© Paul Kolnik NYCB 'Liebeslieder Walzer' reviews 'Liebeslieder Walzer' reviews NYCB 'Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto' reviews 'Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto' reviews Bouder in reviews Kistler in reviews recent NYCB reviews more Eric Taub reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Yet last night Kistler kept a lid on it, and I was blindsided by the sweet sincerity of a performance that rang true, unencumbered by her too-familiar excesses of characterization and deportment. It was as if it weren't only her hair but her onstage persona that she'd returned to normality in giving up her unfortunate particolored blonde for her natural, sober brunette. While her "hostess" character still affected from time to time a young ingenue's smile, she wasn't mugging for the back of the house, or admiring the alien dimension of Planet Darci that only she can see. Instead, she was dancing for her partner, Philip Neal, like Kistler a veteran who'll be retiring this spring. They have a long history together, and as they began their first long duet, the lines between dancer and character faded away. As Neal flourished his white-gloved hand to whisper sweet nothings in the ear of the beaming Kistler, I could imagine them Gingold and Chevalier, reminiscing about their long careers together. "Remember that Mozartiana when you did that penchee and waved your hand behind your back, like, 'take it, Philip, take it!'?" (I do, it was over a decade ago. Good times.) Most likely, Neal whispered nothing to her, but the sparkle in his smile and Kistler's bright eyes made me think he really didn't need to.

There are places in Liebeslieder where the sense of nostalgia, especially in this couple, can become overwhelming, and I'm not ashamed to admit the tears started welling up and didn't stop for the rest of this extraordinary ballet. On the surface, it's a pretty depiction of four upper-middle-class couples of the nineteenth century, dressed in formal elegance and waltzing the night away in a comfortable drawing room, to Brahms' beautiful love songs as performed by an onstage ensemble of singers and pianists, also dressed for the occasion. It's not long before you notice Balanchine's inventive genius as he spins out waltz after waltz in seemingly endless variations, and then you see (especially if you've let Balanchine train your eyes) the wealth of emotional meaning imbued into his intricacies; so many movements are perfect metaphors as to take your breath away with the insights they bring into their characters. It's a ballet both deep and subtle, giving up more of its secrets the more you watch it.

I loved the abandon with which Kistler commended herself to Neal, both in the first, ballroom section and then en pointe. Although I suspect this may be a bit far from this character's original nature (alas, I never saw the legendary revival with Farrell in this role), I saw her coquettishness not glaringly inappropriate, but more in the nature of reminiscence. In the pointe section, when Neal lifted her vertically, her feet fluttering through little beats, he could've been helping her into the light of cherished memory, a rapture that continued even as she fell back and draped herself limply over his arms.

I adored Jennie Somogyi in the plum role of the "doomed" woman, danced so beautifully for years by Kyra Nichols. Although much of Somogyi's career (until her horrendous injury six years ago) was colored by her resemblance to Nichols, Somogyi sells the part more, putting more drama into the moments when her character's lost, staring off blankly into her grim future before brought back to earth by her attentive (if rather blank-faced) partner, Justin Peck, making a somewhat stiff debut in a role danced only by Jock Soto and Nilas Martins in recent memory. It took me too many viewings of this couple's two extraordinary duets in the ballroom section to see the drama Balanchine had put before my eyes; now it's clear as day. Near the second's end, Somogyi looked offstage, over our heads, lost again in thought; Peck came up behind her and delicately placed his upraised hands on each side of her head. Are they wings? A crown? With Somogyi nestled in his outstretched arms, he lifted her again and again; she had her back to him, and at each lift, seemed to be both protected by Peck, and floating away from him. He's telling her, "I'll be there, I'll support you, I won't leave you, until you're an angel." It's just one of the countless phrases in Liebeslieder where Balanchine created movement so aptly embodying these couples' interior lives that they hit you with an emotional wallop that belies these waltzes' delicate, courtly surface. Even now, watching this ballet, I have "eureka" moments when I discover another bit of meaning hidden in plain sight. (To a degree, every Balanchine ballet's a purloined letter.) Imagine seeing beautiful hieroglyphics after you've been handed the Rosetta stone. Of course, most of Balanchine's movement metaphors don't translate so easily into words (or, like Graham, he'd have used Western Union), but if you're attuned to them they travel straight from your eyes to your heart, or gut. Perhaps that's one reason this ballet can reliably move me to tears.

As the youngest couple, still feeling each other out in the flush of first love, Janie Taylor and Sebastien Marcovici were near perfect together. There are few dances that can't be improved with the judicious application of Taylor, and her fey, forceful fragility made her well-suited to join this sorority of women with hyperactive interior lives. Wendy Whelan and Jared Angle were the couple I think of as happily paired and in the prime of their lives. Whelan, as always, was exquisite, and while Angle partnered with calm attentiveness, he was aggressively affectless, as if it might be vulgar, or, worse, discourteous to Whelan should he invade her personal space with a personality.

The fine singers were Ashley Emerson, Katherine Rohrer, Michael Slattery and Thomas Meglioranza, with Richard Moredock and Susan Walters sharing the piano.

In many ways, this has been Ashley Bouder's season. Fully recovered from the injuries that had kept her offstage, then limited her roles for the past year or so, Bouder took her rightful place in City Ballet's ballerina rotation, and made the most of her opportunities, with stunning performances followed by even more-stunning ones. As she's off to Rome to dance Giselle (what a life), she will miss the last week of Winter Season, and, alas, Jewels, so her appearances in Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 were her last of the season, and she went out in fine style. She attacked her ferociously hard opening solo with her usual audacity and aplomb as she proceeded regally from one unforgiving, quarter-toe, swiveling turn to another, in a demonstration of her steely control. In one, she had to make a quick recovery from a slightly off-balance start. Even Homer nods. As she'd done all season, she impressed the most with her strong and subtle musicality. She aggressively attacks the beat, but her technique lets her to boldy play with rubato as none have before, dragging out a prettily turned-out retire on pointe for a magnificent split second before catching up with the baton of Andrews Sill in a rush of flashing little bourrees. Her musicality makes City Ballet's other ballerinas seem tone-deaf and tin-eared.

I've got kaleidoscopic memories of brilliant moments. Her run around the stage in little pique steps had the force of a gathering storm, and her sisonnes flew upwards and unfurled like she was riding an invisible express elevator. She was quite In the slow second movement, she brought a languorous glamor to her evolutions with Jonathan Stafford, stretching out the last inches of her developpes with an authoritative ritard, or circling the stage in a garland of slow pique turns, her arms half-floating at her side, embodying the dreaminess of Tchaikovsky's strings. Embodying as she does the the diamondiferous manner of an old-school ballerina, Bouder takes "ballet-russing" to a level of artistry far beyond its original, somewhat derisive, usage. In other words, she's right at home in PC No 2's ballerina-worshiping paradigm (remember, it was born as Ballet Imperial).

Bouder and Stafford have an easy rapport that's a pleasure to observe. He carried her with such assurance through her long, dramatic lifts that they seem entirely animated by her will alone, and they bounded through their sautes and sissonnes in perfect unison (and, apparently, at the same elevation).

The only sour note in this concerto came in the person of Savannah Lowery, or rather the enigma that goes by that name. A few years ago, a dance-critic friend who spends far more time downtown than at Lincoln Center, after first seeing her, asked me, "Can you please explain Savannah Lowery to me?" Perhaps being gallant, I expounded about the raw athletic energy and aggressiveness that would sometimes animate her dancing. Asked today, I'd answer "I can't." Whatever promise might've been there years ago to offset her painfully rough physicality has faded, leaving a tall, strong woman with angular legs and torso, unfortunate feet, and not the slightest hint of grace or nuance: the monster truck crashing the concours d'elegance.

Sills kept the orchestra bouncing merrily along toward the ballet's glorious finish, although Elaine Chelton sounded occasionally tired on the piano.

As much as I might wish to be in Rome for Bouder's Giselle next week, I think I'll manage to console myself with Jewels.