Monday May 24, 2010 - Benjamin Millepied's new creation for New York City Ballet, WHY AM I NOT WHERE YOU ARE was the subject of this Works and Process evening at the Guggenheim. The work is part of NYCB's Architecture of Dance season where it premiered at the Spring Gala and is now in the midst of a run of performances.
Benjamin (above, photographed by Annie Leibowitz) joined composer Thierry Escaich and NYC Ballet's musical director Faycal Karoui on a panel moderated by conductor Andrews Sill.
Above: production photo by Paul Kolnik/NYC Ballet showing the Santiago Calatrava setting for Ben's ballet. While the evening's discussion and musical excerpts would serve as a perfect introduction to the piece, it was even more meaningful for those of us who have already seen the ballet and could now hear about its creation and watch passages from it with a clear reference point.
The seductive sounds of the voices of Thierry, Ben and Faycal lent an added allure to the evening. The composer often referred to Ben to translate for him as he sat at the keyboard and went thru some of the themes from his score. Cameron Grant took over at the piano when the dancing began.
The excellent leading dancers from the work were on hand to perform the highlighted moments: Kathryn Morgan, Sara Mearns, Sean Suozzi and Amar Ramasar. Despite the limited dancing space, they all went at it full-tilt - Amar at one point seemed about to leap right into the audience - and even without costumes and stage-setting the characterizations were clear in the dancers' movement style and facial expressions. Though abstract in a way, there's a narrative flow that's here for the taking. As the evening progressed I felt that both from a musical and choreographic viewpoint I was right about the ballet from the start: it's rich, poetic, mysterious and finely structured and it is dramatic without being heavy-handed.
Ben took the opportunity to do some extra nuance-polishing as he worked with the dancers which showed us that a ballet is never really 'finished'. Faycal spoke of his admiration for the composer and of his desire for ballet scores that stand up well as concert pieces - which the current work certainly does: Faycal has programmed it for his Orchestre de Pau next season. In attempting to explain what makes music 'French', Thierry and Faycal talked about aspects of harmony and instrumentation which run as threads thru Ravel and Debussy down to present-day composers.
Ben spoke of the Calatrava design and a projection (above) showed some of the options that the architect presented; the luminous fan-like set piece that was chosen is ideal. One rather surprising fact that Ben revealed is that the dancers only had two orchestral rehearsals; really impressive how the music seems so completely in their blood despite actually not having had that much time to absorb it.
Tonight's was the final Works and Process offering for the current season. The series will return on October 3, 2010 when choreographers Jessica Lang (a favorite of mine) and Pontus Lidberg will each show works set to the same music by David Lang and performed by Morphoses.
Meanwhile, a contingent of dancers from NYCB will meet up with colleagues from ABT and the Royal Danish for a gala evening at the Guggenheim in Bilbao (above) on July 27th where a new work by Tom Gold as well as Balanchine highlights are on the bill. The NYCBers are: Jared Angle, Likolani Brown, Sterling Hyltin, Sara Mearns, Abi Stafford and Tom Gold.
Thanks for the two interesting bits of information, Philip.
Here in Pau, we are only a 3 hour drive from the Guggenheim in Bilbao. People either love or hate its architecture. I am one of those who adore it and I go there as often as I can. (Last time was when we to see Bruce Springsteen performing in the Bilbao football stadium!!)
Posted by: Anne | May 26, 2010 at 08:18 AM
From the photos I have seen, I think I would love the Bilbao Guggenheim.
Posted by: Philip | May 26, 2010 at 08:20 AM