by Leigh Witchel
New York City Ballet’s all-Balanchine program put on a trio of his later works, with debuts throughout the evening.
Roman Mejia first outing in “Valse-Fantaisie” was retro – in a good way. The big passages that Balanchine used for the male solo have slow flourishes at the end of the phrase. Those cues from the score, as well as current performance tradition, suggest the part is legato – something like a cousin to the male variation in “Les Sylphides.” But John Clifford, who originated the part in 1967 when it was part of “Glinkaiana,” danced it as an allegro, demi-caractère role. He’s even on video coaching it that way. That’s how Mejia did it. Rather than evenly and slowly spacing out the movement with the arms and legs, he quickly hit the arabesque or pose with the legs and then moved the arm slowly to finish. As always, Mejia’s jumps were showstoppers; he covered a good chunk of the stage in two brisés.
Indiana Woodward’s ports de bras were more decorative, floating and waving in balances. But in her big solo she flew around the stage, running, really running on her toes in between jumps. Conductor Clotilde Otranto kept everyone moving at a clip; the four women in the corps danced avidly; leaning back to come off balance and hustling at top speed to the other side of the stage.
Woodward and Mejia have been put together more than once. Again she felt overshadowed by him. Not because he was a better technician, but a better fit for his part. In the original cast, Clifford was Mimi Paul’s opposite, not her competition.
Paul Hindemith composed “Kammermusik No. 2” in 1924, the year Balanchine, with a handful of other Russian dancers on tour in Germany, fled to Paris and joined the Ballets Russes. The aesthetics of the period formed Balanchine and the full sampler is on display in “Kammermusik.” Echoes of futurism, physical culture, even Bauhaus are all stitched into a work that uses the rarest casting for Balanchine – a male corps.
The ballet is short, but athletic and densely packed. The men’s costumes suggest gymnasts; the women’s short dresses, tennis players. The casting of two lead couples both mirrors and fractures the usual hierarchy. Teresa Reichlen and Abi Stafford (making her NY debut), cut through the opening piano torrent in counterpoint. Together they formed another counterpoint, for the corps of men as it stepped and posed.
Casting Reichlen and Stafford together was inscrutable – the company had again taken a physically similar original cast (Karin von Aroldingen and Colleen Neary) and distorted it with Mutt and Jeff casting. Stafford, the shorter, did the von Aroldingen role; Reichlen danced Neary’s prancing solo, leaving revolving on her heels. Stafford danced with strong attack; at the end of a duet, she gave Joseph Gordon her hand not one but three times – as if he should have known what to do by then. After a sporty finale, the women got carried off overhead to end the ballet, but the male corps still had the last word – taking a knee with their eyes shrouded.
It was all hands on deck for “Union Jack.” Most of the company crowded onstage for Balanchine’s biggest spectacle, including soloists tucked in the corps to fill it out. Even though the ballet relies as much on pageantry as virtuosity, it’s been out of repertory for five years and had largely a new cast. That’s a lot of rehearsal logistics. Seventy dancers filed on to a never-ending drumbeat until the stage had no more room. The tattoo ended, the cast stopped moving for the shortest pause and we were left to contemplate its impact as the lights went out.
Most of the regiments in the first section made it through unscathed, but at times the wrong formations or arms made you wonder if everyone had gotten to rehearse. Ashley Bouder has done Suzanne Farrell’s roles in “Union Jack” before, but it’s not a part that uses her well. She’s neither loose nor leggy, and that’s at least the original intention – a tall woman leading tall women in a dance. Instead, Bouder made the entry about her back, ended up syncopated with the corps in the jig and made the stalking entry in the WRENS about her jump and making eyes at the audience.
The most notable regiment, as usual, was MacDonald of Sleat. Unity Phelan led, tearing into the jumps pitched forward with her limbs wild. Kicking her legs high, she danced on the knife’s edge of being able to control the movement.
The company seems to have a fondness right now for casting ex-couples in the Costermonger pas de deux. Lauren Lovette and Daniel Ulbricht were charming, with Lovette funny and warm in a role that insists that she milk the audience and Ulbricht hitting the right mix of soft-shoe and smooth, beautiful jumps.
If these were late works, none were autumnal. “Valse Fantaisie” returned to a perennial theme for Balanchine; updating the 19th century divertissement. “Union Jack” comes from Balanchine’s blockbuster period, where new works were scaled to fill the State Theater. But there’s more. It’s easy to see that Balanchine was doing the same thing in “Union Jack” that Petipa did in the Shades scene in “La Bayadère.” Neither is as far as we think from another recent revival, “Fase” by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. They all use the same ingredient, repetition. The 70s and 80s were fascinated by minimalism, ritual, repetition, spectacle – and there isn’t really that much distance between minimal and maximum.
“Kammermusik No. 2” is a strong work on its own, but one that looks like fragments of so many other modernist works such as “Stravinsky Violin Concerto” or “Prodigal Son.” Stafford and Gordon did the same intertwining temple-dancer arms that Balanchine had used before in “Rubies” and “Symphony in Three Movements.” “The Four Temperaments” was quoted almost directly in a section when the corps made nearly the same chain formation holding hands as the women in ‘Phlegmatic.’
You could see very clearly, almost like a time-lapse photo, the influences of George Balanchine, 1924, being passed forward to become the building blocks of modern ballets for George Balanchine, 1978. Balnchine’s concessions to being trendy could be awkward, but when he stood in the same place, the trends came to him.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Valse-Fantasisie,” “Kammermusik No. 2,” “Union Jack” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 1 , 2019
Cover: Teresa Reichlen in “Kammermusik No. 2.” Photo © Paul Kolnik.
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