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Alexandra Tomalonis
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Le Jeune Homme et la Morte

Alexandra Tomalonis
Special to The Washington Post
Column: PERFORMING ARTS
January 29, 1990; Page b7

The Ballet National de Marseille Roland Petit, probably the most popular non-Russian ballet company to dance at the Kennedy Center in recent years, deserved the standing ovation it got at its final performance yesterday afternoon. The company ended its run with Petit's "L'Arlesienne," a nice little ballet that guest artist Patrick Dupond transformed into a major theatrical event by dancing the leading role with a stunning combination of unbridled technical daring and dramatic power "L'Arlesienne" tells the tale of a young man who, bewitched by a woman he once saw and knows he can never possess, is unable to find happiness with the perfectly acceptable woman he's about to marry (Lynne Charles, overshadowed, but dancing with a sweetness she didn't show opening night). Too often the men who find themselves in this situation -- not a rare occurrence in ballet -- seem merely to be afraid of women or marriage, but Dupond portrayed a man hemmed in not only by convention but by something deep within.

All of this was done through perfectly controlled and beautifully tempered athletic dancing. The pirouettes varied in tempo, sometimes desperately fast, as though Dupond were trying to rid his body of poison, sometimes unbearably slow, ending in a yearning spiral. Dupond created an almost unbearable dramatic tension through the ferocity of his dancing, a tension that finally found release in the ending scene's explosive circle of turns. The suicidal final leap, rather than seeming tragic, was a relief.

[Author's note, November 2003:  I had not been assigned to write a review of this performance for the Post (I was also writing for The New Dance Review that season), but was so caught by the performance that I asked to write about it and they agreed to take a short review, something not uncommon during the heyday of dance writing at the Post in the '80s and '90s. Thank you, Ellen Edwards. Also, the last sentence in the first paragraph was cut off on my copy after "convention." I have no idea what I wrote at the time, and added "but by something deep within" to complete the sentence.]