All Robbins Showcases PNB's Acting Chops
Macho, moody, and whimsical, PNB's All Robbins program is a stand-up triple, if not a home run (at McCaw Hall through June 8; tickets: $20-$150). Actually the Mariners could learn a lot from the raw athleticism, discipline, and teamwork on display. Opening night's Fancy Free sparked and fizzed erratically; conductor Stewart Kershaw, swinging the baton sans panache, kept Bernstein's charged score sounding off-kilter. But PNB rallied during In the Night, and by the time The Concert wrapped up, even the golf-clappers in the audience were on their feet cheering.
At its premiere in 1944, Fancy Free was life on the street (the set is a street, with a Nighthawks-y bar undergoing severe gravitational strain). Now it's a document of changing social mores; three guys couldn't play keep-away with a woman's purse and have it end well these days. The three sailors (Jonathan Porretta as the muscular hothead, Casey Herd the suave one who knows how to rumba, and Josh Spell the wide-eyed kid) are finally in the big city, but have no idea where to go or what to do--until some women (Noelani Pantastico, Louise Nadeau, and Kylee Kitchens) walk past (in high heels). With all that ensues, we hope PNB has a foot masseur waiting in the wings. There's also a drunken bar brawl the Navy can't have been happy about. Robbins captures perfectly the fuzziness of the line between boys-will-be-boys and real menace, and Porretta's full rotation spin, landing in the splits, has to be seen to be believed. Luckily, he does it twice.
Jerome Robbins was one of those odd ducks, like Leonard Bernstein with whom he collaborated on Fancy Free, who was at home staging ballet as he was with Broadway musical choreography. In Robbins' case, this wasn't high/low art ambivalence; it stemmed from a lasting fascination with the way ordinary people move, from an almost behavioral approach to character. If Balanchine elevates to the ideal, Robbins is a humanist: the sailors on shore leave in New York in Fancy Free play "Rock, Paper, Scissors," they have that distinctive sailor's bow-legged stance, their pelvises snap to attention when a woman walks by.
In the Night presents three couples, or studies of couples, against Chopin's Nocturnes and a starry night sky: one pair (Wevers, Pantastico) exuberantly in love, another two (Lallone, Milov) a deeply entwined partnership, the last (Nadeau, Cruz) feeding on fireworks and drama. If there's nothing all that challenging about the concept of three faces of love, the execution is. Wevers and Pantastico only separate so they can rush together again; their feverish close quarters plays against the sweet unison and give-and-take of Lallone and Milov's unruffled pas de deux, Lallone's arms arcing and falling as fluidly as if the dark was water. Then Nadeau and Cruz, who cradles and carries Nadeau, who leaps free, falls, flees, begs forgiveness. We've all been at that party. There's a terrific coda where the couples see each other, are unsettled, and then return to their partners: all the pairings possible in that instant come to life and vanish in just a few seconds.
The Concert (Or, the Perils of Everybody) was designed by Edward "Gashlycrumb Tinies" Gorey, and looks like a New Yorker cartoon come to absurd life. A pianist, also playing Chopin, draws a ragtag crowd: a overly emotive ballerina, two ladies out shopping, a wife dragging her cigar-chomping husband out for culture, a shy, bookish lad, and an angry young woman in a knit cap and chunky black glasses (from, you know, Sarah Lawrence). Robbins presents each in all their instantly recognizable comic splendor (the ballerina perches nearly inside the piano), and then a series of neo-Freudian fantasias follow, as the products of wandering minds take the stage. One sequence tackles human herding behavior via umbrella usage ("Well, he's got his umbrella open, it must be raining"), then turns into a delicate, Japanese-watercolor tableau, with people emerging from behind umbrellas like stems from behind black orchids. The cigar-chomping husband tries to kill his wife and steal off with the ballerina (Robbins, we think, may have been the first to interpolate a good old-fashioned grab-ass into a ballet).
Is it elevating? We think so. We won't argue about the value of ideals, but Robbins' delight in seeing people just as they are, capable of both grace and an itchy ass, simply resonates more with us. So we're happy that PNB's Peter Boal, who worked many years with Robbins as a dancer, has more Robbins on the way: West Side Story Suite and Dances at a Gathering are coming up next season.
