Saturday afternoon, Oct.14, The New York City Ballet performed four works by Balanchine that showed the range of his choreographic genius, a program that Susan, Gideon, Victoria and I enjoyed immensely. Of course I miss Balanchine not only because there will never be any new Balanchine ballets but also because he is not around to change the old ones, as he did many times. A case in point is Square Dance, originally choreographed in 1957 using a caller and dancers in Western clothes, with the small orchestra on stage playing the Corelli and Vivaldi music. Balanchine often moved to an abstract version of his choreography and in 1976 he did away with the caller, changed the clothes to practice clothes, and put the orchestra in the pit. He also added a male solo, which on Saturday was elegantly danced by Taylor Stanley. I did get to see a version of the original design of Square Dance by the Joffrey in 1976, with the original caller, Elisha C Keeler, calling "Gents go round, come right back. Make your feet go wickety-wack" and other terms for steps (wickety-wack was entrechat quatre). This was a brilliant use of the vernacular by Balanchine but did seem somewhat gimmicky. Now the choreography has been expanded for the New York State Theatre, as Balanchine did with many of the ballets that were first performed on the smaller stage of City Center, but the square dance elements are still there if one watches carefully. Taylor Stanley did his solo beautifully, alone on the stage as though he had briefly slipped out of the dance hall, and doing some slow-motions versions of the faster ensemble steps. Ashley Bouder danced wonderfully, especially the tour jete that ends as an assemble that was incorporated into the choreography when Merrill Ashley danced the part (Balanchine often made changes in the choreography based on who was dancing).
Duo Concertant was danced next, to Stravinsky's music. The musicians, violinist and pianist, were on stage and the dancers, Sterling Hyltin and Robert Fairchild, listened to them briefly before they started to dance, emphasizing how much Balanchine's choreography is directly connected to the music. As Charles M. Joseph says in Stravinsky and Balanchine, "In this ballet more than in any other, Balanchine affirms the music's primacy in a stunning way," as the dancers for eight bars of music do the same step. The dancers dance separately and together, the choreography being simultaneously meditative and energetic and ending on a dark stage, with spotlights on the dancer's faces.
La Valse, choreographed by Balanchine in 1951, is something of a dance noir version of Vienna Waltzes (Balanchine, 1977), a waltz of death. Balanchine found the original score too short and added some additional Ravel waltzes. The ballet has an unusually fatalistic quality, as death shows up at the dance. This was a fairly common scene in the 19th C., when death came to the young more often than it does now (see Poe's The Mask of the Red Death, 1842, and Roger Corman's interesting period film version with the same title, 1964). Sara Mearns is the woman in white (perhaps a reference to Wilkie Collins's semi-gothic novel) who is fascinated by the appearance of death at the party, which whirls around endlessly in a dance of death. Amar Ramasar , a dancer I generally don't care for, is effectively minimal as the symbol of death (a role I saw Francisco Moncion in many times). .
The last ballet Saturday was the energetic and gorgeous Cortege Hongrois, originally done for Melissa Hayden for her retirement in 1973. It was one of the first Balanchine ballets I saw and is as astonishingly beautiful as ever, as Peter Martins continues to keep the Balanchine ballets in pretty good shape. Just as Balanchine was inspired by American dancing in Square Dance he used his extraordinary knowledge of Russian folk dancing for Cortege Hongrois. The music is from Alexander Glazounov's Raymonda, a source of music for some other Balanchine ballets, and is a tribute to the Maryinsky Ballet, where Balanchine danced as a boy, and its great choreographer Marius Petipa. Susan loved the ballet, though she did think the folk dance parts seemed like a separate ballet. Partly the folk dances are part of the tribute to Petipa, who often included them in his choreography, but also they represent an inclusion by Balanchine. Cortege Hongrois not only has solos and pas de quarte, it also includes everyone who likes to dance, from the aristocrats to the peasants; there are forty dancers in the ballet, all infused with terrific attack and speed, led by Teresa Reichlen and Russell Janzen, Savannah Lowery and Sean Suozzi.
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