"long and disappointing evening"

Aug. 20, 2006 performance, reviewed by Connell McGrath

Northwest Pacific Ballet performed at Jacob's Pillow this week to sold-out audiences. They had an enthusiastic reception which was mystifying considering the mediocrity and unevenness of the work. A great dancer Peter Boal has recently taken over as artistic director after his retirement from New York City Ballet. This new post should be very good news indeed for PNB. He is self-effacing, conscientious and has shown excellent taste in the past in choosing works to perform. Two years ago he came to Jacob's Pillow with three other dancers from NYCB under the name Peter Boal and Friends, and his choices were quite interesting. Now he returns with an excellent company, showing this disappointing work.

There is no doubt that the dancers of PNB are of the first quality. They performed the works given to them with the highest degree of professionalism, beautiful technique and nuance. But what were they performing? "The Piano Dance," choreographed by Paul Gipson to piano music of Chopin, John Cage, Ligeti, Bartok and Alberto Ginastera, is a cold, heartless, abstract exercise in ballet technique. I had to fight hard to maintain my concentration and focus on the piece; it never engaged me.

The second piece on the program is called "Ripple Mechanics," by the young choreographer Sonia Dawkins. She creates a musical collage around two songs, Nina Simone singing "Ne Me Quitte Pas," and Jacqueline Fuentes doing "Sinuoso Tropico." Dawkins at least has good taste in music. Around these two fine songs, Matthew Segal weaves a percussion soundscape that has no seeming connection to the songs or the stated theme of the piece. Four dancers, three men and one woman, are dressed in bathing suit costumes with little bits of fishnet hanging from the waist. They move around with abstraction and seeming aimlessness to the percussion, then do some very good work during the actual songs.

Of this piece, Dawkins writes "the dance expresses the forces of attraction and repulsion within relationships." Certainly, some of the pantomime she choreographs and the structure of the dancing during the songs indicates this theme. Sometimes the theme is shown with embarrassing clarity, leaving little to the imagination. There are moments in this piece of excellent choreography but on the whole, it doesn't hang together and the disparate elements have no connection to each other. Why bathing suits? Is she interested in relationships among surfers?

Next, Peter Boal chooses "Duo Concertant" by George Balanchine. This piece has always mystified me. Essentially, it's two dancers listening to a pianist and a violinist playing Stravinsky's great and very dancable piece of the same name. They lean on the piano and do their best to sustain a look of enraptured and loving music appreciation for a long, long stretches. Every once in a while they'll venture out onto the stage and execute a few steps. The choreography never develops to any degree because of the length of time they spend appreciating the beautiful music. I suppose Balanchine achieves his objective of highlighting Stravinsky's music for the audience, of giving it centerstage so to speak. But why choreograph anything for it, in that case?

After a second intermission in an evening of performances that clocked in at over 2 ½ hours, we saw the long-awaited, much-written-about Val Caniparoli work called "Lambarena." This is a dance choreographed to music by Bach and traditional African music. Interesting mixture of music, and Caniparoli does a very good job of blending classical ballet technique with African movement. He makes great use of the stage, and each aspect of the work supports the project. He succeeds in making a "joyous celebration of dancing." To ensure the authenticity of the African influence, Caniparoli engaged African choreographers Zakariya Sao Diouf and Naomi Geo Johnson-Washington as advisors. Lambarena is a unified, enjoyable piece, but it wasn't enough to salvage this long and disappointing evening.

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