 Kloe Walker soars in Tiler Peck's "Symphonie Espagnole" at Saratoga Performing Arts Center on Friday afternoon. (Photo by Erin Baiano) New York City Ballet’s summer stay at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center is all about Tiler Peck.
Her performance in George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was inspired. She gave a pre-performance talk, she signed copies of her book, “XO Ballerina Big Sis.” And her ambitious “Symphonie Espagnole,” to Edouard Lalo’s violin concerto, made its SPAC premiere on Friday afternoon. Peck deserves all the attention as she stands out as one of the company’s biggest talents. She is a draw whose charms onstage translate off. And as “Symphonie Espagnole” shows she is also not afraid to tackle the big and bold, creating a work that explores Spanish-infused themes to create splashy variations for her fellow dancers. However, it’s a shame that it had to premiere at a matinee. At SPAC, matinees are always disappointing as the lighting, so essential to a ballet’s mood, is lost. Friday opened with another perfect Balanchine ballet, “Serenade.” Sadly, the moonlight that bathes the dancers in the first movement of the Tchaikovsky ballet is unseen. And the ascension to the heavens, the ballet’s glorious end, just doesn’t read as it should. Daytime also weakened Jerome Robbins’ “Opus 19/The Dreamer.” In it, Joseph Gordon is a man plagued by a restlessness that haunts him in dreams. But again, the open-air amphitheater, that cannot darken, dispels the nightmare’s power and diminishes the subsequent relief Gordon finds with Alexa Maxwell. Still, the cast for both ballets was good, but one laments losing lighting by Mark Stanley (“Serenade”) and Ronald Bates (“Opus 19/The Dreamer”). Consequently, in Peck’s piece, the potential spark is misplaced. The playful first movement with Emma Von Enck and David Gabriel, the daring dances in the second and third with Kloe Walker and Roman Mejia and finally the romance of the fourth with Mira Nadon and Ryan Tomash are vibrant, but lack the sense of progression that lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker likely provides. It is clear that Peck’s work was well-constructed. She designed the dance beautifully with lines of corps de ballet dancers – upstage and near the wings -- defining the space. Throughout, she sprinkled Spanish spice. Finger snaps and hand claps evoked flamenco while the red, chocolate and icy blue costumes by Robert Perdziola aroused a feeling of toreadors and dark-eyed flirtatious senoritas. Mejia stole the show and hearts with his flashy smile and the ease of his endless turns. Backed by eight other men, Mejia and crew asserted their vigor, prompting some in the audience to surely swoon. All three ballets will be repeated on Saturday night, where they will be seen as intended – in the glow of evening’s light.
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