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More years ago than I care to remember, back during my Misspent Youth in the Seventies, I attended a School of American Ballet Workshop performance which featured a charming little number for the younger kids by Jean-Pierre Bonnefous (now Bonnefoux). It's totally faded from my memory, except for a solo by a boy of twelve, who wowed us with beautiful pirouettes à la séconde and other grown-up feats, all executed with a beatific exactitude. I happily joined in the whole-hearted cheers.
Fast-forward to the late Nineties, when, after a hiatus in my ballet-watching of a dozen years or so, I returned to the New York City Ballet, feeling very much like Rip Van Winkle. Nichol Hlinka a principal? Who'd have guessed? Who's this Whelan person? I was happy to see a few faces familiar from the Balanchine days, but alarmed at how much older they all appeared. (Of course, I tried not to make the same conclusion about what I was seeing in the mirror.) And, of course, I noticed Peter Boal. How could I not? He seemed the living embodiment of words which, when applied to others' dancing, would've been trite, or inappropriate. It's such a cliché to call a dancer "graceful," yet Boal was the embodiment of grace. And clarity, honesty, and joy. I wasn't at all surprised to learn that this was the same dancer who'd thrilled me as a boy in that long-ago workshop. (One day I hope to have Boal autograph my program from that performance.)
Peter Boal as as Apollo
© Paul Kolnik
Like Suzanne Farrell, Boal was an inwardly directed dancer. Watching him was to share in moments of meditative perfection which bordered on the divine, and Boal's movement seemed to emanate from some quiet inner place of strength, peace, and, yes, grace; or Grace, as when he trod the boards those two qualities became one and the same. It was Boal's great gift to those of us privileged to be in his audience that he could, in some small measure, take us there with him. I don't know much about the off-stage Peter Boal. I've met him once or twice, and he seemed very much the nice guy he's said to be. Onstage, though, he was as close to an angel as makes no difference, and if I'm losing my composure as I'm writing these lines, it's because I feel his loss as keenly as I'd feel my heart pulled from my breast. Even when City Ballet wasn't in town, or on nights when they were, but Boal wasn't performing, it was a great comfort, a treasure, really, just to know he was there, and we had more performances of his incomparable Apollo, Oberon, Melancholic, Square Dance, or a score of others awaiting in our futures. With his final performance June 5, that treasure's gone, and the world seems a duller place.
This is some purple prose, for sure, and containing little about what Boal looks, or danced, like, and lots about how he made me feel. Yet, that's what great art, and artists, do: make you feel things. Certainly, Boal was gifted with a magnificent instrument of a body I remember Twyla Tharp talking of his rare, perfect symmetry when she created a role in her short-lived 'The Beethoven Seventh' for him. Like many dancers, Boal could show you the truth of what we learned in geometry: that there's an infinity of points along any line, but Boal's infinity was more infinite and particular than most, as was the care and importance with which he created each comprising mote. I'm reminded of Balanchine's infamous, and enigmatic quip: "La Dance, c'est une question morale."
Peter Boal's farewell performance
© Paul Kolnik
Boal's final performance began with an excerpt from one of the ballets most associated with him: 'Apollo.' When the curtain rose, Boal walked onstage, to a pandemonium of cheers, which didn't stop until he assumed the familiar pose Apollo takes before his second solo, arms raised, as if he were supporting the world. He danced Apollo's second solo, then the balance of the ballet, joined by Yvonne Borree, Jenifer Ringer and Miranda Weese. I could only hope that the results of Boal's call to Seattle (to direct Pacific Northwest Ballet) will be as fruitful as those of Apollo's call to Olympus. To conclude the matinee, Boal danced Jerome Robbins' 'Opus 19/The Dreamer' with Wendy Whelan. Originally made for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride, 'Opus 19' has been danced by many of City Ballet's great men, from Baryshnikov and Helgi Tomasson to the unfortunately short-careered Jeffrey Edwards, yet it was only when I saw it danced by Boal and Whelan that I knew it as a great ballet, a fantasy of two lovers envisioning, perhaps creating, each other, in moments of tenderness, mystery and almost-violent passion. Whelan danced her heart out for Boal; and Boal for us all. At last this particular dream came to an end, with tumultuous applause for Boal, as he was pelted with flowers from the audience, and presented with bouquets by City Ballet's principals, and then Peter Martins, the artistic director. Boal was joined by his wife, Kelly Cass, and sons Sebastian and Olivier, and daughter Sarah, whom he raised overhead in a happy lift, as not long before he'd supported Terpsichore.
There were other things on the program, but you'll forgive me for being unable to recall them.
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