Sometimes, This Company Is Just Grand

    At the start of  “Perfect Day,†Lou Reed’s song about a day with a lover so unusually lovely the singer “thought I was someone else,†the dancing at Jacob’s Pillow caught fire. The duet, performed by Annali Rose and John Michael Schert as part of a longer piece called “Wild Sweet Love,†was complex, both spiky and lyrical, and simply gorgeous. Unfortunately that moment came more than an hour into the night’s performance by the Trey McIntyre Project.  Though well-danced by an interesting and diverse company, the first two pieces just didn’t have the same impact.

   McIntyre has been on the scene for about a decade, working as choreographer-for-hire for a wide range of top ballet companies, and in 2008 pulled together his own group, encouraged by the support of Jacob’s Pillow executive director Ella Baff, who has featured his young company there three times. He creates modern ballets ­— no point work, and not many steps that are recognizably balletic, but still completely rooted in classical technique.

   He also draws from other traditions: his newest piece, “Arrantza,†is set to traditional Basque music and snippets of stories about life in the Pyrenees, told by members of the Basque community living in Boise, Idaho, where McIntyre’s company is based. It began with six people huddled together, covered entirely in rags, like piles of burlap. Slowly, the dancers emerge dressed as Basque seafarers — the women in peplum vests, with ribbons around their ankles, the men with bright red kerchiefs and dungarees. The stories, of growing up around the docks listening to the tales of magical journeys to Africa or Finland, and of how mothers of many nationalities all dressed up in their Sunday best to comfort one who had lost a child, illuminated a nearly lost culture that is little known here.  

   Though the dancing was fine, it took a back seat to the words, as if it were merely accompaniment.

   The second piece, “(serious),†is a trio, but for long stretches the dancers perform alone, not relating to the others on stage. After a sharp and dynamic solo by Jason Hartley, in which he ends up collapsed on the floor, Chanel DaSilva walks over him, stepping on his chest, to begin hers. When all three (Brett Perry is the third) finally connect, it’s as if an underlying anxiety were released.

   “Wild Sweet Love†is also about anxiety ­— the anxiety of a single woman in a world of couples. Through a series of mostly pop-music accompaniments, her lonely path is traced from the joy of a wedding (not hers), to the giddiness of “I think I love you†(yes, the Partridge Family)  to the fear underlying the “Perfect Day†in the Lou Reed song, through to the anguish of “Find Me Somebody To Love†by Queen.

   The dancer,  Ilana Goldman, is very tall and angular. Dressed in a poufy white tulle skirt and long white gloves, she is tragic and comic and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I really wanted there to be one more song, with a happy ending, but it was not to be. At the end, she was swallowed up by the crowd and disappeared. It was an audience pleasing number, occasionally verging on the too-cute: Goldman’s hangdog expression sometimes seemed like mugging, but theme, style and technique came together to convey real heart.

   For information about free and ticketed events at Jacob’s Pillow, go to www.jacobspillow.org. For the box office, call 413-243-0745