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Celebrating AshtonThe Royal Ballet, Covent Garden
Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, June 5, 2001Les Rendezvous, Symphonic Variations, Thais pas de deux, Marguerite and Armand
by Alexandra Tomalonis
For the past two years, as part of its larger Millennium festivities, the Kennedy Center has honored four choreographers it has named the greatest of the 20th century: Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Antony Tudor. Ashton is the last to be presented. (Robbins was represented by the San Francisco Ballet last season, Balanchine by a "Balanchine Celebration" in the autumn of 2000 and by Miami City Ballet last week; Tudor by single ballets during American Ballet Theatre's last two seasons here.)
England's Royal Ballet, the company Ashton did so much to shape, began a week's run last night with an all-Ashton bill; his rustic comedy, La Fille Mal Gardée, will be danced this weekend. Ashton is notoriously difficult to dance. His ballets are fiendishly hard technically, yet no effort can be allowed to show. His legato phrasing is peppered with changes of direction and nonstandard arm positions, but must look elegant and fluid. Dancing him must be like trying to make hopping in quicksand look like floating on air. If the phrasing is off, if the dancers can't toss off Ashton's eccentricities as though they're second-nature, his ballets can look fussy, awkward, and even a bit silly. When everything comes together and the ballets fit the dancers as the falcon's feathers fit the falcon, even the slightest of them are sublime.
Despite some very fine individual performances, last night as a whole was more awkward than sublime. Opening nights are often a bit subdued and perhaps the company hasn't found its stage legs yet, but the overall impression left was that Ashton is no longer the dancers' native language.
The ballet that had generated the most anticipation was a revival of Marguerite and Armand, the work that became indelibly identified with the legendary partnership of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. No one else ever danced this ballet, which was given its last performances more than 20 years ago. It was revived for the French ballerina Sylvie Guillem, a regular guest artist with the Royal, and her compatriot, Nicholas LeRiche.
Guillem--a tall, leggy bravura dancer who can be both glamourous and a gamin--is as far from the cool, classical Fonteyn as can be imagined, and if her interpretation of Marguerite had less nobility, it was still very sincere and touching. (This is the Camille story; Marguerite is a courtesan who sacrifices her life to save the reputation of her young lover's family) Given clearer direction, one could imagine Guillem being an extremely effective Marguerite. LeRiche danced Armand at quarter-speed and with a disappointing lack of passion and energy, and there seemed little rapport between the two. Ashton told the story in flashbacks--vivid scenes consisting of solos, duets and bits of mime as they flashed through the fevered brain of the dying Marguerite as she remembered the most important love in her young life. In this production, there are several details, both in drama and choreography, missing, and this once potent distillation of one of the Romantic Era's greatest love stories looked like just another little love-and-death ballet.
"Thais pas de deux" is another ballet that's closely associated with its creators--Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell, one of the most perfect Ashton dancers ever and the company's current director. Thais was forged from their partnership, their physical and emotional rapport, and their magic as performers. Leanne Benjamin and Adam Cooper danced it very ably, but without the magic.
Ashton's "Symphonic Variations," the ballet that made neoclassicism a moral statement, a return to a celebration of beauty and nobility of spirit created a year after the most devastating war in modern history, received a very cleanly dance, respectful performance that never quite came alive. This was Washington's first look at the company's newest principal, Alina Cojocaru, definitely a ballerina-in-the-making with a beautifully fluid way of moving who doesn't yet quite have the authority for the central role in this ballet.
"Les Rendezvous," that most durable of trifles, was created in 1933 for the young company that would grow up to be the Royal Ballet. This was danced very well, especially by Jamie Tapper in the pas de trois and Johan Kobborg in the role created by the Ballet Russe's great Bluebird, Stanley Idzikowski, that's technically a killer. Unfortunately, the ballet has been sabotaged by its designs. Once set in a very specific place -- a park, with a fence and a gate -- and with a very specific atmosphere of quiet good manners and playful flirtation, Anthony Ward's colorful polka dot-and-striped confections are sickeningly sweet and would be better suited as illustrations to a children's book. The huge trees and outsized sun that look like paper cutouts don't help. The globs of color actually get in the way of watching the ballet, and the costumes not only skew the atmosphere, they destroy its sense of confinement (the fence was not merely decor) and obliterate the subtle alienation of the four "little girls" not quite old enough to have partners, nor partake in the fun.
While it's wonderful to have the opportunity to look at so much Ashton choreography, one doesn't have the sense that his ballets are close to the heart of the company these days. In past seasons here, however, the dancers have grown closer to Ashton, in body and spirit, as they dance him, and the program will repeat tonight and Thursday.
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