Philadelphia Story

Pennsylvania Ballet
“Serenade” and “Carmina Burana”
City Center, New York
November 14, 2007

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2007 by Tom Phillips

Pennsylvania Ballet put its best foot forward for opening night of its first New York season in 22 years.  With a corps liberally sprinkled with young graduates of the School of American Ballet, it began at the beginning:  George Balanchine’s “Serenade,” his first ballet in America, created for his original SAB students nearly 75 years ago.   The performance was unremarkable, but it’s the magic of this ballet that even an unremarkable performance can be memorable.  “Serenade” is one of a kind:  a moment in history, captured in movement.  Why did Balanchine come to America?  To do this, to recreate the art form in a state of innocence. 

Fundamentally, “Serenade” is a teaching ballet – an introduction to dance  performance as much for the dancers as the audience.  But it bears no resemblance to any of the many ballets about ballet, such as “Etudes” or “Scenes de Ballet.”  As the dancers move from a static pose to the radical turnout of the feet, to their first arabesque and eventually to a whirling circle of pique turns, it is not as though they are being trained in a technique, but opened out into a higher level of existence.  This is not about discipline, but discovery – of what the body is capable of, what human beings have in them.  The only proper reaction is wonder, and that is what we and the dancers share.  Happily, the Pennsylvania corps gets it, and they’re good enough to communicate it, at least through the main section of pure dance.  Principal Julie Diana, when she was first lifted in the waltz, seemed awed by her own freedom and facility of movement, as if she had suddenly leaped into a clearing.

Sadly, the drama dipped in the final, mythic elegy.  Diana’s sudden fall was nothing of the sort – rather than coming undone, she just lay down and undid her hair.   James Ady looked more tentative than torn in his doomed effort to save  her.  And when the three men came out to lift her into the final apotheosis, it seemed more a mechanical task than a solemn ritual.  Still, it was “Serenade.”  What remains is the look of breathless astonishment in the corps as they run, run and run in waves, their existence transformed by ballet itself.   

Post Script: I saw "Serenade" again on Saturday night (11/17) and it was better. Diana and Ady added some tragic intensity to their elegy, aided by a ravishing, relentless Arantxa Ochoa as the "dark angel." The performance also reinforced an earlier impression, of Barette Vance standing out in the corps. One of the four demi-soloists in the Russian dance, she led every figure with a regal carriage and full-out extensions. In the last year, she has grown exponentially in strength and presence.

The second half of the program was a new setting of Orff’s “Carmina Burana” by the company’s resident choreographer, Matthew Neenan.   This is mostly about clothes – as Balanchine said of his “Firebird,” you just sit back and watch the costumes flow.   The parade began with some slithery jaguar prints and ended with the whole company stripped down to flesh-colored briefs and leotards.  In between, it included see-through party dresses, layered wedding gowns missing their front panels, nasty girls with bustles like black-fly wings, two guys in silky jodhpurs, Vegas showgirls with red fringe flaring out, and a company of space aliens with Nikolais-type stretchy fabrics to wrap themselves and each other in.  This was all arrayed in shifting light patterns, in and around a moveable sail-shaped object that served as a tent, and in front of a big moving disk on the back wall. 

As in “Serenade,” everyone is constantly in motion, but there the resemblance ends.  The choreography is sexy in the jazz-acrobatic style, with lots of underwear-flashing, but the pace is so frenetic that it rarely has time to build into anything really erotic.  The best you can say is that it kept moving and changing through the whole song cycle, and Pennsylvania Ballet’s dancers kept up.  It had a few moments:  some Olympian straight leaps by Jermel Johnson; a no-hands cartwheel by Barette Vance; a faun-like duet for Julie Diana and James Ady, in and out of the tent-shaped object; and a wacky bit for Abigail Mentzer, mugged by two guys who strip her of her wedding gown and leave her walking around in her undies.  Her look of knowing disbelief was a New York moment, a little bit of ironic sophistication in a piece that relied more on surface flash.   

Judging from this program and two others I’ve seen, this is a company of good overall ability, but with not too much distinction between the corps and the upper ranks.  It has energy, ambition, and a good grounding in the Balanchine technique and style.  But this “Carmina Burana” seemed a poor use of its assets, expensive but mostly empty.

copyright 2007 by Tom Phillips photos by Paul Kolnik