Online
April 9, 2021
David Mead
Runaway, Kyle Abraham’s first work for New York City Ballet was a thrilling rollercoaster ride of music and dance. His second, Ces noms que nous portons, was a meditation on, and celebration of, queerness and colour. His new When We Fell, filmed in 16mm at NYCB’s Lincoln Center home, and co-directed by choreographer Abraham and cinematographer Ryan Marie Helfant, takes yet another path.
Made for eight dancers during a three-week COVID-compliant residency at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, NY, the absorbing ballet is frequently sparse and cool as it displays sensitivity to the surroundings and the winter season in which it was made, but also to this time and what the world, all of us, are living through and feeling.
A further influence was the Prince film Under the Cherry Moon, with which Abraham had a childhood obsession. Like that film, When We Fell is in black and white. And if you want more, danced on the empty David H. Koch Theater promenade before moving to the stage, it can be seen as an homage to the theatre too.
Photo Erin Baiano
It opens with a melancholy scene. A grey expanse of water. Snow falls. A clanging sounds like a cable repeatedly bashing against a yacht’s mast. As we look down on the theatre’s promenade, Claire Kretzschmar is alone the vast emptiness. As she dances to Morton Feldman’s Piece for Four Pianos, watched over only by the camera and Elie Nadelman’s ‘Two Female Nudes’, she looks like a tiny clay figure.
Others join her but it remains quietly peaceful. There’s a sense of each alone in their own thoughts, yet simultaneously finding community in the often slow movement that evokes memories of the great Merce Cunningham. All the time, the elegant, strong but soft lines of the choreography contrast with the straight lines of the grid on the floor.
Photo Erin Baiano
The sound of a chill wind and the metallic banging of James Moran’s All Hammers and Chains brings an abrupt change. If you think of the first section as gentle snowfall, now we have a sharp flurry. Shifting to the theatre’s stage, the tempo ups, the dance full of sharp petit allegro and turns.
Things calm down again in the final section, an introspective duet for Lauren Lovette and Taylor Stanley to Falling Berceuse by Nico Muhly. They dance with deep intensity. As their fluid bodies shift and meld, they seem to take immense pleasure in each simple touch, each embrace. Often drifting towards the shadows at the edge of the single pool of light, the mood hovers between hope and uncertainty. Perhaps there’s a hint of despair too. But always, always, it’s beautiful.
Alongside the performance film of When We Fell is a well-worth watching up-close and personal documentary short that goes behind the scenes of the residency, and also includes Abraham talking about his dance beginnings, including being thrown out of school for dancing.
When We Fell is available at NYCB’s home page and YouTube until April 22, 2021.
The documentary short, Return to Form: Creating Kyle Abraham’s When We Fell is also on nycballet.com and YouTube.