ANYONE who ever claimed that it ain’t what you do but the way that you do it, quite clearly knew little or nothing about dance.
Martin Fredmann’s highly regarded and excellent Colorado Ballet made its Manhattan debut — it had been seen in a one-performance stand in Brooklyn two or three years back — at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday night.
The performance went swimmingly, but of the three ballets only one really survived. Of the other two, one drowned and the other was left gasping for breath.
Whenever a company wants to show off its wares, programming becomes a vital and difficult question. Do you play safe, or go for broke?
The Colorado company decided on the latter course, offering two New York premieres, and the revival of a masterwork by Frederick Ashton, his 1931 “Facade,” not seen in New York for more than 20 years. Ironically it was the revival that fared best.
The opening ballet, “Picture of Sedalia,” was by Peter Pucci, a modern-dance choreographer, once a member of Pilobolus, who created this work to Scott Joplin (in an extremely odd recorded arrangement by Itzhak Perlman for piano and violin) and was intended, it seems, to suggest vignettes of American rural life at the turn of the 19th century.
Pucci’s choreography is dauntlessly vigorous, suggesting sometimes Martha Graham, but here very much lacks variety, and the picture it is trying to present appeared vague to the point of muzziness.
With the pocket virtuosity of Koichi Kubo outstanding, the ballet was very well danced, as was Stanton Welch’s “Of Blessed Memory,” another divertissement piece this time set to a selection of Joseph Canteloube’s “Songs of the Auvergne.”
The 30-year-old Australian Welch created this for his home company, the Australian Ballet in 1991 — I think it was his first work — and it is, according to one description, an account of “youth, motherhood and the transition families have to endure when children grow up and leave.”
This was possibly the subtext, but to me it looked a plotless piece, full of lively promise, exhilaratingly danced — the St. Petersburg-trained Olga Volobuyeva looks a particular find — but it went on far too long. A few fewer songs and a little less memory would have made the ballet more blessed.
Ashton’s “Facade” was not quite a first work although it came very early in his career. Inspired by William Walton’s orchestral suite — in turn taken from a recitation entertainment with nonsense poems by Edith Sitwell — Ashton has delivered an affectionate suite of satirical dancers.
Nearly 70 years later they remain as fresh as ever, and while the young Colorado cast did not perhaps catch every comic nuance, the performance, like those in the earlier ballets, proved fresh and engaging.
Particularly notable were Sharon Wehner crisp and saucy in the Polka, and the only slightly exaggerated humors of Maria Mosina and Andrews Thompson in that immortal, much-imitated Tango, which sets the cap on the whole ballet.
The Joyce Theater. 175 EighthAve. at 19th St. (212) 2542-0800.The last performance is tonight.
