What's Going On at Richmond Ballet

En Chalant,” Richmond Ballet artistic director Ma Cong said at the opening night of the company’s Studio Finale series on September 17th, “is the opposite of nonchalant.” It’s the title of his world premiere—Ma’s 11th for Richmond Ballet but his first as the company’s artistic director. (Founding artistic director Stoner Winslett passed the torch to Ma in July after helming the company for 44 years.)

The company’s new works festival used to be called “Studio Series.” This program, a two-piece bill with Ma’s new work and Val Caniparoli’s “What’s Going On”—is a finale because the company will be moving to its new home, the renovated theater at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in 2025.

But enough milestones. Ma wishes us an evening full of “chalance” as he leaves the stage and the lights dim.

Performance

Richmond Ballet: “What's Going On” by Val Caniparoli / “En Chalant” by Ma Cong

Place

Richmond Ballet, Richmond, VA, September 17, 2024

Words

Hannah Foster

Richmond Ballet perform Val Caniparoli's “What's Going On.” Photograph by Sarah Ferguson

Ma’s choreography is nothing if not musical. “En Chalant,” with music by Nils Frahm, Hauschka, and Jóhann Jóhannssonn—composers whose masterful, electronic manipulations of classical instruments will have your heart thrumming along—is no different. Though a flute and a horn are familiar, the dancers—costumed by Rebecca Turk in dark leotards and pants with beige inserts that contour a leg and exaggerate a sweeping hyperextension—wriggle their hips in a way that would have Petipa blushing. Yet, the first section’s music invites a gusto that the dancers don’t quite convince me of. Certain thrusts of chest and hip belie classical ballet training, and the dancers have yet to settle into the grounded movement. Alejandro Mariño Hechavarria, in his first season with Richmond Ballet, was close. Like the Olympic gymnasts we watched all summer, when Hechavarria throws his head back, he’s not afraid to lose sight of the ground he’ll land on a beat later.

Indeed, the best moments are not the leg-whacking extensions: The leg hiked up to 180 degrees to act as a fulcrum for a fouetté or handle for a “starfish” lift, as my non-dancer companion calls them. Contemporary ballet choreography has altogether too much of this.

No, the best moments are Ma’s subtle ones, even the weird ones: when Izabella Tokev flails (for lack of a better word) all four limbs while held in the air, when the exquisite Nishihara shepherds in the last section with two little heel-lifts and a smirk, when swimming fishy hands lead the dancers downstage and elicit smiles from every audience member.

Ma is not evolving contemporary ballet with athletic extensions, but he is doing it with the undeniable joy he infuses into his choreography. There’s true delight in the viewing experience. The “chalance” is, indeed, irresistible—and it will keep me coming back for more.

Zacchaeus Page and Izabella Tokev in “En Chalant” by Ma Cong. Photograph by Sarah Ferguson

I’m still smiling after intermission as the next piece opens with the titular track, “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye. Debuted in 2022, Canpiaroli’s “What’s Going On” begins with the cast stepping in time to the easy, swingy beat.

Exactly what’s going on is spelled out for us with each song change while newspaper headlines and quotes are projected on the backdrop, often distracting from the dancing. The golden rule of show don’t tell is not followed here. One section is about war. Another is about war and grief. Another is about LGBTQ+ rights and mental health. Another is about COVID and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. All are set to protest songs by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Headlines of the past are juxtaposed with headlines of today.

I get it. The battle for equal human rights and freedoms and making the world a better place is ongoing. It’s an election year. We’re using art to call attention to the issues and to the incredible resilience of the human spirit. I am here for it.

But I also feel a little confused as to why I’m watching a pas de deux in front of a video of oil refineries. With such blatant messaging, the dancing feels a little random or, worse, like an afterthought. The climate change point would have been better made if, instead of dancing a lovely pas de deux in front of an image of baked, dry earth, the dancers had just lay face down on the stage, as if too hot in an over-heated world to move.

Colin Jacob and Khaiyom Khojaev in “What’s Going On” by
Val Caniparoli. Photograph by Sarah Ferguson

The dancing is good. The choreography is good. The moments of human connection, when I can stop reading the projected quotes long enough to watch them, are good. I’d love to see Caniparoli’s section about war and veterans developed into a longer piece. There’s something about the regimented nature of ballet training that has always seemed militaristic to me. And as I watch the haunting way that Colin Jacob, Jack Miller, and Zacchaeus Page’s arms swing into the shape of a gun and back into a balletic port de bras in the blink of an eye, I think Caniparoli’s movement vocabulary could take on heady subjects like war if given more time. But instead of making an impact with any one idea, we’re bombarded with a litany of issues. The dancing just kind of happens beneath the words and videos and images.

Music, narrative, and movement do coalesce in the pas de deux sweetly danced by Colin Jacob and Khalyom Khojaev. Their characters are gay lovers hiding their affection in a world where a man can be—and was, in Iran—hanged for homosexuality. That was the only headline that actually shocked me with new information. I don’t know if I needed it delivered above a ballet for that horror to hit home.

This ballet is not revolutionary, but its opening does stick with me. With the cast standing equidistant, looking down, stepping in perfect synchronicity while fully disengaged from one another—I am struck by this isolated collective. They are together while perfectly alone. The music and costuming are mid-century, but if Caniparoli were to have put a cell phone prop in each of the dancers’ hands and had them sway in their own little worlds on a crowded stage, never interacting, it would have been a successful commentary on—well, a barrage of images and sound and text supplanting the humanity necessary to make change in this fraught world.

Hannah Foster

Hannah Foster is a dancer, writer, and museum fundraiser based in Charlottesville, VA. Her articles on everything from perfumed plays to Marina Abramovic-flavored macarons have been published in The New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, The Brooklyn Rail, Dance Magazine, and more.

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