Above: choreographer Adam Hendrickson
Saturday August 31st, 2013 - The opportunity to see more of Intermezzo Dance Company's work-in-progress - a setting of Giuseppe Verdi's string quartet in E-minor - came about sooner than I'd expected. Craig Salstein, Intermezzo's founder, invited me to a rehearsal at City Center studios today where Adam Hendrickson (formerly a soloist at New York City Ballet) was working on the third movement of the quartet with two of my favorite dancers, Kaitlyn Gilliland and Stephen Hanna.
The quartet's third movement is Prestissimo ("very fast") and that's how Adam Hendrickson always danced at City Ballet: fast but lyrical, with an intriguing darkish edge. Unlike many virtuoso dancers, Adam somehow managed to maintain a mystique onstage and this paradox - extroverted dancing mixed with a unique personal intensity - always put his performances in a realm of their own. I really miss seeing him onstage.
As a choreographer, Adam has a definitive and highly imaginative way of responding to music. In this instance, where the score was assigned to him rather than being of his own choosing, he turns necessity into a virtue by creating movement that visualizes the restless energy of the Prestissimo both in the steps and partnering elements and in moving his dancers about the space with mercurial flair.
Tall dancers often crave adagio movement, but Kaitlyn and Stephen have the agility to respond to Adam's setting of this fast-paced music with confidence, and their long limbs lend a feeling of spaciousness to the movement. We hadn't been watching for 30 seconds when Craig leaned over to me and whispered "I want to dance this myself!"
Of course it was all way too fast for my limited photographic skills to capture, but I do have a few images when things were relatively 'still':
Kaitlyn & Stephen
Stephen & Adam
An interesting stretchy moment...
...observed by the choreographer.
Verdi composed the string quartet - his only known chamber work - in 1873, and he said of it: "I've written a quartet in my leisure moments in Naples. I had it performed one evening in my house, without attaching the least importance to it and without inviting anyone in particular. Only the seven or eight persons who usually come to visit me were present. I don't know whether the quartet is beautiful or ugly, but I do know that it's a quartet!"
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