© Charlie McCullers Atlanta 'Jupiter' reviews 'Shoo Pah Minor' reviews 'Sinfonietta Giocosa' reviews Atlanta reviews more Eric Taub reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Actually, I could. Bruce was quite scrupulous about assuring me he entirely expected me to make up my own mind about Hampson's piece. But his assurances quickly proved moot. I liked Sinfonietta Giocosa, and Atlanta Ballet isn't awful; in fact, it's pretty darn good, and well worth the tsuris and agita of our subway odyssey.
 

The program's first ballet was by Atlanta Ballet's venerable artistic director, John McFall. Jupiter, set to parts of Mozart's eponymous symphonies, was a serviceable curtain-raiser. Christine Joly dressed the four men and four women in costumes evocative of Mozart's time, although in loud, almost piebald assemblages of big, vibrant patterns, cut so as to make the otherwise elegant clothes appear to be crafted out of flying-carpet remnants. Atlanta Ballet's dancers quickly proved themselves to be both strong and appealing in McFall's pleasant, if bland, assemblages of classroom steps leavened with dashes of old-world courtliness. I was particularly impressed at how well the men could jump and turn in their enormous frock coats, although they sensibly shed them for the ballet's spirited allegro finale. While Jupiter didn't break any new ground with its fusty, overly symmetrical design, but it did show off the Atlanta dancer's gutty strength and physicality, especially among the men no reed-thin whippets here!

Next was the world premiere of Chicago choreograper Lauri Stallings' Shoo Pah Minor, set to bubbly bits of Vivaldi. Stallings' delightfully hyperbolic program notes promised, among other things, "Each movement is a progression and a digression, dualing the dichotomies of athleticism vs. grace, ugly vs. beautiful, one vs. many." (I'll forgive her for writing like a choreographer if the world will forgive me for dancing like a writer.) These dualing dualities appeared in the personages of fourteen dancers dressed in bright, bright green outfits by Elena Rao which invited, no, demanded comparisons to Stephen Galloway's celebrated costumes for William Forstythe's The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude. Unflattering comparisons for Rao's designs, which, while featuring rather harmless unitards for the men, put the women in tutus with ultra-flat plates like the rings of Saturn, with big, separate green pants allowing for the occasional flash of a bare midriff in lifts and poses. Rao also saw fit to embellish these designs with unfortunate cutouts covered with coarse green mesh in a crescent under each dancer's right breast, or cut like a shark-bite out of their buttocks. We know we're not in ballet-land as perky women spend so much time crushing their tutus against the big, hunky men, or crouching and flipping them over so we have plenty of time to contemplate the shape and meaning of those shark-bite cutouts.

It's a bit unfortunate for Stallings' work that Rao's costumes screamed "Forsythe manqué," as it became near-impossible not to see Rao's work as "Forsythe-lite," at least when one wasn't nostalgically engaging in that old parlor game of "rename the Forsythe ballet," but this time reworking Vertiginous' title to apply to Stallings' work. I gave up after "The Diaphanous Veil of Bad Attitude." (I never was much good at that game, which was pretty much retired by the late Anita Finkel's untoppable "Under the Table, Somewhat Inebriated." But I digress.) Indeed, much like Forsythe, Stallings will offset a balletic stretched and pointed line with "non-dance" movement, but Forsythe has the knack (when he's not tiresome in his pedantry) of showing us walking or posing in a deep penchée as simply extremes of the continuum of movement made real for us by those magnificent creatures, ballet dancers. True to her word, Stalling does indeed set up dichotomies between when her dancers are being dancers they point, stretch, balance with the best of them and when they're not they jump, trip, tumble, writhe over each other, and even (horror of horrors!) sickle their feet. This seems very much a false dichotomy to me, but might've appeared less so had Stallings' vocabulary, particularly when she's tossing in her meager ballet steps, been more, well, interesting. I suppose it's a stretch to say such a plotless, pure-movement piece could reek of condescension, yet Shoo Pah Minor did, seeming more contrived as it progressed, and, in the end, doing no favors to either of the extremes it purported to represent. Here, the dancers gave far more to the choreography than it gave them; and it did nicely show them off as friendly athletes.

Last was Hampson's Sinfonietta Giocosa, to Bohuslav Martinu's eponymous, bubbly composition. Hampson's made a dazzling, faceted jewel for twelve of Atlanta Ballet's dancers, and Bruce French's costumes black unitards with delicate lighter tracings for the men; similarly adorned leotards, sheer black tights and shoes for the women, topped with enormous, shining, crystal-studded chokers and earrings echo the wry balance between frippery and formality in Hampson's choreography, which morphs happily between diamond and rhinestone.

The curtain rose on what would become a familiar composition: all twelve men and women facing us in two rows, men to the left, women to the right, in nice, tight fifth positions. Throughout Sinfonietta Giocosa, Hampson returns to this pose, after each section, and at the curtain. They don't hold this, or any, pose for long; like the preceding two ballets, this one is about almost-perpetual, hard-charging movement, which seems to be a hallmark of this company. Hampson puts his dozen through barrages of fast footwork with incessant changes of direction, and tricky jumps both large and small, especially for the ebullient men. Why do a chassé when you can do a chassé en tournant?
 

In one notable section, all six traverse the stage in huge jetés, one after the other, swinging their arms like doing a breaststroke at the height of each leap, and landing in a solid arabesque. Over and over. In a pas de trois for two men and a woman, all three, arms linked, hopped downstage along a diagonal, their back legs swinging briskly from tapping the stage to arabesque and back, again and again, just one of Hampson's many staccato inventions to mirror Martinu's own quick and sparkling melodies. Hampson's women seem sillier and jazzier, posing with arms and hips akimbo, or playfully flicking their hands above their heads while blinding us with the afternoon's only manifestation of the dreaded Regional Ballet Smile. I wouldn't put a bit of sly irony past Hampson here; he's not above trashy fun, like the aforementioned rhinestones.

Hampson's referred to Sinfonietta Giocosa as a "3-D jigsaw puzzle." I'm not sure what he means by that; I did notice that he's fond of deploying his dancers in big lines, both up and across the stage, and in diagonals. He plays with a the "funhouse-mirror" effect having his dancers fly across the stage in a perfect line stretching away from us upstage, we see, not individual dancers, but seemingly endless reflections, thanks to the Atlanta dancers admirable unity. Hampson also plays with movement rippling up or down a diagonal line of dancers, like the Wilis in Giselle or the huge line of girls in white in Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements. Hampson masses his lines of dancers with a disarmingly simple sophistication, a kinetic counterpoint to the individuals he pulls from the group and plays against it.

At the end, Sinfonietta Giocosa seemed as much a flute of champagne as it did jewelry sparkling, effervescent, and with a delicate aftertaste. It speaks well of Hampson's acuity and judgment, although only hinting at how he might handle larger, more-symphonic works, or smaller, more dramatic ones. I do want to see more of his work, and more of Atlanta Ballet, which deserves a longer New York season in a more accessible venue.
 

PS. I hope the dancers will forgive me for not mentioning individual names. I didn't get a press kit, and had no way of linking names to faces. They all danced to a very high standard.