Review: Miami City Ballet in ‘Heatscape,’ a Fleeting Chase of Romance

<First published online in the New York Times on March 29, 2015>

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — No ballet by the 27-year-old choreographer Justin Peckis much like another; with each assignment he sets himself new choreographic hurdles. But Mr. Peck has quickly become the most eminent choreographer of ballet in the United States — and two particular characteristics have propelled him to the top: the exciting formal architecture of his dances and the kinesthetic thrill of his movement.

Certainly his latest ballet, “Heatscape,” which had its premiere at the Kravis Center here over the weekend with Miami City Ballet, shows his gift for memorably picturesque, changing group shapes: lines, rings, clusters occur at various points and angles on the stage, registering dramatically. Meanwhile the dancers infectiously show the appeal of the ebullient movement he gives to them, with contrasting through-the-body ripples, pounces, bends, jumps and changes of direction.

The curtain rises, in silence, to show a row of dancers across the rear of the stage, backs to us, silhouetted as if looking at the view. Actually, the backdrop just behind them is a two-tier array of colorful pattern by Shepard Fairey/Obeygiant.com — the lower level, just taller than the performers, in two different browns; the main upper part a red sunburst. The idea might be of a glowing sky above a cityscape.

The dancers wear informal sleeveless white by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung— the men in tops and shorts, the women in dresses (each nicely individualized in cut). The shoes, sand-colored, often make these people look barefoot. All of them turn, run to the front as if to catch another view — and the music begins.

The score, almost 30 minutes long, is the first piano concerto (1925) by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959), whose music has been used by the choreographers Kenneth MacMillan, Mark Morris and, in 2013, Mr. Peck, in City Ballet’s “Paz de la Jolla” (recently the subject of the film “Ballet 422”). Whereas “Paz de la Jolla” more specifically evoked Southern California, “Heatscape” lets us imagine we’re on the Atlantic coast of South Florida in a generalized way. A recurrent theme is what can and can’t be seen.

The Vision Scene is a standard device of 19th-century Romantic ballet; usually it’s the male hero’s vision of the heroine amid some transcendent world that we see. Mr. Peck’s exuberant 21st-century world here keeps suggesting something more like a mirage. In the substantial first movement, a young man (Renan Cerdeiro or Andrei Chagas, depending on the performance, both with charming vulnerability and eagerness) looks across the stage; he immediately registers a young woman, only then to lose her amid a throng of other people her age. The Romantic ballerina was glimpsed amid an all-female corps, but Mr. Peck’s heroine is lost amid dancers of both sexes.

At one point she returns as one of three women who, in profile, advance together toward him and, taking his hands, each raise legs high behind them in arabesques penchées — a fragrant little echo of George Balanchine’s “Apollo” that adds spice before passing into nothing. “Heatscape” abounds in fragrant moments. Though this makes it a hard ballet to add up, its principal subject seems to be the transience of relationships amid a large young community in a hot climate.

Meanwhile, the excitement is heightened by the steps, rich with intense dynamic contrasts, that Mr. Peck gives these exultant Miami performers. The same woman shows a wavelike motion through her torso, a sudden darting arrival into a fixed statuesque position, and a slow arc, gracious and musically judicious, with which the upper body inclines to resolve a position. (Patricia Delgado, radiant and refined, is especially compelling as this first heroine, though Emily Bromberg danced her with real elegance at the matinee.) All these features of style, rich fare as dance, register musically.

The second movement, with lower lighting, features another young couple (Tricia Albertson and Kleber Rebello or Nathalia Arja and Renato Penteado); and from the way they occasionally recline, sit up to look at a view, and recline again, we can easily fancy they’re on the beach. There are incidents to enjoy here — there’s another mirage image, and at one point the woman soars through the hoop the man makes with his arms. Still, this is the ballet’s most diffuse, strenuous, and repetitious section, with a few awkwardly grandiose strokes. What does it all add up to?

The third movement features two other men and a third young woman (and the earlier principal characters also return). Mr. Peck responds to each of them: the athletic energies of Mr. Chagas (swapping roles in another cast), Shimon Ito and Jeanette Delgado or (at the matinee) Michael Sean Breeden, Ariel Rose and Jennifer Lauren, are given marvelous focus and embellishment.

All of them are backed by — and part of — a larger ensemble. This soloists/group connection takes its substance from the relationship of piano and orchestra. (Martinu provides extended passages for solo piano.) One background dance for 12 has the corps in two concentric rings swapping places. At first you think it’s one ring of six women, another of six men; but then you see they’re unequally mixed. It’s a double image of the ballet’s ambiguity: How quickly do we really see what’s here? And how much does gender matter today? This happens to be a heterosexual ballet, but it doesn’t weigh itself down with male-female dualism.

“Heatscape” was sandwiched by excellent performances of Balanchine’s ultraclassical “Raymonda Variations” (1962) and Jerome Robbins’s classic comedy “The Concert” (1956). The level of dancing in the “Raymonda” was extraordinarily high at both performances, with virtuoso coloratura made musically acute and danced with full-out verve. Miami City Ballet, a jubilant and endearing company, refreshes the eyes and spirit.

@New York Times, 2015