Lush Movement to Break Winter’s Spell

<First published online in the New York Times on January 4, 2008>

Snowflakes fell in New York on Wednesday, but none onstage at Lincoln Center. New York City Ballet had closed its annual season of George Balanchine’s “Nutcracker” with a particularly bright performance on Sunday. On Wednesday it opened its eight-week winter repertory season with an account of Balanchine’s “Jewels.” “The Nutcracker” is narrative; “Jewels” has its place in history as “the first abstract full-evening ballet” (as it was billed when new in 1967). Both ballets serve as ideal introductions to what dance theater has to offer; and both are classics that repay innumerable rewatchings.

One of the best reasons for watching City Ballet these days is listening, especially when its music director, Fayçal Karoui, is conducting. In the final “Nutcracker” performances the orchestra actually sounded as if it was having even more fun than the dancers. The don’t-miss-this castanets during the Spanish dance made me laugh aloud, and the string section delivered a brilliant contrast between loud and quiet pizzicati in the Chinese dance.

Mr. Karoui’s rhythm and accentuation grow only keener when there’s an occasional blip in the orchestral playing. There were two brief lapses of coordination in one post-Christmas “Nutcracker” matinee, and a hiccup during the oboe melody that opened the Andante elegiaco movement in Wednesday’s performance of the Tchaikovsky score for “Diamonds” (the closing third of “Jewels”). Still such flaws never made these performances lackluster. On Wednesday the Fauré music for the opening “Emeralds” sounded especially sensuous.

There have been a lot of “Jewels” about of late. City Ballet closed its spring season with it in June, and since then I have traveled to see Miami City Ballet and the Royal Ballet in Britain. The Paris Opera Ballet’s account is on DVD, and the Kirov Ballet’s performances early in this decade left powerful impressions. A true balletomane in such circumstances should respond by attending to who danced what better or best. But Wednesday’s curtain no sooner rose on “Emeralds,” looking in Peter Harvey’s décor like not just jewelry but also a lusciously deep late-summer garden where dew hangs heavy on spider webs between the leaves, and I found myself plunged deep into the ballet itself.

Why is it that ballets like these are so rewatchable? Balanchine knew how to construct a ballet in five dimensions - the three dimensions of space; the fourth of time; the fifth of imagination, resonance, drama and memory - so that, watching and listening in the theater, we are made extraordinarily alive and responsive.

His sheer grasp of theater seems far larger than that of most major directors. Take the entrances and exits in “Jewels” alone. In both “Emeralds” and “Diamonds,” there is a pas de deux that starts with man and woman entering from opposite sides of the stage and looking at each other as if across a vast terrain.

In “Emeralds” they both enter from the back, then, locked into each other’s eyes (each with one arm powerfully raised), process forward, formally, slowly, powerfully distanced; only then do they come together. In “Diamonds” they enter from diametrically opposed corners, stand, partner addressing partner, as if across an infinity and then advance - formally again - along gently zigzagging paths (which seem dictated by the music) until they meet center stage.

As for exits, just look at those in which Balanchine has dancers retreat into the wings backwards. The leading man of “Rubies” has a famous exit jump, vaulting off while hailing the action onstage (like the famous Parthian shot in which the archers released their load while leaving the field). This was a specialty of Edward Villella, who originated this role, but here it registers as drama.

The second ballerina of the same piece has a slow, strange, retreating exit toward the wings, repeatedly pausing, on flat foot, to raise her rear leg high in one powerful arabesque penchée after another as she goes. The closing dance of “Emeralds” starts with a beautiful fanlike tableau that melts as the 10 women of the corps de ballet slowly pace back, back, back - they seem to be reluctantly withdrawing from a spell - before leaving the stage for the 7 lead dancers.

Then there are dance motifs. In all three ballets dancers walk, walk, walk; and, in the Stravinsky “Rubies,” jog. In all three, dancers bend right forward to the floor, bring fingers together, then rise erect and, opening arms apart now, arch back (a grand port de bras); and variations occur on this to-and-fro bending-and-opening throughout, not least during the several pas de deux, where such upper body motions become powerful expressions of intimate needs and reactions.

Everybody sees these things in any performance of “Jewels,” but since there is so much to see, it can take years before some of them truly register in terms of meaning and before we have a full sense of just what world we’re watching onstage.

I must have often seen how some of the lead dancers of “Emeralds” shield their eyes for a moment during that closing septet; the shielding of eyes is one of the most famous dramatic motifs in Balanchine dance theater. But had I noticed before Wednesday? Certainly it struck me as if for the first time; other points too.

Emeralds,” with its double aura of both perfumed Romanticism and medieval chivalrous romance, looked freshest on Wednesday. The first ballerina role here is a good one for Ashley Bouder, just because it takes her out of the bright flash in which she excels and into less familiar zones of poetic mystery, and she dances it lovingly. Coming down the stage’s center line toward the audience in a series of pirouettes on point, she contrasts fast turns with lingering ones with such dynamic clarity that we’re newly held, as we are by the rich pliancy of her upper body.

Sara Mearns, in the second role, is a dancer of similarly luscious tone and pointed dance nuance. I begin to see why she has been given some of the repertory’s foremost roles and am keen to watch what she can do with them.

“Rubies” was dominated by Teresa Reichlen’s account of the second ballerina, whom she makes its mistress of ceremonies, turning in one knee across another (with a lavish downward arm gesture) with the same inscrutable authority as elsewhere she hurls a leg to the sky.

As the leading couple, Megan Fairchild and Benjamin Millepied gave polite and perky performances that surely need attack and texture of an altogether more potent order.

Wendy Whelan, the company’s senior ballerina as far as most of its prima roles go, led “Diamonds” with such authority that she won the evening’s biggest ovation. Though her authority is unquestionable, to my eye Ms. Whelan’s upper and lower body just aren’t ideally coordinated, and her movements aren’t fully finished. There is a particular tension in her shoulders that often seems to block the flow of movement into her arms, so that it’s like hearing a famous singer who often sings sharp.

This is the kind of problem one doesn’t enjoy addressing because Ms. Whelan’s authority is earned out of the best kind of dance honesty: She isn’t a superficially showy dancer, she doesn’t try to leave out steps, and she is riveting simply by her attention to movement.

Cast changes in “Jewels” lie ahead, and many other repertory programs over the weeks to come. These programs will remind us of the continuing difficulties of Life After Balanchine. In the meantime it is good just to go to see his choreography and, when concentration and conditions allow, to enter ever deeper into it. Its riches do not pall.

@New York Times, 2008