“Steptext,” “Approximate Sonata,” “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude,” “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated.”
Kirov Ballet
New York City Center
New York, NY
April 15, 2008
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel
In 2004, the ballet of the Mariinsky Theater (we still call it the
Kirov when it comes to visit) decided to propel itself into the late
20th century – better late than never – with an all-William Forsythe
evening. For the Mariinsky, it was a bold move. All Forsythe evenings
aren’t a new thing; Paris Opera Ballet presented one in 1999 that
included two of the works performed here (“In the Middle, Somewhat
Elevated” was also commissioned for them by Nureyev in 1989) but also
with two new works. There were no commissions in St. Petersburg. By
2004, Forsythe wasn’t making dances on ballet companies. We’ve seen
some of these works in New York for more than two decades.
Diana Vishneva, in a bright cherry red unitard where every knot in every muscle on her legs was visible, looked as sinewy in “Steptext” as if she were made of gristle. She is also shorter than most women who dance that role and it diminished her impact. Her three attendants/watchers/antagonists were the hunky duo of Mikhail Lobukhin and Igor Kolb along with baby-faced Alexander Sergeev. The Kirov dances Forsythe sculpturally; there’s no way for the dancers to escape their Vaganova training bred in the bone. Form matters to them as much as force. At the end, Vishneva still came to the footlights and took a grand scale Mariinsky bow to the knee.
“Steptext,” made for Aterballetto in 1985, is one of Forsythe’s essays into Ballet of Cruelty. All the usual tricks were there; in the middle of the work the house lights went up and the theater doors were opened much to the consternation of the audience and confusion of the ushers. They had to figure out exactly when they were supposed to open the doors (I overheard them arguing) and then had to explain to people that no, this was not a mistake. “Steptext” seemed like a sketch for the full-evening “Artifact.” Both works shred the same Bach cello partita – poor Johann! – and employ the same semaphore arms. However, “Steptext” isn’t a sketch, but a retread; “Artifact” was made the year before.
“Artifact,” revised and distilled by Forsythe a few years ago, has held up very well, but at these performances “Steptext” seemed dated – attitude without context. When Helene Alexopoulos at New York City Ballet hit a way-beyond-180 degree extension in “Behind the China Dogs” in 1988, though others had done it before, it still had shock value. When Vishneva went beyond 180 degrees in 2008, it seemed commonplace. And yet, the audience still seemed provoked. Was it provocation, or were they just annoyed?
The City Center stage is way too small for “In The Middle, Somewhat Elevated,” which closed the evening. The ballet should take place in a dark, empty vacuum. Crowded together, the Kirov dancers looked cramped and prim. Olesia Novikova kept smiling amiably as her ponytail bounced. It was all wrong, but still endearing. The primness burnt away when Victoria Tereshkina arrived in Sylvie Guillem’s role. Tereshkina doesn’t have Guillem’s freak show facility, but she is as tough as nails: a gun moll in pointe shoes. The central attitude of the ballet, something many dancers after the Parisians – who come with attitude seemingly out of the womb – have to playact, is right there and Tereshkina was corrosive and riveting in the part. Tall redhead Ekaterina Kondaurova took Isabelle Guerin’s role but was too cheery. Her statuesque quality would have worked in “Steptext,” and she took that role at the following performances.
“Approximate Sonata” began with Andrey Ivanov walking forward while scrunching up his face, and then talking briefly in Russian. Elena Sheshina (a fine, but frankly overweight, dancer) joined him for a pas de deux. Three other couples danced one couple at a time. “Approximate Sonata” and “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude” were created as a pair for Ballett Frankfurt in 1996 under the cynical, but in this case appropriate, portmanteau billing of “Two Ballets in the Manner of the Late XX Century.” “Vertiginous” has since joined the repertory of The National Ballet of Everywhere, “Approximate” is rarely seen. It has some of the same grating tropes that “Steptext” does, but as with that ballet, once one gets beyond them to the long stretches of pure dance, there is decidedly something to be seen.
Further into the work, the music drops down to spare piano chords and so do the pretensions; it’s just good dancing. The third pas de deux with Yana Selina and Anton Pimonov was almost angelic and Forsythe at his best. Sheshina and Ivanov returned at the end and they “rehearsed” for us, going over steps we’ve just seen and discussing among themselves the intricacies of partnering. Both of them are particularly comfortable with what Forsythe is asking for, not only in movement, yet it’s still the Mariinsky. When Ivanov sat to watch Sheshina as she danced, he torqued and braced himself just like Nijinsky’s faun. The curtain came down slowly and more slowly; the last thing to disappear were Sheshina’s feet, still in motion.
“Vertiginous” is Forsythe’s classical whackathon. I’d rather see Paris or St. Petersburg do “Vertiginous” “wrong” than San Francisco (to name a company that tries to be scrupulous about tempo) do it “right.” The three women (Elena Androsova, Ekaterina Osmolkina and Novikova substituting for Nadezhda Gonchar) took sky high arabesques, because they could. Osmolkina danced a liquid variation; finely honed golden boy Leonid Sarafanov let loose multiple turns profligately. Paired with Andrian Fadeev – also no slouch – it was a near white-out of blondness.
The Petersburgers don’t even attempt to keep to tempo; they seemed scandalously leisurely as the music excitedly trumpeted on. It was almost subversive, but it gave the ballet air and breath. “Vertiginous” went from being a frenzied cascade of steps to a tale of institutional absorption – Forsythe meets The Establishment. In a better world, that is what should have happened all along – détente, exchange, renewal and each party convinced that it affected the other more. But alas, that wasn’t the story, and Forsythe moved on to Tanztheater.
An evening of Forsythe shows that he isn’t the intellectual he seems to wish he were. Often the ideas are striking, but more often he pushes them too repetitively, or they’ve been gotten from elsewhere or worse, they're just not as interesting as he thinks they are. In proportion his theatrical tics would serve to focus rather than distract but the motion speaks far more eloquently than the ideas. And yet, carp away about Forsythe, he created seductive, exciting movement, and his choreography influenced ballet more than anyone else’s in the arid period after Balanchine and Ashton. We're still waiting for something better to come along. Like Paris, the Mariinsky has the institutional power to assimilate his choreography into its bloodstream. They needed to do these ballets, if only to acknowledge recent history. It would be all too Soviet to pretend that such things never existed.
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel
Photo: Irina Golub and Maxim Zyuzin in “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude”