Backchat
Backchat is a short ballet made by Eliot Feld for Ballet Tech, his New York-based company, set to Paul Lansky's electronic/electroacoustic score "Idle Chatter Junior." It premiered on October 21, 2004, as part of Ballet Tech's MANDANCE PROJECT season at the Joyce Theater, a program built around Feld's smaller, often male-focused works of that period.
What is danced
The source article does not describe the choreography of Backchat in any concrete terms — no synopsis, cast breakdown, step vocabulary, or reviewer description of movement is given, only the fact of its premiere, its score, and its two stagings. It is not possible, from this article alone, to say what is danced, how many dancers appear, or what technical demands the piece makes.
Context
The work belongs to Eliot Feld's MANDANCE PROJECT, a 2004 Joyce Theater season presented under his Ballet Tech banner; Feld had by this point spent decades building a New York company associated with contemporary, technically driven ballet-based work distinct from the classical-narrative repertory of larger companies. Its move to New York City Ballet's main stage at the New York State Theater less than two years after its Ballet Tech premiere is notable in itself, since it represents a smaller downtown company's repertory crossing into one of the country's flagship ballet institutions.
Staging history
Backchat premiered October 21, 2004, with Ballet Tech during the MANDANCE PROJECT season at the Joyce Theater, New York. Its New York City Ballet premiere followed on April 29, 2006, at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center — the article does not say whether this NYCB staging used the same cast, was restaged by Feld himself, or altered in any way from the Ballet Tech original.
How to watch it
With no synopsis or movement description available here, a viewer has only the score and the venue history to orient by: attend to how Lansky's electronic/processed-voice score ('Idle Chatter Junior') is handled choreographically, and compare the piece as staged by Ballet Tech's own dancers against its later NYCB cast, since the same choreography performed by two differently trained companies is often where interpretive differences show up most clearly.
Credits
- composer: Paul Lansky