NEW YORK — The pandemic has handed dance a particularly rough
year. “The floor was taken out from where we stand,” choreographer Alexei
Ratmansky says in a new video. “So we need to find this ground again and find
the audience, find ourselves.”
اضافة اعلان
“American Ballet Theatre (ABT) Live From City Center: A Ratmansky Celebration,” which
includes a new ballet, is a step toward that: His dances have found solid
ground in the form of a stage. And as the respected artist-in-residence at
American Ballet Theatre, he knows his way around one. But how does dance live
without an audience? And how can dancers, especially those in ballet who are so
used to being seen, reclaim their identities?
If we’ve learned anything in a year when most live performance
has been shuttered, it’s that virtual dance — especially when it’s treated like
an ordinary performance — is tricky to pull off. In Ratmansky’s premiere, “Bernstein
in a Bubble,” as well as the other works on the program, including the Rose
Adagio from “The Sleeping Beauty,” the lack of an audience is acutely felt.
The connection between spectator and dancer may not be physical,
but it creates a line of energy that completes the vibrancy of a ballet. In
this production, we are being led not by the choreographer but by the camera.
And it doesn’t always take you where you want to go.
For the program, produced by New York City Center, Ballet
Theater and Nel Shelby Productions, the performers were shot in multiple takes
and from a variety of angles, with five cameras. This means views fluctuate
from near to far and everything in between. What’s disconcerting — and, worse,
dizzying — is how the vantage point changes in the blink of an eye. Dancers
disappear into shadows. Details blur as the camera pans back and forth;
suddenly, it’s much too close. We lose fingertips, feet — those essential parts
of the dancing body.
A camera can do one of two things: obscure a dance or enhance
it. Ratmansky’s latest, set to Leonard Bernstein’s brisk “Divertimento,” has an
air of American optimism and heroism along with the idea that drive and spirit
are more than enough to save the day. An antidote to the times? Sure. But do I
buy this veiled version? Not really.
“Bernstein in a Bubble” has its share of quiet moments, but the
main feeling is one of playfulness for the cast: Skylar Brandt, Catherine
Hurlin, Cassandra Trenary, Aran Bell, Patrick Frenette, Blaine Hoven and Tyler
Maloney. Ratmansky embellishes his choreography with enjoyable details — the
women, first raising their knees, tap the tip of their pointe shoes onto the
stage with relish — but there is also, periodically, a sense of the dancers
slipping in and out of sync, of not quite knowing where to look. From its
overly cute title to the abruptness of the scenes, “Bernstein” feels
superficial. And despite its energy, there’s little momentum. It might be the
film and not the dance, but does that matter? This is a film of a
dance.
Bookended by the image of six performers gathered around the
towering Bell — who, occasionally, is also the odd man out — “Bernstein in a
Bubble” has an episodic quality as it responds to the mood and energy of the
short suites. A gentle male trio, in which the dancers lean forward in an
arabesque and cascade to the floor, eventually leads to them sitting like
sculptures, propped up on a straight arm and gazing down.
The lively ending attempts to tie it together by showing the
community of the group. But while “Bernstein in a Bubble” has its share of
tender and courageous moments, it doesn’t feel lived in enough to really know
what its entirety is.
There was nothing incomplete about another dance video
experience, this one by contemporary choreographer Netta Yerushalmy. Presented
by Wexner Center for the Arts and Los Angeles Performance Practice on Tuesday, “Distant
Dance Demonstration: Movement in Unison and Not for Those in Need of Art”
records and expands on a live, unauthorized performance at the East River Park
Amphitheater.
Here, filmmaker Jeremy Jacob, credited with creating designs for
the screen, illuminates the dance with colorblocking techniques and animation —
yellows and pinks wash over the performance — and inserts still photography by
Maria Baranova. The dancers wear sneakers — performing footwork that is
rigorous, detailed and imaginative — as they move from the stage to surrounding
bits of grass and dirt.
This film, in essence, preserves not only a dance but a place:
the amphitheater, whose proposed demolition is a part of plans to elevate and
reconstruct East River Park to protect it from damaging coastal storms. (The
plan is not universally popular.) It also represents a moment in time when,
despite the pandemic, a choreographer and her dancers, seven in all, rehearsed
in a park and performed for an invited crowd and anyone else who felt like
stopping by.
Because of the camera — and not despite it — this is a dance
that breathes. Most important, it feels like you are looking out of a window
instead of at a screen. At 27 minutes, “Distant Dance Demonstration” might not
be, as Yerushalmy said in her live introduction, “fast or fun or polished.”
What it is: an absorbing, soulful recreation of time and place
that evokes the isolation of this time. Remember the end of summer when the
heat and light couldn’t soften the sorrow and confusion of the world? “Distant
Dance Demonstration” was a rare live performance, but now it’s also more than a
dance. It’s a piece of history, a marker of time — and, yes, it is very much
alive.
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