Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow Gala
Vladimir Vasiliev: A Gala Tribute to a Dance Legend
Youth America Grand Prix
New York City Center
New York, NY
March 27-28, 2010
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel
Youth America Grand Prix came back to City Center for its annual series of back-to-back galas that test the viewing stamina of the most seasoned balletomane. Each topping three hours, a gala isn’t the best way to see great dance, and there’s chaff mixed into the wheat, but there’s still always something that makes you glad to have gone.
The “Stars of Today” gala started with the top YAGP contestants performing followed by professional alumni and other ballet stars, punctuated by screams from the upper balconies where the students watch their peers and idols.
The contestants’ offerings can be enervating. Despite their talent, they’re performing short, showy numbers designed not to be good dances, but to win competitions. There were promising performances, particularly the young Flemish man who won a gold medal, Edo Wijnen. Wijnen, 17, was trained in Antwerp and will join the Dutch National Ballet; he performed a section from John Neumeier’s “Spring and Fall” looking like a mature and finished artist already.
In the long second half, Mathias Heymann and Mathilde Froustey were stereotypically French: elegant and aloof in the pas d’action from “Giselle” (gesturing to an imaginary Myrtha) and in a pas de deux choreographed by Manuel Legris. New York also got its first taste of Yevgenia Obraztsova, a beautiful Mariinsky dancer saddled with some not-so-beautiful choreography – an Eifman chair dance ripoff by Yuri Smekalov that was too unegregious to be true Eifman.
The last gala of the YAGP series, a tribute performance after the obligatory student performances have been dispensed with, is always the most substantial. Last year feted teacher Peter Pestov, this year, 70-year-old Vladimir Vasiliev. Though the Vasiliev tribute was stultifyingly long, it included a well-chosen film montage that gave a vivid sense of Vasiliev as an artist: virile, strong and stylish. A clip from his Act III variation from “Don Quixote” showed brio and elevation that would be hard to top today.
Two small choreographic rarities by Kasyan Goleizovsky, a contemporary of Balanchine, were, like the Jakobsen miniatures here earlier in the month, welcome visitors even if they only offered a tantalizing glimpse of Goleizovky’s style. Three short, very Russian, pieces by Vasiliev himself led off the first act. Obraztsova was a ripe-cheeked heroine out of Turgenev in his short “Sentimental Waltz.” It wasn’t much of a surprise when Ashley Bouder revealed herself as a closet Soviet ballerina. She took Vasiliev’s brief tarantella from “Anyuta” and used her extroverted and precise execution to further her quest to flirt with an entire audience at once.
Obraztsova was at her best in a pas d’action with Emmanuel Thibault from “La Sylphide.” The version is credited to Bournonville, but what is shown at galas as coming from Bournonville or Petipa might not be recognized by either man. The Russian strain of Bournonville is something else entirely involving huge jumps and pointe work, but Obraztsova was a delicate, Russian-style Sylph and Thibault showed off brilliant beats.
David Hallberg repeated Ashton’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits,” which he performed a few weeks earlier at Kings of the Dance. It’s an astute gala piece for him – Hallberg gives the work a beautiful, sculpted quality – and it added substance and choreography to the evening. The previous night, Joaquin De Luz also repeated a work seen at Kings of the Dance, “Five Variations on a Theme” by David Fernandez that was understandably lesser, but ingratiating.
Polina Semionova showed up both nights to impress us with her leggy technique. She did Bejart’s tepid “Romeo and Juliet” with Hallberg and a good bedroom duet from “Manon” with Marcelo Gomes, who is turning that pas de deux into a cottage industry.
Besides a joyously crass ballroom couple who might as well have arrived from Mars or Carnival Cruise Lines, two of the galas’ trouble spots were caused by partnering issues. “Stars and Stripes” is filled with finger turns that demand the partner be several inches taller than the ballerina. De Luz is too short to partner Tiler Peck in that. Joseph Phillips just couldn’t get a handle on Ana Sophia Scheller in “Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux” and the performance came perilously close to meltdown.
The evening closed the way only a gala can, with “Pièce d’Occasion” by Vasiliev, in which he performed The work, involved Vasiliev looking well-tailored in a blazer, 17-year-old Bolshoi dancer Daria Kkokhlova and the inevitable chair. Vasiliev confronted – or didn’t – his fading powers and Khokhlova was – or wasn’t – youth, an angel, or the shade of former partner Ekaterina Maximova – all rolling about on casters. The heartfelt, enigmatic, wildly emotional and just a touch vulgar vignette was “The Master Builder” for the age of Viagra.
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel