The message is in the medium and it’s presented right from the start. As show-goers file in, a scrim of brightly-hued triangles and circles loom from the stage. Its pattern, designed by Jeffrey Gibson, proves to be effective if overwhelming, foreshadowing.
Now sharpen your eyes. Running on either side, from top to bottom, lies the message: The only way out is through. That’s the name of the first section of choreographer Justin Peck’s new full-length work for New York City Ballet, Copland Dance Episodes. The sentiment though, carries through 80 minutes of freewheeling, slice-of-life dancing. It might sound like fortune-cookie wisdom or a line from an oft-recited Robert Frost poem (which it is, actually), but it’s a decent thought, regardless.
So what must one go through to get out? The answer: A LOT, maybe too much if youthful maximalism isn’t your jam. Over twenty-two vignettes, some long, others short, a cast of thirty, pedestrianizes ballet. The work suggests that who you are matters more than what you do.
Against a set that looks sourced from IKEA’s finest, dancers pop into sissonnes, hold low arabesques and twirl through topsy-turvy pirouettes. While ballet’s architecture remains intact, its flash and fuss have been jettisoned for a democracy of styles. Jazz flirts with ballet, ballet nods to downtown dance and downtown dance invites schoolyard games into the mêlée. Don’t forget that Peck started as a tapper, so blistering footwork will grab the spotlight. The choreography challenges everyone with its shifts among levels, directions and impulses. Yet the larger task is staying true to oneself.
Forget the prodigious talents and oversized personalities associated with ballet. The artists here are people first, performers second. Lines stretch across the stage rather than reach for the heavens. Landing a grand jeté cleanly and then holding that landing is more morally virtuous than scraping the ceiling and alighting onto a wobbly leg. Port de bras glide casually as when a person’s absorbed in a good conversation. Occasionally, a head cocks down as if someone’s lost in thought.
Performers come and go, mingling with one another, watching each other. They are aware of us, the audience, but we’re not the point. We’re there to overhear, to notice, to bear witness to their community.
No overarching narrative emerges, but there are personalities. And when there are personalities, tensions, aspirations and negotiations become inevitable. KJ Takahashi charms as the wry jester, slowing down through a series of à la seconde turns as the music sputters to a close. In a fateful quirk of time and space, Alexa Maxwell and Jovani Furlan find themselves alone on stage. Through fits and starts, his warm boyishness fits itself into her self-possessed introversion. Spoiler alert: it’s love!
Miriam Miller and Russell Janzen float through the youngsters magisterially. They’re that couple who’s always been together, will always be together - until a minor snag explodes into a major split. Using the form of a classical pas de deux, they re-enact an earlier sequence of arms that loop and slice over and around the other. This time, in that gestural slow dance of romance, frustration replaces their tenderness. Then come the divertissements. She explains herself through movement and he watches. He explains himself through movement and she watches. They break up and stay broken up, even as Miller, still hopeful, reaches out one last time.
The score, as you’ve already guessed, features a cascade of Aaron Copland numbers. Their familiarity, their unabashed Americanness, their tonal imperative to be expansive, forge a propulsive through line. While you’ve heard the music in other dances (Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid), you haven’t heard it with this dance save Rodeo, which is lifted from Peck’s 2015 Rodeo: Four Dances. Copland Dance Episodes smackers, a sloppy kiss to Millennial values which means the other, more-famous pieces remain on the sidelines, facts you know but don’t need.
Peck has been making dances for over a decade and his fingerprint is ridged with tics and preoccupations. The man loves organizing dancers in clumps, like life should be one giant cocktail party. Now, that’s an idea I can get behind! Movement often arises from an inhalation, powered straight from the spirit. He’s not opposed to a showbiz trope or two, such as kick lines and canons, as long as they’re reimagined. In one eye-catching phrase, artists recline on their elbows and, one after another, lift their legs. It’s a Vegas gimmick made sleek.
I’m no fortune teller, but once Copland Dance Episodes settles into the repertory, I bet it’ll become a crowd favorite. Wit, texture and color — the latter, literally with the cast in color block leotards and unitards by Ellen Warren, are artistic principles that are hard to resist. Plus, a full-length ballet at 80 minutes? That’s a date to keep for the always-overscheduled, hacking-their-way-to-productivity crowd.
I’ll see them there.
