The dancers at American Ballet Theater often describe the company as a family. Sometimes I wonder: Is that good? Is it true? How is it reflected in the art?
Families experience angst and tension, but this season at the David H. Koch Theater, the sitcom version of family has emerged in some ballets. “The New Romantics,” a program on Wednesday night, featured two new works with little urgency. Instead, there it was: that artificial sitcom feeling.
That program, a fairly regressive look at love, explored conventional aspects of romance by Gemma Bond, Jessica Lang and James Whiteside. The return of Ms. Lang’s “Garden Blue” couldn’t diminish the dismal memory of her “Let Me Sing Forevermore,” a duet performed for the first time in New York last week. Set to Tony Bennett, it is a flimsy redaction of Twyla Tharp’s choreography to Frank Sinatra and a figure skating routine rolled into one.
“Garden Blue” is derivative in a midcentury modern dance way, but it has a loveliness mainly because of Sarah Crowner’s sets, Noguchi-like winged panels sometimes activated by the dancers, and vibrant unitards that give the stage a three-dimensionality.
Mr. Whiteside’s “New American Romance,” originally performed over the summer at Vail Dance Festival, also had a secondhand veneer. In it, he merges the idea of romantic ballet — dancers wear blue-violet costumes, long tulle skirts for the women and poet shirts for the men — with contemporary, sassy injections of turned-in footwork or classical hands that suddenly start to swirl midair.
Set to Debussy, “New American Romance” begins with a pas de deux for Catherine Hurlin and Aran Bell; here they are again, as in “Forevermore,” performing a figure skating routine off the ice, complete with throws and flips. A trio for three women, a sisterhood of sorts, turns powerful poses into coquettish ones — in 2019, it’s a frustrating sight — and later a duet morphs into a ménage à trois.
Throuples happen. But here the final scene features a threesome in which they pile on top of one another, each raising an arm in the air before the three arms are intertwined. It was surprising, coming from Mr. Whiteside — who is a drag artist as well as a Ballet Theater principal — that his ballet was so, well, straight.
But he does know how to move bodies: His dance glides along with a certain ease. Ms. Bond’s “A Time There Was,” though, is frantic and overpacked: The spins, kicks and embellished details of the arms rarely slow down. This foray into romance takes inspiration from Benjamin Britten and, it seems, the dynamic qualities of her cast.
A former member of Ballet Theater, Ms. Bond clearly has studied these dancers for years. She has ideas on how to show them off. Too many.
As the sections unfold and couples dash in and out — Zimmi Coker, sunny and sweet, and Gabe Stone Shayer infuse a folk-infused section with sprightly jumps — hints of a narrative emerge, but only hazily. The couples appear to be part of the same community. So why do they seem to come from disparate worlds?
It’s not until the end that Ms. Bond lets in more air with a pas de deux for Isabella Boylston and Mr. Whiteside; there’s a wistfulness, a quest for harmony as they dart toward and away from each other until he latches an arm around her waist and spins her right into a blackout.
At least the dancers moved with spirit and vivacity. This season — particularly in George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations” — some of the dancing has been more studious than free, as if it were taking place underwater.
A consistent delight, though, has been Calvin Royal III, who is suddenly the most elegant male dancer in the company. Twyla Tharp’s “Deuce Coupe” shows off his jazzy daring, and he made a remarkable debut in the daunting title role of Balanchine’s “Apollo.”
Splendidly expansive, he makes you realize how important expressive hands and fingers can be: In “Apollo,” they radiated with a wholeness that made you sense their interior force. Joo Won Ahn, also making his debut in the title role, didn’t have the same polish — or was it will? He looked uncomfortable, unsure of himself.
The decision to revive Clark Tippet’s “Some Assembly Required” is a perplexing one. This 1989 work, created for the real-life couple of Amanda McKerrow and John Gardner, tracks a relationship that flickers between moments of tenderness and thorny partnering. For all their beauty and imagination, Sarah Lane, in a short, flirty dress, and Cory Stearns, in jeans and a white T-shirt, looked as if they were part of an artier outtake from “Dirty Dancing,” the 1987 film. Both the ballet and the movie are clearly of their moment.
Ms. Tharp’s “Deuce Coupe,” from 1973, does capture a specific time, yet it remains timeless. This season, the majority of performances that stood out were of dancers gracing Tharp ballets. In her latest, “A Gathering of Ghosts,” the star is Herman Cornejo. But it’s the others swirling around him that give this ballet its air of mystery and eccentricity.
It’s striking to realize that Ms. Tharp’s first ballet and her most recent one — 46 years apart — are part of the same season; it’s even more striking to realize that rather than making the same dance over and over again, she is continuing to probe her imagination. Her presence at Ballet Theater over the past two seasons is important; it has instilled momentum, a never-settle-for-less force into the dancers.
In “A Gathering of Ghosts,” Ms. Tharp turned one that I respect, Christine Shevchenko, into one that I couldn’t peel my eyes away from.
Wearing a sheer Norma Kamali jumpsuit — the costume was to die for — Ms. Shevchenko, as slender as a feather, looped the stage like a snake. She found a groove within the Brahms score, abandoned the outward focus that can make her performances overly stiff and showed what she is capable of when she lets loose. It was spectacular, like watching a dream, and I couldn’t help but think that Ms. Tharp was behind it all.
Gia Kourlas is the dance critic of The New York Times.
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