New York City Ballet & Orchestra
"Carousel (A Dance)," "Glass Pieces," "Vienna Waltzes"
Opera House
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
March 30, 2013
by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright 2013 by Alexandra Tomalonis
There
aren’t many ballets that keep their opening night freshness for 20 years, but
Robbins’ “Glass Pieces” (1983), which was the centerpiece of the New York City
Ballet’s second program here, had first season clarity. If anything, it’s a
stronger work today, as the dancers are now comfortable with both choreography
and score.
“Glass Pieces” is one of the greatest tributes to a city in all of ballet. The first movement (“Rubric”) is built on walking. The curtain goes up, and instantly you’re on a street corner in New York – possibly one near Lincoln Center – watching people MOVE. They look like dancers, but these days dancewear is street wear, and the mixing of the real world and the imaginary is a large part of the work’s soul, so one can’t be sure. We only know that they walk at New York pace, their movements perfectly attuned to Glass’s mesmerizing, repetitive score, and the seemingly random, perfectly calculated, spacing of the dancers is an extraordinary choreographic feat. As they walk, a man and a woman in white unitards enter from the opposite side of the stage. Their slow jumps, which emphasize the landings, make them seem to have come from above. They touch ground and stand, as though taking a split second to regain their balance, and repeat. They don’t stay long, and they neither interfere nor mingle with the walkers. Dancers, or angels?
The walking and dancing is repeated, with a slightly different gesture added whenever Glass adds one of his subtle rhythmical changes. I could watch them forever.
In the second section (“Facades,”), there’s a pas de deux, a very lovely neoclassical pas de deux, beautifully danced on Saturday afternoon by Rebecca Krohn and Adrian Danchig-Waring. A line of women, backlit, move across the stage during the dance – nymphs, perhaps? “Antique Epigraphs” was made the year after “Glass Pieces,” and Robbins may well have already been thinking of the statues that inspired that ballet.
There are
other references to Robbins’ body of work. The final section (“Akhnaten”), opens
with men who could be the grandsons of the boys in “West Side Story,” and they
dance with Shark and Jet vigor. They’re not Broadway dancers, though. They’re
ballet dancers, as are the women, who enter after the men’s big dance, all
feminine lightness – nymphs, or girls at the dance? The ballet is a wonderful
mixture of Robbins’ two worlds – Broadway and ballet – and the contemporary
dance scene as well. Perhaps the very idea of a ballet choreographer making a
ballet to Glass’s music, which was novel in its time, is a comment on the
nature of ballet and contemporary dance. Many downtown dance choreographers
were using Glass and Reich music then. Can one be postmodern and neoclassical
in the same piece?, Robbins seems to ask, and proves it so.
“Glass Pieces” is still stunning, and It’s hard to imagine that the dancers could have been better. The New York Citiy Ballet Orchestra, conducted by Clotilde Otranto, deserves a big hand, too.
That “Glass Pieces” seemed so well-rehearsed and full of life was even more evident by the sad state of “Vienna Waltzes” – also a great tribute to a city – which, on Saturday afternoon at least, looked like a shaky dress rehearsal. The dancers seemed to have learned the steps, but not who they were supposed to be. “Tales from the Vienna Woods” looked like an American high school prom; “Explosions-Polka” was excessively coarse; and the “Gold and Silver Waltz” was the non-interaction of a couple (supposedly the Merry Widow and Prince Danilo) as the corps danced impassively around them. Sterling Hyltin and Gonzalo Garcia danced “Voices of Spring” very cleanly, but the ballet has lost its after-Bournonville style, and that changes Balanchine’s idea of showing the waltz in different times and environments.
The closing Rosenkavalier Waltz, the finale to end finales, simply looked tired, and the best indication of how disappointing the ballet was was the lack of applause as the waves of dancers swept onto the stage. There used to be three. To be fair, friends who attended the Saturday evening performance said that it was better then, but if Saturday afternoon was the first time you saw “Vienna Waltzes,” or (perish the thought) a Balanchine ballet, it would have been an unfortunate introduction.
The program
opened with Christopher Wheeldon’s “Carousel, (A Dance)” to a collection of
show tunes by Richard Rodgers. “Carousel” is certainly a pleasant ballet, and
was well danced by its large cast: 12 women, 8 men, two demi-soloist couples,
and a leading couple, here Lauren Lovette and Robert Fairchild. Everything is
set up for it to be a crowd pleasing opener, but the choreography isn’t strong
enough to pull that off, and it doesn’t equal Rodgers’ music. The score may be
show music, but it’s sophisticated show music.
One of the things that separates Wheeldon from many of his contemporaries is that he can characterize dancers, can bring out their individuality, or make roles porous enough so that they can dance in their own styles, and this is no mean achievement. But his corps choreography can be rather generic. Often, when watching a Wheeldon ballet, I think that he’s got a really solid structure, and some day will go back and enrich the dances. “Carousel” deserves that.
Photos by Paul Kolnik.