A great talent says farewell

Julie Kent & José Manuel Carreño during his farewell at the Met

The New York Times
July 1, 2011
By ROSLYN SULCAS

A Crowd Favorite Takes His Leave

“The love for José Manuel Carreño poured across the Metropolitan Opera House stage in almost palpable waves as one by one, his fellow dancers, his colleagues and his daughters delivered bouquets of flowers at the end of his final New York performance on Thursday with American Ballet Theater, where he had been a principal since 1995.

There are few dancers as adored by both balletomanes and the general public as Mr. Carreño. Handsome, but not untouchably so; charming; infallibly courteous; a superb partner with a virile stage presence and a reliably plush, polished technique, he has been one of the standard-bearers of Ballet Theater’s reputation for brilliant male dancers.

His role of choice for his departure was Prince Siegfried in “Swan Lake.” That wasn’t taking the easy route; the part is full of the big jumps that are always the first technical casualty for male dancers as they get older. (Mr. Carreño is just 43, but that’s a lifetime of back strain from lifting ballerinas over his head.)

Mr. Carreño can still jump, although he no longer has the buoyancy he possessed years ago. His line is impeccable, his turns a thing of beauty: perfectly centered and upright as he spins, the unsupported leg outlining perfect geometric shapes. When he does execute a jump turn called “tour en l’air,” he lands with a luxurious bend in perfect fifth position, bang on the music.

Those details are a thrill for ballet nerds. More important, every step is permeated by an innate elegance and authority. You have no doubt, watching Mr. Carreño, that he is a star, although of the nicest, most un-divo-like kind.

On Thursday there were two dancers embodying the dual role of Odette-Odile. (Once customary, such casting is rare today.) Presumably this was Mr. Carreño’s choice — Julie Kent as the innocent Odette, Gillian Murphy as her evil alter ego, Odile — as was the guest appearance of the former Ballet Theater dancer Joaquin de Luz (now a New York City Ballet principal) as the prince’s friend Benno.

Oddly, the emotional rapport onstage that Mr. Carreño shared with Mr. de Luz (who danced with energy and panache) was far greater than what he had with Ms. Kent, a longtime partner who is celebrating her 25th anniversary with Ballet Theater this season. With her lyrical, elongated lines, Ms. Kent can look picture-perfect, but so mannered and grand ballerina was her performance, so languorous the tempo of music and dancing, that you could doze off between positions.

This didn’t help Mr. Carreño, who has never been a great actor, but things perked up considerably in Act III with the arrival of Ms. Murphy and of David Hallberg as the sorcerer von Rothbart. (Isaac Stappas played his nonhuman alter ego). Both Ms. Murphy and Mr. Hallberg put an over-the-top spin on their roles, neatly skirting the line between vulgarity and fun, as Mr. Hallberg seduced the Queen (Susan Jaffe, a former Odette-Odile of Mr. Carreño’s) and the princesses with callous magnetism and hilariously exaggerated timing.

Ms. Murphy and Mr. Carreño offered no less. For once that gala staple, the black swan pas de deux, was the showstopper it’s meant to be. In the coda Ms. Murphy offered quadruple and quintuple fouettés, and Mr. Carreño rose to the occasion with a bravura exhibition of his own that seemed as much an expression of excitement about finding his Swan Queen as it was a display of audience-pleasing feats.

This production of “Swan Lake,” by Ballet Theater’s artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, so effectively ruins Act IV as to make the dancers quite inconsequential. It’s a pity that Mr. Carreño’s final exit here is to turn his back on the audience, run up a ramp (left! sharp right!) and throw himself into the lake in bad lighting, but so be it.

The audience members — who screamed, threw flowers, held up phones to record the moment and sobbed as Mr. Carreño, looking overwhelmed, opened his arms to us all — weren’t going to let him go so easily anyway.”

Personal comment: This is the performance I mentioned last year [in my entry for September 9, 2010] when I was talking about the dual role of Odette/Odile usually being danced by the same ballerina in productions of Swan Lake performed by major companies and smaller ones who have ballerinas up to the task. I wish I could have seen this perf as the combination of Murphy as Odile and Hallberg as von Rothbart not to mention the marvelous talent of José Manuel Carreño was an occasion not to be missed. Sigh!