Stella Abrera and Sarah Lane took the long road to becoming principal dancers with American Ballet Theatre. Both were longtime soloists when Abrera was elevated in 2015. Lane climbed the final rung just last season. Seeing them paired as the female leads in Alexei Ratmansky’s Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher, I had the sense that I was watching two powerful and durable women who’ve paid their dues and are determined to make the most of the time they have on stage. Abrera has blossomed, giving rich interpretations to acting roles, especially the comic ones, and she moves with a new sense of freedom. Lane seems to still be feeling her way but her stage presence is already stronger and more assertive. That they dominated their younger male partners is no surprise. Thomas Forster, partnering Abrera, was two dancers. When he was dancing apart from her, he was fluid and graceful, blessed with long lines. But while supporting Abrera, he was so focused on her that he seemed to forget he had a body of his own that needed to maintain its posture. Tyler Maloney was a fresh surprise with Lane. He’s just beginning to make his mark with featured roles and he’s on everyone’s list of young dancers to watch. There’s feeling, passion, secrets, intimations, but nothing like an actual story in this ballet. It’s appropriate with these shorter works that they are content with suggesting mood and character and staying away from trying to convey narrative. Shorter works are just not meant to carry all that weight.
Speaking of weight, Benjamin Millepied’s I Feel the Earth Move, a première performance, aspired to more than it achieved. The program notes referenced Tony Kushner’s Angels in America but I didn’t feel anything like that emotional intensity from this ballet. In the opening, David Hallberg was effectively portraying distress before collapsing and being comforted by Misty Copeland. They were eloquent together. But the emotional threads snapped there and never came back for me. Most of the rest was patterns reminiscent of Busby Berkeley dance numbers, perhaps an homage to Millepied’s new life in Los Angeles. The corps de ballet went through the usual store of choreographic tropes including the cascade, in which one dancer begins a movement and they all follow sequentially down the line to create a flowing effect. Just add giant feathered fans and you’ve got a film. Then there was the alternating dance in which every other dancer in a line does one move while the other half does a contrasting step – very Rockettes. Finally, there was the unison movement with lines, diagonals and star shaped patterns that dissolve and re-form surprisingly into new shapes – voilà! The costumes by Rag & Bone were detrimental to this show. The women looked like they were from the high school cross country team in their tank tops and running trunks which occasionally gave me the eerie feeling of having accidentally wandered into a commercial shoot for leisurewear. I can’t help feeling that an opportunity was missed by not making knockoffs of the costume line available at the concession stand during the intermission. There is some good dancing in this ballet but it missed the mark as far as emotional content is concerned.