Improving Broadway, By Any Physical Means Necessary

That leaves “Illinoise,” the most difficult candidate to rank. On the one hand, it’s a concert performance of Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 album. But it’s also a dance performance, choreographed and directed by Justin Peck, who performs the songs silently and braids them into a story. Like the other nominees (except for “Here Lies Love”), it’s a coming-of-age story. The idea is that a group of fragile young people gather around a campfire to read extracts from their journals aloud – telling stories expressed through dance.

Having dancers carry the narrative while musicians and singers accompany them is fairly common in ballet and concert dance, but it has not been tried much on Broadway, a notable exception being Twyla’s “Movin’ Out.” Tharp. This means that “Illinoise” is by far the most choreographically ambitious candidate, the one that demands the most from the dance.

The show caused a curious split in critical reception. Theater critics generally found “Illinoise” innovative and touching. Dance critics considered it sentimental and disappointing.

How to explain this distribution? This could be a question of sensitivity, although theater critics tend to be wary of the sentimentality of other theatrical forms. It’s definitely a question of familiarity. Peck, who won a Tony for his choreography for the 2018 revival of “Carousel,” is New York City Ballet’s resident choreographer. He has long created dances about late adolescence, often set to music by Stevens. To many dance critics, including Peck fans like me, he lately seems stuck in a kind of arrested development.

From this point of view, the choreography of “Illinoise” is stunted. Although arranged with skill and care, the basic idiom is restrained, alternating frantically between holding back and reaching out. The dancers seem to be trying to escape the shackles and failing. This could express an aspect of adolescence, but it hampers these talented dancers too much, limiting their emotional range. Worse yet, Peck makes them all dance the same way, as if they were trapped in Peck’s avatars. When they erupt, tangentially (Byron Tittle’s tap solo) or or in a breakdown (Ricky Ubeda’s angry sorrow solo), it’s a flash of missed potential.

Common language establishes a community, but it is a community that seems artificial from the start (where, outside of therapy, do young people sit and read excerpts from their journals to each other?), achieved primarily by cheers and forced hugs. The great feelings that the show can arouse come from the music, despite the limitations of the choreography.