Kingdom of the Shades is a company's ultimate test

The complete La Bayadère is a sprawling, sometimes uneven ballet. Most productions make liberal cuts. Natalia Makarova’s La Bayadère removed most of the character dances from the betrothal scene, while other productions delete the entire final act.

But in the middle of this ballet, there is one of the most famous distillations of classical technique in the repertoire. The famous Kingdom of the Shades scene starts with the corps de ballet, one after another, descending down a ramp and stepping into an arabesque. They do this 24 more times (in some companies 32 more times!). After everyone is down the ramp, they line up for a series of basic classroom steps (the developpé, arabesque) but again, everyone must be 100% together. Even the smallest errors in synchronization are visible to the audience. There is no place to hide. I have seen some of the greatest corps de ballet (the Mariinsky, for example) perform the Shades scene with noticeable errors.

Thus, Artistic Director Susan Jaffe, reviving the Kingdom of the Shades for American Ballet Theatre’s Fall Season was both a testament to her trust in her company, and also a test. Thankfully, the ABT corps passed this test with flying colors. In fact, they looked more synchronized than I’ve ever seen them in this ballet. Legs, arms, shoulders, heads, were all together.

Hee Seo was Nikya and Isaac Hernández was Solor at this performance. They were serviceable without being transcendent. Hernández is a wonderful dancer, with exciting jumps. Nice double assemblés and cabrioles. He lacks flexibility in the back, however. There are several times Solor is supposed to bend backwards, as if overwhelmed by a higher power. Hernández’s back did not bend.

Seo has so many great qualities as a dancer. She has lovely legs and beautifully tapered feet, and a softness and suppleness in her upper body that is effective in this ballet. She is, however, technically rather uneven. She struggles with pirouettes. Every pirouette in the scarf scene was smudged, especially the pirouettes to the left. She has a habit of starting a rotation, but not really finishing it and then snapping her leg out. More troublesome was her lack of musicality. She simply does not shape her movements to the music. She is almost always a little behind the beat. Her passés were particularly poorly timed. 

Seo’s lack of musicality was more apparent when you saw the first shade, the other Seo in the company (Yoon Jung Seo). Every pirouette was timed perfectly to the music. The younger Seo is definitely one to watch. Sierra Armstrong managed the slow developpés of the second variation well, and SunMi Park had a big spacious jump in the third variation.

Balanchine’s Sylvia Pas de Deux was the highlight of the evening. Chloe Misseldine and Aran Bell’s movements have a spaciousness and grandeur that matches the choreography beautifully. Misseldine’s fouettés in the coda were very impressive. Bell and Misseldine have fantastic stage chemistry. I can barely wait to see this work again.

Tharp’s Sinatra Suite is rather dated, and truth be told, has little choreographic interest. It’s a lot of ballroom twirling. But Daniel Camargo and SunMi Park were sexy and elegant. Always great to hear Frank Sinatra.

After an interminable delay, the program closed with the surefire In the Upper Room. This cast was not quite as strong as the cast I saw last week. In particular, the female stomper trio of Cassandra Trenary, Skylar Brandt and Lauren Bonfiglio were not as commanding as the trio of Gillian Murphy, Catherine Hurlin and Devon Teuscher. But you can’t lose with this ballet. At the end of the evening, Twyla Tharp came on stage to take a curtain call to well-deserved applause.