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ABT's Opening Mixed Bill a Mixed Bag
American Ballet Theatre
Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.
Opening night (Tuesday April 10, 2001)
Theme and Variations, Sleeping Beauty Act III and
WORLD PREMIERE of Paul Taylor's Black Tuesday
by Alexandra Tomalonis
American Ballet Theatre opened its welcome, if brief (one-week) season at the Kennedy Center Opera House last night with a mixed bill that seemed designed to give opportunities to as many dancers as possible. Programming Balanchine's Theme and Variations (often described as a tribute to, or comment on, Petipa's Sleeping Beauty) on the same program as Act III of Sleeping Beauty seemed curiously redundant, especially as both ballets were danced in much the same way, and sandwiching Paul Taylor's light and dour new ballet between these two party pieces made for a rather disjointed evening.
Taylor's Black Tuesday is a suite of dances set to popular music from the Depression that fits into the History of American Social Dance and Society wing of Taylor's oeuvre. It's hard not to compare it to Company B--there's the same episodic structure, the same dancing out of popular songs--and if Black Tuesday lacks Company B's pizzazz, that's as much due to its subject as anything. The Andrews Sisters' World War II ditties were an affirmative expression of an unquenchable American spirit and sassiness in the face of war; the Depression songs (not nearly as familiar, at least to these ears) are cynical social commentaries. This, Taylor captures very well.
Black Tuesday is really a ballet, not a modern dance set on ballet dancers. It's a demicaractere ballet, a very contemporary version of Ballet Russe and early Ballet Americana fare, and in that way might well serve as a model for other choreographers. Each episode works very well, but it lacks the framing device that made Company B transcend its musical material. That ballet opens with kids dancing without a care in the world; it ends with the same young people thrown back on stage as though spit out by a virulent wind. Their lives have been ruptured by the war and though they may dance to the same music, they will never, ever dance the same way. Black Tuesday begins and ends in the street. The first song, "Underneath the Arches," is itself rather arch, a finger flick in the face of disaster. The ending solo (last night brilliantly danced by Ethan Stiefel), "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," is desperate and poignant--Taylor captures in choreography the boundless, wasted energy of the American working man of that era--but it's just an ending, not a resolution (or anti-resolution).
In between are a series of "numbers," some of which look like out-takes from a Depression musical, others more successful. The costumes, tattered clothes in black and brown, were both glum and glam and set the mood for the ballet perfectly. The set (sets and costumes by Santo Loquasto), tantalizing views of the New York skyline. Jennifer Tipton provided the shadows.The dancers were terrific. Karin Ellis-Wentz has a brilliant demicaractere solo, a washerwoman's quickstep, full of beats ("Sittin' on a Rubbish-Can"); Marcelo Gomes was an endearing lazy lug, happily exploiting his stable of girls (Erica Cornejo, Elizabeth Gaither and Anne Milewiski); Cornejo was a tattered sophisticate in "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams"; and Marian Butler shot up the stage in "(I Went Hunting) and the Big Bad Wolf Was Dead." Of course, he wasn't, and ending the dance with Stiefel's solo (in itself a structurally daring move that works very well) should have stung the heart: this isn't a musical; these were real people living terrified, wasted lives. Somehow, it didn't. The dance may well acquire depth in subsequent performances (and upon subsequent viewings). On first acquaintance, Company B looked like a nice little suite of dances, too.
Unfortunately, the dancers didn't look all that terrific in Theme and Variations. One can't help but think that Paloma Herrera, with her exquisite feet and allegro allure, should be wonderful in this ballet's ballerina role, but last night she seemed to be taking so much care that all the spunk had gone out of her. Her arms were softened to the point of near bonelessness--but that's not Balanchine. Marcelo Gomes stole the show, without trying to. He's not a neat dancer, but he's a juicy one--he'd be great in the Taylor repertory; he's got zunch to spare. Gomes is a big man and moves on a big scale, and so the classical niceties of the role--the ronds de jambe that were really circles described in the air, not just a flapping foot--seem all the more beautiful. He tired at the end--they cut the lifts from the coda--but I'd like to see him in it again. Herrera and Gomes look well together; the central duet was beautifully musical and just needed to be more relaxed to be really first-rate, and with more performances, it may well be.
Michele Wiles stood out among the "soloists"; she was the only one of the women who had a Balanchinean attack. The corps as a whole seemed ragged, not because of imprecise dancing, as much as it was all too obvious that the company has become a clash of body types as well as styles. There was no uniformity. The dancers weren't properly sized (grouped on stage in a way that differences in height don't smack the viewer in the face) which didn't help, and the men, especially, had physiques that seemed much more suited to a contemporary repertory than a classical or neoclassical one.
There were similar problems with Sleeping Beauty, Act III. Despite some very good dancing, especially the Blue Bird pas de deux (Ashley Tuttle and Herman Cornejo) and Aurora and the Prince (Julie Kent and Angel Corella), the performance did not convince that one was seeing one of the world's great companies dance one of the world's great classics. Tuttle, Kent and Corella looked beautifully coached--this was refined, classical dancing. Cornejo's Blue Bird really soared--the opening series of pas de poissons were high and perfectly arched--and Tuttle's dancing was exceptionally polished. Kent's clear dancing, the fine feet and lovely line--her arabesque is one of the company's glories--made her a lovely Aurora. Corella's Prince Desiré was significantly more mature than last year's Siegfried. If he's not a natural prince, he showed he can be very princely, and his solo had all the necessary fireworks.
Elsewhere, there were too many ear-splitting grins, flailing hands (with widely spread fingers), and the circus-style wrist flicks after landing an air turn that's turned up over and over in ABT performances in the past two years. Even Corella, otherwise the model Prince, did this: "Look Ma! I landed it!" The King looked like Squire Westin in a dinner theater production of Tom Jones; the Cats were aggressively cute; the Mazurka was energetic, but not regal. In other divertissements, Ekaterina Shelkanova stood out as one of the "silver fairies" (they look like the Steel Fairies in Georgiadis's steel-gray, cold tutus) and Rosalie O'Connor was charming as Little Red Riding Hood--but she always is. She's stepped into Kathleen Moore's place as the company's great character dancer.
For a review of the second performance of this program, click here