Melancholy. Fiery. Sensual. Piano Trio in A minor by Tchaikovsky, Op. 50, a monumental work composed in 1882, covers the whole emotional range. Add a balletic element, and it flies away.
He is the rare choreographer capable of materializing this haunting and haunting work. Lincoln Jones, artistic director of the American Contemporary Ballet, rose to the task in his first work of an evening.
Capping off its third season of Music + Dance: LA, a partnership with the venerable Da Camera Society, American Contemporary Ballet performed the first of six shows Friday ending Sunday at ACB DanceSpace on Wilshire Boulevard, featuring the stunning Saguaro Trio.
In the process, 11 dancers were subjected to rigorous, beautiful and sometimes surprising rhythms.
The Tchaikovsky opened with violinist Luanne Homzy, cellist Peter Myers and pianist Régulo Martínez-Antón performing the 18-minute elegiac opening movement, one brimming with lyrical motifs. What followed was a 30-minute virtual marathon of theme and variations, with each of the 10 variations, including a waltz and a mazurka, having distinct flavors; the work ending with another variation and a coda.
Dressed in gold, the central couple, Alisha Brach and Colby Parsons (her in a skirted leotard, he in a shiny gold top and mid-calf tights), presented the initial slow theme as if in statuary, posing, before create steam with quick and articulate footwork. . Parsons has hummingbird feet, enormous lift and mercurial leaps, and Brach’s porcelain demeanor belies ferocious technique, his back a study in suppleness, his precise turns.
The performance took place in a series of studio in-and-outs and not on a proscenium stage. It was a ballet in your face, with every effort seen, every shoe squeak and every landing heard. Unfortunately, Parsons, having trouble pairing Brach up in difficult lifts, seemed to tire early, his discomfort visible. When the eight-woman ensemble entered for the fifth variation – also clad in gold – it was well received, as Jones’ line formations and fugal motifs filled the room. A la Nijinsky, the octet marched slowly, as if nymphs were contemplating a frolic in the woods.
But one longed for a deeper perspective, to see the dance from further away, to absorb Jones’ complex neo-Balanchine shapes and diagonals, all moving at ever faster rhythms.
Suddenly a whoosh of black came in, broadcasting the golden girls. It was Hungarian-born firebrand Mate Szentes (new to the company this season), who spun, jumped and sometimes partnered with Rochelle Chang, Cleo Magill, Crystal Serrano and Carrie Ruth Trumbo, before the rest of the ensemble enters, becoming his playmates as well. Szentes, mischievous with a bravery attack, was a disruptive force thoroughly enjoying his Black Swan-like otherness.
Another reveal had the dancers (including Brach and Parsons), returning in coral-colored costume, with Szentes still in black. When the full ensemble, featuring Lydia Relle, Lauryn Winterhalder, Anaïs Blake and ACB Associate Director Theresa Farrell (also Jones’ muse), moved in glorious unison, their delicate bourrées accentuated the ethereal beauty of the art form, even ephemeral. With Martínez-Antón’s final piano notes barely audible, it was a beautiful end to a daring, mostly sublime journey.
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