by Leigh Witchel
The third All-Balanchine program at New York City Ballet featured dances with some of the most on-brand roles in the repertory: Apollo, The Poet and the Sleepwalker, and the ballerina in “Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2.” Some of those required a character, others required presence. Some of those roles got filled nicely. Some didn’t.
Adrian Danchig-Waring opened “Apollo” with a clean, neatly punctuated opening solo, but was that we needed to see? There have been two approaches to Apollo for several decades: Blond God or Wild Boy. Danchig-Waring seemed to be going for Blond God. He has those looks, but he hasn’t had that career, and might be better off with a wilder approach.
Sara Adams fed on Calliope’s drama, doing a big contraction at the outset. When she softly rolled her arms to indicate speech, she seemed more contemplative, as if she weren’t declaiming but thinking about what was coming out. But Danchig-Waring turned away before he reacted to her, so there was no sense of cause and effect.
Emilie Gerrity’s first turns were clean, but the en dedans diagonal into arabesque still gave her trouble. She did the turns rapidly to get the double done, and then saved the endings. This still wasn’t a role she was comfortable with. Earlier, when dipping down with all the women, Gerrity did her penchée too late and they all bumped legs.
Unity Phelan gave Terpsichore more scale with bigger kicks in her solo, and in her duet with Danchig-Waring, he flipped her over into an upside-down split, something that seems to have gradually become standard. Jacques d’Amboise didn’t do that with Diana Adams in 1960, but he came closer to doing it it with Suzanne Farrell in 1965. But what was once about its motion has become about a pose, and the woman’s stretch. When Danchig-Waring escorted Phelan across the stage as she dove over, all four penchées went to a full easy split. 180° just happened. If she was plastic, she was also placid. The “swimming” pose was secure. She smiled a lot, and if it didn’t add up to a character it was at least pleasant.
The coda looked best; all the dancers increased their scale, but that section can also be put over by just dancing it. All told, who is Danchig-Waring’s Apollo? From that performance, someone who does steps very cleanly. In his solo, when he kicked side to side you finally saw him straining at the boundaries, and it brought something to the part. The final “peacock” pose was beautiful and lit beautifully, but like the rest of the performance, not yet more than a pretty picture.
It’s amazing what coaching can do. Phelan worked on “La Sonnambula” with Allegra Kent, and she had a much more vivid and personal idea of who the Sleepwalker was than Terpsichore.
In the opening scene, Ashley Laracey played the Coquette as haughty with a tightly pursed mouth. Andrew Veyette, as the Baron, first grasped her shoulders before turning her round and made something of bringing her together with Taylor Stanley’s Poet, each movement and invitation towards one another very deliberate. But also quite cryptic. In the divertissements, Davide Riccardo made an elegant debut in the pas de deux with Jacqueline Bologna.
The Poet danced with two women. Oddly, neither duet felt about the poet; Stanley seemed to see him as less an active participant in the drama, then a reflection of others. Interesting, but if so, who is the Sleepwalker? In Stanley’s first duet with Laracey, it was about her legs. Even in a long skirt, they shot up over her head. Stanley receded in some way, even physically staying behind her. They embraced hurriedly, looking around at the end of their dance, and Stanley made an eye roll as the others came in for a Polonaise. Veyette whisked Laracey away to dinner almost like a magic trick, but without some hints of malice and ire, the Baron’s violence later comes out of nowhere.
Phelan’s conception of the Sleepwalker felt fresh. She didn’t seem mysterious and otherworldly, as one of the most affecting Sleepwalkers, Darci Kistler, did. This was not someone from a Romantic dream. But Kistler was a character who was a mirror of the Poet’s desires. Phelan was the main character in her story. With her quick and staccato runs on pointe, she was concerned and constantly moving, stuck in a nightmare where she was racing down a corridor we couldn’t see.
Four times Stanley tried to bar Phelan’s path, slotting under her seamlessly until a beautiful final backbend. Each time she just stepped over. At the end of their encounter, Stanley barely kissed her, and when she left, sent her with a push as if it were one of Balanchine’s abstract ballets.
Betrayed, Laracey spied and fumed in tight, furious movements. She made it clear her actions were calculated revenge that she only regretted when it became murder.
Phelan’s final appearance was emotionally complex and ambivalent. Still rapt in her concern, she came out as if somehow drawn to the tragedy. Though she wasn’t awake, she registered shock when she was stopped by the poet’s body. It was as if in her dream she were suddenly stopped as well. Unlike Kistler, who was untouchable and unknowable, Phelan’s mystery lived in what we could see versus what she was seeing as she ran to and from it in her dreams.
“Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” is a turning role, and Sara Mearns is a turner, but a risky rather than a gyroscopic one. Still, that added a level of heightened emotion to her performance.
Mearns had a leisurely presence in the opening, and took the first of the infamous swivel turns slowly so she could speed up. You could see her think when setting up her next enchaînement to make her soutenus go round quickly, and picked her own accenting for final piqué combination of the movement, again starting slow and speeding it up.
In the adagio, of course Mearns made a big deal of the first entry, running down a corridor of dancers and dipping low to embrace Tyler Angle. Her effects were as calculated as in “Swan Lake.” A few were lifted from it. Mearns colored everything with a “Swan Lake” pathos, her head downcast. Still, she managed to link a ballet that can feel schizophrenic, because “Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” distills a full-length ballet’s range of emotions and situations down to about half the time by dispensing with an emotional continuity. She threaded all the sections together on the same string by giving them a similar attack.
Making her debut in the second ballerina role, Emily Kikta’s technique is in some ways a surprise because she’s so tall. You’d expect her to be squishier, but she’s a strong turner. Again, she’s refined her look this season, to a glamorous presence.
Partnering Mearns, Angle did clean turns and sharp, precise beats. He kept his solo feats simple; in the first movement he set himself up carefully for his tours and went round quickly with more push than snap.
Jules Mabie was supposed to make his debut in the pas de trois with Devin Alberda, but wound up instead with Riccardo, but the two are often together and look good, with complementary height and lines. Jacqueline Bologna and India Bradley also made their debuts as demi-soloists, and in the adagio, formed another nice duo with similar heights and lines.
Like many ballerinas, Mearns looked spontaneous, but a lot of preparation went into that illusion. She always scales her presence up, and she seemed to inhabit a magical kingdom. Which she ruled, natch. There was a lot of Mearns in her interpretation, as well as some Balanchine, but this proportion wasn’t to the point of distortion (for instance, the battements serrés remained properly accented inwards) and this is one of the big Tchaikovsky ballerina roles in NYCB’s repertory that can contain an oversize personality. Some performers disappear into a character, some make every character themselves. For Mearns, personality and character are basically the same thing.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Apollo,” “La Sonnambula,” “Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 4, 2023
Cover: Tyler Angle and Sara Mearns in “Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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