My coworker texted me on Sunday morning to ask if The Joffrey Ballet’s performance at Zellerbach Hall was a must-see. “Honestly, no,” I wrote her back. I debated whether I should equivocate—one person’s must-see is another’s dud, after all. But in the end I held firm. “I only liked 2 out of 4 pieces,” I told her. “If you’re not feeling it, I would say you can skip it.”
As someone who is trying to advocate for getting people to go to the ballet, I probably should have told her to go. But I also know, from years of theater-going, that if you start off not wanting to be there, then you will be bitter by the end unless the performance is so amazing that it manages to get you past the hurdle you created, which is basically sitting down and saying, “Impress me.”
The Joffrey Ballet presented a mixed bill of four ballets: In Creases, by Justin Peck; Encounter, by Nicolas Blanc; Joy, by Alexander Ekman; and Mammatus, by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. They also announced that this was the first in a five-year partnership with Cal Performances, which means that Bay Area audiences will be getting to see a lot more of this company.
Peck’s In Creases was the only piece on the program I was familiar with, having seen it in August when I saw the Tiler Peck-curated “Ballet Now” at The Music Center in L.A. I liked it immediately, and so was glad to see it again. This was Peck’s first creation for New York City Ballet. In the intervening years, he’s become quite the “It” choreographer, in demand across the industry and the latest in a series of choreographers to be considered an heir to Balanchine.
What I like so much about In Creases is that you can see the construction. If you take a choreography class, you learn tools to help you manipulate movement. Mirroring, repetition, reversing, retrograding, changing directions, changing angles—all of these are “devices” that can be applied to a dance phrase to make it more—complex, interesting, just MORE. Most of the time when you watch a ballet, you’re not conscious of the choreographer deploying these tricks. But In Creases is a bit like a garment turned inside out. You can see the seams, and the stitching, all of which are very good but which nevertheless reveal themselves. And for whatever reason, that appealed to me. It may be because I’ve seen other of Peck’s more recent works and know how he’s grown that I find it charming to witness the essential simplicity of his first ballet. It may be because having tried my own hand at choreography in college I appreciate the bald use of basic techniques. And it may be because it’s rare to see a piece like this these days, with a small group, lots of patterns, and real, honest-to-goodness technique on display.
Following a pause, the evening continued with Nicolas Blanc’s Encounter. “It’s very neo-Afternoon of a Faun,” I told my mom afterwards. And I would like to say, for the record, that I made that comment BEFORE I read the program notes, where in fact it says that the piece does indeed nod to that work. Encounter referenced both versions, actually. When the man first reaches out to his partner, his hands are flat and bent along the wrist, à la Nijinsky, a gesture that recurs throughout. But in mood and content, Encounter is closer to the Faun of Jerome Robbins, although it lacks the dreamy narcissism of that work that gives it its spellbinding quality. All told, I did not care for the piece.
The middle section of the evening was given over to Joy, both the title of Alexander Ekman’s work and the tone of the piece. As the curtain rises, you see dancers already in motion—one man is jumping around in the corner (cavorting is a better word), one man is in a handstand. The stage is bare, save for a single tree, being tended by a man with an enormous green watering can. There are no wings, no backdrops; the stage is open so that you can see the back wall and the lighting booms off to the sides. Then the narration begins. Ekman’s lightly accented voice starts talking about the concept of the ballet: he asked the dancers if there were certain movements that sparked joy when they executed them. As the audience begins to ponder that, a woman slides across stage on the tips of her pointe shoes. Upstage, a man holds a woman aloft and revolves slowly. One or two at a time, as Ekman continues talking—and it’s very funny—the dancers enter the stage space and begin moving in ways that are, one presumes, joyful to them. Finally, Ekman asks, “Is it possible not to have an opinion?” I don’t think it is, and anyway, by that time I’ve already formed one and it’s positive.
The opening is followed by a women’s section, featuring a “shoe drop.” A single woman stands center stage, hair down, in fourth position, holding a pointe shoe in each hand. “I had thought about calling the piece ‘Shoe Drop’,” Ekman intones. Then the dancer speaks, saying, “This is a shoe drop,” before simply dropping her shoes straight down. Another woman enters, with her own short sentence, and then drops her shoes, as the first repeats her own shoe drop. Again, one or two at a time, the women enter and begin their own shoe drop routine until the full cast of women is onstage. Then, altogether, they drop their shoes as a neon light stick figure of a flamingo lowers into the space. The women sit down, and in semi-darkness put on their pointe shoes. It felt a bit like a race, and I found myself holding my breath as I watched and waited. When they stood up, they were no longer women; they were ballerinas, stalking about in their shoes. To me, that moment spoke to the transformative power of pointe shoes: the satin slippers are what make them go from woman to ballerina. There isn’t a lot of choreography, per se, in this section, but it was powerful to see a large group of women move about the stage in a pack. They seemed like a tribe, traveling around the stage en masse or leaping across in double-attitude jetes, truly like a herd of gazelles. While the big ballets are full of large corps de ballets moving in perfect unison, this had a different and unusual feel. I found myself thinking of Giselle, actually, and of Hilarion, and of how I wouldn’t want to come across this pack of powerful women in the forest at night. The section ends, fittingly, with the women taking their shoes off.
There’s more—a pack-mentality bit, a men in heels bit, then everyone in heels—before the piece winds itself naturally back to where it started (it’s funny how sometimes you can see that ending coming).
I was sorry that Joy wasn’t the final piece on the program. It had the energy and humor that I needed, and I could have happily walked out of the theater on a cloud. Instead, there was Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s abstract take on clouds, Mammatus. There was really nothing wrong with this piece, except that it didn’t capture me the way Joy did. I also couldn’t help comparing it to Ochoa’s Requiem for a Rose, which I had just seen Smuin perform and loved. Requiem is deeply romantic, with a lush score and intimate atmosphere. Mammatus felt cool in comparison, with dry ice fog and neon rod lights, stark black (or white) costumes with gloved hands, and an emphasis on groups rather than couples.
While I can still recall vividly entire sections of Joy, very little stands out in memory of Mammatus. But I was glad to see another piece of Ochoa’s. This is the third I’ve seen this year (the others being Requiem for a Rose and A Streetcar Named Desire), and I’m all the more curious now to see what she creates for San Francisco Ballet as part of their Unbound festival of new works next spring.
Until then, I would like to revisit the concept of joy. Going to the ballet brings me joy. What brings YOU joy? And, in the spirit of the holiday season and Marie Kondo, pursue that, even if just for an evening.
The Joffrey Ballet
November 18, 2017, 8 pm, at Zellerbach Hall
In Creases, Encounter, Joy, Mammatus
Going to the Ballet 