reView of ABT-SPA

What's a reView? I made it up. For the time being, it's when you get a "view" rather than a review of an entire performance. Let's all agree that Tudor's Pillar of Fire and Balanchine's Mozartina are masterpieces and move on.

I was talking with my father the other day. Naturally, the conversation drifted toward dance. "You know that Kylian fellow, he's not a choreographer, but an architect of space." As a lover of phrases that move, this one was a keeper. I imagine my father was watching a different set of Kylian's works but that's besides the point. As a little visual experiment I decided to let my father's words drift into my imagination while watching the two Kylian works marvelously performed by ABT.

In Petite Mort, the swords chopped up space while those weird lacquered dress/cars really did a number on my spacial perception. When the headless dresses reappeared in Sechs Tanze with the swords sticking out of them I thought I was inside a Magritte painting. Even the puffs of white powder coming off the dancers' wigs occupied space with intention. The back-to-back Kylian pieces seemed an odd choice. I guess it was all about the roving disembodied black dresses. If only my dad lived in Houston. What a rare treat for Houston audiences.