This week there were two more Wheeldon ballets on the NYC Ballet website: Liturgy and Carousel: A Dance; two more ballets, slight but likable, that I didn't have to pay for, as I try to find some more marginal benefits to sheltering in place (I was able to get back to ballet classes after a five-year absence because a teacher of mine is giving digital classes.) Liturgy at first glance seems to be considerably influenced by Balanchine's magnificent Episodes -- particularly Webern's Five Pieces Op. 10 pas de deux, in which a woman wraps herself around a man on a darkened stage -- while Carousel: A Dance is more influenced by the theatrical dances of Jerome Robbins as well as Dances at a Gathering and other ballets Robbins did for the New York City Ballet. The music for Liturgy by Arvo Part is non-serial, somewhat similar to the Webern music in Episodes, and the Richard Rogers music for Carousel: A Dance is itself from the musical Carousel. The dancing in both pieces was excellent: Maria Kowkoski and Tyler Angle were intense and focused in Liturgy and Angle, Lauren Lovette and the corps were energetic and precise in Carousel: A Dance.
Also on the NYC Ballet website was A Part of Together, in which Tiler Peck, Troy Schumacher, Lauren Lovette, Ashley Bouder, and Peter Walker danced individually on location to Bach's Brandenberg Concerto No. 6 in B-Flat Major, with Peck ending up in a swimming pool and Walker dancing up and down a flight of stairs. The piece projected effectively the pure pleasure of dancing.
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