NYC Ballet: May 18, 2019

We had not been to the ballet since Jan. and we were eager to see some beautiful dancing on Saturday and boy, did we see it, as NYC Ballet performed two wonderful Balanchine ballets:  Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet (1966) and Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3 (1970).

Each ballet is divided into four sections, three seemingly oneiric and one seemingly "realistic."  Otherwise the two ballets are as different as the music and seem to contrast dreams with a kind of reality.  Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet (Brahms's Piano Quartet in G minor arranged by Schoenberg for orchestra) was suggested as appropriate for ballet by Stravinsky;  Balanchine was attracted to this combination of modern and classical and combines them beautifully, with the allegro (Joseph Gordon, Emilie Garrity, Lydia Wellington), the intermezzo (Lauren Lovette, Andrew Veyette) and the andante (Megan Fairchild, Gonzalo Garcia) gradually building up to the exuberant rondo alla Zingarese (Sara Mearns, Amar Ramasar), one of Balanchine's most powerful adaptations of folk dancing to ballet.

Tschaikovsky Suite No, 3 started with Balanchine's choreography of the final movement, theme and variations, in elegant classical style, in 1947.  In 1970 he added the first three movements, which take place behind a scrim in what seems to be moonlight, suggesting to me dreams of the performers, with the costumes resembling sleepwear and the women with their hair down; the first movement, elegie, had Teresa Reichlen, Adrian Danchig-Waring and six additional women; valse melancolique had Lauren King and Taylor Stanley and six women; scherzo had Georgina Pazcouguin,Harrison Ball and eight women.  After these three movements the scrim was lifted, bright lights came on and the stage was filled by male and female corps members led by Ashley Bouder and Anthony Huxley, all parading in mazurkas, spinning in tour jetes and filing in and out of formations, gradually building to an exquisite pas de deux by Bouder and Hall, with the corps following immediately (deliberately preventing the audience from applauding and disrupting the momentum) to build to a pirouetting and jeteing finale.  Particularly good was Huxley, who went all out on his series of pirouettes and tours en l'air and fell after the final landing (to his credit, in my opinion, for not holding back in the least).