by Leigh Witchel
Time has made “Harlequinade” seem like a calico kitten: even with its own charm, you’d wonder if it was built out of spare parts from other cats.
“Harlequinade” was choreographed by Petipa in 1900 near the close of his career. It was created for legends of the St. Petersburg stage: Mathilde Kschessinkaya was the original Columbine (and Petipa detested her. In his diaries he referred to her as “a nasty little swine”). The ballet, in its premiere before the Imperial court, was a huge success, both for Petipa’s choreography and Riccardo Drigo’s score, which almost wasn’t by Drigo. It had originally been assigned to Glazunov, but he felt that Drigo’s Italian heritage made him the natural choice to write music for the commedia dell’arte ballet. Drigo and Glazunov exchanged assignments and instead, Glazunov composed the ballet score to “The Seasons.”
“Harlequinade” was performed frequently before the Russian revolution, but the last performance of Petipa’s production was in 1927. In 1965, Balanchine mounted his production à la manière de Petipa for New York City Ballet. Now Alexei Ratmansky has gone even closer to the source and remounted the ballet for American Ballet Theatre from Stepanov’s notation.
“Harlequinade” pays homage to the characters and conventions of commedia. Its story is wafer-thin and thickly familiar to anyone who’s seen ballet or pantomime shows.
It started off in the inevitable town square. Cassandre, the inevitable wealthy father, emerged from his home brandishing a key, not the last time “Harlequinade” would resemble “Coppélia.” Pierrot, Cassandre’s servant entered and mimed, all declaimed straight to the audience. His wife Pierrette entered and danced. Petipa’s original steps were straightforward; Pierrette’s variation began with a diagonal of emboîtés. Most of Petipa’s ballets gained frills and furbelows over the century, one reason may be the paradox that simpler steps are harder to sell. It takes a greater dancer to make something out of cakewalking down the stage.
The inevitable village dances followed. As in “Coppélia,” in the first act they were a pastiche of character dances: first a tarantella, then a Spanish dance.
Harlequin made his entrance; he also came front and mimed right to us. “I love her, but she is locked away, what to do?” He decided to serenade Columbine to wake her up. Band geek objection to this staging: a mandolin was playing in the orchestra pit, but the musicians onstage had prop lutes.
Pierrette arrived with Cassandre’s purloined key and danced with four other couples, but not with Pierrot. Instead, she danced with an unnamed cavalier who did not figure in the plot and the corps echoed them in beautiful moving patterns. Pierrot shooed them away and in came brigands, conspiring with Cassandre. They attacked Harlequin and “dismembered” him – his stunt double was a doll that endearingly recalled the very obviously stuffed tiger that looks like a rug in ABT’s “La Bayadère.” It would have been gruesome if it weren’t so fake – instead it was a sight gag.
The gendarmes arrived and mangled a phrase of the Marseillaise in affable silliness that felt as much like Ratmansky as Petipa. In a low-tech miracle, Harlequin burst through a door with his limbs magically restored. He met the Good Fairy (Ratmansky’s wife Tatiana in the most warm and vivid performance in the ballet). Yet another instance where “Harlequinade” recalled other ballets – she was even wearing lilac. She bestowed a magical slap stick on Harlequin as a gift.
In came a wealthy fop, Gamache . . . sorry, Léandre . . . who wanted Columbine for his bride. He was his own Ministry of Silly Walks as his attendants carried him about.
As the act ended, the lovers escaped with Pierrette. Harlequin used the magical gift of the Good Fairy to drop the balcony that imprisoned the two women so that they could escape. Instead, it trapped Cassandre and Pierrot as the lovers fled.
By Act 2 the story was done, except for the inevitable betrothal scene gone awry. The Good Fairy’s slap stick now created a spray of money so that the penniless Harlequin could marry Columbine. There was no faked suicide as in “Don Quixote,” but the notary from “La Fille Mal Gardée” presided.
The end of the plot gave way to a divertissement featuring four squads of children dressed as commedia dell’arte familiars of the main characters. Cascades of youngsters bobbed side to side and circled the stage or came forward in careful linear patterns. The groups massed together for the finale; the joy was in the sheer volume.
A fountain was symbolized by a spangled umbrella that a dancer crouched under and rotated. Columbine, mimicking a lark, came out twittering and jumping. Harlequin captured her heart with a blowgun, and there we were in the land of the Firebird. The lovers’ duet was tender and simple; he tossed and caught her repeatedly in a gentle flip, capturing and taming her. The ballet ended in a flutter of little larks, a danse générale and a happy tableau.
Ratmansky wasn’t trying to remove an overlay of performance tradition like varnish from “Harlequinade,” so his production seemed less revisionist than his revivals of “The Sleeping Beauty” or “Swan Lake.” As with those, it’s a staging as much as a reconstruction. If he needed to add business or fill in a gap, he did.
But “Harlequinade” isn’t on the level of “The Sleeping Beauty” or “Swan Lake.” It isn’t really even on the level of “Coppélia.” The story is charming but static and feels like an unspecific pastiche, and the dances aren’t unique or memorable enough to make you forget that nothing much actually happens.
This is a revival that could have used star power, something ABT is low on this season. As lovely as it is to see ABT encouraging its own, the ranks are still thin, particularly for ballerinas. And “Harlequinade” is a ballet that needs dancers who can bring their own magic to make something of it.
Still, Ratmansky showed off both James Whiteside and Isabella Boylston. Whiteside was masked the entire time, so how he moved mattered the most – it served as his character, and he’s exceptionally coordinated. His Act 1 solo had a springy attack, and in the second act he phrased through spins that rotated into air turns that landed to the knee.
Boylston is an easy dancer with a beautiful jump, again in a role that impressed through movement and only asked for a light comic touch as an actress. As with Whiteside, the variations shone through coordination and control; her act 1 solo only had single turns, but in a difficult position with the foot held low in the back and requiring a clean, clear finish that couldn’t be faked.
Gillian Murphy in the second banana role of Pierrette was a surprising bit of overcasting, as were the company’s male soloists sprinkled into the corps in Act 1. Thomas Forster flopped his sleeves forlornly as Pierrot; Alexandre Hammoudi was Murphy’s unnamed cavalier.
You’d think with the public’s hunger for story ballets, “Harlequinade” would be a more frequent visitor. NYCB’s production was a succès d’estime, but even with New York City Ballet’s trend towards full-length works, “Harlequinade” hasn’t persisted in repertory beyond infrequent revivals. It may not have enough unique virtues to capture a place in repertory on its own.
The difficulty might be the calico cat issue – even though Balanchine didn’t stage “Coppélia” for NYCB until 1974, after that point, “Harlequinade” probably looked like a knockoff of it. Even Drigo’s sonorous score sounded like Delibes as it swelled into ripe chords.
Like our calico, the ballet is an endearing bit of fluff, and important to preserve as well. But in a dog-eat-dog world where time grinds up and digests repertory, it’s in a precarious position – the same one as Balanchine’s “Gounod Symphony.” Both are good works. But both look a lot like other works that have a firmer hold on their spot.
copyright © 2018 by Leigh Witchel
“Harlequinade” – American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House, New York, NY
June 4, 2018
Cover: James Whiteside in “Harlequinade.” Photo © Marty Sohl.
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