Where Were You Sitting?

Weekend Debuts

New York City Ballet
"Theme and Variations", "The Four Temperaments", "I'm Old Fashioned"
Opera House, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC, USA
March 5, 2005 (matinee)

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright ©2005 by Alexandra Tomalonis

It's been an uneven week. An exciting "Glass Pieces" Thursday, and a glorious "Divertimento No. 15" Friday; a decidedly less than glorious "Theme and Variations" opening night. Last year, the trouble spot was "Concerto Barocco;" this year it was "Theme." Perhaps Andrea Quinn's conducting, which surely broke a speed record, was partly to blame. Saturday afternoon, she outraced the orchestra for a few seconds, let alone the dancers. But there were too many stumbles, too many falls off pointe, at both performances of "Theme" that I saw to be accidental. The ballet didn't look particularly underrehearsed, just badly underdanced by the corps and soloists. They don't seem to have the technical strength to get through it.

What We See is What We See

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra Tomalonis

Judged by the Washington ballet audience’s response to last week’s visit of the New York City Ballet, the one act ballet isn’t dead yet. Nor is it necessary to do pop ballet to sell out the house; I saw only a handful of empty seats in the orchestra back. After a season where several companies played to less than full houses and tickets were released to the half-price booths to fill seats, this must have been welcome news to the Kennedy Center and ballet lovers here alike. And what a nice 100th birthday present: Balanchine sells!

Wasn't It a Time?

Wasn't It a Time?
New York City Ballet's Forties Night

"Theme and Variations," "The Four Temperaments," "I'm Old Fashioned"
New York City Ballet
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
March 2, 2005

By Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright ©2005 by Alexandra Tomalonis

Every time I see Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments” I’m astonished at how modern it looks and wonder what it looked like to an audience when it was new (aside from the quickly discarded elaborate costumes; I mean the bones of it). Its spare construction and poetic imagery must have been a shock in 1946, when the Ballets Russes’ character and demi-caractere ballets were the standard fare.

The Great American Dancer

Concerto Barocco, Prodigal Son, Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2
New York City Ballet
Opera House, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C.
March 6 (matinee), 2004

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra Tomalonis

Who are the great American male dancers? And before you say “Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly,” add the word “ballet” to that sentence. You can count them on the fingers of one hand. Jacques d’Amboise and Edward Villella and…..some might add Fernando Bujones with an honorable mention for the late Patrick Bissell, surely a great American dancer in the making. The photo at left doesn't reflect the gender ratios of American ballet, but might be an allegory of the place of men in that world: the ballerina held aloft by a group of men, others, perhaps challengers, felled at her feet, and one young man struggling to rise.

Balanchine's Greatest Hits

Serenade, Apollo, Symphony in C
New York City Ballet
Opera House, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C.
March 3, 2004

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra Tomalonis
published 4 March 2004

When the New York City Ballet last danced in Washington, the Iran-contra scandal was in full swing, Al Gore had yet to invent the internet, and I was writing on a Macintosh with 512k of RAM. Seventeen years is a long time. The company came here for three weeks every winter, right after its New York winter season, and danced three programs each week. During the 1970s and early 1980s, “our” ballets were the new ones Balanchine and Robbins had just created—pieces from the Stravinsky and Ravel Festivals, Chaconne, Vienna Waltzes, Union Jack, Mozartiana, The Four Seasons, Tchaikovsky Piano Pieces—mixed with the older classics. Having this much fine choreography was important to the young Kennedy Center and the audience it was trying to develop; it helped educate our eyes and, if you’re into choreography, presented a measuring stick by which to judge other new work.

The company has returned with a Balanchine's Greatest Hits season, part of its year-long Balanchine celebration, in this, his 100th annivesary year. Save for Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, all of the ballets have been seen here fairly frequently in the past 17 years danced by other companies, and often danced very well. How would the ballets look on their home company?

Public and Private

Jewels
New York City Ballet
Opera House, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C.
March 5, 2004

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra Tomalonis

There are as many facets to George Balanchine’s three-act plotless ballet, Jewels, as there are to a diamond. It’s a ballet about atmosphere, about music, about the countries and eras associated with that music, about styles of dance, about its dancers. Jewels illustrates perfectly Balanchine’s oft-repeated line: “You put a man and a woman on stage, how much story do you want?” because the ballet can be seen as a series of unspecified, unknowable conversations between a man and a woman, the corps in each act echoing the soloists’ moods and steps as nonjudgmentally as the swans and sylphs in the 19th century ballets from which this one descends. Each ballet also suggests differences in public and private behavior, expressions of which are appropriate to the setting and atmosphere.