by Leigh Witchel
For the second night of New York City Ballet’s season, the company returned to an all-Balanchine triple bill, opening with a “Mozartiana” from a couple we might not have expected.
It’s a surprise to discover this much time has passed, but Sterling Hyltin joined the company two decades ago as a more excitable dancer. Like most people moving from their teens to their thirties, she’s moderated over time, at least onstage. Her arms were carefully placed, her movement was clean, and her attack on her variations was playful but calm. Hyltin didn’t overdo her musicality; she stroked the correspondences between the steps and the score rather than hammering them. An extended position she took on a low boom in the score wasn’t an exclamation point, but something that caught your eye as she moved through it. Hyltin was playful but cool, and the opening Preghiera was more reverent than fervent prayer. The role was created on Suzanne Farrell, but there’s another dancer who shaped it that she’s starting to recall: Kyra Nichols. The performance was sculpted, but placid. There were no exclamation points, but also few periods, most punctuation was a comma.
It is fascinating to see Anthony Huxley at the of the heart of the repertory. His height could have marginalized him to “short” roles. Still, he has always moved beautifully, with fluid phrasing; his finer details, transitions such as glissades, are as handsome as his tricks. It’s still not an easy fit; partnering will most likely always be his bête noire, even when he’s on. A promenade with Hyltin got stuck and he didn’t have the bulk to muscle it back on track. Nerves also got to him in pirouettes to arabesque where he nearly lost his spot.
Casting Daniel Ulbricht in the Gigue paid off in the finale, when he and Huxley were matched in height. Balanchine’s original casting of two physically similar men (Ib Andersen and Victor Castelli) is often ignored. Watching Ulbricht, who joined the company at the end of 2000, feels like watching an old friend do something comfortingly familiar. He knows the part and the details were clear.
All the women in the Menuet (Ashley Hod, Isabella LaFreniere, Miriam Miller and Mira Nadon) had just been promoted to soloist; and they got the synchronization of the quartet even when they couldn’t see one another. The languorous dance is an interesting oddity; one of the times Balanchine went slow rather than fast. In his last major work made in the shadow of mortality, it was as if there were all the time in the world.
In the theme and variations, the penultimate variation serves as the main pas de deux, and looked as if it had been coached and rehearsed more than any other part. All the blanks in the other sections got filled in; Huxley was finishing poses, musically more expansive and directing our attention by his gaze. That’s where the rest of the ballet needs to be, but he and Hyltin played it safe in the coda. In a risky move where he was supposed to come out of a turn and grab her while she’s still turning, he stopped and came towards her before she started, so there was never a point where they were both spinning. Will they add some swagger? The role’s originator, Ib Andersen, was anything but a showoff, but it was handed down to Damian Woetzel and got massaged, like his other virtuoso roles, into a showpiece.
In his debut in “La Valse,” Jovani Furlan would have been bulldozed by his partner, Sara Mearns, if he had done anything else but hold himself like a matador. As always, she gave a performance, but boy, did she play the end. She laid her head in Furlan’s hand, and came back up as if she had a premonition, like a sibyl who could see her own future.
Amar Ramasar subbed for Andrew Veyette as the death figure, and he and Mearns were a match of near-equals: she was almost as dangerous as him. But she was still human and gave in to her weaknesses: accepting the gloves, admiring herself in the cracked mirror, and only too late hurling her purple-black corsage to the ground. It’s prudish to not see sex in ballet, or any dance, the question is how obvious should you make it? Ramasar posed only for a moment after slaughtering the girl before running off like a criminal, but the fleeting but arrested look on his face was one of a climax.
The cast of “Rubies” pulled back from connecting those dots. Toward the end of Megan Fairchild’s duet with Gonzalo Garcia, he slid up behind her and bounced her. She didn’t make the by-now-obvious connection to arousal. In the soloist part, Emily Kikta treated the four men manipulating her like assistants. She was an amazon, not a victim or a vampire, but any approach that avoids making the moment look non-consensual is a good one. She also took a narrower second position than usual in her exiting plies in the opening movement, making it less about an open-crotch position.
In other ways, Fairchild punched the lead role a little harder than usual, sharply turning in at the end of each little paso doble step with Garcia. Garcia took a breezy, soft-shoe approach, barely trying to create a line. At the end of their duet, each took their time and Fairchild savored completing with her finger the delicate closing pose. Her ability to turn came in handy in the final movement; she didn’t miss any of the pique turns to exit, which have caused more than a few to wipe out. When she retracted her wrists to start them the sequence was less like an insect and more comic wit as if she were imitating a 1950’s secretary about to type.
Just promoted to soloist as well, we saw Kikta as one of the three young ladies in “La Valse.” In an ensemble part it was more apparent how she’s become a soloist. She was doing the same steps as the other women, but more focused. When she looked at her hands in their gloves, she was really looking at something. Sure, she also towered over the others in height, but more than that made us watch her.
In “Rubies,” Kikta always had the height and stretch, but she’s figured out how to use them. In the finale, she came out WHACK to an extension, arcing off balance yet in total control of her facility. She was able to go to extravagant lengths, really bending without throwing herself around. She didn’t have that security of abandon before, but she’s grown into the part. The ballerina incubator looks as if it’s gestating Emily Kikta.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Mozartiana” “Rubies,” “La Valse” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
January 28, 2022
Cover: Emily Kikta in “La Valse.” Photo credit © Erin Baiano.
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