A Godlike Dancer’s Company Farewell Keeps Adventures Rolling to the End

<First published online in the New York Times on February 12, 2008>

After more than 15 years with New York City Ballet, Nikolaj Hübbe danced his farewell performance on Sunday afternoon not as if he were delivering the last word on his roles, but as if they were brave new worlds he was still exploring. Especially in the title role of Balanchine’s “Apollo,” the opening ballet of this special program, he was utterly in the moment, apparently discovering or even testing the steps and gestures as they arrived. To see this kind of fresh energy in a dancer who looks entirely Apollonian is heady stuff.

Mr. Hübbe has been this way in everything I’ve seen him dance with City Ballet. A few days ago he gave his final performance of Balanchine’s “Square Dance,” probably the most technically challenging role in his current repertory. Did he play safe? No, there he was, trying out successive pirouettes from an ever-deeper fourth position, experimenting in a “what if?” way that was a thrill to behold.

Then there were his final performances of “La Sonnambula” in January. I watched one performance with a member of that ballet’s 1946 original cast (when it was called “Night Shadow”), another with someone who has photographic recall of Balanchine’s 1948 production of it for Marquis de Cuevas company, and both of them, despite these memories, sang Mr. Hübbe’s praises as much as I. Who will ever watch the ballet now without recalling the ardor of his byplay with the Coquette at the back of the stage? It was hard to concentrate on the dance in the foreground, even though Mr. Hübbe did nothing that you could truly call upstaging.

I, along with many New Yorkers, first saw Mr. Hübbe 20 years ago when the Royal Danish Ballet danced at the Metropolitan Opera House; four years later I saw him when he had become a central star of that company, during its 1992 Bournonville Festival in Copenhagen and its subsequent season in Washington; that was just before he joined City Ballet. Admirable as he was then, I would never have predicted how much he would grow during his years here

His Apollo reminded me how manuals on classical singing in the virtuoso age of the 18th century always insisted that two prime virtues in performance were always spontaneity and intensity. Mr. Hübbe has both, and incidentally, his dancing sings too. These have always been prime virtues in the Bournonville ballet tradition of Denmark, which was Mr. Hübbe’s training ground, and they are yet more crucial in the Balanchine tradition at City Ballet, which Mr. Hübbe has adorned since 1992.

“What are you saving it for?” Balanchine would ask his dancers; I hope Mr. Hübbe’s radiant vitality would have pleased him as an answer.

Not only his dancing sings. On Sunday he both sang and danced “Cool,” from Jerome Robbins’s “West Side Story Suite.” Samuel Johnson said of a dog standing on its hind legs, “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” Mr. Hübbe’s singing is better than the dog’s hind-legged pose, but still your reaction is just happy surprise and admiration. Trust him: he’s never held back, he’s always gone for it. Better than his singing is just his stance. In a T-shirt and jeans, he’s no longer the noble poet but the embodiment of West Side edginess and attack.

“Cool” recalls his collaborations with Robbins on new stagings, at least one other of which (“Brandenburg”) remains in repertory. The matinee was also a reminder of his collaborations with Peter Martins, whose “Zakouski” pas de deux helped introduce Mr. Hübbe to City Ballet.

Sunday’s “Zakouski” was a double-cast affair, its parts danced by Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette (both good), alternating with Yvonne Borree and Mr. Hübbe. Here again was Mr. Hübbe’s startling immediacy: nothing valedictory about this dancing, everything as if for the first time.

We hope the leading men of ballet will be heroes, poets, gods. Mr. Hübbe is all of these, and he is also both a dreamboat and a hunk. He’s also a load of fun. He ended this farewell by dancing the cowboy in the final movement of Balanchine’s “Western Symphony” (partnering Maria Kowroski), and letting us know quite how American his life in ballet has let him become. Charm, humor, glee, mischief, lovability: he has them all. And his kissing business with Ms. Kowroski by the wings will linger in the annals of this ballet as firmly as his colloquy with the Coquette will haunt “La Sonnambula.”

Afterward, one ballerina after another (including Kyra Nichols, who bade her own farewell to the company last June) presented Mr. Hübbe with bouquets onstage; Heather Watts and Damian Woetzel threw further flowers. Mr. Woetzel and Mr. Martins were the foremost of the many male colleagues who joined and applauded the hero of the day.

Now Mr. Hübbe goes on to become artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet. Who could not wish him well, or not imagine his virtues lighting up that company? But the gap he leaves in New York is a mighty one and cannot readily be filled.

@New York Times, 2008