{"id":147213,"date":"2023-11-21T16:45:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-21T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/2023\/11\/bodies-full-of-light\/"},"modified":"2024-04-10T11:28:27","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T15:28:27","slug":"bodies-full-of-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/2023\/11\/bodies-full-of-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Bodies full of light"},"content":{"rendered":"
After a summer performing Giselle<\/i>, Romeo and Juliet<\/i>, Swan Lake<\/i>, and the new Christopher Wheeldon ballet Like Water for Chocolate<\/i> on the Metropolitan Opera stage, American Ballet Theatre returned to New York for a two-week fall season featuring short, mostly abstract works at Lincoln Center\u2019s David H. Koch Theater. Spread across double and triple bills, the ballets flaunted the chameleon-like abilities of ABT<\/span> dancers: plucked from around the world and cast in a wide-ranging repertoire, they excel at adapting to new ballet styles. Nowhere was this ability more on display than in the three pieces of \u201c21st Century Works: King, Ratmansky, and Bond.\u201d<\/p>\n First up was Single Eye<\/i>, a thirty-minute piece commissioned for ABT<\/span> last year by Alonzo King, the American founder-director of San Francisco\u2019s LINES<\/span> Ballet. Set to music by the jazz composer Jason Moran, the piece was inspired by a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, adapted from the King James Version and printed in the program: \u201cIf thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.\u201d In dividing the work into seven sections\u2014a number often connoting completeness in the scriptures\u2014King has embedded symbolism into the structure of the piece, which loosely progresses, in both its music and its steps, from discord to harmony.<\/p>\n