Surely you remember the old movies and tales in which a teenage dancer is spotted at the recital of a provincial dance studio. There, a diamond in the rough, she stands out among aspirants clearly headed for careers in more pedestrian fields and goes on to glory. Taylor 2, Ailey II, and ABT II, sharing two weeks at the Joyce Theater billed as the 1.2.3. Festival, convince you to get those dated romantic notions right out of your head.
The members of these small, selective farm-team companies have been recognized and nurtured as the crème de la crème at every level of their development. Typically, they have survived the rigors of the professional track in the parent company’s academy or its equivalent and now, as inordinately gifted and groomed pre-professionals, are highly likely candidates for that senior company. Granted, a very few don’t stay the course and—such is the dancing life—others may end up working for the competition.
A couple of years in a junior group gives these young hopefuls yet more challenging classroom training along with considerable performing experience, which is essential to the making of a dancer. Because the groups are compact, they’re more mobile and affordable when it comes to touring, they’re available for outreach activities, and their members are sometimes called upon to do stints with the parent company. The Ailey and ABT juniors also get new works choreographed on them, which, even when these pieces lack distinction, as they often do, the dancers enjoy and learn from participating in the choreographic process.
Making the young jump through all these hoops, often beginning before they have two numbers to their age, can be thought of as ill-advised, even merciless. The process devours childhood and adolescence and provides ongoing opportunities for heartbreak. Yet burgeoning dancers who survive it seem to enjoy the experience, even need it—the way one needs air and nourishment—and the results, from the audience’s viewpoint, are frequently breathtaking.
Opening night of the 1.2.3. Festival offered a single piece by each of the participating troupes. Taylor 2 delivered Arden Court—in the 1994 version of the thrilling 1981 work, which reduces the number of dancers from nine to six, leaving it too symmetrical to my taste. Still, the delights of the performance nearly erased any misgivings about the necessary choreographic decision. (The Taylor 2 company is always kept to six members both for economic reasons and a sentimental one: the original parent company, in its pioneering days, consisted of only a half-dozen members.)
Today’s fledgling performers have already captured the buoyancy and the curious torque of the body central to Taylor’s idiosyncratic style-no mean feat, especially since they make these things look natural. Each of the dancers is physically individual—an important characteristic of the senior company. My favorite among the three women was Jamie Rae Walker, fairy-like in her petite, delicate build and gravity-defying elevation. Her straight blond hair is blunt cut schoolgirl-style and she smiles, spontaneously, at just the right moments. A good case can be made, though, for Latra Wilson, who counters Walker’s springtime freshness with a potentially erotic lushness and a deeply rooted musicality; she needs only to reveal these gifts in their full strength. Among the men, I favored Nic Ceynowa, whose dancing might be modeled on Taylor’s own—strong, sculptural, and flowing, as he explores the enigmas of the space he finds himself in.
Like many dancers in the early phase of their careers, Taylor’s protégés are occasionally weak in phrasing and making distinct contrasts in tone between bright and dark, forceful and subdued. And at moments they look "taught" rather than spontaneous. I think the best dancing—correct me if I’m dead wrong—has the unfettered air of improvisation.
The Ailey II dancers brought their remarkably mature stage presence to the eponymous choreographer’s 1970 Streams, an abstract work that opens and closes with the full group but, in between, showcases solo dancers and duos, even a quartet. It astutely reflects the parent company’s look of individualized body types and stage personas being united by a mutual effort. The junior Ailey dancers are a gifted, handsome, and elegant group, some more developed than others, but all displaying a modest self-possession that is both admirable and endearing.
Ailey II's Yannick Lebrun in Alvin Ailey's Streams. Photo by Eduardo Patino.
Every generation of the Ailey II company seems increasingly balletic, and this one is no exception. Men and women alike possess fantastic extensions, uncanny steadiness in off-kilter balances, space-cleaving leaps, and the ability to whirl like nobody’s business. But they don’t aim to excite the audience by attacking the space as if to conquer it, the way the senior company often does, but rather with the idea of inhabiting it fully. Their softer style—more human than aggressively theatrical—is enormously attractive.
After the first night, the 1.2.3. groups began alternating in full programs devoted to each of them. For me, the highlight of the first all-ABT II night, May 1, was Irina Kolpakova's staging of pure-dance excerpts from Act III of Marius Petipa’s Raymonda. This radiant item was also chosen for the group’s contribution to the three-company opening. Because of the celebrated former ballerina’s career with the Kirov, her setting theoretically brings us closer to the choreography of the nineteenth-century original. (Kolpakova is now an ABT ballet mistress and a marvelous coach for dancers ready to listen and learn.)
By reason of its far-fetched plot, Raymonda has been much monkeyed with over the decades in efforts to make it believable, rational, and/or psychologically up to date—with decidedly mixed results. For this occasion, Kolpakova has wisely jettisoned the narrative—with its melodramatic conflicts and disturbing dreams—and produced, instead, an immaculate exercise in style. It is so infallibly accurate technically, with moments of vivacity spicing a pervasive tenderness, you can’t believe you’re seeing it in today’s rough, rude, ramshackle New York. Obviously, it reflects Kolpakova's own dancing and the old traditions of the school that bred it. Its virtues encompass exquisite line, jumps and turns that finish in perfect fifth position (no sort-of, no wobbling—except for the customary disaster of the four guys who face the audience like a firing squad and attempt to do double air turns in tandem), and a port de bras that gives the body sculptural grace.
Among the delights was an irresistible solo—interpolated from an earlier act of Raymonda—in which a young woman dances with a long chiffon scarf that seems almost alive. Here, the rapt interplay suggested, simultaneously, a child with a cherished toy or imaginary friend and a budding girl experiencing her first romantic fantasies. I had never seen it before and was struck by the way it epitomized the pearly beauty and charm of yesteryear’s ballet. April Giangeruso danced it accordingly.
The Raymonda, Kaia Annika, matched her outstanding technical aplomb with a gentle fluidity. She still needs to project her character’s varying moods with more courage and clarity, but already, particularly in the famous hand-clapping solo with its Hungarian flourishes, she seemed to have some ideas in this quarter. Her partner, Joseph Gorak, a danseur noble-in-the making, was so uncannily well-placed, I rejoiced in his meticulous, secure landings as much as I did the fine figure he cut in the air.
On the May 1 program, ABT II also performed Balanchine’s Allegro Brilliante, translating the New York City Ballet’s typical scintillating attack into a sweeter, more fluent quality; Brian Reeder’s new Cake, about the life and times of Marie Antoinette (don’t ask); and the Act III Don Quixote pas de deux—for flash.
I must add that I found it gratifying to find more people of color on ABT II’s stage, percentage-wise, than we usually see in our major classical companies. It’s only a start on correcting a shameful state of affairs that should have been rectified long ago. Nevertheless, it’s progress and should be vigorously supported by company administrations and audiences alike.
A bit of advice for the viewer: Remember all the young dancers you see on the 1.2.3. Festival programs—they’re an annual affair—so you can tell your grandchildren you were present at the birth.
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