Then, With a Touch of Now, and a Fully Charged Prodigal Son
<First published online in the New York Times on January 21, 2008>
The three ballets in New York City Ballet’s new “Traditions” program, which received its first performance on Friday night at the New York State Theater, were created over 50 years: from “The Prodigal Son” in 1929 through “Square Dance” (1957, revised in 1976) to “The Four Seasons” in 1979. But their music, all brightly conducted on Friday by Fayçal Karoui, covers a far wider chronological distance.
It is the oldest ballet, George Balanchine’s “Prodigal Son,” that has the most modern score, one that had its premiere with the ballet. Jerome Robbins choreographed “The Four Seasons” to ballet music that Verdi composed in 1855 for his opera “Les Vêpres Siciliennes,” adding supplements from ballets Verdi composed for his French versions of “Il Trovatore” (“Le Trouvère,” 1857) and “I Lombardi” (“Jerusalem,” 1848). For “Square Dance,” Balanchine used music from the Italian Baroque era by Corelli and Vivaldi.
It is Robbins, curiously, who stays closest to his music’s original scenario (closer, for example, than did Kenneth MacMillan in his 1975 Royal Ballet version of the Verdi ballet music), with the god Janus introducing the seasons of the year. By contrast, Balanchine - the most musically revealing of choreographers - offended Prokofiev with his stylized, nonrealistic stage action in “The Prodigal Son” and the music in “Square Dance” that Corelli and Vivaldi had not intended for dancing. (More daring yet, Balanchine’s original 1957 version of the ballet used an American square-dance caller, Elisha Keeler. I am among the growing number of balletgoers who have never seen this version, still occasionally revived by various American companies.)
“Square Dance,” by going furthest into pure form and presented without scenic adornment, currently produces the evening’s most modern look. Andrew Veyette gave a sober, correct, but absorbing account of its male role on Friday night. His partner, Megan Fairchild (replacing the indisposed Abi Stafford), brings light-coloratura warmth to the ballerina role, but the memory of Merrill Ashley’s classic performance makes me long for more stretch, definition and incisiveness. This ballet used to pulsate at City Ballet with a luster it has lost.
Other memories resurfaced in watching the program. I can never forget the premiere of “The Four Seasons” seen from standing room at the back of the New York State Theater’s fourth ring. Recollections of its first two casts made me miss their technical flair and also certain layers of interpretative color. Rachel Rutherford and Stephen Hanna’s account of Summer, devoid of languor or luxuriance, might as well have been Winter. Sara Mearns, despite one slip, was lusciously appealing in Spring, but, like Philip Neal as her elegant partner, lacked the special buoyancy that should characterize these roles.
When this ballet was new, the leading male role in Fall existed in two versions - Mikhail Baryshnikov’s and Peter Martins’s - and it was a thrill to compare and contrast those two great dancers. I did not recognize the salient features of either in Benjamin Millepied’s merely sketchy performance on Friday. Daniel Ulbricht as the “Pan” figure was another matter: though his style may be too cute and too coarse, his timing and power made the role register at full force.
In the Fall ballerina role - originally created for Patricia McBride and Suzanne Farrell (yes, it was a golden age, and we knew it) - Ashley Bouder’s dancing is so clean, bright and fast that it seems unfair to want more. Still, autumnal expansiveness and mellowness aren’t present in her dancing here. And this is a role in which her manner gets in the way. Instead of the simple presentation that is the City Ballet norm, the generally admirable Ms. Bouder lifts her eyebrows and employs a smile that looks knowing.
Yet in decades to come Ms. Bouder’s performances will remain etched in memory. At present this can be said of too few City Ballet dancers, but Damian Woetzel is another. The foremost event Friday night was his account of the Prodigal Son, an object lesson in the interpretative qualities lacking in most of “The Four Seasons.” The role seems to get under and even into Mr. Woetzel’s very skin.
When Kenneth Clark, in his book “The Nude,” defines nudity as an ideal and unashamed condition, his words remind me of the quality that ballet dancers customarily have onstage, whether fully or minimally dressed. As the Prodigal is stripped and robbed, however, Mr. Woetzel moves into the condition that Mr. Clark distinguishes as nakedness. Shame and degradation suffuse him, and his former vitality turns into vulnerability. It was announced recently that he will retire this spring, and “The Prodigal Son” is just one of many ballets where he will be sorely missed.
@New York Times, 2008