All Grown Up, But Still Playful

Inspired by her fascination with microphotography, Noelle Kayser’s “Scales on the Wings of a Butterfly” at BalletX’s midsummer series opened with a pyramid of 16 bodies under Drew Billiau’s shadowed lighting. I sensed a collective intake of breath from the full audience at the Susanne Roberts Theatre as the dancers began slowly melting away from the pile, emerging as individual creatures. Kaleidoscopically colored body suits by Amanda Gladu gave them an insectile look, camouflaged, as they would be in nature. As the second piece on the program, the bridge piece, it was the most memorable.

Performance

BalletX: “Petrushka” by Amy Hall Garner / “Scales on the Wing of a Butterfly” by Noelle Kayser / “The Last Glass” by Matthew Neenan

Place

Susanne Roberts Theatre, Philadelphia, July 18, 2025

Words

Merilyn Jackson

Ashley Simpson, Luca De-Poli, Jonathan Montepara, Francesca Forcella in “The Last Glass” by Matthew Neenan. Photograph by Scott Serio for BalletX

Luca De-Poli, the tallest and most imposing cast member, stood alone as if he’s a survivor. But he’s soon joined by five couples performing, perhaps, mating dances in the fleeting lives of insects. They quivered over and slithered beneath each other’s crouched bodies. The moves that most drove home Kayser’s intent to depict the insect world was in the hands. As dancers slow walked upstage, their hands curved backwards at the wrists before slowly flexing up. A deep, second position plié by Minori Sakita with one toe shoe speared to the floor, was riveting.

Jeff Kolar’s soundsketch composition used differing tonal combinations that ranged from what sounded like plinky water dripping on rocks or wind tearing through a forest to string instruments. They created an underworldly atmosphere of infinitesimal life we could be walking on in any forest or even a city sidewalk.

Chicago-based Kayser is the tenth Choreographic Fellow with BalletX. In a pre-dance video, by company videographer Daniel Madoff, Kayser charmingly explains how she became fascinated with insects, their mutable colors and sweeping or flickery movements. With all 16 company members on stage for her work, “Scales on a Wing” was a beautifully realized work.

Minori Sakita in “Scales on the Wings of a Butterfly” by Noelle Kayser. Photograph by Scott Serio for BalletX

The evening opened with a “Petrushka” by Amy Hall Garner, as a ‘work in process premiere.’ Garner, with numerous choreography credits, is currently resident choreographer for Carolina Ballet, and an adjunct professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Fokine/Stravinsky’s 1911 “Petrushka” is a puppet love triangle with a tragic end. Garner and her artistic collaborator Nancy Meckler, place their Petrushka, (danced by Peter Weil) in a world of “jealousy, chaos and wonder where he comes to discover his true self.”

Weil, sporting platinum blond curls piled high atop his head, was a charming and perky puppet, unlike the original forlorn Petrushka. We see him in this excerpt as more like a kid who runs away with the circus. Lanie Jackson, as the Ballerina, is loveable, as she placed each toe on stage with delicate determination. Emma Kingsberry’s costumes complement the duo delightfully, with Jackson using her frilly electric blue skirt to comedic effect as Weir feigns modesty while zipping into a harlequinesque pantalooned jumpsuit.

I’m eager to see it again in January when the full-length ballet premieres at the Kimmel’s Perelman Theater.

Peter Weil and Lanie Jackson in “Petrushka” by Amy Hall Garner. Photograph by Scott Serio for BalletX

Matthew Neenan’s “The Last Glass” from 2010 closed the show on this summer run. Another ex-Philadelphia Ballet dancer, Martha Chamberlain, designed the ruffled panties, beribboned hair and candy-colored pointe shoes, evoking an era of youthful innocence. It exemplifies his style of melancholy fun.

To understand “The Last Glass,” you have to go deeper into the music of the Santa Fe-based, indie-rock band, Beirut. Founder Zack Condon’s folk influence songs are tinged with joy and melancholia—very sympatico with Neenan. Neenan ends this choreography with a track from Beirut’s EP, “Elephant Gun.” Neenan captures the freewheeling mood, and cleans it up as a dance for five couples. Jackson, Jonathan Montepara, Jerard Palazo, Ben Schwarz, Minori Sakita, Ashley Simpson, and Weil make up the cast with Francesca Forcella standing off to the side like a wallflower at times.

Skyler Lubin, dances with Luca De-Poli the ghost of her dead husband, never quite touching. As the curtain falls, she is left before it, standing alone in her grief.

In human terms, the career span of a dancer is as brief as the life of an insect. As I finished this review, I took a coffee break and, picking up this week’s New Yorker, it opened to a lovely poem by Robert Pinsky. It ended:

Was I really one of the doomed ancestors

Stranded to die on a foreign planet, or was I

The microscopic descendants they designed.

Perhaps those are the kind of questions central to the making of a poem, a novel, a painting, a symphony, or even, a dance.

Merilyn Jackson

Merilyn Jackson has written on dance for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1996 and writes on dance, theater, food, travel and Eastern European culture and Latin American fiction for publications including the New York Times, the Warsaw Voice, the Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times, MIT’s Technology Review, Arizona Highways, Dance Magazine, Pointe and Dance Teacher, and Broad Street Review. She also writes for tanz magazin and Ballet Review. She was awarded an NEA Critics Fellowship in 2005 to Duke University and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for her novel-in-progress, Solitary Host.

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