The Great 'Great Gatsby' by World Ballet

World Ballet's "The Great Gatsby" was a hit at the Palace Theatre on Friday night.

World Ballet, which so impressed with its “Swan Lake” at Proctors last November, has done it again – this time with an American classic – “The Great Gatsby.”
 
This shimmering new ballet, choreographed by Ilya Jivoy with a jazz-infuse score by Anna Drubich, was near perfect at the Palace Theatre in Albany on Friday night. Now touring,  this production told the monumental F. Scott Fitzgerald tale by arousing all of its romance, glamour and tragedy. And the production values, were outstanding (always a surprise for touring ensembles) sending the audience reeling back into the Jazz Age when pent-up repressions were released in a steamy mix of new music, dance and fashion that fed a hunger for sex and debauchery.
 
With glittering gold art-deco designs, by Sergey Novikov, and moving graphics by Mikki Kunttu, the audience imbibed in the sensation, feeling as if they were being bathed in the magnums of champagne of a Jay Gatsby soiree. The whoops, screams and hollers it elicited were deserved.
 
Of course, none of this could be expertly launched without the Los Angeles-based company’s marvelous dancers. Once again, the caliber of this small ensemble is astonishing especially as its ranks must dance numerous roles each performance to fill out the production.
 
Leading the pack was Raul Abreu as Gatsby, who is hopelessly in love with the emotionally fragile Daisy, danced by Darya Medovskaya. Abreu portrayed the Gatsby’s devotion to the unattainable Daisy with heartfelt warmth. When they are together in that first meeting, arranged by her cousin Nick (danced by Konstantin Geronik), Abreu and Medovskaya’s pas de deux was a haze of amour. And the table of towering cakes and flowers acted as a metaphor for its ephemeral sweetness.
 
Some of the best sections of the ballet were designed around the ensemble – for example the opening scene at New York’s Penn Station captured its vibrancy and diversity. The party thrown by Gatsby for Daisy was spectacular with a chorus of dancing flappers, a bejeweled and boa-wrapped singer Aria Saha and the bouncing and flipping Mykhaylo Kalenta. These amazing sections were intertwined with large ensembles that seamlessly hit on the popular dance of the day – the Charleston, the shimmy and the quick step.
 
Jivoy incorporated them all as Drubich kept the score jazzy, but also mysterious.
 
Finally, speed and the highway and the eventual tragic ending of Myrtle (danced with sass by Tatiana Suliak) was ingeniously depicted by Kunttu’s graphics – basically a projection of cars racing along a highway. However, if I had to criticize, the car that hit Myrtle in Fitzgerald’s novel was yellow, not red as shown.
 
If World Ballet could amend this detail its “The Great Gatsby” would be deemed perfect.