by Leigh Witchel
The Sarasota Ballet’s second repertory program was a history lesson, one that confirmed as much as it questioned some of the received wisdom about The Royal Ballet’s two major 20th century choreographers.
“Danses Concertantes,” created in 1955 for Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, is early, neoclassical MacMillan. For New Yorkers, the ballet is familiar in another version. Balanchine did his originally for the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo in 1944, but redid it for the 1972 Stravinsky Festival using Eugene Berman’s original designs.
From MacMillan’s opening of a brilliantly-dressed cast with the lead women sitting atop the linked arms of the men, you could see a young choreographer trying to show all he knows. He referenced Ashton’s landmark work to Stravinsky, “Scènes de Ballet,” including Ashton’s idea of chic. The human viaduct the dancers formed in the opening tableau of “Danses” recalled André Beaurepaire’s scenery in “Scènes.”
Nicholas Georgiadis’ designs for MacMillan also have some similarities to Berman’s, particularly the bright, saturated colors accented with black. But Georgiadis’ chic was mid-century British, with the almost chessboard look of the costume decoration and skullcaps imitating a pageboy cut, topped with points or eagles at the top like luxury kebabs. At the side, six corps women sat, legs elegantly crossed, in slim, high-backed chairs. They posed and modeled as if they were hostesses at a car show. Georgiadis was also young, still a student. He may have done some early revisions. Photos from 1955 show the women clothed in the softly draped soft skirts we saw in Sarasota, but also stiff, short tutus that never appeared.
MacMillan’s structural asymmetry kept you thinking. In Balanchine’s version the hierarchy is obvious from first tableau: a lead couple in the center, surrounded by four trios, one at each corner. As he usually did to Stravinsky, and pretty much all music, he neatly carved into the architecture like someone filleting meat right along muscle lines.
In MacMillan, the structure is not as easy or obvious, and it is dense. A secondary lead in yellow dances solos but a man in blue does the partnering. You get some visual cuing from Georgiadis. The woman who will do the pas de deux is also in blue. But the pas de deux doesn’t finish at the end of a segment; the couple regroups and exits through the silence and a brief interlude. In MacMillan, instead of neat divisions, there was some filet mignon and sirloin in the same cut. That doesn’t taste worse, just different.
The lead ballerina’s first solo, done originally by Maryon Lane, used both pointing fingers and a head wiggle as motifs. Like both Ashton and Balanchine, MacMillan approached Stravinsky through music visualization. The difference across the Atlantic was that Ashton, and MacMillan here, would use the head and arms to mirror Stravinsky’s notes. Balanchine’s default was to use the legs and feet. There was also the visible difference between London and New York’s priorities in technique: The women would rise onto pointe and come right down to flat, but without letting their weight fall naturally. Like Ashton, MacMillan was asking them to triumph over gravity.
The ballerina’s first duet with her partner began with a thrilling jump that froze her airborne, a moment Ashton also used often, including in “Scènes.” Their duet was pose to pose. Change positions, stop. Point side to side. Turn head. Stop. You sensed positions, not a chain of motion. The ballerina ended curled on her partner’s back, but that was where what might have ended in New York kept going in London. She pointed into an arabesque; the two left at opposite sides.
The work continually surprised in its approach. Two soloist women and a man in olive danced a pas de trois. The enchaînements flowed more than in the pas de deux, but they were still rigorous. To close, the man dragged both women off in arabesque, one in front of him, one behind. The two male principals danced a short duet that unexpectedly transitioned into another dance for the couple in blue beginning with countless finger turns. After, as the two men posed elegantly in the chairs, the ballerina danced a solo that was part shimmy and part Charleston.
The ballet rose steadily to its big moment. The lead ballerina drifted in from the back on her pointes. She had changed into long gloves offstage to emphasize the poses; she put her fingers round her eyes like spectacles or a domino. The blue gloves even had red interiors on the thumb and index fingers to give a different look when she changed her grip. The men watched, half-hidden in the wings, as she danced her solo. That chic wasn’t only Ashton’s to teach: was it not the look of mid-century British modernism?
The music rose and quickened. MacMillan built Stravinsky’s finale into a busy street scene, with the cast crossing the stage laterally, sometimes in walks, others in partnered lifts, in pairs, trios and groups, sometimes the whole lot of them. The men jockeyed in, partnered the ballerina and made spectacles with their hands as well. Together, they lifted and brought her back for a closing ritornello and tableau: Like the music, the work ended where it began.
Sarasota only got three shots at this, divided almost cruelly among two casts, so one group only got the matinee, and that was it. On opening night, the first cast couldn’t get much past getting the steps on the stage. In the lead, Danielle Brown went smiley as she shimmied and pointed. There was so much sharp head-ticking in the choreography, and her persona wasn’t yet fine-tuned. You could see her work towards it at her second show; remaining sphinx-like as Ricardo Graziano lifted her in an arc and braced her to finish on his back.
Marijana Dominis got her one shot at the lead at the matinee. She found a compromise between being cheery, yet not being false, coming towards us by skipping over the men with alacrity. Graziano partnered both women, dancing all the shows.
The second male lead (in yellow) was danced by Luke Schaufuss in the evenings and Maximiliano Iglesias at the matinee. His solo was to Stravinsky’s rollicking variation that sounded like an elephant’s day off. Schaufuss danced it emphasizing the steps. He waved and gathered his arms, and pointed both hands before ending in a comically baroque pose. Iglesias both danced and sold the part, grabbing onto the volume of the movement, making the arms wide and attacking the pointing hands.
“Danses Concertantes” is a portrait of the choreographer as a bright young thing. The response was so positive that MacMillan decided to stop dancing and concentrate on choreography. From mid-century to the turn of the Millennium, on the other side of the Atlantic, history repeated itself. English transplant Christopher Wheeldon displayed the same kind of precocity in his early works for the School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet: his own version of “Scènes de Ballet” and “Mercurial Manoeuvres.” He didn’t use the British spelling for nothing.
In 1940, as the world was plunging into darkness, Ashton made “Dante Sonata.” It’s literally a world inhabited by Children of Light and Children of Darkness, resulting in perhaps the most black-and-white ballet ever.
As the curtain rose, we heard a crash in the orchestration of Liszt’s piano piece, conducted by Barry Wordsworth. The drop, by Sophie Fedorovitch, was suggestive of a celestial kingdom, with clouds and pathways, but a shadowy, troubled one.
Light and Darkness are both led by a couple. The piece opened with the Children of Light (Brown and Richard House or Schaufuss). The women, their hair unbound, wore diaphanous shifts. The Children of Darkness were led by Graziano and Lauren Ostrander or Ricki Bertoni and Anna Pellegrini. The women wore black skirts, the men wore little but briefs and black straps spiraling down their legs.
As the secondary soloist of the Light brigade, Dominis galloped and whirled before collapsing Three dudes of Darkness grabbed and dragged her offstage as she desperately shook her hands. The Duke of Darkness slammed down the Lord of Light before his forces carried him off. Things got even more histrionic. When the lead couples returned, the Darkness Duo threw down and assaulted their counterparts, grinding on them.
Even with that shock, there was so much more drama ahead. The Duke of Darkness beat up the Lord of Light and then nailed him to the floor. You could even hear the hammering crashes in the music. The Lieutenants of Light retrieved their Lord, lifting him off in an upside down crucifixion.
The three Lieutenants of Light faced off against the Dudes of Darkness and vanquished them into a pile. The Duke of Darkness grabbed the Lady of Light before everyone rolled on the floor. That signaled a unison finale with a pileup surmounted by the Dame of Darkness. It ended with both the Lord of Light and the Duke of Darkness lifted as if crucified, and the Lady of Light pointing hopefully towards a better future.
“Dante Sonata” is hard to describe with so many participants and this might have been a humorous effort, but the ballet is pretty fabulous if the dancers push all the way with it.
Bertoni was great as the Child of Darkness, hinging backwards in horror with hands like claws. You bet he looked at pictures of Robert Helpmann in the role and reached into his makeup pot for an extra helping of black eyeshadow. Graziano also pitched back his weight and went there. Oddly, when Ostrander gave the female role the same over-the-top attack, it felt too much like Carabosse, as if Ashton were calibrating for a different character from the men than the women.
In a part where Brown didn’t have to think so much about the steps, getting a handle on the role was much simpler as she moved side to side in a solo, exhausted and weeping. Like the hero in a melodrama, the male Child of Light required more restraint. House kept it noble as Brown’s hands vibrated, and he stilled them while shaking his head.
After a ballet of MacMillan defying his stereotypes by being classical, here was Ashton being expressionist, in a work influenced both in movement and aesthetic by Isadora Duncan. But Ashton being Ashton, at the end he gave us a tightly structured dance. The system could only break down so far.
“Dante Sonata” works best with context. Birmingham Royal Ballet did the work at the 2004 Lincoln Center Festival, when thoughts were turned towards Iraq. Give this ballet to a Ukrainian company today and let them dance the hell out of it.
In 1980, Mikhail Baryshnikov agreed to guest at The Royal Ballet only if Ashton made a new work for him – he had already danced Colas in “La Fille Mal Gardée” three years before. Like many great dancers, Baryshnikov wanted to experience a style of ballet that was completely different. But like all great choreographers, Ashton was fascinated by Baryshnikov as he was. You can’t change someone until you really know who they are.
It felt as if Ashton wasn’t only trying to give Baryshnikov a juicy part, but a context to being a guest at Covent Garden. The result, “Rhapsody,” to Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Variations on a Theme of Paganini,” was like the fitting of a precious stone in a ring: a Russian diamond in an English setting. A clue how Ashton saw Baryshnikov was when he had him mime the violin’s bowing in the score. That was the dancer as Paganini, the almost-demonic virtuoso.
Ashton designed the balustrade setting, his old friend William Chappell designed the costumes, as he had for 1930’s “Capriol Suite.” Here, it was chiffon skirts for the women and short-sleeves for the men, evoking classicism, but with a relaxed formality also used in “Scènes de Ballet.”
It’s amazing to consider a soloist in a regional U.S. company, no matter who good, as the person to re-inhabit a part made for Baryshnikov, but that’s what Yuki Nonaka did. He began with an elegant bow and sprang into an air turn in retiré. The ensemble stood posed behind the balustrade, watching like spectators at a match before they became participants. Nonaka whirled out on his next entrance, springing into splits and pirouettes. By the second performance he was starting to relax into the complexities in the role, being precise but light.
Yet the most deceptively difficult aspect was the mood. It isn’t enough to dance the part, you have to quickly display hints of character. Ashton kept placing poses at the end of the phrase, but each with a different mood and timing, from matador to prince. These flickering masks were an echo of the ballet that first alerted the West to Baryshnikov in the Moscow International Ballet Competition in 1969: Leonid Yakobson’s “Vestris.”
Ashton supported Baryshnikov with a young corps of six men and six women, promising dancers whose names you would continue to see, including Bryony Brind, Genesia Rosato, Ashley Page and Ross MacGibbon. A slow dance introduced them in waltzes and lifts, but emphasizing épaulement. The setting for Baryshnikov’s virtuosity as a guest was his hosts’ style.
Nonaka ran and slid out for an entrée, his leg flying upward as the men stood sentinel behind. They had their own dance after, with entrechats and double tours alternating. Those were hard enough, but the right curve of the arm or bend in port de bras could be more elusive. By the final show, the tours had gotten consistent, and the épaulement clearer. This cast got to do all three shows, which is still too little, but there was so much to be said for getting enough time living with a part, not just in the studio, but on stage.
Ashton chose a fleet dancer, Lesley Collier, to be Baryshnikov’s partner; that part was done here by one of Sarasota’s newest principals, Macarena Giménez. Ashton had her arrive fashionably late to the ballet, on a platform behind the colonnade at the back, elevated like Aurora or Cinderella. Nonaka was standing center stage, waiting. Ashton peppered the whole piece with the conventions and tropes of ballet, counting on the cast to make them believable, and traded on what we know happens in ballet.
Contrasted to Nonaka, Giménez’ entry wasn’t technical fireworks, rather it was all bourrées and port de bras, but isn’t the quality of those a mark of a ballerina? The corps men passed her forward in lifts that softly rose: it was an entrance with a capital E.
Giménez was strong but sweet: a lovely combination. She smiled as she met the men, and has a lovely, natural stage smile. Dancing with the men before Nonaka gave us yet another hint: this was the ballerina’s turf, and the man was a guest.
Her next variation featured fast footwork. Giménez’ footwork wasn’t steely, but buttery – a lot of the fast solo work was done on the balls of the feet, not the pointe tips. She had absolute confidence, and was nailing it, but this was also has an assignment she was familiar with: be a ballerina.
Writing about the ballet in the 1980’s, Arlene Croce saw “Rhapsody” as tilted in Baryshnikov’s favor, but also isolating him as a guest. That depended both on casting, and Croce’s prejudices towards Baryshnikov and against The Royal Ballet. She had written stinging articles a few years prior about the deterioration of the company. In this cast Giménez was the more experienced and polished dancer. She was working comfortably in her range, and while Nonaka did an impressive job, it was in a role that pushed the boundaries of his technical capacity, and that made the work more balanced. And yet, was it just that? Going back to the original cast, with all the fireworks Baryshnikov was setting off, would you have wanted Collier to bust out into fouettés? Did it need to be a competition like “Tarantella?”
Ashton’s dance for his six corps women began with them stalking out on pointe in such an Ashtonian way, then each did a brief solo or duet. As twilight fell, Nonaka entered, searching. The women shielded their eyes as “Rhapsody” riffed on “Swan Lake.” As he uncovered their faces, they rose and left. Giménez entered and posed under the arch. It was a quintessential entrance for The Big Pas De Deux.
In some ways a ballerina is a courtesan, displaying required emotions that have to look sincere. Giménez was a genius at that; she sold that ballet like an expert. It helped Nonaka; she looked at him and smiled, and he loosened up. The duet contained many of Ashton’s signature tropes for rapture: shivering bourrées, feet that continued to flutter as Giménez got lifted to the big tune.
She knew the emotional arc of the duet; she reached her arms at the big overhead press to make it the emotional peak. When Nonaka put her down, Giménez put her head on his shoulder as they walked, and yes, it looked like an afterglow. I bought the conventions, a friend was less sold; she leaned over and whispered about Giménez, “she’s had several orgasms by now.”
Ashton showed off the women’s footwork, then a male trio. Nonaka barreled through 540s, and raced out as Giménez raced in. Again her variation was sparkling footwork – was that what Collier did best? – and the only turning manège for her. Ashton had the men lift and toss Nonaka: he’s used those in excelsis moments often, but it was also an echo of Baryshnikov’s heritage: “Spartacus.” The ballet accelerated to a finale, but then stopped to catch its breath at the last moment when Nonaka did a final air turn, but ended with an Ashtonian shrug. Despite Baryshnikov’s disappointment with the ballet going over old ground for him, Russia met England and no one was the worse for it.
This was an incredibly rich program for Sarasota, but also an incredibly dense one. There was a lot to absorb and process, both for us and it. As always, curation and repertory selection are the company’s forte, what makes it worth traveling to see. Turnover is now the company’s bête noire. There were also unfortunate injuries, losing Ricardo Rhodes for this program put pressure on the other men, especially Graziano and Nonaka. But to remain the avatar of style it was so proud of becoming, The Sarasota Ballet needs to recover and foster a core group throughout its ranks.
For those of us for whom Croce’s magisterial reports from a New York perspective were our keyhole into The Royal Ballet, there was also a lot to reassess. If we thought MacMillan’s purpose in life was to destroy classical style and turn ballet into a cesspool of sex, “The Judas Tree” certainly exists, but so does “Danses Concertantes.” And we watched Ashton, yes Ashton, stage a double rape. Can we move away from the idea that classicism and expressionism are a dichotomy, but instead are both movable points in the development of a choreographer?
Copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Danses Concertantes,” “Dante Sonata,” “Rhapsody” – The Sarasota Ballet
Sarasota Opera House, Sarasota, FL
November 18-19, 2022
Cover: The Sarasota Ballet in “Danses Concertantes.” Photo credit © Frank Atura.
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