If Emergence emerges again, I would see it again in a heartbeat And the PNB dancers’ execution was electrifying: every one of the dancers, whether featured or not, was on the mark and thoroughly in sync with each other and with Pite’s vision, as one would expect a non-hierarchical community to be. But even though there’s no cosmic significance to it, what it ‘is’ is absolutely fabulous. The piece is an extraordinary visual adventure, but it takes no positions, compels no conclusions, and doesn’t ‘go’ anywhere – it just ‘is’. One of the most astonishing sequences is the creation of sleek vertical lines of ballerina cavalry, and one line in particular resolutely and mechanically forcing one errant male out of its way, perhaps to his death. From there, the action proceeds seamlessly to scenes of predator males attempting to ensnare (or, perhaps, mate) females and females repelling males. (The fascinating costumes were designed by Linda Chow.) The masks eventually are discarded, yielding a pack of shirtless males and black leotard-clad females, with the females soon moving more like long-legged avian ballerinas than insects. Space does not permit a blow-by-blow of the piece as a whole, but the highlights include powerful depictions of menacing collective species (‘tribal’) movement – first by the male insectoids, then the females – all wearing insect-like masks. Grant then teaches Foster how to move like the insect-being she is – and they both thereafter scoot into the colony’s hive, or hill, or warren – through an entryway that passes through a marvelously ominous-looking set designed by Jay Gower Taylor, augmented by lighting (designed by Alan Brodie) that brings the colony starkly to life. Foster’s struggle to engage her insect/human bones and break free is extraordinarily compelling: it’s a painful-looking birth made even more painful-looking by the inch-by-inch detail of Pite’s choreography. The ballet begins auspiciously, and brilliantly, as Rachel Foster gradually emerges from a cocoon-like womb under the watchful gaze of Joshua Grant. The stagecraft alone is quite remarkable: despite at times filling the stage with some 38 dancers, Emergence always looks vigorous, and never looks busy. And it depicts group culture, regimentation and conformity, as well as a measure of individual thinking, all wrapped in an exciting package of controlled frenzy. It depicts life in a community, whether it be a colony of ants, an avian aerie, a faceless corporation, or a ballet company – the last of which Pite writes was “the starting-off point” for the dance’s creation. But Emergence is considerably more complex than that. On the basest of levels, Emergence is about an insectoid’s transition from birth to being a part of a functioning insectoid environment. And even if it’s not a ‘great’ ballet, whatever that might mean, any dance that succeeds in evoking a visceral audience response akin to that of The Rite of Spring and that at various moments kindles memories of Jerome Robbins’s The Cage, Act II of Giselle, and depictions of The Borg from the Star Trek The Next Generation television series without being artistically indebted to any of them merits considerable intellectual respect. While the all-Balanchine program once again showed that the PNB dancers can handle the Balanchine repertory reasonably well, the contemporary program, and particularly the closing piece on that program, Crystal Pite’s Emergence, demonstrated how fine a group of dancers they are.Ĭreated in 2009 on commission from the National Ballet of Canada, Emergence is a strange, but profoundly audacious piece of ballet theater, generating images that remain seared in a viewer’s mind long after the performance ends – a rarity for a contemporary ballet. Square Dance, Prodigal Son, Stravinsky Violin ConcertoĪ Million Kisses to My Skin, The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, Emergenceįor its third visit to New York in as many years, PNB returned to City Center last week bringing with it two programs: one, as was the case three years ago, an evening of Balanchine the other a mixed bill of contemporary ballets.
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