United States Max Richter (composer), Melissa Barak (choreographer), Memoryhouse: Dancers of Los Angeles Ballet. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Beverly Hills, 30,1.2025. (JRo)
Creatives:
Sets – BA Collective
Costumes – Holly Hynes
Lighting – Nathan Scheuer
Media – Sebastian Peschiera
Dancers: Natalia Burns, Sarah-Ashley Chicola, Cassidy Cocke, Poppy Coleman, Lilly Fife, Aviva Gelfer-Mundl, Abigail Gross, Kate Inoue, Anna Jacobs, Julianne Kinasiewicz, Cleo Taneja, Page Wilkey, Shintaro Akana, Marco Biella, Bryce Broedell, John Dekle, Cesar Ramirez-Castellano, Jacob Soltero, Evan Swenson, Jonas Tutaj
Memoryhouse, Melissa Barak’s full-length ballet, is like memory itself, which comes to us fragmented, fleeting and often in bursts of overwhelming clarity. Barak has created a poetic tribute to the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, but this is no literal-minded evocation – Memoryhouse is an abstract ballet, never wallowing in sentiment or storytelling, allowing the viewer the freedom to interpret its signs and symbols and making the loss personal in its quiet, understated way.
The ballet transcends the general to acknowledge the private and intimate nature of loss; and because no one can live and escape grief, it feels like an extension of life. In eighteen movements, danced to Max Richter’s Memoryhouse (all eighteen tracks of his album are danced in the order recorded), the music and dance are married together in a harmonious blending of sound and sight. Rain falling (or is it the forced showers of the camps?), solo piano mimicking the tolling of bells, electronic sounds like the passing of trains or running footsteps, human speech, plaintiff strings – taken together they create a mood of both grief and exaltation.
At a compact 75 minutes, not a gesture or phrase was superfluous. Concision was a hallmark of the performance, and I was held in the grip of the dance. Barak’s choreography has echoes of Balanchine (she danced with New York City Ballet for nine years) with its clean, extended lines, quick transitions and open port de bras. The fluidity of her choreography allowed the music to speak through the dancers, and the dancers of Los Angeles Ballet proved themselves worthy of her artistry.
I recently attended a production of LAB’s annual Nutcracker, which I first saw twelve years ago, and I was surprised that the same sets, costumes and choreography were still in use. It remained underwhelming choreographically, and the dancers were no more than adequate save for a choice handful, but after attending last night’s performance of Memoryhouse, I have changed my view. The dancers were excellent, and I can only surmise that Barak needs to choreograph a new Nutcracker, one that would allow the dancers to shine.
Many segments were performed behind a scrim on which falling rain, birds in flight or forests were projected. Sebastian Peschiera’s video projections were thoughtfully conceived and added visual poetry to the dances. In one evocative moment, tall lampposts spaced evenly apart morphed into musical bar lines and a staff appeared. Birds flying over the lampposts flew onto the staff and turned into notes – a visual counterpart to Richter’s music.
Bird imagery was echoed in the dances. In the second movement, a ballerina’s arms gestured like bird wings, and she and another dancer raced into the arms of their waiting partners, as if trying to take flight and escape.
In the third movement, spotlights illuminated the floor as dancers moved in and out of their range. I thought of a prison yard as more dancers entered, taking tiny, crab-like steps on the balls of their feet as they huddled together.
During a percussive segment, dancers dressed in off-white pants and shirts ran in place to the insistent beat of the music. This was no ordinary run, however, as legs kicked backwards in a frantic, mock attitude derrière. Then, as if their collective will had collapsed, the dancers merged into a tight group, flat-footed and rocking side to side.
Another movement found four dancers seated at a white table with an extension that created a sort of headboard. The table was used as a prop where two women – one dressed in green, the other in periwinkle blue (a shock after the black and neutral colors that preceded them) – repeatedly moved off and back onto their stools along with their companions. To an eerie harpsichord strain, a ballerina entered from the back of the stage. After watching all the women dance in ballet slippers with their hair pulled back in traditional buns, it was a jolt to see a ballerina in point shoes, hair down and wearing a diaphanous skin-colored dress. One of the males (Evan Swenson) stood up, gazed at her in recognition and partnered her in a series of balletic lifts. Was she an apparition of his making, a soul lost to the tragedy of war and the Holocaust? It was a moment of purity, encapsulating what ballet and the ballerina represent in the imagination. As danced by Page Wilkey, with her long red hair about her shoulders, she became part of the tradition of wraithlike roles: the Sylphide, the Swan, a Willis, Ondine.
Finally, the table and its extension became a ramp. Dancers descended from the top of the ramp, trying desperately to evade the pull of the downward slope. It was a striking scene. This was followed by bravura dancing to music that sounded brasher than what had preceded it.
But the evening ended on a quiet note. Wilkey and Swenson returned, this time dressed in street clothes and, with their backs to the audience, stood at the table (now reconfigured into its former position) and seemed to be cleaning and packing invisible belongings. Their motions took on an aspect of resignation, as if they knew they couldn’t avoid the inevitable. It was a fitting ending to a ballet that with subtlety and pathos brought us face to face with our own mortality.
Jane Rosenberg