Nowadays, it feels as if every dancemaker — yes, even the best of them — throws the kitchen sink at us. Justin Peck, New York City Ballet’s choreographer-of-the-moment, premiered his ingenious “Paz de la Jolla” Thursday, and it’s one big kitchen sink.
Set to Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu’s “Sinfonietta la Jolla,” the 25-year-old dancer’s new work pays breathless homage to growing up in Southern California.
Tiler Peck (no relation to Justin), costumed like a bathing beauty in teal, races off-balance a mile a minute while the music chirps faster and faster. It looks as if he gave her all those steps just to see if she could do them.
The mood darkens for a romantic duet between Amar Ramasar and Sterling Hyltin. The corps drifts opposite, but almost threatens to engulf the two. Things speed back up for the finale, but Peck lets his fellow corps members shine in charming duets.
Peck’s imagination shows from start to finish. Still, like most young artists, he is jammed to overflowing with ingenuity, and his good ideas would be better if he didn’t use them all at once.
After taking his bow, he changed to rejoin the corps for the final ballet, Alexei Ratmansky’s “Concerto DSCH.” There was an unexpected new member of the cast, Troy Schumacher, who was almost literally thrown onstage for the injured Sean Suozzi and talked through the role as he danced it.
Backstage drama aside, Peck could have been inspired by this 2008 work — Ashley Bouder flies through a similar opening stump-the-dancer solo and as Shostakovich’s piano concerto turns into a lullaby, Ratmansky’s ballet also darkens to an exquisite, tender duet punctuated by the corps.
Sandwiched in between, Balanchine was represented by one of his most atypical works, “Variations pour une porte and un soupir” (Variations for a Door and a Sigh). Made in 1974 to a sound score by Pierre Henry, a vamp in a black pageboy wig and enormous silk skirt towers over a man in gray who writhes beneath her.
The experimental work is out of Balanchine’s comfort zone — the steps are danced so literally on the sounds of hinges creaking that Thursday’s audience thought it was supposed to be a joke — but it’s not.
“Variations” isn’t Balanchine’s best, but let him have the last word, talking about “Apollo,” his first masterpiece, made when he was only slightly younger than Peck. He remarked, “It seemed to tell me that I could dare not to use everything, that I, too, could eliminate.” Great advice for all his successors.