Pretty Things

REVIEWS

THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

“Gasps rippled through the audience as the curtain lifted on opening night Friday, unveiling at long last Houston Ballet’s world premiere of Trey McIntyre’s “Pretty Things” after a two-year delay.

The electric performance was worth the wait.

The finale of “Pretty Things,” a mixed-repertoire program of original, Houston-born ballets, offers so many reasons to marvel. Following crowd favorites “ONE|end|ONE” and “Hush,” McIntyre’s piece transports viewers to outer space, where planets are disco balls and the sun, moon and atmosphere are yellow lightning bolts with star-shapes cut throughout. It’s a Ziggy Stardust world, and for at least 20 minutes, we’re all just living in it.

Eight toe-tapping songs by David Bowie set the scene. McIntyre favors music created during his own generation — he works with pop almost exclusively. The selection ranges from “The Man Who Sold the World” from 1970, when McIntyre was born, to 1997s “Little Wonder.”

Those are formative years for any young man. Considering the all-male cast of 11 dancers, “Pretty Things” feels like you’re witnessing masters of the universe in the making. Nostalgia and a sense of coming of age all are in play.

The piece explores peacocking, or the male urge to be seen, and the inherent narcissism of being a performer. These men are not wallflowers, and they don’t move as such. There are no supporting characters — as the kids say, it’s full-out “main character energy” onstage.

They look the part, in faintly 1980s-inspired costumes designed by Thomas Mika. I let myself imagine they were dancing in white Keds and the stretchiest, skin-tight denim. In reality, Mika looked to images of beautiful men from classical paintings. Portraits painted on embellished waist-coasts peered back at the audience; underneath, rhinestone harnesses sparkled.

There were times when principal dancers Charles-Louis Yoshiyama and Connor Walsh reminded me of another major ’80s moment: when the titular character of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” leads a flash mob-style sequence through a parade. Up to that point in the film, everything seems to go wrong for everyone except Bueller, who asks his sidekicks to have a little faith. After a pandemic-induced hiatus of new work — with the exception of “In Good Company” by Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch — the last two years have felt a little like that, too.

“Pretty Things” was initially intended to debut onstage in March 2020, instead, it became one of the first major COVID postponements. McIntyre had faith and ultimately persevered.

Sequences that previously bothered him were easy to fix with fresh eyes. His lifts now resolve seamlessly; a few in “The Man Who Sold the World” and “Little Wonder” more closely resemble mosh pits.

There are unexpected nods to break dancing. The most technical moments arrive as successive pas de deux during “Oh! You Pretty Things,” among others.

Overall, McIntyre’s choreography challenges his supernovas to be vulnerable. In Hollywood, he notes, actors rarely win awards for comedic performances. In McIntyre’s movie, he’s doling out golden statues for unabated joy.

“Pretty Things” performs with the volume turned all the way up. It literally crescendos with a confetti cannon and is the most fun you’ll have in any theater this year.

PREVIEW

While I was floating in a most peculiar way, watching the premiere of “Pretty Things,” another lyric of the dance’s David Bowie music rang only half true: “Time may change me, but I can’t trace time.”

As a dance writer and critic, I’ve traced a lot of time with Houston Ballet. So has choreographer Trey McIntyre, whose career began with the company in the 1980s. “Pretty Things” is his seventh Houston commission, but the early one-act dances are long gone. Not because they weren’t good. With a few exceptions (say, George Balanchine’s “Serenade”), one-act productions rarely stay in rotation as long as bigger-investment story ballets: they feed the need to offer something new.

Two of McIntyre’s most memorable early works captured the energy of the dancers he grew up with especially well. The performers lit themselves with flashlights in his witty “Touched,” made in 1994 to the jazz standard “Take Five.” “Second Before the Ground,” choreographed in 1995 to music by the Kronos Quartet, was pure sunshine.

Even then, McIntyre’s choreography had a lyrical luminosity that seems to glow from within performers’ bodies. His dances feel All-American fresh and warm — a style partly inherited from Paul Taylor, whose Andrews Sisters-fueled “Company B” was one of Houston Ballet’s most popular works when McIntyre was young. He still has all that and melds the iconic Bowie songs of “Pretty Things” gracefully without becoming a prisoner to the lyrics.

Any new dance is a snapshot of a particular moment, but “Pretty Things” distinctively straddles two: Before and after the long stretch of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. In the before, McIntyre was returning to a company he barely knew anymore, looking for inspiration in a new generation of male dancers as he pondered “peacocking” behavior — the craving to be in the spotlight.

The high-energy “Pretty Things” would have had a different tone if it had premiered on schedule in March 2020, when it was finished. Its cast of 11 men could have been cockier then, although as the title song suggests, McIntyre wasn’t aiming for brawn.

As a central figure who slowly comes into being at the beginning and seems to be finding his way in the world, the amiable soloist Ryo Kato sets the tone with a generously open stance and broad, innocent smile. The veteran principal Connor Walsh grounds the ballet as a more introspective, conflicted character. Walsh and the powerful Fernando Martin-Gullans provide needed gravity in a combative, acrobatic duet that suggests an inner struggle more than a man-to-man battle.

All the dancers are superb, and each has a featured moment. It’s great to see the company’s young men dancing so terrifically. But mostly, “Pretty Things” embodies a joy ride of togetherness. The physical fireworks they bring to the buoyant “Young Americans” finale jazzes the house to the rafters, literally exploding in a burst of glitter. “Pretty Things” ultimately feels like a Broadway rock ballet; the kind of release everybody needs after the last two years.

Designer Thomas Mika’s stunning, minimalist-glam set frames the stage with wedges that evoke shooting stars; one forms a ramp for the dancers, providing a metaphor about striving. The backdrop color changes with the mood of each song behind a small galaxy of disco-ball planets. The costumes dazzle differently, combining blue tights, sparkly suspenders and glittery individualized boleros. (While most of the audience won’t see the details, the bolero fabrics honor iconic male artists.)”