Since conductor Beatrice Jona Affron left for New York City Ballet after some 30 years on our podium, the company has invited guest conductors. For this run, Ming Luke took the podium to a warm welcome. 

Luke gave Joby Talbot’s and Jack White III’s (of the White Stripes) score a thrumming, resonant reading. Percussion instruments for MacGregor’s “Chroma” and Wheeldon’s “DGV” were set up in the balconies on either side of the stage, enveloping the audience in an intimate hearing of the live music. Precisely amped, the vibraphone and marimba sounded like they were in the pit as well. I asked Luke later about the amping and he confirmed, especially for “DGV,” “the score specifically asks that certain instruments are amplified” he said. “Two violins, a cello and an electric bass are amplified, as well as a trio of saxophones, just for the flexibility.”

Architectural designer, John Pawson designed “Chroma’s” stark white set with a rectangular cutout in the large backdrop which acted as a step for the dancers to enter the stage. Within it, Lucy Carter’s lighting played a spectrum of colors that washed over the mauve shades of the dancers gauzy shifts (by Moritz Junge) changing shades that synched with the music’s chromatics. The whiter shades of pale in the set and costumes matched Talbot’s and White’s  music rigorous, yet liquid plinkiness, with loud tympani and abrupt endings to its phrases. Lighting blackouts and foggy mists signaled new sections of the dance.

Thay Golz and Jorge Garcia Alonzo kicked it off with a dynamic duet of arabesques penchés, repeatedly seesawing. It blacks out into a solo by Nayara Lopes, and back to Zechang Liang skirting around the couple. Lopes and Liang create an architectural moment when she flings herself onto him, arms elbowed up behind his shoulders, he grasping the backs of her outstretched legs. Abrupt movements end in perpendicular stances and runs into the wings or back through the cutout. Bendy, upward throat scoops make the women look like storks. Taken by their necks and ankles the men bend them sinuously. They sling the women between them, and slide them backwards along a soft-slippered demi-toe.

As ever, Liang, Ashton Roxander, and Jack Thomas, all principals, danced powerfully. My eyes kept returning to Cory Ogdahl (corps de ballet) and Jorge Garcia Alonso (soloist)—unfamiliar to me, but I’m interested to see how they’ll come up in the ranks.