New York City Ballet's Diamond Project
The Diamond Project, New York City Ballet’s biennial showcase of new works, takes as its title the irresistible surname of the late philanthropist Irene Diamond. This spring, the Project commissioned dance makers from around the globe, trafficking in seven “diamond” premières at the New York State Theater. They included a bright addition to the repertoire and one out-and-out masterpiece.
Alexei Ratmansky’s Russian Seasons is by far the most accomplished and important work, vividly reimagining Russia’s folk heritage in a colorful and often startlingly original vocabulary. Even within a single phrase, Ratmansky’s characters cast a backward glance at peasant idioms while leaping in radical, new directions. Both Jenifer Ringer and Sofiane Sylve gave unusually electrifying performances fraught with out-turned kicks and off-balance perches. Ratmansky has found the right impetus in Leonid Desyatnikov’s magnificent score, an expansive take on Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” composed in 12 sections for solo violin, played by Arturo Delmoni and the voice of mezzo-soprano Susana Poretsky. The music evokes what Henry James called the “loose baggy monster” emotions of great Russian novels.
Christopher Wheeldon premiered the excellent, if inconsistent Evenfall, set to Bartók’s late and unfinished “Piano Concerto No. 3.” Like the Victorian word for “twilight,” Evenfall seems anachronistic in its combination of sharp geometries with tried-and-true classical images—a background sequence in silhouette recalling the Kingdom of the Shades, or the persistent brood of references to Swan Lake. The novel and enduring quality of Evenfall, however, is how holistically Wheeldon gathers modern and traditional aesthetics beneath his intelligent and seemingly infallible eye. The tutu, a neoclassical symbol, becomes an abstract sphere above the diagonal lines of the ballerinas’ arms as they bend forward. At the same time, their cavaliers take shelter underneath, resting their heads on their knees.
Jorma Elo, the Finnish choreographer now in residence at Boston Ballet, debuted Slice to Sharp, a high-energy movement suite to a sampling of baroque music by Vivaldi and Biber. Without any meaningful context, however, Elo’s partnering exercises offered mere masquerades of emotion.
Eliot Feld’s atmospheric solo Étoile Polaire elevated apprentice Kaitlyn Gilliland to star status. She orbited the empty stage in near darkness to excerpts from Philip Glass’s “North Star.” She emitted a cool dispassion with her long, knowing limbs, although the work itself was slight.
Other works included Two Birds with the Wings of One, a largely forgettable animal allegory by Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux to Bright Sheng’s composition. Enacted in a Chinese-opera style it featured two Sung Dynasty poems warbled bird-like by soprano Lauren Flanigan. In Vento, Mauro Bigonzetti’s sequel to his Vespro, seemed starkly amateurish in its writhing conceit of tortured souls. Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins contributed Red Violin, to John Corigliano’s film score, making notable sculptural use of ensemble patterns and of Jennie Somogyi’s flexible back.
This multi-faceted Diamond Project reflected Martin’s optimism, acknowledging the demand for new repertory while keeping the late George Balanchine’s oeuvre alive and fresh.
Aeron Kopriva is a freelance writer on dance.
