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, 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.
Jerome Robbins captured all that in his very first ballet, and his first collaboration with fellow New Yorker Leonard Bernstein. “Fancy Free” is still fresh today, and probably will be as long as there is a U.S. Navy and an island of Manhattan. On Sunday the three sailors were Joaquin de Luz, Tyler Angle, and Marcelo Gomes, a guest from “Fancy Free’s” original home, American Ballet Theatre. De Luz was electric and comic in the acrobatic first solo, Gomes sexy and mock-seductive in the Latin-inflected last, and the sweet-faced Angle tipsy and dreamy in the middle. DeLuz and Gomez came across as sailors, but Angle had too much sugar and not enough salt. He needs more seasoning for this part.
Speaking of which, a critic recently complained that Tiler Peck was too “hard-boiled” for her ballerina role in “Symphony in C.” But in “Fancy Free,” her Broadway toughness serves her well. She teased her partner with a sharp, provocative changes of direction, but never veered into romance, keeping alive the ambiguous intentions of her sketchy character. Amanda Hankes, a gifted character dancer, was just cheap enough to be irresistible as the other main passer-by.
“Fancy Free’s” characters may be the most true-to-life that Robbins ever created, far more real than the romanticized punks of “West Side Story.” Still, “West Side Story” has some of his most exciting choreography – including the biggest and wildest fight scene of all his famous battles. The young men of NYCB do a serviceable job of tearing across the stage and flinging each other down, but this performance was stolen by the girls, mainly the Sharks: 
Georgina Pazcoguin’s leg-shaking, skirt-swishing “America” was brazen and ebullient, her singing was more than adequate, and her gang sisters added hot spice. NYCB’s “West Side Story Suite” can’t compare to the original Broadway musical; for one thing, Shakespeare’s tragedy gets lost in the hokey hopeful ending. But it’s a chance for young dancers to strut their stuff, and a chance for the orchestra to play the kind of music it seems to excel at. NYCB’s moody musicians often seem bored stiff by the classics, but they come alive with the dramatic clash and clang of Bernstein’s sound scenarios.
That they did also in “Dybbuk,” led with intensity by guest conductor Clotilde Otranto. This is Robbins and Bernstein in their eastern European Jewish mode. The score is brilliantly dramatic, which ironically seems to have cursed this particular collaboration. The legend is that Bernstein wanted to tell this tale of doomed lovers in music, but Robbins wanted a more abstract treatment on the themes of occult ritual and demonic possession. The result is a murky drama in black, white and gray, enlivened in this case by a terrific pas de deux of possession, with Benjamin Millepied wrapping himself around and into a wraithlike Janie Taylor. Both danced it as if they meant it, but what it all meant remained largely occult.
Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips
Photos by Paul Kolnik
