by Leigh Witchel
American Ballet Theatre fielded several new dancers in two substantial ballets during its fall season. Both dances got their energy from looking back to the late 1800s.
Conductor David LaMarche’s tempo for the overture of Ashton’s “The Dream” was much more paced than you might hear for the same music across the plaza in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” But even at that tempo, the skittering runs for the fairies were a magical blur. “The Dream” has some of the most enchanting corps dances and ABT’s women looked lovely in them. Towards the end in the scherzo, Ashton beautifully syncopated their steps as they flicked their legs out after a pas de chat. It was at once a Victorian lithograph and a celebration of the sisterhood and virtuosity of the ensemble.
Both Daniel Camargo and Cassandra Trenary’s initial outings in the leads were auspicious. (It was her debut but not his; he had to pinch-hit for an injured Cory Stearns earlier in the week). The results weren’t a surprise, they more confirmed the two dancers’ abilities more than showing us new ones.
Trenary was discovering her part both physically and temperamentally. She was living for Titania’s wriggly moves, and working to her expansiveness, but could have pushed it even more. It’s Ashton. Don’t just incline, bend. This was a great role for her to take on that challenge. She and Camargo looked well-matched; he was also approaching the part both through its dancing and acting.
Camargo pushed himself physically, sending his weight back as his leg shot front, and as before, was a daring, impetuous turner. He didn’t set himself up carefully, he barreled through enchaînements and brought heat to the characterization.
He was also an avid, detailed actor; we always knew what he was thinking. Once Trenary was disenchanted, Camargo played with his nails while she figured it all out; he was chuffed at pulling it off. His fury at Puck was unnerving; he seemed fine, smiling until he exploded.
Ashton knew royalty himself; he saw Oberon and Titania as realistically flawed rather than idealized. They sparred and schemed. The characterization of the lovers was even broader, almost to panto. The pairs, Sung Woo Han and Alexandra Basmagy as Lysander and Hermia, with Patrick Frenette and Betsy McBride as Demetrius and Helena, all dolled up in tails and crinolines, dug into the comedy. Poor exhausted McBride got moved by the men from place to place like an unwanted floor lamp.
Elwince Magbitang’s debut as Puck had him springing into the air, buzzing about like a fly and spinning like a top. But his lines were incomplete. At the end of the ballet, like the Blue Boy in “Les Patineurs” or Mikhail Baryshnikov in “Rhapsody,” Puck shrugs. It happens through the canon, and it’s more overt a motif than the “Fred Step” that seems to have been reinterpreted as the secret Masonic handshake of Ashton. That shrug, like many of Ashton’s steps, is an action first, then a shape. When Magbitang shrugged it wasn’t a shrug, but a decorative flourish. Without knowing why you’re doing it, the shape gets fuzzy.
We’re much more aware and wary about the consequences of sex and power nowadays. You could see it in how Camargo and Trenary shaded the final duet, one I first heard informally described over three decades ago as the “capitulation pas.” Camargo played down his arm movement, which usually goes way up and over before taking hold of Trenary and dipping her round in a promenade, as if he didn’t want to go into the overtones of possession or victory. Still, the two delivered the gorgeous ending where she lay flat in his arms.
Because of the designs, it’s easy to miscue “The Dream” as just a Victorian nosegay. But like the Victorians, it was also ribald. Basmagy may have sent Han to the other side of the stage with nothing more than a peck on the cheek, and his reaction to that may have been comic, but he wanted the same thing Trenary wanted when she sized up Blaine Hoven as Bottom before jumping on his back.
Sex and comedy go together throughout “The Dream.” There is the great silly moment where the fairies who serve Titania reenter after she’s danced with Bottom and realize their boss had gone bonkers. But they still play along. Hoven’s pointe work was pained and precarious, occasionally collapsing to flat foot, but Bottom isn’t supposed to have the footwork of a ballerina.
In Balanchine’s version, Titania’s bower is a large but freestanding chair. It’s something to nap on, but it’s also movable and placed in the open. There’s little private about it. In David Walker’s designs for “The Dream,” Titania’s bower is in the bottom of a tree. It’s enclosed, private and we see people lie down in it. It’s a bedchamber. At the end of their duet, Titania takes Bottom there, and at the end of the ballet Oberon invites her to accompany him to it. Sex is never that far below the surface.
After intermission, there was a swap of batons for Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Seasons,” with Charles Barker conducting Glazunov’s score. The dancers were largely a cast of debutants. It’s easier to note who wasn’t new (Hoven in Fall), than who was.
There’s enough choreographic material in “The Seasons” for about five kitchen sinks. “The Seasons” is entirely Ratmansky, but also his assimilation of reconstructing Petipa: The early 21st century version of the late 19th century. Sometimes it felt as if Ratmansky was commenting on the entire canon of seasonal ballets.
Jarod Curley posed as Winter with his harem of four: Frost, Ice, Hail and Snow, but the women’s variations echoed Ashton’s four seasons in “Cinderella.” During an adagio with one of the women, Curley placed her in the braced arabesque with the chin raised that Ashton used so often.
Zimmi Coker’s fleet first variation recalled Ashton’s Fairy Spring, then she sprang side to side clasping Curley’s hands. Ingrid Thoms’ second solo was big and lush, like Fairy Summer, and Zhong-Jing Fang’s closing fourth variation was slow and quiet. The tempos and very familiar waltzes reminded us that in “Cinderella,” Prokofiev could have been echoing Glazunov.
Sunmi Park made her debut in the third variation earlier in the run, whizzing round in a manège of low jetés en tournant. But in a move of kitchen sink Ratmanskyness, behind her Curley was killing himself in air turns. Later, Ratmansky had Curley pass in front of her as she was doing the trickiest turn combination. It’s as if he doesn’t always think about the stage picture with the audience’s eyes.
Spring is a trio for two women and man, Joo Won Ahn, with McBride as a rose and Fangqi Li as a swallow. They danced an adagio that echoed Robbins’ Summer in his almanac to Verdi, “The Four Seasons.” Robert Perdziola’s costumes for the leads are very busy patchworks, which stuck out against the bare stage and the much simpler outfits for the corps.
The Rose and The Swallow each did solos, and six cornflowers arrived before Hee Seo entered as The Spirit of the Corn. Young girls arrived representing poppies. Ratmansky has an affinity for children in ballets that his Petipa reconstructions only strengthened.
Everything in “The Seasons” is hard on the heels of the last number, at a breathless pace with Ratmansky charging into the next divertissement. You need to see it a few times to parse it. Seo danced her obligatory Big Ballerina Number before exiting with the girls. The cornflowers danced a very familiar waltz of romping jumps and chainés.
Everyone lay down and in came six Water Men in blue. The full group did an elaborate adagio climaxing with the girls sitting on the men’s shoulders, offering their hands to the cornflowers to support them in arabesque. That creation of a complicated formation through relatively simple means was again Ratmansky mining his research on Petipa’s stagings.
The breakneck pace continued with another variation for Seo, and she nailed a balance in an extension to the side. After a galop where the women partnered the girls in pirouettes, we were three seasons down, one to go. Glazunov, like Verdi, journeyed from winter to autumn, and both staged it as a harvest bacchanal, led here by Hoven and Courtney Shealy.
Somehow, it’s also a reprise. McBride did a long balance with the Water Men, who kept almost knocking her off balance as they exchanged hands. And in bad luck and probably debut jitters, Shealy lost herself in a series of hopping turns.
The big duet for Ahn and Seo climaxed in a bird lift and ended with partnered jetés like walks. There have been some changes to the finale, Hoven got dragged in at the end, but it used to be that the women were as well, and that’s been deleted, mercifully. The female leads get pressed skywards for a final tableau. You thought it was a kitchen sink earlier? But look at sketches of Petipa’s ballets. That excess was very much in line with both the era of the music and the original ballet. There are many things we misread about the Victorian era, but one thing it wasn’t was minimalist.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“The Dream,” “The Seasons” – American Ballet Theatre
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 29, 2022
Cover: American Ballet Theatre in “The Dream.” Photo credit © Rosalie O’Connor.
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