by Leigh Witchel
In this season of return, New York City Ballet welcomed us back to the theater to say goodbye. Over the year, six principals will leave. Sunday afternoon marked the first farewell – Abi Stafford’s. Three dark dances, each with its own air of mystery, were offered for the occasion in a compressed program without an intermission. Stafford appeared in the final dance, “Russian Seasons.”
Before that, hello. Joseph Gordon made his debut in “Opus 19/The Dreamer.” We’ll probably measure everyone against our fuzzy recollections of how they struck us pre-pandemic. By that unreliable standard, he seemed more elongated and refined. The company hasn’t gone to bits; if anything the principals look more relaxed.
Gordon danced the opening with a sustained legato, but also a baroque, elongated line as he bent back or reached. He still has the company’s penchant for a sharp, punchy contrast as the default punctuation; clapping his hands or snapping into attitude.
Part of the ballet’s fame was its originator, Mikhail Baryshnikov. Yet his short tenure with the company didn’t have much lasting influence. It’s four decades down the line, and you don’t see Baryshnikov in Gordon. When he spun and stopped as if stricken, you sensed echoes of more recent princes: Peter Boal or Jeffrey Edwards and their darker Hamlet qualities.
Sterling Hyltin’s aggressive approach to provoke and draw out Gordon took from Wendy Whelan, who most likely still coaches the role. Her attack, racing around the stage, looked good, and looked like herself. “Opus 19” moves quickly; you keep waiting for a big central pas de deux, which never happens; you hit the finale before you know it. The fast movement was done loosey-goosey, with limbs flailing and whirling bodies, before the ballet slowed to its closing, Orientalist pose.
“AMARIA” is a brief duet for Maria Kowroski and Amar Ramasar by Mauro Bigonzetti and Yes, Virginia, it’s Another Piano Ballet. This time, it’s contemporary, to two brief Scarlatti sonatas well played by Craig Baldwin.
The ballet opened with Ramasar clutching Kowroski in a ball, and she stretched into an arabesque reaching urgently backwards. That looked a lot like “Polyphonia.” Kowroski, in a simple emerald dress and soft slippers, turned in and out, then tapped on her sole. Ramasar walked slowly at the perimeter as if ticking off time until he met her. She waved her hand above him as if in incantation, and he began a disturbed solo while she walked behind. After a little while, the work ended neatly back at the opening pose.
Not much happened in “AMARIA,” and what did has all been done before by Bigonzetti – and others. But if it was negligible and derivative, that’s not very important. Kowroski has been in every ballet Bigonzetti has made for the company; this is Ramasar’s third. As the name suggests, it was a valentine custom-made by Bigonzetti for them.
“Russian Seasons” had several scheduled male debuts, about half of which happened. There were still debuts, but several new men replaced the scheduled ones. Ratmansky’s ensemble work has become a staple: it doesn’t look like the rest of the repertory, so provides great contrast, and it brings out good performances from the dancers.
Georgina Pazcoguin anchored her part with both her acting and turning prowess; Sebastian Villarini-Velez and Devin Alberda seemed to jog in the air, then squired Kristen Segin as she ticked through pointe work like a treble to their bass. Pazcoguin filled the house, but she has a tendency to punch hard, playing the part as a disaffected character, spinning wildly and silently screaming, to the extent that it pointed up how little Ratmansky explains in the ballet. There isn’t a plot – it’s like asking what’s happening in a Bruegel painting. You’re looking at a portrait of a community.
Later on, Unity Phelan, in the lead female role originated by Wendy Whelan, collapsed. Why? Why does a woman collapse in “Serenade?” Because it felt right to Ratmansky. It’s a mood, not a story. Still, we fall in love with moments when the painting reaches out of the frame to touch us: the dancers come forward, cross their hand over their chest and bow, offering their hearts to us.
Stafford danced a variation with prancing footwork. Years ago a friend, talking about her exquisite feet, described them, with curling hands elegantly imitating their delicate arch, as being like “little teacups.”
She got into the company in 2000 at age 17 and within two weeks she was thrown by Peter Martins into the lead in “Valse-Fantaisie.” Her prodigious and pure technique seemed to mark her as bound for stardom. Though she made principal rank, stardom didn’t happen.
“Russian Seasons” built towards its finale as the men joined in one by one. It looked as if Stafford would disappear into the woodwork with a plum role – but not the lead – in an ensemble ballet. The music churned louder but then a surprise was conjured from a bit of shuffling and surgery. Instead of Phelan dancing the hymn-like final duet as normally done, it was Stafford in white, crowned with a garland of flowers. Adrian Danchig-Waring, also changed into white, joined her. They faced us, finger over lips, as if to advise us that silence was best. The singer’s voice soared in praise offering a Hallelujah to the heavens.
Almost against expectations, Stafford did a full dress curtain call at the end, her fellow principal dancers coming out with bouquets, and a hail of gold mylar.
The best way for us to say goodbye to Stafford seems to be to recall the hello. From 2000:
For the most part it was impressive just how focused she was. Usually the debutantes go blank-eyed; one sees the nerves in the frozen stare, the smile that flickers on and off. Ms. Stafford projected out the whole time, and we saw a young lady dance for us. And a young lady in command of lovely and subtle rubato touches, an airy carriage in her upper body and a beautiful arc in attitude. Her composure was not that of a 28 year old in a 17 year old’s body, it was that of a well-trained and calm girl whom someone happily forgot to inform that all this stuff was hard. If Ms. Stafford did anything wrong, it’s that she didn’t differentiate any of the dance for us, she made it all look easy. One can be confident that will come with time.
But for now, I hope Ms. Stafford puts the program in her scrapbook, along with the flowers she undoubtedly got pressed into it as well, and I hope she treasures her memories of the day she got to be a princess.
Between the hello and the goodbye, things do not always go as planned. But after a year and a half in exile, she came back to say goodbye, and we were finally able to be there, together, to celebrate and bear witness.
Hallelujah.
copyright © 2021 by Leigh Witchel
Abi Stafford Farewell
“Opus 19/The Dreamer,” “AMARIA,” “Russian Seasons” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
September 26, 2021
Cover: Abi Stafford at her farewell bow. Photo credit © Paul Kolnik.
Got something to say about this? Sound off here
[Don’t miss a thing! We’ll send you a notification of every article we post if you sign up with your email. (The signup is right below, scroll down). We promise you won’t be deluged and we won’t spam you either.]
