BWW Reviews: Variety and Virtuosity with the ARB SIGNATURE DUETS

The duet is one of the most versatile, most fulfilling, and most inexhaustible aspects of the art of ballet. But it isn't just the challenge of evoking a wealth of suggestion with a couple of dancers that makes duets so endlessly watchable: the format gives the dancers themselves enough room to show discipline and coordination, without really stifling personality. A case in point is the American Repertory Ballet's (ARB) Signature Duets showcase, which recently took the Hamilton Stage at the Union County Performing Arts Center. As a frequent ARB spectator, I have absorbed a good sense of the dancers' characters by now--but even complete newcomers to the ARB will realize that this is a company of immense, wonderfully individualized energy, an asset shared by the performers and the in-house choreographers.

Among the night's offerings were both balletic renditions of classical favorites and works with a little more modern nerve. While Douglas Martin's "Romeo and Juliet Balcony Pas" contrasted a gentle Karen Leslie Moscato with a regal Mattia Pallozzi, Martin's "Midsummer Night's Dream Pas" brought together two dancers (Shaye Firer and Marc St-Pierre) who established a thoroughgoing sense of calm good cheer. Two segments of Kirk Peterson's Tears of the Moon were also performed, bringing together four precise and disciplined dancers in total--first Monica Giragosian and Alexander Dutko, then Pallozzi and Samantha Gullace--and leading them, in concord with the music, to moments of both tension and tenderness. Weirder than any of this was Peterson's "Amazed in Burning Dreams Pas", a duet that found Firer and Cameron Able-Branigan decked out in metallic gray unitards and the occasional swatch of red. The choreography itself is both sudden and athletic, a possible reminder that every duet, perhaps, is a piece of sublimated competition.

To end the showcase, the ARB departed from the duet-upon-duet format and presented Mary Barton's Shades of Time, a cyclical composition that begins with a depiction of the darkness just before dawn, proceeds through the hours of the day, and rounds off as a new night begins to fall. It's both a big finish and a cool-down. Here, you will find the ARB dancers working in fine unison, which means that there is little of the drama of pairing-off that distinguished the duets. Shades of Time glides forward with the richly-colored inevitability of time and nature themselves. There are duets, quartets, and more within this composition, which takes a showcase that proceeds from routine to pleasing routine and draws everything serenely together.

For more information on the American Repertory Ballet, classes at the Princton Ballet School and their upcoming season announcement, visit their web site at http://www.americanrepertoryballet.org/.

This week, the ARB will have a special event: "Exploring Dance in the Summer" - an On Pointe event on May 8, 2014 at 5:15pm at the Princeton Ballet School studios, 301 North Harrison Street in Princeton, New Jersey. The event is free and open to the public. On Pointe is recommended for ages 5 and up.

Photo Credit: Leighton Chen

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