Part of the appeal of New York City Center’s annual Fall for Dance is its eclectic unpredictability. Occasionally, they’ll program a chestnut, but most of the time the programming is off the beaten path. Program 4 of Fall for Dance consisted of a piece by Ballet BC, a duet with Dutch National Ballet superstar Olga Smirnova and a big tango piece.
It was a mixed bag. The first piece, Obsidian, was choreographed by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber. Curtain up, and I thought I was watching Dances at a Gathering. There was a piano, and six dancers standing in different colored clothing. But within the first five minutes I already checked off my least favorite contemporary ballet clichés. Screechy, dissonant music (by George Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann)? Check. Long moments of complete silence, with dancers staring warily at each other from across the stage? Check. Extremely violent partnering, with women being manhandled and sexual assault simulated onstage? Check.
Anyway, the six dancers dance a combination of duets and solos. Everything is very angsty and tortured. The solos are full of hunched torsos and flailing arms and balled fists. The duets had a lot of dragging people around. I did enjoy watching the dancers of Ballet BC, but this piece didn’t do it for me. Others I talked to loved it.
A brief pause, and then it was the complete opposite. Dutch National Ballet’s Olga Smirnova and Jacopo Tissi danced the Balcony pas de deux from Romeo and Juliet. This version is by Rudi van Dantzig. I have seen so many versions of this by different choreographers that they all blur together. Nevertheless, van Dantzig’s version is less naturalistic than Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s. Instead of Juliet running down the balcony, here she daintily floats onstage. There are no huge overhead lifts. A lot of smaller carry lifts. What I missed from this version was musicality. There were a lot of steps (and swooning), but it rarely seemed connected to the score.
Mostly, this duet was a chance to see Olga Smirnova do her thing. She is the rare true Prima Ballerina whose dancing is on a different level. Not everyone cottons on to her rather calculated style – she’s one of those dancers who seems to value the final pose more than the movements in between, but the suppleness of her back and arms, her impeccable technique, they are clearly that of a world class dancer. Jacopo Tissi made less of an impression. He’s handsome, a good partner. The audience loved it. Judging by how many Russian-language women I saw at the bathroom line, I'd wager that a good chunk of the audience bought tickets specifically to see Smirnova.
A long intermission, and the final piece was Social Tango Project by Agustina Videla. Documentary-style footage of Videla talking about how tango has changed his life is interspersed with a recreation of a nightclub, complete with a live band. Various dancers dance the tango. It was fun … for a while. But then the sameness of the choreography started to grate. Ballroom dancing is a social art, and stage performances tend to become one-note quickly. I feel the same way about sections of Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes. It was pleasant to watch though, the music was fantastic, and it made the audience happy.
So it was an uneven program. But you don’t go to Fall for Dance to get the sure thing. You go because you want to experience something new. The audience is younger, trendier, than it is at a normal dance program. They love everything. And while I didn’t love every piece I saw, I loved the energy and excitement of the crowd.
