'Square Dance' reviews 'The Four Temperaments' reviews Kistler in reviews Whelan in reviews recent NYCB reviews

Last month I was in New York for several days, and saw two performances from each company. I start off with the New York City Ballet (NYCB), whose repertory was largely created by its founder choreographer George Balanchine, the greatest choreographer of the 20th century. Peter Martins has been the artistic director since Balanchine's death in 1983, and his custodianship of the Balanchine repertory has been been subject to a lot of criticism in the past decade. During the nine-week season at the New York State Theater NYCB offered a total of 46 ballets in different combinations of mixed programmes. It may sound impressive on paper, but it is alarming to see that the percentage of Balanchine's ballets (numbering only 21 in total) in the repertory has shrunk to less than half.

To many serious ballet-goers NYCB's prizeless Balanchine repertory is the main reason for its existence. In the two triple-bill programmes that I saw that week, I was fortunate to see four different Balanchine ballets. The first work that I saw was "Square Dance" (1957), set to music by Corelli and Vivaldi. The choreography is sheer joy. Would that the ballerina role could have been danced with more power than Yvonne Borree could manage, but Sebastien Marcovici danced the cavalier with plenty of charm.

"Chaconne" (1976) fared better with Wendy Whelan and Philip Neal in the leads. Balanchine's salutary choreography for this gem of pure classicism, whose pas de deux was created on the legendaray partnership of Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins, is life-enhancing. The pas de deux has several memorable witty variations on 'pirouettes', for instance the supported pirouettes in both directions, and a single unsupported pirouette.

"The Four Temperaments", one of Balanchine's major masterpieces dating back to 1946, still makes a powerful impact after all these years. Peter Boal and Albert Evans in the first and third variations especially imparted meaning to their richly nuanced dancing. An even older work was "The Prodigal Son" (1929), and the title role on this occasion was movingly danced by Peter Boal again.

The only Peter Martins ballet that I saw was "Harmonielehre", a large ensemble work created last year set to John Adams' music. It was a bonus to see Darci Kistler, the last ballerina nurtured by Balanchine, in the second movement being lifted by two cavaliers. However the whole work is pointless and tedious, and suffers terribly from longueurs. Kistler was actually better dislayed in Jerome Robbins' "In Memory of", the only one of Robbins' ballet that I saw on this visit.

Seeing two performances of NYCB is of course not sufficient to properly assess its actual state of health. But I find it worrying that nowadays the company lacks major ballerinas to illuminate Balanchine's ballets, and that its performances of the Balanchine repertory seem at times to lack inspiration and slide into mere routine. I didn't see the Kirov Ballet do the same Balanchine ballets during its London season last month. But the Kirov's glorious performances of other Balanchine masterpieces - "Jewels", "Serenade", "Symphony in C", and "Apollo" - were far more resonant in tone and in meaning, and gave me a more consummate Balanchine experience.