Love’s Labors Tossed and Turned in a Survey of the Heart’s Hard Edges

<First published in the New York Times on February 16, 2008>

Anyone with a romantic streak will have room in his heart for various kinds of unhappy ending. The love that cannot succeed in this world, at which ballet can excel, is part of what romanticism is all about. In what kind of grim “but not for me” temper, though, did New York City Ballet assemble “Matters of the Heart” on Valentine’s Day?

It starts with a plotless vision of romantic classicism (George Balanchine’s “Raymonda Variations”), where pure style so predominates that it’s easy to overlook that this is in fact a dream tinted by longing so that the whole world onstage glows. This amorous idyll past, pathos follows: a charming Hans Christian Andersen story of love between dolls (Balanchine’s “Steadfast Tin Soldier”) that ends with the she-doll being blown away into the fireplace.

Next, an Oscar Wilde display of prolonged self-sacrifice (Christopher Wheeldon’s “Nightingale and the Rose”) in the supposed cause of a love that is ultimately and carelessly rejected anyway. Finally, an account of love wracked by distraction and despair (Balanchine’s “Robert Schumann’s ‘Davidsbündlertänze’ ”), whose key gesture is the hands placed over the face in grief, and which closes with the heroine left alone as the hero retreats into a slow and agonized exit that suggests madness, isolation and even death.

Still, I dearly love three of the ballets of this weirdly antivalentine anthology. So let’s quickly get the fourth out of the way.

“The Nightingale and the Rose” is a repulsive celebration of Wildean self-pity in its original form, but Mr. Wheeldon’s dance setting is worse, neither telling the story with any kind of efficiency nor making it any less horridly masochistic. Wendy Whelan, cast as the nightingale, is shown as half praying mantis and half sparrow hawk. The nightingale’s spiritual deity, the moon (unforgettably rendered in dance terms in Mark Morris’s nightingale scene in “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato”), is here shown by a moving-picture décor, animated by James Buckhouse, that looks like a clumsy parody of a Méliès silent movie.

In the Parnassian dance solos that are the core of “Raymonda Variations,” it was good to see Savannah Lowery, Tiler Peck, Sara Mearns, Rebecca Krohn, Teresa Reichlen, Andrew Veyette and, in the lead ballerina role, Ashley Bouder, each transcending the very considerable technical challenges of their choreography, attending always to phrasing, rhythm, brio.

There is further to go: Ms. Lowery’s lively head positions should be yet more elegant; Ms. Krohn is too automatonlike; and Ms. Reichlen at one point prolongs a preparation in an un-Balanchine way. But all these were compelling performances, each variously fragrant.

Mr. Veyette (replacing Benjamin Millepied) started elegantly but anxiously; by the end of his final grande pirouette, as he paused before bringing his raised leg to the ground, he too had found the luster that marked the women. And Ms. Bouder, even though her way of delivering a dance to the audience can show too shrewd a charm, does wonders with midphrase rubato, suspense, surprise. One characteristic of a ballerina is that she always has time: nobody today at City Ballet shows that better than Ms. Bouder.

In “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” Megan Fairchild gave off light and Daniel Ulbricht gave off pizazz. My memory is that Patricia McBride here danced with yet more amplitude as this ministory’s original ballerina: even in this doll role, there was something heart-stopping in the way she ate up space with no loss of delicacy. But Ms. Fairchild’s gleaming dancing is all along the right lines here, while Mr. Ulbricht’s attack, virtuosity and impishness are perfectly showcased.

Thursday’s performance of “Robert Schumann’s ‘Davidsbündlertänze’ ” was truly mixed. Charles Askegard as the leading man and Jared Angle as a supporting one were both exemplars of chivalry. However, Darci Kistler’s dainty dancing — marked (in Milton’s phrase) by “nods and becks and wreath’ed smiles,” now ingratiating, now sentimental — simply disfigures the “muse” role. Her spine no longer has the strength to deliver this part’s great arabesques, the most tremendous of which she simply eliminates.

Abi Stafford, in one of the supporting roles, does unconnectedly eloquent gestures and steps that, as yet, become isolated effects; Janie Taylor, in another, has more fluency but does not yet dance on a big scale. If pallidly danced, “ ‘Davidsbündlertänze’ ” — this startling, fragmented, rueful study of wife/husband, muse/artist relations — becomes a tepid exercise in histrionics.

But Ms. Mearns danced, with complete absorption and lyrical sweep, the part of the “wife” that is associated with Karin von Aroldingen and, more recently, Kyra Nichols. From Ms. Mearns, too, there is more to come; I hope she will find ways of using her eyes and neck to greater effect, and to develop her real gift for phrasing. City Ballet of late has been giving her role upon role, and it has been good to see her thick-cream dancing grow more nuanced and complex. If the company’s lighting were better, she would already be making twice the impact on us all.

@New York Times, 2008