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“They belief themselves greater than actors do,” Jerome Robbins as soon as wrote of dancers. “Dancers know they’ll make it their very own. Actors have the complication of desirous to make it their very own, and their horror of exposing what their very own is. Dancers all the time reveal themselves.”
But the dancers in “Illinoise,” Justin Peck’s reimagining of Sufjan Stevens’s adventurous idea album “Illinois” (2005), are in a knotty state of affairs. In the present, now on the Park Avenue Armory, the dancers are additionally the actors. And hardly ever does it really feel like they’re revealing sides of themselves — or displaying the readability that radiates via unaffected dancing.
Instead their performances are a weird hybrid. They act out the dancing and dance out the performing. They battle with each, partly due to their daunting activity: Turning their very grownup selves into youthful selves on the cusp of maturity. Even the dewier-looking ones have hassle. How might they not? Peck has them bouncing between giddiness and angst, with little in between.
It’s onerous to pin down what “Illinoise” desires to be, although it clearly has Broadway ambitions. Is it the musical theater model of a narrative ballet? A live performance with dancing? Does it even care about dancing, actually? The present, known as “A New Kind of Musical,” has little that appears new; it’s drowning in sentimentality, which is about as old-fashioned because it will get. And it doesn’t have a lot of a narrative, however what’s there — by Peck and the playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury — is opaque. There’s no dialogue. It’s the music that’s the undisputed star right here.
With new preparations by the composer Timo Andres, and that includes three high quality vocalists, the music carries the manufacturing, usually leaving the dancers with little to do however mirror the lyrics. It’s exhausting to look at them sweat via this choreography. “Illinoise” is one other try by Peck to construct a group via dancing our bodies, however the group is just too delicate, too self absorbed for actual connection.
Peck, the resident choreographer of New York City Ballet, has been creating group dances that scent like teen spirit for ages. But what began out as a choreographic signature, wherein he drew on the abilities of ballet dancers round his personal age, has grow to be drained. His choreography, particularly because the pandemic, has misplaced its approach, its beat, its backbone. He has made high quality dances, contemporary and alive; “The Times Are Racing” (2017) feels prefer it poured out of him; its coronary heart and drive stay unassailable.
When “Illinoise” picks up momentum and the dancers carry out as a bunch, respiration as one, a few of that fiery groove shines via. Those moments are fleeting, however they communicate to the glimmering spirit of what “Illinoise” might need been had dance been granted extra energy. For all its in-you-face presence, it’s extra of a aspect hustle right here than a instrument to get the job accomplished.
Peck is understood for the rigor of his construction, however he has allowed a sameness to seep in: Often in his works, dancers converge in tight formations — like a mid-dance huddle — after which spill out onto the stage. An identical factor occurs in “Illinoise” repeatedly because the group gathers round a campfire (an association of lanterns) after which trickles off, clearing the stage for a brand new scene. It appears like church camp.
With this music, the lens is concentrated on a particular time, one which appears private to Peck, whose quest for nirvana — not the Nirvana of the ’90s, however the wistful blissing out of the aughts — continuously lands him in a spot of overflowing emotion. His forged tasks adolescence, with its inherent depth of feeling, however with out the theatrical glue it wants: pressure.
The motion in “Illinoise” is obscure, inserting extra significance on shapes than on totally dimensional choreography. You might swear you’re watching dancing, however is it? What is it? Sometimes ambiguous, generally literal — with gestures reflecting lyrics — the energetic dancing, together with on a regular basis, pedestrian motion, can appear each contrived and predictable. When the lead character of Henry (Ricky Ubeda) pulls on a jacket that instantly falls off — this occurs on the present’s begin and end — you see it coming.
There are rounded backs and deep pliés, the sort that assist a surfer stand up on a board, in addition to punchy unison moments that contain, repeatedly, pulled up knees with a backward lean and a hulking step ahead. Swirls on sneaker suggestions, toe drags, heel pivots — they don’t come collectively as a choreographic language, however as motion {that a} stylist may drape on a physique for theatrical impact.
Journaling is a theme of the manufacturing, which delves into points round psychological well being; this system options journal entries, written by Drury, illustrating Henry’s ideas. “I’m fearful I’m nonetheless a toddler,” she writes as Henry, letting “nervous ideas rule extra usually than I’d prefer to admit.”
In the primary act, journals positioned on the entrance of the stage appear to be the inspiration for dancing out Stevens’s songs. When Craig Salstein seems in a clown costume as John Wayne Gacy, to the tune of “John Wayne Gacy Jr.,” his expression turns into filled with rage as he knocks the others down with systematic coldness. To one other music, the dancer Jeanette Delgado battles zombies and runs in place — greater than as soon as.
And Robbie Fairchild, in “The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts” transforms from Clark Kent to Superman with palms proudly on his hips. These are all achieved dancers, however they will’t elevate choreography that appears harking back to Eighties music movies.
“Illinoise” owes a lot to “Movin’ Out,” Twyla Tharp’s musical, set to Billy Joel’s songs and orchestral items, a couple of technology of younger Americans within the Nineteen Sixties and their expertise throughout and after the Vietnam War. And it appears beholden to a star of that present, John Selya, a Tharp muse and real-life surfer. Selya’s groundedness, his casual-athletic method to the curves and bends of motion struck me repeatedly as blueprint for the vocabulary of “Illinoise.”
Bodies swoop and swoon — seemingly pushed extra by emotional vitality than by steps. But aren’t steps what makes a dance breathe? Is that why this present feels so stunted? With its reaching arms, sharp kicks, craving eyes and hungry smiles, the dance is hardly a dance in any respect, however the determined backup act of “Illinoise.”
Robbins, too, is a crucial Peck affect, and a choreographer who labored wonders with the thought of youthful, energized kid-style ballets. He was additionally a grasp of two realms, dance and theater. In “Illinoise,” Peck waters down each, however significantly what he must be most in command of — the choreography.
