The Kirov Ballet
New York City Center
New York, New York
April 1 - 10, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Michael Popkin
New York City Center may not be the "house that Balanchine built" (the Shriners enjoy that distinction) but it's certainly a house deeply associated with his work; and seeing the Kirov's Petipa programs on that stage thus has been extraordinarily interesting. It's an intimate theater, with the orchestra only nineteen rows deep, the stage shallow, and little room in the wings. The Kirov's core repertory, great Nineteenth Century ballets like Raymonda, Le Corsaire, Don Quixote and La Bayadere, won't fit very well into that space and so for the New York season the company pared it down to present only portions of each ballet: Act 3 from Raymonda; the Grand Pas de Deux from both Paquita and Don Q; The Kingdom of the Shades from La Bayadere; and the pas de deux from Diana and Acteon.
Seeing this repertory performed on one of Balanchine's stages, the interesting thing was how much the results (either intentionally or not) resembled many of that choreographer's one act ballets -- particularly those which themselves are glosses on Petipa, Copenhagen or Paris Opera originals -- in their structure and organization. In Balanchine's opus, ballets like La Source, Donizetti or Raymonda Variations, Walpurgisnacht Ballet, or Cortege Hongroise, have a recipe that you could describe as follows: take the basic form of the pas de deux (entrance for the couple, solo for each dancer, then an ensemble recapitulation); then repackage and juice it up by adding entrances, in addition to those for the principal dancers, for a corps de ballet, as well as variations and ensemble dances by one or more soloists. Well, if you took a moment at City Center to forget that the works in front of you were in fact portions of longer ballets, the funny thing was that you could look at them exactly as you would at one of those Balanchine ballets: the structures and lengths were virtually the same: the classical pas de deux form, but with the addition of a corps and soloists making the difference and the rhythmic sequence of the entrances creating the flow and drama.
The Grand Pas from Don Q and the Diana and Acteon Pas de Deux (both performed last Thursday night) can serve as examples. If you see either of these old nuts danced at a ballet gala or a youth competition, they're just a male and female dancer on stage in the familiar sequence of solo and ensemble entrances, building to a climax. As presented by the Kirov last week, however, the forces were augmented by the deployment of a sizeable corps de ballet (and what a beautiful and sublime one the Kirov has), plus the interpolation of a number of variations for soloists and ensemble dances for the cast -- and that made all the difference. In Diana and Acteon only a corps was added but when the ballet began with a waltz for an attractive group of Diana's attendants from the women's corps you were reminded of the opening waltz for all of the women (but not the man) in Raymonda Variations (the ballet actually was once called Waltz and Variations). Don Q, on the other hand, not only began with an entrance for a corps de ballet of eight or twelve, but then introduced four demi-soloists, followed by a variation for a strong woman (Ekaterina Osmolkina) before the principal couple -- Vishneyva and Fadeev -- did their thing; it as well as Diana and Acteon ended with an ensemble dance for the entire cast, reminiscent on a small scale of the dances for the entire cast that end so many Balanchine ballets, from those named above to Bizet, Theme or Diamonds on a grander scale. That mustering of the forces at the end, with everyone finally performing the same steps in unison, and the principal woman lifted by her partner into a pose in the midst of it all as the curtain falls is one of Balanchine's signatures.
Given these resemblances it was more than a little amusing (and provincial too) to hear so many New York fans, and not a few critics too, carping at the Kirov performing "excerpts" here. How you see these ballets -- whether as integral works or as "excerpts" is largely arbitrary; it's a matter of how you consider what's in front of you, of how you decide to look at it. And, finally, while I've said above that the Petipa pieces so presented "resemble" Balanchine -- I've clearly got the relationship backwards. For in relation to Balanchine it's Petipa who's the source. He, not Balanchine, is the one who took the pas de deux form, expanded it by the increased use of corps and soloists in a kind of dramatic rhythm, and standardized it all into an accepted theatrical form. The Balanchine innovation (and I'm speaking only of structure here and narrowly in respect to this kind of ballet) was in seeing how you could take the existing Petipa form and present it as "One Act Ballet" with integrity and theatrical success.
Photo: Leonid Sarafanov and Olesia Novikova in the Grand Pas de Deux from Don Quixote
Courtesy of Mariinsky Theater
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