{"id":941,"date":"2018-10-19T07:07:39","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T14:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/?p=941"},"modified":"2018-10-19T13:26:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T20:26:27","slug":"fall-for-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/fall-for-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall for Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every fall, over the course of two or\u00a0three weeks, New Yorkers get treated to a generous helping of dance at the hallowed City Center<\/a>. This Moorish extravaganza on West 55th Street was the original home of the New York City Ballet, and it is still a great place to see dance. What is particularly appealing\u00a0about the “Fall for Dance” programs is not just their range\u2014which could include\u00a0ballet, modern, hip-hop, and\u00a0flamenco in a single evening\u2014but also their price: for $15 (plus some rather hefty fees), you can get a ticket anywhere in the house. The result is an audience that is young, ethnically varied, and wildly enthusiastic about\u00a0everything it\u00a0sees.\u00a0Because it’s such a good deal, though, you have to\u00a0buy tickets\u00a0the first day they are offered if you want to be sure of getting your first choices. This year I managed to snag tickets to\u00a0Program 2 and Program 4, and I was more than satisfied with the results.<\/p>\n

Program 2 gave me a chance to see a good portion of Pam Tanowitz’s New Work for\u00a0Goldberg Variations<\/em>, which I had missed when it premiered last year, and I was grateful not only for the dance, but also for the performance by Simone Dinnerstein which the dance was designed to surround and accompany. I was also thrilled to see a new piece by Justin Peck, Sleep Well Beast<\/em>, that he\u00a0choreographed for himself and the remarkable dancer\u00a0Patricia Delgado (who also happens to be Peck’s fianc\u00e9e). The duet\u00a0was so perfectly suited to the two performers that it felt as if they were making it up spontaneously, yet so difficult to execute correctly that they must have spent weeks rehearsing it. Delgado is the best kind of ballerina\u2014delicate yet strong, flexible yet precise\u2014and I sincerely hope we get to see more of her in New York. The two pieces that came after the intermission were less noteworthy (Paul Taylor’s Promethean Fire<\/em> was a particular disappointment, largely because of its bombastic Stokowski orchestration of Bach’s\u00a0Toccata and Fugue, a score which sadly matched\u00a0the bombastic choreography). But by then I had more than had my money’s worth, so I didn’t mind.<\/p>\n

Program 4 was, if anything, even more satisfying. It began with a Frederick Ashton duet (excerpts from Rhapsody<\/em>) performed by Alina Cojocaru and Herman Cornejo. For me, any chance to see Cornejo perform these days is not to be missed, and from my excellent first-row mezzanine seat I could actually see his warm facial expressions as well as his precise gestures. Then came a Lucinda Childs work called Canto Ostinato<\/em>, subtly and skillfully\u00a0performed by a Dutch group called Introdans. This modernist work for four dancers\u00a0was so minimalist as to verge on tedium, if you were looking only for excitement; but I found it incredibly soothing to\u00a0watch the minor changes executed over time in such a bracingly intelligent manner. Neither of these pleasant experiences, however, prepared me for the wonder that was to follow: Jennifer Weber’s reimagining of Petrushka<\/em>, with Lil Buck (the great inventor and purveyor of Memphis jookin’) in the title role. I expected to love Lil Buck on his own, but I was not prepared for how beautifully the full trio worked together:\u00a0the liquid-boned Buck bringing new pathos to the\u00a0puppet role;\u00a0the wonderful Tiler Peck exhibiting a hard, sharp grace as\u00a0the ballerina he loves; and,\u00a0in the villainous role of the strongman who steals her,\u00a0an amazing ballet dancer (new to me)\u00a0named Brooklyn Mack. This was the kind of dance that leaves you\u00a0breathless\u2014it left me<\/em> breathless, anyway, as each new episode unfolded,\u00a0with every\u00a0performer embodying his or her\u00a0role to its fullest extent, and all three dancing (sometimes in unison) in a style that managed to combine ballet, jookin’, modern, and god knows what else. I can’t say anything better than to say that the performance\u00a0gave new life and meaning to the Stravinsky score, and I only wish it had gone on longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every fall, over the course of two or\u00a0three weeks, New Yorkers get treated to a generous helping of dance at the hallowed City Center. This Moorish extravaganza on West 55th Street was the original home of the New York City … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[543,141,139,548,549,546,541,544,547,57,545,542],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-lesser-blog","tag-brooklyn-mack","tag-city-center","tag-fall-for-dance","tag-herman-cornejo","tag-jennifer-weber","tag-justin-peck","tag-lil-buck","tag-pam-tanowitz","tag-patricia-delgado","tag-paul-taylor","tag-simone-dinnerstein","tag-tiler-peck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":948,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}