by Leigh Witchel
Going to see The Sarasota Ballet do Balanchine is like going to see New York City Ballet do Ashton. It’s not the House Specialty, but you could learn something about what really makes Balanchine or Ashton, Balanchine or Ashton.
The Tribute to Balanchine program was a triple bill of major works and greatest hits: “Divertimento No. 15,” “The Four Temperaments,” and “Western Symphony.” Only “Divert” was new to the company, but there has been enough turnover that much of the company was new to the works. Injuries and illnesses close to the performance also forced major cast shuffles. One of the company’s two main ballerinas, Danielle Brown, could only dance “Western.”
“Divert” needed the most work. When we first laid eyes on it opening night, it looked cramped and seemed to crowd the stage. Jared Oaks conducted it at a spacious tempo, and the costumes by Peter Farmer were less ornate and brocaded than Karinska’s, with the men in shirts, not tunics.
The company danced it classically, more academically vertical in placement. If you looked at films of NYCB dancing “Divert” in the 1960s, it was classical as well, but classical doesn’t mean without attack. Dancing the themes, both Josh Fisk and Evan Gorbell were very promising; Fisk was more punctuated with a high arabesque, Gorbell more creamy in phrasing with an arcing back. After that things didn’t really look the way they should until Ricardo Rhodes did the lead male solo. Rhodes has technique to spare, and he danced big without sacrificing cleanliness. The women were all dancing under themselves.
The performances improved; both this cast on Saturday evening and the matinee cast moved more. Doing one of the themes at the matinee, Daniel Pratt (LAW note: Daniel and I are friends) found a compromise on how to do Balanchine if you’re not a Balanchine dancer. His partnering was more romantic and moody than a Balanchine dancer would be, and his phrasing used more breath than accent to color it, but the line was there and the partnering was secure. Because of an injury to Samuel Gest, Fisk did all three shows, and though he was already on the right track, he pushed more as he went. He did his final beats emphasizing a full shift in direction. Punching the twist was a little too much, as if trying to search for a meaning that wasn’t actually the meaning.
Anna Pellegrino is long all around, including her torso, but she’s a bête de scène and her happy smile in the first variation at the matinee worked for the antic nature of the role. Plus she made her gargouillades. In her duet, she had a big ballerina fantasy that recalled a much-missed dancer, Ellen Overstreet.
In the third variation, Lauren Ostrander was in touch with her inner Balanchine dancer. Her fantasy also worked; it was just the right amount to sustain what she was trying for physically. She was a little wristy and flappy, but that’s not out of the style, and it didn’t look like parody. Her extroverted, American, energy fit; there was something sunny, athletic and a tiny bit raw that made her look at home. Leading the men, Maximiliano Iglesias danced fluently and didn’t overdo it.
Marijana Dominis did the same variation as Ostrander in the evening cast and led the women at the matinee. She’s a precise turner, with an accurate retiré, and spotted neatly en face. She covered all the bases, but she was risk-averse. There are certain differences that are acceptable as the local accent, but some things are antithetical to Balanchine’s work: dancing under yourself or not taking chances. In her duet in the evening cast, she did a perfect pirouette for Rhodes to come in and get her, but Balanchine isn’t about being in the safety zone. There were small details that were different: an arabesque penchée that was done with free arms instead of bracing on the shoulder. It was more daring, but also more awkward.
In the coda, Gorbell did gorgeous beats to turns and Pellegrino stuck a balance, but both Ostrander and Dominis kept the volume low when they did teeny tiny hip twists. Thank you to both casts of the ensemble for moving big.
With Brown only able to do one ballet, Macarena Giménez saved the weekend, doing just about everything else. But she’s as much of a Balanchine dancer as a bacon cheeseburger in a kosher deli. She’s technical, but believes in completely different priorities. She did the beats, but small and unaccented, or made the necessary speed but milked the ending. She came forward in the opening and did textbook turns; like Dominis, she has a beautiful, pulled-up retiré. Both women also have elegant feet and light, fast point work, but in Balanchine their point work seemed spongy, as if their energy didn’t go all the way to their toes.
Giménez is a mistress of the stage smile, but close up in Balanchine, it felt plastered on. In her duet with Rhodes, she fluttered enough you’d have thought it was “Swan Lake.” She spent so much energy on giving face, extraneous port de bras and come-hither glances instead of covering the space. It was like someone who wears a little too much perfume. That wasn’t what you were supposed to notice. In Balanchine, all the ballerina-isms felt as if she were trying to pull a fast one on you.
Sanguinic in “The Four Temperaments” worked better for Giménez. Her flexibility meant she could go off her leg, and the ballet’s mood reined in some of her tendency towards artifice. Rhodes could lift her imperceptibly, and she kept it more neutral as she leaned forward or drifted round the stage carried by him.
Iglesias did Melancholic as a sustained, dramatic collapse. He threw himself around, BAM! to the floor. He was living for the suffering by the end, shaking his head in sadness and brushing his hand on the floor. It was a little too much, but at least too much in the right direction. Melancholic can handle some of that interpretation, and the performance wasn’t just in his face, it was in his body and movement.
Like her husband, Giménez overdid some of the movement in Sanguinic, flopping over at the end of her short solo, but she could also really bend back as she reentered kicking. Falling back on pointe was not Giménez’s jam, but if a step didn’t work for her, she did what would.
Gorbell again got the tone right in his matinee performance of Melancholic. In his sharp motion and strong attack in the huge backbends and reaches, he conveyed the emotions through his focus and the force of his body as a metaphor.
Gorbell and Richard House couldn’t be more different, but you have to have a back to do either Melancholic and Phlegmatic, and both men do. We haven’t seen as much of House this season, so his Phlegmatic was welcome, but more than that, it looked right both temperamentally and physically. Cast shuffling in the matinee meant he did all three performances, and kept getting better. He performed with a thoughtful mix of emotion and design, he has the flexibility for the part and he never stepped under his long legs.
Pellegrino and Ostrander alternated in Choleric. Hindemith’s opening, played by NYCB veteran pianist Cameron Grant, is like someone dumped a bucket of notes on the dancer. It looked as if Ostrander hadn’t fully decided on her phrasing but she found it by the Devil’s Dance. Pellegrino is shorter than often cast at NYCB, but she pushed, springing out and diving riskily into a crouch.
When one of the two was doing Choleric, the other was dancing the second theme. Pellegrino and Ostrander seemed to be the women with the most affinity for Balanchine; Ostrander got the en face, frieze-like quality of the duet, and her partner, Thomas Leprohon, moved well.
In the other themes, Mihai Costache and Bel Pickering placed their feet in the opening tendus with the gravity of a pavane. Gabriella Schulze did the matinee; when she looked at Costache, there was a story. She articulated the moment when her foot went from being flexed to touching the floor. There was passion as well as fantasy; you could see she was transported by the way she moved her head, but she could get so caught up in the mood that she would break the connection of her neck and spine. She joined the company last year, and she’s one to watch.
Pratt again figured out a good balance between the technical demands of the partnering and creating a mood. His arms rose as if lifted by air currents underneath and deflated quietly. It was as if we weren’t there; his gaze was often down and eyes almost shut as if dreaming the moment. Dominis checked for him before she bent over, but gave no secrets away.
Everyone was hopped up on Saturday night, because it was both the last show of the season and Brown’s final performance with the company, except for a fundraising gala the next day. Everyone pushed, sometimes off the cliff. Iglesias took Melancholic from emotional to drama drama drama DRAMA, slamming the floor with his hand, or collapsing over practically weeping. The ballet is one of the masterworks of the 20th century. It’s less about what you’re feeling than what you’re showing, and it doesn’t need to be sold. All you really need to do is focus on the choreography.
Between “Danses Concertantes” and the Sylph, Brown has been thrown so many challenges this season that it was nice to see her in the first movement of “Western Symphony,” where she could blow kisses at the audience and enjoy herself. And on the last night, you saw nothing from her but genuine smiles and pleasure.
“Western” has more dancers on stage at most times than “Divert” but it felt less cramped. The company has done it before and knew how to move in it. Partnering Brown, House did a full, easy split jeté with legs that seemed to take up a quarter of the stage. That’s a man who should be doing more Balanchine; he’s got the technique, the proportions and the flexibility.
Even though they are husband and wife, Giménez and Iglesias don’t dance together often; he’s a little too short for her. But they led the matinee cast for the first movement. She’s a thoughtful dancer and has a sense of humor; she figured out how to walk away from us in a way that made her bustle sway just so. But the joy of dancing together removed all restraining impulses. She made so many little faces, OOH! AAH! and flirted endlessly with both him and us as if dancing got in the way. They played too much with the music, and that distorted the choreography. And it looks like ego if you don’t trust Balanchine’s choreography to do its job.
If Ricki Bertoni acts his way through his dancing, well, that’s his job as Character Principal Dancer. He’s one of the best and smartest dance actors out there, and always seems to be digging into the material to discover more, rather than trying to do what works best for him. Watching him figure out the second movement was breathtaking; the solution he seemed to come up with, playing alongside Dominis, wasn’t exactly like anyone else’s. He grew a mustache, looked like a movie cowboy and acted like a movie cowboy. Submitted for your approval: we meet a contract player in a Hollywood studio from the 1950s whose specialty was being an extra in Westerns. Imagine if he woke up one morning to find himself the lead in a ballet.
He and Dominis gently pointed out the absurdity of the conventions, and somehow, it worked. She tapped him twice on the shoulder to start the show. When he took her in a dip, then flipped her upside down, the point wasn’t the absurdity of flipping her in the wrong direction, but him assuming that’s what ballet dancers do, right? Look at this trick! TADA! She’s facing the ground!
Dominis didn’t ignore the role’s technical demands, particularly the swamp pit Italian Fouettés that have claimed several ballerinas. The two didn’t overplay the abrupt change of mood when she got “stuck” in the final lift. They played it almost like a set change, something easily accepted because this is a movie, and that’s the ending. So she left sadly, he strummed his hat, gathered his ladies and rode off into the sunset.
At the matinee, Pratt wisely didn’t try to imitate Bertoni. He played straight man to Dominique Jenkins’ ballerina, with an air of endless surprise: You’re the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen! Look, a pointe shoe! She found a good tone for the transitions, going blank as he held her suspended. A detail that Sandra Jennings’ staging pointed up and is hard to catch at Lincoln Center: When the ballerina runs and dives into her partner’s arms at the back of the stage, both Pratt and Bertoni tipped her far enough over that she could look at us and we could see her face. [Postscript 10/23: I checked when I next saw “Western Symphony,” at NYCB. It’s hard to spot because it isn’t done. I also checked both the 1950’s and the 1990 recordings of the ballet. This detail is in neither.]
Like he did with Madge, Bertoni nailed the quality of his performance on the first night, but then went a little too far the second. The sad thing is, he rarely gets a third performance and beyond to establish equilibrium.
The finale featured Ostrander towering over Yuki Nonaka. Once again, Ostrander got the tone, and the eccentricities of the part, shuffling to the center in a leisurely walk, then kicking over Nonaka’s head. Nonaka set off a shower of technical fireworks: amazing turns, and one trick after another. But he mugged and played to the crowd, and if you’re doing that in Balanchine, you need to think again. In the afternoon, both Gorbell and Pellegrino understood how to dance first, and flirt second. She managed to have a wonderful time without losing the choreography and pranced to the center as he strolled. Gorbell didn’t punch the tricks as hard as Nonaka did, but he danced the part. Both Ostrander and Pellegrino did good, clean fouettés.
At the very end, Bertoni, bless his Character Principal Dancer heart, had to do something he probably doesn’t do all that often anymore, repeated turns from fifth position. The first night it was rough, the second night he lost his bearings.
There’s a lot that can be seen more clearly when a company ventures on to less familiar turf. How do you adapt to a different style? When do you push movement, when do you push acting, and when is it too much? One place Sarasota could rival NYCB was program composition: “Divert,” “4Ts” and “Western” is a better triple bill than most of the ones we’ve gotten at NYCB this year. And seriously, could you imagine NYCB doing better at “Symphonic Variations?”
Brown’s retirement encapsulates an issue The Sarasota Ballet is facing. Webb hired many of his stalwarts when he arrived in 2007, including Victoria Hulland, who retired last year, Brown, Rhodes and Bertoni. They’re aging out, and in a tight clump rather than spread out gradually. The company is going to London in June 2024 to dance a week of Ashton programs. It’s a thrilling prospect, and Webb needs to hold on to everyone who can do the style.
Giménez, Iglesias and Dominis have all looked better in repertory where they could be coached more consistently or effectively. And new dancers are coming up. Pellegrino has real potential, Ostrander has already shown a talent for acting as well as Balanchine. Fisk and Gorbell both could move beyond the corps.
But the final moment belonged to Brown. She was a sleeper ballerina, not bursting into stardom, but developing steadily. She evolved from the virtuoso dancer you expected to do all the hard parts, to a surprising actress as well, to an exponent of style in the Ashton repertory she’s now done more than 15 years – the one you wanted to see first in anything to know what it was supposed to look like. She pulled more than her weight in bringing the company to where it is. It’s hard to imagine Sarasota Ballet without her.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Divertimento No. 15,” “The Four Temperaments,” “Western Symphony” – The Sarasota Ballet
Sarasota Opera House, Sarasota, FL
April 28-9, 2023
Cover: Danielle Brown and Richard House in “Western Symphony.” Photo © Frank Atura.
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