Coupling Up

The Pennsylvania Ballet's "Love & Longing"

by Janet Anderson

With the surging speed of a runaway train, Peter Martins' propulsive Fearful Symmetries opened Pennsylvania Ballet's "Love & Longing" program at the Merriam. Minimalist John Adams' score is complex and fast, yet subtle; New York City Ballet's Peter Martins crafted a dance that uses every one of Adams' idiosyncratic notes. Twenty-three dancers hurled across the stage, jolting and bouncing like pieces in an electronic music game jerked around by an out-of-control cursor. Three couples (Amy Aldridge with Zachary Hench, Meredith Reffner with James Ihde, and Martha Chamberlain with Jermel Johnson) gave the piece focus. Corps members Reffner and Johnson deserve special nods, stepping effortlessly and beautifully into principal roles.

Netherlands-based Annabelle Lopez Ochoa contributed Requiem for a Rose, performed by 12 long-stemmed dancers, plus one solo figure. Abigail Mentzer, who opened the dance, moved in a shaft of light wearing a green leotard, holding a red flower in her mouth, flinging her beautiful red hair on the floor like an exotic mop. She disappeared. Out came a dozen dancers in unisex red skirts. The guys were bare-chested, the ladies in modest flesh-colored tank tops. Whirling in their skirts and bending over, they suggested flowers as they danced to Schubert's Adagio from the Quintet in C, with added soundscape by Bart Rijnink. No one onstage could trump sinuous Riolama Lorenzo, dancing with dynamo Sergio Torrado. To wrap things up, Mentzer returned alone and, using a quick hand gesture, ended the garden visit. Was she a thorn, a heartbeat or a serpent?

Twyla Tharp, who loosened up ballet using ordinary gestures, pop music and even boxing while simultaneously tackling everything from modern dance and Broadway, has rarely been better than Nine Sinatra Songs (1982). Her dance duets, unfurling to nine great Frank Sinatra classics including Softly as I Leave You, Strangers in the Night and Somethin' Stupid, incorporate ballroom, flamenco, tango and pure boogie. It's all a pleasure to watch, yet no one embraced Sinatra and Tharp's sheer impudence and sexiness better than Aldridge and Torrado's pairing in That's Life. When Torrado took off his suit jacket, whammed it on the floor and grabbed his partner, everyone in the theater jolted. The finale, My Way, left the audience not only applauding but a little misty-eyed.

(j_anderson@citypaper.net)

Pennsylvania Ballet | Feb. 11, Merriam Theater