BWW Reviews: ARB at McCarter Theatre - A Perfect Showcase

It's been a long, drowsy winter--though if you're a dance buff, the American Repertory Ballet has put together the perfect showcase to jolt you out of hibernation. Starting with the magnificent melodrama Firebird, and following up with the warm-season works Afternoon of a Faun and Rite of Spring, the troupe took the stage at Princeton's McCarter Theatre just this past week. The program was a celebration of dance both new and old--the world premiere of Douglas Martin's Firebird choreography, no less--a revisitation of the balletic past that was taut, nimble, and modern in about the right measure.

Naturally, Martin's Firebird headlined the ARB's offerings. Set to the music of Igor Stravinsky, this short ballet is a fairly clean-cut story of good and evil. Our hero is Prince Ivan (Stephen Campanella), who is aided by the Sapphire Princess (Alice Cao) and the mystical Firebird (Alexander Dutko) in his attempts to vanquish the nefarious Immortal (Samantha Gullace). No major ambiguities, though the ARB production does have a few gratifyingly unexpected features. These welcome idiosyncrasies start with scenic designer Elizabeth Nelson's cubistic backdrops and extend to the dynamic between Campanella and Dutko, which evolves from distance and trepidation to something like camaraderie by the final, triumphant tableau.

Martin has disciplined this material into remarkably good shape, though he's sacrificed a few of the ballet's more intriguing possibilities in order to do so. While Dutko makes a fine and serious male Firebird, I wouldn't have minded a female dancer in the role; the Ivan-Sapphire relationship will always be too chaste to be interesting, but an Ivan-Firebird duet can have a much-appreciated sexual spark. And starting the production by introducing the Immortal and her minions, only to trot them out again at the climax, defeats too many elements of surprise. (For all its many flaws,the old Marc Chagall Firebird still wows its audience by saving its array of villains for the very end.) Yet repetitions like these are also invaluable in tightening up the narrative. In other productions I have seen, the ballet plays like a revised, abridged, brightened-up and tamped-down version of Swan Lake, and Martin has succeeded in giving Firebird some of the unity and integrity of a well-turned myth.

Afternoon of a Faun sets a markedly different tone; we're still in the world of myth, but this time, myth with laughter and sex and see-through dresses. Of the three pieces in the showcase, this was the one that seemed to glide by most quickly. No scene changes, no real scenery, and just about nothing in the way of narrative: just Claude Debussy's fluid music and scenes of dalliance involving a lusty faun (Mattia Pallozzi), a demure nymph (Karen Leslie Moscato), and their two coteries. It's a great counterpoint to Martin's little-to-no-nonsense take on Firebird, with Kirk Peterson's choreography striking a balance between grandeur (those fauns, how they move like actual, stately rams...) and flirtatious mischief.

To finish the night, the ARB presented its audience with another vision of harmony and tension: the inside of a mid-century ad agency, with all the regimentation, all the gender politics, and all the "making things happen" seductiveness that viewers of Mad Men have come to know and love. Is it a risk to combine Stravinsky's Rite of Spring with these trappings? Sure it is. But because civilization at its most regimented always seems just that close to losing control, Martin's leaping, pounding choreography for this second Stravinsky selection makes offbeat sense. What office drone doesn't, in his heart of hearts, dream of soaring through the air like an ARB principal?

Mad Men aside, the effect of all those bobbing secretaries and flapping suits is less Don Draper and more Dick Tracy than one might expect. Yet there are notes of complicating savagery. Without undermining the ebullience of so much of the piece, Campanella's turn as a disenchanted ad man and Shaye Firer's late-in-the-game entrance as a quasi-feminist upstart make this Rite of Spring almost ferocious. A rite, or a sublimated blood ritual? While it's not your usual take on Stravinsky, it's nutty, kinetic, and surprisingly glorious: a Rite of Spring that welcomes spring--which so often seems like the most cheery and harmless season--with a burst of frenzy.

The American Repertory Ballet continues their 2014 Spring Season this weekend at UCPAC's Hamilton stage in Rahway with Signature Duets: Dances of Daring and Devotion. For more information and ticketing, please visit their web site at www.americanrepertoryballet.org.

Photo Credit: Leighton Chen

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