Elizabeth Gaither and Jonathan Jordan
in "In the Upper Room"
The Washington Ballet
Eisenhower Theater, The Kennedy Center
"In the Night," "oui, non," "In the Upper Room"
Through Oct. 29
By Alexander C. Kafka
A thrilled audience said an unmistakable "oui" to the Washington Ballet's world premiere Wednesday night of artistic director Septime Webre's "oui, non." The clever cabaret odyssey featured not only the talents of the company in great form, but also those of the acclaimed singer-actress Karen Akers, who, as a particularly poised on-stage chanteuse, was a vital part of both the work's visual and musical composition.
In Elizabeth Peyton's evocative set design, upper stage right Akers and her exceptional accompanists—pianist Don Rebic and bassist Jon Nazdin—stirringly rendered eight French cabaret standards associated with the likes of Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel. Opposite them, stage left, is the young, inquisitive, pale face and arms of a reclining young man, painted by Holly Highfill in a sort of Parisian poster style on the backdrop. Depending on the song, the scrim and Clifton Taylor's delicate lighting reveal or re-conceal the rest of the painted young man's body, his red shirt melding with the shade of Aker's elegant strapless gown. Subtle drips of paint on the backdrop image are echoed in the traces of red on the dancers off-white costumes, designed by Vandal.
With the dancers' makeup-paled faces, the effect is at once lovely and slightly foreboding. It is as though they've emerged from the world of the painted young man. The pallid tones, and the faint blood suggestion of the reds mix memorably into the musical palette of romance hard-won, volatile, fleeting, and wistfully recalled. The echo is of tenuous ties, fleeting eras, and mortality.
And just what do we make of this young man in the background anyway, gazing at us almost testingly? Is he voyeur? Are the dancers figures of his imagination? Of his dreams? Might we even take the leap and interpret him as the alter ego of Webre himself?
In couples, trios, or small groups, the dancers treated graciously Webre's seasoned blend of ballet and jazz, which ranges from almost raucously spirited in "Sympathique," in which Brianne Bland is lofted and tossed boyantly and gamely about by Jason Hartley, Jonathan Jordan, and Jared Nelson; to quasi-acrobatic in the "Padam, Padam" trio of those same three men; to the intensely intimate "Ne Me Quitte Pas," exquisitely partnered by Nelson and Elizabeth Gaither. In a smart, sensitive, and strangely apt touch, four dancer couples don't dance at all but simply cluster around Akers, now center stage, for her typically refined but quite straightforward contralto rendering of Brel's "La Chanson Des Vieuxs Amants." It's as if, in the painted poster world of the boite du nuit, word is deed is movement is music, all part and parcel of this peculiar parlor of cuddles and quibbles, ardor, coquetry, and tristesse.
There were some minor rough edges to the ensemble work, as in "Mon Dieu," but, mon dieu, it was nothing to get worked up about and I'd much prefer those rough edges to sacrificing even an ounce of the great gusto with which the dancers approached this challenging and richly textured choreography. Other companies will line up, I suspect, for permission to use this work. And they should. They will regret rien.
Lovers are also the focus of "In the Night," Jerome Robbins' elegant 1970 consideration—to Chopin Nocturnes here superbly performed by Scott Dettra—of the variations and evolutions of romance. We meet three couples, who dance before a starry backdrop. Let us call them, in order of appearance, the Orbits (Gaither and Nelson), who circle each other in sweet, somewhat agitated desire; the more stately Parallels (Erin Mahoney-Du and Runqiao Du), who move that way, often literally and figuratively in step; and the quite tense Centrifugals (Sona Kharatian and Luis Torres), who seem to have a stormier relationship of partings and reunitings, mismeasurings, belittlings, and embellishings. In dapper suits and dresses of browns, rusts, blacks, and grays, the three couples eventually encounter each other and mingle a bit, and it's a revelatory few moments because it's only upon that interaction that they seem to comprehend their coupleness and retreat into their separate intimacies with a new maturity and calm. In all, a cultured, thoughtful, and insightful work, delivered here with fine pace, grace, and emotional conveyance.
Topping off this extraordinary evening was Twyla Tharp's demanding 1986 work "In the Upper Room," the title drawn (I learned from Suzanne Carbonneau's helpful program notes) from Tharp's feeling, on hearing a Mahalia Jackson gospel song, that it seemed "to climb so high it pushed through the roof" like "an empty attic, a place of last resort, where one takes one's treasures and puts them up for very special public view."
The nine-section work is set to a wonderful score by Philip Glass. (I know we called it, controversially, minimalism back then, but now that pop radio consists of former boy- and girl- group members huskily talking dirty to their drum boxes, this music sounds positively lush.) The striking Santo Loquasto-designed set actually is minimalistic, except that it's buffered in a constant and quite thick fog-machine cloud from which the dancers emerge, and into which they disappear, with quick and quiet dispatch. They are costumed in striped suits that simultaneously hint at prison, Vaudeville, and a pajama party. But as Jennifer Tipton's recreated lighting becomes gradually brighter and more distinctly beamed—almost in the style of a Renaissance heavens-and-earth painting—the black and white stripes give way to at first spots, then patches, then whole outfits of bright pink and salmon shades.
The choreography's speed; its idiomatic mix of ballet, modern, circus, majorette, and lindy type movements; the dancers' somewhat manic, jubilant, and other-worldly energies; and the accompanying music, light, and costume colors have a profound and cumulative intoxicating effect. To me, the dancers appear to be some slightly other species freed from whatever prison, immaturity, false maturity, overwork, or other exploitation they've just fled from. Footed in assorted sneakers and ballet slippers, coming and going in a relentless and complicated scheme of shifts, groupings, and movement tropes, it's as if they'd taken Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Barnum & Bailey, and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders hostage, given them too many espressos, and locked them in a gymnasium until they created a dance they could all sign off on.
The company became these creatures in great spirits and great form, capping with athletic confidence an evening that was, from start to finish, a genuine treat.
