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Robbins' Moonlit Meditation

SEASONS: "Watermill," "The Four Seasons"
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, NY
May 2, 2008

by Susan Reiter
copyright © 2008 Susan Reiter

Some of New York City Ballet's programming, in this era of fixed programs, is forced and awkward, but the combining of these two completely different Jerome Robbins works does have an innate logic. In their extremely different ways -- "Four Seasons"(1979) is lively, colorful, uncomplicatedly entertaining, while "Watermill"(1972) is a contemplative exploration of stillness that demands intensely focused attentiveness -- they both employ the cycle of the seasons as a structural underpinning. But otherwise, they are so different that one has to remind oneself that Robbins created them within the same decade. And while "Four Seasons" is a proven program closer and showcase for breezy virtuosity that has found its place in the company's repertory, "Watermill," which banishes conventional ballet technique and requires extreme subtlety from its performers, makes highly infrequent appearances.

Still Looking Beyond Seventy-Five

San Francisco Ballet
“New Works Festival,” Part Two
April 22-May 6, 2008
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, California
by Rita Felciano

copyright © Rita Felciano, 2008

Given the task to create a piece for San Francisco Ballet’s New Works Festival, the culmination of the company’s 75th anniversary season, Val Caniparoli, Jorma Elo, Stanton Welch and Christopher Wheeldon chose to work with the pas de deux as their basic unit. No surprise here, given the role that the pas de deux has played in Classical Ballet. Audiences love them because they showcase dancers individually and suggest natural climaxes. Besides, everyone understands the difference between xx and xy. The drama is built in.

Two Guys from New York

Bernstein Collaborations
“Fancy Free,” “Dybbuk,” and “West Side Story Suite”

New York City Ballet
New York State Theater, New York
May 4, 2008

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips

Sailors on leave were ubiquitous on the west side of Manhattan during World War Two, when “Fancy Free” had its premiere in 1944. Now they arrive en masse just once a year for Fleet Week in April, but the boys in white bell-bottoms and Dixie-cup hats are as welcome, as endearing, and as clueless as ever. These storm-tossed and battle-hardened youths don’t know where they are, or even who they are, and have no idea what to do in New York. So naturally they drift a few blocks from the docks to the cheap, smelly bars of Eighth Avenue, where they try their awkward bravado on random girls passing by, and are shielded from harm by the good will of a grateful nation, and the God who looks out for drunks.

Looking Beyond Seventy-Five—Part One

San Francisco Ballet
“New Works Festival,” Part One
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, California
April 22-May 6, 2008

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2008

I have a modest proposal.  Let’s have a festival of new ballet with two restrictions: no pas de deux’s, and choreographers have to use the classical language that dancers spend so many years perfecting. The result might be quite different from the one produced by San Francisco Ballet’s New Works Festival which closed the company’s 75th anniversary season. The work might not be better; it most certainly would be different.

Symphonic Variations

"Symphony in C", "Symphony in Three Movements", and "Western Symphony"
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, NY
May 3, 2008, matinee

by Mary Cargill
copyright 2008 by Mary Cargill

One of the few-all Balanchine programs in this Robbins-fest season was also an all symphonic program, an immersion into Balanchine's astounding variety; three completely different responses to three different symphonies, all developed from the majestic geometry of the Russian classical ballet in which he grew up.  "Symphony in C" and "Western Symphony" both, in their different ways, acknowledge "Swan Lake", and "Symphony in C" had an eloquent evocation of the tragic atmosphere in the second movement's dancers, Sara Mearns and Charles Askegard.  They avoided the trick of over-dramatizing the steps (the final pose in the pas de deux was a simple, musical, pause in the movement, not the final flutterings of "The Dying, Gasping, Eventually Expiring Swan".  Mearns is a lush dancer, with a subtle sense of phrasing, and there were many simply glorious moments; one of my favorites was the series of grand battements, where she paused slightly with her leg up and leaned back onto the waiting Askegard, a sublime moment of perfect trust.

Robbins Festivities Begin with Brio

Spring Gala 2008: Jerome Robbins Celebration
"Circus Polka," "The Four Seasons," "West Side Story Suite"
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, NY
April 29, 2008

by Susan Reiter
copyright © 2008 Susan Reiter

To launch the spring season's focus on Jerome Robbins, New York City Ballet offered an opening night that emphasized his flair for savvy entertainment. Many of his more profound and complex ballets will be seen in the course of the ten all-Robbins programs that dominate the schedule. This evening, while somewhat low-key for an opening gala, certainly made the case for Robbins' theatrical ingenuity. His confident mastery when it came to arranging and moving large groups with sheer inventiveness as well as maximum emotional impact was certianlyt on display. The program also featured performances by several of the company members (and one guest artist, Robert La Fosse) who had worked closely with the choreographer or have evidenced a special affinity for his repertory.

Chopin in Motion: Simplicity, Virtuosity, Structure

"The Dances of Isadora Duncan"
Word Dance Theater
The Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum
Bethesda, Maryland
May 1, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

How have the dances of Isadora Duncan survived? Neither notated nor filmed originally, they have been passed down body to body, spirit to spirit through the sisterhood of Duncan’s adopted daughters and subsequent disciples. Perhaps pheromones have helped in the process? Our unreasonable expectation for a Duncan program isn’t just that the current performers do the movement well but that, like wine in a church chalice transformed into sacred blood, they become the divine Isadora. Of the three dancers doing the ten Duncan choreographies on this bill, one had something of the air of an original about her.

The Kirov Delves into Balanchine

"Serenade," "Rubies," "Ballet Imperial"
Kirov Ballet
City Center
New York, NY
April 19, 2008 (evening)

by Susan Reiter
copyright © 2008 Susan Reiter

It was exhilarating, and profoundly moving, to see the Kirov take on this ambitious and demanding program of Balanchine masterworks. After the oddly restrained response to the musical impetus that marked some of their earlier programs, this final (of six) programs let them truly connect to the music and dance with newfound openness and spontaneity. The layers of history and significance embedded in this program were fascinating. Here were works made by the choreographer who followed and inherited the legacies of Petipa and Fokine. who absorbed all the tradition and majesty of the Russian Imperial ballet, and then charted a brave new course that brilliantly transformed and translated everything from that noble past, to point the way to ballet's future. And here was the company that embodies, and keeps alive in today's terms, that past, finding its own distinctive way into a representative sampling of what he created.

Miami High

Miami City Ballet
"Raymonda Variations", "Sonatine", "Tarantella", and "In the Upper Room"
Tilles Center for the Performing Arts
Long Island University, New York
April 25, 2008

by Mary Cargill
copyright 2008 by Mary Cargill

The Miami City Ballet made one of its too rare and too brief visits to the New York vicinity, appearing for two days in the spacious and well-designed Tilles Center of Long Island University; the company has yet to appear in Manhattan.  This visit confirmed the virtues seen in earlier performances, and showed a well-rehearsed, well-trained company with a fine sense of style.  Of course, dancing only a comparatively few ballets a season allows for more intensive rehearsal, and so it isn't really surprising that Miami's "Raymonda Variations" showed more cohesion and more detail than the recent NYCB version, performed as one of several dozen ballets, but audiences do not watch excuses and explanations, they watch performances, and Miami's version was pure joy.  Well, not pure, perhaps, because financial constraints forced them to dance to taped music, so the lush Glazounov score sounded a bit tinny.

Royal Ballet Mixed Bill

“Rushes”, “Serenade”, “Homage to the Queen”
23 April – 14 May 2008
Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
London, England

by Judith Cruickshank
copyright 2008 by Judith Cruickshank

Nearly 30 years ago when he was director of the Berlin Ballet, Valery Panov created a full evening ballet based on Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot”.  Despite strong performers — Panov himself as Rogozin, the Kirov-trained Vladimir Gelvan in the title role and Eva Evdokimova as Nastasya — and some blindingly theatrical moments, the ballet failed to deliver much idea of the richness and complexity of Dostoevsky's plot and writing.

In his first creation for the Royal Ballet, the Danish choreographer Kim Brandstrup also claims “The Idiot” as his inspiration. But rather than the published novel he has turned to Dostoevsky’s early drafts in which the central figure combined the characteristics of both the saintly Prince Myshkin and the worldly anti-hero Rogozin.

Back to its African Roots

John Neumeier´s “Othello”
Stuttgart Ballet
Opera House
Stuttgart, Germany
April 24, 2008

by Horst Koegler
copyright @2008 by Horst Koegler

When John Neumeier, then  31 years old, started in 1973 his directorship of the Hamburg Ballet, he commissioned a full-length ”Othello” ballet from Gerald Humel, an American composer who lived in Berlin and had just scored a hit with “The Tortures of Beatrice Cenci”, written for Gerhard Bohner, one of the pioneers of  the infant German tanztheater movement. But when Humel delivered his score, Neumeier was not satisfied with it and thus the planned Hamburg staging was cancelled. However, the idea let him not go, and so he produced “Otello”, Verdi´s dramma lirico, in 1977 at the Bavrian State Opera in Munich (with Juergen Rose as designer). Eight years later the time of another attempt to deal with Shakespeare´s “Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice” had come, for which Neumeier emigrated from the Hamburg opera-house to the Kampnagelfabrik, a workshop setting, where his “Othello" was premiered in 1985 , Ballet by J.N. after Shakespeare, choreography, production, stage, costumes and lighting by J.N. -  a unanimous success, not et least thanks to an ideal cast with Gamal Gouda (Othello), Gigy Hyatt (Desdemona) and Max Midinet (Jago).

Fast or Slow--As You Like It

Doug Varone and Dancers
“Lux,” “Home” and “Boats Are Leaving”
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
April 21, 2008

by Rita Felciano
copyright © 2008 Rita Felciano

San Francisco Performances closed its current season with a return visit from Doug Varone and Dancers. What a smart move that was! Two years ago, when the company made its first appearance in fifteen years, Varone was practically unknown in the Bay Area. Certain companies return year after year but Varone’s was never among them. Yet this is a  choreographer whose work is rich beyond the way he uses music and movement. No matter the tenor of the times with its demands for experimentation for its own sake, Varone never let this get into the way of making formally cogent work about what it means to be human: conflicted, fragile, resilient. He may also be the most visible direct descendant of early modern dance.

Bavarian State Ballet (Munich)

“Cambio d´abito”, “Adagio Hammerklavier”, "Violakonzert/II"
Bavarian State Ballet
National Theatre
Munich, Germany
April 12,2008

by Horst Koegler
copyright @2008 by Horst Koegler

Among the four German Ivy League ballet companies of Berlin , Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart, the Bavarian State Ballet, housed at the beautiful Munich National Theatre, is certainly the most classically oriented. Solidly established under the experienced direction of Konstanze Vernon in 1989 as part of the greater Bavarian State Opera establishment, it has been led since 1998 by Ivan Liska, formerly John Neumeier's star-pricipal in Hamburg. Its repertory offers the most comprehensive survey of Petipa of all German troups, including the Tchaikovsky classics plus “Don Q”, “La Bayadère”, “Raymonda” and the recently added “Le Corsaire”.  Other choreographers contributing substantially to the bulk of the repertory are Cranko (the three full-lengths), Balanchine, Neumeier, MacMillan, Van Manen and Kylián through Childs, Ek, Preljocaj, Teshigawara and Forsythe. Its annual Ballet Festival Week opened this year with Van Manen´s “Adagio Hammerklavier” of 1973 vintage, flanked by two creations: Simone Sandroni´s “Cambio d´abito” and Martin Schlaepfer´s “Violakonzert / II”.

The Custom of the Country

“Serenade,” “Rubies,” “Ballet Imperial”
Kirov Ballet
New York City Center
New York, NY
April 18, 2008

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel

It takes guts to bring an all-Balanchine program to New York.  The scene at City Center on the Friday night opening of the program was thick with present and former New York City Ballet dancers, including Peter Martins, all there to watch, and perhaps to judge. If bringing coals to Newcastle is going to be done, it might as well be by a company like the Kirov that has a completely different tradition. Watching the Kirov do Balanchine is like wandering into a Japanese grocery and marveling at Western dishes transformed by native tastes; Ronzoni spaghetti is next to packages of spaghetti sauce mix – cuttlefish flavor.

Balanchine-Nureyev-Forsythe at Paris Opera

Balanchine-Nureyev-Forsythe
Paris Opera Ballet
Opéra Bastille
Paris, France
5 April 2008

by Marc Haegeman
copyright 2008 Marc Haegeman

With its latest triple bill simply called ‘Balanchine/Nureev/Forsythe’ the Paris Opera Ballet invited us to rediscover the styles of three major figures of 20th century ballet, each in his own way expanding and transforming the classical legacy of Marius Petipa. To illustrate this, the company revived George Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments”, a short suite of extracts from Rudolf Nureyev’s full-length “Raymonda”, created for the Opera in 1983, and “Artifact Suite” from William Forsythe, distilled from his evening length 1984 “Artifact.” Not the most balanced choice of works perhaps for such an ambitious programme, but one which had at least the merit to say something about the present state of the company itself, if not about the personalities and their respective styles it wanted us to compare.