by Leigh Witchel
When you follow, or chronicle, an artist, their middle range gives you as much information as the masterworks. New York City Ballet’s Balanchine and Robbins triple bill was made up of mid-range works. You could mount a more vigorous defense for “Duo Concertant,” but it’s small scale.
“Raymonda Variations” was one of Balanchine’s several takes on Glazunov’s score. He evidently loved the music, but never seemed content enough with his efforts to not go at it again. In a few ways, including chronologically, this 1961 effort slots midway between 1956’s “Divertimento No. 15” and 1968’s “La Source.”
The five solo female variations in “Raymonda Variations” that augment the two each for the leads are as technically demanding as those in “Divert,” but the ballet gives as many opportunities to the dancers, with less pressure. Instead of the women acting as soloists and doing pas de deux, they emerge and recede back into the corps for their moment center stage.
The performance began with Glazunov’s rich overture, sensitively played by the orchestra, which was led by Andrews Sill. Megan Fairchild sped in at the end of the waltz, and seemed more free than she had a few days earlier in “Divertimento No. 15.”
Anthony Huxley was comfortable with the partnering, pushing her gently as she glided away on pointe. The tricky promenades that are dependent on him giving her enough room so her leg can pass him went seamlessly. Most of the their dancing together was staccato, moving from pose to pose to pose like points on a line, but their duet had the mass to look like a grand pas de deux. There was time for Fairchild to vary her effects, rippling her bourrées back or slowly extending in a grand rond de jambe, then swinging round in a flash. The only flaccid moment was the final dive Fairchild made by rushing at the audience straight into Huxley’s arms. That takes the guy catching having bulk as well as skill; here it was tepid and safe.
Leading off the soloists, Sara Adams powered through the brutal diagonal of hops on pointe to end strongly. Baily Jones nibbled on her pointe work to a close with complicated en dedans fouetté series. Huxley threaded the many beats in his solo without a dropped stitch, and Fairchild was relaxed and expansive in her first solo. Like sopranos mellow as they age, do dancers move from coloratura to a middle range? As Tiler Peck seems more comfortable in a chiffon skirt than a stiff tutu, Fairchild seems less restricted with flowers in her hair rather than a bejeweled tiara.
Emily Kikta was a natural choice for the Harp variation. Her last turns in cou de pied sent her slightly back, but otherwise she was soundly on her leg. Mary Elizabeth Sell’s solo felt like one of the variations in “The Sleeping Beauty,” and reminded that often a series of variations, in Petipa, Ashton or Balanchine, is a checklist of moods.
As in “La Source,” the lead couple each dance two solos; Huxley’s first was beats; the second covered space with jumps. Fairchild found wit in the poses of her second solo. Another similarity; like Glazunov, Délibes was a composer Balanchine kept whacking at: “La Source” had a few iterations before settling into its final form.
Continuing on, you saw Ashley Hod’s spring from assemblé landing BOOM into arabesque more even than in her jumping role in “Symphony in C.” But where she had trouble staying on top of the music there, in her pizzicato variation here she was right on it, even during the nasty series of pas de bourrée turns. Maybe that’s a hidden meaning of “Raymonda Variations”: the awful step at the end of each solo?
In “Duo Concertant,” Jovani Furlan made his debut opposite Indiana Woodward. A guest violinist, Sean Lee, played notably, giving an emotional, physical performance onstage as he leaned and swayed into the notes.
Furlan and Woodward looked comfortable together. He is warm and can handle her. Not that she needs handling. Like Fairchild, Woodward usually gets paired with the shortest men. She’s low maintenance, but it must be nice to have some leeway with a partner who has the bulk to save you if you’re off your leg.
When the dancers leave the piano’s side and start to move, Stravinsky’s music always feels like the beginning of a train journey, with the landscape rushing by the window. Lee kept up the brisk pace, ensuring an ontime arrival. Woodward posed glamorously in front while Furlan ticked off the beats behind her.
In the Gigue, Furlan was quicksilver. Even though he isn’t short, he cut through the beats and direction changes. The two of them took the moment where she refused his hand like a joke done for our benefit with an elegant smile. Furlan had the melodrama for the final section, putting his hand passionately on her heart, embracing her, losing her and genuinely seeming to have no idea where she was when she exited, shattered at her loss.
Robbins’ “Piano Pieces” was made for the 1981 Tchaikovsky Festival, and earlier in the season, Joseph Gordon and Chun Wai Chan made their debuts in the ballet. It started with an ensemble, six couples in two squads, wearing simplified Russian peasant garb in white and red. The corps assembled in a clump; the men reached and bent, the women placed their hands over their hearts.
The piece moved into a folk dance reminiscent of the Russian folk vocabulary Balanchine used in his “Scherzo à la Russe,” then the couples sped across the stage in a polka. As in “Dances at a Gathering,” Robbins was making a portrait of a community, only this time the echoes were of Russia, not Poland.
Sebastián Villarini-Velez danced more this season than he has in a long while; this has been his chance to show what he can do. His part, originally Ib Andersen’s, was at his technical limit; it was as much about tricks as about speed. There were moments at the outset you could see he was flustered; he landed a tour early and was just in control, trying not to drown in a cascade of arpeggios.
Sara Mearns and Chun Wai Chan, dressed in lilac, danced a medium cool duet. Her legs stayed low; she was never very far from her axis. As in “Dances,” Robbins went long, to the delight of some and the consternation of others. The pas de deux went on, from one promenade to the next lift.
Tiler Peck and Joseph Gordon danced their duet in blue, as it elaborately chained round itself. She was beaming; he was acting the cavalier. Mira Nadon and Aaron Sanz, in pale green, danced a pas de deux not that far off the lilac one, though with its own striking close as he lifted her off upside-down. Peck turned her solo into a very Peck solo, emphasizing the balances and rapid-fire tight chaîné turns, including a wild spinning exit.
“Piano Pieces” is unbalanced in a way Balanchine would avoid and Robbins didn’t mind. Here Nadon and Sanz didn’t get solos. Histories of the ballet recount that the dancers recalled endless rehearsals with multiple possible versions; there may have been variations that got cut.
Despite the music being very familiar (especially if you’ve ever taken ballet class) “Piano Pieces” has the feeling of a sequel: “Dances at Another Gathering.” But it’s also useful and clear to see how Robbins built a duet, and how he viewed the corps. We get to do that in the middle-tier works without the distracting glare of a masterpiece.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Raymonda Variations,” “Duo Concertant,” “Piano Pieces” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 4, 2022
Cover: Indiana Woodward and Jovani Furlan in “Duo Concertant.” Photo credit © Paul Kolnik.
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