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Reviews

American Ballet Theatre at City Center

Virtuoso dancing, nuggets from ABT’s treasure chest repertory, and some newer experiments, characterize the company’s fall season at New York’s City Center.

by Carol Pardo
copyright 1999 by Carol Pardo
Spring 1999

In his speech before the curtain on the opening night of American Ballet Theatre’s 1998 season at City Center in New York, Kevin McKenzie, the company’s director, announced that the season would be dedicated to “the repertory which is the artistic heart of American Ballet Theatre”. The repertory whcih followed—a mixed bag of Euroballets, virutoso display pieces, excerpts, new works and old— stressed variety over the short term as defined by a two week season. But the evocative depth necessary to sustain a repertory and a company over the long haul were in much shorter supply.

As a group the European imports were the deadliest of the lot and the most difficult to avoid; at least one was presented on every program. None of them took full advantage of their scores. All of them, in various ways conferred anonymity on the dancers. Sinfonietta is a group exercise that takes place in murky lighting so it is very difficult to see anybody. No one breaks away from the group and establishes their own identity. Nor does the choreography, based strictly on big jetes by the men in the opening movement let you know who these people are.

If John Neumeier chose the title Spring and Fall for any reason beyond the seasonal or gravitational play on words, that reason escapes me. One could infer the passage of time as the ballet progresses. It starts with the lead male and male corps—shirtless—dancing together. The next movement is for the lead woman and female corps who, when joined by some of the men, definitively rebuff them with a movement akin to that of a dog using its hind leg to kick dirt. The third movement again belongs to the men and starts off with the most forceful moment of the piece: Two men jump up butting sternums. The crack of bone against bone sounded extremely painful as it reverberated through the auditorium. The last movement incorporates a pas de deux for the leads and the finale. Maybe the combination of a fall to the ground like a fish dangling on a line followed by a soaring jump off stage is the choreographer’s nod to the other possible meaning of spring and fall. Since one is never sure what he does mean, the performers remain pawns in some incomprehensible mind game. At the curtain call after the premiere, Neumeier provided the most accessible, honest moment of the ballet when he took the hands of his two lead dancers and propelled them forcefully to the footlights to acknowledge the audience’s applause.

One wonders what qualities stood out in Nacho Duato’s Remanso, acquired in spring 1997, to such an extent that a second work by the choreographer, the all too similar Without Words, was added to the repertory this season. The point of Duato’s work seems to be to provide an opportunity to admire beautifully trained bodies; not what those bodies can do, but the bodies themselves: ballet as voyeurism. In Remanso, the men are wear cap-sleeved T-shirts and short shorts that direct attention to their bare limbs. In Without Words the women are clothed in gold unitards; the men are barely clothed. The choreography consists of manipulating these well-trained bodies as if they were animated taffy. No one even moves independently until the third movement (of four). All of this takes place in a very consciously constructed environment. The stage resembles the black velvet lining of a casket. Against this the lighting is either murky (again) so the dancers are almost invisible or golden making them look naked. The only other decoration is blow-ups of photographs of details of the dancers. In case we can’t get enough of their bodies in three dimensions there they are in two as well. Duato also seems to like to play with getting the dancers on and off the stage. In Remanso, they interact with a partial wall to do so; in Without Words they appear and disappear through slits in the black background. If only Duato cared as much about what the dancers were given to do while they are on stage. Both Duato and Neumeier are credited not only with the choreography of their works but also for the sets, costumes and (with assistance) lighting as well. Choreography is only one aspect of the entire production and not necessarily the most compelling.

Things picked up a bit with the virtuoso display pieces in the repertory. At least their meaning and inten-tions were clear. Piece d’Occasion, choreographed by Kevin McKenzie, was just that: a bon-bon for the gala crowd with Cecilia Bartoli—first heard off stage—captiva-ting Angel Corella at the expense of Ashley Tuttle in spite of the latter’s short, backless, scarlet dress. Corella was given two opportunities to let loose with everything he has leaving the audience happy and hollering. That the piece achieved its ends was not only a tribute to technique but to the theatrical savvy of Corella and Bartoli and the good humor and good sportsmanship of all concerned.

Variations for Four, Sir Anton Dolin’s showpiece for four men, also left the audience happy, although it did not start promisingly. Light bouncing off the beading on the ice blue costumes temporarily blinded the audience. As the music started, each dancer left his corner of the stage, walking in tendu front with his chest puffed out—just like the Italian ballerina in Gala Performance. Although there are enough tours a la seconde (ubiquitous as fouettés would be in a similar piece for women) to satisfy anyone’s thirst for the athletic side of ballet, the piece does not browbeat the audience into submission by piling technical feat on technical feat unceasingly. The solos can be phrased to reveal moments of poetry as Jose Manuel Carreno proved on opening night. Furthermore, how many technical showpieces include an adagio solo— particularly for a man— which comes right on top of very flashy allegro executed at fever pitch? Although the adagio was beautifully served by Vladimir Malakhov’s line and control on first viewing, the transition from speed to sere-nity held the attention of the audience at each perform-ance. There was no fidgeting with disappointment as the tempi changed—a tribute to the dancers but also to the skill of the choreographer.

I came to the Tharp premiere with high hopes—perhaps too high—wishing that her work would light a fire in what had been a disappointing parade of unfulfilling material. Known by Heart revisits a theme, which has interested Tharp for at least a quarter of a century: the classical, the modern and the synthesis of the two. Julie Kent and Angel Corella dance to an arrangement of Mozart and represent the classical strain. The choreogra-phy is decorous and genteel, much of it in unison. Decorous and genteel are not words I would ever have thought to use about Tharp but that tone seems intentional here. The musical quote from Ca ira (whose lyrics include phrases like “the aristocrats—we’ll hang ‘em”) passes without comment.

The second movement, the modern one danced to Junk Music by Donald Knaack is more insistent and full of cartoon-like punches and allusions to violence. The high point is a solo danced by Ethan Stiefel which reveals the classicist beneath the late 20th century tough—beautiful line, control and tight fifth positions.

The final movement to music by Steve Reich begins with Griff Braun and Keith Roberts moving in unison, but here side by side as though shot from a canon and com-pelled by some unseen force to keep moving. The dancers’ intensity and concentration command the attention of the audience. Just when you think the dancers can’t take any more, two soloists appear and pick up the choreography. The soloists from the previous movements arrive and we are ready for synthesis. However, more dancers, not seen earlier, just keep coming, echoing but also adding to the vocabulary of the previous move-ments. The music keeps going and one cannot help but feel that there is too much music for the choreographer to deal with and she just keeps throwing dancers at it until it ends. This dilutes the impact of the piece as a whole.

In contrast, I came to John Selya’s new work Dispositon knowing nothing of the choreo-graphy but rather wary of dances set to Shostakovitch, as this one is. I was hooked on the music, excerpts from the composer’s Jazz Suites: think Kurt Weill goes to the circus. Selya responded to the jazzy rhythms and wit of the music to produce a piece for a lead man and women and a corps of two men and four women with a distinct flavor of ballet Spanish meets the late 20th century. The red and black costumes echo this as well: the women appear initially in traditional bodices which are exchanges for halterneck bodices in subsequent movements and wear cut off tights with their point shoes. The piece is concise, witty and never takes itself too seriously. In its seventeen minutes, everyone is given at least one chance to shine with the partnership of Paloma Herrera and Giuseppe Picone looking particularly promising. A useful addition to the repertory.

Rounding out the repertory were ballets by deceased choreographers with proven reputations, Tudor’s Gala Performance, Ashton’s Les Patineurs, Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo and probably the most durable success by a (then) ABT house choreographer, Jerome Robbins’ Fancy Free. It is depressing to realize that all of the ballets were created before 1945.

Of these four works, Gala Performance is the one whose meaning has been most obscured by the passage of time. Intended as a parody of the manners and styles of the Italian, Russian and French schools of ballet, it is hard—if not impossible—to make these nuances clear in a world where the British Royal Ballet has ousted Cechetti from its syllabus and where, during his tenure as head of the Kirov Ballet, Oleg Vinogradov took Sylvie Guillem, a unique and utterly unconventional dancer, as his model. Now Gala Performance comes across as an examination of dancers’ egos. But the ballet did provide wonderful performances by Yan Chen as the French ballerina and by Vladimir Malakhov as her cavalier. Yan Chen spoke French—volubly— with her feet. Malakhov, usually known as the pure classical prince, was equally believable as the boyish but game cavalier overpowered by the perpetuum mobile of his partner. Malakhov seems to relish parts like this or Lakhedem in Le Corsaire, in which he is cast as anything but the danseur noble.

The three remaining “Old Masters” have lost less of their meaning to the passage of time.They are also sterling examples of what music, choreography, perform-ance and production can accomplish when they are in concert with each other. Each provided a more satisfying whole than did Neumeier’s or Duato’s attempts at Gesamtkunstwerk. As the curtain came up and the set was revealed, I found myself being sucked into a world and into the ballet before the dancing had even started. Gillian Murphy as one of the Blue Girls executed some turns so evenly and securely that she gave the illusion of having broken through the resistance of the “ice” under-foot much as an actual skater seems to do when their image blurs in a turn. For Ethan Stiefel’s Blue Skater there was no resistance to overcome. This was a skater of the air rather than the ice, but it was a technically impeccable performance.

Fancy Free conjures up a vision of New York as one would like to believe it was during World War II—bright lights, infinite possibilities and a deserted bar where anything benign can happen. Joaquin de Luz, Ethan Stiefel and John Selya gave transcendent performances as the three sailors. De Luz as the short sailor who can turn on any surface still had the deck of a ship underfoot with his rounded shoulders and rolling gait. Stiefel played the second sailor, the softer one who gets stuck with the tab, as a hayseed all wide-eyed at what had to be his first view of the big city. He kept in character even during the pas de deux. (This is the first time I’ve seen the second sailor, rather than the third, dance the pas de deux and it changes the balance of the piece. The second sailor is not the sweet but gullible guy and the eternal looser. In a sense he “wins” if winning can be defined as having one of the girls all to himself. Footing the bar tab becomes a small price to pay for the privilege.) All too often the third sailor doesn’t seem to belong with the other two. He seems more a man and more experienced both with women and with the steps and Latino tone of the rhumba. Here Selya made him younger and definitely a North American kid carried away by the rumba rhythm in spite of himself rather than an experienced practitioner. The disappointment in the performances of Fancy Free occurred when the two girls stepped on stage. No one I saw as the girl with the red purse could make anything of the part. She was either bland or scared, and petulant rather than urban, a little tough, a little brassy, good-natured and willing to have a good time as long as it didn’t get out of hand. The second girl is supposed to be a nice girl initially, skeptical about her partner in the pas de deux, but willing to be convinced otherwise. As danced by Amanda McKerrow, the girl’s entrance included an extension under the lamppost, which showed her underwear. The year is 1944. Nice girls didn’t show their underwear in public. During the pas de deux, she took to her partner from the beginning, so the dance really had no narrative reason to exist. Fancy Free, like so many other ballets in the season’s repertory belongs to the men and, luckily, they carried it—beautifully.

Like Fancy Free, Rodeo takes place in a world far removed from the here and now: on a ranch, west of Kansas City in a culture where a woman’s place is being a wife. However politically incorrect we may find this assertion now, one cast of Rodeo made you believe that it mattered. On a Saturday afternoon in October you believed that you were watching a rodeo under a beating sun thanks to Oliver Smith’s set. The dancers did the rest. The way he examined the girls from Kansas City let everyone know that the Head Wrangler as danced by Ethan Brown was not good husband material—the wandering eye would probably continue to wander. Griff Braun was able to show both the happy cowboy kicking up his heels on the way to the Saturday night dance as well as his empathy for the cowgirl only a scene later. Kathleen Moore as the Cowgirl also gave a performance alive with detailed observation—like her satisfaction and pleasure and finally bringing her horse under control. She and Griff Braun really play off each other and to “listen” to each other on stage. The entire performance worked far too beautifully for one to absorb the fact that this was Moore’s penultimate performance in the part before retirement.

The repertory may be the heart of American Ballet Theatre, but it is the dancers who, by going on night after night in a repertory which did not always do them justice, kept it alive.