Last spring, a small group of climate change activists disrupted New York City Ballet’s opening night performance, which led to the curtain coming down a few minutes into a performance of George Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.”
The choreographer Jamar Roberts recognized it was jarring for the dancers, he said in a podcast. But he also understood the reason behind the protest, which was on Earth Day. In his “Foreseeable Future,” which premiered at City Ballet’s fall fashion gala on Wednesday night, he reclaims the sentiment of that protest — distress about a planet in peril — in a dance. And as dances go, it seems like it might last.
The members of the company staged a protest of their own by refusing to appear on the red carpet or at the gala dinner because of a delay in their collective bargaining agreement with City Ballet.
Roberts produces a beautifully tragic melding of worlds in “Foreseeable Future,” where nature exists alongside technology and where the dancers, split into two groups, are, in a sense, possessed. One squad is swept by a gently persistent breeze; the other by a stern pulse, twitching with steely precision. This ballet, Roberts’s third work for the company, has a point of view and feels the most like it comes from his choreographic voice. It’s sensitive yet tough.
Formerly the resident choreographer of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where he performed for many years, Roberts has scored his ballet to Arca, a celebrated Venezuelan-born experimental electronic musician and producer who has collaborated with artists like Björk and FKA twigs.
The ballet begins on an abrasive note as the sound of a growling motor slowly fills the space. It glides between crackling noises and a softer, more plush sonic landscape that reverberates as if notes were bouncing around the quiet vastness of a forest. In “Foreseeable Future,” Roberts seems to find ways to show how a dance can be as sincere as nature.
The costumes are by the daring Iris van Herpen, a former dancer whose sculptural designs mirror or bounce off elements found in nature; she is an artist, too, who doesn’t just make clothing but also finds ways for a body to become something else within it. “Foreseeable Future” uses fabric as a means of storytelling. It’s an uncanny pull between peace and conflict.
The curtain opens on four dancers whose costumes feature wings that waft around their bodies and float with undulating life. The dancers raise a leg to the side with a bent knee and a flexed foot — over and over, it reads like the awkward leg of a butterfly — and point their elbows in ways that allow the fabric to undulate, inhaling and exhaling like fish drifting through water.
This group — the ghost of Loie Fuller, a pioneer of light and fabric, was felt — features Isabella LaFreniere and Sara Mearns, their wings dipped in vibrant red; and Taylor Stanley and Ryan Tomash, whose wings flutter in light beige. The other group, highlighted by a luminous Emily Kikta, wears short dresses and unitards in shades of silver detailed with patterns of scales. Their movement, more vigorous, has a driving energy in its mix of angular, jutting arms and legs that buckle and straighten like pieces of machinery.
This arrangement of dancers moves with tight precision whether closely knit or spread across the stage. But for all of the stuttered positions of arms and feet, Roberts’s choreography never becomes hectic, the kind you see in more formulaic contemporary ballet. Instead, it gives off a pristine sense of control as bodies work as one to create a greater whole.
As the winged group, with its breezy silhouettes of flora and fauna, converges with the more robotic contingent, there is disintegration, too, and the ballet ends with Mearns and Stanley on the floor as the others form a semicircle around their bodies. They stretch their arms in a V; they lower them simply and somberly as the curtain slowly falls. It feels as if the two worlds have come together, but a moment too late.
Brandon Stirling Baker’s lighting is exquisite, giving the ballet a glow as it moves from one section to the next as it sculpts the air around van Herpen’s designs and Roberts’s choreography. The lighting, washing the stage in cool greens or a hint of saffron, feeds into the ballet like atmospheric pressure — you sense it before you see it.
Usually, commissions for City Ballet’s fashion gala result in rushed works with little connection between the dance and its designer. Gianna Reisen’s “Composer’s Holiday” (2017), the program opener, was part of a previous gala. It has youthful, vivacious energy, but is more memorable for its chic costumes by Virgil Abloh of Off-White. The cast was good, and the ballet gave Mia Williams, in a debut, a chance to stand out.
But contemporary ballets shouldn’t always be lumped together, and “Composer’s Holiday” paled next to William Forsythe’s “Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux” (1992). Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia, a real-life couple who can actually dance together — onstage chemistry is never a given — brought a whimsical blend of casual wit and technical wizardry to the stylish duet. Or they gave it style. It doesn’t always look this sleek.
“Foreseeable Future” uses style in a different way. Its elements converge to create, strangely, a calming effect because its subject matter is less about an attitude and more about real life. Roberts shows how ballet can reveal a darker side of human existence, just as Alexei Ratmansky’s “Solitude,” also at City Ballet, did with its unsettling, stark look at the war in Ukraine. Here, Roberts values what collaboration can bring — costumes and lighting aren’t mere decoration, they serve a purpose.
It was striking that there were no speeches at the gala. The only interruption was a film exploring the process behind “Foreseeable Future.” These mini movie breaks are common at fashion galas, but the films usually lean into sentimentality or jokey banter. This time, it was serious and straightforward. Roberts created a world full of tension, full of shared tolerance and humanity — a real world that we, all of us, are just renting. The art spoke for itself.
New York City Ballet
Through Oct. 12 at the David H. Koch Theater; nycballet.com.
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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