Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Beloved City Ballet principals TILER PECK and SARA MEARNS branch out from the comfort of their home base to curate their own programs of dance

• By drediman
• March 10, 2022
• No Comments

Tiler Peck and Sara Mearns have bigger things on their minds beyond dazzling audiences with their appearances with New York City Ballet. Case in point – with the company’s gruelling winter season behind them, these two beloved and seasoned City Ballet principals have branched out from the comfort of their home base to forge forward with their own personally curated programs via two of the city’s premiere presenters of dance. Interestingly, the two evenings couldn’t have been more different. Here are my thoughts on them.

TILER PECK: ARTISTS AT THE CENTER
New York City Center
Closed

Last weekend, Tiler Peck launched New York City Center’s inaugural “Artists at the Center” series with her own curated bill (RECOMMENDED) designed specifically around and built upon her recognizable brand of dance – quicksilver, brightly musical, and polished. Smartly, Peck surrounded herself with some of the city’s finest dancers (mostly culled from the ranks of City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre), internationally accomplished choreographers, and a diverse set of live musicians – all but guaranteeing a crowd-pleasing evening. And it was, although I didn’t really get the sense that she was fundamentally challenged by the endeavor. Peck’s own Thousandth Orange got things off to a promising start. Set to Caroline Shaw’s serene score, Peck refreshingly eschews technical fireworks in her choreography (she did not appear in the piece), instead choosing to caress the music with a series of elegant and quietly ravishing tableaus. The program continued with Alonzo King’s Swift Arrow, a fluid but forgettable pas de deux danced with precision by Peck and Roman Mejia. Then came the world premiere of the sprawling Time Spell, a choreographic collaboration between Peck, Michelle Dorrance, and Jillian Meyers for eleven eclectic dancers (although all three choreographers appeared in the work, I simply could not take my eyes off of City Ballet’s India Bradley, a future star for sure) and two singers (the wonderfully engaged Aaron Marcellus and Penelope Wendtlandt). Thrillingly, ballet, tap, and music-making weaved in and out of each other with spectacular spontaneity as the piece played with time, space, and music – a hat trick that Peck is no stranger to. The program concluded with William Forsythe’s The Barre Project, Blake Works II. A streaming hit during lockdown, the work seemed diminished live onstage, even as it attempted to spur excitement through Forsythe’s distinctively swaggering, angular movements and James Blake’s high octane music.

SARA MEARNS: PIECE OF WORK
The Joyce Theater
Through March 13

Then this week at The Joyce Theater, we have “Piece of Work” (RECOMMENDED), Sara Mearns’ adventurous and deeply personal dive into dance well beyond the confines of classical ballet. In contrast to the glossy surface-level sheen of Peck’s meticulously curated evening of dance, Mearns’ program showcased a chameleonic artist unafraid to get her hands dirty in her thoughtful pursuit of self-knowledge. Despite the evening’s frustrations (I’ll get to those shortly), the bill explores the full breadth and depth of her artistry as a dancer and collaborator. An imperious, dramatic dancer, Mearns could have easily skated by safely by continuing to dance classical ballet roles that scarcely anyone performs better. Ever the restless artist (especially during the pandemic), however, she’s instead chosen to challenge herself to work with dance artists way outside of her wheelhouse. The frustrations come from the overarching sense that the program is primarily an experiment, for better or worse. As such, some dances gel better than others. Among the “hits” of the duet-dominated bill – which is augmented by insightful voice-over commentary by Mearns between dances – is Jodi Melnick’s Opulence, which presents Mearns at her most laid back as she casually yet beguilingly weaves in and out of synchronicity with Melnick. Also fascinating is On the Margins, Mearns’ fractured and sensitively frayed collaboration with dancer/choreographer Vinson Fraley, Jr. Additionally, there is unconventional drama in JoycEvent – Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener’s arrangement of Merce Cunningham choreography – which finds Ms. Mearns (along with five other relative Cunningham virgins, all excellent) discovering serenity in movement devoid of human context. Less successful, however, is the head-scratching solo SSSARA by Beth Gill, as well as the closer – National Ballet of Canada star Guillaume Côté’s generically pretty SPIR, perhaps the most conventional and, therefore, least interesting of the lot.