In a story ballet, a prop can be a powerful tool or a source of aggravation. In Lar Lubovitch’s “Othello,” a handkerchief is the narrative thread that carries the plot from marriage to murder.
It doesn’t take long for the sight of it to produce a certain weariness, especially in the exaggerated way that it’s presented — pulled out with careful deliberation to emphasize its importance or letting it flutter through the air. For better or worse, the handkerchief is the ballet’s unofficial main character.
The most perplexing part of this “Othello: A Dance in Three Acts” (1997) isn’t how a general is duped so easily into thinking that his wife is cheating on him, but why American Ballet Theater decided to remount the production for its inaugural spring season at the David H. Koch Theater. Its return — eight performances in a relatively short season — is frustrating. Why, for instance, are the company’s Antony Tudor ballets wasting away?
“Othello,” last shown at Ballet Theater in 2015, grows monotonous with choreography that switches in tone to reflect the brightness or somberness — it’s generally an either/or situation — of Elliot Goldenthal’s cinematic score. Lubovitch’s “Othello” focuses more on drama than on dance with the most expressive role going, again, to that handkerchief. After Othello (Calvin Royal III in the first cast on Friday night) presents it to Desdemona (Fangqi Li) at their wedding celebration, she draws it across her throat and leans back. Even with a wistful smile, it looks like she’s being strangled.
Blissfully unaware, Li holds the handkerchief as she balances and spins. Othello looks on — in love with his love. After Iago (James Whiteside) loses a promotion to the cheerful, dashing Cassio (Jake Roxander), he uses his wife, Emilia (Madison Brown), a handmaid to Desdemona, to help him get the handkerchief. Eventually he plants it on Cassio so it looks as if he and Desdemona are having an affair.
When Iago ends up with it — Desdemona loses it during a feverish tarantella, led by Bianca (the daring Breanne Granlund) — he mimics her earlier gesture by laying it across his throat and leaning his head back. But these sinister images backfire. Shakespeare’s play twists and churns in satisfying ways; this ballet is cartoon land.
Jealousy is the common denominator. Iago is consumed by rage, and Othello by grief. Both lead them to treat their women badly. Necks are their general target, and one move is particularly distasteful: The man lifts the woman seemingly by the sides of her neck. Once airborne, she parts her legs, straddling them off the floor.
If this were a fresh way to make you understand male rage, fine; I don’t mind feeling things outside my comfort zone. But it was more of a flagrant foul: cheap and unnecessary.
Ballet is not the main language of “Othello,” yet there isn’t a compelling enough sense of theater to hold it together, with an emphasis on mood rather than action. The lack of movement variation — the lifts turn the women into objects, into dolls — makes the stage feel smaller and smaller. Pas de deux show more exertion than fluency.
Sharp elbows and flexed feet dominate the choreography for the corps de ballet. And while I love a flexed foot, it’s awkward on these dancers — their efforts are rushed, blurring the choreographic design. While it’s clear that Iago’s emotions are spinning out of control, his choppy, syncopated movement comes off as more histrionic than forceful.
Drama comes from George Tsypin’s set — a minimalist Lucite-looking palace that recalls Superman’s Fortress of Solitude and a dock with ropes that stretch across the stage — and Wendall K. Harrington’s projections that show a stormy sea. Female dancers, their hair down, undulate forward and back like waves.)
More special effects come in Act 3 when Iago convinces Othello that Cassio and Desdemona are lovers. Black-and-white videos of the pair fill the back of the stage; in one, Roxander, standing behind Li, seductively slides fabric away from her shoulder. Onstage, Whiteside mimics those movements with Royal turning the films into something like thought bubbles. Here we are again, back in cartoon land.
Revealing depth was hard. There was space for emoting, but less for acting. Royal, vulnerable from the start, had problems expressing his passion for Desdemona; Roxander, as Cassio, was a frisky, generic version of himself even as his virtuosic turns and leaps remained superlative; and Whiteside, playing a villain to the extreme, got the biggest laughs of the night. The part is supposed to be more sinister than comedic, but there is an art to slicking your hair back with a silent growl, and he nailed it. Good or bad, I can’t decide. It was diverting.
As Desdemona, Li showed off her elegant line but was more weak than delicate, while Madison Brown, as Emilia, managed to convey more texture in her full-bodied dancing and acting — even as Iago threw her to the floor. The handkerchief was treated with more kindness.
American Ballet Theater
Through March 21 at the David H. Koch Theater, Manhattan; 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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