I feel that most of us during the global pandemic faced some sort of crisis involving purpose and identity.  While that’s our own personal journey to discover, American Ballet Theatre played out its own identity crisis on stage this fall season with one of their mixed rep programs.  The program that evening, being composed mostly of new pieces commissioned during the pandemic, showed a company being pulled in many directions.  It’d have been fantastic if these pieces were of actual merit and contributed to the artistic vision and expansion of culture and taste, but most of the pieces had no value or any merit to them besides being an example of what not to do and commission for a company of this caliber.

            The night started off rather strong though.  The first piece on the program was Alexie Ratmansky’s Bernstein in a Bubble and immediately we are off to the races with this piece.  Ratmansky charges the dancers forward with his instantly recognizable movement vocabulary that captures the pure joy and exhilaration inherit in dancing.  He’s one of the few living choreographers who’s still able to manage this.  He is also a supremely musical choreographer, not just in the sense of creating steps to counts, but in matching the energy and pathos of the music.  He presents his honest reaction to the music and he is usually always on the mark and can capture the essence of any piece of music he choreographs.  It makes for a thrilling and engaging piece where you can really see the music personified through dance.  Using a small ensemble of dancers, he is also able to illuminate individual personalities and have them shine forth in different groupings and patterns. A highlight of the piece was a slinky, sexually charged jazzy duet between Aran Bell and Chloe Misseldine who had a chemistry on stage that was palpable and enthralling to watch.  The piece, as a whole was thoroughly entertaining but did feel a little incomplete due to lacking a set and having not much cohesion between the costumes which were rather basic and uninspired.  The piece also ended flatly when the dancers strike a tacky pose of taking a selfie at the end.  It was random and dimmed what was an interesting and successful ballet.  

            From this point forward the program and the night took a sharp nosedive down and it became quite painful to watch.  The next piece was another virtual commission put to stage called Touché by choreographer Christopher Rudd.  The duet featuring Calvin Royal III and João Menegussi as Adam and Steve (cringe) started off in silence with the dancers beating their chest and shouting in an overly melodramatic fashion.  Then the lights in the audience come on for a split second and then go off as the dancers then begin to strip and begin quite an explicit homoerotic duet.  Now I’m no prude, but the nature of this duet really crossed the line of tastefulness for me and if that weren’t bad enough it was filled with unoriginal cliche’s that didn’t lend itself to piece at all besides just being there.  The one redeeming quality being that the music chosen was nice to listen too, but ultimately the piece was hard to watch and tolerate.

            Another Duet was next on the program, by late choreographer Clark Tippet titled Some Assembly Required featuring Skyler Brandt, and Gabe Stone Shayer.  I won’t really go into this overly long, and dull duet because it was so inconsequential except to say that the duet was included in the program for ABT’s first ever pride night to honor the late choreographer who was a victim of the AIDS epidemic and so it was a nice way to highlight him.  I only wish they might’ve chosen a more compelling piece to put on the program to show him in a better light.

            The last piece, and certainly the most dreadful of the night was Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Indestructible Light.  Featuring a cast of fresh young members of the Corps de Ballet, the piece devolved into a high school production of a jazzy ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ spectacle full with sequined and rhinestone leotards and tights.  At one point a velvet wall comes down and the dancers lean and dance upon the wall with all sass and taste of adolescents.  The dancers themselves, are actually very talented and threw off pyrotechnical feats with ease, but I just couldn’t get beyond how terrible and tacky the piece itself was.  What’s sad too is that these young talented dancers, will seldom get another opportunity like this to be featured in a ballet.  Most of their dance career will be in the swan corps or stomping around in peasant boots in the back, and so any opportunity to truly shine is exceedingly rare for them.  I only wish that they could’ve had a piece that was worthy of their talents and didn’t waste my time.  Overall, the evening was a dud and not even a respectable piece like the one Ratmansky gave to us could salvage it.  But I always believe it’s important to see bad ballets, only so we can inform our tastes further and learn what not to see and avoid.  I certainly will be avoiding more programs like this.