© Marty Sohl 'VIII' reviews Corella in reviews Ferri in reviews recent ABT reviews more Eric Taub reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Alessandra Ferri in Christopher Wheeldon's VIII
© Marty Sohl

There's nothing wrong with this approach in theory it worked just fine for Balanchine in 'Apollo' but in practice, Wheeldon drains much of the blood out of one of history's more dramatic tales, and this anemia is nowhere more apparent than in the person of Henry, danced at the premiere by Angel Corella. Corella has matured greatly as an actor, and he danced with an appealing gravitas; yet, gravitas is not the primary quality which comes to mind when I think of Henry VIII. I wasn't expecting a dancing Charles Laughton, yet Corella's Henry is strangely stolid. It's as if Wheeldon were saying "You want a dynamic Henry? That's too easy! I'll make him dull. And you'll like it. Yes, you will!" This isn't an immobile Henry: we see him bounding about with his male courtiers in a hunting scene which looks more like a combination of track meet (they burst up out of sprinter's crouches) and calisthenics, but, as Corella's given no steps different from the corps', this section tells little about Henry's character, except that, perhaps, he enjoys being "one of the guys." (As Wheeldon carefully avoids anything which might smack of male-bonding clichés, it's hard to tell.) But at the moments when we might be excused for expecting some passion from Henry, Wheeldon makes him strangely passive. The closest he comes to showing some sort of emotion is in his solo, where he windmills his arms faster and faster, until they're almost a blur, representing... what? Power? Frustration? Gnats? Wheeldon has a child in period garb stand, briefly, on that upstage platform, presumably representing Henry's longed-for heir. Corella, downstage left, turns and contemplates the boy. If ever there were a time for Henry to show some feeling in this ballet, this is it. Yet Corella observes him as he might a shrub; would any sign of yearning, anything as simple as Corella reaching out towards the child, have been to ... obvious?

While one of the ballet's arguments seems to be that Henry looked on his women as little more than pretty incubators for the fruit of his loins, it is Wheeldon's Henry who's reduced to a mere vehicle for the passions of his women, or he would've been, had the women teamed with Corella been more effectively used, and their roles better danced. As Katherine, Alessandra Ferri suffers mightily and devoutly as she sees Boleyn making the moves on Henry. Wheeldon gives to Katherine some of 'VIII's' most striking bits: after seeing Henry with Anne, she gets to literally claw the scenery, yanking down a hanging banner depicting blue sky and clouds as she storms offstage (it's one of the ballet's few literal gestures, effectively suggesting Katherine's realization that her horizons are about to become confining indeed). In the final duet between Henry and Katherine, Wheeldon does remind us he can, indeed, create inventive yet powerful metaphors in movement. The duet's closing image shows us Henry pacing measuredly upstage (into the murk, of course). Katherine moves with him, but she's bourreeing backwards, facing us, clutched tightly against Henry's back by the backwards-reaching arm he's managed to snag about her middle. As she's pulled along, she reaches one arm upward, holding the other stretched taughtly, horizontally, across her chest. So, in one moment, Wheeldon shows us Katherine reaching with desperation and devotion to heaven, with the hint of a suggestion that Katherine, herself, is being crucified, on the body of Henry, no less. Heady stuff, and would that there were more of it in 'VIII.' Wheeldon uses Katherine for another striking, but less successful, bit of imagery: as she's apparently bound towards her confinement in a convent, she's escorted by four men who lift her repeatedly high above their heads. She climbs up them as if they were a staircase to heaven, walking on their upraised palms. This would work better if Wheeldon had perhaps saved it for a final image; instead we see Katherine ascend and descend far too many times. Worse, it wakens that little voice in the back of one's head (well, my head) which says, "Look! He's stolen bits from Balanchine's 'The Unanswered Question' and the end of 'Serenade,' munged them together, and presented it as his own. The cad!"

Unlike many observers in this town, I don't have a problem with what's perceived by many to be Wheeldon's 'borrowings' from Balanchine and others (well, mostly Balanchine). True, 'Polyphonia' and its spawn are clearly based on Balanchine's great "leotard" ballets, particularly 'Agon' and 'Episodes,' but I always thought of it as homage, not theft, and I liked what Wheeldon did with that angular vocabulary he's nothing if not fluent. However, this bit for Katherine left me wondering if Wheeldon's more clever than brilliant.
 

Alessandra Ferri and Angel Corella in Christopher Wheeldon's VIII
© Marty Sohl

Anyway, back to the women. Ferri emoted mightily, if generically, as Katherine. Perhaps she's become so accustomed to portraying angst-driven heroines during her career as a Macmillan diva (not that there's anything wrong with that) that her Katherine looked to have been painted by the numbers. It seems that 'VIII,' was aquired by Kevin McKenzie as a vehicle for its senior ballerinas, but neither Ferri's overbaked Katherine nor Julie Kent's saccharine Anne Boleyn speak much for the wisdom of this choice. Kent, back from maternity leave, has lost much of her strength, but, sadly, none of her mannerisms. While some ballerinas d'une certaine age have performed magically as teen-agers (Fonteyn and Ulanova come to mind), Kent isn't among them, perhaps because she hasn't yet realized that she's reached the point where she must portray an ingenue rather than embody one. (That Kent wasn't yet in shape cannot be the entire culprit for her unfortunate performances this season, in 'Les Sylphides,' 'Pillar of Fire,' and God give me strength to write of it 'Mozartiana.') Yes, this is a flirty and seductive Anne Boleyn. (I wasn't expecting Corella to be Laughton, but in watching Kent I had to struggle to exorcise the memory of Genevieve Bujold.) It's hard to make much sense of the duets between Corella and Kent; despite Kent's flirtatiousness, Wheeldon gives Henry little apparent reaction. Yes, Henry dances with Anne, but why? Is he burning to impregnate her? Bewitched by Kent's eyebrows? Or, later, seething with anger (or mired in regret) as he sends her to her death? If Wheeldon thinks that melodrama is vulgar, what hubris inspired him to choose this story in the first place?

Oddly enough, 'VIII' came far closer to life with its third cast: Gennadi Saveliev as Henry, Kristi Boone as Katherine, and Sarah Lane as Anne. Naturally impassive, Saveliev made a good canvas for the women, whose youth gave their portrayals a freshness and conviction lacking in the original cast. Boone, a strong, enthusiastic dancer who seems to be eternally type-cast in dramatic and modern roles, danced Katherine with real anguish; showing her pain at her barrenness, and desperate refuge in religion. Lane, a petite newcomer to ABT already known as a technical firecracker, was a sweet charmer, only somewhat aware of her effect on men, flirting with Henry to test her wings, rather than as Kent's deliberate seduction.

In 'VIII,' Wheeldon shows, yet again, that sometimes it's better to aim for a low mark and hit, rather than for a high one and miss entirely. For all the high-mindedness of his conception, his leads are seldom affecting, and then more by dint of the dancers' exertions than his choreography. Ensemble work for the courtiers adds nothing to his exposition, nor do a particularly annoying quartet of masquers. Perhaps Wheeldon might take a hard look at José Limon's 'The Moor's Pavane' before again taking on a historical drama of this magnitude and familiarity.