'Le Corsaire' reviews 'Acteon' reviews 'L'Arlesienne' reviews 'Kazimir's Colors' reviews Ansanelli in reviews Corella in reviews recent Stars reviews more Eric Taub reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

If this year's installment of the "Défilé" didn't quite live up (or down) to 2002's standard, it was nonetheless memorable, more so than much of the gala itself, which, as is too often the case with such endeavors, looked more interesting on paper than on stage. In past years, each star couple tended to appear twice, in a classical pas de deux and something more modern. This year the rule seemed no longer to apply, as the modernities far outweighed the classics, and, perhaps in honor of Roland Petit's eightieth birthday the day before, three Petit works were presented. In a somewhat surreal touch, each dance and dancer was introduced over the State Theater's loudspeakers, a necessity due to obligatory last-minute changes in the performing order, and which brought nothing to mind so much as a figure-skating competition. Those speakers got a good workout, as the gala was performed entirely to recorded music. For some reason, the organizers omitted to conclude each item with the presentation of the contestants', I mean dancers', final scores, a neglect which I've addressed here, based entirely on personal preferences (i.e., whim).

Pas de deux from 'Le Corsaire.' Alexandra Ansanelli (New York City Ballet) and Angel Corella (American Ballet Theatre)

Although Ansanelli is no stranger to these galas (having previously done the pas de deux from "Stars and Stripes" with Charles Askegard), this was her first appearance as a City Ballet principal, her first pairing with Corella, and her first public tackling of a traditional warhorse like 'Corsaire,' and I'd been eagerly looking forward to it. When she first appeared to the gaze of Corella's fawning slave, Ansanelli was a vision of cotton-candy sweetness in a voluminous pink-and-white tutu. The adagio went off with careful colorlessness which hinted that the pair had little rehearsal time together, and to my perhaps-jaded eyes, Corella, while flashy and exciting as ever, looked a bit overbaked perhaps he might consider giving 'Corsaire' a rest for awhile? Ansanelli had missed a few weeks of performances at City Ballet due to illness, and her solos confirmed that this wasn't perhaps the wisest choice for her return to the stage, as was her choice of tricks: double pirouettes between the Italian fouettés in her solo, and double one-and-a-quarter fouettés in the coda (where she changes her spot an extra ninety degrees with each fouetté). Although Ansanelli's natural turning skills got her through each, it was not without some desperate moments, and the overall effect was far from pretty.

Score: B-

'Diana and Acteon' Xiomara Reyes (American Ballet Theatre), Herman Cornejo (American Ballet Theatre)

Cornejo, ABT's brilliant, though diminutive, principal, shone here, with a bevy of turns as flashy Corella's, and leaps which seemed even higher. Cornejo kept little of the original Vaganova/Chabukiani solo, instead tossing in two of the tricky corkscrewing jumps with the double kicks which have been a signature of ABT's soloist, Gennady Saveliev. But what the heck; it's a gala. Cornejo's minimal costume showed a newly bulked-up chest and shoulders perhaps he's been pumping iron to help his often indifferent partnering? Cornejo had no troubles with Reyes, and handled her far more gracefully than she did her notoriously difficult solo. She fudged the two tricky pique arabesques penchées and made a blurry mess of the rest, only waking up for the coda's fouettés, smartly changing her arm positions with each turns, but they were the only arrows in this Diana's quiver not tipped with rubber.

Score: B-

'L'Arlesienne' and 'Kazimir's Colors' Eleanor Abbagnato, Alessio Carbone (Paris Opera Ballet)

These two first dancers of the POB were among the most interesting of the gala, and I wish I'd seen them in something more classical. I hadn't missed Roland Petit's 'L'Arlesienne' since seeing it a couple of decades ago with the appropriately surly and charismatic Jean-Charles Gil during a New York visit by Petit's Ballets de Marseille. The dark Carbone smoldered mightily, but couldn't bring to life this duet's story of a husband obsessed with a never-seen Other Woman from Arles, ignoring his wife's increasingly desperate importuning before taking a suicidal plunge into the empty orchestra pit (well, that's where he was heading before the final, and greatly appreciated, blackout). There was no mention of this duet's "story" in the program, and it must have been baffling for the audience (or perhaps not the foreign-language chatter which filled the auditorium for much of the night left little doubt that many were there primarily to see the Russians). In a very untitillating strip-tease, Abbagnato must unbutton and remove her outer dress, in yet another failed attempt to win back Carbone. (Not to worry; she's got good peasant undies on beneath it all.) When it's not rendering dramatically opaque with a vocabulary that's both contorted and precious, 'L'Arlesienne' is creepily misogynistic. As I tried to let the familiar and thundering Bizet score for which the ballet's named take me far away from the State Theater, I realized the many abasements Petit puts the woman through had me pitying, not the unhappy wife, but the muscular and captivating Abbagnato (she could be Sofiane Sylve's smaller, blonder sister), who looked like she was perfectly capable of beating some sense into Carbone, for having to portray such a wan cipher.

Although I haven't been a big fan of Mauro Bigonzetti, 'Kasimir's Colors,' which the French couple performed in the program's second half, looked to be the second coming of William Forsythe (the neo-neo classical one, not the bizarro table-dragging one). Bigonzetti presents the bare-chested Carbone and two-piece clad Abbagnato as just normal people (with spectacular bods) who happen to enjoy noodling around in a vaguely contortionistic, vaguely balletic idiom. I liked this couple a lot, and wanted badly to see them do the pas de deux from 'Esmeralda,' or some other classical warhorse. But, alas, "art" apparently won out.

Score: 'L'Arlesienne,' B; 'Kazimir's Colors,' B+

Pas de deux from 'Giselle,' 'Don Quixote' pas de deux Alina Cojocaru, Johan Kobborg (The Royal Ballet)

Artistically, Cojocaru and Kobborg's excerpts from 'Giselle' were the finest thing at this gala, by far. As always with Cojocaru, I found myself a bit in awe of her magnificent peasant feet: the strong foundation for her dancing, especially in her rendition of Giselle's opening adagio solo. Even to canned music, there were many moments where Cojocaru seemed to spin out time almost indefinitely, the seemingly limitless subtlety and granularity of her arms contributing as much to her Giselle's incorporeality as the enormity of her soubresauts. The sensitivity of Kobborg's partnering and understated brilliance of his solos also helped make these excerpts an emotional refuge from the gala's tinny clamor.

'Don Quixote' came at the evening's end, just before the 'Défilé.' Given that it was probably five or six in the morning in London, it's no wonder that the pair looked a bit jet-lagged. There were no technical gaffes, but no fire, and no risk-taking. Cojocaru finessed her balances, a couple of times using the momentum of a slow passé from arabesque to a developpé to the front to disguise the fact that she was never sturdily over her foot, and her fouttés were oddly flat, although technically impressive many doubles while fanning her bosom. Similarly, while Kobborg's beautiful line, elevation and precision were all admirable, I found myself missing the flash and showmanship of Corella and Cornejo, back in the distant, pre-intermission era.

Score: 'Giselle,' A+, 'Don Q,' B

Pas de Deux from 'Rubies,' Balcony scene from 'Romeo and Juliet' Diana Vishneva, Adrian Fadeev (Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet)

I remember Vishneva as a joyful and jazzy whirlwind in 'Rubies' back in 2002 when the Kirov performed Balanchine's 'Jewels' at the Metropolitan Opera House in 2002. Her guileless abandon and leggy figure made her look as if she could step into the New York City Ballet the next day, and fit right in. Well, no longer. Although the basic shapes and steps were there, this fractured 'Rubies' was barely recognizable, so much had its feel and emphasis been transmorgified into, well, I'm not sure what. Vishneva and Fadeev only seemed to take care when hitting the big signature poses, most of the rest was tossed off with a coarse and blurry indifference, a casual approach to the choreography's integrity I might've expected from that other big Russian company, but not the famously scrupulous Kirov. I've adored Vishneva in many things, but for the first time I found myself understanding why she's sometimes considered vulgar, and not the sort of zesty vulgarity Balanchine loved. While Fadeev is blond and a pretty dancer, he looked about as comfortable as most Russians I've seen trying to look jazzy onstage, that is, not very. I was happy City Ballet did 'Jewels' the very next night, as Miranda Weese and Benjamin Millepied in 'Rubies' helped exorcise the memory of the gala's 'Rubies,' or at least most of my mental anguish. (That the Kirov pair's recording of the music for their duet sounded paradoxically as if it had been recorded from the middle of a rather noisy audience during a live performance in a rainstorm didn't help my appreciation any.)

So accustomed have we become to thinking of MacMillan's 'Romeo and Juliet' as the definitive one, it's interesting to contemplate Leonid Lavrovsky's, and compare the striking similarities. Both start Romeo's solo with renversés; both have the lovers express their ever-increasing ardor in acrobatic overhead lifts sometimes almost the same ones, as in where Romeo holds Juliet aloft with her head near his and her feet pointing skyward in a sort of upside-down fish position. Where MacMillan's lovers seem at times about to be swept away in a rush of young hormones, Lavrovsky's are more chaste, as in the lovely, simple lift where Romeo holds Juliet upright, as if boosting her to get a view over a wall, and she glows, looking out over the audience as if seeing her imagined future with Romeo. Here the long-limbed Vishneva luxuriated in every swoop, stretch and delicate clinch at the hands of the fervent and dashing Fadeev, dancing with a conviction and ardor, and, dare I say it, respect for the choreography so painfully missing in the 'Rubies' excerpt.

Score: 'Rubies,' C+, 'Romeo and Juliet,' A-

"Steps in the Street" from 'Chronicle The Martha Graham Ensemble

Set against various pipe-cleaner thin ballerinas, the women of the Graham ensemble appeared oddly bruiser-like in their identical black dresses, in a piece which elsewhere might've been an interesting look at Graham's early use of a large ensemble, perhaps contradicting the popular view that Graham couldn't do much with them. The inclusion of Graham's vision of a community of earthy, strong, self-sufficient women sans cavaliers seemed jarringly out of place in this ballet gala, perhaps a token acknowledgment of the modern world. It all seemed rather superfluous to me.

Score: B

Pas de deux from 'La Sylphide' Svetlana Lunkina (Bolshoi Ballet) Guillame Coté (National Ballet of Canada)

For reasons unknown, Dmitri Gudanov didn't perform, leading to the cancellation of one number, and his replacement in excerpts from 'La Sylphide' by Coté. Although Lunkina was a compelling Giselle when the Bolshoi last visited New York in 2000, she was a rather frenetic Sylph, and helped not at all by her bizarrely inappropriate costume. In a huge, multilayered Romantic tutu liberally festooned with rhinestones (her wings were caked with them), and spray-painted with tints of green (for that shabby-chic woodland look?), Lunkina brought to mind nothing so much as Miss Havisham subbing in 'Iolanthe.' Although certainly energetic, Lunkina's solos often looked like a struggle to keep from vanishing into her costume's voluminous confines; by her third solo she'd gotten so wild, you could see castanets. Coté did well enough for a last-minute replacement, although someone should tell him to cross more than just his heels when he's doing entrechats.

Score: B

'Carmen' pas de deux 'La Prisoniérre' pas de deux Lucia LaCarra, Cyril Pierre (Munich Ballet)

The luscious LaCarra and Pierre gave us a Roland Petit double-header, the familiar pas de deux from his 'Carmen,' and one from 'La Prisonierre,' which I hadn't seen before. I remember the first time I saw LaCarra was at one of these galas a few years ago, when she danced a breathtakingly ethereal "White Swan" with Pierre, turning the long adagio into one long, organic phrase (during which I could hardly take a breath). Not long after that, she was stunning in Robbins' 'The Cage' during a visit here with San Francisco Ballet. Since then, however, in her gala appearances here, she and her husband, Pierre, have taken her great gifts astonishing flexibility and line, and succulent phrasing and commoditized them, in a repertory consisting entirely of balletic erotica. By so objectifying themselves, they've become perfect gala dancers.

Just as Andrea Bocelli's recordings are more vehicles for expressing his carefully tailored persona and technical limitations, the pieces in which LaCarra and Pierre have presented themselves in these galas are always about LaCarra the sex-kitten and her India-rubber limbs. I have nothing against good, steamy love duets, but this presentation LaCarra borders on porn, not that it's unabashedly sexual (ballet is nothing if not sexual), but in its creepy fetishization of LaCarra. You could call these two duets "LaCarra Does Petit," and be right in just about any meaning, as in other appearances she's "done" MacMillan (of course the bedroom scene from 'Manon') and Arpino (the hippy love duet, 'Light Rain'). I've seen 'Carmen' before with other dancers the film of Jeanmaire and Petit; a fantastic video of Vishneva and Ruzimatov, and various others and only with LaCarra have I noticed the moment where Carmen comes up to standing Escamillo, buries her face in his crotch (with her back to the audience), and wiggles her head, or, if I have, I never imagined it to mean she was servicing him. This time, I just thought, "did I really see that?" As for 'La Prisonniere,' LaCarra was also her gorgeous self in a what appeared to be a duet about a man dancing with his lover's occasionally animated corpse.

Score: for both, B

Grand Défilé Everyone

What fun. To a thundering recording of the polonaise from 'Eugene Onegin,' each dancer blew onto the stage for a brief solo, to the wild screams of the audience, although the best moments came at the beginning, when first Corella and then Cornejo had a chance to pull out the stops. Corella put together the longest pirouette sequence I've ever seen, in what was probably the most exciting moment of the evening. Then I just sat back and enjoyed the delightfully absurd and incongruous procession Kitri, Basilio, James, the Sylphide, Medora, Ali, all sharing the stage to the booming Tchaikovsky. If this Défilé didn't quite match the unforgettable 'Stars and Stripes' one, I still savored the moment, although wondering if I'd still respect myself in the morning.

Score: A-