The symmetry is uncanny. Almost exactly eight years ago, on January 26, 2017 – six days after an impactful inauguration — Justin Peck delivered a robustly explosive, invigorating ballet, The Times Are Racing. Set to four sections of Dan Deacon’s 2012 album “America,” it throbbed with pent-up frustration, and seemed to celebrate chaos and defiance. Yet it was threaded with sequences of comfort, trust and support.
On January 29th, NYCB unveiled Peck’s latest ballet (his 25th for the company): Mystic Familiar, for fourteen dancers, set to a commissioned suite drawing on music from Deacon’s 2020 album of the same title. It arrives, once again, days after a cataclysmic transfer of presidential power. It was hard not to bring expectations to this premiere. With its symmetrical timing, would the new work share the earlier one’s urgency and ferocity? Offer answers? Would it confront, or sidestep, the moment — when the times seem to be racing ever more wildly out of control? No one expects Peck to be a messenger; that’s certainly not his role. But it was difficult not to sense the moment.
During these eight eventful years. Peck has made a Tony-winning Broadway debut, created the full-length Copland Dance Episodes, won another Tony for last year’s dance musical Illinoise, continuing to contribute regularly to NYCB’s repertory and occasionally creating for other major companies. He’s become a husband and a father.
What has not changed is that Peck is a music-driven choreographer, choosing and investigating scores of many types, but often returning to certain contemporary composers to whom he feels a deep connection. Deacon is one of those. In choosing this Deacon score he has tapped into its more contemplative, elemental – dare we say hopeful – tone. If the title, Mystic Familiar, did not provide a clue, the five sections of the 25-minute ballet identified in the program evoke connections to natural, essential forces.
The opening “Air,” is as luminous and leisurely as the start of The Times Are Racing was frenetic and disconcerting. The dancers stroll across the stage sporting puffy white translucent fabric on their arms, so that they seem to evoke passing clouds. The calm pace, and the open space between them, allows Eamon Ore-Giron’s bold, striking backdrop to register right away. The Los Angeles-based artist’s expansive vista features dark, wide lanes narrowing in the distance, evoking a freeway — or possibly a tunnel, with its red-orange walls. The lanes stretch towards what could be a sunrise in the distance.
“Earth” is an exquisite solo for Taylor Stanley during which time feels suspended. He is angelic, self-reliant and contemplative as his beautifully articulated movement unfurls and winds around itself. He radiates control and purity. He’s a soothing hero for our moment.
The group, now in sporty jumpsuits and other casual wear, returns to surround him, and a leader of sorts, Peter Walker, emerges front and center. This launches “Fire,” for which the music becomes more intense and driving, closer in spirit to Deacon’s “America” selections for the earlier ballet. Walker is an electric force field, moving with the invigorating, fluently athletic energy that marked the central male roles in the earlier ballet. Waves of energy course through him as he seems to move in multiple directions.
This same energy and fluency propels the group, which Peck propels through contrasting, nuanced passages with his singular flair for group dynamics. Clusters form and disperse, but the connection between these shimmering bodies is always palpable. Peck’s gift is to make the ensemble transcend the sum of its parts and to evoke a sense of spontaneity and surprise.
“Fire” continues with a duet for Tiler Peck and Gilbert Bolden III, as we hear the purest form of “Become a Mountain,” the album track around which Deacon composed this orchestral suite. (He himself joins the orchestra to perform vocals and play electronic instruments; it all blends seamlessly.) The two explore each other with a sense of trust and admiration. Bolden is a glorious partner, and while this duet harks back to the one Tiler Peck danced with Amar Ramasar in The Times Are Racing, that one was more playful and marked by mutual challenge. Here the couple feels more grounded and quietly confident in each other.
“Water” is a brief interlude for Emily Kikta and Naomi Corti, who, in pale blue leotards, fluidly traverse the stage on or close to the ground evoking swimmers.
Group energy returns and triumphs in the concluding “Ether.” Peck’s ability to allow individual moments within a surging ensemble is mesmerizing, and it’s hard to assimilate his multi-faceted stage energy on one viewing.
In no way should we be looking to Peck to summarize or synthesize this moment. But I came away from Mystic Familiar feeling soothed, refocused, reminded of the power of connections and the relief of taking deep breaths.
Susan Reiter covers dance for TDF Stages and contributes regularly to the Los Angeles Times, Playbill, Dance Australia and other publications.