New York City Ballet, May 23, 2006

New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
May 23, 2006

Monumentum Pro Gesualdo
Movements for Piano and Orchestra
Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux
Evenfall
Fancy Free

An interesting program, this. I saw it from the second ring (seems like I haven’t been sitting in the fourth ring too often lately. Maybe I should change the name of the blog to The View from Guess Where I’m Sitting Tonight). I’m not competent to discuss Monumentum/Movements yet. I haven’t seen it enough to be able to say anything remotely intelligent about it; but the performances (Reichlin and Evans; Krohn and Evans; and corps) were sharp and good.

Scheller and Veyette danced the Tschaikovsky. Veyette came across as strangely shy, as if he wasn’t used to the idea (or no one told him) that he needed to perform this in a different way than he performs other pieces (i.e., he had to really PERFORM it). Scheller, on the other hand, began somewhat tentatively, but, as if to make up for Veyette’s retreat, came on full force as the piece went on. She danced her variation beautifully.

This was the second time I saw Wheeldon’s new Evenfall, to the Bartók third piano concerto. Of the Diamond Project ballets this season, this is the only one I saw more than once, and I wanted to see it more than once (not something I can say for some of the others). It is somewhat of a departure for him, and I am glad to see that he is seeking to expand his vision and ideas (I am even more glad to see that he seems to have such things). The parts for the soloists and the corps are more interesting than those for the principals (Weese and Woetzel); I am not sure why this is so; these sections also do not seem to be well integrated into the whole. While the piece is not entirely successful, it provides clues to a direction in which Wheeldon might go that could potentially be very fruitful. It was clear that in certain steps and arrangements he was drawing upon Balanchine but I also saw signs (I will need to see it again to give examples) that he was looking to extend this vocabulary into something different (and good). And then again, there were aspects that gave me pause. Evenfall’s "look" is tied in part to its costuming. I have conflicting thoughts about the importance of the costumes here; on the one hand, I think of Balanchine over the years paring down the way (some of) his ballets looked, because what the dancers wore came not to matter (think of Apollo; Four Temperaments). If Evenfall were danced in leotards and tights a visual dimension would be lost. On the other hand, using costume as an integral part of the choreography can be regarded as traditional (Mother Ginger); or avant-garde (Parade; Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir). But these are pieces in which the dance loses its raison d’etre without the costume, and maybe that is the issue: how necessary to the quality of the piece is that visual dimension here? Wheeldon’s choreography is mostly good enough not to have depend on a tutu for it to work…isn’t it?

The final ballet on the program was Fancy Free. I am not a great fan of much of Robbins’s work (don’t ask me about Dances at a Gathering—I know everyone raves about it and I must be the only one in the world who won’t sit through it again—or ye gads, New York Export: Opus Jazz), but Fancy Free is a good ballet, and with a good cast, can be a great ballet. This cast (De Luz, Tyler Angle replacing Orza, and Woetzel; Hankes, Ringer, and Krohn) was first-rate, and they really made the piece shine. Because of their attention to detail and because they are talented actors, they showed it to be a coherent piece of theater, from start to finish: every movement, every gesture exists for a reason; nothing is superfluous, there are no gimmicks, no clichés. Woetzel and Ringer, in particular, articulated their characters very well. The dancing from all was terrific. I left the theater very happy.