by Leigh Witchel
Unity Phelan may not be a first night dancer. Opening night of the Spring season at New York City Ballet was her debut in “Concerto Barocco.” She did fine, but looked harassed. It could have been the tempo, Andrew Litton conducted the evening at a rapid pace that felt closer to what tempos at NYCB used to be. Balanchine seemed to want speeds faster than was comfortable to keep the energy level up. And that was exciting, if rushed. One corps dancer did fumble, but Ashley Laracey, in the second ballerina role, looked great. Darting from position to position, the pace showed off her lanky speed.
The second movement adagio barely slowed down, but Tyler Angle and Phelan looked seamless. Angle’s done this part for years and there were no fumbles. Phelan couldn’t have asked for a better partner. It went more smoothly for Phelan as well, now she can find moments in the adagio to make an impression. We lost her at times. As the full cast did a spiraling walk, she disappeared into the corps, but came back into view mentally as well as physically when Angle carried her out front in bell-like arabesques.
When Laracey returned for the opening phrases of the third movement, she was all alacrity and brightness, which Phelan could have used a pinch of. It felt like she was checking the boxes, concentrating on getting through a landmark ballet for the first time. The same thing happened in her debut in “The Sleeping Beauty,” when she did better than she thought she did. Perhaps she needs the first performance to work out the kinks.
“Raymonda Variations” closed the evening, with several debuts among the variations, but veterans in the leads. There was one promenade with arms overhead that Anthony Huxley just didn’t have the height over Megan Fairchild for. She got stuck, but it didn’t faze her and she didn’t hold back elsewhere. Everything else went well.
Huxley’s calling card is his ability to string together the most complicated and intricate steps. The first variation is petit allegro, and that’s his thing. He has beautiful ballon, and looped around the stage in a continuous phrase. The second variation turns up the volume with bigger jumps; he’s got those as well as small ones and he took more risks. The main trick in the variation is a complex turn; it sets up with beats, then flicks to one side and slowly winds into a pose. Well, Huxley was on and floated beautifully to a sustained balance . . . with his back to us. The control was gorgeous, but he had to be a bit disoriented; he ended to the knee a few counts early.
Fairchild’s first variation is glamorous, with room to play. She took her time, breathing at the top of her movements. As Huxley’s second variation was bigger, she danced a tit-for-tat grand allegro with a manège of jetés en tournant, nailing her turns at the end.
In the solo variations, Claire von Enck made an early debut in the first of them, having to go in for Sara Adams, and did fine with both the hops on pointe and the final balance. Meaghan Dutton-O’Hara has done the Harp variation before, and she’s not just tall, but accurate, turning with a clean axis. Lauren Collett had a fast, strong debut in the bright, military solo. In her first shot at the pizzicato solo, Emily Kikta emphasized a cushy landing in plié before whirring through pas de bourrée en tournant to close. A final amusement, it’s all still done in front of a drop recycled decades ago from when NYCB did “Lilac Garden.” Look closely, you can see the bushes.
In between “Barocco” and “Kammermusik No. 2” Litton gave a “See the Music” talk that explored the relationship between both Hindemith and Bach, as well as their two compositions. Though Hindemith did a series of Kammermusik, not all of them are chamber music. Number Two is a piano concerto with a chamber orchestra accompaniment, and the solo part is counterpoint between the left and right hands. The two violins in Bach’s concerto have a similar relationship, and Balanchine chose slightly different ways to create an analog in each ballet.
Litton again took a swift tempo in “Kammermusik,” which included debuts for Harrison Coll and Mira Nadon, and a New York debut for Aarón Sanz. It forced them all to push. Balanchine might have said that he told you so. The ballet has such a look of 1920’s physical culture that it sometimes seems like calisthenics, but tricky ones: walking backwards at top speed is harder than it looks, and at one point Nadon fell. Still, for the eight men in the corps, it looked as if someone had polished the gears.
The adagio began with low strings and querulous woodwinds. It sounded like the beginning of a cloak and dagger movie as Coll and Sanz flipped over Emilie Gerrity and Nadon, and the corps exited like insects.
The stage darkened for Gerrity and Coll’s duet, he handled her with her arms cocked upwards as she pitched down, grabbing her under the arms before she sidled off with her cheek in his hands. Nadon and Sanz also made those cocked arms, as did three men sidling across the back in darkness. At the close of another duet, Gerrity finally decided to give Coll her hand as he crouched and offered it repeatedly.
The lights brightened as everyone returned, and one side of the stage, led by one couple, mirrored the other. Sanz and Coll led off a scherzo with a piccolo solo by leaping in tandem, then the women entered doing the same. Nadon, who did Colleen Neary’s original part, was most vivid at the same spot as reports of Neary: prancing wildly at the end of this section, then exiting turning on her heels. Gerrity, in Karin von Aroldingen’s role, floated through back attitudes before spinning out.
The finale was a mix of calisthenics and semaphore, ending with the women lifted off by their partners, but the corps got the last word, turning one by one to end crouched covering their eyes. Given that the male ensemble at New York City Ballet can get overlooked, I’m glad they give the men a bow in front of the curtain, a tradition that’s been around since the ballet was made. But still, have they ever done that for the corps women?
Balanchine’s palette in “Kammermusik” called back to several of his expressionist pieces: “The Four Temperaments,” or the Five Pieces section of “Episodes” – both of those to German composers, the first also Hindemith, the other Webern. By 1978, we were close to the end of Balanchine’s output, and we’ve seen this before, but not put together like this. As Litton reminded us, one of Balanchine’s most-quoted statements was, “There are no new steps, only new combinations.”
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Concerto Barocco,” “Kammermusik No. 2,” “Raymonda Variations” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
April 18, 2023
Cover: Tyler Angle and Unity Phelan in “Concerto Barocco.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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.]
