In her pre-show speech for Smuin Ballet’s 32nd season premiere, Smuin artistic director Amy Seiwert thanked everyone gathered to see the triptych “Extremely Close,” playing at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from Sept. 26 to Oct. 5.
Justin Peck’s “Partita” (2022) is being performed outside of New York for the first time, she said.
Tony-winner Peck has a known affinity for “A Chorus Line,” which may explain why “Partita” feels like his personal version of that Broadway classic.
Indeed, the eight dancers in the piece are all in contemporary dancewear and white sneakers. It opens with the dancers moving into place as disembodied voices recite steps. One half-expects someone to sing, “God, I hope I get it.”
The piece veers into the experimental, albeit uninspired. Movements where the dancers come together to form moving boats adds to the “theatre games” impression that this is Peck’s take on the musical.
Yet the choreography itself is too rigid. A later movement involving two dancers who mimic archers only slightly allows for more fluidity. Peck may be commenting on the stiff formality of both classical dance and the military, but that’s only a guess.
The piece only really comes to life in its closing minutes, when it becomes a duet between two dancers (performed this night by Tess Lane and Gabrielle Collins).
Not only do they possess the grace missing from much of the earlier movements, but the choreography also shows how camaraderie can evolve into intimacy. This section tells a story of two people finding one another away from the cacophony of the outside world. It also saves “Partita” from being a piece to merely shrug at.
Amy Seiwert’s revision of a classic fares better by comparison. In “A Long Night’s” (2023) prologue, the stage’s lighting rig is lowered above flowers on the stage, which are then swept up by a custodian before the curtain drops.
Perhaps this is a fourth-wall-breaking wink at the audience about the artifice of theatre? In any case, this cute pantomime has nothing to do with the ballet proper.
Needle-drops proliferate in this jukebox ballet, with Pink Martini’s version of “Dream a Little Dream” playing as a lively fella in gold-patterned clothing greets us. This, obviously, is Puck (Jacopo Calvo).
As usual, he observes “what fools these mortals be” by observing young lovers Hermia (Brennan Wall) and Lysander (João Sampaio) as they’re pursued by non-lovers Demetrius (Marc LaPierre) and Helena (Gabrielle Collins). Puck and his special flowers only add to the mayhem.
Seiwert’s choice of a 1960s aesthetic for the wardrobe appears to lack rhyme or reason. Still, it’s tough to screw up one of the Western world’s most renowned comedies.
The choreography swings between “classical ballet” and “clown routine,” both of which it does adequately. Seiwert wanted to give a classic her own spin, and the result is entertaining.
By far, the highlight of the show is the 2007 Alejandro Cerrudo ballet for which the event is named. Although a large pile of feathers at the start of this ballet get no more explanation than the flowers preceding the last piece, Cerrudo makes ample use of the three moving walls his dancers push across the stage.
Dancers disappear and reappear as if in a magic act, all the while providing fluid and emotionally charged choreography.
It conveys a loose story of loneliness and lost love in a manner that’s captivating from beginning to end. The ballet finishes the night on a high note and shows why it earned its place as the closing number.
Although its first piece is somewhat uneven, the show “Extremely Close” succeeds in quieting the outside world for a short time.
Smuin Ballet’s “Extremely Close” runs through Oct. 5 at the Blue Shield of California Theater at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard St. Tickets are $25 to $90.