New York Times Dance Review #2 – Gabriel Misse & Analia Centurion

VAIL, Colo. — Each year a central feature of the two-week Vail International Dance Festival, high in the Rockies, is its two consecutive International Evenings of Dance. Organized and introduced onstage by the festival’s artistic director, Damian Woetzel, this year’s presentations were distinguished above all by catholic taste and brilliant programming. They merit superlatives.

Though these evenings aren’t called galas, that’s what they are, and unusually fine examples of that difficult format, in which highlights and short showpieces can whet or blunt the appetite. (Hooray! Only one set of 32 fouetté turns per evening!)

Friday’s was simply the best gala I have attended in decades. And though Saturday’s was patchier, several of its items were even more historic. Established stars performed in unfamiliar partnerships and repertory; one of George Balanchine’s very last works of choreography, not seen for 30 years, was revived; young ballet dancers at soloist or corps level received prestigious breakthrough opportunities.

Any American balletomane would be excited by the way the programs showed several of the country’s foremost ballet dancers (Herman Cornejo, Carla Körbes, Misa Kuranaga, Cory Stearns, Daniel Ulbricht, Wendy Whelan) performing with partners from other companies and in new repertory. But almost as fascinating was the chance to see junior dancers — Lauren Lovette and Zachary Catazaro (both New York City Ballet), Beatriz Stix-Brunell (Royal Ballet at Covent Garden) — making important debuts. History kept being made in one way or another. Deeper than that, though, these programs were pervaded by an infectious love of dance.

On Friday one sequence of three pieces proved an object lesson in virtuoso footwork: the Argentine tango stylists Gabriel Missé and Analia Centurión in “El Flete”; the Memphis jooker Ron Myles in “The Legacy Continues”; and the City Ballet principals Ashley Bouder and Mr. Ulbricht in Balanchine’s “Tarantella.” Audience excitement during each number was audible; to this devotee of footwork, all three were astounding.

They were immediately followed by Brian Brooks in his body-rippling solo “I’m Going to Explode,” in which he scarcely moved his feet at all, and by Ms. Whelan and Craig Hall in Christopher Wheeldon’s “Liturgy,” where footwork plays only a secondary role; both items, rightly, won ovations.

The two evenings showed the range of several dancers wonderfully. In particular they demonstrated the exceptional diversity of one dancer, the Brazilian Ms. Körbes, a former soloist with City Ballet and a principal with Pacific Northwest Ballet since 2006. There’s no question that she is one of the finest ballerinas appearing in America today; some think her the finest, and last weekend I felt in no mood to contradict them. Physically and artistically, she is in peak condition. (Her sole mannerism is a distracting way of breathing as if taking tiny bites of air.) The decisive naturalness of her phrasing has utter authority without a jot of diva ego.

Ms. Körbes danced both the pas de deux from the 1957 Stravinsky-Balanchine “Agon,” a hard-driving peak of modernism, with Eric Underwood (an American soloist with the Royal Ballet), and the radically dissimilar, serenely surprising divertissement pas de deux from Balanchine’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1962) to the celestialAndante from Mendelssohn’s Symphony for Strings No. 9, with City Ballet’s Tyler Angle as her partner.

On Saturday she and Mr. Stearns danced the pas de deux and solos that form the climax of Act II of “Giselle”; after intermission she danced the first performance in 30 years of the “Élégie” solo that Balanchine made for Suzanne Farrell for City Ballet’s 1982 Stravinsky Festival.

These facts alone say much. Now let me add that though “Agon” is often danced by many companies, this was the most superb account of its pas de deux I have seen in years. City Ballet’s Tiler Peck is possibly the only rival for Ms. Körbes in musical phrasing in the “Midsummer” divertissement, and the “Élégie” (accompanied onstage by Nicholas Cords on solo viola) was revelatory. This melancholy, soulful solo begins with the ballerina seated on the floor. She makes a series of hand gestures that slowly build; then she rises with them, reaches a climactic array of grand positions on point, and in a diminuendo returns to her opening gestures.

The two evenings also provided four distinct opportunities to the great tango exemplars Mr. Missé and Ms. Centurión; if I could see this couple dance every day of my life, I would die happy. In “Los Mareados” you could watch them stretch their style to its most glamorous, even flamboyant, with no loss of wit.

Friday evening concluded with Mr. Cornejo of American Ballet Theater in the “Don Quixote” pas de deux with Ms. Kuranaga of the Boston Ballet; on Saturday the same two danced the pas de deux from Acts II and III of “Swan Lake” — the Act III closing the evening. It’s hard not to wonder what Mr. Missé and Mr. Cornejo, Argentina’s two greatest male dancers today, make of each other; I find them both intoxicating.

Quickly let me mention the nice touch of swagger with which the handsome Mr. Catazaro danced Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes” pas de deux alongside the sparkling Ms. Bouder; the springtime charm of Ms. Lovette in the pas de deux from August Bournonville’s “Sylphide” (and in “Tarantella,” both times partnered by Mr. Ulbricht at his most vivid, though his “Sylphide” kilt is inches too short); the ardor of Linda Celeste Sims in Alvin Ailey’s “Cry”; and the mesmerizing control with which Fang-Yi Sheu, in solos by Lin Hwai-min and herself, isolated or connected separate body parts within a continuous current of motion.

There are, inevitably, times when I feel I see too much dance. These two evenings made me feel I can’t see enough of it.