Home
Ballet Talk
Magazines
Specials
Reviews
Ballets
Dancers
Companies
Studio
Shop
Links
Subscribe

---

First Impressions and Second Thoughts
New York City Ballet in Berkeley
by Rita Felciano

Agon, Concerto Barocco, Fearful Symmetries, Barber Violin Concerto, Other Dances, The Concert, Square Dance, and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux

The New York City Ballet—or about half of it, some 40 members—returned to the Bay Area (Sept. 22-27) after a twelve year hiatus. Naturally, anticipation ran high. CalPerformances, the presenters, pulled out all the stops, using the event to open their prestigious and generally first-rate season with all the social hoopla and fundraising potential they could muster. The first program's requisite mix of the old and the new (Balanchine's Concerto Barocco and Agon, Jerome Robbins Other Dances and Peter Martins' Fearful Symmetries) promised much. But performances of the Balanchine ballets were such a let down, the opening night felt like an ice-cold shower. It made me wonder whether all the horror stories of the company's decline in fact were true, or what I thought I had seen had in fact taken place.

Concerto Barocco, in particular looked mechanical, with an inordinate number of technical snafus. You can't hide sloppy descents or wayward rhythms in a ballet this transparent. Where was that much vaunted dancerly brilliance? The musical reading was overly romantic, particularly in the largo. The corps didn't seem to have a clue about its relationship to the soloists. There is supposed to a give and take, imitating and supporting, as well as considerable independence. Those much spoofed, yet still delightful knots and unfurling patterns, looked brittle instead of steadily flowing. At times it felt like Miranda Weese, as the first soloist, (partnered by a competent Robert Lyon) had to hold the piece together by herself. It was one of those experiences where they longer you stayed with them, the more you feel your spirit sinking.

I went to see the program again, two nights later. What a change. Maybe this company, which almost never performs in unfamiliar environments, had problems performing in a new theater? However, this excuse certainly does not get the musicians off the hook. At the second performance, Hugo Fiorato's conducting was less soupy, and Barocco came to life. Zippora Karz , whose upper chest and neck had looked as if encased in a brace, had been replaced by Jennie Somogy as the second soloist. She danced in the same world as Weese, and the corps responded in kind. The third movement especially sparkled and restored to the work its wonderful sense of watching a keen mind at play.

Agon, too, looked improved the second time around. The score sounded crisper and rhythmically cleaner. A slight rearrangement of the cast, with Sebastien Marcovici, Karz and Deanna McBrearty taking the roles of Nilas Martin, Michele Gifford and Riolama Lorenzo for the first Pas de Trois, proved to be a good move. Marcovici is a pleasant and clean performer; Karz and McBrearty's two-peas-in-a pod look (though with very different port de bras) visually emphasized the Gailliard's delicious mirroring images. Excellent also was Stephen Hanna and Christopher Wheeldon in Bransle Simple's rocking syncopations. Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto's Pas de Deux, partly because she looks so attenuated and he so stocky, seemed somewhat idiosyncratic. But there is no questioning her fully inhabiting the part and his excellent and secure, almost self-effacing partnering. What I missed was the sense of danger—both physical and metaphoric—that is integral to this duet. There was no sense of smoldering sexuality between them. This was all business.

Agon's surprise was Monique Meunier, a dancer new to me. A technically secure, poised performer with wonderfully clean lines, her sultry épaulement in Bransle Gay injected just a touch of dramatic narrative. Her sense of tonal nuance was put to good use when, in NYCB's second program, she danced with great aplomb the part of the browbeating wife in Robbins' The Concert.

Both of Martins' works were new to the area. The breezy Fearful Symmetries to John Adams' eponymous score did what good choreography can do: highlight and illuminate a score. It also rode Adams' lush carpet of shifting rhythms and vivid colorizations with confidence and indisputable logic. This is not a greatly original piece, but it is solidly crafted, in an honest workmanlike manner, somewhat in the manner of good show or movie musical choreography.

In many ways Symmetries looks like a water ballet. It starts with wave upon wave of dancers who cavort like a flock of playful dolphins that eventually pair themselves into couples. In the central duets, the couples reminded me somewhat of underwater creatures alternatively floating and fighting against the elements. The combination of angularity and floating or airborne quality was somewhat self-conscious but it made sense musically. The most emotionally involving choreography was for the first couple, Meunier and Charles Askegard on the first night, Robert Lyon and the darkly handsome Riolama Lorenzo in the second cast. There Martins seems to have gone beyond the merely pleasing.

Martins' Barber Violin Concerto, performed on program B together with Square Dance Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and The Concert, was a curiously unsatisfactory affair. Originally set on two ballet dancers and two modern dancers (Kate Johnson and David Parson from the Paul Taylor company), Barber was here performed by Whelan and Charles Askegard, with Samantha Allen and Soto in the "modern" roles. The idea, particularly in the crossover partnering, is intriguing enough but as interpreted by Allen and Soto, modern dance looked like a parody of itself. Soto appeared to have to force his body, particularly his angularly stretched arms, into alien positions, and the diminutive Allen flung herself all over the place in a manner that simply perplexed the stately Askegard. No Taylor dancer would ever look so uncontrolled. What worked convincingly was Whelan's gradual softening of her lines in response to Soto's rawer physicality. At times she looked as if she had even changed her way of breathing.

Square Dance is a delicious piece; ever so much slier than Balanchine's other bow to Americana, Western Symphony. Except for its unremitting cheerfulness, its line and promenade patterns are at home in court as well as on the range. In some ways the piece felt like Robbins' Other Dances (danced superbly by that magical, mature and ever so womanly Kyra Nichols and grown up wonderboy Damien Woetzel on program A) which also interprets sociability, both formal and casual.

Yvonne Borree and Nilas Martins were Square Dance's oddly paired soloists. Martins looked stodgy, almost uncomfortable against Borree's buoyant exuberance. Borree started out slowly, but built up a firestorm, taking to the intricate allegro combinations with increasing ease and confidence. She ended by spitting out that rapid-fire finale like a contestant eager to go on to the next challenge.

After Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (with Woetzel and Whelan substituting competently for Nichols), program B closed with The Concert. Good comedy is hard to find; timing and anticipation are everything. In dance it's not any different, and this performance had both. Despite the work's being basically a series of vignettes, NYCB's ensemble work held the piece together immaculately, with Lorenzo as the star-struck music lover, and Robert Fosse and Meunier as the couple married in hell. I do not expect to see soon again the hapless sylph section quite as finely tuned and therefore, as hilarious. I am also afraid that I may never again be able to look at Les Sylphides with quite the same eyes.