Tragic Love, Live from Lincoln Center
May 19, 2009
Sterling Hyltin and Robert Fairchild rehearsing Romeo + Juliet, photo by Paul Kolnik, 2007
On Thursday evening, May 21, “Live from Lincoln Center” on PBS will broadcast New York City Ballet’s production of Romeo + Juliet, choreographed by Peter Martins. Check your local listings for the exact time of the broadcast.
In spite of all the hype and wonderful behind-the-scenes videos leading up to the May 2007 premiere of Romeo + Juliet, I was disappointed with the production when I saw it at that time. Unexceptional choreography and dreadful costumes weaken the ballet, while its youthful dancers are its primary strength (Sterling Hyltin and Robert Fairchild, who created the title roles, both received well-deserved promotions shortly after the premiere). I remember feeling particularly frustrated by the choreography’s hazy portrayal of the plot. Some critical moments in the ballet, such as when Friar Laurence marries the star-crossed lovers, were so rushed and insubstantial that they were lost to the audience. Considering that I had this problem from an orchestra seat, I imagine that the plot looked even blurrier to audience members in the balconies.
Although I don’t plan on attending a performance of R+J this season, it might be worth tuning in for the televised broadcast, which will probably remedy (or at least conceal) some of the ballet’s problems by utilizing a combination of close-ups and wide angles in order to convey both plot and movement. A Playbill article by Pia Catton discusses the process of transferring the live production to the screen, which involves collaboration among Martins, “Live from Lincoln Center” executive producer John Goberman, and director Alan Skog. As it turns out, eight cameras will be placed throughout the theater so that the director can choose from a variety of vantage points throughout the ballet, with input from Martins. Catton writes:
“Each shot is transcribed into a camera script and given a number so that each cameraman will know his role in the sequence. But at this stage, it’s all written down in pencil: Even though it may look good to the director, the choreographer gets to have his say. Skog and Martins go over the ballet shot by shot to see if there are trouble spots or if a change in the choreography is needed.”
It should be interesting to see if a televised version of this production is more coherent than the live performance. The costumes probably won’t be any less distracting, but the ability to zoom in on the action might more effectively convey the plot. Tune in this Thursday, May 21.
Symphony in Three Movements, photo by Paul Kolnik
Sunday afternoon’s program displayed disparate moods and movement, ranging from George Balanchine’s neo-classical to neo-romantic works, with a ballet by Christopher Wheeldon showing innovative choreography of this century. All four pieces featured superb partnering and a fresh beginning-of-the-season commitment from the dancers.
Symphony in Three Movements is one of Balanchine’s finest “leotard” ballets. This abstract work captures and plays with the endless complexity of Stravinsky’s driven score, so that with each viewing another astonishing nuance is detectable in the angular, jazzy movement. This time, the contrasts between piano and harp stood out, along with the way a trio of women – and later a trio of men – perform a few simple, alternating steps that each coincide with a distinct instrument. Sterling Hyltin and Daniel Ulbricht leap among the large corps of women with unstoppable power and pizzazz. With equal energy and a bit more control and precision, Savannah Lowery and Adrian Danchig-Waring are a commanding, cheery presence in the second lead couple. Although Abi Stafford’s delicate dancing lacks authority in the first section, she makes up for it in a mature, meditative pas de deux with Jared Angle. Just for a moment, rippling arms, head rolls, and fluid promenades replace the sharpness and flair of the ballet’s opening, before flexed feet and angular shapes re-enter the mix. The slower tempo and melodic flute solo allow both dancers to luxuriate in the movement.
"La Valse", photo by Paul Kolnik
Balanchine’s La Valse equals Symphony in Three Movements in its intensity, but due to its melodrama and tragic narrative set in a dimly lit ballroom, the former feels dated. Nevertheless, Ravel’s evocative, haunting score and the maddening whirl of waltzing couples among a menacing death figure are enough to transport the viewer to this mysterious, unsettling world. Janie Taylor, as the tragic girl in white, is utterly captivating as she succumbs to death’s seductive power. Rather than appearing innocent and naïve, Taylor portrays a young woman who is simultaneously terrified and fascinated by Death (an ominous Amar Ramasar) in spite of the presence of her adoring, devoted partner (Sébastien Marcovici). She is self-destructive as she determinedly dances with Death and allows him to consume her. The girl’s recklessness is reflected in Taylor’s flailing limbs and wild abandon. She is truly “dancing on the edge of a volcano”, as Ravel dramatically wrote in his notes on La Valse.
A small section of the score for Swan Lake lends itself to Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, a technically challenging duet that premiered in 1960. The music and structure of the piece could easily fit into a full-length story ballet, with the elegant partnering, bravura solos for each dancer, and a rousing finale. The music, in fact, is known as the Black Swan pas de deux, but this brief gem of a ballet benefits from no plot or long-winded court dancing. Megan Fairchild is relaxed and engaging, without being overly sweet (as she has tended to do in the past), while Joaquin De Luz is effortless in his airborne jumps. In spite of both being overzealous near the end as she dives into his arms, the dancers give a polished performance.
After the Rain, photo by Tristram Kenton
In the midst of this Balanchine-dominant program is Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain (2005). The second half of this two-part work is a duet set to Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel”, originally created for Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto. It is performed often as an excerpt from the ballet, and although its otherworldliness and delicacy are exquisite on their own, the duet makes more sense when balanced by the work’s stormy first half. Under dim lighting by Mark Stanley, three women in blue-gray leotards stand perched over their partners as their legs rapidly circle the air like the hands on a clock. The six dancers work as an ensemble and in pairs to create a whirlwind of movement that compliments Pärt’s disquieting “Tabula Rasa”. Yet, some of the most intriguing moments occur when the dancers move in silence. As Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall reappear in the second half, the pace mellows and a sunnier background replaces the darkness of the first section. Whelan wears only a pink leotard and ballet slippers, with her hair loose, while Hall is bare-chested. Their intimate, sensual duet seems to occur in another stratosphere, far away from a theater filled with spectators. Both dancers are fully absorbed in each other, with Whelan’s ethereal quality and Hall’s grounded movement balancing one another. But like many of Wheeldon’s works, the man’s role here is mainly to lift and provide support for the woman. The audience sees Whelan as physical, emotional, and spiritual, while Hall is mostly just physical. A deeper development of the man’s inner qualities would surely reveal an even more breathtaking duet.
New York City Ballet: All Robbins
January 22, 2009
Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall in "The Cage", photo by Paul Kolnik
Last spring, New York City Ballet celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Jerome Robbins’ death with the Jerome Robbins Celebration. This season, the company pays tribute to the choreographer with the “All Robbins” program, which will be performed for the last time on Saturday afternoon. The four ballets cover a range of musical choices and are performed in the order in which they premiered, spanning from 1945 to 1983.
Interplay is a playful piece, set to Morton Gould’s American Concertette, for four men and four women in brightly colored costumes. The dancers flirt with one another, horse around, and do cartwheels, but this is all interspersed with stylized movement that compliments the jazzy score. At one point, the dancers compete to see who can perform the most sophisticated moves. Sean Suozzi was at ease in Free Play, and Sterling Hyltin and Robert Fairchild were excellent in a romantic, lighthearted duet. Interplay is clearly a product of the 1940s, but it still seems fresh in 2009.
Perhaps one of Robbins’ most bizarre ballets is The Cage (set to Stravinsky’s urgent Concerto in D for String Orchestra), which depicts a tribe of female creatures who kill after mating. Rebecca Krohn is an aggressive Queen in command of the pack of fierce, messy-haired women, who move in unison as they stretch open their mouths and creepily crawl across the stage. But the most intriguing creature is the Novice, played by Wendy Whelan. Contorting her muscular limbs into angular shapes while mercilessly attacking Sébastien Marcovici, Whelan looks at home in the quirky movement. I cannot imagine any other dancer more vividly interpreting this role.
If I had been told that Four Bagatelles were a Balanchine ballet, I would have believed it, for it is so simple and different from the Robbins ballets I’ve seen. The piece is set to four of Beethoven’s bagatelles – short piano pieces – beautifully played by Nancy McDill. Wearing a green tulle skirt and corset, Tiler Peck showed a new softness in her dancing that I hadn’t noticed in previous seasons. Her delicate, airy movement matched the music, particularly when she seamlessly glided across the stage in her solo. Gonzalo Garcia was buoyant, expansive, and proved to be an elegant partner with a superb sense of timing. The movement itself was not particularly innovative, but Peck and Garcia emphasized the nuances to make this ballet thoroughly enjoyable.
Gonzalo Garcia and Tiler Peck in Four Bagatelles, photo by Paul Kolnik
According to Deborah Jowitt’s program notes, Robbins did not think I’m Old Fashioned was worthy of Fred Astaire, whose duet with Rita Hayworth in the 1942 film You Were Never Lovelier was the inspiration for the ballet. In a way, he was right. The balletic version of the duet is boring, especially since Astaire and Hayworth’s more interesting duet is shown on a large screen behind the dancers. While there is a visible motif in the theme and variations, the ballet goes on for far too long to hold the audience’s interest. Another Robbins classic, such as West Side Story Suite, Glass Pieces, or even The Concert, would have been a more engaging close to the performance.
Celebrating Jerome Robbins at the JCC
June 24, 2008
Ellen Sorrin, Jock Soto, and Robert Fairchild in costume for Fancy Free – photograph by Evan
On Monday evening, thanks to the generosity of my friend Sarah, I attended a special seminar at The JCC in Manhattan on the life and work of choreographer Jerome Robbins, with a particular focus on his contribution to New York City Ballet. The event, which was facilitated by the JCC and NYCB, featured a discussion between Ellen Sorrin, who is on the advisory committee of The Jerome Robbins Trust, and former NYCB principal dancer Jock Soto. The audience got to see some rare footage of Jock in studio rehearsals with Mr. Robbins. Additionally, brief excerpts from two of Robbins’ ballets, The Concert and Fancy Free, were performed by NYCB principal Sterling Hyltin and soloist Robert Fairchild, respectively.
Jock Soto and Sterling Hyltin in costume for The Concert – photo by Evan
The evening began with Ellen discussing the significance of heritage for Mr. Robbins, who was born in 1918 to Russian-Jewish parents. Although he wrote in his diary in 1939 (when he was about twenty) that his dance classes “shall be my daily worship”, his connection to his roots was more pronounced later in his life and often played a part in the ballets he created. It was interesting to hear Jock reflect on his heritage in a similar way. When he arrived in New York as a teenager to study at the School of American Ballet, he “became a New Yorker overnight”. As a dancer in the company, he said, “My church was the New York State Theater”. It wasn’t until he was in his thirties that he reflected on his heritage – he’s half Navajo, half Puerto Rican – and returned to the Navajo reservation where he was born and where his parents lived. Dance, for both Robbins and Soto, seemed to serve as religion, but eventually, both men found their way back to their roots.
Jock talked at length about the rehearsal process for Robbins’ West Side Story, in which he was cast as the original “Bernardo”. Both the video footage and Soto’s comments indicated that it was an often stressful and tiring process in which Robbins always asked his dancers for more. He demanded that they become their characters – that Jock Soto, as Bernardo, despise Nikolaj Hubbe as Riff. This was extremely challenging since the two are good friends. Just when Jock was about to boldly tell Robbins that he and the other dancers were fed up with rehearsals for the ballet, Robbins announced to the cast that they had to rise to Jock and Nikolaj’s level, stunning the two dancers beyond belief. Robbins was, according to Jock, a very intuitive individual.
Jock Soto, Sterling Hyltin, and Robert Fairchild – photo by Evan
After treating the audience to the simple sailor’s solo in Fancy Free, with Nancy McDill at the piano, Robert Fairchild talked about the significance of the role. This is the innocent sailor. He’s awed by the size and glitter of New York City, always looking after his friends, picking up the bill at the bar, and occasionally getting picked on by his pals. Fairchild was charming, moving with ease and fluidity, and truly embodying the good-natured quality of his character. Jock, who taught Robert at SAB, looked on with pride, and later declared that watching his students become gifted company dancers was gratifying. In an excerpt from The Concert, Sterling Hyltin was endearing and funny as the “mad ballerina”. She literally embraces the piano and becomes so immersed in the music that she doesn’t realize that someone has lifted her chair from under her while she is clutching the piano.
The evening ended the way it began, with a discussion of the significance of dance for these artists. Sterling pointed out that “dance is a constant in our lives” and a critical part of her identity, while Jock remarked that a dancer has to fully believe in what he or she is doing in order for a performance to be effective. He noted Wendy Whelan, saying, “She believes in every step she takes”. As a teacher at SAB, Jock said he always tells his students that they can’t get away with faking anything on stage. Robert agreed, adding that performing is one of the most rewarding parts of being a dancer. The high he achieves from dancing for an audience makes it all worth it.
Jock Soto, Sterling Hyltin, and Robert Fairchild – photo by Evan
Listening to Jock talk about his experiences working with Mr. Robbins, and then watching Sterling and Robert – both young, sophisticated dancers who represent the next generation of NYCB – perform excerpts from his works exemplified the lasting impact that the choreographer has had on ballet. The Concert and Fancy Free, both of which I saw in their entirety this season at NYCB, continue to look fresh and appealing. It was clear that Robbins demanded a lot from his dancers when creating new works for them, but his persistence and dedication resulted in a diverse array of ballets that are an essential part of NYCB’s repertoire and truly cherished by the company’s current dancers.
Many thanks to Sarah for inviting me to this unique and memorable event. Please do not use photos without permission.
New York City Ballet – Definitive Chopin
June 9, 2008
I’ll be the first to admit that I love Chopin’s piano pieces. They are breezy, thoughtful, and at times dramatic and intense. With such beautiful music, it is easy to let the mind wander (as mine did several times throughout the performance), to lose yourself in listening to the music, which is exactly what Jerome Robbins said in the program notes for his ballet The Concert. In fact, this was true for all of the pieces on Friday’s all-Robbins program.
Sara Mearns in Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering, photo by Paul Kolnik
When I saw Dances at a Gathering last summer, it was at Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s outdoor theater on a hot, humid night. The gathering on stage felt tangible, as if the ten dancers in this hour-long piece were dancing right on the lawn where some of the audience members sat. On Friday evening, sitting in the New York State Theater, the gathering was more distant, which I think had to do with the fact that it was performed indoors. The dancers, surely moved by Chopin’s music, drifted off to another place so that they were detached from the audience. Damian Woetzel was lost in thought as the ballet began, walking with his head in the sky and certainly daydreaming. Later, he was airborne in his solo, dancing effortlessly with clarity in his footwork and ease in his upper body. This role is undoubtedly one of his finest and most beloved. The rest of the cast was also strong in the series of solos, duets, and trios. Jared Angle’s elegant, confident partnering was particularly commendable. And Sara Mearns, as the girl in green, was superb. She accurately portrayed the aloofness and mysteriousness of her character as she wandered separately from the others.
Other Dances was so similar in mood and composition to Dances at a Gathering that it could have been part of that ballet. But there was only one couple – Julie Kent from American Ballet Theatre making a guest appearance, and Gonzalo Garcia – and a pianist on stage. The dark blue backdrop and blue-gray costumes lent a lazy, mellow feeling to the piece. The dancers graciously bowed as they exited and entered the stage for solos in between their pas de deux, but they were casual and a bit playful in their duet. Ms. Kent’s every gesture was delicate and serene, while Gonzalo Garcia had lovely lines and gracefully showed off his arms and long neck. Perhaps this ballet would stand out more if it were placed before or after pieces that offer more of a contrast. In its current position, it simply looks like a continuation of Dances at a Gathering, which is such a long ballet (sixty-three minutes, to be exact) that any piece following it should be dissimilar.
Gwyneth Muller and Andrew Veyette in Jerome Robbins’ The Concert, photo by John Ross
Fortunately, the evening ended with an altogether different piece. The Concert (or, The Perils of Everybody) is a comedy that illustrates an afternoon piano recital with a very recognizable cast of characters – all audience members of the concert. There were two gossipy women who made noise with their candy wrappers, a nerdy, bespectacled man, a young woman in love with music (she literally embraced the piano), and a henpecked husband, played by the hilarious Andrew Veyette. One of the funniest scenes from the ballet involved a corps of female dancers who couldn’t quite get it together to perform in perfect unison, no matter how hard they tried. One dancer was always turning the wrong way or waltzing in the opposite direction from the others. It was truly a choreographer’s worst nightmare. Chopin’s music was most memorable in the touching and realistic rain scene. Each character felt the first drops of rain, reluctantly opened his or her umbrella overhead, and then slowly continued walking about. It was a beautiful, poignant addition to the otherwise comical ballet.
