by Leigh Witchel
The final repertory program of New York City Ballet’s season was composed of works with at least a hint of a narrative. Especially here, that’s license to dream, and let the stories sparked by the dancers’ physical language fill in the stories in your imagination.
For his penultimate Prodigal Son, Gonzalo Garcia performed the lead role like a letter from a forty-year-old to a twenty-year-old. Other dancers have used the physical energy of the steps to create the character. Garcia didn’t attack the turns and leaps with that desperate energy; they were more crafted than urgent. It was a portrait of the artist as an angry young man.
Sara Mearns’ Siren spoke volumes in her body language as well. The nervous aggression she moved with was at odds with her shiny outfit, velvet cape and fashion millinery. In her opening solo, Mearns wound the cape around her legs like a charwoman with a mop: it was a task. The Siren doesn’t change costume; it wouldn’t be odd to imagine that she started out desperately poor but pretty, and that was her one good outfit.
When her cape came off, she stared at us, then at Garcia. He was in trouble. Her fists circled angrily as she turned in attitude. She became elegant in the duet; a killer feline sizing him up and taking her time with her prey. She neatly swung her leg over him to perch on his shoulders and waved her arms like gibberish, finally standing on his knees as if he were a foot stool.
In some stagings, the Prodigal gets tossed by the Siren and smacks his head against the table. Garcia didn’t; his collapse wasn’t from a single moment but progressive weakness and exhaustion. His servants stopped protecting him long before; Harrison Coll and Lars Nelson (in his debut) roughhoused as if they were two blood brothers. Once Garcia was unconscious, Mearns pawed up his body to find a locket, and distributed the stolen loot among her henchmen while twisting and posing like a 1950’s TV hostess.
Garcia became most animated in his final scene. Scrabbling along the floor with his walking stick, he portrayed his humiliation with vivid details, as well as changes in accent and speed.
It could have just been difficulty with the platform shoes, but it seemed that Aaron Sanz depicted the father as having difficulty walking, and that recalled the discussion Lincoln Kirstein recounted between Balanchine and W.H. Auden in “Portrait of Mr. B.” Auden saw the father as having compassion and moving towards his son; Balanchine wanted the son to have to go to his father – possibly as much for morality as because it looks better on stage. Sanz took Auden’s side. If he didn’t take a step he made it clear that his heart was leaping across.
In his final season, Garcia went out well; dancing a lot, and consistently. An affectionate bow with Mearns was a small taste of what the final curtain call must have held.
In “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” are we looking at dancing dolls or humans playing dancing dolls? With her movement sometimes angular and sometimes more fluid, Megan Fairchild seemed to flicker in between the two. Daniel Ulbricht’s powder-white makeup recalled both a porcelain doll face, but also a Kabuki mask. Originally made for Patricia McBride and Peter Schaufuss, you could tease questions of identity out of it, but it’s mostly a showpiece with barrel turns in the finale. What looked even more glorious on Ulbricht were a series of air turns with one arm raised, switching facing to each compass point. He rocketed straight upwards.
The ballets from the 1975 Ravel Festival ballets don’t feel as much a part of repertory as the earlier Stravinsky Festival works. But a few have been picked back up, particularly the small-scale ones that are good for filling-in a mixed bill: “Sonatine,” “Steadfast,” and also “Pavane.”
“Pavane” is a scarf dance by Balanchine that recalls Isadora Duncan, but also Frederick Ashton. His “Meditation from Thaïs” was made four years earlier. Making her debut, Sterling Hyltin, shrouded by the silk, reached her hands out as if to weep. It was interesting to see Hyltin handle one of the infrequent solo dances in repertory. She’s a senior ballerina now, and we got to watch how she held the stage. Like many scarf dances, “Pavane” is simple but tricky – once Hyltin almost got snagged by the fabric.
The shawl took on different stories and characters; not just a cape, but Hyltin cradled a bit of it like an infant. Just as Balanchine factored in how a skirt did (or didn’t) move, he also understood fabric’s visual possibilities. Hyltin’s loveliest moment was a series of turns in attitude front, done principally because the fabric looked so good as it turned. For her final moments, she held the scarf across her body and walked forward heroically: a riff on Isadora Duncan in her “La Marseillaise.”
Miriam Miller made her debut in “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.” Besides legs that go on forever, she has an actresses’ face, with big, expressive features that read well in a Broadway role. She’s also got a sky-high front battement, but when she holds her leg up in a sustained position, it’s a bit lower. In her first appearance, where she was doing the latter, she seemed a bit more ladylike. But when she sprawled out on the bar stool and came to Peter Walker for their big duet it was hair and gams and gams and hair and hair and gams . . .
Walker’s approach was the one he used as Siegfried as well – he’s a method actor and he approaches the part by living the story. When he drank to steel himself to dance with the Stripper, you could see the nerves. When the stripper was shot he grieved and threw the gun down in disgust and horror.
But “Slaughter” is a story inside a story: a ballet about a ballet company presenting a ballet. A minute after getting shot and dying, Miller playing a dancer playing a stripper was reaching to Walker, waving a piece of paper, “take the note, Take The Note, TAKE THE NOTE.” And then falling back dead the moment he did. It’s a good idea to do the part with a twinkle and let the audience know you’re in on the game. When Walker shouted at the conductor “One More Time!” to go into another round of tapping to stall, it could have been as much an invitation as a plea.
In the opening, Daniel Applebaum nearly stole the whole shebang with a crazy interpretation of the evil danseur Morrosine. His fake Russian accent was lifted straight from Michael Cusumano’s Madame Olga – but he’s created fully his own character: affronted, scheming and oh-so-vain.
Despite the bent of neoclassical choreographers to discourage interpreting their works (they’re worried your interpretation will be bananas), the stories in your head are part of what you do to get more from watching. Ballets have no meaning until you interpret them. Just remember these stories are yours, not theirs.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Prodigal Son,” “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” “Pavane,” “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
February 25, 2022
Cover: Sterling Hyltin in “Pavane.” Photo credit © Paul Kolnik.
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