Rarefied air: Justin Peck’s new work at New York City Ballet

Dance · Reviews
Mystic Familiar, choreography by Justin Peck, photo: Erin Baiano

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.

Scenic designer Eamon Ore-Grion and choreographer Justin Peck take bow after premiere of Mystic Familiar. photo: Erin Baiano

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 “Ether,” 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.

Peter Walker, Mystic Familiar, photo: Erin Baiano

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.

Tiler Peck, Gilbert Bolden, Mystic Familiar, photo: Erin Baiano

“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 had 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.

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Twyla Tharp, irrepressible, meets Beethoven, Philip Glass, for Jubilee Tour

Dance
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Twyla Tharp: The name is distinctive and memorable. So, too, are the accolades the choreographer has accumulated over decades in the creative artist’s lane. Now, at 83, the Tony/MacArthur/Primetime Emmy/Kennedy Center/Guggenheim Award winner remains a bold and uncompromising force in the dance world. For her Diamond Jubilee tour at The Soraya’s Great Hall for two performances, February 22 and 23, Tharp has fashioned a program to celebrate her sixty-year tenure as one of America’s most distinguished creators.

This is not a “greatest hits” program, nor a retrospective. The evening offers two works from different stages in her career. The first, from 1998, “Diabelli,” is one of her most profound—an exploration of Beethoven’s nearly hour-long solo piano work, “Diabelli Variations.” A second work, “Slacktide,” is staged to chamber music by one of our most celebrated and influential living composers, Philip Glass. That is a brand-new piece.

Beginning in 1965, Tharp choreographed for an all-female group she irreverently labeled “a bunch of broads doing God’s work.” From her tough-minded pieces that challenged rather than entertained, she began to expand horizons. By the late 1960s, she was placing her dancers in museum galleries and outdoor settings long before “site-specific” became a common term.

Her company – Twyla Tharp Dance – was one of the wonders of the dance world in the ‘70s and ‘80s. She added dancers and included men—all exceptional, individual performers. Inspired by their talent, Tharp created a steady stream of inventive works in a distinctive style. Co-mingling technical virtuosity with vernacular moves, the dancers motor on high velocity and intricacy, while exuding nonchalance and theatrical flair. 

It was when Tharp began to branch out, choreographing for ballet companies, that her force field emerged. Robert Joffrey was the first to spot her potential, and her 1973 “Deuce Coupe,” an exhilarating mashup of the Beach Boys and ballet, became a Joffrey Ballet signature. This approach, pop culture through the prism of dance, came naturally to Tharp, as she grew up in Rialto, California, bagging popcorn at the family drive-in movie theater.  

In 1976, Mikhail Baryshnikov – newly arrived to the U.S. – teamed with Tharp for the hugely popular “Push Comes to Shove.” During his tenure as artistic director of American Ballet Theatre, he commissioned several Tharp works, and, ever since, ABT dancers have Tharp running in their bloodstream.

Branching into film (Hair, Amadeus, both for director Miloš Forman) and Broadway (her Tony Award-winning Movin’ Out, to the music of Billy Joel, which ran three years on Broadway), Tharp planted her flag in both the artistic and commercial sectors. In her “spare time” she has penned four books filled with insights about creativity and the human body, her most recent, KEEP IT MOVING: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life, proffers advice she herself follows. Like Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse, Tharp is that rare choreographer widely known beyond the confines of the dance world, achieving the ultimate status: she’s a dance brand.

The Soraya program’s “Diabelli” is a major but little-seen work from 1998 with an interesting history. During the 1990s, Tharp was on a creative tear. (Her roster of works, 1995 – 2000, is astonishing.) There was a full-length ballet for London’s august Royal Ballet, several works for ABT, a commission for the Australian Ballet. All the while, Tharp continued to form short-term groups (called Tharp!) that toured worldwide. It was on these eleven dancers that Tharp first noodled to Beethoven’s mighty piano score. “Diabelli” was performed only a handful of times, mostly in Europe. In London it picked up an Olivier Award for Best Dance Production. Since then, it has not been seen on any stage – until now.  At The Soraya, Beethoven’s majestic music will be performed by pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev.

Jessica Lang, a busy and highly respected choreographer, danced for Tharp in 1998 and appeared in “Diabelli”’s premiere. “It was intense. She was demanding,” she recalls about the experience. “We were immersed in it for two months. She really loved and valued the music; she encouraged us to get the score and understand the music. That dance was uniquely Tharp. It gave us identity and individuality and humanity.”

A newly assembled, hand-picked ensemble will deliver these two challenging and contrasting works. Some qualify as Tharp veterans – Reed Tankersley has worked on Tharp projects since his senior year at The Juilliard School. Others have taken leaves of absence from Martha Graham Dance Company and Miami City Ballet, for the opportunity to work with Tharp.

This current group was coached by original “Diabelli” cast members while simultaneously learning Tharp’s “Slacktide” to the Glass score. Tankersley calls the Glass work “a tour de force” that “feels very Tharp.”

“There’s her humor, her quirky movement, but also classical partnering,” says Tankersley, noting, “She likes the theme-and-variations form.”

Tharp and Philip Glass collaborated previously, in 1986. Returning to Glass’s music for this anniversary, Tharp was drawn to his lyrical and contemplative “Aguas da Amazonia,” composed in 1993 and performed by Third Coast Percussion in a new arrangement created for the occasion. Speaking while “Slacktide” was still taking shape, Tankersley notes its “different moods and energies. It changes as it goes on. A lot of it is pulled from improvisations she’s done herself, on video.”

Jessica Lang says of Tharp, “She’s a dynamic, intense, creative human being; a remarkable artist who’s been completely dedicated and inspiring.” Reed Tankersley observes, “At this point in her life, I think she always is more interested in creation, making new things. It’s incredible seeing her in her creative element—and seeing how it all pieces together.”

Twyla Tharp Sixtieth Anniversary Diamond Jubilee | The Soraya | Feb 22, 23


Susan Reiter is a New York City-based arts journalist who covers dance for TDF Stages and contributes to a variety of publications.

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