There’s an abundance of talented men in New York City Ballet’s corps.
A case in point is David Prottas–He’s got outstanding coordination, jump and plumb-line pirouettes.
In The New York Times, Claudia La Rocco described Prottas as “a beautifully classical dancer,” when he first apprenticed in the company in 2006.
On the classical/neoclassical cusp he and Austin Laurent were both meticulous and expansive in the Sonnambula Pastorale quartet two months ago, (following Devin Alberda and Ralph Ippolito—as I was saying about the corps!. . . )
Then Prottas on the same program was buffoonish danseur Morrosine in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue — a toe-twirler with a very high opinion of himself. You know the type. He got to speak lines in a good comic stage Russian accent. And with Prottas’s arabesque, you were almost ready to believe the braggart’s bloviations re: global pre-eminence.
Last week I went to see Prottas given another chance to show his theatricality, as Drosselmeier in The Nutcracker.
He does it his own way–elegantly. You could imagine he’d stepped out of Strauss’s Capriccio. Is quite the scene setter, everywhere on the stage, but not jarring. Expressive mesmerizing with the hands.
And Laurent and Ippolito were happily back as, respectively, toy soldier in act 1, and Tea China man in act 2–
Skill, taste, and imagination were at play in this Nutcracker!