Review: Illinoise Is a Folk Ballet for the Emotionally Wounded

We’re currently living through a golden age of dance. Choreographers like Camille A. Brown, Andy Blankenbuehler, and Christopher Wheeldon are pushing the boundaries of storytelling through movement, boldly going where no choreographer has gone before. Add to that list Justin Peck, the resident choreographer of New York City Ballet and Tony winner for Carousel. Peck is also the director-choreographer of Illinoise, the ambitious and uneven folk ballet now performing at Park Avenue Armory.

The project, which is officially described as “a new kind of musical,” takes its score from Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 album Illinois in a manner similar to American Idiot. A frequent collaborator with Stevens, Peck devised the story (there are no book scenes) with Pulitzer Prize winner Jackie Sibblies Drury (Fairview). The result is initially deadly, but it gets better.

The first act is set in a grassy location where a group of cool kids have gathered around a lantern campfire to tell stories, some of which are more interesting than others. Naturally, these disconnected tales are presented through dance. It’s like the second act of The Nutcracker — not so much delictably problematic as blandly woke.

There are highlights: Byron Tittle astounds with his tap routine set to “Jacksonville,” and Robbie Fairchild makes a cuddly Superman in “The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts.” But then there’s “They Are Night Zombies,” in which Jeanette Delgado is surrounded by dancers wearing ghoulish masks and holding up signs to identify themselves as Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell, among a host of other spooky white men (just in case the song’s message didn’t smack you on the nose hard enough). The appearance of a dancer in a clown negligee (questionable costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung) during the song “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” threatens to drive the whole show off the camp cliff.

Luckily, we’re saved by the second act, when Henry (Ricky Ubeda) tells his story: It’s about his childhood best friend Carl (Ben Cook). Henry loves Carl, Carl loves Shelby (Gaby Diaz), and the three dance a pas de trois of unprocessed emotions. Shelby stays behind in their small town when Henry and Carl embark on an epic road trip, first to Chicago and then to New York City. That’s where Henry meets Douglas (Ahmad Simmons), a new love. When an emergency prompts Carl to return home, Henry isn’t so sure he wants to go with him.

Ubeda and Cook have a percolating chemistry, and we get an instant impression of their complicated relationship without either performer uttering a word (the Armory, always keen on an extravagant souvenir, provides a wordy supplement to this by re-creating Henry’s journal in the program). Their journey is both exhilarating and heartbreaking. It is guaranteed to evoke memories of lost love and adolescent regret, and that more than makes up for the dull first act.

It’s clear why that first half exists: Peck and Sibblies Drury have used the frame of campfire story time to exile the songs from Illinois that don’t fit the story of Illinoise. This is a problem encountered by all theatermakers who attempt to graft a coherent narrative onto a catalog of songs that were not originally written with that intention (consider every jukebox musical ever written). The strategy Peck and Sibblies Drury have adopted is fine, although it is less preferable to just axing the numbers that don’t work. A perfectly constructed musical drama it is not, but as a new ballet, Illinoise has plenty of things going for it.

Foremost is Stevens’s music, which is lyrically dense and musically adventurous. Music director Nathan Koci deftly leads a 14-person band in gorgeously re-creating the symphonic flourishes of the album, which we feel permeating our skin thanks to the excellent sound design of Garth MacAleavey.

Three vocalists (Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova, and Tasha Viets-VanLear) stand slightly downstage of the band wearing the butterfly wings that have become a hallmark of Stevens’s live performance. They come together on pristine straight tone harmonies, breaking away to showcase their unique voices. Lyons is especially impressive, with a soothing voice that is the aural equivalent of being wrapped in a big comfy blanket straight out of the dryer.

Then there’s Peck’s choreography, which takes little human gestures (a shrug, a lean, a glance) and amplifies them into moving sculpture. He’s working with a cast of top-notch dancers who joyously barrel roll across the stage, their limbs seemingly extending into the lofty rafters of the Armory. Every move is in service to the character’s objective and performed with personality and heart, so we never lose sight of the human beings within the dance. It’s undeniably beautiful.

Adam Rigg’s scaffold set provides both a platform for the musicians and facilitates multiple locations in the story (the blue “post no bills” construction wall of the second act instantly transports us to its urban locations). It also pushes the dancers far downstage, forcing them into a relatively narrow strip between the band and the audience, which feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity. I would have loved to see a ballet that uses the full potential of the Armory’s monumental drill hall, but I understand that such a radical redesign is probably too much to ask from a show that has just come from a run in Chicago, and perhaps has ambitions to move to a proscenium stage elsewhere. Happily, Brandon Stirling Baker does take advantage of the height of the space with towering, breathtaking lighting effects.

That’s the frustration of Illinoise: There are so many moments of brilliance, but as soon as the show seems to find a groove, some disappointment yanks us out of the trance. That’s life, I suppose.