New York City Ballet, June 10, 2006

New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
June 10, 2006

Donizetti Variations
The Cage
Duo Concertant
Episodes

I had another chance to try and get at Episodes last night. This time I was aware of how Balanchine moves the four couples in Symphony around the stage—the way he sets them (when the ballet begins the main couple that is downstage is not on the same line as the couple that is upstage—and likewise the two couples on the right and left are not on the same line) so that even though he’s working with even numbers, the couples are misaligned at the same time that he presents them in neat pairs. I was also more aware of how the shifting weight motif is carried throughout the entire ballet, from Symphony to the shaking walks in spotlight in Five Pieces, to the pas de deux in Concerto, and then is expanded from the individual to the groupings in the Bach. In some ways the simplicity of the movements—stepping, walking—pretty much informs the esthetic of “modern dance”; somehow when Balanchine does this he transforms it into ballet.

Five Pieces, which I never really understood, looked more interesting to me than usual, maybe because I was paying more attention and was looking beyond its surface movements (the dancers were the same as last week, Reichlin and Fowler). I think understanding the weight shifting helped, because then the entrances of the dancers on the diagonal in the spotlights doing their jagged walks made more sense when considered in the broader context. The spotlight can’t help but dramatize and focus on the concept of “performance,” as if they were performing a nightclub act (but in Paris).

I am not sure why the movements of the Concerto (Somogyi and Evans) stay in my head the least, but I remembered the visual joke with the girls just before they leave the stage before the pas de deux.—the beginning of which is so interesting and I still haven’t got all of it. She starts on pointe and then he manipulates her stance; they face one another with their arms straight out in that kind of Nijinsky Faun pose, and then he is facing backward and opens up the pose by stepping outward to the left, so that they form a kind of open can opener (jacknife?). And they get into that cantilevered pose (exploration of weight again). The third section borrows much from Four Temperaments Phlegmatic, which I think last week Evans (who dances that, too) was stressing too much; this week he made less of the man poking his way out of the chain of women, perhaps realizing that while the movements were pretty similar, the ballets are pretty different.

I don’t think I have anything to add to the Bach; it was performed very well.

A note on Duo Concertant another time.

The Donizetti was terrifically danced by the corps. The way it is conceived, it is almost as if there are two different ballets going on. When the male lead (Veyette) comes out to dance and the corps girls are arrayed in diagonals, they barely acknowledge him, and continue doing their own thing until the very end, when they use him as a prop. The corps are in their own opera, and the leads are in their own. They’re on the same stage, but they rarely intersect. I also love how the celeste music is given to the three men before it gets turned over to the female lead (Borree).