An Evening @ New Chamber Ballet

Friday November 20th, 2015 - Miro Magloire's New Chamber Ballet presenting works by Miro and resident choreographer Constantine Baecher in a nicely-mixed programme of new and olde music - expertly played - and danced by Miro's uniquely talented band of ballerinas. In the intimate setting of the City Center Studios, there's a sense of immediacy - both of the music and the dancing - that no other dance company in Gotham can quite match.

In his most recent works, Miro's choreography has been daring in its exploration of female partnering. Tonight's concert opened with the premiere of a full version of Gravity, excerpted earlier this season and which I'd seen in a formative rehearsal.

First off, a salute to violinist Doori Na for his impressive rendering of "Six Pieces for Violin" by Friedrich Cerha. The venerable Austrian composer, soon to celebrate his 90th birthday, is currently in the news locally as The Met is offering a new production of Alban Berg's LULU which Mr. Cerha completed upon Berg's death.

Gravity was danced tonight by Elisabeth Brown, Traci Finch, and NCB's newest member Cassidy Hall. The dancers alternate between posing and partnering: a duet for Elizabeth and Traci is observed by Cassidy, who then inserts herself into the dance. Elizabeth's solo comes as the music falls silent; she then dances with Cassidy in a duet where Elizabeth, at full stretch, is nearly parallel to the floor in displaying a superb line.

The dancers then polish off the ballet with a trio (Traci, Elizabeth and Cassidy, above). 

More images from Gravity, photographed by Amber Neff:

Cassidy Hall and Traci Finch

Elizabeth Brown and Cassidy Hall

Someone once wrote of Aristotle Onassis: "He was not the first man to want both his wife and his mistress."  That very notion was the starting point of The Other Woman, Miro's 'classic triangle' ballet set to a classic score: Bach's B-minor violin sonata. 

An en travesti Sarah Atkins, wearing a jaunty fedora, faces the age-old dilemma of the married man as he vacillates between his wife and his lover. Elizabeth Brown and Holly Curran offer contrasting attractions of face, form, and personality; in this very theatrical piece, their dancing is urgent and nuanced. The rival women confront one another while Sarah dances a space-filling solo. In the end it seems no real decision has been reached, and it feels like more chapters are yet to come before this story ends.

Doori Na and pianist Taka Kigawa played the Bach so attractively, and moments later Taka returned play Beat Furrer's 'Voicelessness. The snow has no voice' for Miro's second premiere of the evening: Voicelessness. Taka's playing was marvelous right from the murmuring start of the piece; he was able to sustain a pianissimo misterioso atmosphere throughout with great control. This was punctuated with the occasional emphatic high staccato.

In this duet the two dancers - Amber Neff and Cassidy Hall, (above) - perform extremely demanding and intensely intimate feats of partnering. The two girls, abetted by Taka Kigawa's keyboard, sustained the tension of the work most impressively.

Above: Amber Neff and Cassidy Hall in Voicelessness

 

More images from Voicelessness; these photos are by Sarah Thea who also designed the costumes for four of the five works seen tonight:

 

 

Amber Neff, Cassidy Hall

 

Amber Neff and Cassidy Hall

 

Following the interval, Richard Carrick's score 'In flow' for solo violin provided another showcase for Doori Na as Miro's Friction unfolded. The ballet opens in silence before Doori's violin sounds hesitantly; the angular, sinuous music includes an alarming forte 'scrunch' at one point. Dancers Holly Curran and Amber Neff moved thru the intricate partnering motifs with total assurance and dealt with the technical demands Miro makes on them with cool confidence.

 

The evening closed with Constantine Baecher's lively and very original ballet, Mozart Trio, set to excerpts from the composer's piano sonatas played with genial clarity by Taka Kigawa.

 

In this ballet about beginnings and endings, the dancers speak: they speak not only of where they are and what they are doing at the moment, but also - more cosmically - of where they are in their lives.

 

Traci Finch narrates solos by Elizabeth Brown and Sarah Atkins in turn, describing their dancing and giving us bytes of biography. In the second movement, Sarah's solo takes an autobiographical approach ("I'm in the middle!" she calls out - of her dance, of her career, of her life?). The third movement is an abstracted trio for all three dancers, full of energy and wit, until they reach the self-declared "end of the end!"

 

New Chamber Ballet's next performances are set for February 26th and 27th, 2016. More details will be forthcoming as the dates draw nigh.