"Essential Balanchine"

New York City Ballet
May 23, 2007
New York State Theater

Walpurgisnacht Ballet
Liebeslieder Walzer
Symphony in Three Movements

Much has been made (though not by me) about NYCB’s new "theme" programming, but let me tell you, they can call these things "Larry, Moe, and Curly" for all I care as long as they keep giving us lots of Balanchine danced at the highest level, as it was last night. Each ballet looked so fresh that it was like seeing it anew.

Walpurgisnacht is not anything I would consider "essential" (I guess the marketers had to come up with something); in fact, usually when I see it on the program I think, ok, it’s not great, but it’s not like it’s something I wouldn’t sit through. Recent casts haven’t helped, making it look like a piece of kitschy-ballety stuff. Last night Sara Mearns had the main role and she was terrific. The ballet’s still no Four Temperaments, but she danced as if it mattered. Her movements are strongly accented yet they happen within a lyrical, musical framework, a style that brings a very engaging tension to her dancing. You want to keep watching her.

Ana Sophia Scheller was the soloist and she also did a very good job. It is still obvious when she starts to run out of steam, but this stamina problem seems to improve from performance to performance. Ask La Cour was Mearns’s partner, and there were a few mishaps in the pas de deux (hmm; see my review of May 19; maybe he needs to work on his partnering skills).

Liebeslieder (Darci Kistler and Philip Neal; Kyra Nichols and Nilas Martins; Rachel Rutherford and Jared Angle; Wendy Whelan and Nikolaj Hübbe) was also fine last night. There were two moments, both simple, that seemed to transcend everything and achieve the highest art; one was during the first part, in "Ein kleiner, hübscher Vogel," when the four couples waltz together on the shifting diagonal. The moment just shone, with dancers, singers, pianists, costumes and set—the whole thing—unified. The second was during the second part, in Whelan and Hübbe’s "Nein, Geliebter." Even in this cast, with Nichols and Kistler both strong presences, Whelan and Hübbe, particularly, stand out, because they are as a pair so committed to their roles. While this entire pas de deux is practically transcendently beautiful, there is a small, almost insignificant, moment when the two have finished a phrase at the end of the diagonal, and they are downstage left, both facing the corner, so she has her back to him. He waits a second and then proffers his hands to her, even though she hasn’t turned yet; and when she turns, finally, he is there waiting for her. It is small; but huge.

The pianists, Richard Moredock and Susan Walters, and the singers, Nancy Allen Lundy; Jennifer Rivera; Brian Anderson; and Jan Opalah, were no small reason why this performance was so good. While there were glitches (the tempi in the slow songs came close to being funereal; the pianists and the bass-baritone seemed unable to hear one another for "Ich kose süß mit der und der"), the songs were nonetheless mostly performed with an intensity to which the dancers responded, making for a real collaboration, rather than a contest.

The last ballet was Symphony in Three Movements, with Tiler Peck (substituting for Sterling Hyltin) and Tom Gold; Megan LeCrone and Adrian Danchig-Waring; and Wendy Whelan (substituting for Abi Stafford) and Albert Evans—a very strong cast. They, along with soloists and the corps, who are really this ballet’s backbone, did justice both to the great score and the great choreography. I was happy to see Whelan in her old part again, since she doesn’t seem to be doing this, along with Sanguinic and Symphony in C any more.

I always see different things in this ballet: this time I saw in the first movement a part that looked like it might be an allusion to Le Sacre du Printemps; if anyone knows about that, let me know.