In Three Visions of Balanchine, Charm, Romance and Drama

<First published online in the New York Times on May 25, 2007>

We could waste time about whether New York City Ballet’s new triple bill should really be labeled “Essential Balanchine.” Although “Walpurgisnacht Ballet,” which opens the program, is certainly intoxicating, most Balanchinaholics would surely count at least 25 other ballets by the master as more essential than this one. No matter: it, and more indubitably the two that follow, plunge us deep into the essential Balanchine experience, which is one of transformation. Those onstage are seen to change, the place they inhabit is felt to change, and ultimately we know that we too are changed, we know not how.

At surface level, “Walpurgisnacht” (set to ballet music from Gounod’s “Faust,” in which Mephistopheles summons up a witches’ Sabbath and a false Marguerite to overwhelm the hero) provides an unmistakable image of this. After dancing with hair bound high, the all-female corps de ballet and ballerina return to the stage with hair flowing, a knockout switch from classical decorum to Romantic abandon. But the ballet’s deeper changes are successive, and they occur principally in the dancers’ rhythm and dynamics. The heady feminine charm of the vision becomes darkened by witty effects of deviltry in timing, and sudden dance thunderbolts occur in a clear sky.

Likewise nobody can miss the central change in “Liebeslieder Walzer,” the program’s centerpiece. The ballroom where four mortal couples were dancing to the title music (Brahms) is seen, after a pause, transfigured: the walls are now transparent, and the women are no longer in full-length ball gowns and heels but in diaphanous Romantic ballet wear and toe shoes, dancing now to Brahms’s “Neue Liebeslieder.” (I love the current 1984 production of this 1960 ballet, and consider the costumes a subtle improvement upon the Karinska originals. But my pleasure would be greater if David Mitchell’s décor for Part Two could be revised to place the room against a background of a starlit sky, as did the older production.)

The real spell of this ballet, however, is that each of its four male-female love relationships keeps changing, becoming more expansive, ardent, poignant, ambiguous before our eyes — and all to the unfolding legato phraseology of the waltz.

In the Stravinsky closer, “Symphony in Three Movements,” dancers, space, time and history seem all to be in a constant state of flux: they and we are caught in imagery of engines, transcultural exchanges, inexorable processes. Although I don’t enjoy the physicality of Wendy Whelan (who on Wednesday night replaced Abi Stafford as the central ballerina), I certainly give credit to the intelligence and authority with which she sets the role before us. In the first soloist role, Tiler Peck (in a debut) is ebullient.

In “Walpurgisnacht,” Sara Mearns gives a major soloist performance in a role that requires prima ballerina technique. I liked her juiciness and wit without ever finding in Wednesday’s performance the array of complex resources that should take this choreography into the stratosphere. But the ballet was generally alert, firmly conducted by Nicolette Fraillon, and Ana Sophia Scheller relished the impish surprises of its second role.

The first half of “Liebeslieder Walzer,” which may be the more fascinating in its formal choreography, was on the whole clear as danced by Darci Kistler and Jared Angle, Kyra Nichols and Nilas Martins, Rachel Rutherford and Philip Neal, Ms. Whelan and Nikolaj Hübbe. And the music is in better hands than 20 years ago (I remember a City Ballet performance when boos for the musicians were delivered by none other than Mark Morris): the contribution of the bass-baritone Jan Opalach among the four singers is especially firm and eloquent.

The ballet’s overall dramatic architecture remains remarkable. But only Ms. Nichols and Mr. Hübbe reveal their roles’ full dimensions and find, simply by the clarity of their dancing, the notes of tragedy within this extraordinary series of love duets. The way Ms. Kistler diminishes her part, even before Part Two, to winsome, papery prettiness is especially saddening. Few Balanchine ballets are more essential than this. Its drama must be danced, in glowing tones, rather than sweetly sketched.

@New York Times, 2007