“Bugaku”, “Ballade”, “Pithoprakta”, “Meditation”, “Brahms-Schoenberg” Finale
Suzanne Farrell Ballet
Opera House, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
November 23, 2007
by George Jackson
(copyright 2007 by George Jackson)
Loyalty and self-reliance are two of Suzanne Farrell’s traits that may be clues to explain her company’s state. Farrell is loyal to three choreographers -- Balanchine, Bejart and Robbins -- with whom she worked closely in her own dancing days. Depending on your viewpoint, this faithfulness either “focuses” or “restricts” the company’s repertory. Also, Farrell is loyal to dancers who have made sacrifices in order to appear with her part-time enterprise. Again, that either “helps” forge a cohesive group or “limits” her in recruiting fresh talent. On this first evening of the alternate bill -- Program B -- for the company’s 1-week season, Farrell loyally dedicated the occasion to Maurice Bejart who had died the previous day. Five ballets by George Balanchine, all staged by Farrell, were shown.
Most successful was “Pithoprakta”, a modernist exercise to Iannis Xenakis’ probabilistic music. By comparison, Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic scores seem conservative. (Will the Farrell-instigated Balanchine Preservation Initiative attempt to revive the choreography to Schoenberg’s “Opus 34”?) There is in “Pithoprakta” an ensemble (12 dancers according to the printed program, I counted only 11 at the curtain call). They are dressed in black and jiggle like molecules suspended in a fluid medium. Technically the term is Brownian motion in texts on physical chemistry. Although this type of movement doesn’t require life forms, Balanchine never tries to disguise the male and female dancers’ human anatomy. He merely limits what they do to vigorous jiggles, jerks and a state of jumpiness. Two white-clad figures, a woman and a man, engage in more complex behavior. The bodies of these two flex at multiple joints, folding and angling futuristically. They even begin to combine. This chemical reaction proceeds for a time but the bond is impermanent. At the beginning of the ballet, the woman in white had been alone in the stage-space. At the end of the ballet, the male drifts off and the ensemble disappears into shadow but she remains center stage, kneeling with arms raised above her head and then lowered as the fingers gently pulse like fibrils in an array. Alone, she seems to have attained some sort of serenity.
Balanchine premiered “Pithoprakta” (preceded by “Metastaseis” also to a Xenakis score) in 1968 at New York City Ballet. It remained in the repertory for several years and I remember some of the movement but not the dramatic atmosphere of Farrell’s current staging. I also do not remember that there was a designed backdrop. There is one now. It is uncredited and looks like a graph of molecular pathways in a reaction chamber. The current costumes, by Holly Hynes, seem more striking than the originals. Farrell says that she had to invent some of the principal man’s steps for this production, so perhaps the choreography should be designated as “after George Balanchine”. Elisabeth Holowchuk, Matthew Prescott and the ensemble danced with dignity and intensity.
Both “Ballade” and “Meditation” are more emotional pieces than “Pithoprakta” yet neither attained a comparable poignancy. “Ballade”, from 1980 (not to be confused with Jerome Robbins’ 1952 work of the same name) was Balanchine’s prescription for making a super-technician -- principal dancer Merrill Ashley -- more feminine. Set to a late romantic composition for piano and orchestra by Gabriel Faure, it is a catalog of gliding, arching and almost swooning steps for a ballerina with long, loose hair and flowing apparel. In its day, “Ballade” didn’t transform Ashley but was of minor interest as a study in constructing a starring vehicle soft at the core. Surrounding the ballerina role are ten attendant women and an ardent danseur.
The problem with this performance of “Ballade” was that Bonnie Pickard in the ballerina part hadn’t Ashley’s “problem” of too much technique. The tension of holding back is lacking. Nor has Pickard the general traits of a Balanchine dancer although she works hard at being incisive and committed. Deserving some attention were the ways in which Balanchine grouped the ten attendants spatially and numerically (as 5 + 5 or 4 + 3 + 3 or in other subdivisions). Runqiao Du served as the ardent male. My seat neighbor, music critic David Johnson who has a fondness for late romantic music, found this Faure (Op. 19) insipid. Glenn Sales was the piano soloist and Ron J. Matson conducted.
“Meditation” reminded ballet fans of Soviet mood pieces when it was new in 1963. Balanchine, apparently having fun with continuity of movement-plus-mime and being romantically self-indulgent, spun this duet for a troubled figure of a man and his consoling female ideal. As performed now by Natalia Magnicaballi and the steadfast Du, both characters are doubt-ridden and require tender loving care as the Tchaikovsky/Glazunov music for violin and orchestra proceeds. Neither dancer became sufficiently larger than life to make these case-study characters memorable.
Gypsy zest, the “Rondo alla Zingarese” or final fourth movement of “Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet”, concluded Program B which, like Program A, began with “Bugaku”. Most of the “Zingarese” cast -- 8 couples are supposed to reflect the dancing of a fiery principal pair -- looked like well behaved school girls and boys. Even the principal woman, Pickard, was neat and nice. On occasion a wild spark ignited Momchil Mladenov, the principal male. Actually it was rather touching to see the orderly ranks of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet trying to pretend. In “Bugaku”, the one longer work on the program, Michael Cook as the Bridegroom mustered more power than on opening night. Magnicaballi’s Bride, instead of displaying a delicate strength, still seemed insecure. Overall, Program B’s opening was more pungent than Program A’s.
Recently, Farrell announced that her company would become full-time and also that she plans to choreograph for it. Perhaps her first step in less self-reliance and learning to delegate was the designation this season of Kristen Gallagher as her artistic assistant.