There have been many dance theater pieces inspired by pop artists, but few carry the sweeping emotional heft of Illinoise. Justin Peck’s dance production based on Sufjan’s Stevens’ critically acclaimed 2005 album is now receiving its New York City premiere at the Park Avenue Armory after buzzy runs at the Fisher Center at Bard and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. If the rapturous audience response for this limited engagement is any indication, this won’t be its last stop.
The piece may not be everyone, for sure, and the notion of a Broadway transfer seems ill-advised. Stevens, after all, is not exactly a mainstream artist, and his unclassifiable music, which ranges from folk rock to chamber pop to experimental to well, pick your own label, hasn’t exactly topped the charts. And while Peck has devised a storyline of sorts in collaboration with playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury (Fairview, Marys Seacole), it’s amorphous at best, so loosely constructed that the expansive program includes context in the form of fictional diary entries by the characters, not that they’ll help much.
Even if you’re familiar with the album you’ll sometimes find yourselves adrift, since the songs, all relating in some way to the state that provides its title (Stevens had once announced that he would be creating 50 such themed albums, only to later say it was a joke), are all over the map thematically. The numbers, with some of the song titles and lyrics projected at the rear of the stage, reference such topics as Casimir Pulaski Day (a state holiday), Mary Todd Lincoln, serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr., Superman, and, employing a pun, “The Seer’s Tower.”
The loose narrative revolves around a dozen young people who gather in an outdoor setting over a campfire (Adam Rigg’s scenic design includes massive fir trees suspended upside down from the rafters) to relate stories from their lives as written down in their journals, with one character, Henry (Ricky Ubeda), taking center stage with his tangled romantic relationships. Three singer/musicians (Tasha Viets-VanLear, Shara Nova, and the gloriously ethereally-voiced Elijah Lyons, all wearing large butterfly-style wings) perform the songs from the album, accompanied by an 11-piece band perched on an overhead platform. The music sounds gorgeous, thanks to Timo Andres’ superb arrangements hewing as closely to the originals as possible.
Peck, the New York City Ballet’s current resident choreographer whose credits include the recent Broadway revival of Carousel and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, has created a dazzling array of dances incorporating a wide variety of styles, including modern, ballet, jazz, and, for the amazing soloist Byron Tittle, tap. The movement is for the most part remarkably fluid and emotionally expressive, if at times too constrained by the song lyrics. For the mournful ballad “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.,” for instance, we see a man in a clown suit brutally murdering several victims. “They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!” features, you guessed it, an array of the undead, looking like they’ve stepped out of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. And for “Casimir Pulaski Day,” which includes a reference to cancer, a young woman (Gaby Diaz) walks around with an IV bag attached to her. On the other hand, the number celebrating “The Man of Metropolis” delightfully features the charismatic dancer Robbie Fairchild wearing a Superman shirt and sporting a cape made of a billowing sheet.
Not everything in the evening fully succeeds, and repetition tends to set in before the conclusion of the intermissionless 90-minute piece. But ultimately proves transporting nonetheless. You won’t always know what’s going on in Illinoise, but thanks to its wonderful combination of music, choreography and amazing dancing, you won’t really care.
Illinoise opened March 7, 2023, at the Park Avenue Armory and runs through March 26. Tickets and information: armoryonpark.org
