By Sheila Abrams
Offering a welcome opportunity to escape from both dire weather warnings and political cacophony, New Jersey Ballet made its annual autumn visit to the Sitnik Theatre at Centenary College in Hackettstown with a richly varied Halloween-themed program called Ghosts of the Ballet.
The Livingston-based company is about as international in its personnel as the UN—and the dancers illustrate an ability to work together in spite of their differences that should serve as a model. The program, consisting of five pieces, showed off the variety of both the company’s repertoire and its dancers’ talents.
Death and the Maiden, choreographer Robert North’s interpretation of Franz Schubert’s Quartet No. 14 in D Minor of the same name, has held a unique position in the company’s repertoire for years. The work spans the divide between ballet and modern dance, with the influence of Martha Graham evident. The five women are wearing soft shoes and long, flowing dresses, the movements of which echo the movements of their legs.
In the story, a young girl, frolicking with her friends, is singled out from the group by a new partner. Dressed in black, his identity is never in question. Though she resists his advances, they are as seductive as they are controlling. A female friend tries to draw her back into life, but the dark partner has already staked his claim. The friend walks off. The girl ends up limp in the partner’s arms.
This powerful piece is of course defined by the exquisite score, music of a serious nature that rarely is heard at the ballet. Leonid Flegmatov filled the role of the dreaded partner with subtle authority, at the same time lover and killer. Christina Theryoung-Neira was superb as the hapless maiden, and company apprentice Carmen Gonzalez was surprisingly strong and precise as the friend.
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven is such an integral part of the American psyche that we hardly ever stop to ask what it so scary about it. A man, called the narrator, sits dreaming of his lost, presumably dead, love, Lenore, when a big black bird knocks at his door and comes in. What is it there for? To tell the writer that he will see Lenore “nevermore?” Well, he already knows that. And how come the bird can talk? (These questions all arose in my seventh grade class in The Bronx, N.Y., after the class visited Poe Cottage, where the poet once lived, and read the poem.)
In any case, it makes a good framework for a spooky ballet, choreographed by David Fernandez to a musical score by Elliott Goldenthol. Kerry Mara Cox was an ethereal Lenore, boureeing across the stage as if she were floating. Junio Teixeira was a handsome “narrator” and Albert Davydov, in a mostly crouched position, conveyed a sense of madness and menace.
The evening closed felicitously with a supremely entertaining piece, Masquerade, choreographed by Bettijane Sills to a familiar and luxuriously danceable score by Aram Khachaturian. Sills, who studied with and danced for Balanchine at New York City Ballet, shows his influence in this wonderful work.
Backed up by a corps of eight women, gorgeously dressed in many-hued tulle-skirted ball gowns, three women dance with and seemingly compete for two tail-coated men. Two of the women, Elisa Toro Franky and Ana Luiza Luizi, flirt from behind masks, trading partners in a light-hearted way. But, if there is a menace here, it comes in the form of the third woman, a temptress, perhaps a threat. She could easily steal a male heart or two, as danced by Ekaterina Smurova. The two men, elegant in black tie, were Oliver Beres and Martin Vignolo, both new to NJ Ballet this season.
A nod here has to go to Myra Tang, the company’s Wardrobe Mistress, who designed the gorgeous costumes. The layers of colored and black tulle in the skirts that move so fluidly with the dance add a great deal to the success of the piece.
The program began with two classics, The Kingdom of the Shades from La Bayadere and The Black Swan Pas de Deux.
New Jersey Ballet will be at the Mayo Center in Morristown next Saturday evening with a George Balanchine-Jerome Robbins program.
