of them comes bearing a pair of toe-shoes for our heroine, a relief.)  Luckily, we already know the plot; but who are the creepy little people—dancers shuffling on their knees, wearing masks—who emerge from the fireplace to enact Cinderella’s fantasy wedding?  And why do Twig, Petal, and the other garden creatures appear at the ball? More crucially, why are the climactic events of the story—the moment in which Cinderella loses her slipper and the instant in which she successfully slips it back onto her foot, in the presence of the prince—obstructed from view?

The ballet has a few moments in which it rises above the clutter. The “round-the-world” search for Cinderella, undertaken by the prince and his four attendants, is witty, fast-paced and clean, and provides the men (now dressed in dapper whites) with ample opportunities to show off their technique. As always, one can’t help but be impressed by the depth of talent in ABT’s ranks. And it is a clever idea to have Cinderella, back in her now tidy kitchen, perform a dance with one foot sheathed in a pointe shoe and the other bare; it is interesting to see the contrast in the line of the leg on and off pointe. This contrast also presents the perfect excuse for a series of fouetté turns, with the ballerina rising and falling on the pointe shoe while whipping her bare foot round and round in the air. But these moments of clarity are not enough to elevate the rest of the ballet. Nor are the pas de deux for Cinderella and the prince. These quickly devolve into a series of cumbersome, awkward lifts, especially one in which the ballerina is hauled up by one leg, with the other leg extended, only to be tossed down again; this lift is repeated several times, and manages to look effortful on every occasion. It hardly seems worth the exertion. The final disappointment is the ballet’s bourgeois, un-spectacular resolution, in which Cinderella and her prince settle down to a domestic life by the hearth. This is a fairy-tale after all, a story about the triumph of true goodness over cruelty and neglect. But in the end Kudelka gives his heroine only an attentive husband (with his shirt-sleeves rolled up) and her own house to clean.

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Meanwhile, in one of the studios above City Center, Miro Magloire’s New Chamber Ballet held its final performances of the season (June 24-25). I’ve been watching this small ensemble for a few years now, and I think it is safe to say that this was their most successful evening of dances so far. Magloire, who was born in Germany, trained as a composer before coming to New York to study dance and work as a professional accompanist. As a former student of composition, he has a vivid interest in late twentieth-century music, works by composers such as Berio, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Salvatore Sciarrino. Not easy stuff to listen to or play, or to make dances to. Luckily, he has enlisted two truly top-notch musicians, Erik Carlson and Melody Fader, both of whom are full members of the company (not occasional collaborators). Their intelligence, sensitivity, and hyper-alert musicality illuminates these challenging scores and brings them to life.

Magloire also has an eye. He consistently works with a group of five or six excellent women dancers, many of whom he meets in the ballet classes where he plays. They come and go, but each newcomer brings with her a clean, un-showy technique, her own musical sensitivity, and a quiet gravity. The current crop—Alexandra Blacker, Elizabeth Brown, Madeline Deavenport, Katie Gibson, Victoria North, and Lauren Toole—are exemplary. They lead the viewer through the choreography, pointing the way with intelligence and grace. This is even more impressive given that they perform in the barest, most exposed setting one could imagine. The studios at City Center are large, high-ceilinged, clean-lined, and pleasantly old-fashioned, but there is no theatrical lighting and very little distance between the performers and their audience. The entire space is bathed in a bright, unforgiving light that reveals every drop of sweat, every breath, every slip of the foot, every sign of fatigue. Magloire’s dancers don’t try to create an illusion of theatricality through glassy smiles or weighty expressions. Their faces are calm, serene, but alert; they seem to think onstage, to listen, to open themselves to changes of tempo, dynamics, or feeling.  They perform the steps with quiet precision, as if to say, “here are the steps, see how the leg rises to the knee and the body draws a graceful arc. Now listen to this chord as it reverberates through the room.” The beautiful lines shine through: pure, up-lifted, expansive.

Magloire’s choreography tends toward spareness; he doesn’t derive much inspiration from rhythmic structure or phrasing. As a result, there is a certain static quality to his dances, as if he were trying to figure out how this or that idea might look, or how to express an underlying theme in the music, rather than how to create excitement or pleasure through the rush of movement. There are almost no big jumps, and the steps stay within a small range of floor space. Magloire’s imagination seems to build little stories or images rather than patterns and rhythms, as with Balanchine. Thought, rather than movement, predominates.

The first dance on the program, “The Game,” was set to a piece for solo violin by the British composer Brian Ferneyhough, “Unsichtbare Farben” (invisible colors). Magloire visualized the music as a card game, with two players sitting at a table, flanked by the violinist (at one point, one of the dancers turned the pages of the violin score). There is a power struggle between them; one dancer pushes the other’s head forcefully down toward the table, the cards fly. Every so often one of the players breaks away from the game to execute a short phrase, roll her shoulders, rise into a slow arabesque, do a few piqués. There is no real rhythmic structure to these solos, which are more like meditations than like dances. What stands out is the tension, the strategizing of the two card-players. The second piece, “Love Song Solos,” is more complex and more consciously “dancey,” and perhaps for this reason it my favorite work of his so far. For its score, Magloire deconstructed several pieces of German Romantic music, Wagner’s “Im Treibhaus” from “Wesendonck Lieder,” Schumann’s “Ich will meine Seele tauchen,” from “Dichterliebe,” etc, and set them, eccentrically, for two maracas, which he played. (No, it wasn’t a joke: he has a very German way of doing such things without the slightest hint of humor.) To my surprise, the experiment worked: the solos were wonderful little sketches, lush and evocative, with a more expansive use of space than is typical for him. Somehow, the dances managed to capture the spirit of the lieder; one could almost hear the music. I especially enjoyed a voluptuous waltz near the end.

The final piece on the program was by Magloire’s choreographer-in-residence, the young Emery LeCrone, whose name is beginning to circulate more and more in ballet circles. Her “Chamber Dances,” from last year, is the best piece of hers I’ve seen. Set to John Adams’ “Road Movies,” for violin and piano, it is fast-paced, breezy, rhythmically alive, refreshingly American, with an almost folksy feel. What struck me was LeCrone’s use of counterpoint, shifting the focus among the three dancers. There was a satisfying complexity to the footwork, and a bracing use of syncopation. The dancers tore around the studio, finally giving  free rein to their energy, which had been so contained in the previous works. There is no doubt that LeCrone is developing her craft, and quickly. She is certainly one to watch. She and Avi Scher will be sharing an evening at Works and Process at the Guggenheim in the fall. Something to look forward to.

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