CAN you make champagne ballet on a Bud Light budget? You’ve got to give Christopher Wheeldon props for trying, but Thursday evening at City Center needed more fizz.
Morphoses, his Diaghilev-on-a-shoestring company, has a lot of help from his friends: top dancers, designers and kind folks with checkbooks. The company is doing two different programs with commissioned dances and a live orchestra.
The first program, repeating Oct. 31, led off with Wheeldon’s own “Commedia” (a nod to the Commedia dell’arte), which premiered last year. Usually his ballets become more cogent with time, but not here. There are cryptic repeated gestures (a warning finger wag, a snap of the fingers) that seem decorative rather than intrinsic. Sharper timing might have sharpened its charms, but the performance felt flat.
Australia’s Tim Harbour was tapped to make “Leaving Songs,” a handsome, pensive work with lovely music by Ross Edwards.
Ghostly balloons symbolized tenuous vessels of life as the ballet brooded on mortality.
The husband-and-wife team Lightfoot Leon contributed another brooding piece, “Softly as I Leave You,” a story of a guy, a gal and a coffin-like box they banged around in. The movement rarely let up and there was excitement, acrobatics and angst aplenty on the surface, although one wondered what was underneath.
Alexei Ratmansky made his version of “Boléro” in 2004 for the Bolshoi Ballet. It’s another endlessly driven piece. The Ravel score starts slow and doesn’t let up. Ratmansky got the drive in the music, but not the build; the ballet didn’t add up to more than a grueling test of endurance. Even the indefatigable New York City Ballet principal Wendy Whelan, here underused in an ensemble role, looked exhausted. Each of the six dancers wore a huge number on the front of their costume. Were they contestants or components?
Carping aside, Morphoses is a good idea and a worthy venture. It just needs some fine-tuning and gentle fermentation.