"Les Biches", "Afternoon of the Faunes", "Four Bagatelles", "Grand Duo"
Fall for Dance Festival
City Center
New York, NY
September 30, 2009
By Carol Pardo
Copyright © 2009 by Carol Pardo
The Fall for Dance Festival has made its reputation on its $10 tickets (kudos to those who have kept them at that price) and on the the range of its programming—most anything goes, cheek by jowl on the same program with most anything else. This year has been a lttle different, as the programming has also been tailored to celebrate the centenary of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. This fourth program of the run was even more focused, including as it did two works on pointe and two works by current modern dance choreographers based in New York. It was also a program that reminded one, both of the accomplishments of Vaslav Nijinsky as both dancer and choreographer.
The revival of ballets distant in time and probably in style run the risk of being nothing more than dutiful, dessicated bow to the past. But the revival by Ballet West of "Les Biches", first performed in 1924 and not seen in New York since 1983, showed that Nijinska's ballet is still wonderfully alive. Marie Laurencin's set is both beautiful and transporting. The space of the ballet is dominated by a huge long rectangular window open to a view of a palm tree and the sea. The cream-colored room itself is warm and inviting but not overheated. The costumes in pink, apricot and sky blue, with black accents, elegant and casual, complete our introduction to this afternoon party overlooking the Mediterranean.
There is no particular plot taking place within this stage world, rather we are introduced to a series of characters: three athletes, a mysterious and aloof girl/woman, two young girls and our hostess, all ostrich feathers and pearls, who shows up quite late at her own party. Women outnumber men 16 to 3 among the guests which gives rise to a genteel sense of competition. And two of the men are content to spend their time dancing with each other. In this atmosphere, anything can happen, or nothing can. "Les Biches" has been in the repertory of Ballet West for little more than six months, enough time to show how good Nijinska's ballet is, but not enough to hint at all the possibilities beneath the surface. The dancers also need more time to master the tecnical demands of the ballet which are formidable and include not only quick clean beats which must land softly, but extremely expressive shoulders and slightly off-kilter port de bras. The three men's, for example, are closed fists.
Mark Dendy's "Afternoon of the Faunes" borrows the music, the character of the faun, most of its title and some of its vocabulary from Nijinsky. But the piece often goes against the Arcadian dream of the music, the number of fauns is doubled, and the poses are danced through rather than pushed forward.The work finds its source in a quote from Nijinsky's diary, "I run instead of walking. I run a lot because I feel strong. I have obedient muscles. I have an obedient brain ... I have a big appetite ... I ran and ran. I did not stumble. A mysterious force was driving me forward". The leitmotiv of the piece is a shamboling run which pounds the stage with increasing insistence and force, and becomes by turns compulsive, obsessive, almost irrational and finally transcendent as the music ends and the dance winds down in silence.
It would be hard to find two more different ballets in the repertory of the New York City Ballet than the originally scheduled "Herman Schmerman pas de deux" by William Forsythe and Jerome Robbins' "Four Bagatelles" a verdant descendant of Bournonville's pas de deux from the "Flower Festival at Genzano", which replaced it. Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia were most at ease in the opening adagio. She seems to have found a source of calm, and consequently maturity, in her dancing. The rest of the piece did not flow as effortlessly as one might wish. The male solo seemed to defeat him while rhythmically speaking the specter of Violette Verdy, who created the woman's role, hung over her. The finale, which depends so much on the dancers to render it coherent, was an endurance test to the finish.
The first movement of Mark Morris' "Grand Duo" looks like a pediment frieze brought to life. Later there are moments of great calm, of camaraderie exemplified by folk dancing but also, group movements that become savage. Nijinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" is not far away. The connection is probably not conscious on anyone's part, but is created in the context of this program with its' generous quotient of male virtuosity and with it's quotes from Nijinsky's choreographic vocabulary.
