by Leigh Witchel
The most awaited event of New York City Ballet’s season was likely Alexei Ratmansky’s first new ballet as the company’s Artist in Residence. Still, don’t discount the rest of the show. There were fine performances of both Opus 19/The Dreamer, and Symphony in Three Movements included a very promising debut.
David Gabriel has been in the company less than two years. He’s been featured before, and now he’s starting to get leads. His debut as the first of the men in Symphony in Three Movements showed why. He’s a whippet, not tall but very long, and led out alongside Erica Pereira with beautiful elevation, hanging in the air in jumps with his legs tucked under him.
Tiler Peck had a minor injury that kept her out most of the week; Ashley Laracey went in for her here. Adrian Danchig-Waring seemed inspired by his part opposite her. He attacked it, flying in to enter and skidding round the stage.
Isabella LaFreniere and Jules Mabie both made debuts as the third couple. LaFreniere is getting cast in Amazonian roles and they suit her. She nailed a series of en dedans pirouettes, smiling as her ponytail whipped round.
Danchig-Waring and Laracey are both very long-limbed, so they looked good together and the curlicues of the main duet worked well on them. The overtones of Orientalism in their duet faded by the time Balanchine used the cocked arms and held-back stance here and in Rubies. There’s a good chance he had stopped thinking of those poses as “exotic” and only thought of them as “modern.” Danchig-Waring always feels as if he’s en face to us, but the climax of this duet is completely en face. It was another way the part fit him.
At the end of their duet Laracey drifted around like a somnambulist, then turned in and out alongside Danchig-Waring. Laracey was just weird enough to make the part more interesting; the level of spice was nicely piquant. Gabriel led the final moments of the work, attacking his jumps with precision.
Taylor Stanley is the best example in the company of a dancer who prioritizes line over force. Thay drifted round the stage, showing off beautiful lines. Stanley doesn’t do steely turns (one had a small hiccup, but all thair air turns were speedy and clean). It’s interesting that the part was originally made on Mikhail Baryshnikov, a much more forceful dancer, but the role changed in tenor with the casting of Peter Boal and Jeffrey Edwards.
Stanley instinctively understood the character thay were building, but it also had overlays of a persona thay seem to gravitate to: the beautiful outsider. In The Runaway Stanley is also an outsider, but in Opus 19 it’s a choice. Voluntary or involuntary, thay suffer exquisitely, a beautiful soul at odds with the world.
Right now Unity Phelan is in everything, which is classic NYCB poor distribution of resources. We have no idea who’s injured or not, but Emilie Gerrity has been in almost nothing, and Phelan is wildly overworked. This hints at a casting dilemma for the principal women. With LaFreniere and Gerrity seemingly having specific emotional ranges they haven’t yet expanded, Phelan is working through the same issue, but having to do it the opposite route – by being cast in everything.
That said, she looked as if a light bulb went on again, both here and a few days prior in Copland Dance Episodes she was animated, here circling the stage in jumps before collapsing onto Stanley. She is a strong technician; whirling through turns into small stammering hops on pointe. She charged into everything.
The men marched on and Stanley pranced with a carriage as if thay were strutting through the march in Phlegmatic. Stanley understands things using repertory as a prism, but what would not come naturally is the Russianness of the concerto; something Baryshnikov wouldn’t have had to think about. But Stanley has also found thair way into Stravinsky Violin Concerto.
Towards the end of the concerto, the violin line ascended, and Stanley spasmed into poses (thay do suffer beautifully). The well-rehearsed ensemble bent round unperturbed.
Stanley slowly revolved to repeat beautifully elongated penchés. Phelan reappeared to stand by tham. The dancers drifted away and the two ended in a mutual shrug, their heads in each other’s hands.
Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet, Solitude is dedicated “to the children of Ukraine, victims of the war” and dealt with the conflict that has haunted Ratmansky since the invasion. The ballet is set to two of Mahler’s most famous excerpts: the funeral march from his first symphony and the adagietto from his fifth.
The murky designs by Moritz Junge hinted at a landscape of hazy desolation. On one side of the stage an SAB student, Theo Rochios, lay on the ground, motionless. Joseph Gordon knelt beside him, paralyzed, holding his hand.
On the other side the rest of the cast made a slow march. Five couples, led by Nadon and Chan, struggled across the stage. The women collapsed one at a time, the men reached to them. The men crouched; then the women reached. Nadon was tossed and recoiled from Chan, then sprung into him, and did it again. Everyone tumbled and struggled off.
Sara Mearns formed a dramatic trio with Chan and Davide Riccardo. Gordon and Rochios remained still for what felt like an eternity. Two women joined Gordon and the boy, but after observing, they withdrew as if there was sadly nothing to be done.
If Ratmansky is making an unusually emotional statement for him, there were also things that were very familiar. Ratmansky often uses what’s more accurately an ensemble than a corps de ballet. It’s a community and one of its most important functions is to act as a witness. Nadon and Mearns picked up the boy and led him away. Gordon remained unable to move.
The men leaped behind and KJ Takahashi danced a solo, scuffling out before the movement ended and Gordon finally got up. The adagietto began, the strings and harps offering hope. This is the music Gerald Arpino used in 1983 or Round of Angels, a memorial for the death of a friend from AIDS.
Ratmansky gave Gordon a dream role: a long soliloquy of an anguished soul, sorrowing and whirling, then collapsing precipitously to the ground, rubbing it with his palms to try and find comfort in the earth. Gordon ran and threw himself into turns, or pitched into balances and jumps. There was a link to Stanley’s character depictions – both of them suffer beautifully, but Gordon’s suffering, when it was finally expressed, was active and directed outwards, hinting in his Romantic yearning that there was a way out. Stanley’s collapsed inwards.
As strong as the ensemble was, the ballet was over-cast. Gordon’s role was the only part that required a principal dancer. Nadon and Chun got something meaty. Mearns and Indiana Woodward had moments; Woodward got to show off her tight turns. Still, this was largely an ensemble work, and somewhere in the crowd were several soloists, including Laracey, Ashley Hod and Harrison Coll.
Two women brought the boy back to Gordon and the two danced an adagio, as if the act of rebuilding were possible. Gordon protected the child on one side; the others floated and massed on the other. After a manège the others pushed Gordon, then the sky went white with a flash, then chaos. The others fled and Gordon remained where he began with the child, once again motionless on the ground, as if there were no way these people could end the sufferings imposed upon them.
The raw emotions of Solitude, like Ashton’s Dante Sonata, worked because of their white-hot topicality. Ratmansky kept some restraint no matter how emotional, but if Gordon and the rest of the cast hadn’t performed with such commitment it could have gone off the rails. Like Ashton’s work as England was dragged into battle, Solitude may also be a work that in the future will need historical context to understand how people felt at the time.
Even if Gordon’s portrayal may be a high mark in his career, the most interesting character in Solitude is Ratmansky himself. He is a changed man, one driven to wear his heart on his sleeve. As Marina Harss has said about Ratmansky after writing her biography The Boy from Kyiv, he is an intensely private man, and like Balanchine, felt that to survive in Russia, you needed to keep your head down. And when he has talked, it hasn’t always gone well.
His head is now held high, burning with conviction. One of the great themes of Romantic ballet is awakening – the hero discovering who he actually is. Life is imitating art, and we are now witnesses to the awakening of Alexei Ratmansky.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Opus 19/The Dreamer, Solitude, Symphony in Three Movements – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
February 15, 2024
Cover: New York City Ballet in Solitude. Photo © Erin Baiano.
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