Real Gems in a Rhinestone Town

“Jewels”
Ballet West, Nevada Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet
The Smith Center
Las Vegas, NV 
October 13-14, 2012

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2012 by Leigh Witchel

To the joy of Las Vegas’ residents, The Smith Center, a $470 million dollar cultural complex, opened last March. Because of the plethora of casinos with auditoriums, the city was one of the last its size not to have a municipal center. The new, art-deco theater is imposing – its detailing was based on design elements of the Hoover Dam – and fills a function The Strip doesn’t. The gathering of three Western companies to perform George Balanchine’s “Jewels” is a prime example.

Ballet West led off. Based in Salt Lake City, the company is a diverse group yet uniform in look: the shortest woman is 5’4” and lined up onstage, the female corps looks like a row of long-stemmed champagne flutes.  “Emeralds” showed the company to its best advantage as a well-rehearsed corps fronted by good principal dancers. Some of the men were weaker than the women, good partners yet uncomfortable with the speed and not fully stretched in jumps. Still, Tom Mattingly led the pas de trois with attack, presence (and slightly flapping wrists.)

Christiana Bennett, the senior ballerina in the company, danced the Violette Verdy role that occasionally is cast younger at New York City Ballet so that the solo can look like the anticipation of a first ball. Bennett is not an ingénue, and her anticipation was calmer and more mature as she coasted off of balances with a breath, or deliberately reached to move aside her skirt and show us her pointe work. She glowed with a fugitive smile as she turned, circling the stage. When her arm was held at her sides you could see her expressive back spread like wings. Her duet with Beau Pearson became almost valedictory, an anniversary rather than a wedding.

In the Mimi Paul role, Haley Henderson Smith had more expression in her legs than her face, but she’s so tall and physical that it worked. Her lines went on and on as she risked balances with her leg front, yet seemed to come down of her own accord. Her more frozen demeanor suited the “walking” pas de deux; she looked like a beautiful doll in fractured motion. In the same role on Sunday, Emily Adams was slower, softer and more expressive, with a wistful sadness in her face as she posed and bowed. In the duet she was not mechanical, but a woman imitating something mechanical.

Nevada Ballet Theatre is the youngest and greenest of the companies, also the smallest with fewer textbook bodies. Despite good work by Mary Lacroix in the female lead of "Rubies," the pas de deux didn’t have a lot of heat; it looked foreign to Grigori Arakelyan. Some details that are familiar in New York weren’t there; a curling turn didn’t end with the man trapping the woman in his embrace – she stayed at his side and free. Some tempos in the first movement felt slowed and both dancers had trouble with the finale. He threw himself around in jumps and wasn’t comfortable with his steps; she lost her spot in her final pique turns. But “Rubies” was a challenge and for the most part they met it.

The company also made a case for the ballet, perhaps as New York a work as any Balanchine ever made, as being just as appropriate to Las Vegas. The solo ballerina, Alissa Dale, did her role with no outward hints of danger, as blond, freshly scrubbed and smiling as a casino hostess. She snapped to second position, leaned back and brought her arm down decoratively as if showing off the box on “Let’s Make a Deal.” She smiled while braced in balance as four men held and manipulated her. But isn’t that the game here? A wholesome façade, yet you enter at your own risk.

The performance worth traveling for came from Carla Körbes leading Pacific Northwest Ballet in “Diamonds.” Körbes left NYCB right after being promoted to soloist; for New Yorkers, it was a bittersweet reminder of what was to be – and what might have been. During Peter Boal’s tenure as artistic director, when the company has visited New York, they’ve only brought Balanchine in a chamber setting (that will change in February when the company opens its City Center run with one all-Balanchine program.) But Körbes doesn’t excel in contemporary repertory. Balanchine, particularly the White Goddess roles we associate with Suzanne Farrell, is her métier, and “Diamonds” is a jewel in that crown. Her performance showed that Körbes was no pretender to the throne.

All the promise she showed was there Saturday night, only now with strength and control. Her attack is still soft and ripe; she’s never sharp in tendu but her feet don’t roll over and collapse, so her small walks on pointe were exquisite and articulated. She’s also fortified her jump; she was airborne in the jétés en tournant in the scherzo.

She was always a ballerina with an inner life, now she has a canny sense of how to suck the audience into her fantasy. She marked an important pose first with stillness; she paused for us in fifth position on pointe, and then a slow, strong extension of the leg to the side drove the audience to clap. The effect of that simple step recalled Alexandra Danilova’s famous advice, “Make it look difficult, make them think it’s hard.”
 
Balanchine might have said the same about building a ballet. His musical understanding is famously subtle: there’s a link in the sonorities of the Fauré in “Emeralds” with the opening flute calls of the pas de deux in “Diamonds.” Yet his timing is cagey, starting in the scherzo with fleeting entrances and exits of the leads. He has the corps men appear only after the lead male solo, building excitement by multiplication. By the final movement, the audience is close to frenzy, on Saturday night it burst into applause at the big final theme almost entirely because the music cued it to. The Seattle dancers rode the timing impeccably.

In a city of glitz, these “Jewels” were in a modest setting. They used the Karinska costumes, but no scenery except a chandelier in “Diamonds,” that – like Stonehenge in “Spinal Tap” – didn’t quite fill the background. Members of another resident organization, the Las Vegas Philharmonic, added luster through their excellent playing, conducted by Emil de Cou.

copyright © 2012 by Leigh Witchel

Top: Photo by Angela Sterling, Carla Körbes of Pacific Northwest Ballet in “Diamonds.”
Middle: Photo by Erik Ostling. Christiana Bennett of Ballet West in “Emeralds.”
Bottom: Photo by Erik Ostling. Emily Adams of Ballet West in “Emeralds.”