Rite of a Century

“Age of Innocence,” “After the Rain,” “Le Sacre du Printemps”
The Joffrey Ballet
Winspear Opera House
Dallas, TX
January 18, 2013

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2013 by Leigh Witchel

“The Rite of Spring” is about to hit 100. Nijinsky's epochal creation to Stravinsky's pounding score was first performed in Paris in 1913, marked by infamous rioting at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The ballet was all but lost, but in 1987 after painstaking research, Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer mounted a reconstruction for The Joffrey Ballet. A pivotal source was Marie Rambert's orchestral score annotated with Nijinsky's commentary.

Billed in the original French, “Le Sacre du Printemps” is in two parts, with a large cast divided into squadrons by sex, age and height. The mysterious rituals and auguries of the elders in the first part lead to the self-sacrifice of a chosen maiden in the closing half, with the hopes of fertile land and sustenance for the rest of the community for another year.

The Joffrey has brought the ballet back on tour for its centennial. What came to Dallas' Winspear Opera House seemed like a reasonable approximation of what the ballet looked like. What was missing was how it felt.

Much of that is lost to history no matter how faithful the revival. Several wars and the atom bomb, to say nothing of serialism and electronic music make it hard to viscerally appreciate why the Parisian audience revolted. Nicholas Roerich's designs for the Ballets Russes look quaint: crudely painted faces, floppy wigs, bearskin costumes that look like stuffed animals. The closest of modern day versions to that éclat is Michael Clark's “Mmm . . .” from 1992, where shock seemed to be its raison d'être. The only way Nijinsky's “Rite” works today is if it is attacked at full tilt as an experience, not a mausoleum.

The Joffrey is not a company to stint on energy, but there are style questions of style.  In Rambert's autobiography “Quicksilver,” she talks about the ballet's primitivism but her comments on Nijinsky's “Afternoon of a Faun” are pertinent. “Although they were incapable of understanding Nijinsky's intentions, the mere fact of faithfully copying his unique movements gave them the requisite style. He told them: no expressions in the face, you must just be as though asleep with your eyes open – like statues.”

“Rite” isn't “Faun” but it does have a similar pictorial inspiration. From the turned-in posture of the Chosen Maiden to her exhausting sacrificial dance, with tight jumps under herself and circling arms, the expression lives in the body. Erica Lynette Edwards acted her way through the solo. She was frightened, she tried to escape, she pleaded for mercy; her Chosen One became a female counterpart to Albrecht in “Giselle.” For an 21st century audience that was probably unfamiliar with the ballet and the myths behind it, that connected the dots and made it comprehensible. But it felt a giant step away from Nijinsky's intentions.

Christopher Wheeldon's “After the Rain” is less than a decade old, and set on the company by Jason Fowler. The company gives a solid performance – but one that also shows how little it takes to change a ballet's look and intention.

The Joffrey performs the full version for three couples, but the lynchpin of the ballet is the final duet, originally made for Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto before his retirement. It remains one of Wheeldon's most emotional works.

The company's de facto stars, Victoria Jaiani and Fabrice Calmels, took the roles. Jaiani has lines as extended as Whelan's; Calmels is an exceptional partner. The pas de deux was exquisitely sculpted. But if you saw Whelan and Soto, it was hard not to wish for less beauty and more immediacy. Jaiani did it like a ballerina, with far-away, gauzy looks and every phrase closing in a delicate pose. There was little of the sense of loss that made the duet so heart-wrenching.

The full ballet's casting seemed a stretch for the company. New York City Ballet always offered its tallest, longest-limbed women. The Joffrey doesn't have a garden of women to choose from with those proportions. One of the women's signature poses – a deep arabeque penchée facing us with a rotation of the hip so the leg goes parallel to the floor like an hour hand moving from noon to three – lost its effect without that extreme attack.

“Age of Innocence” by fellow NYCB alum Edwaard Liang's shares stylistic trappings with “After the Rain,” (he was a member of the original cast) particularly the distortions in the hips and arms of classical vocabulary, so they aren't the best pairing. The later work's costumes and crimson draperies give it a different look. But it was made on the Joffrey, and with the company's professionalism and commitment to performance, it deserves a work it knows intimately.

Per the program notes, inspired by the women in Jane Austen rather than Edith Wharton, the ballet is a large work for eight couples to a stitched-together score by Philip Glass and Thomas Newman. There were good sections for the men and women alone – Derrick Agnoletti and Temur Suliashvili flew through double saut de basques, and a climactic duet for Jaiani and Calmels.

She leapt up to him, he grabbed her foot and flipped her over his back to a shoulder sit. Several times he pressed her overhead – once with a single arm. She could unfold to full extension, and then rotate her leg from there without dropping it a centimeter. The two were dancing steps made on and for them, deftly judged for her jointlessness and his strength. They sold them impeccably.

copyright © 2013 by Leigh Witchel

Top: Photo by Herbert Migdoll, The Joffrey Ballet in “Le Sacre du Printemps”
Bottom: Fabrice Calmels and Victoria Jaiani in “Age of Innocence”