American Ballet Theater is always here to remind us that we are living in a man’s world. From “Swan Lake” to “Giselle,” two full-length productions presented during its current summer season, men lie, cheat and are forgiven in the name of true love. They get away with everything. It’s exhausting.
Christopher Wheeldon’s “The Winter’s Tale,” a company premiere based on the Shakespeare play that opened this week, involves much of that bad behavior and, unfortunately, quite a bit more. In Act 1, Hermione, Queen of Sicilia, is accused of cheating and is brutalized by her husband, King Leontes, in such an excessively drawn out way that your skin doesn’t so much crawl as scream.
But though much in this ballet is long-winded — even in its most robust section, the dance-filled Act 2 — “The Winter’s Tale” does have something that Ballet Theater needs: a number of substantial leading parts. For the principals at this company, there are never enough roles to go around.
In the work, originally a co-production between the Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada from 2014, six main characters explore themes of love, jealousy and forgiveness. Set to a commissioned score by Joby Talbot with designs by Bob Crowley, it showcases an all-too brief visual feat, an effect with silks by Basil Twist, the brilliant puppeteer. In the play, there is a well-known stage direction for Antigonus, an adviser to Leontes, after the king tells him to take away his baby Perdita: “Exit, pursued by a bear.”
Twist’s bear appears in a swirl of rushing fabric. It’s both ravishing and frightening as its face, imprinted on the silk, seems to be caught in a wave — and just as impressive a sight as it was in 2016, when the National Ballet of Canada presented the dance in New York. But in this Ballet Theater production, running through Saturday with cast changes all week, certain weaknesses remain as the dancers move through Talbot’s cinematic, sugary score, which grows increasingly thin with each scene. The choreography can seem cinematic, too, and with that, cartoonishly repetitive.
The plot, through the lens of ballet, is convoluted, but Wheeldon’s introduction of its events, at least in the beginning, is clear enough. Leontes (Aran Bell) and Hermione (Devon Teuscher, who performs with commendable subtlety) have a son. Leontes presents her with an emerald necklace.
His childhood best friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia (Cory Stearns), comes for a visit, and the men suspend Hermione in cheerful, swinging lifts, but soon everything starts to fall apart. When Leontes sees Hermione place Polixenes’s hand on her pregnant abdomen before doing the same with his own, he is consumed by jealousy. He becomes suspicious and accuses his wife — now pregnant with a second child — of adultery.
In Shakespeare’s text, the line “I have drunk, and seen the spider” is the cue for jealousy to invade Leontes’s flesh. It takes root in his fingers, which wiggle and stretch like a spider’s legs before crushing into his chest. His spine contorts. As his envy grows, Bell — to his credit, this transformation seems to grow from the inside out — contorts his body, giving the sense that poison is flowing through his veins. His brows furrow, and his fingers twist in rage, as if trying to peel away from his palms.
He has Hermione arrested and their daughter — born in prison — is sent away, despite the efforts of Paulina, the head of Hermione’s household (a stoic Christine Shevchenko). After a dramatic shipwreck, Perdita (Catherine Hurlin) ends up in a lighter, brighter space, the pastoral Bohemia, where she grows into a beauty and falls in love with Prince Florizel (Carlos Gonzalez), Polixenes’s son who is disguised as a shepherd.
Eventually, everything works out in the end — even Hermione, who died of a broken heart, returns to life. And the emerald, now passed onto the baby Perdita, proves that she is a princess. I am tired of watching ballet versions of Disney princesses, but at least Perdita, in the electric, lively Hurlin, can dance. She frolics with Gonzalez and an ensemble in muscular dances that show an eagerness to dive into the joy of light, jovial movement.
But here, physical exaggeration permeates Wheeldon’s choreography, with its fussy arms and overly complicated lifts. Gonzalez, at times, had difficulty maneuvering Hurlin overhead, particularly in a balance that angled her bent leg around his face. More than watching two people dance together, their duets became rushed lessons in the mechanics of choreography.
In his ensembles, Wheeldon has a specific language that is recognizably precise. Arms strike forward with twisting torsos, legs extend to the front with the arms squared off like goal posts and unison lifts aim soaring dancers through the air. Yet over time, the patterns, on repeat, lose their luster and feel more constricted than free.
A delightful exception came in the dancing of Takumi Miyake as Clown, the son of the shepherd father who, long ago, rescued the infant Perdita. Performing with Breanne Granlund as the lead shepherdess, was Miyake, ever bounding, a dancer of effortless abandon whose buoyancy linked the steps to the music as if they belonged together. When he was front and center, there was no room for melodrama. But it’s not only just his effervescent jumps and his formidable technique: Miyake, natural and vivid, dances with an open heart.
American Ballet Theater: “The Winter’s Tale”
Through July 5 at the Metropolitan Opera House; abt.org.
Gia Kourlas is the dance critic for The Times. She writes reviews, essays and feature articles and works on a range of stories.
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