NYCB’s 2010 Fall season

NYCB Maria Kowroski and Sébastien Marcovici in "Movements for Piano and Orchestra"

The New York Times
September 17, 2010
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

A Way With Balanchine (and With a Talking Dancer, Too)

"New York City Ballet is presenting no fewer than 27 works during its inaugural fall season, 10 of them during this opening week. By world ballet standards, this is astonishing. Here, nobody even remarks on it. On Wednesday night four of George Balanchine’s ballets re-entered the repertory, and suddenly the eye, the ear, the mind and the imagination were again all full.

First, as part of the company’s venture in making ballet more accessible, the young principal dancer Tyler Angle gave a curtain speech. In this new City Ballet experiment, a different principal will introduce each program this week. Mr. Angle was a good opener. He talks as he dances: affable, youthful, generous, not completely in control of all his effects but always appealingly personable.

Much of what he said was, beneath the charm, shrewd. He singled out the two most advanced modernist pieces on the bill — the Stravinsky duo “Monumentum pro Gesualdo” and “Movements for Piano and Orchestra” — as his favorites. He drew attention to the amazing inventiveness of the pas de deux in “Danses Concertantes.” And he offered a couple of human-interest items: Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette, the lead couple of this “Danses Concertantes” performance, had become engaged, and Mr. Angle had throughout the summer watched Tiler Peck, Ana Sophia Scheller, Sterling Hyltin and Amar Ramasar rehearsing and dancing “Who Cares?” in different situations, once at 3 a.m.

If this gives new audiences a way into the ballets, I’m all for it. For those of us who’ve been watching Balanchine repertory since before Mr. Angle was born, the danger is that we tend to be distracted by Mr. Angle’s points, or to react against them. You certainly watch a pas de deux differently when you’ve just been told its dancers will get married; you look less for choreography than for gossipy clues to their relationship.

The high point of Wednesday’s performance came in the new assertiveness with which Maria Kowroski — excellently partnered by Charles Askegard in “Monumentum” and by Sébastien Marcovici in “Movements” — danced. Coolly, elegantly, she took full charge of both works, from curtain up. When City Ballet’s performance is compared with that given by the Suzanne Farrell Ballet this June, City Ballet’s dancers, especially the six women in “Movements,” do less to reveal the internal geometries and human impulses of the choreography. (They’re also inclined to dance with their weight relatively back. In Balanchine it cannot be too far forward.) But Ms. Kowroski — in her long-limbed grandeur always a physically breathtaking instrument for Balanchine choreography — is giving the most alert, powerful and eloquent performances of these works at City Ballet since Ms. Farrell herself more than 30 years ago.

By contrast, “Danses Concertantes” — like Balanchine’s “Serenade” on Tuesday night — has lost some of the remarkable freshness it had when it returned to the repertory in the spring. It’s fair to look forward to how successive performances of a revival will build: to see how artists, now knowing they’re more than capable, can develop its already impressive achievement. Instead, however, both “Serenade” and “Danses Concertantes” show slight signs of crumbling. “Serenade” should recover, but “Danses Concertantes” has many high-exposure moments of precision, and, notably among some of its supporting dancers, Wednesday’s performance had too many blips for us to relax in the abundant good humor of the choreography. And though Ms. Fairchild is sweet enough, she lacks wit.

Never mind the smudges in Wednesday’s delivery of the Gershwin classic “Who Cares?” What we should not overlook, however, is a pervasive blandness that now shrinks this ballet. The most exceptional of this cast was Ms. Peck, dancing the “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” solo and the “Man I Love” duet with her tremendous, and unfailing, velocity, skill and good cheer. Why is it that her heart seems closed, whereas Patricia McBride’s, in the original cast, seemed almost frighteningly open?

It’s hard to explain how a Balanchine ballet, in which dancers perform complex steps without acting, can become an encompassing drama, and it’s harder to explain how that drama can turn pale and polite over the years. The key lies not in technique — City Ballet’s dancers all move with a speed that few dancers elsewhere possess — but with the erosion of the more high-definition aspects of Balanchine style (where the weight is placed; how the dancer arrives just ahead of the beat; the drastic contrasts between closed and open, up and down, straight and angled).

My memory is that Ms. McBride was not unlike Ms. Peck — only 20 times more lucid, more enthralling, more unpredictable. Ms. Peck is a conscientious worker, and I don’t doubt we’ll watch her continue to build her performance impressively over the seasons. But will City Ballet help her do so, with top-level rather than routine coaching?

The blandest component of the cast is Mr. Ramasar: he makes no mistakes, and he does nothing I remember the next moment. Ms. Scheller, despite superior polish and charm, is along the same lines. Ms. Hyltin, in Karin von Aroldingen’s elusive and taxing role, is altogether more individual — with her big strokes of light-hearted initiative, she could be a screwball-comedy heroine — but she too needs guidance.

“Who Cares?” still bubbles over with fascinating craft and spirit; the audience isn’t bored. But this is a ballet where high art and low art meet, where you should feel Fred Astaire and Apollo passing on equal inspiration into the impulsiveness and charm of latter-day New York, where danger and exhilaration coexist at every moment. It once mattered as it now does not."


Personal comment: I’m posting this because it gives another critics perspective on how a pre-performance chat can change how even an extremely knowledgeable persons looks at dancers in roles:

“If this gives new audiences a way into the ballets, I’m all for it. For those of us who’ve been watching Balanchine repertory since before Mr. Angle was born, the danger is that we tend to be distracted by Mr. Angle’s points, or to react against them. You certainly watch a pas de deux differently when you’ve just been told its dancers will get married; you look less for choreography than for gossipy clues to their relationship.”

Also Alastair Macaulay’s insight about how today’s dancers compare with stars of the past:

“But Ms. [Maria] Kowroski — in her long-limbed grandeur always a physically breathtaking instrument for Balanchine choreography — is giving the most alert, powerful and eloquent performances of these works at City Ballet since Ms. Farrell herself more than 30 years ago.”

And of young Principal dancers:

“My memory is that Ms. [Patricia] McBride was not unlike Ms. [Tiler] Peck — only 20 times more lucid, more enthralling, more unpredictable. Ms. Peck is a conscientious worker, and I don’t doubt we’ll watch her continue to build her performance impressively over the seasons. But will City Ballet help her do so, with top-level rather than routine coaching?

Ms. [Sterling] Hyltin, in Karin von Aroldingen’s elusive and taxing role, is altogether more individual — with her big strokes of light-hearted initiative, she could be a screwball-comedy heroine — but she too needs guidance.

And this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it more clearly put about how the HD aspects of Balanchine technique taught at SAB change the dynamic of a ballet:

“It’s hard to explain how a Balanchine ballet, in which dancers perform complex steps without acting, can become an encompassing drama, and it’s harder to explain how that drama can turn pale and polite over the years. The key lies not in technique — City Ballet’s dancers all move with a speed that few dancers elsewhere possess — but with the erosion of the more high-definition aspects of Balanchine style (where the weight is placed; how the dancer arrives just ahead of the beat; the drastic contrasts between closed and open, up and down, straight and angled).”