THEY used to say that classic dance and American modern dance could never be performed, or at least performed adequately, by the same dancers. Yet for years now the barriers have been crumbling.
As long ago as 1970 American Ballet Theater took two Jose Limon works under its wing, then came ballets by Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham and many others.
But while ABT has flirted with modern dance’s grand dame Martha Graham – it once even presented a special performance of “Appalachian Spring” with dancers from both companies – not until last Saturday afternoon did it take one of Graham’s works into its regular repertory.
The choice, a wise one, fell on Graham’s 1948 pure dance piece, “Diversion of Angels,” a ballet full of surging poetry. Its plotless patterns, suggestive perhaps of three faces of love – youthful, erotic and mature – swirl across the stage with limitless energy and buoyancy.
The Ballet Theater dancers took its complexities in their bounding stride, with Graham’s kinetic system of muscular contraction and release, alien to standard classic technique, suddenly appearing as second nature to them.
Remarkably, the company put out two totally different casts. The second crew, making its debut at Sunday’s matinee, had no principal dancers and only two soloists among its leading septet. But both were sensational in this tribute to Takako Asakawa, the Graham regisseur who staged the ballet.
Special praise for the red couple in each cast, first Ashley Tuttle and Keith Roberts, and then Sandra Brown and Ethan Brown, must really suffice for all. All 22 of them performed like Graham dancers, but with a slight yet distinctive classic twist.
Other weekend events and debuts included a stylish new cast in Robert Joffrey’s “Pas des Deeses” with Susan Jaffe, Sandra Brown (replaced by Irina Dvorovenko at the Sunday showing), Ekaterina Shelnakova and a particularly impressive Giuseppe Picone.
We also had a dazzling Angel Corella almost Chaplinesque in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s old role in Twyla Tharp’s “Push Comes to Shove.”
John Gardner, in another debut, made a crisp-dancing, boyishly sinister killer in the title role of “Billy the Kid,” and Ethan Stiefel, air-borne, was pleasant and charmingly peasant in Jerome Robbins’ “Other Dances.”
But on Sunday it was Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca showing why they currently reign supreme in this bewitching Robbins piano excursion to the world of Chopin.
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