New York City Ballet Koch Theater February 8, 2014, matinee

New Combinations: Vespro (Mauretti/Bigonzetti); Spectral Evidence (Cage/Preljocaj); Acheron (Poulenc/Scarlett)

Dancing in the Dark

Dear NYCB: Please pay your Con Ed bill. At the start of the third murkily-lit piece of the afternoon, a man behind me loudly whispered to his seat mate that the lighting person must be on vacation.

Well, maybe others were happier today, like the man who sat behind me at a recent Union Jack performance and snarkily commented, “New York City Ballet—so contemporary.”

All three of these ballets exhibit much of the odd conformity (dark stages; tedious and inexplicable gesturing; highly-trained dancers rolling around on the floor in skimpy costumes) that seems to be a requirement of “modern” ballet (I would except Ratmansky). The one that worked the best conceptually was Spectral Evidence. While too much of the choreography is banal, and seems to offer little challenge to the dancers (other than fear of sticking to or sliding off of the otherwise effectively used white wedges), the central portions for Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild form the ballet’s creative peak. The solo Preljocaj has created for Mr. Fairchild (his sister is in the piece, too, but sorely underused) shows inspiration and wit and is superbly performed. After this I was willing to take the whole ballet more seriously. If only Preljocaj had been able to sustain that level of dance-making throughout.

Bruno Moretti’s composition for solo piano, voice, and saxophone, is thought-provoking and I appreciate NYCB’s commission; it is regrettable that Bigonzetti’s choreography is not able to communicate its ideas more effectively. Andrew Veyette does his best with what he is given.

Liam Scarlett’s new piece, premiered just last week, with vaguely faunish costumes for the men (who look good) and filled with romantic sweeping lift (after lift after lift) shows promise. The choreographer showed he had some breadth and a good sense for movement, but the ballet itself didn’t stand up to the Poulenc Organ Concerto.

In all, these new combinations are not terrible; they are avenues that must be explored. But I left the theater longing for that old combination, Concerto Barocco.

New York City Ballet, Koch Theater, Winter 2013

A preliminary note: The View from the Fourth Ring was a bit depressed when the Powers That Be at the Koch (aka New York State) Theater closed off the fourth ring sides for almost all performances, and started charging $50+ for the rest of the area, hence effectively negating one of the primary reasons for this blog's existence--to offer a perspective on the ballets that the major newspaper reviewers never (or rarely) saw. However, since those Powers have made other options available at affordable prices, TVFTFR has been feeling a little better, and has come to see more performances.

Why is it that after all the affirmed-legitimate Balanchine masterpieces I saw presented by the NYCB this season (not a complete list and not necessarily in this order: Symphony in C; Symphony in Three Movements; Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fée’; Diamonds; Serenade; Mozartiana; Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2; Swan Lake; Allegro Brillante; Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3; not to mention the Stravinskys from the Fall—wow, what a list!), why is it that what most sticks in my head is Western Symphony?

Maybe I don’t have much taste? Maybe I’m not a good judge of what’s good art? Too easily pleased?

I’ve written about it before (“New York City Ballet, June 21 and 22, 2006”) with the same kind of smugly astonished praise—and whenever I see the ballet, I start with the same cringing feelings: Those corny costumes! The girls’ legs and feet look so funny in black! Cowboy tunes?...And then over the course of the performance the same reaction unfolds—this is a smart, beautifully structured composition that has one of the best endings in the business. Tell me: can you leave that ballet without feeling happy? Ecstatic? Shouldn’t good art change you?

And this is purely the choreography—it’s not the music (although the music isn’t unpleasant). Compare the ending of Mozartiana; at the end of that ballet, there’s a feeling (for me, anyway) of ultimate happiness; but this comes primarily from Tchaikovsky’s Mozart, not just from the choreography. Tchaikovsky and Mozart are great; cowboy tunes, enjoyable, not so “great”—but George B. figures out how to elevate them to art and exultation.

Additional cheers are in order for Justin Peck’s Year of the Rabbit. I saw it 2/2/13 mat. I missed the premiere and feared what seemed to be overly enthusiastic reviews (like movie reviewers who praise to the skies anything that isn’t complete dreck). But all praise seemed deserved, even after only one viewing. It was a sound, entertaining, intelligently constructed piece that enabled the dancers to dance. Refreshingly, Peck isn’t afraid to use and make new combinations of the traditional steps that make ballet ballet. (Unfortunately, I missed his other new piece.)

Other highlights:

Maria Kowroski as Odette (1/17/13), for the sheer beauty of her physicality. She doesn’t offer much else in this role, and of course, while I might want more, I wonder whether Balanchine wouldn’t have loved her performance. I did, on one level, anyway.

Teresa Reichlin, in anything. She was terrific with Andrew Veyette in the Western Symphony Rondo (2/17/13). Veyette was also very good here. And in Tschai. Piano #2; when Ask la Cour tripped her up at the 1/26/13 mat., she came back stronger and better than ever.

Tiler Peck, in anything: Allegro Brillante (1/17/13); I wrote in my program: even among the fine and very sharp dancing of the demi soloists—let me give them credit: Lauren King, Ashley Laracey, Megan LeCrone, Gretchen Smith; Devin Alberda, Austin Laurent, Allen Peiffer, Christian Tworzyanski; and that of her partner, Amar Ramasar—she is five times brighter, faster, sharper. As Aurora: strong and beautiful throughout.

Robert Fairchild, with Tiler Peck (1/25/13) in a resonant, arresting, memorable—ok, it’s not just Western Symphony; this stays with me, too—performance of Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fée.’

Sterling Hyltin, balancing delicacy and strength in Symphony in Three Movements (2/7/13) and thoughtful with Chase Finlay in Mozartiana (1/18/13).

Janie Taylor—excellent in Serenade (1/18/13).

The corps de ballet in everything, and especially Glass Pieces (2/13/13 mat.).

Sorely missing, especially in Symphony in C, second movement: Wendy Whelan.

Anticipating spring.

Re-view: John Gruen, The Private World of Ballet (1975)

April 23, 2011

Having rediscovered this collection of interviews of 20th-century ballet personalities last week, I was struck by the way the book—from the fact of its very existence to the subjects interviewed—engages Jennifer Homans’s expression of dismay about the future of the art in her history Apollo’s Angels.

Gruen’s subjects span 75 years of ballet—reaching back to the Diaghilev era (Lifar, Massine, and others) and "looking ahead" to choreographers such as Glen Tetley and Eliot Feld. But the greater part of the book is devoted to the "stars" (my term) of the 60s and 70s. The names that might even today (admittedly in certain circles) be considered "household" are there: Fonteyn, Nureyev; Balanchine; also a good selection of those every devoted balletomane will know: Markova, Farrell, Verdy, Baryshnikov, along with those for whom some may need first names: (Ivan) Nagy, (Allegra) Kent, (Monica) Mason, (Peter) Martins; and yet still others whom even the most devoted might have trouble recalling: (Michael) Coleman, (Dennis) Wayne, (Francesca) Corkle.

Gruen masterfully elicits information from his subjects. Dennis Wayne states that he "insisted that each year [Robert] Joffrey [also a subject] bring in a ballet for me…But each year it’s a fight." Ann Jenner (Royal Ballet) captures the rising anxiety that creeps in amidst the mundane tasks she performs as she prepares to make her entrance as Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. Most of the dancers’ responses (except perhaps for some of Balanchine’s, who is defensive, and whose ability to deflect a question is as good as any politician’s) seem candid and unguarded. Sallie Wilson, for example, reveals how she allowed herself to be cruelly manipulated by Antony Tudor. And one of the pleasures of the book is how Gruen cross-questions, allowing us to see that Wilson isn’t just trash-talking. Here is Tudor discussing a rehearsal of Shadowplay with Anthony Dowell. He tells Gruen, "We improvised quietly. I made him walk to the place where he comes upstage—back to the audience—and I said, ‘Now I want you to look up, and I want you to see the tree.’ He asked, ‘Which tree? What tree?’ I said, ‘There is a tree. Don’t you see the tree? I’d like you to tell me what kind of tree it was. So we left the rehearsal there. I mean, if he didn’t know what kind of tree it was, what use was it doing the ballet." (In fairness, Tudor seems to have it made it up to Dowell at the next rehearsal; nonetheless, the point was made.)

Enlightening as the interviews are (and they are), the book, seen from afar, offers a sobering perspective not only on individual fame (we know how that goes) but also on the waning of an entire aspect of artistic culture. This revisit of the ballet world of the early 1970s emphasized just how much more ballet and its artists seemed to matter back then and how little—not just ballet—but to an extent also classical music, opera, and indeed, books themselves, seem to matter today.

New York City Ballet: Some Thoughts on Tchaikovsky’s Ballets

New York City Ballet
Koch Theater
Winter 2009–2010

What with Nutcracker season and all, Tchaikovsky was much on my mind; additionally, I had been dipping into Solomon Volkov’s fine Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky, and I got to thinking how privileged the NYCB audience was over the last winter. We had the opportunity to see and hear all three Tchaikovsky (or Tschaikovsky, their preferred spelling) ballets over the course of a little over three months.

At the performance of Nutcracker that I saw, on December 4, 2009, in the newly renovated theater, everything sounded clear and looked sharp and beautiful. My new seat in Fourth Ring sides had arm rests (very nice!) and, without 40 years of people’s butts pushing down the plush, it was so puffy my feet didn’t touch the floor. For some reason, at this performance, despite the familiarity of the score, I was struck by the music’s strangeness—strange not as odd but in a way that channels mystery and the wondrous—particularly in Act I. Kurt Nikkannen, in the violin solo, captured this sense beautifully. Sara Mearns as Dewdrop, along with the Flowers, were full of luminous energy; Maria Kowroski as Sugarplum, partnered by Charles Askegard, occasionally seemed to be channeling not mystery but her inner Rockette; but the edge she brought to the choreography was not unwelcome.

I regret that I was able to catch only one performance of The Sleeping Beauty, the matinée on January 30, 2010, with Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette as Aurora and Prince Désiré. The last time I saw this production, a few years ago, it left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied. The odd thing is that, although I still have some of the same issues (the fast tempi at the start can make it seem like we are off to the races, there isn’t much poetry, and I still find the postponement of the awakening a little jarring), this time I left feeling that none of that mattered and—I didn’t want the ballet to end. It was one of the most enjoyable and truly joyous Beautys I’ve seen.

Some standouts (too many to note):
Sara Mearns as Lilac. When she executes the renversés in Act I she kicks her leg up on one count, then slowly turns her body and lowers the leg all while still on pointe, with an expansive use of her arms and upper back; and she does all those pirouettes to tendu on a dime. Pretty impressive, and very beautiful (ok, here’s some poetry).
Erica Pereira as the Fairy of Eloquence;
Tyler Angle, Robert Fairchild, Jonathan Stafford, and Amar Ramasar as Aurora’s attentive suitors;
Merrill Ashley as Carabosse;
Bouder’s thoughtful Aurora; her Rose Adagio was a little tense but still pretty great; the final pas de deux with Veyette was regal, musical, well-shaped, and matched the grandeur of that music;
Teresa Reichlin and Abi Stafford as Diamond and Ruby in the Wedding divertissement;
Tiler Peck and Daniel Ulbricht as Florine and Bluebird—top-notch dancing; truly wonderful to see;
Tchaikovsky’s Apotheosis—I don’t know why other productions cut this glorious music.

The score was conducted by Fayçal Karoui. I was glad to see the house was very full.

Again, there was a very full house for the Swan Lake I saw on February 12, with Sara Mearns, gorgeous and soulful, and Jared Angle, handsome and stalwart as Siegfried. While this is not the most traditional of Swan Lakes, it is certainly not the least; and after repeated viewings, while I continue to prefer the condensed one-act version, the production can hold its own.

Bonus 1: Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 (February 19; and had to see it again immediately, February 20, evening), with Teresa Reichlin, Stephen Hanna, and Kathryn Morgan; Elaine Chelton at the piano. The ballet was danced and the music played with attack and passion; Reichlin was both Terpsichore and Athena here.

Bonus 2: Maria Kowroski in the "Diamonds" section of Jewels (selections from Symphony No. 3 in D Major), with Charles Askegard, gave performances (February 26; February 28) that were the most assured, commanding, and elegant as I have seen her give in this; she was stunning.

New York City Ballet

New York City Ballet
Koch Theater (New York State Theater)
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Matinee

Agon
The Lady with the Little Dog
Cortège Hongrois

Alexey Miroshnichenko’s new ballet, The Lady with the Little Dog, opts to reference the short story by Anton Chekhov by reducing most of the plot to broad symbolic values. (The dog, which takes one promenade and receives huge applause, is a literal presence that seems to appear only to justify the title.)

The protagonists, the man and woman who meet on holiday, have an affair, and later decide that they must quit their unhappy lives to pursue "true love," are portrayed by a woman costumed (by Tatiana Noginova) in a pretty black dress (Sterling Hyltin) and a man in a white suit (Andrew Veyette). They are shadowed by an eight-man corps of "Angels" dressed in gray leotards (led by Troy Schumacher and Giovanni Villalobos). At curtain rise, a scrim with black and white diagonal stripes filters the scene on stage. This motif is repeated in the presence of a narrow carpet, bearing what now looks like a parallelogram pattern, that the Angels unroll and re-roll throughout. The ballet uses this carpet first to divide the space in which the man and woman, strangers to one another, appear; then, in a starkly red-lit passage, it serves to represent the location in (and on) which their passion/transgression takes place; at the end of the ballet it forms the path on which Hyltin and Veyette, now stripped down to flesh-colored clothing (this is actually the second time they are stripped; the Angels strip them for the sex scene), ascend Adam and Eve-like toward the risk of their future. The choreography is set to Rodion Shchedrin’s 1985 romantically tinged score.

Miroshnichenko is clearly an intelligent choreographer who put a lot of thought into this piece. He seems to have been caught between a desire to make clear a story that contains some complications (such as the protagonists’ feelings toward their respective spouses) that he thought he might not be able to effectively communicate in dance (however: Think of Davidsbündlertänze; Liebeslieder Walzer), and a sense that maybe he actually could put the literal story on stage. By hedging his bets and doing a little of both, he causes confusion, whether you know the story or not. If you don’t know the story, and you are a regular attendee of NYCB, when you see a dog on stage, you think comedy because you’ve seen the dog in Double Feature used to wonderful comic effect. If you do know the story, the existence and purpose of the Angels is a mystery; they are not in the Chekhov, so are they meant to symbolize those undanceable elements? Or something else? Both? At one point, for example, it seems as if they are recreating the fence behind which the woman lives; but how would you even guess this if you hadn’t read the story? It’s just guys lying in a row with their legs in the air. Because some of their choreography is acrobatic and oddly comical (or just odd), they seem to be introducing a lighthearted element into a story that reads as anything but.

The choreography for the principals is pretty; Hyltin has some very pretty steps and she looks pretty; she smiles when she and Veyette dance their initial meeting and she looks anguished in other parts, as per the musical cues. Veyette is a given a solo that he dances well, but which otherwise does not do much to use his considerable talent.

The Lady with the Little Dog had the misfortune of having to follow George Balanchine’s Agon; if you want to see a man and woman lay bare mind, body, and soul, it’s all there. This ballet opened the program and received a very crisp, clear performance. Wendy Whelan is back dancing the pas de deux with Albert Evans. There is just nothing like the electricity they generate as they spring like jaguars across the stage in that opening diagonal; you can almost see the sparks when Whelan punctuates that opening movement by aggressively flinging her leg around Evans’s body. The barely contained aggression of their polite greeting before the dance proper begins lets us know in no uncertain terms that this is going to be adult entertainment, not the kids’ play of the two preceding pas de trois.

The program was rousingly concluded with Balanchine’s Melissa Hayden tribute ballet, Cortège Hongrois. It was very well done, with particular notice going to the czardas dancers, led by Rebecca Krohn and Sean Suozzi, and Ashley Laracey, who stepped for Gwyneth Muller to dance the second variation quite beautifully. Maria Kowroski and Jonathan Stafford danced the leads. (I always forget, but am always happy to be reminded that it is this Balanchine Glazounov that uses the ballerina variation from the old Pas de Dix--done very effectively by Kowroski, who was accompanied with eloquent clarity by Cameron Grant in the pit. Thank you, Mr. Balanchine.

Morphoses / The Wheeldon Company

Morphoses / The Wheeldon Company
New York City Center
Friday, October 30, 2009

Program “B”:
Continnum
Softly as I Leave You
Rhapsody Fantasie

Christopher Wheeldon returned to City Center with this second of two programs, featuring two of his own ballets and one by the Nederlands Dans Theater-associated choreographers Lightfoot León. While the three ballets are of varying quality, the evening was an entertaining one, as Wheeldon, a good showman, seeks to bridge the gap between performer and audience by personally introducing the ballets to the audience and by showing engaging film clips of the dancers rehearsing and discussing their motivations.

Continuum, the opener, was made for the San Francisco Ballet in 2002. It is set for four women and four men to a selection of György Ligeti piano pieces, so austere that listening to them for an extended period begins to seem like sucking a lemon. The ballet is what might by now be termed "vintage" Wheeldon: arm gesturing; contortionist pas de deux; some flashes of brightness. In other words, choreography that is long on geometry and short on poetry. Not that I am against the one and in favor of the other; it is just that Wheeldon is capable of integrating them, yet in these Ligeti ballets, due to the nature of the music, I guess, he rarely does so. For example, there a is lift in which the woman places her flexed foot into the palm of her partner’s hand, which he uses to haul her around his shoulders into a clunky, bent-leg waving position. It is particularly in the pas de deux, with the seemingly constant agonistic posturing that this compartmentalization is most evident, although the piece for Andrew Crawford and Gabrielle Lamb (who also had a challenging, inventive solo), had a more compelling momentum. There comes a point where all edge becomes ho-hum.

The pianists were Cameron Grant and Susan Walters, familiar from New York City Ballet. From my vantage point in the first balcony, I could see beneath the stage a sliver of the right end of the piano, and perpendicular to it, with its back to me, the harpsichord that was used for one of the pieces. Fascinating to watch was the occasional glimpse of Grant’s right hand on the piano’s upper register—but even more fascinating was seeing the virtuoso performance he gave on the harpsichord.

Softly as I Leave You is a piece for three performers: Drew Jacoby ("guest dance goddess," according to her bio), Rubinald Pronk ("Holland’s sexiest ballet dancer ever," according to his bio), and a wooden box, performed by the Box (no bio; despite its prominence, it seemed a little stiff). The piece begins with Jacoby flailing and throwing herself against the walls of the upright wooden Box to the Kyrie Eleison. (She’s trapped; it’s a metaphor—get it?) When the music turns into the Air on the G String, we see Mr. Pronk, posed to the left of the box, who then begins a series of strong/lyrical movements of the modern-ballet type. Jacoby leaves the box and joins him for a bit. When the music then shifts to Arvo Pärt’s "Spiegel im Spiegel," familiar to all Wheeldon-watchers as the music for the (quite poetic, and very beautiful) After the Rain pas de deux, our expectation is only slightly shaken when, after Pronk enters the box, Jacoby soon joins him. The End.

The evening’s closer was the New York premier of Wheeldon’s Rhapsody Fantaisie, set to eight Rachmaninoff piano pieces, for six women and six men. The expectation that this would be a big ballet (like Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet?) comes from the title, its sweeping score, the bright red-orange costumes (harem pants for the men and knee-length dresses for the women), and the backdrop of large horizontal cones by set designer Los Carpinteros. However, the ballet is at heart a chamber piece with big packaging.

There is an exuberant opening ensemble, and a good, dynamic, balletic piece for the men. As he shows in Continuum, Wheeldon shows here, too, that he is capable of crafting very fine solos for the women. The first pas de deux, however, along with certain other sections, are indications that Wheeldon is too often tempted to regress further and further from the ballet vocabulary and wades more and more into the murky world of that kind of modern ballet that prefers the ultimate distortion and corruption of classical steps to an exploration and re-creation of them—a direction that last year’s excellent Commedia follows, and which he can do very well. Rhapsody Fantaisie again features an abundance of compulsive arm waving and gesturing; the head-caressing becomes a cliché fast. (What does it all mean? Is it post-modern miming? Is it angst? Are the women miming having babies? Is it meaningless? I could use some help here.)

The ballet, while danced with great verve and intensity, is uneven and seems to be unfinished. The pas de deux for Wendy Whelan and Andrew Crawford starts out well, but ends on a weak note as Crawford awkwardly lowers Whelan to the floor, where she remains prone in a pose that serves as a transition to the final piece. The rest of the cast enter and step over her as she rolls upstage. The ballet does seem to have something to say beyond just dancing; I’m just not sure what. Is Wheeldon influenced by some of Alexei Ratmansky’s recent work, which deals, very proficiently, and with the use of the ballet vocabulary, with human interactions, even feelings? If so, this may be a fruitful direction/competition for him, but the choreography needs a cleaner articulation. The loose structure of the piece as a whole collapsed by the time it got to the end.

While the works presented were somewhat uneven, the dancers and musicians were excellent, and along with Wheeldon, deserve praise for showing us engaging and thought-provoking pieces in this season of ballet drought.

A Note on San Francisco Ballet

San Francisco Ballet
New York City Center
Thursday, October 16, 2008

It was a treat to see this company and its wonderful dancers.

Thursday’s program began with two works by director Helgi Tomasson. "The Fifth Season" is an ensemble ballet set to engaging, danceable pieces by Karl Jenkins; "Concerto Grosso" is a piece for five men set to Francesco Geminiani’s Concerto XII in D minor. Both of these works, easy on the eyes and ears, seemed to exist mainly to show off the dancers, and if that was the goal, it was successful.

The standout performer in "The Fifth Season" was Yuan Yuan Tan, whose musicality and intensity of focus was strong enough to reach all the way up to the rear mezzanine (The View from the Fourth Ring’s usual City Center seating area). The SFB’s excellent men had the stage to themselves for "Concerto Grosso." Tomasson’s choreography, while providing each dancer ample opportunity to show off, to its credit also allows for the individuality of each man, so that we saw people on the stage, not just technically proficient machines.

Before we could get to the real meat and potatoes at the end of the program, we saw Mark Morris’s "Joyride," which was not much of a ride and had unfortunately little joy. The eight dancers, costumed in shiny gold or silver tunics by Isaac Mizrahi, were for the most part poorly used. The last (and only other) time that I saw SFB it was in Morris’s "Sylvia," which I thought was promising and yes, enjoyable. In this work, however, what Morris perhaps construes as simplicity of movement, comes across as merely simplistic, suggesting that he has an unimaginative and limited balletic vocabulary. The commissioned John Adams score was perhaps less workable for dancing than Morris may have hoped. The score itself had a vigor and muscle and I would like to hear it again, but the choreography was a distraction, failing to enhance or illuminate its qualities.

The last piece was Balanchine’s "Four Temperaments," and the SFB dancers gave it a great reading.

Part of the fun of seeing SFB dance it was the chance to see this ballet performed in a more intimate space than what I normally see at the New York State Theater. Because the City Center stage is that much smaller, the spatial dynamics of the ballet are significantly changed. For example, in Melancholic, when the principal (Taras Domitro) and soloists are downstage left and the four women make their dramatic, aggressive entrance from upstage right, the shorter diagonal causes the two groups to encounter one another in a more intimate, emotionally engaging way, which the larger stage can swallow up. So the spatial arrangement also causes an adjustment in the emotional dynamics of the choreography (actually, not too unlike the space on the Dance in America recording of the piece for TV).

Domitro’s reading of Melancholic was one of the strongest I have seen. A technically beautiful dancer, his performance was effective and articulate without being melodramatic. Lorena Feijoo and Ruben Martin (who seemed somewhat swamped by her strong personality) performed Sanguinic. Feijoo, who comes on (too) strong in the opening movements, looks good in the rest of this variation, which does reveal an aggressive, darker, less sanguine side. Ian Popov was a good Phlegmatic, and Sofiane Sylve looked much more comfortable in Choleric than in the Sanguinic she used to dance at New York City Ballet. The company’s electric performances in the finale brought this great work to a close. I’ll hold the emotional intensity of those final lifts in my heart for a long time.