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Two Premieres at New York City Ballet

“Sky to Hold,” “Suspended Animation,” “Western Symphony”
David Koch Theater, Lincoln Center
New York, New York
October 2, 2021

by Gay Morris
copyright 2021 by Gay Morris

Last week, New York City Ballet premiered two works that pointed toward an expanding reach into the twenty-first century. It is a healthy sign in a company that often seems to have settled into a narrow repertory that looks to the past in works dominated by Robbins and Balanchine, and choreographers influenced by Balanchine or the Russian school.

Both “Sky to Hold,” choreographed by Andrea Miller, and “Suspended Animation,” by Sidra Bell, challenged what some undoubtedly consider the company’s duty to the old guard. For this, one can only thank directors Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan. Whelan in particular was adventuresome in pursuing new dance avenues after leaving City Ballet as a principal in 2014. With her return as associate artistic director in 2019, the repertory is being shaken up a bit. This is not to say a revolution has occurred. It is hardly that, but new directions are being explored, and they are welcome.

Domestic vs, Foreign?

Domestic vs, Foreign?

Book: "Todd Bolender, Janet Reed, and the Making of American Ballet"

by Martha Ullman West

University Press of Florida, 2021

388 pages with black/white photos

 

by George Jackson
copyright 2021 by George Jackson

The noisiest individual about nationality in dance in the America of the 20th Century was Lincoln Kirstein - sponsor, writer, would-be patriot. Never mind that the choreographer he admired the most, George Balanchine, was from Russia by way of Serge Diaghilev's international Ballets Russes. Kirstein advocated against what he considred the "superficial" Americanism of choreographers such as Leonide Massine in ballets like "Union Pacific". In contrast, to represent the beginnings of American ballet, the two individuals our author West has chosen are neither the most likely nor the least likely. Todd Bolender (1914 - 2006) began as a modern dancer. Janet Reed (1916 - 2000) was often classified as a balletic soubrette. Bolender and Reed did not even meet until the fall of 1939. Mrs. West might instead have picked the dramatic Nora Kaye or one of the explorative Littlefield sisters and a Christensen brother or Eugene Loring to represent America ballet. But she is unwavering that Bolender and Reed serve history best. These two met again in the 1940s, and became occasional dance partners but lifelong friends. Bolender was a prolific choreographer in the USA, Germany and Turkey. Reed was a prominent dancer with such major companies as (American) Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. The book by Mrs. West details the course of their careers and the growth of American ballet. 

A Few Thoughts on Alexei Ratmansky's "Harlequinade"

Harlequinade

Choreography by Marius Petipa
Staging and Additional Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Assisted by Tatiana Ratmansky
Music by Ricardo Drigo
Scenery and Costumes by Robert Perdziola (inspired by Orest Allegri and Ivan Vsevolozhsky)
First performed: 1900 at the Hermitage Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, with the title Les Millions d’Arlequin

 

Harlequin, who loses and regains his love  and his life AND is rewarded with wealth by  the Good Fairy, may well be the perfect hero for our time. Who wouldn’t want to be Harlequin?

Harlequin and his love, Columbine, as well as their friends, Pierrot and Pierrette, have been enchanting audiences since at least the late 16^thcentury. They were principal characters of the commedia dell’arte, which traveled all over Europe with its stock characters recognizable by everyone and stories that had been around for centuries. The stories are timeless and pop up in other ballets. This one – of a pretty young girl who falls in love with a poor young man to the displeasure of her father, who wants to marry her off to a totally unsuitable suitor or an old, rich man – supplies plots for such works as La Fille Mal Gardee and Don Quixote. It still makes us laugh. (There is something wondrously chilling about watching a story that one knows made one’s 15^thgreat-grandparents laugh too.)

Photo copyright American Ballet Theatre.

Malcolm John McCormick

OBITUARY
MALCOLM JOHN McCORMICK
OCTOBER 30 1927 – 29 DECEMBER 2017

------------- 

MALCOLM McCORMICK, DANCER, COSTUME DESIGNER, DANCE HISTORIAN DIES AT 90 

Malcolm John McCormick, a multidimensional artist of exceptional cultural and intellectual breadth, passed away on December 29^th following complications due to a stroke. Born on October 30^th 1927 in Gouverneur, upstate New York, McCormick was a noted dancer, award-winning and influential costume designer, author, academic, researcher and authority on dance and theater. He was 90 years old.

After graduating from Canton High School in 1945, McCormick headed for New York to pursue studies in art. He there discovered his true vocation, dance. “I had only one friend in NYC,” he wrote, “and while sketching her in classes at Carnegie Hall I realized that it was the only thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life…dance, that is.”

McCormick studied with Zachary Solov, Nanette Charisse and Antony Tudor. His most influential instructors were Margaret Craske, who coached him in Cecchetti technique, and Mia Slavenska, one of the 20^th century’s most brilliant dancers, and a formidable technician.  As a soloist with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet (1951-59), he partnered among others Slavenska and guest artist Mary Ellen Moylan, George Balanchine’s “first” ballerina. Like many dancers of his day, McCormick also appeared in musicals, summer stock, on TV, in spectaculars and performed across the USA the country as well as in Paris and other European venues.

            In a dance career spanning three decades, 1940s-1960s, McCormick was a contemporary and friend to a diversity of luminaries and notables in the dance world. He maintained a lifelong personal and professional friendship with Slavenska, and in later years worked closely with her on codifying and recording her training method. When she passed away in 2002, he accompanied her ashes to Croatia, her homeland, and attended the weeklong celebration honoring her career in Zagreb. He was historical consultant and interviewee for Emmy award-winning film “Mia: A Dancer’s Journey” co-produced by Slavenska’s daughter Maria Ramas. “Loved her for teach[ing me] so much about dance,” he wrote.

An award-winning costume designer, McCormick created designs for productions at the Metropolitan Opera. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Limon Dance Company, Murray Louis Dance Company, Pennsylvania Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Lincoln Center Repertory Company, as well as many individual performers were among his commissions. He gifted his designs to novice troupes such as Pilobolus. When his costumes for “Mary Stuart” at the LCRC won him the Billboard Critics Award, the citation read “… for the most beautiful costumes of [that] Broadway season.” The Chujoy/Manchester Dance Encyclopedia credits him with having “… a considerable influence on modern dance, scenically and in costuming.” The National Museum of Dance, Saratoga Springs, held a major retrospective exhibition of his dance costume designs (May-November 2017), selected from an archive of 250 drawings donated to the institution by the artist. A dancer, he was a member of the United Scenic Artists Union.

McCormick was also a noted dance historian. In 2003, Yale University press published “ No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century.” The magisterial 900 page-plus tome was co-authored with Nancy Reynolds, renowned writer, critic and Director of Research at the George Balanchine Foundation. It chronicled one hundred years of developments in ballet, modern and experimental dance for stage and screen in Europe and North America, while setting dance in broader cultural and historical contexts. The book, researched over twenty years, was the subject of laudatory reviews in the general media and the dance press, both in the USA, including in the New York Times Book Review, and in Canada, the UK, Germany and Russia. Of her co-author, Reynolds states: “I have the highest regard for Malcolm McCormick as a scholar and thinker…During our lengthy collaboration … I found Malcolm to be an outstanding researcher and synthesizer of material, and his conceptual thinking was often excitingly ‘outside the box.’  He also had a grasp of social, cultural, and philosophical issues as they could be brought to bear on the world of dance.”  Reynolds commissioned several articles from McCormick for the International Encyclopedia of Dance.

After obtaining an M.A. in 1968 from the Dance Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), McCormick joined the faculty, where he taught costume design and construction, and designed for performance and degree productions at the department. He was a guest lecturer at California Institute of the Arts as well as other universities for many years.

McCormick retired in 1979, and settled in his birthplace of Gouverneur, then in nearby Canton, NY.

New York City Ballet's 2015 Spring Season Review - part 1

New York City Ballet
April 28 – June 7
David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center 

by Gay Morris
copyright 2015 by Gay Morris 

New York City Ballet is noted for the diversity and size of its repertory, however the company outdid itself in its spring season, offering not just a bouquet, but an entire garden of ballets. The proceedings began in May with three programs of Balanchine’s stripped down, modernist “black and white” ballets, and ended six weeks later with the choreographer’s opulent, full-length narrative work, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In between there was a program that managed to successfully combine Jerome Robbins’ baroque-inspired “The Goldberg Variations” with his clamorous paen to street gangs, “West Side Story Suite,” and further repertory that included recent works by young choreographers and a new work (at least for the company) from a 19^th century Danish choreographer, August Bournonville.

It was Bournonville’s “La Sylphide,” that received the most pre-season attention. Not that Bournonville is unknown to NYCB. The important Danish teacher, Stanley Williams, was a presence in the men’s classes at the School of American Ballet for many years. In the 1970s Balanchine asked him to create a ballet based on Bournonville excerpts for the company. “Bournonville Divertissements” was premiered in 1977 and has been in the repertory from time to time since then. It was performed this season as a prelude to “La Sylphide.” In addition, Peter Martins, who has directed the company since Balanchine’s death, was a principal at the Royal Danish Ballet before joining NYCB. He originally staged this production of “La Sylphide” for Pennsylvania Ballet in 1985, only now bringing it to his own company. Despite this extensive interaction between New York and Denmark, the dancers who appeared in the two casts I saw of “La Sylphide” and “Bournonville Divertissements” seemed to have little idea of Bournonville style. Why Martins didn’t insist on more accuracy is a mystery. What was missing most was the lightness of the jumps and the beautifully articulated shoulders, arms and torsos that are so much a part of Bournonville style. Here is how the great Danish dancer, Erik Bruhn, described that style in his book on Bournonville technique: “His variations are full of fascinating and unexpected changes of épaulement and direction, and they usually cover the whole stage. The dancers seem to dart and skim over its surface, and sometimes they really soar.” He complained that many English and American choreographers stressed line over ballon and elevation. It is interesting to consider this observation in relation to Balanchine. Perhaps his greater interest in women’s dancing over men’s would account for an emphasis on line. As for the question of épaulement, one could argue that Balanchine favored geometry over the sinuous line, and it was partially because of it that his choreography appears modernist.  

In the performances of “Bournonville Divertissements,” most of the dancers looked as if they were struggling with the combination of demanding beats coupled with the constant changes of direction. There was also the challenge of doing pirouettes from a second position preparation instead of the more customary fourth. But it was the lack of épaulement that was most absent. It made the dances look flat and far less nuanced than they should have been. Even the formidable Theresa Reichlen, who usually conquers all, looked slightly uncomfortable and her movement blurred, especially in the small, very fast transition steps that are also a hallmark of Bournonville style. She danced the “Flower Festival in Genzano” duet with Tyler Angle. The strongest dancing in “Bournonville Divertissements” came from Joseph Gordon in a solo that he performed in both of the casts I saw. Tall and blond, he has presence and showed the necessary clarity in his jumps and beats. Although still a member of the corps, he was notable in several solo roles throughout the season, particularly “The Goldberg Variations.”

Of the two principal casts I saw in “La Sylphide,” Lauren Lovette and Anthony Huxley made a stronger impression than Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia. Yet although Lovette was lighter in her presentation than Peck, neither of the women appeared to understand that the Sylph is not human, but a supernatural creature who only superficially resembles a human. Both Lovette and Peck made her appear too flesh-and-blood, her actions too emphatic and realistic. The Sylph is also, of course, a symbol of James’ yearning for something beyond the safe bourgeois world of home. He pays a terrible price for what was viewed, at least by 19^th century keepers of the status quo, as a delusion. Of the two casts, the only dancer who truly succeeded was Huxley, whose refined technique and natural ballon served him well. He had the precision and speed for his solos, and he also proved to be a surprisingly effective actor. He is most often cast in roles that call for pure dancing, but here he was understated yet deeply immersed in the role, making James a far more sympathetic character than usual.

“La Sylphide” was not helped by Susan Tammany’s sets and costumes, particularly the second act forest scene, which she depicted as something resembling a Fauvist painting, in intense unnatural colors that clashed with the sense of romantic mystery that the scene should evoke. Her Highland costumes, too, could have used a bit of toning down. In some instances they approached the garish, especially in the brilliant violet of James’ kilt.

Fortunately, the Bournonville ballets were an exception in a season that otherwise held many fascinations. It was, for example, instructive to see three programs of Balanchine’s black and white, or leotard, ballets on consecutive programs. These were the works that Balanchine chose to present in variations of practice dress, ostensibly to show the body clearly, but more practically to save the company money, at least at the beginning, in its more impoverished years.

Balanchine’s first major ballet, “Apollo,” was the earliest of these works offered, although when it was premiered in 1928 it not only had a set and costumes, it had a narrative (Apollo’s birth and growth to adulthood). Balanchine eliminated these details over time, until today there is not even the staircase that used to lead toward Mt. Olympus. Adrian Danchig-Waring was an Apollo I had never seen before, and although he does not have the physical beauty or magnetic stage presence of Chase Finlay and Robert Fairchild, two company principals who often dance the role, he brought a freshness to the part that was charming, especially in the early sections of the ballet. Danchig-Waring is an intelligent artist who, like several other company members, has grown substantially over the last few years, and he is likely to deepen his interpretation as he continues to perform the role. Tiler Peck as Terpsichore, his primary muse, danced with her usual musicality, but her natural warmth had to be tamped down here, which made her less suited to Terpsichore than cooler dancers. 

READ MORE:  Go to Part 2: http://danceviewtimes.typepad.com/danceview/2015/06/new-york-city-ballet-review-part-2.html

Photos:
Adrian Danchig-Waring in Balanchine's "Apollo." Photo by Paul Kolnik.
Anthony Huxley in Bournonville's "La Sylphide." Photo by Paul Kolnik.

New York City Ballet Review - Part 2

NY City Ballet Review - part 2
by Gay Morris

“Apollo” was followed by “Agon” (1957), the third in Balanchine’s Greek trilogy (The second, “Orpheus,” was not included, since it includes costumes and a more defined narrative). Maria Kowroski and Amar Ramasar danced the central duet originated by Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell. Kowroski started the season on a strong note. In the past she has often appeared anxious and slightly awkward, as if her tall stature and long legs hampered her movement. “Agon” showed her with new confidence and speed while Ramasar, whose technique has improved immensely in recent seasons, looked equally strong and confident. His body is newly stretched and taut, creating dance images of  power. Throughout the season, he showed his range in both dramatic roles, including Death in “La Valse,” and in works that called for pure dancing. Rebecca Krohn and Andrew Veyette were the second couple. Although Krohn is efficient and cheerful, she doesn’t yet show the command of a principal dancer or the individual use of technique that makes a major dancer interesting. Veyette, on the other hand, came back from an injury in the winter to dance with tremendous verve and energy. I usually think of him in dramatic roles, but his solo in the Sarabande had a new elegance and virtuosity that was a pleasure to see, and which was equally apparent in the first movement of “Symphony in C.”

Kowroski and Ramasar also appeared in “Stravinsky Violin Concerto” from 1972, where they again made a vivid impression, this time in the company of Sterling Hyltin, partnered by Ask la Cour. Both of the central duets stress extreme movements, relating the ballet to “Agon.” Kowroski was the lead in more Stravinsky/Balanchine, this time “Monumentum pro Gesualdo” (1960) and “Movements for Piano and Orchestra” (1963), where she again had complete command of the technical aspects of the work, giving her room to add expressive details and to connect with her partner, Ask Le Cour, with an occasional look and smile.

It was interesting to see “Episodes” once again, the 1959 ballet in which Balanchine attempted to show that he, and not Martha Graham, was the real vanguard modernist of American dance. The project, probably conceived by Lincoln Kirstein, who had long sought to wrest the modernist mantle from modern dance, pitted the two choreographers in a “collaborative” venture, in which each used Webern music to create a separate work, mostly for their own companies (among the few cross-over dancers were Paul Taylor, who appeared in Balanchine’s ballet, and Sally Wilson in Graham’s).  For her segment, Graham created a costume drama in which she portrayed Mary Queen of Scotts, while Balanchine produced a stark, plotless ballet full of choreographic complexity and unfamiliar, acrobatic movement. A sibling of “Agon,” which he had premiered 18 months earlier, “Episodes” features duets in which four ballerinas execute high extensions and twisted poses. The Graham part of the program soon disappeared, not only from NYCB but from Graham’s own repertory, but Balanchine’s ballet survives (minus Taylor’s solo). This season’s performances marked a rare appearance of Jennie Somogyi, looking totally at ease, despite dancing infrequently.

Ashley Bouder was featured in several of the leotard ballets, including “Duo Concertant” and “Square Dance.”  For the former, choreographed in 1972, she was partnered with Huxley, which was a mistake. One can imagine Huxley dancing this work, which needs a touch of vulnerability, with Sterling Hyltin or even Megan Fairchild, but Bouder is a powerhouse who didn’t so much partner with him as bulldoze on alone.  She is an extravert of great technical ability but little mystery, which did not work well here. She was much more successful in “Square Dance,” one of Balanchine’s odes to the American vernacular, which he produced during the height of the Cold War. Thank goodness he dispensed with the hoedown caller soon after the ballet’s premiere in 1957. Although he incorporated some square dance patterns, they now look perfectly in keeping with the Corelli/Vivaldi score, showing, perhaps, that American folk dances evolved gradually from the loftier heights of court dance. This ballet is loaded with beats and jumps of every description, including the infamous gargouillade, an egg-beater-like jump that has the feet whirling in opposite directions. Bouder looked happily at home with all the ballet’s challenges. Her partner, Taylor Stanley, was much better matched to her ebullient personality than Huxley. Although his solo in the ballet is slow and reflective, his dancing has an emphatic kind of amplitude that complemented Bouder’s energy.

“Symphony in Three Movements,” a large-scale work created for the Stravinsky Festival in 1972, was, paradoxically, the only black and white ballet to include color: the central three ballerinas wear varied shades of pink leotards. Sterling Hyltin took on the main ballerina role, which she danced with new-found power, partnered by Stanley. Ultimately, though, this is a ballet in which the corps of sixteen women is triumphant. They take the stage like Amazons bestriding the earth, their hair, worn in long pony tails, slashing the space around them. The finale is a monumental deployment of group movement on stage.

In contrast, “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” created for the 1975 Ravel Festival, made a pleasant respite from the hard-lined mechanics of most of the other ballets on these opening programs. It is a charming work for eight couples, mostly from the corps de ballet, which features two quadrilles of dancers in intricate patterns of movements that include none of the lifts and high extensions usually seen in couples’ dances. Or, I should say, there are no lifts until the very end, which includes one joyous sweep upward to crown the finale.

Two more works were included in the black and white programs, these being among the most famous of Balanchine’s choreographies. “Concerto Barocco” (1948) when danced by Sara Mearns and Teresa Reichlen, seems to be the epitome of how the two ballerina roles should be danced. These women are like fire and ice, Mearns all baroque flourishes and ravishing bends, Reichlen cool and precise, like a slim knife slicing through the movement. It was delightful to see Justin Peck, the company’s young resident choreographer, fulfilling his other role as a company soloist. He brought to his duet with Reichlen a disciplined focus, as if guiding her through the steps, experiencing the dance and at the same time analyzing each of its movements.

However, if “Concerto Barocco,” with Reichlen and Mearns, seems to be exactly how this ballet should be danced, “The Four Temperaments” (1946) in its current incarnation, is much the opposite. Most of it seems out of control, exaggerated to the point of parody. The first solo “Melancholic” as danced by Gonzalo Garcia, looked like more like a nervous breakdown, while Ashley Bouder’s Choleric was angry enough to be mistaken for Medea. The corps movement, too, was grossly exaggerated, oddly resembling Graham at her most over-the-top. This movement was inspired by jazz, not Greek tragedy. A little more of the Balanchine command, “don’t think, just dance,” would be in order. The only artist who grasped the concept of the work was Ramasar in the Phlegmatic solo, giving it a contemplative element that recalled Kirstein’s description of the role as an “acrobatic mendicant.”

One last word on these Balanchine ballets, which once seemed so radical. Seeing them together now, they look distinctly mid-century modern, in line with Eero Saarinen’s terminal at JFK Airport, Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, and fin-tailed automobiles. The jazz references recall the cool of Miles Davis or Stan Getz. In short, they are of their time, when a postwar US was flexing its muscles and feeling the full extent of its power. 

READ MORE:  Go to http://danceviewtimes.typepad.com/danceview/2015/06/highlights-of-the-rest-of-the-spring-season-included-mearns-in-balanchines-walpurgisnacht-ballet-1980-which-allow.html

Photos:
Amar Ramasar and Maria Kowroski in Balanchine's "Agon." Photo by Paul Kolnik.
Dancers of the New York City Ballet in Balanchine's "Symphony in 3 Movements." Photo by Paul Kolnik.
Teresa Reichlen, Sara Mearns and Company in Balanchine's "Concerto Barocco." Photo by Paul Kolnik.

New York City Ballet 2015 Spring Season Review - Part 3

NY City Ballet Review - part 3
by Gay Morris

Highlights of the rest of the spring season included Mearns in Balanchine’s “Walpurgisnacht Ballet” (1980), which allowed her to engage the full panoply of her powers in a role that moves from cool classicism to wild fire. Also in this ballet, corps dancer Alexa Maxwell made a vivid impression as the soloist, showing she already understands how to control movement to make it speak eloquently.

Tiler Peck had some of her best moments in Balanchine’s seldom seen “Sonatine”(1975) and in Christopher Wheeldon’s “Mercurial Manoeuvers”(2000), both of which suited her musicality and warmth. In “La Valse” (1951), Sterling Hyltin danced the kind of fragile woman we associate her with. I wish I had seen her in “La Sylphide,” since she is the one NYCB ballerina who seems to possess the quality of fey vulnerability necessary for the role.  “La Valse,” created in 1951, bears the marks of the neoromanticism that Balanchine favored earlier in his career with works like “Cotillon” (1932) and “La Sonnambula” (originally “Night Shadow” 1946), the latter of which is one of Hyltin’s signature roles. But Hyltin was also impressive in Robbins’ “The Goldberg Variations,” looking fleet and elegant. This ambitious ballet, created in 1971, is notable for its length (at least an hour) and the fact that Robbins managed never to run out of inventive ideas in it. The movement for each of the individual variations ranges from the simplicity of patterned walks to highly virtuosic duets for the three central couples. To proceed from this formal work to “West Side Story Suite” (1995) was enough to cause whiplash, but it proved Robbins was versatile enough to handle both. It wasn’t a particularly good rendering of “West Side Story Suite,” although Georgina Pazcoguin gave her usual high voltage performance as Anita and Veyette was in excellent form as Riff. But the work looked under-rehearsed and the characterizations uncommitted and undefined. Justin Peck, replacing Ramasar, was miscast as Bernardo, a knife-wielding Latin gang leader being far too great a stretch for this quiet dancer.

Not that Peck lacks passion, but it is reserved for his choreography. His “Rōdē,ō: Four Dance Episodes,” which was the hit of the winter season, was given four additional performances in the spring, to equally rapturous reception. It is not set to the Copland ballet music, but to Copland’s composition on four themes from the ballet. Peck created his own response to the themes, with what might be read as slight references to the original ballet.

Set for sixteen men and one woman, it focuses on the men of the cast, perhaps the only male centered ballet in NYCB repertory. The 1942 Agnes de Mille work, for which Copland wrote the ballet score, is a narrative piece about a girl in a man’s world. Peck’s is a man’s world too, but one in which the costume references are to sports like soccer and running rather than western rodeos. There is a girl here, too, but she is the center of attention only in the duet. What is interesting is that this man’s world is not one of aggressive competition, but more generally of male camaraderie and trust. What competition exists is playful and good humored. Consequently when the girl appears, the men look at her as if in recognition, but they don’t compete for her and they don’t intrude on the lovers’ dance. This is not a masculine world that is usually emphasized, but it certainly exists. One thinks of the “band of brothers” soldiers speak of, or of close knit teams of players who depend on each other to win.

The ballet starts with the men lined up and crouched like runners at the beginning of a race, reinforcing the sports metaphor. In two of the episodes the movement is rambunctious and virtuosic, and in another, meditative and yearning. It is the slow section that is the most moving, with the men supporting the central dancer, Taylor Stanley, as if he dreams of a desired future, or a painful past. At various points, Peck makes excellent use of synchronized group movement to emphasize an exhilarating sense of power and drive, as the men move across the stage in bold jumps and turns. He chose his principal dancers carefully – Ramasar, Garcia, Daniel Ulbricht, Veyette, and Mearns – but he also gave great dancing opportunities to every man in the cast, and they deliver with total commitment. Although Peck has shown remarkable promise in his earlier ballets, “Rōdē,ō” is in my view a breakthrough, where he has finally freed himself from the influential choreographers whose work dominates NYCB’s repertory, and found his own voice.

The other works that were most notable during the season were all short and came together in one program, separated by pauses between each: Liam Scarlett’s “Funerailles,” Troy Schumacher’s “Clearing Dawn,” Jean Pierre Frohlich’s “Varied Trio (in Four)” and Christopher Wheeldon’s duet from “This Bitter Earth.” The Scarlett, Schumacher and Frohlich pieces were premiered at last year’s NYCB gala, while Wheeldon’s ballet was choreographed in 2012. All but “Clearing Dawn” were duets. Scarlett, who is the major choreographer for the Royal Ballet, showed his roots in a dance that looked like “Mayerling” revisited. It was one of those male/female struggles, much beloved by Kenneth Macmillan, where the man tosses the woman around and she comes back for more. The most interesting aspect of it were the costumes, designed by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, and which consisted of an extravagant black and white ball gown for her and an 18^th century style jacket for him, worn loose over a bare chest. It was danced by Gretchen Smith and Zachary Catazaro with the cold-blooded zeal it called for.

Far more inventive was “Clearing Down,” set for six dancers, which started with disappearing coats, and went on to a kind of group play that stressed both fighting gestures and show off ones. Although it included dancers from all three ranks – principals, soloists and corps – everyone danced equally as part of a group. There was an informality and sense of fun about the work, even in the child-like conflicts, which no one seemed to take very seriously. But the most notable aspect of the dance was its lack of classical vocabulary. Schumacher, who is a soloist with the company, pushed beyond the usual steps and gestures of the danse d’école to find expanded forms of expression, and he succeeded very well.  I look forward to seeing what he will do next.

Jean-Pierre Frohlich, a former member of NYCB and now a ballet master, set his beautiful “Varied Trio (in Four)” to music of Lou Harrison. The composer’s gamelan influenced score must have also influenced the choreography, which included many sinuous arm gestures coupled with occasional sharp, percussive ones. It was danced by Hyltin and Ramasar in sky blue leotards against a darker cerulean cyclorama. As in Schumacher’s piece, Frohlich seemed to be searching beyond the classical ballet vocabulary for inventive movement forms, and like Schumacher, he also succeeded, although in quite a different way. Here the dancers were like fluttering ribbons of motion, entwining and parting, then coming together in ever changing shapes and images.

“This Bitter Earth,” the final of the four works, added another dimension to this varied quartet. Using film music by Max Richter and Dinah Washington, the dance stressed sliding and swooping movement that played off of both the melancholy music and the poignant lyrics of Washington’s song of sadness and hope. The duet featured Tiler Peck, at her finest, partnered by an equally fine Tyler Angle. Peck always seems to me a quintessentially contemporary dancer, and Wheeldon’s works are admirable vehicles for her.

As mentioned at the beginning of this review, NYCB has always been a company that stressed a varied repertory, although Balanchine’s ballets were at its core. Peter Martins must be applauded not only for carrying on that tradition, but expanding it in extremely productive ways. A recent New York Times article noted that for those wanting to hear new music, they would be better off attending NYCB than the New York Philharmonic. Martins has also not only engaged the finest contemporary choreographers, he has founded an institute that helps nurture new choreographic talent. These elements put NYCB in a league of its own, and New York audiences are the beneficiaries.

Photos:
Sara Mearns in Balanchine’s “Walpurgisnacht Ballet”. Photo by Paul Kolnik.
"Rodeo." Photo by Paul Kolnik.
"Rodeo." Photo by Paul Kolnik.

Kathrine Sorley Walker (1920 – 2015)

One of the dance world’s best known writers over many years, Kathrine Sorley Walker has died, apparently in her sleep, the night of 14 – 15 April 2015. Born on 5 March 1920 in Aberdeen and proud of her Scottish heritage, she lived in London most of her life and became an ardent traveler. Sorley Walker studied at colleges in London and Besancon, France. Her mother had introduced her to the ballet and her first published review (during or just after World War 2) was of modern dancer Pola Nirenska (a Mary Wigman pupil). The daytime work Sorley Walker did included curatorial services for the London Archives of the Dance (now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum), editing for Geographical magazine (1951-1956), and then for  many years she assisted literary agent Helga Guinness Greene. At night, Sorley Walker reviewed for The Playgoer (1951-1961), then for the Daily Telegraph newspaper (1962 – 1995), eventually becoming its principal dance critic. To the end she also wrote for specialty publications such as Dance Chronicle, Dance International, Dance Now, Dancing Times and DanceView, as well as entries for the Encyclopedia Britannica. She was a meticulous historian and her books and monographs are considered standard references. They focus on institutions such as DeBasil’s Ballets Russes and Britain’s Royal Ballet as well as on individuals, among them Ninette DeValois, Robert Helpmann, Andree Howard and Cyril W. Beaumont. She was co-editor of her mentor A.V. Coton’s collected criticism and of crime mystery author Raymond Chandler’s correspondence and speeches. Reading who-done-it? novels was her favorite past time. She also was a published poet and wrote children’s books about Sultan Saladin and Joan of Arc. 

 

Kathrine had friends and acquaintances in many countries with whom she shared her admiration of, especially, the art of dance. Yet she remained a very private lady in some ways. During her adult life, only her solicitor knew her birth year for sure. After  learning of Kathrine’s death, I sat down to read again in her “DeBasil’s Ballets Russes” (Hutchinson, 1982).  Amazing how her prose propels the reader along, yet also tempts one to linger.  

 

__George Jackson

The Cup of Trembling

At age 58, I lost my long-time job in journalism, and entered a period of depression and wandering, looking around for something to do. That’s when I started writing about dance, first for Ballet Talk and then for www.danceviewtimes.com. I also signed up to volunteer at the School of American Ballet. The following is adapted from my memoir, “A Beginner’s Life – The Adventures of Tom Phillips.”  

My wife Debra showed me an item in the School of American Ballet newsletter that Cassie brought home. SAB needed tutors for foreign students attending public schools in New York. These kids spent most of their time in the dance studio, and their heavy work load plus the language barrier made school difficult, if not impossible. So I signed up to help them with their homework. I spent hours every week with dancers from Asia and Latin America, explaining US history, reading Macbeth out loud, smuggling in Cliff Notes for a Korean boy who didn’t have time to read Les Miserables.

Heart and Spleen: Confessions of a Strike-breaker

by Tom Phillips

The strike is o’er, the battle done, the victory o’er me is won.

Three years ago, mad as hell about New York City Ballet’s plan to triple and quadruple ticket prices, I and a few other balletomanes declared an audience strike against our long-time beloved ballet company.  We hoped a boycott and protest would shake up the management, and force a return to popular prices.

Three years later, they win. Drawn by rave reviews and gorgeous pictures in the paper, I finally slunk back across my invisible picket line last week.  I wouldn’t ask for a press ticket, so I paid 62 dollars for a seat in Row G on the side in the fourth ring – three times what I would have paid just a few years ago.  The reward was a brilliant triple bill of Balanchine classics – Serenade, Agon, and Symphony in C – from a company dancing better than it has in years.  Is this the effect of prosperity?  If so, you can’t argue with success. 

Established stars and up-and-comers were all dancing with passion and precision, and the corps looked like they cared.   There were no more cases of arrested development among the divas – all looked like they had matured in the last three years.  In the first-movement allegro of Symphony in C, Ashley Bouder was crystalline without being affected, and her partner Andrew Veyette’s solo was crisp and strong.   But even they may have been outshone by the bounding grace of a young couple, Lauren Lovette with Joseph Gordon, in the third movement allegro.    

Savannah Lowery attacked Agon with assurance and agility.  And Adrian Danchig-Waring looked like a danseur noble.   

Still it was my prima ballerina, Sara Mearns, who brought me to tears in Serenade.  Mearns appears to have internalized both Tchaikovsky’s music and Balanchine’s technique to the point where they are expressions of herself.  One movement brought a gasp as never before – a sudden, violent horizontal whirl in the arms of her would-be savior, just before he’s led away.  It seemed to augur increasing beauty and mastery before the inevitable, early end of a ballerina’s whirl on the stage. 

Even the orchestra, under the feisty Clotilde Otranto, seemed engaged and free of the hiccups of past years. 

NYCB’s packaging and advertising is cheesy – slick photos of dancers sprawled on sheets, sparkly fake jewels on the new costumes for Symphony in C, a fluffy art exhibit in the promenade.  But what counts is the product, and the product is on a roll.  NYCB even has a hot young resident choreographer, Justin Peck, turning out new works people want to see. 

So it’s time to wake up, old man, and admit you’re on the wrong side of history.  

I shouldn’t have directed all my spleen at New York City Ballet.  They’re just doing what all of Lincoln Center is doing, indeed most of Manhattan and even parts of Brooklyn and Queens – going upscale, in a hurry.   Middle-class Manhattan is fading into history.   Poor students and scruffy intellectuals have gone the way of the corner deli, now the corner branch of Citibank or Chase.  The new audience, everywhere, is more expensively dressed, many from out of town.  New York City Ballet was right – it could fill the theater at premium prices, with an audience of upscale New Yorkers and moneyed tourists.  In the fourth ring, I sat next to a Chinese lady in a fur coat.      

What’s the downside?  Just the shrinking of the audience pool.   Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein wanted to make ballet an American art form, and an essential part of their scheme was to invite everyone in to see the ballet, at prices anyone could afford.  It worked.  Generations of dancers – as well as writers and critics – were spawned amid the creative energy and democratic openness of the fifties, sixties and seventies. 

That was then.  Balanchine and Kirstein’s vision has faded, following Fiorello LaGuardia’s dream of opera for the masses.  New York City Opera is defunct.  The New York State Theater has become the David H. Koch Theater.   Inclusiveness is out. 

Will I ever be a regular patron of New York City Ballet again?  Not at these prices.  But I don’t want to miss the rise of Lauren Lovette, or the apotheosis of Sara Mearns, or the next big thing from Justin Peck.  Balletomania is incurable.  Heart and spleen, I’ll hang around.  

 

-- Copyright 2015 by Tom Phillips