Presented by the Joyce Theater Foundation at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., NYC, March 15–20.
Peter Boal brought to the Joyce Theater a thin but engaging program featuring several new choreographers, some healthy-looking young men, a fragile Wendy Whelan, and a final look at Boal himself, who leaves after this season to become artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet. Boal, who has graced New York City Ballet for many years, has always been the consummate partner, a dancer of rare elegance and riveting presence.
Partnering Whelan must have seemed to him like holding aloft a bunch of feathers. Except for her well-muscled legs and highly arched feet, she personifies the wraith look. Unfortunately, the viewer's eye fixates on the toothpick figure, and though she moves with ballerina strength, it is a challenge to look past the survivor image and be soothed by the movement itself.
"Finding," a solo for Boal choreographed by Wendy Perron, was danced with flawless artistry against a backdrop of scenic slides that might have suggested the stages of a man's life. It left one puzzled and strangely unfulfilled. "Strange Hero," the classic Daniel Nagrin solo, was here performed by Sean Suozzi. Though a much better dancer than Nagrin (as I recall), Suozzi was not as in tune with the lowdown quality of the title character.
Edwaard Liang's "Distant Cries" brought Whelan and Boal together for the pleasurable experience of seeing symbiotic dancing between expert partner and seamlessly fluid ballerina. The merits of the choreography are slight, but the dramatic imprint of the two on each other was beautifully realized.
Whelan's solo, "Body Study III," to music by Morton Feldman and Iannis Xenakis, was, indeed, just that. Dressed in a pale blue, backless leotard, she became a walking anatomy lesson: sinews, tendons, and protruding bones on display. It made this writer wish to turn away.
The program ended with "Soft Watching the First Implosion," for three men and a lot of lights—off when they scrambled around changing positions, on when posed in those positions. David Parsons' nifty strobe-light classic, "Caught," quickly came to mind as a much better lighting experiment.