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American Ballet TheatreMay 2008 New York, Metropolitan Opera House by Rachel Straus |
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Le Corsaire is awesomely irrational. Perhaps that’s why the ballet, which opened American Ballet Theatre’s spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, feels like a guilty pleasure. Consider the plot. A pirate risks it all for a female slave. A lusty pasha, who owns the slave, dreams about her and other girls dancing in geometric patterns that have as much sex appeal as a formal garden. The slave girls wear tutus. The sailors resemble princes and the pasha, who is an aristocrat, has no class. He is the class clown. In the happy ending everyone dies save the male and female leads (so much for humanity). The joy of Le Corsaire comes from watching one juicy jump variation after another. On May 21, dynamos David Hallberg, Ethan Stiefel, Craig Salstein and Sascha Radetsky soared and landed triumphantly in time to the thump-thump of the homogenous music from Adolphe Adam to Prince Oldenbourg. Hallberg performed as Conrad, the pirate. Never have I seen a less swarthy robber of the high seas. No matter since this ballet is deliriously nonsensical. The ballet’s “truth” lies in its cat’s cradle of history. Since its 1856 creation by Joseph Mazilier (1801-1868), Le Corsaire has been added to, altered, edited and preserved by some of ballet’s most important figures. They include Jules Perrot (1810-1892), Marius Petipa (1818-1910), Nicholas Sergeyev (1875-1951), Konstantin Sergeyev (1910-1992), Natalia Dudinskaya (1912-2003) and most recently Anna-Marie Homes, who set the ballet on ABT a decade ago. They, and countless others, carried this fantasy ballet from one generation to the next, from one country to another, testifying to the enduring need and desire to preserve exotica and irrationality. For simplicity sake “Le Corsaire” is considered a Marius Petipa ballet, inspired by Lord Byron’s eponymous 1814 poem. Following the plot twists and departures, however, reveal that many minds have shaped this ballet and many feet have attempted to dance it into a consumable feast. Did the May 21 matinee accomplish this near-impossible goal? Yes! And no! Principal Julie Kent, who danced Medora (the object of Conrad’s ardor), embodied the ballerina ideal. She was a will-o'-the-wisp. When she is whisked away by Conrad (Hallberg) to his bootie-filled grotto, when she swishes her hips in her first solo variation like a playful tongue, and when she whirls in fuettes as smooth as silk thread coming off a spool, I believed she could go anywhere and with anyone of her choosing. The same can be said of Sarawanee Tanatanit who danced the Lead Pirate Woman. Featured in the folk numbers, Tanatanit embodied the folk dancer ideal. Her face was ecstatic, her body serpentine, and her approach to the boastful lunging, beating steps musically dynamic. Misty Copeland who performed Gulnare, Medora’s friend, partly embodied the 19th century ballerina ideal. She delivered rock solid technique and a fiercely confident presence, much I imagine as Mathilde Kschessinskaya did. Next to Kent and Tanatanit, however, Copeland didn’t shine. She lacks as an actor and needs coaching. Because Copeland is by ballet standards a big, strong woman, she should dance the powerhouse instead of trying to approximate Kent’s delicacy.
And it was the lack of delicacy, thanks to Irina Tibilova’s set of a ship at sea, that brought the three-act ballet to its close. Nearly the width of the opera stage, the careening boat symbolized the ballet—unwieldy, gargantuan and impossible to ignore. Faced with drowning into Le Corsaire or over-analyzing its absurdities, I opted for the former. As I left the theater my mind was a shipwreck, but my eyes sparkled—and that is nothing to demean.
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