Washington Ballet
Eisenhower Theater
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
October 15, 2009
by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright 2009 by Alexandra Tomalonis
Marius Petipa's "Don Quixote" is a complex, messy ballet of mixed lineage. It was made for the Bolshoi, which explains its emphasis on character dancing and liveliness; then transferred to the Maryinsky Ballet, where the second act dream sequence was added to appeal to the taste of the St. Petersburg balletomanes; then redone again, at the Bolshoi, by Alexander Gorsky, whose production was geared more to popular taste and a new century. Every production since has had bits and pieces of this and that, so in a way, it's a good 19th century work for a small company to try; there's no standard text, no Swans or Shades. In any "Don Q," though, there needs to be a convincing Spanish flavor, a mix of character and bravura classical dancing, and (most difficult of all) enough good character dancers to handle the many acting parts that are difficult for today's dancers to manage convincingly.
Washington Ballet did a very good job by simply getting the ballet on to the stage. There are only 21 full-time professional dancers in the company, which would barely be enough for the wedding scene. For "Don Q," TWB added two apprentices, seven Studio Company dancers, fifty students from the school and six guest artists. The production looked comfortable on the small Eisenhower Theater stage and seemed very well-rehearsed. However, although there was some very good dancing, the acting was both too broad and too muddy: the story wasn't clearly told. On balance, the production shows too few of the company's strong points and exposes too many of its shortcomings.
The production was staged by Anna-Marie Holmes and, aside from a front-of-the-curtain romp by four "Deamons" who look as though they've escaped from "Where the Wild Things Are," it's standard fare (and I mean that in a good way; there are no overly-imaginative "enhancements.") Holmes has added a Spanish-flavored dance for a group of men that showed off the dancers beautifully and let the production breathe. She had to cut some scenes and dances, but otherwise it's a good, solid "Don Q." The sets (by Thomas Boyd) are minimal and very serviceable. Judanna Lynn's costumes are handsome, save, perhaps, for the women's dresses in the Fandango, which looked authentic but were flattering to neither the dancers nor the dancing.
The production's greatest drawback is the lack of an orchestra. This isn't something you can hide, especially when the tape that replaced it sounded so thin and tinny. Worse, the editing wasn't smooth, and each cut was preceded by a heart-stopping second or two of silence, as though the tape had broken. We're used to seeing short ballets danced to tape music, and everyone grumbles and puts up with it as a necessary evil, but for a full-length, 19th century classic, music is as much a requirement as sets and costumes. (Actually, if one had to choose....) The top ticket price for this was $125, and for that price, the audience expects an orchestra, and this was the topic of nearly every conversation on which I eavesdropped at intermission.
There were definitely some good moments. One of Director Septime Webre's smartest moves was to invite National Ballet of Cuba's prima ballerina, Viengsay Valdes, to dance Kitri at three performances. She's been dancing the role for years, is a stellar technician, and could be expected to inspire the company's dancers (as ABT's David Hallberg did last season in TWB's fine production of "La Sylphide.") Valdes toned down her star power a bit from what I remembered from her performance here a few years ago with her home company (and as shown on a currently available DVD) and it's a credit to her taste and graciousness that she did, because had she come out guns blazing, she would have completely dominated the production. Her performance was in scale, and I liked her for that. Valdes is an excellent, yet not a hard, technician: a spirited Kitri in the first act, a softly enticing Dulcinea in the second, before getting down to business and turning in a medal-winning level grand pas de deux. Valdes is known, for good reason, for her balances. She could take an arabesque, polish each fingernail, choose another color and polish them again without bothering the floor with her foot, and all this without a conductor to stretch out the music. Some love this, some do not. I would much rather see beautiful lines and an overheld balance than a whole evening of ballerinas kicking their heads at every opportunity, but that's a matter of taste.
Jonathan Jordan gave Valdes fine support as Basil and danced with charm and flash on his own. Brooklyn Mack (late of Orlando Ballet) is an endearing performer and a strong dancer, but his Espada was Basil 2, rather than a Spanish matador with noble line, and so he didn't provide a contrast to Basil. "Don Q" is hard to master in a few weeks of rehearsal, and style is elusive. In the second act, the three soloists were elegant and musical, the Dryad Fairy (perhaps because of the tape) a bit less so. Maki Onuki was a very contemporary Amour, dancing strongly, but without the sweetness and charm usually associated with Cupid. There was a very shortened dance for the corps and soloists in the last act -- in the Maryinsky production, this is one of the ballet's glories, showing off the company's style, but that's the Maryinsky. TWB dancers don't have a distinctive classical style, and Holmes' trim here was a wise one.
The real problem for me was the character dancing. Why does the Don amble around in a half-crouch? Why is Gamache played as a buffoon without a shred of elegance (he's supposed to be a fop, an overly elegant aristocrat. He's riped to be mocked, but not a clown in a funny suit.) The basic plot point that Kitri's father does not want her to marry Basil the barber, but rather an unsuitable rich man, was not clearly made. (On the other hand, the mock suicide scene, where Basil pretends to commit suicide, was very clearly done.) As a whole, the production did not looked directed. Scene followed scene, but the action was not pulled together. It could hardly be otherwise, when a company is so new to the style and has only a week to settle into a ballet, but strong character dancing is as important to "Don Q" as bravura tricks in the solos.
There are two reasons for a company getting into the 19th century classics business. The first is to build a classical company, but this can be a short road to hell. (Once you open that door, you need a corps de ballet of 24 perfectly matched female bodies who dance in a coherent classical style, and this completely changes your selection of dancers and repertory.) If a director isn't after that, it seems a huge expenditure of time, effort and money to take on such a work and only dance it for a week. Perhaps there are plans to revive the production down the road, but when most of the company's time is spent dancing contemporary works, it will be starting from scratch each time it dances a full-length classical ballet.
The second reason is to try to handle the terrible balancing act that medium-sized companies face these days: there are at least two audiences, one who wants to see classical/neoclassical ballet and another who prefers more contemporary fare. Balanchine provided a fix for that -- dozens of small-scale, low-budget masterpieces, which TWB used to dance, along with Choo-San Goh's new neoclassical works, regularly (the typical program of TWB' in Mary Day's time was one Balanchine, one Goh and one novelty on each).
Today, many regional companies are choosing a different approach: one classic, "Nutcracker," and one, two or three programs of shorter works, which may be company staples or new works. But here, TWB faces an problem it wouldn't face in most cities, as DC has the Maryinsky, the Bolshoi and American Ballet Theatre dancing here every season, and that's a heavy burden of comparison to bear. American Ballet Theatre, which had to dance for years in the shadow of the Royal Ballet (with its then-gold standard versions of the 19th century classics as well as the new works of Frederick Ashton) and New York City Ballet, which had a constant supply of modern masterpieces by Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, dealt with it by dancing small-scale classics -- "Giselle," "La Sylphide" and "Coppelia" -- until the company felt ready to handle something more complex ("Swan Lake") and there were discussions, from both the classical and the contemporary side, about that choice.
For an audience, sitting in a darkened house and watching a production that, at its best, is entertaining, danced by people one admires or loves, such things may seem quibbly, or not important enough to matter, but they are problems that will continue until the company finds its own balance.
Photo: Valencia Valdes in "Don Quixote" (Cuban National Ballet) by Michel Lidvac.
