Steps That Outshine Big City’s Bright Lights
<First published online in the New York Times on July 1. 2007>
IN moving to New York this year, I had expected to see much of the world’s best choreography and many of the world’s finest dancers. I hadn’t quite expected a single week like June 18 to 24, when I saw not only the farewell performances of Kyra Nichols and Alessandra Ferri but also dancing by, among many others, Nina Ananiashvili, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Roberto Bolle, Angel Corella, Herman Cornejo, Maria Kowroski, Diana Vishneva and Damien Woetzel (as well as Victor Barbee, Georgina Parkinson and Frederic Franklin in character roles). And I had no notion that New York City Ballet would include a young dancer like Ashley Bouder. Two of the highlights of that star-packed week were her debut performances in the ballerina roles of Balanchine’s “Raymonda Variations” and “Rubies.”
“So shines a good deed in a naughty world,” Shakespeare’s Venetian Portia says, and Ms. Bouder’s dancing fairly blazes: a very good deed indeed. She brings a high-definition brilliance to Balanchine choreography that very few young dancers have shown in recent years. Her kind of energy, so focused and so musically incisive, was less rare when Balanchine was alive. He demanded it of his dancers.
Ms. Bouder remains charged with energy even in motionlessness. Nothing I’ve seen her do is more memorable than the still crescent she makes in the Elegy of “Serenade,” arching down from the male dancer’s supporting arms in an angelic through-the-body gesture to the ballet’s heroine, who stretches back up from the floor. This is the role Kyra Nichols used to dance, and in the season’s last three “Serenade” performances, with Ms. Nichols on the floor looking up to Ms. Bouder, it felt like the passing of a torch.
Ms. Bouder (rhymes with chowder) is a small dancer who dances big. In her second “Rubies” performance and in both her thrilling performances of “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2,” she was teamed with Teresa Reichlen, who is as tall as Ms. Bouder is tiny. It was terrific fun to see such opposites together: Ms. Bouder is a chinny brunette, with eyes that narrow when she smiles, a bold and witty dancer who won’t wear her evidently large heart on her sleeve, while Ms. Reichlen is a blond, doe-eyed, leggy nymph, dewy and lyrical even in the most impersonal situations. Both illuminate their music, and both grow from one performance to the next and from role to role.
When you’ve seen some dancers make a promising debut, you want to see them do the role again in a year’s time, but Ms. Bouder and Ms. Reichlen are among those who make it worth your time to go see them later that same week. Ms. Bouder’s debut in the Tchaikovsky concerto — one of the most taxing, multifaceted and exciting roles ever choreographed — was the defining performance of City Ballet’s season to date, but the dramatically sparkling performance she gave six days later was brighter, freer, richer. Recalling how my breathing altered as I watched her dance, I hear again her music.
“Raymonda Variations” is a ballet that can seem prettily inconsequential, as it did at a pre-Bouder performance this season. But when those steps are made to shine, it becomes one of Balanchine’s most prismatic refinements of classicism. In the ballerina’s second variation, Ms. Bouder’s rapid series of jumps opening to opposite sides were cascades of coloratura.
City Ballet’s “Rubies” has needed a local performance to match Ms. Vishneva’s staggering achievement in the Kirov production; Ms. Bouder’s is that (every bit as fearlessly percussive), and all her glee goes not into competing with any predecessors but into making us look at the dazzling details of the choreography as if for the first time. She shows us a classical pose at full stretch, then shows it sharply fragmented on the next beat. Spinning her way offstage with splayed hands by her shoulders, she is the wittiest dancer in New York, both the dark gem and its radical cutter.
At performances like these New York City Ballet was the place to be for sheer dancing. For choreography it was the place to be throughout most of its nine-week spring season. Not, alas, because of its new ballets by Christopher Wheeldon and its artistic director, Peter Martins, which were neither marvelous nor appalling. Nor, alas, because of the ballets shown from the company’s extensive Jerome Robbins collection, none of which — except for “Piano Pieces” — were well enough danced (alas and alack, since the company is to present an extensive Robbins celebration this winter). Yet one could shrug off these nothing-much occasions given the extraordinary feast of choreography on offer by Balanchine, the company’s founding choreographer.
In the 1990s there used to be complaints that Mr. Martins was giving his audience too little Balanchine choreography, and that all-Balanchine programs had become distressingly rare. I hope the complainers remembered to appreciate this spring’s rich fare.
@New York Times, 2007