Pennsylvania Ballet's "Company B'

Transitional steps

LEWIS WHITTINGTON

When he can, Pennsylvania Ballet artistic director Roy Kaiser likes to put together back-to-back programming, in order to put his dancers in mental and physical shape after the summer months off. He was able to schedule it that way this year with the “Company B” opening program of three modern works, followed by Ben Stevenson’s evening-length Dracula opening just before Halloween. The company will next perform Matt Neenan’s last two Pennsylvania Ballet commissions— Carmina Burana and As It’s Going— along with Val Canaparoli’s Lambarena at the New York Center festival in November.

This is a transitional time for PAB, with several veterans and key dancers having exited during the last two years. But Kaiser is not hedging any bets in challenging his new dancers or making roster changes in his seasoned corps.

Any major corps de ballet weakness would certainly be apparent in the industrial-strength neoclassicism of George Balanchine’s Concerto Barroco. In the second-night performance I attended, the corps opened with promisingly supple phrasing but veered quickly into flat and muddy unison work. If precision and lyricism is lost in this work, it looks rote or brittle. Fortunately, Martha Chamberlain and Julie Diana, embodiments of Bach’s Concerto in D minor’s dual strings, paced out their duet with conviction.

Diana beautifully partnered James Ady, highlighted by sustained musicality flowing through airy lifts and solid arabesque combinations. At one point Diana’s wraparound silk skirt ripped from her Danskin, but she wasn’t distracted from her technique or artistry. Ultimately she ignited the corps to put some air back in Balanchine’s closing allegro passages.

Bristling with emotion

Balanchine’s austerity was intriguingly contrasted with Matt Neenan’s 2006 ballet As It’s Going, scored to music by Dmitri Shostakovitch. The title is taken from a 1907 poem by Anna Akhmatova, who, like the composer, was a censored artist under Stalinist Russia.

The sheer curtains at the wings suggested a vanquished ballroom, haunted by dancers. Multi-hued slow fade-outs on the dancers still dancing in the dark suggested glimpses of lost stories. Martha Chamberlain’s thematic costume design had men in chocolate brown tights and black boots, women in dusted blue dance dresses— outfits that could look natural a century ago at the Maryinsky Theatre.

This work bristles with roiling emotions that come through the choreography. Ady, operating under Neenan’s dance fusion lexicon, proved that Balanchine was a mere warmup. He was partnered with a luminous Amy Aldridge in fiery pas de deux, full of intricate lift sequences and sudden tempo shifts not cued by the music. Arantxa Ochoa was also well matched with last-minute substitute Maximilien Baud. At one point during her solo, Ochoa landed on the floor and reached back with a leg like a Cirque contortionist.

Neenan‘s idioms require attack through a very un-dancey score, and the ballet was labored in the middle sections. Focus was missing between Sergio Torrado and Brooke Moore during a central duet, and the women’s quartet looked over-studied, while the men’s trio looked rushed. But a muscular trio by Barette Vance, Ian Hussey and Gabriella Yudenich thrilled me in its pacing and clarity of movement. This is a second run for As It’s Going. It’s unpredictable but cohesive choreography by Neenan that will eventually emerge as one of his strongest works.

The last good war

Who can’t love Company B, Paul Taylor’s classic honoring the GIs of World War II and their sweethearts back home? Set to the music of the Andrew Sisters, it revives the spirit of America’s greatest triumphs, on the battlefield and on the social dance floor alike. “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,” everybody’s favorite Andrews song, is tons of fun with Taylor’s stylized jitterbug and jive moves.

Hawley Rowe’s haunted realism on “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” communicates the grief of a war bride. In the tableaux, Taylor suggests with silhouettes that the two men in the distance were lovers, or perhaps that one was being escorted to heaven. Ian Hussey left the girls panting onstage and wowed everyone else with his jaunty attitude turn in “Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh.” And James Idhe tore wittily through “Tico, Tico” with a few spastic ticos of his own. Departing corps de ballet star Matt Neenan reprised his role as the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” with so much reveille style to spare that it’s hard to say “At ease, soldier.” But now hear this, troops: your “Pennsylvania Polka” needs more speed, lift and spark. Look me up at the next wedding.