Where Were You Sitting?

Pleasures and Questions

“La Valse," "Enigma Variations," "Tanglewood," "Gloria"
The Royal Ballet
Opera House, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC, USA
June 20 and 21, 2006

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright ©2006, Alexandra Tomalonis

This year, Britain’s Royal Ballet celebrates its 75th anniversary. During much of those 75 years, the company set the standard for classical ballet in the West, preserving the 19th century Petipa ballets as well as classics from the Diaghilev era and presenting brilliant new ballets by its own choreographers that have since become classics. Ballet companies’ fortunes are as variable as those of corporations or football teams, and the Royal has had a rough go of it for some time now. Changes at the School and an influx of foreign-trained dancers that eroded the company’s style and identity, several seasons without its home stage when Covent Garden was under renovation, an unfortunate change in directorship — all took their toll. If the company isn’t quite back to its full former glory, its brief appearance in Washington this past week showed that the current director, Monica Mason, a former RB ballerina, is steering the ship with a sure hand.

The Right Giants

Lincoln Center Festival
Ashton Celebration
July 6-17, 2004

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra Tomalonis

When Sir Frederick Ashton died in 1988, one obituary quoted him as having said during one of his frequent bouts of insecurity—this time about the Bolshoi, whose broad, expansive scale he admired, though it went against his own instincts of lyricism and a soft classical perfection—"But what if we're the right pygmies, and they're the wrong giants?" Despite his qualms, Ashton is certainly one of ballet's giants; with George Balanchine (with whom he shares a birth year and whose works we've been celebrating this season), Ashton is one of the two great classical choreographers of the 20th century.

From 1949 until the late 1970s, when the Royal Ballet's regular visits to New York, and its cross-country tours in America, stopped, he was one of the most beloved as well as one of the most admired here. Again, with Balanchine, Ashton helped form America's eye and taste for neoclassical ballet.  But the late 1970s is a long time ago now, and Ashton's work is barely known to many younger balletgoers. Although Joffrey Ballet has its own Ashton tradition, dating to Ashton's lifetime, and American Ballet Theatre has dipped its toe irregularly into Ashtonian waters, Ashton's ballets are just beginning to enter American repertories. After ABT's triumph with "La Fille Mal Gardee" a few seasons ago, and the televised production of its staging of "The Dream," one can hope that this 100th birthday summer is the beginning of an Ashton rediscovery, and that company directors will start looking for Ashton works to add to their repertories. If this happens, Lincoln Center may well be able to take a large share of the credit by getting audiences and dancers excited about Ashton again.

Ashton, 2001

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2001 by Alexandra Tomalonis
      

The Kennedy Center celebrated the Millennium by celebrating its greatest artists, and it dedicated the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 seasons to presenting the works of those artists. In ballet, the Center designated Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Antony Tudor as the century’s greatest choreographers. Robbins was represented with an evening of ballets danced by the San Francisco Ballet; Antony Tudor (underrepresented through no fault of the Kennedy Center’s; his works are barely in repertory today) by American Ballet Theatre’s Jardin Aux Lilas. There was a very successful, and exciting, two-week celebration of Balanchine, where his works were danced by a collection of companies: Joffrey Ballet, Miami City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet and the nascent Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Companies shared program and brought whatever Balanchine happened to be in repertory that season, and the result was a fascinating look at how different Balanchine can look while still remaining obviously Balanchine—and how alive the ballets and their aesthetic is.