Miami City Ballet opened its 26th season at the Kravis Center this weekend with a rousing performance of four diverse, contemporary works that ended with a standing ovation Friday night from a near-capacity crowd.
The evening began with George Balanchine’s Square Dance. This high-energy, technically challenging ballet was perfectly danced: Jeanette Delgado was the personification of joy, a 100-watt smile on her face, her feet moving so quickly it defied comprehension. Her partner, Renan Cerdeiro, was equally adroit and the pair together were riveting as they danced to the music of Vivaldi and Corelli.
The soft grays and blues of the costumes were just the right palette, creating a kind of visual trampoline for audience members to imbue with their emotions. Lines were danced with impeccable timing and coordinated movements. And the coming together of the square dancing partners was sheer exhilaration.
It was followed by Afternoon of a Faun, Jerome Robbins’ take on the celebrated Debussy tone poem. This was all ethereal beauty, so well-staged that every imaginable dramatic contrivance found its way into what was finally a very subtle interpretation of the transformation from innocence to sensual awakening.
Patricia Delgado danced the part of the young girl who interrupts the narcissistic reverie of a young male dancer regarding himself in a ballet studio mirror. The challenge of the ballet is for the dancers to play off the theoretical “fourth wall,” which is both the audience and the mirrored wall of the studio. Every movement in the pas de deux must be coordinated including sight lines as they would appear in the mirror.
Delgado paired with the very talented Yann Trivdic performed so beautifully and with such finesse it was possible to feel her trepidation and yet at the same time the inescapable tug of awareness across the room. The culmination in a kiss was so sensitive and the reaction so pure, it was hypnotic. Trivdic brought a major “wow factor” to the piece with his strong, sensual, commanding portrayal of the young man.
Liturgy, a modern bit of choreography by former Royal Ballet and New York City Ballet dancer Christopher Wheeldon, is set to a minimalist score by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. A duet danced by husband and wife Carlos Guerra and Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg, Liturgy is a collection of sculptural forms achieved through balletic acrobatics that is simply stunning.
The tension is palpable — it makes one feel as though you have just pointed a toe and are unable to let it relax. Setting the ballet within the confines of a dimly lit set added to the eerie, taut transformation from shape to shape, from high to grounded movements.
Finally, the exhausting flailing of Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room grabbed the audience hard and did not relent until they were on their feet applauding. Thirteen dancers garbed in throw-back Norma Kamali costumes danced at a frenzied pace reflecting Tharp’s much-noted practice of working dancers to their upper limits.
This is a ballet of strength and endurance, of wild sashays across the stage, of running shoes and red toe shoes, of clothing shed and pulses racing — an ingenious way to end the program.
Set to the music of Philip Glass, on a stage infused with billowing smoke and enduring for more than 40 minutes, In the Upper Room had dancers moving on and off stage not only from the wings but from slits in an ebony backdrop.
The dancers were everywhere at once, as was the choreography, which embraced everything from swing dance to martial arts.
The evening was, in short, a triumph.