One of the world’s most iconic ballet companies makes its first trip to the UK in 16 years. New York City Ballet, in its 75th Anniversary season, is still much defined by the work of founder choreographer George Balanchine, but this quadruple bill shows a 21st-century version of NYCB.
Balanchine gets a look in, with 1972’s Duo Concertant, but the other three works were all made in the last five years. NYCB’s resident choreographer Justin Peck continues Balanchine’s music-driven neoclassical legacy in Rotunda, soundtracked by composer Nico Muhly. With dancers in practice gear, it has the undramatic feel of dancers at their daily work – and these are some of the US’s best dancers, with inbuilt speed, finesse and quality of line. Peck excels in passages where dancers deftly circle around ideas, retread steps and switch directions. They never settle, and the effect is that your eye doesn’t settle either, but is swept along in the delightful slipstream.
The prize for best costume goes to Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung’s bright red constructions for Pam Tanowitz’s Gustave Le Grey No 1: all-in-ones with extra lengths of fabric attached from shoulder to foot that billow like the tendrils of a scarlet sea creature. The outfits both obscure and emphasise Tanowitz’s sober, ultra-specific steps. At the same time, there’s an element of absurdism: the four dancers push the grand piano across the stage while Stephen Gosling is still playing Caroline Shaw’s eponymous piece, which sounds like Chopin’s A-minor mazurka was put through the wash and came out all blurry.
Choreographers love the music of British producer James Blake. William Forsythe made a series of works to Blake’s tracks, and now Kyle Abraham has made Love Letter (on shuffle). Like Forsythe, Abraham counters the angsty electronica by leaning in to the precision of classical form and academic steps – brisé, sissonne, pas de chat, three girls linking arms like Swan Lake’s cygnets. But then he’ll break the line, send a ripple all the way through the torso, add jolting isolations, fold in a hip-hop stance, in a way that thoroughly makes sense. Principal dancer Taylor Stanley is a natural conduit for Abraham’s style in arresting solos and a cool but charged pas de deux with Jules Mabie. This is what ballet looks like now.
At Sadler’s Wells, London, until 10 March
