Wendy Whelan Farewell
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
October 18, 2014
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2014 by Leigh Witchel
Wendy Whelan’s farewell to New York City Ballet was everything it should have been; everything she deserved after a three decade career that rewrote the definition of a ballerina. The program showed her evolution, moving from her work in the core Balanchine-Robbins repertory to the roles created on her by Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon.
New York City Ballet applauding Wendy Whelan Photo © Paul Kolnik.
Whelan had great roles both in Balanchine and Robbins (her harrowing performance in “In Memory Of” redeemed a weak ballet) but she found her true self in the contemporary repertory. She could offer her virtues – intensity, commitment and honesty – without having to fake an ethereal passivity. She used that here to make the end of “La Sonnambula” work on her terms. When she reentered after The Poet’s death, her path was blocked by his lifeless body. Where once she had to step over and past him, this time she could acknowledge sensing him, and the tragedy she couldn’t see. Her body arced into a grand circle – had she been awake we would have called it grief.
After an intermission Whelan returned in Robbins’ “Dances at a Gathering” – but not in one of the final duets. Rather, she took a role she hadn’t done in a while, the Girl in Yellow within a sextet where she was tossed into a double air turn. The toss just about worked (at 47, there are things that don’t work as well as they once did). What was wonderful was Whelan’s visible pleasure at rediscovering the role – she smiled at every turn to discover which dancer was now by her side.
Moving into the present, Whelan performed a matched pair of roles made on her: the dusky nocturne from Ratmansky’s “Concerto DSCH” and the quintessential Whelan/Wheeldon duet, “After the Rain.” Again, how fitting in “DSCH” that even though she was the ballerina, she was part of a community, along with three couples who watch her and Tyler Angle in the gathering twilight, and separate them when it’s time to leave.
“After the Rain” was meant to be her sign-off. The most emotional piece Wheeldon ever composed, at its premiere Whelan danced the loss of her partner, Jock Soto. Now, on that bare pale landscape, swaying and drifting to the sparse violin and piano legato by Arvo Pärt, Craig Hall lifted, enveloped and protected Whelan – saying farewell.
It may have been meant to be the final bow in our eyes, but along with her other virtues, Whelan is unsentimental. We said goodbye, but she said hello. Instead, she closed with a debut, “By 2 With & From,” a short work made at her request by Wheeldon and Ratmansky to music she selected: Max Richter’s remix of sections of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” Hall and Angle returned to dance a trio that was a deceptively brief Wendy Whelan remix – each choreographer’s section recapitulated some of Whelan’s best characteristics from their partnerships. Wheeldon’s section was a never-ending phrase of Whelan being carried or pivoted, spiraling round, curling and uncurling or floating above the stage. Ratmansky’s brought Hall and Angle together in a jovial duet before ending with a totemic motif both dancemakers have used: Whelan braced standing on her partner’s thigh or chest; a sentinel towering above him.
For Wheeldon, Whelan distorts space – she’s “Bendy Wendy” – and he sees what shapes they can discover together. Even in the film excerpts shown to let Whelan catch her breath, he asked her to take a classical position and twist it further. Ratmansky doesn’t stray as far from canonical vocabulary. But on her entrances, the mood and speed changes. Lights darken, the tempo slows. For Ratmansky, Whelan’s essence was to distort time.
Moving from interpreting the past generation’s work to ballets made on her, Whelan shifted the playing field from one where she played by someone else’s rules, wearing clothing that didn’t quite fit, to her own turf – her strengths made into virtues. She was ethereal, but for her ethereality was not to be the passive, elusive hand-mirror for someone else’s reflection. She needed to be part of the team.
The final bow was as moving as anything that came before it. Three decades of partners paid homage, Peter Martins had a long, tender conversation with her we could only see rather than hear. She waltzed around the stage with Jacques d’Amboise. She’s not one for adulation – she dropped the flowers into a pile – the dancers, sensing the joke, threw each rose upon the floral pyre. When she came forward, it wasn’t to accept our applause but to extend her hand to us, acknowledging her debt and offering her thanks.
We refused to stop clapping and kept her there long enough that the theater turned up the house lights as a hint. She was tired and you could sense the embarrassment mixed with gratitude at the affection. As Whelan came forward, she looked out and saw us, and waved. We waved back. And at the outset, when the curtain first rose on her alone, her first gesture wasn’t a port-de-bras, but a simple extending of the arms to the side. The most declarative and direct of statements: “Here I am.”
As a senior ballerina, Whelan was a gentle maverick rather than a queen bee. She didn’t rebel against the system, but gained strength within it. Her exit was a grown-up’s. She chose how to leave, her repertory, even to do a new commission with music she requested. She evolved from a concept of herself as an instrument – one that got judged by others if it were acceptable or flawed – into a collaborator and interpreter, ready for her new incarnation in contemporary work. If only for that, she’s a role model for the next generation of dancers. As she joked in the film excerpts played between dances “I wasn’t a beautiful girl. [But] now . . .”
Au revoir Wendy – the most adult of ballerinas. You earned every bouquet.
copyright © 2014 by Leigh Witchel