© Paul Kolnik 'Who Cares?' reviews 'Western Symphony' reviews 'Stars and Stripes' reviews 'Tarantella' reviews 'Ivestiana' reviews 'Interplay' reviews 'Glass Pieces' reviews 'Fancy Free' reviews 'West Side Story' reviews 'Old Fashioned' reviews 'Calcium Light Night' reviews 'Barber Violin Concerto' reviews 'Sonatas and Interludes' reviews 'Chichester Psalms' reviews 'Eros Piano' reviews recent NYCB reviews more David Mead reviews

The American Festival featured 15 ballets many with overtly American themes and all with American music. At the opening night on May 25th Eileen Mason, deputy chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts, spoke of Balanchine as the founding father of American ballet and how, fuelled by the energy of American life, this was a new kind of ballet.

Opening night: all energy and Americana

‘Energy and American’ were certainly two words to the fore when the night’s ballets got underway. As usual at City Ballet it was a mixed programme but what was different was that it was three of Mr. B’s American-themed blockbuster crowd-pleasers: Who Cares?, Western Symphony and Stars and Stripes, all to music orchestrated by Hershey Kay.

Who Cares? is Balanchine’s tribute to Broadway, so what could be more appropriate to this most enjoyable of Mr. B’s ballets than a backdrop of the Manhattan skyline. It was very well danced on all three occasions I saw it with Nilas Martins, who seems to look more like his father every day, was the perfect partner. Maybe that’s just as well as he gets to dance three pas de deux in with three beautiful ladies in close succession.

Although the ballet opens and closes with big Broadway-style chorus numbers its heart and soul is undoubtedly the middle section, especially the three pas de deux. Of these, The One I Love danced by Martins and Miranda Weese is undoubtedly the most beautiful. I do wish though that he would not loudly click his fingers to the music during this. We may wonder which of the three women Martins is really in love with but it is this most romantic of duets that really suggests that and after all the song title says it all.

Martins’ other principal partners were Sofiane Sylve in Embraceable You and Ashley Bouder in Who Cares?. Both were impressive but Bouder really danced with great zest, wearing her hair in a ponytail which somehow adding to her much more carefree, Who Cares? attitude. They were all ably backed up by an excellent corps, two couples worthy of note being Amanda Edge and Darius Crenshaw in S’Wonderful, and Saskia Beskow and Jonathan Stafford in Lady Be Good; Beskow especially always looks as if she is having such a good time on stage.

Despite being 34 years old and danced to music over twice that age Who Cares? always seems so fresh. We know they are songs from a bygone age yet they somehow they seem to have such relevance today. Maybe it’s something to do with the ballet’s innocent feel, something we long for in our troubled times. It was a great way to open the festival and, as the final words of the final song say, “who could ask for anything more?”

Balanchine’s nod in the direction of the American West was Western Symphony. Full of toe tapping tunes it was, as ever, fun to watch. On the opening night we had a little extra ‘fun’ when some ribbon on Jenifer Ringer’s tutu slowly came unstitched during the opening movement. At one point it reached all the way from her waist to the floor behind her, looking rather like a long mouse’s tail! Just as we were wondering how she or partner James Fayette was going to avoid getting it caught round their feet a brief exit allowed someone with some scissors to come to the rescue.

On the opening night Alexandra Ansanelli was the sylph-like partner to Albert Evans’ wonderfully dreamy Rhinestone Cowboy. Evans really is quite perfect in this role, so laid back he is almost horizontal and with just the right ‘aw shucks’ approach. Robert Tewsley, who took over the role in subsequent performances somehow never seems quite as easy going.
 

Maria Korowski and Nikolaj Hübbe and the whole cast gave us a rousing finale but I do wish that City Ballet would restore the missing movement. It always seems rather odd that we see three couples, yet four appear for the finale, only for one of them to disappear when it is time for the curtain calls.

How do you follow Western Symphony, about as typically American as you can get? There can only be one answer, Stars and Stripes about which Balanchine is reported to have said that its story was America. It was probably again a reflection of our times but the raising of the Stars and Stripes at the finale received one of the loudest rounds of applause of the whole festival.

Although the ballet appeared several times in the season it was on the opening night when it seemed at its best. All three regiments exploded onto the stage, the men, led by pocket dynamo Daniel Ulbricht on the first night and Adam Hendrickson thereafter, being especially sharp and impressive.

On the opening night Wendy Whelan and Damien Woetzel danced the Fourth Campaign pas de deux with just the right amount of sparkle. In a couple of later performances Tai Jiminez and Duncan Cooper from the Dance Theatre of Harlem took over the roles, one of the features of this season being occasional guest appearances by dancers and conductors from other companies with a strong Balanchine link.

Jiminez and Cooper received rapturous applause, and were joined at the curtain calls by DTH artistic director Arthur Mitchell, although this may have been partly out of sympathy as the audience would have been only too well aware of DTH’s financial problems. A recent New York Times article suggested that unless $2.5 million was raised by the end of June the company would cease operations. Although Cooper put in all the necessary mock swagger and Jiminez gave us lots of flashy smiles there was definitely something missing. The whole thing was danced more lyrically and seemed slower; there was no spark.

Three blockbusters but in some ways this made for an unfulfilled evening. All three are traditional ‘evening-enders’, works to round off a programme and to send the audience home happy and upbeat. As enjoyable as they were, one did though rather long for something a little more substantial. It was a bit like going to a restaurant and having three desserts, I rather longed for some meat!

Fizzing

Tarantella, a short Balanchine showpiece made several appearances in the season, on one occasion instead of Richard Tanner’s Calcium Light Night. When injuries happen at City Ballet you sometimes get ballet changes rather than cast changes! Joaquin de Luz, formerly with American Ballet Theatre and who danced all the performances positively fizzed along with several excellent partners including Amy Aldridge from Pennsylvania Ballet.

Balanchine with a difference

Pioneer American composer Charles Ives died in May 1954 so it was appropriate that two ballets to his music should appear in the Festival. The first was Ivesiana, made just four months after Ives’ death. It is a very strange and different Balanchine ballet, and one that it is difficult to believe is 50 years old.

Ives said that Central Park in the Dark, the first of four sections, was “a picture in sound of the sounds...that men would hear...sitting on a bench in Central Park on a hot summer night.” To this Balanchine created an eerie, dimly lit scene with a man and a woman, James Fayette and Jennifer Tinsley, lost among strange figures. All very spooky and enough to make you never want to go near some parts of the Park ever again.

The Unanswered Question saw Janie Taylor as the all-knowing girl to which Tom Gold tries to turn. Taylor is constantly manipulated and manoeuvred by four men, never touching the floor and always just out of Gold’s reach. Eventually she leaves, carried upright by the men, Serenade-like, followed by Gold, still searching for that answer.

In the Inn is a total change of scene and could well be an almost bawdy public house scene. Sofiane Sylve and Albert Evans echoed the music’s old-time dance rhythms with their steps and movement before shaking hands and parting and we return to In the Night, a short section that seems to take us back where we started.

The whole ballet is incredibly spellbinding. Although much of the movement is very slow, Balanchine just makes you want to look at the stage the whole time, hardly even daring to blink. He wrote that “as the names Ives gave to his music so vividly describe them, I would hope that they also tell what the dance might be about.” He certainly succeeded.

Five by Robbins

Jerome Robbins’ Interplay, danced to Morton Gould’s lively American Concertette, is one of those hugely enjoyable, good-feeling ballets that just bounces along. Made as long ago as 1945 this is another of those works that has maintained its freshness.

Essentially it is an informal ballet about four couples, their friendship, playing games and good-natured competition. It isn’t really serious and everyone is having a good time. The mood turns to light romance in the third movement, a pas de deux for the lead couple danced by the delightful Carla Körbes and Stephen Hanna. It is as though love is also just a game. In the final movement the dance becomes a game as sides are picked, tactics decided upon and the two teams try and outdo each other culminating in the men doing a series of double tours en l’air. The fourth one has to perform four such jumps one after the other with no preparation in between, something which is exceedingly difficult and doesn’t always come off but which Ulbricht made look easy.

The ever-popular Glass Pieces, made in 1983, put in several appearances. Is there a simpler yet more effective opening to a ballet that the walking section of Rubric? Wendy Whelan and Sébastien Marcovici gave an excellent performance in Facades but it is strange how one’s eyes keep being drawn to the women who slowly make their way across from right to left far upstage. They almost look like upright ants in silhouette, their movement being very simple and repetitive yet crazily hypnotic.
 

The Festival coincided with Fleet Week in New York. With several US Navy ships in the port and sailors on shore leave wherever you looked, what could be more apt to perform than Robbins’ Fancy Free, later used as the basis for the musical On The Town. To many this is a classic but despite some nice performances and characterisations for me at least, it looks a little dated and rather drags. Of the different casts the highlights were Tom Gold as the sailor who does the tours en l’air directly into splits and the very beguiling Rachel Rutherford as the second of the two ladies to put in an appearance.

If Fancy Free was the ballet that became a musical then West Side Story was the musical that became a ballet although Robbins did not choreograph West Side Story Suite until 1995, some 38 years after the original. It must also be one of the few ballets, maybe the only one, which requires the cast to sing and speak. It always seems that the dancers are having great fun with this ballet and this season was no different. Benjamin Millepied (Tony), Nikolaj Hübbe (Riff), Jock Soto (a really mean-looking Bernado) and Jenifer Ringer (a stunningly good-looking Anita) all gave their all and the final song, There’s a Place for Us, sung by whole cast, always ended the evening on a hopeful and positive note.

Having had Balanchine’s tribute to Broadway in Who Cares? the middle Saturday of the Festival concluded with Robbins’ nod in the direction of the Hollywood musical. I’m Old Fashioned, subtitled The Astaire Variations, mixes live and film action and is his tribute to Fred Astaire, the man he regarded as the greatest ever American dancer. Judging by the loud applause when the words “dedicated to Fred Astaire” appeared on the screen, the audience enthusiastically agreed.

This is where Fred and City Ballet get to share a stage. It’s essentially a ‘theme and variations’ ballet with Fred and Rita Hayworth dancing the theme, from the film You Were Never Lovelier, on a big screen mid stage. City Ballet then dance the variations being joined by Fred and Rita for a grand finale in which an on-screen trip by Astaire is choreographed into the live action. With the dancers all in evening dress this really does evoke the big Hollywood numbers and is another of those ballets that sends the audience home humming the glorious music, this time by Morton Gould on a theme by Jerome Kern.

Two by Martins

Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins had two existing and two new works in two-week festival, the first being his first ever ballet, Calcium Light Night, danced to nine short Ives pieces from various compositions between 1909 and 1921. The bare stage stripped even of its wings seems a very cold, empty place as the ballet is danced primarily under a small square of white strip lighting.

The first four dances are for the man; the next three for the woman, one of them a repeat of the man’s steps but on pointe; then finishing with two together. Edward Liang and Alexandra Ansanelli gave just the right interpretation to the modern and hard-edged movement.

Barber Violin Concerto is another of his earlier works and is interesting piece mixing a classical ballet couple and a modern dance couple, the ladies then changing partners. It is when he mixes the movement vocabularies like this that Martins seems at his happiest creatively. Elizabeth Walker, one of the modern couple, could not have asked for better partners, dancing with either Albert Evans or Jock Soto. Soto especially brings such intensity to this sort of role. Wendy Whelan and Ask la Cour danced the classical dancer roles. Cage on stage

The cold atmosphere of Calcium Light Night returned in Richard Tanner’s Sonatas and Interludes. The work is danced to a John Cage score for ‘prepared piano’. This is a concept devised by Cage in the late 1930’s and which involves giving the pianist instructions to insert various objects between or on the strings to produce a more percussive sound, in this case something quite metallic. Jock Soto and Maria Korowski beautifully danced Tanner’s intricate and inventive partnering and Elaine Chelton superbly played the music on stage.

A prayer for peace

The highlights of the second week came on Wednesday evening with the premiere of two new works by Peter Martins. In Chichester Psalms, danced to Leonard Bernstein’s music of the same title, he used the music, meaning and themes from the psalms to create a visually stunning and quite moving piece. It is also a work on a grand scale with two leading dancers, a corps of 24 women and 12 men, a 60-strong chorus from the community-based Julliard Choral Union and a boy soloist. The two casts both features non-principal dancers as leads, Carla Körbes and Amar Ramasar, and Dena Abergel and Henry Seth.
 

The music features excerpts from six psalms sung in Hebrew. The dancers share the stage with the chorus who stand on two semicircles of steps. Behind the steps are two sets of five taut, vertical ropes, each lit from the bottom by a single strong beam. For many this was a powerful reminder of the Twin Towers, September 11th and the two lights later used to make their previous location. It is however not an anti-war ballet but more an appeal for friendship, harmony and peace.

The curtain rises to reveal all the performers on the steps, the dancers in front of the chorus. The music opens with two lines the second verse of Psalm 108 (“Awake...I will rouse the dawn”) after which 12 couples leave the steps to dance joyously to the whole of Psalm 100. Suddenly Ramasar lifts Körbes who collapses into his arms. The boy soloist, either 13 year old James Danner or 11 year old Jason Goldberg depending on the performance, accompanied by two harps, then gives a very moving rendition of the whole of Psalm 23. The sopranos of the chorus repeat the song, the female corps reflecting the music, ebbing and flowing in waves across the stage with Körbes. Suddenly there is a reflection of war, the men’s voices violently interrupting things with verses from Psalm 2 asking “why do the nations rage” as the men leap from the steps and dance a series of very physical acrobatic duels. The upper voices return with Psalm 23 but the tension of suppressed violence is never far away. As the lights give the stage an orange-red hue Körbes and Ramasar dance a duet during which she sinks to her knees and is held and turned in an unusual arabesque-like position but almost on the floor later echoed by the corps. The calmness and humility of Psalm 131, a plea for peace, is the cue for an unison section, the dancers in two lines two women kneeling to the side of each man. The two lines then walk in circles, one inside the other, as if peace is circling the World. Finally the chorus add its “Amen” as the dancers, in threesomes, make a final pose.

The whole piece is very harmonious and very symmetrical. It is full of balance. In many ways quite unlike anything else of Martins’ work I have seen. The movement could even be described as uninventive yet the whole piece is incredibly moving and symbolic. The choreography is usually symmetrical, the left and right sides often being balanced or mirroring each other. It also usually follows the music with the female corps dancing to the higher voices of the women and the men to the stronger men’s sections.

The ballet’s mood is helped enormously by Mark Stanley’s atmospheric lighting and Catherine Barinas’ costumes. The women, dancers and chorus, are all in long white skirts with laced tops, the men in all black robes just adding to the feeling. When both the chorus and the dancers are on the steps they cannot be told apart. At times it is as if the white represents peace and the black violence, or good and evil, but eventually the two come together.

Real or a dream?

Very different in nature in just about every respect was Eros Piano where Martins uses music by John Adams, one of his favourite contemporary composers. The music was composed as a tribute to Morton Feldman, ‘Eros’ being a reference to a John Cage comment that Feldman’s music was ‘erotic’. From the near-100 strong cast for Chichester Psalms here there are just three dancers and much tighter, jagged, movement.

The ballet opens with a short solo for Nikolaj Hübbe, clothed in a white shirt and tights. As he leaves Alexandra Ansanelli enters far upstage. After a short solo Hübbe returns to join her. When they leave Ashley Laracey, a young member of the corps, enters. Hübbe later dances duets with each, then with both together.
 

It is not clear whether Hübbe is dancing with two real women who both want his attention or with a real woman and someone from a dream. Laracey definitely seemed the more spirit-like figure. One of the women often leaves as the other enters. At other times Hübbe will be dancing with one when the other seamlessly takes her place, almost as if his partners are one and the same person, the feeling being added to by both wearing similar turquoise unitards. What is certain is that the ballet revolves around him and it somehow seems right that he is left alone at the end.

New works, new works...

The Festival may have been part of the Balanchine 100 celebrations but it also showed that the company is not only about Mr.B. Writing in the repertory notes Peter Martins recalled some important advice that Balanchine gave him, “New works you have to choreograph all the time – not just you, many people. You have to keep creating new works. You can’t just do my ballets; you have to make new ballets.”

Martins alone has now created over 75 new ballets ranging from purely classical to very modern and from reworkings of the classics such as Swan Lake to ones for just two dancers. He occasionally takes quite a lot of criticism as Ballet Master in Chief of the Company but whoever followed Balanchine would probably have had the same treatment, simply for not being Balanchine. What he has done is kept the creative work of the company very much alive both through his own creations and those of other choreographers. New York City Ballet produces more new works than pretty much any other large company. Balanchine and City Ballet will never be separated, but the company is not, thank goodness, purely a Balanchine museum.