BWW Reviews: The Gods Prevail in NYCB's Black and White Festival II

Tuesday, May 5th, New York City Ballet's Black and White Festival offered the second of three programs showing the range of George Balanchine's minimalist works, which heralded the neoclassical style for which the company is known. Hear the Dance: Russia, covered forty years of Balanchine accompanied by Stravinsky's music from his Apollo, created in 1928 for Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, to 1957's Agon, to two works from 1972, Duo Concertant and Symphony in Three Movements. In Balanchine's temple on Lincoln Center's campus, his choreography plagued the dancers with drops, trips, and slips.

With principal dancer Robert Fairchild away on Broadway and Chase Finlay's injury, this season's Apollo casting brought debuts for both principal dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring and tonight for newly-promoted soloist Zachary Catazaro. Apollo and his Muses struggled on this night, the only healing from an unflappable Sterling Hyltin's Terpsichore. Catazaro's broad chest and chiseled torso embodied Apollonian physique. He moved with an unexpected grounded weightiness that distinguished his dancing with its elasticity. His opening solo began with luscious port de bras of the lyre, but ended with a crash as he dropped the instrument. He himself seemed shocked to have dropped it. He hesitated before placing the lyre further downstage. The energy of the evening shifted in that moment. His muses, Hyltin as Terpsichore, Sara Mearns as Polyhymnia, and Ana Sophia Scheller as Calliope, encountered difficulties of their own. Not complementary to each other or to Catazaro, perhaps these Muses were chosen for their distinct qualities. However, Hyltin's spritely shape with Mearn's willowy grace and Scheller's subtle presence lacked synchronicity. Hyltin and Scheller's petite forms couldn't maintain the framing of Mearns' longer reach and step. Mearns tripped in a sequence of bourrées (perhaps in an effort to regain proper relationship in formation). And in one of the trio's arabesque posés around Catazaro, Scheller kicked Hyltin's derrière. Yet, Hyltin manifested the spirit of Terpsichore, bolstering Catazaro's Apollo in their pas de deux.

The odd energy of the night continued in Agon, with a big slip for Ashley Hod as she cheerily took her place front and center in the opening section. Hod regained most of her buoyant fervor and delivered striking jetés in the First Pas de Trois. Hod and Unity Phelan strongly matched each other's dynamic in the way Apollo's muses did not. The most senior of the men, Adrian Danchig-Waring, looked generally concerned in the pas de quatre. But he came to life grasping Teresa Reichlen's hand in their pas de deux to punctuate Balanchine's furtive affinity for romance. The intersecting duos and trios in Part III showed the corps de ballet's youthfulness, at times anticipating the music and rushing their steps.

The pace slowed with Duo Concertant for Sterling Hyltin and Russell Janzen, accompanied by violinist Arturo Delmoni and Pianist Nancy McDill. Intimate but playful, Hyltin and Janzen turned the evening toward a calmer tide. Hyltin treated each moment with equal attention - maintaining Terpsichore - whether standing beside the piano or twirling away from it. Janzen, a 2015 Clive Barnes Foundation Award recipient, paralleled Hyltin's presence. This focus gave a somewhat anxious audience a reprieve. Balanchine indulged in shadow play with the spotlight showing only their hands or faces.

Symphony in Three Movements better balanced principals, soloists, and the corps de ballet. As the women in pink, Lauren King, Megan LeCrone, and Tiler Peck pushed through the challenge of closing a night in their first appearance. Peck darted through the alternating circles of the corps in a catch-me-if-you-can manner. Peck and Amar Ramasar's pas deux contained jazzy hints in the slight swiveling of leg into plié, or the rolling of a shoulder, as both move beyond a purely classical capacity. The men found their moxie as they descended into push-up positions, the women stepping around them.

Director Peter Martins put his dancers through a Balanchine course. But with Balanchine, his works developed in tandem with the particular dancers of each work's time. Like Apollo, these dancers seek their inspiration; some as muses, some as gods.

Teresa Reichlen and Adrian Danchig-Waring in Agon courtesy New York City Ballet.

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