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.
It is such a highly unusual work -- more a theatrical exploration of imagery than a ballet, although it certainly calls for dancers --- that it resurfaces mainly when NYCB is focusing on Robbins to a special degree, as it did in 1990 and is doing this season to mark both what would have been his 90th birthday, as well as the tenth anniversary of his death. "Watermill"'s return to the stage requires a performer of maturity and a distinctive presence in the central role. In 1990, that was the role's originator, Edward Villella, who came out of retirement at the age of 54 -- one year older than Robbins was when he created it. Still a magnificent performer, his added years and the deeper resonance they added to the work made for a memorable and moving performance.
"Watermill"'s other revival was in 1995 with the Paris Opera Ballet's Jean Guizerix, who was performing in that company's production of the work, as a guest artist. The news that it would be included in the current Jerome Robbins Celebration was most welcome, but also seemed sadly timed in that a potential ideal interpreter of Villella's role was Nikolaj Hubbe, who retired from the company in February. Happily, he has been able to return as a guest artist to bring his astutely subtle dramatic presence and sense of discovery to the role, grounding and focusing the work with his capacity for resonant stillness and his wonderfully alert sensitivity to everything and everyone around him on stage.
The role has been referred to over the years as an "Everyman" figure, but that seems simplistic and inaccurate. This reflective, barely-moving figure certainly evokes connections with Robbins himself, just as the scenery, imagery and iconography of "Watermill" extrapolate from people, places and incidents that made an impact on him. The personal nature of the work -- with its central figure of a man in midlife, looking back at, perhaps trying to connect with, scenes that suggest not just the passage of time but his increasing distance from earlier, vanished recollections -- was noted from the start, but with its return for the first time since Robbins' death, one can find additional personal material in the work thanks to the thorough biographies that have been written.
The ballet's title is the name of a Long Island beach town where Robbins had frequently spent time, and the three tall, hour-glass shaped bundles of feathery reeds that are the dominant scenic element and demarcate the stage space are the phragmites that are common in that area. The small, bent bit of fencing in the upstage right corner also suggests the beaches on that area. Each of the major Robbins biographies refers to a devastating acid trip he experienced with friends a few years before the creation of "Watermill," which began benignly on the beach, where he engaged in his own personal dance with several phragmites before things turned ugly and led him into a traumatized state through which his friends attentively helped him.
One can surmise that Robbins' recollections from that experience can have fed into "Watermill"'s inspiration, as did the kind of experimental, process-oriented work that he pursued from 1966 to 1968 with his American Theater Laboratory. Much of it focused on aspects of Noh Theater, and Deborah Jowitt, in "Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance" cites a 1967 letter he wrote to Robert Graves, discussing his fascination with Noh drama: "...what appeals to me is the austerity and religious atmosphere, the paring away of unessentials, and the final evoking in the temple of some aspect of human relationships which have never been said purer or clearer. There is a relationship between this kind of theatre and things I want to attempt. It might be the intense religious fervor of it and the sense of embarking on a truly holy and perhaps dangerous journey."
ATL was not geared to creating productions, but one can see "Watermill" as Robbins' way of eventually utilizing the questions and techniques he examined during that period. He certainly achieved a luminous "austerity" in the work, and was brave enough to "pare away of unessentials" -- on a grand stage where the audience arrived with expectations of a very different type of work.
It also was certainly influenced by his awareness of experimental and avant-garde performances, where more pedestrian, non-virtuosic movement was in favor, and traditional assumptions were being radically questioned. His friendship with the visionary theater director Robert Wilson, then in the very early stages of his career, had certainly exposed Robbins to concepts and ideas about using the stage that influenced "Watermill" (which is also the name of a center for cross-disciplinary arts exploration Wilson has run since 1992).
Back on stage 36 years after its premiere, and for the first time without its creator's hands-on involvement, "Watermill" remains a haunting, mesmerizing theatrical experience that draws the viewer into its open-ended, intently calm episodic sequences. The observation, and influence of, the natural world is a major part of the work; its exquisite lighting (originally by Ronald Bates but in recent revivals credited to the ever-masterful Jennifer Tipton), spare but perfect scenic design, and the serene, subtly varied Teiji Ito score (performed by six musicians seated at the upstage left corner) combine with Robbins' mostly meditative, occasionally harsh and violent, movement to create an artfully shaped collaboration. It demands to be met on its own terms, outside a more conventional theatrical comfort zone, and rewards the effort
From the moment he first appears -- or rather materializes, as the lighting reveals him very gradually, so that one doesn't immediately notice he is on stage -- as a cloaked figure gazing at the phragmites and then advancing very slowly, thoughtfully across the stage, Hubbe persuasively leads us through this man's experiences as he recalls -- or perhaps dreams about -- the encounters and images that this landscape summons up. Reclining, sitting, standing or at one point lying prone, he always makes us sense his alert connection to the other activity on stage -- and makes the moment when he reaches across space (and time) to share a moment with the sprightly bounding boy (Matthew Renko) ineffably poignant.
Lasting slightly more than an hour, and shunning standard ballet steps and anything resembling virtuosity, "Watermill" challenges our concept of time. It requires patience but also persuasively illustrates how less can be more, that watching intently and being aware of every slight shift in the lighting, or subtle new entrance of another instrument, or the few leaves that briefly drift onto the stage, make their own resonant impact and enhance the cumulative experience. An hour is passing in the theater; on stage, a lifetime -- or perhaps the reverberations of many lifetimes -- is being summoned up by this man.
Among the resonant images are the four men placidly bearing poles on which bob round lanterns -- at first they look like balloons -- of various colors and sizes. They are the first signs of life -- or memories -- we see aside from the central figure himself, and they enter from the four corner, perhaps announcing the cycle of four seasons that will be represented. They cross the stage and vanish, never interacting with Hubbe, but once they have gone, he reaches and lunges, as though they have awakened an urgent need or desire in him. Equally magical in its simplicity and beauty is the autumnal scene, in which six women wearing simple earth-toned dresses, some with broad flat hats that suggest peasants who toil in rice paddies, seize individual phragmite stalks and perform a hypnotic ritual with them. They let them drop softly to the ground, later tie them together and bear them away. One gently, sadly, hands two of them to Hubbe, then takes the shawl wrapped around her shoulders and covers her head as she leaves. It's such a simple, yet in context evocatively wistful, moment, and "Watermill" achieves a number of these as its projected moon waxes and wanes and Hubbe proceeds on his metaphysical journey.
The performers were wonderfully attuned to the work's unique requirements. Kaitlyn Gilliland, luxuriantly calm, was the elegant, rather remote woman swathed in a chartreuse robe, her hair initially wrapped turban-style in a towel, who spreads a shimmering towel, then languidly combs her hair and just as languidly engages in a sexual encounter with a young man (Zachary Catazaro). Adam Hendrickson, always a superbly focused performer, was the masked, wild-haired Kabuki-like demon whose ferocity provides singular moments of jarring violence amid the otherwise serene inevitability of the action.
