NYC Ballet Virtual Fall: Oct. 6, 2020

The second week of NYC Ballet's virtual Fall season was entitled "Modern Innovation," two words that could mean just about anything; in this case it probably referred to relatively recent ballets using relatively new music.  

Two of the pieces were by Jerome Robbins and looked to me like longer and floppier versions of his West Side Story:  Opus 19: The Dreamer (the first movement), from 1979, and Glass Pieces(the final movement) from 1983,  Opus 19: The Dreamer, done to Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 and originally done on Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride, was pleasantly and somewhat lugubriously danced here by Unity Phelan and Gonzalo Garcia.  Glass Pieces used parts of various Philip Glass works and at least exhibited some energetic dancing by the corps, with some of the pounding minimalist and honking score making the ballet stage look and sound like a crowded city sidewalk.

Balanchine's Kammermusik No. 2 was choreographed in 1978 to music by Hindemith written in 1924.  It is a very "modern" piece, with -- in this first movement -- eight men moving in exquisite counterpoint to the two female leads, in this case Sara Mearns and Teresa Reichlen.  Movements for Piano and Orchestra was choregraphed by Balanchine in 1963 to a piece of music from Stravinsky's serial period. The Stravinsky piece is divided up into sections, with dancers -- led by Maria Kowrowski and Ask la Cour -- walking to new positions between sections.  It's a complex and austere piece and, like Kammermusik No. 2, is both very classical and extremely modern.

I found less felicitous the remaining ballets in this group: Red Angels by Ulysses Dove with electronic violin music by Richard Einhorn, from 1994, and Chiaroscuro by Lynne Taylor-Corbett, with music by Baroque composer Francesco Geminiani, also from 1994.  They both were impressively danced and artistically lit by Mark Stanley.  They were funded by the Diamond Project, from the Fund of Irene Diamond, which lasted from 1992 to 2006 and produced new choreography, little of which continued in the NYC Ballet repertory.