PNB Taps Into Broadway-Style Ballet

Though it had its premiere in 1967, Balanchine's Slaughter on Tenth Avenue reaches back to an earlier Broadway era. The story is potboiler enough to qualify for opera: a star dancer (Jonathan Porretta, sporting a to-the-hilt Russian accent) hires a gangster (Dan Baty, a PNB donor game enough to play a persuasive hitman) to knock off his up-and-coming rival (Jeffrey Stanton) at a show's finale.

Part of the appeal is seeing Balanchine in "Broadway mode," as Doug Fullington put it in his introductory talk--he's illustrating a story with dance and painting with the full Broadway palette: Stanton got to tap and soft-shoe, and Kiyon Gaines and Josh Spell hoofed it up as bartenders. Lesley Rausch brought an unexpected punch to the role of the striptease girl. So much of Broadway relies on a star enjoying performance unselfconsciously, as if they wake up each morning dreaming about achieving technical perfection in front of an audience--Rausch and Stanton captured a bit of that hard-won, manufactured joy.

Christopher Wheeldon's Carousel (A Dance) is another kind of distillation, but one where things woozily end up in mixture. Carla Körbes danced the demure Julie Jordan role and Seth Orza was carnival hand Billy Bigelow. Wheeldon spins out their meeting and falling in love with the corps rotating around them. Julie is shy, Billie aggressive, she emerges from her shell, but also falls under his control (at one point, Billy draws her back with a gesture, as if she's on a leash). The audience gasped at Wheeldon's coup de théâtre, when after minutes of suggesting a carousel, the corps actually forms one. We aren't sure what to make of his use of horizontal planes to challenge ballet's verticality, dancers carrying dancers at rigid right angles--which is why you go see ballets more than once.

Still, there's something about this piece that reminded us of a little boy playing with the dolls of another era; the costumes are both gorgeous and too precious, Julie's yellow dress signaling her naivete like a flag, Billy with his red neckerchief. It's like watching a carousel, true, but a small, mechanized one moving roundabout in a memory box. That may be the point, but if so, it's a hermetic one.

Take Five...More or Less, Susan Stroman's ode to emotional coloration, appropriates the enormous popularity of Dave Brubeck's jazz: "Take Five" (in 5/4 time), "Blue Rondo à la Turk (in 9/8), and "Strange Meadow Lark" (in 4/4). When we saw this as part of PNB's Laugh Out Loud festival we mentioned "the work is so eager to please it pulls out all the stops for a big finish that's more Broadway than ballet." At a Broadway festival, it fits right in.

The second time around, we enjoyed it as much as the first, maybe more. Each of the women was dressed in a different color: Kaori Nakamura, yellow; Stacy Lowenberg, orange; Kari Brunson, red; Chalnessa Eames, pink; Lesley Rausch, purple; and Miranda Weese, blue. In form-fitting black were Kiyon Gaines, Jordan Pacitti, and Jerome Tisserand. Jeffrey Stanton and Jonathan Porretta both had leading-man star turns.

Tap-master Stanton especially seems to enter the Broadway idiom with ease. And again, Rausch found something in Stroman's choreography that resonated--there's a moment when, standing behind Stanton (we think) she bops him playfully on the shoulder with her heel. There's nothing really playful about the power and discipline required for that move, yet it's wonderful in its authenticity--Stroman has found a way for ballet dancers to flirt as ballerinas, to be seductive (try that photo of Kari Brunson in red), to be cool (Weese). Even dropping into the splits is played for the spectacular effect of the move as a move, let's face it, none of the rest of us can even imagine doing.

It's literally true that for the Broadway festival, the dancers have let their hair down. It's paradoxical because with seven stagers, two choreographers, and two vocal coaches imported for preparation, the dancers have had an immense amount on their plate. Yet, at their best--and at Broadway's best--you'd never guess it was work, that Stanton ever tapped his way across the stage for any reason other than pure exuberance.