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AUDIENCE REVIEW: An Expansive Evening With BalletX

Company:
BalletX

Performance Date:
September 27th, 2024

Freeform Review:

Opening the 7:30pm show at the Joyce Theatre was Jodie Gates’ Beautiful Once, set to the music and ambient vocalizations by Ryan Lott. This piece was an explicit display of the company memeber’s excellent technical facility and complex partner work. Gates’ partnering choreography built a fresh form of shapes that relied on challenging shifts in weight placement which was interesting to see. In combination with the heartening music scheme, the movement quality of the dancers expressed a type of optimism and hope; albeit occasionally interrupted by corny hugging that could have had more depth. While not necessarily a problem, optimism is the singular note present in this piece. Standing alone, the work is not the most emotionally complex, but in accompaniment with the rest of the night's pieces, Beautiful Once was a substantial opener for what would come later that evening. 

Following a short pause, the audience was catapulted away from Gates’ hopefulness, and into the stern world of Takehiro Ueyama’s piece, Heroes. The start of the work unfolded with a slow duet between a female and male presenting dancer, both in striking red suits. While extremely grounded through the entire runtime, there was a sense of urgency in the group section following the duet which made it quite an interesting watch. Mimicking the transition from the duet to the group work, the music, The Chairman Dances, by John Adams was accompanied by live musicians Kato Hideki and Ana Milosavljevic. Like in his other work Salaryman, Ueyama’s piece is a form of tribute and analysis on the grit embedded within Japanese culture throughout social conditions of hardship. Even without the intentions of the piece outlined to the audience, elements of monotony included, such as repetitive pulling up and walking on chairs, are images familiar to people who have experienced the disillusioning cycle of hustle culture.

Ending the evening was a peculiar and subversive piece by Loughlan Prior, set to the musical score by Claire Cowan. Every element from the neon colonial-era costuming, ostrich feather tickle fights, and an almost uncomfortably long trio section only lip syncing to random audio bytes about tea time, was an unexpected and fascinating celebration of queerness.

Author:
LB