Agon by Jennifer Homans

Agon, a Ballet by Igor Stravinsky with Choreography by George Balanchine appears in the May 12, 2016 issue of The New York Review of Books.  Jennifer Homans, who wrote the excellent Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, is one of the few writers on ballet today who can bring intense insight to the art of ballet and can write about it without the subjective generalities or excessive technical terms of too many writers on the subject, especially now that Arlene Croce is not writing about ballet currently(and when is her long-delayed book on Balanchine going to appear?).

Agon had its premiere on Dec.1,1957 and looks very different now, with Balanchine no longer around.  It is no longer shocking for its music, its astounding choreography or its cast, with a white woman and a black man in the lead(originally Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell) and has now, as Homans puts it, "achieved the dubious status of a 'classic.'"  What Homans does, quite effectively, is describe not only the details of the ballet but the effect it had on the audience when it was first performed.  She is able to do this with a minimum of technical terms because it is one of the many astounding things about this ballet that it uses few standard ballet steps.  Yes, there is arabesque en point but there is also walking, bowing and running. One of the reasons it amuses me that many people find Stravinsky difficult to appreciate is that in Agon the way Balanchine uses the music enhances the complex beauty of not only the choreography but the music itself. 

Thanks to Homans I hope I can stop taking Agon somewhat for granted and start again to appreciate its pure-dance elegance.