Dancing duality: Boston Ballet’s Fall Expertise 2024

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At the same time, none of these programs have ever felt quite the same. That reflects the duality of novelty and tradition within artmaking; we draw upon what has come before to make something not exactly like anything that has ever come before. There were many such intriguing dualities in this program – leaving me both intellectually stimulated and aesthetically satisfied long after I left the theater.

The world premiere of Boston Ballet Principal Lia Cirio’s After kicked off the program. Her being a seasoned performer and rising choreographer, Cirio’s work here demonstrated singularity of voice and the potential for a vibrant choreographic career ahead of her. It teased at dualities and tensions in ways that tickled the mind, but also settled the soul.

The work began humming with calm and introspection – yet also touches of uncertainty and unease. The latter grew to more than just a touch as the work progressed: the ensemble growing, the score (from Lera Auerbach) escalating in intensity, and movement accordingly accruing vigor.

A variety of qualities remained at hand, however – such as hip rolls and popped heels offering just a dash of spirit and sass. Strong poses melted, spines fully softening. Bent limbs with flexed feet lengthened into expansive lines, partners supporting ballerinas en pointe through the shift.

Speaking of pas de deux partners, keeping the same pairs throughout the work allowed unique and compelling relationships to grow between each. In particular, Paul Craig and Chyrstyn Fentroy brought their contrasting movement signatures together into something harmonious.

Pleats in the costumes (by Marija Djordjevic), and a large sculpture both circular and striated (by John Farrell), felt aligned with all of these dualities. On multiple levels, the work built a dynamic exchange between sharp angularity and curvaceous flow. It also underscored how through intelligent shaping of aesthetic theme, a non-narrative work can indeed speak – clearly, and in volumes…speak through how it can make us feel.

Next came Sabrina Matthews’ fresh, evocative Ein von Viel (2001). It began with an onstage pianist (Alex Foaksman) offering an ebullient Bach prelude. Then lights came up on two duet partners, Soon Woo Lee and Yue Shi. The energy gradually rose as they added layers of supple yet staccato movement.

Their limbs circled and swept like propeller blades, quick and sure. Commanding space and standing ground, they reached up to make an “X” shape: living Vetruvian men before us. As in Cirio’s work, their angles offset serpentine spinal exploration – even more so as the work progressed.

Matthews also keenly staged them to have their shapes converge and diverge as they danced in non-unison, even when they were apart onstage – and the duet partners delivered those choices with effective precision. That quality built a dynamic and deepened a connection between them.

All of the above was possible through two bodies, a piano and a pianist to play it; as the cliché goes, less is more…less can create more. To end the work, they held arms out at shoulder height, palms and gaze up, directly facing the audience: an embodiment of the openness to joyful possibility that permeated the work.

Coming third, before an intermission, was Resident Choreographer Jorma Elo’s elegantly high-octane and muscular Plan to B (2004). I first experienced the work virtually, in 2020. The work’s play with physical proximity, finding and losing tangible touch, hit me differently now that we’ve come out on the other side of lockdowns (although not past COVID as a whole, to be clear). It reminded me how works like these can resonate differently, perhaps no more or less deeply, depending on what we bring to them.

Crystal Pite’s raw and earthy The Seasons’ Canon (2016) closed the program. A “four seasons” conceit has certainly been done – many times – but Pite brought a singular, and enticingly modern, sensibility to it here. To open the work, a mesmerizing pattern that reminisced dancing tree branches came up on the backdrop (by Jay Gower Taylor and Tom Visser).

Then lights came up on the dancers, clumped and rippling in turn to create a wave effect – echoing the fluidity in the backdrop behind them. Throughout the work, the backdrop and dancers seemed to move in parallel — amoeba-like organisms of their own nevertheless in conversation.

The ensemble’s movement quality drastically shifted, however, as they began executing almost bird-like twitches. The group then dispersed to dance vivacious allegro movement, at times reminiscing soft opening and closing of flower petals – as if in time lapse.

As these stellar artists executed such kinetic nuances, both viscous and serpentine qualities shone through: mingling, toggling, interchanging. All of this may sound a bit abrupt and disjointed, yet Pite and the ensemble brought all of these layers of natural imagery together into something cohesive – and quite satisfying.

As further sections progressed, seamless shifts in staging echoed the continuous growth and erosion within the natural world. Just as in nature, as well, there was also no escaping an inherent interconnection. The dancers appeared to be independent agents within a collective; relationships evolved with telling actions such as dancers rising to stand above others.

Impressively, all of this action – from an ensemble of 54 dancers – stayed clean and digestible (very much no easy feat). In fact, Pite’s choice of such a large ensemble seemed to make possible many of the effects on offer (such as the large clump rippling like a wave in the work’s opening and, bringing it full-circle, in its closing).

Dancers fully blanketing the stage, erupting in explosive unison movement, could induce chills – simply from the unified physical power at hand. There was also a softer rising of hope to the surface: warmer, brighter days, firefly-like flashes dancing across the backdrop throughout.

Yes, there were those evident signifiers – yet, interestingly, not a conventional seasonal structuring (at least not one that stood out to me). The feeling here was more cyclical, more continuous – even, I daresay, eternal. Perhaps there is a kind of hope in that sense of perpetuity.

All considered, the work did the farthest thing from falling back on what’s already been done. Rather, it was one of those works that makes me ponder on those flashes of creative vision that – if followed and intentionally shaped – can make something daring and unparalleled like this. I’d argue that the same was true of each of the works in the program, each in their own way.

That could resonate from the holding container of another Fall Experience from this stalwart company. I look forward to coming back to experience that free ingenuity within rigorous, intentional structure – again…and again. If you can, I hope that you will too!