These dancers have an innate rhythm to them. And I have a rhythm of my own. Sometimes, it’s too much, so I need to pull back. I don’t want any of the dancers to fall. But we work in the hope that [our rhythms] coincide. —Cecile Licad
The honor of dancing to Cecile Licad
12 dance prodigies from the world over, our very own Vince Pelegrin included, collaborate with our most celebrated pianist in American Ballet Theater Studio Company’s return to the Philippine stage
Apr 30, 2023 06:53 AM
At a glance
Performance photos by Jojo Mamangun
At some point during the one-night-only American Ballet Theater (ABT) Studio Company “Rising Stars” performance in Manila, at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater at Circuit Makati, I was unsure whether to focus on Cecile Licad or the young dancers moving to her music.
Cecile, whom the New Yorker once described as “the pianist’s pianist,” came in only in the second act of the show, by which time I had had half a show’s worth of ballet to feed my eyes and soul with. Don’t get me wrong—the 12 rising stars of the ABT Studio Company, including our very own Vince Pelegrin, a former Pacita Madrigal scholar under Sofia Elizalde’s STEPS Scholarship Foundation, were more than dazzling, but I couldn’t wait to watch Cecile, whom I last saw on the piano, the 1929 New York Steinway piano at the sala of the Beaux Arts-style mansion Nelly Garden in Iloilo, in 2018.
Alas, behind the massive Mason & Hamlin piano on the right corner of the stage at the April 20 gala event, Cecile was only partly visible from my seat on orchestra center. Still, I could see how she literally embodied the music she was playing. I could see how the sounds and the melodies found a physical form through her. Although her fingers on the keys were beyond view, I could see them in the way she stretched her shoulders or hunched them, how in minute movements, according to the dips and soars of the notes, they would command her body to reposition itself on the seat, how with every hard press and every soft glide those fingers would take her deep beneath her closed eyelids, as if to the very depths of her soul, and then release her through those same eyes as they opened as if by the force of the music.
Watching Cecile play, allowing the music to inhabit her body, possess it, occupy it, even from my limited vantage point, is itself a show. “It’s not a performance,” she corrected me in 2018. “I go with what’s natural.”
But then there were the dancers, whose presence on stage, as Cecile told me before the performance, she considered an “extra challenge,” which was perhaps the biggest draw for her when Stella Abrera, former ABT principal dancer, now acting artistic director of ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and wife of this show’s artistic director Sascha Radetsky, invited her to take part in ABT Studio Company’s return to the Philippine stage. “I like challenges. I don’t like repetitive stuff. But this is a lot of hard work for me,” said the pianist, who first worked with dancers, also on the invitation of Stella and with the choreographer Gemma Bond, in 2021 in New York. “I perform with the dancers as if to chamber music, except they’re not music, they’re real, physical bodies doing incredible, magical stuff,” added Cecile.
No wonder, none of these “efforts” was visible on stage. Before the show, mouthing my concern to Stella, Cecile, and Sascha, I was afraid I might be caught wondering who was following whom, though all assured me, “They would be following each other.”
Cecile and Stella called this working together of pianist and dancers a collaboration, not mere accompaniment. “These dancers have an innate rhythm to them,” said Cecile. “And I have a rhythm of my own. Sometimes, it’s too much, so I need to pull back. I don’t want any of the dancers to fall. But we work in the hope that [our rhythms] coincide.”
On stage, the synergy was nothing short of ravishing. There were pieces in the second act, such as three of the études—“Octave” (Étude Op. 25 No. 10 in B Minor), “Winter Wind” (Étude Op. 25 No. 11 in A Minor), and “Ocean” (Étude Op. 25 No. 12 in C Minor)—of Frédéric Chopin, which made Cecile the only star on the stage, unleashing in parts a pandemonium of sound akin to a volcanic eruption or thundering explosions with all fingers, judging from the way her body swayed from side to side, sweeping the entire keyboard.
But then playing American jazz pianist Art Tatum’s “Tatum Pole Boogie,” she shared the stage with fellow Filipino and ABT Studio Company rising star Vince Pelegrin, who gracefully rose above the challenges of the piece once described by New York City Ballet’s Daniel Ulbricht as a “virtuoso solo…that pushes the dancer to the limits of speed and artistry, featuring fast footwork, split-second timing, and charisma to spare.”
Also a highlight of the evening was the Japanese rising star Takumi Miyake, a graduate of the Royal Ballet School. Was he dancing to Cecile’s interpretation of Russian and Soviet composer Boris Asafyev’s “Flames of Paris” or was Cecile playing to his movement in his pas de deux with Madison Brown, also one of the more accomplished of the ABT Studio Company’s rising stars? No doubt about it, with his bold feats composed of complex jumps, thrilling turns, and never-ending pirouettes, Takumi brought down the house—my friend Pablo Tariman, possibly Manila’s most established reviewer and critic of classical art, describes him as “an Asian Nijinsky in the making.”
Cecile also played selected sonatas by Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti from ABT dancer and choreographer Gemma Bond’s The Go Between, an abstract work inspired by British writer L.P. Harley’s novel of the same title, in collaboration with an eight-man ensemble of the rising stars, including Madison Brown in a pas de deux with Kayke Carvalho, a fellow rising star from the ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School.
Just for context, the ABT Studio Company rising stars are prodigies, ranging in age from 16 to 21. In a typical season, only 12 dancers, handpicked from all over world, make it to the company, which, more than a junior of the main company American Ballet Theater, is a laboratory of sorts, an experimental stage, a training ground, where their skills are honed, their survival instincts sharpened, and their experience expanded, the ultimate goal being for them to graduate to the mothership.
Other than those mentioned, such as Vince (Philippines), Takumi (Japan), Madison (US), and Kayke (Brazil), the rising stars are Finnian Carmeci (US), Kyra Coco (US), Brady Farrar (US), Ayami Goto (Japan), Lilia Greyeyes (US), Sylvie Squires (US), Alejandro Valera Outlaw (Spain), and YeonSeo Choi (South Korea), the youngest, only 16.
Cecile calls them “kids.” Were they terrified of her? “No,” said Cecile. “They asked me if they could call me ‘tita,’ I said no… I said ‘Call me ate.’” But what an honor it must have been for these kids to play with a master like Cecile, only once described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “one of the great flaming talents that comes along one or two times in every generation!”
The gala event at the Samsung Performing Art Theater in Makati City, produced by STEPS Dance Studio, Ayala Malls, and Ayala Land, was for the benefit of Ayala Foundation’s The Center of Excellence in Public Elementary Education (CENTEX) program. It was immediately followed by public shows at Ayala Center Cebu and Ayala Malls Abreeza in Davao City.
Gala guests
Andy Preysler, Sylvia Zobel, and Bea Elizalde
