Great Moments and a Safe Finish

Jacob’s Pillow ended its season last weekend with what was intended to be a rip-roaring finale, the crowd-pleasing Ballet Hispanico. But it was a somewhat subdued ending: instead of Ella Baff, the Pillow’s executive director, making a personal introduction and welcome, as she has done at every performance for the last decade (at least that I’ve been to), there was a video with a plea for donations (and a matching letter and envelope in the program). The sense of hard times was borne out by the small audience — at least a third of the seats were empty.

   The performance itself seemed subdued and disjointed as well. Ballet Hispanico’s choreography is meant to be a fusion of ballet, modern and the various forms of Latin dance, and the company itself has nurtured generations of Latino dancers. Its school in New York City educates hundreds each year. Cultural inclusivity and opportunity are the company’s strong point, but not, if this performance is any indication, choreographic innovation.

   In an excerpt of the 1994 story ballet, “Goodnight Paradiseâ€�  by Ramón Oller, one woman lies on the floor, under a blanket, while another squeezes water from a sponge over her. They are watched, diffidently, by an assortment of women sitting in chairs or leaning against a table, a couple standing to the side. All are in ruffled underpants and most are in corsets; the light is stark and uneven. It could be a brothel, or maybe a tenement.  To a mournful-sounding Catalan song, they dance with male visitors, quarrel and form new couples, fold blankets, don skirts. It’s mysterious but not provocative and, while well-danced by the very able and attractive cast, seemed largely spiritless.

   Tito on Timbales, set to a suite of pieces by the great Tito Puente, was a lively antidote. The eight dancers wore elegant, subtle earth tones, and combined long balletic lines with funkier moves like rapidly pumping heads and undulating bodies. Group sections alternated with joyful, buoyant partnering with the lifts and twirls common in the social dances which have become so popular on television competitions, only far less flashy and vulgar. Too bad the music was recorded instead of live. Throughout the evening, the overloud and harsh sound system detracted from the beauty of the music.

   Less successful was Destino Incierto, a “Carmenâ€� retread using a suite based on Bizet’s opera music. Angelica Burgos was a vivid and brazen Carmen, with a raucous laugh and a flying cloud of hair, but the choreography was unmemorable — high kicks, straddling lifts, swooping falls. The world premiere of “Locked-Up Lauraâ€� seemed to be about the difference between the backstage and onstage lives of a dancer and her partner. Laura apparently does not to want to be a performer. She resists the spoken “5-minute calls,â€� rips off her skirt, falls as if dead weight in refusal.

   Finally, “Club Havanaâ€� was a suite of social dances — the son, the cha cha cha, the mambo. The dancers smoked long cigarettes and wore sparkly costumes, once again showing off their impressive high kicks, intricate partnering, and undulating torsos.  Min-Tzu Li, Rodney Hamilton and Candice Monet McCall stood out here as in other parts of the program.

   After an exciting season of risky and boundary-pushing performances, Jacob’s Pillow ended on a safe note. I hope their fundraising appeal succeeds. It’s vitally important to our region, and it must carry on.