Trey McIntyre Project - George Jackson

Craft and Concept

Trey McIntyre Project
Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
Vienna, Virginia, USA
August 8, 2006

by George Jackson
copyright ©2006 by George Jackson

Expectations differ for up-and-coming ballet choreographers and for their counterparts in contemporary dance. In ballet the choreographers themselves and their clienteles put more emphasis on craft than on vision. It is the nuts-and-bolts, the tooling, the finish of a new ballet that gets comments from fans and from the press. Making a piece in the manner of this or that famous example is expected and, indeed, considered desirable. So what if the work has no singular, original, innovative vision? Skeptics even argue that there’s no such thing as real novelty because, if you look closely, ballet choreographers have been copying their teachers’ dance pieces since the dawn of the artform and only the handwriting is new.

No question that Trey McIntyre — in his mid-30s, Kansas born and with mostly a non-coastal background — has been honing his skills. McIntyre’s three-part program, which toured the country this summer, is well made. The step vocabulary’s balance of variety and consistency is sound, the step combinations are negotiable; McIntyre knows how to develop themes, build a work and implement a denouement. What’s more, he doesn’t repeat himself in these three pieces.

The opener is light. “Like a Samba” consists of ballet/ballroom movement driven by a Latin pulse (Astrud Gilberto songs). How the hips shake and how the hands fend give the dancing its ethnic flavor. Mainly fashioned into boy-girl duos, there’s a trio too that lets its two boys enjoy a few moments together. The model for this 1997 piece may well have been Twyla Tharp’s “9 Sinatra Songs”. No question though that Tharp’s duets are more individual and inventive while McIntyre’s slip by smoothly but not so memorably. Michael Mazzola’s brightly colored and sometimes silhouetted lighting patterns are easier to recall.

“Just” is more taxing for the audience with its prickly sweet Henry Cowell music and rapier movement that seems to fragment balletic syntax. Dance phrases end ever so abruptly. Sounds familiar? George Balanchine’s “Episodes” is the prototype. Ideally, the dancers ought to appear matter-of-fact. No comment, no hint of feeling should escape them as they stop in mid-motion or assume poses that look askew. Balanchine has at times been betrayed by his dancers and, on those occasions, ”Episodes” ended up a comedy rather than an amazing atomization of dance. “Just” was betrayed by McIntyre himself, not the dancers. As choreographer and director, he hit the unexpected stops and non-endings too hard. Less emphasis at those moments would have made “Just” subtler. It would not have made the piece dull because “Just” isn’t just an example of movement analysis. It is also, and very much so, a display of bodies and a look at physical attraction. Its two pairs of dancers, a tall couple and a short, appear very male and female in their velvety white bathing suits. Not only does the shiny cloth cling, but it is banded tightly to the anatomy with silken tape (Patrick Long’s designs).

Best was the program’s longish last piece, “Go Out”. It is an American version of “Le jeune homme et la mort” — Roland Petit filtered thru Agnes de Mille and Paul Taylor sensibilities. McIntyre tells the tale of fateful Death stalking a group of country folk and does so not seamlessly but in a suite of separate numbers — small scenes tied to 11 astringent pieces of country music. The audience was allowed to clap after each number, and I wonder whether the work’s impact wouldn’t have been even greater without that interruption. Much of the movement is inventive, individual, memorable — particularly the cadaver’s grotesque solo. Dramatically “Go Out” is astute, with Death not only frightening the still living characters but making some of them very angry. The final duet for a Young Man and Death is not without nobility.

The project’s 11 dancers were drawn from companies for whom McIntyre has choreographed. He seems to have known what he wanted and gotten it. I’ve never seen acrobatic Jason Hartley (Washington Ballet) used more aptly, both in the Samba piece and in “Go Out” as the cadaver. Alison Roper (Oregon Ballet Theatre) had grandeur as Death, despite seeming reluctant to take on the part in its entirety (imagine Veronika Part in this role). Anne Mueller (OBT) and Dawn Faye (Ballet Memphis) possessed the speed and stop-on-a-dime abilities the choreographer often requires. Michele Jimenez (WB*) and Artur Sultanov (OBT) brought out the sensuality in McIntyre’s dances, although Jimenez’s torso seemed a bit stolid. Jonathan Jordan (WB) may be too classical for some of this repertory yet McIntyre used him astutely. John Michael Schert (LINES Ballet) and Jonathan Dummar (Joffrey Ballet) are the All American boy types of Edward Albee plays and McIntyre ballets.

Trey McIntyre isn’t just about the craft of making ballets and the skill of casting them. He has a handwriting. It is laid-back and impatient — an American mix. It may even constitute a vision.

* Jimenez is in transition from Washington Ballet to Netherlands National Ballet.

Photo: Jonathan Jordan in performance with the Trey McIntyre Project.

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Craft and Concept