Brad S. Ross
New
Chamber Ballet—Twine The New Chamber Ballet began their season on a meditative and joyful note Friday evening with the world premiere of Twine, a new ballet by artistic director Miro Magloire and composer Tonia Ko. Before that, however, came Love Song Solo, a miniature inspired by the German Romantic-era arts songs of Robert Schumann. Magloire introduced the piece as a “dance toast,” playfully adding that you cannot jump straight into a world premiere at the start of the season. This short and sweet dance was performed by Rachele Perla and accompanied by two maracas, arranged and played by Magloire himself. It was a charming appetizer for the larger feast to come.
That, of course, was the headlining Twine, a sprawling chamber ballet written for piano and violin and choreographed for dance quintet. Magloire’s program note stated that Ko’s music served as “the canvas for a dance about human connection,” adding, “In a group of five dancers, spines and limbs coil around one another, disentangle, then intertwine again; as do the dancers’ pathways through space.” This aptly characterizes the spirit of the choreography, which frequently saw the dancers break into pairs and threes, frolic freely around the dance floor, or come together as a single entity. Lasting just under an hour, the ballet was divided into five movements. The first movement “Tribute (Axis II)” began with an eerie violin line emerging from silence as piano strings were increasingly struck and scraped—alternating between aggravated and introspective in ways reminiscent of Béla Bartók’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” or even, briefly, Jerry Goldsmith’s “Main Title” from Planet of the Apes. The dancers, meanwhile, alternated between pairs that seemed to unfold from each other. The second movement “Games of Belief” was scored for solo piano, which wandered through dissonant chords, pensive melodic lines, and the occasionally struck prepared piano strings. The dancers now roamed about the floor, as if freed from their previous group confines, before joining hands and working as one unit. The music built to a great crash, then descended into thoughtful meditation that brought the movement to its end—dancers glistening from each corner of the floor. The piano solo was traded for violin in the third movement “Moves and Remains,” which featured many meandering pizzicato plucks and dissonant double-stops. The form of the choreography shifted as one dancer was positioned at the center as the four orbited around her. The fourth movement “Surge Out” again featured solo piano, which was once more prepared with items in its strings, giving it a decidedly alien texture. The choreography took on a subtle shape of dialogue, while referencing some of the structure seen in the first movement; eventually, a crisp pointed star shape briefly emerged from the dancers’ interconnected bodies, which ended the movement with a series of gentle rippling motions. The dancers’ movements here were accompanied by dreamy, wandering notes that seemed to be in search of some resolution that wouldn’t arrive. The final movement “Plush Earth in Four Pieces” saw the performers’ pace quicken as the music moved with more urgency—this time with the piano and violin working together again. Rather than unfolding outward from each other, the motion of collective bodies wound down by seeming to turn inward, towards each other. The music, likewise, became more introspective here as the work came to a gentle end with all of the dancers collapsed on their sides about the floor. Ko’s decidedly atonal score was performed flawlessly by violinist Doori Na and pianist Sophiko Simsive, while dancers Anabel Alpert, Megan Foley, Nicole McGinnis, Amber Neff, and Kayla Schmitt made exquisite work of Magloire’s choreography. It made for a pleasant and upbeat start to the New Chamber Ballet’s latest season, which will see the group tour in Catskill and Asheville before returning to New York City on November 21st and 22nd. |
| museums | NYTW mail | recordings | coupons | publications | classified |