© Marty Sohl 'Pretty Good Year' reviews 'Le Spectre' reviews 'Le Corsaire' reviews 'Theme and Variations' reviews Corella in reviews Murphy in reviews recent ABT reviews more Eric Taub reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

This second viewing of 'Pretty Good Year' confirmed my first impression: pretty forgettable. Although the piece isn't without the charm of youthful vigor McIntyre uses five of the youngest of ABT's dancers McIntyre himself falls into that young-choreographer pitfall of equating invention with meaning. The overall theme of 'Pretty Good Year' is unobjectionable, and not without potential: a lead couple (Stella Abrera and Herman Cornejo at the premiere, David Hallberg this night), a trio (Sarawanee Tanatanit, Alexandre Hammoudi, Matthew Murphy) and a duo (Zhong-Jing Fang and the leggy Bo Busby) each have their moments in the spotlight to various movements of Dvorak's evanescent Piano Trio in B-flat Major. McIntyre keeps the activity bubbling along merrily enough, even though he never really makes it clear who these people are, or why we should care to watch them. The piece begins with Hallberg lying on his back in the middle of the stage, with Abrera looming over him in a deep-seated, wide plié, looking as if she were about to start a classical Indian dance. Instead, she makes mime-like gestures which might indicate she's looking at a mirror held in one outstretched hand, and, perhaps, touching up her makeup with the other, before she brings Hallberg to life with a tap on his head and the romp begins (we never revisit this faux-Indian pose; what was it all about?). Liz Prince's costumes, with short, multilayered skirts for the women reminiscent of Karinska's for the dance-hall girls in Western Symphony (although the bare legs beneath give an altogether different effect), and various gold-trimmed doublets, shorts and tights for the men, added to the whimsey.

It's hard to shake the sense that McIntyre is getting more inspiration from his dancers than he gives back to them: we see Abrera in a tough-cookie solo, Fang as suffering-for-her-art diva (oh, those eyebrows!) in a melodramatic duet with Busby (such stabbing pointes!), and Tanatanit as a perky, playful kid in the company of two other playful kids. Paging Mr. Robbins. While it's possible to simply enjoy the sight of ballet dancers actually dancing ballet (Hallberg's springy, leaping solo is a joy) McIntyre undermines this admirably classical base by grafting on adamantly non-classical bits off-kilter tilts of the head, unfelicitously inventive partnering (must the boys with Sarawanee hoist her by grabbing her legs as if they were jousting spears or vaulting poles?), mysterious quirks (why does Abrera pause in her solo with her back to the audience, and twiddle her fingers under an armpit? Does she have an itch? Is it a joke?). For better or worse, it's a tenet of classical style and technique that all movements are not created equal (or executed equally, for that matter). It's one thing to stick "characterizing" movements onto a classical base (Ashton does this par excellence), but quite another to promote "vernacular" movement to be the thematic and structural equivalent of classical steps, so that, say, running one's fingers through one's hair is as thematically important as flicking one's feet through brisés volées. Of course downtown choreographers have been doing this sort of thing for ages, and decades ago it percolated to the ballet stage in the breathtakingly innovative ballets Twyla Tharp made in the 1970s. McIntyre is no Tharp, and shows us accretions of clevernesses where Tharp's iron-willed exposition broke down, for a time, the conceptual walls between the mundane and sublime. When McIntyre repeats a motif in which a dancer momentarily rests his or her head on another's outstretched palm, it's just that, a motif, not a tired Apollo resting his head in the hands of his Muses. It's also a puzzlement why Busby concludes his duet with Fang by cradling in his arms the intrusive and suddenly supine Hallberg (he lies down a lot in this ballet) and carrying him offstage, gravely pacing (Fang paces along behind, a suddenly detached third wheel, before diffidently joining the two other women in for a bouncy trio). It's an affecting image, or might be, in a context created by a choreographer with a better sense of how to shape and focus (and prune) his inventions.
 

Herman Cornejo in Le Spectre de la Rose
© Marty Sohl

Not suprisingly, Spectre was considerably better than opening night. This is clearly a carefully coached performance, with much nuance, from the sleepy tilt of Xiomara Reyes' head to Herman Cornejo's perfect contrapposto poses. What I think Kirk Peterson forgot to tell the dancers was to relax and have fun with what they'd learned the dancers seem to suffocate under their correctness, as we do with them. Miraculously, Reyes loosened up considerably at the beginning of Spectre, dialing down her high-voltage smile into the merest hint of a sleepy grin, and suddenly I was seeing, not a canny and often overbaked performer, but a graceful, guileless and oh-so-vulnerable young woman just what the role demands. If Cornejo could've found a sensuality to match the power of his beats and turns, this ballet might've come to life in a shower of adolescent sexuality. Instead, Cornejo remained punctilious, and Reye's sweetness turned saccharine, as she started beaming at Cornejo as if he were the puppy she'd just found under the Christmas tree. Ah well. Perhaps Stiefel will be back on Sunday afternoon after all. (Just heard from the Press Department he's out for the season.)

Speaking of sexuality, while I've seen many Black Swan pas de deux in which it looked as if Odile were trying to get into Siegfried's tights, Michele Wiles' was the first White Swan to leave me wanting (metaphorically) to light up a cigarette. While Odette is usually presented as an ethereal, virginal icon of pure love (as opposed to the bad-girl Odile), here Wiles showed us a strong, sensual woman using all her wiles (forgive me!) to make emotional contact with the impassive, lantern-jawed Saveliev. After a while, she seemed to give up on Saveliev (it looked as if they'd had barely any rehearsal), and decide to luxuriate in the moment of each penchée, each creamy developpé, each arch of her back against Saveliev's chest. Her sensual, open-lipped mouth would have been perfect for the dreaming girl in Spectre, as would have been the florid, Art-Nouveau curls of her arms and fingers for the Rose. It was a vulgar performance, but the sort of vulgarity Balanchine might've treasured, especially now that Toni Bentley's told the world that he liked to frequent the naughty girly shows in Paree. Can we cue up some Gershwin, please?

In the pas de deux from 'Le Corsaire,' both Angel Corella and Paloma Herrera delivered stunning, crowd-pleasing tours de force. Corella reached deeply into his seemingly bottomless bag of tricks, emerging with some awe-inspiring pirouette combinations and aerial hi-jinks, including: multiple, lightning-fast turns with the working foot moving down the standing leg for a showy corkscrew effect, then popping back up to retiré before a big finish in fourth; turns a la seconde with the working leg pulling in for a tight triple pirouette as he bends his working knee with his hands on his shoulders for that requisite "slave" look, before swinging out for still more a la seconde turns, and various leaps involving improbable double-splits and dramatic landings to the knee, all punctuated with showy back-archings and wrist-flicks (even finishing on the music). No wonder his harem pants were studded with stars! For her part, Herrera dazzled with a particularly brilliant rendition of the "hard" Corsaire solo, with pirouettes á la séconde pulling into tight double pirouettes, and, if she didn't quite reach the level of Gillian Murphy's celebrated triple fouettés, Herrera's doubles were sharp and clear and dead on the music. Her smoldering passion (when she's in the mood) is a welcome contrast to Murphy's ice-queen perfection, and it's been one of the interesting themes of the season to see how these two stack up against each other in the absence of other pas de deux divas like Ananiashvili or Dvorovenko.

Speaking of Murphy, she was up with Marcelo Gomes in Balanchine's 'Theme and Variations,' which concluded the evening. Murphy started a bit slowly (for her, that is), safely eschewing a triple pirouette for a double in her first solo, but nonetheless displaying the great elevation and balance which have become her trademarks. By her second solo, she was properly regal yet aggressive. There was a time she danced Theme with all the passion of a geometry teacher demonstrating a theorem (I half expected her to mime "QED" at the end of each solo), but those days are gone for good. Gomes, for his part, seems a bit in awe of Theme still. In his first solo, he survived the cascade of pirouettes which have brought so many men to grief, but, after a bravura beginning, swinging his working leg up and around in grandes rondes de jambe between each turn, he couldn't quite keep the momentum going, and had to come to a halt in fourth between his last few turns. In its way, this is a harder solo to get right than the celebrated second one, with its multiple double-tour, pirouette combination. Gomes got through this, and looked quite happy to put it behind him. A big, strong and darkly handsome dancer, Gomes has a powerful physique which sometimes seems to hinder as much as help his dancing, and he often moves with a weightiness which detracts from not negligible speed and elevation. Regardless, he did execute the beginning of this solo in the proper, old-fashioned way as staged by Kirk Peterson, connecting the pique arabesques and rondes de jambe en l'air sauté with a tidy assemblé into fifth, rather than the big, sloppy failli that's become so common, even at City Ballet where they should know better.

This was a Theme with many grand moments, thanks to the lead pair, the adequate soloists, and the strong corps of men who pranced brilliantly through the final polonaise, to the grand accompaniment of ABT's reinvigorated orchestra (under the rousing baton of Ormsby Wilkins). Perhaps the grandest moment came while Murphy was barely moving: at the beginning of the third restatement of Tchaikovsky's theme in the magnificent pas de deux, she stands in a perfect, tight fifth position, facing us. She glanced to one side, raised her arm to follow her gaze in a regally simple port de bras, then repeated this to the other side. Breathtaking. In past years, Murphy might've totally swallowed this moment, looking more at the floor than the audience. Not this night, and, as much as her triumph last spring in 'Ballet Imperial,' Murphy's regal carriage, matching perfectly the swell of Tchaikovsky's strings, left me with no doubts that she's grown from a cold, dispassionate technician into one of the greatest ballerinas of her generation.