Houston Ballet’s triple bill An Evening with the Stars opened Thursday night with a powerful and introspective world premiere of Australian choreographer Alice Topp. Sisu proved to be an evocative exploration of human responses to adversity, and how people survive through community, connection, and confluence. This new work is named after a Finnish concept that refers to tenacity and grit in the face of impossible odds, a notion that is often used to characterize the Finnish spirit.
Sisu begins with Principal dancer Jessica Collado lying prone amidst a march of dancers moving backwards. She rises with bound, contorted movements suggesting an exterior struggle turned inward until she falls into partner Ryan Williams. This initial supported suspension leads to an impressive partnering sequence that sees tight, contracted shapes explode into extended distill arrangements. The tense, focused duet underscores the general quiet of the atmosphere.
As the company assembles onstage, the choreography builds into a series of stunning images, not the least of which sees the women supported by the men just off the floor as if levitating. This evolves into partner work that makes splendid use of negative space, and made all the more dazzling as the five duos work alternately between unison and canon. All of this is happening as a fissure opens in the background, a steam effect bursting through as if foreshadowing an impending tectonic surface. The steam, along with the sleet swirling down from above, intensifies the drama of the movement onstage, and heightens the imagery of a community under threat.
I appreciate the cinematic quality of this work, and how its grand themes are juxtaposed with the specificity of individual movements. The composition of the work magnifies the intimacy of the duets by arranging the rest in stillness. One powerful moment is when a duet emerges in the foreground with the other couples arranged kneeling, heads leaning on one another. They are players in an ever-changing landscape, which reveals itself as the crack in the background opens up and reveals dusk, maybe dawn.
In one of the final moments, the dancers come downstage to face the landscape they have been confronted with. They each rush upstage, the right arm outstretched to the horizon. This gesture, what I assume is meant to suggest a metaphorical goodbye, makes for an emotional falling action. The dancers eventually arrange themselves into the original backwards march with a dancer rushing offstage in the opposite direction, followed by Collado and Williams. The curtain falls, and even at almost half an hour, it seems too soon or misplaced. If these dancers have survived through the strength and fortitude of the community, why are they leaving for the unknown?
This denouement, along with the overused music by Arvo Part, are unsatisfying, but what Sisu has is in abundance is grit and a bold vision. It feels like a work that is rooted in the here and now, when communities worldwide find themselves under the duress of calamity. The partner work underscores the work’s themes, as much of it is physically daring, and even laborious. I can recall one interesting moment where the women are standing on the men who are on their sides, and the men make a full revolution while bearing the full weight of the endeavor. The visual effect is minimal, but it reveals the effort, and beauty, of the human experience.
Sisu found itself sandwiched in between two pieces of lighter fare, Stanton Welch’s Tapestry set to music by Mozart, and Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering courtesy of Chopin. The result was a bit discomfitting, as if someone made the decision that the audience was too soft to handle the gravitas of Sisu alone.
Tapestry is a pleasure to watch and for many reasons, not least of which is the sumptuous pas de trois in the first movement, performing opening night by the transcendent Karina Gonazalez, Connor Walsh, and Harper Watters, and the airy quality of so many airborne elements. There are fun and cheeky moments in abundance, and the quality is one of mannered musicality. The juxtaposition between the roundedness of the movement and the austerity of the gridlike set piece makes for intriguing images, especially when the dancers dissolve in and out of the grid, at times mysterious and at others mischievous.
Robbins’ slightly overlong Dances at a Gathering is fundamental viewing; it mines the beauty of that centuries-old marriage between ballet and classical music. The problem is that it all feels a bit removed from contemporary life. Even though the dancers’ do not express specific relationships, they utilize conventionally gendered poses and variations, and with plenty of Spanish characterizations to suggest a flash of verve and passion. They move to Chopin against a bright blue backdrop with a dash of cloudy white as if they are dandelions with the wind, the waltzes and folk steps and handsome gestures evoking a landscape of romanticism.
Compared to the landscape of Sisu, a dance that acknowledges the strain of contemporary human life and the need for connection in a world of growing discordance, the bucolic view created in Gathering does not seem real. Ballet, like all dance, is grounded in the physical realm, and for this particular viewer, to find firm footing means searching for meaning beyond pretty steps.
Performances continue through June 7 at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays at Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For more information, call 713-227-2787 or visit houstonballet.org. $25-$168.