by Leigh Witchel
A decade on at American Ballet Theatre, Alexei Ratmansky is still making very Russian ballets. The company programmed a triple bill in his honor: an abstract work, a one-act narrative ballet, and a large-scale homage to Petipa. They’re linked by Russian sources, Russian scores and Russian subjects and form part of a broad snapshot of a decade.
“On the Dnieper,” from 2009, is the earliest of the three and a genre in a long eclipse, the one-act narrative ballet. Originally composed in 1930 for Paris Opera Ballet, it’s a bittersweet tale of how one love kindles as another dies. Sergei, a decorated soldier, returned home from war to realize he no longer loved his fiancée Natalia. He is instead smitten by Olga, who is also engaged to another. She can’t resist their mutual attraction, and the ballet examines the elation – and collateral damage – of facing that truth.
Simon Pastukh (who worked with Ratmansky again on “Firebird”) contributed a beautiful, simple and effective set of movable picket fences and cherry trees right after full flower, their falling petals scattering in a carpet.
A recurring point that runs through all of Ratmansky’s ballet is how he sees the corps de ballet. If Balanchine’s corps echoed the hierarchy of the court, Ratmansky’s corps is a village. One of its most important functions is to witness. The women of the village wrapped their arms round themselves and twisted on pointe, but later they saw Sergei reject Natalia. The men asked Sergei to dance with them. He crouched low to lead them in a dance that narrated his time in battle; they bore witness to his experience.
The idea of the corps as community goes back at least as far as bedrocks of 20th century Russian ballet such as “Le Sacre du Printemps” and “Les Noces.” The climax of “Dnieper” was a village wedding and when the assembled wedding party came forward to pose for a photo. That paid homage to Ashton as well, both “Enigma Variations” and Ashton’s laughing child of “Les Noces”: “A Wedding Bouquet.”
Ratmansky used cliché (Sergei leans against the men when talking about the hardships of combat), but clichés tell a story in dance narrative. For all its mother-in-law plot complexity, “On the Dnieper” was easy to follow. Ratmansky has a keen eye for character detail: such as the way each person greeted Sergei on his return, from neighbors to parents. Natalia’s joy, Olga’s more tentative greeting, Sergei’s mother utterly overcome to see him again.
The cast gave their characters life, telling the story. Give Corey Stearns a character with a dark soul and he shines. He played Sergei with the frustration of someone who can’t explain everything that he’s been through, staggering in drunk after Olga’s wedding because that’s the only way he can cope. He’s the company’s anti-hero. James Whiteside also responds to darker roles. They harness his energy, and feel individual where his princes can seem generic. As Olga’s fiancé, he raced in for a solo, darting through changing directions and turns. The agitated this-way-and-that movement is Ratmansky’s default style, but here it mirrored what the character was feeling.
Hee Seo showed Natalia’s mounting fear and made her a heroine rather than a patsy. Her decision to give up Sergei came right after he held her in a dead embrace. She could feel he no longer loved her. Christine Shevchenko understood Olga’s confusion at her growing attraction in the same instinctive way.
At the end, Natalia confronted the lovers but ended up pointing the way to an escape from the village. Before Olga and Sergei embark on their new life, they could do nothing more than bow to her, but it said it all.
“Songs of Bukovina” falls into two large boxes of a decade’s work: Ratmansky’s emotionally pungent abstractions and his collaborations with Russian Composer Leonid Desyatnikov. “Russian Seasons,” the first of those, shot Ratmansky to recognition in New York. “Bukovina” mined a similar vein; folk content that got elevated by mystery. Bukovina straddles the present Romanian/Ukrainian border – with the imaginable consequences of the ethnic cleansing of the past century.
On the ghostly opening chords, the cast entered tentatively. The men caught up to the women, reaching for their hands, which morphed into a dance for four couples. Dances for the men and women used a signature Ratmansky move you wish he’d dial back on: jogging.
The music became slower and more spacious; Ratmansky reacted to that change and set the entry for the lead couple, Isabella Boylston and Blaine Hoven. She walked in on pointe like royalty, but it seemed to happen primarily because the music changed. What Alexei Ratmansky hears is what he does.
The women did a folk dance with shuffling feet and tilting heads – only sped up. Boylston danced a long solo, floating but also agitated, and ended raised aloft by the men. Hoven’s solo had overtones of marching and the military. If Balanchine’s Russia was a land of Tsars and revolutions, Ratmansky’s was one of two generations of war.
A speedy duet for Hoven and Boylston was followed by a drifting dance for one man from the corps and three women. Everyone returned and Ratmansky staged a comic argument – the men pointing an accusing finger at the women; the woman bobbing their heads as if chattering. The music raced, everyone rushed madly until a final toss of Boylston spinning into Hoven’s arms and the ballet ended.
For all the hints of narrative, Ratmansky wasn’t playing a long game. Both “Russian Seasons” and “Bukovina” are song collections but “Russian Seasons” is a complete song cycle, and that gives the dance a framework. “Bukovina” uses half of a set of piano preludes. It made sense moment to moment rather than over the full work.
In “Dnieper” emotions propelled the narrative and they had a cost. But just as often in his short ballets, Ratmansky used emotions as choreography rather than to build a world. All of the ingredients are there but without a destination in mind. He’s not baring his Russian soul here, he’s offering it for rent.
“The Seasons” was originally choreographed by Petipa in 1900 with music by Glazunov. The composer and Drigo swapped assignments, giving Drigo “Harlequinade.” Ratmansky’s new production of “The Seasons” was exhausting: a calendar’s worth of frenzied dancing. Like Jerome Robbins’ 1979 version of “The Four Seasons” using Verdi’s music, the ballet journeys from Winter to Autumn. Robbins’ ballet is a lot more straightforward.
Winter was led by Joo Won Ahn with four female soloists dressed in white, each a different attribute of cold weather: Frost, Ice, Hail and Snow. Unfortunately Ahn had a rough night. – the part was unceasing air turns and he was just making them.
Ratmansky’s tireless work reconstructing Petipa’s ballets has inevitably seeped into his own work, but here it’s the strangest hybrid with a healthy dose of ADD. He had the dancers moving from tableau to tableau, but Petipa – as Ratmansky himself has staged him – relied on simplicity and volume to get an effect across. Ratmansky is a more-is-more kind of guy, and this is a kitchen sink of ideas, several of them awkward. All of the female corps in Winter slowly slid into splits, not the easiest pose to get into or out of.
Spring was a patchwork led by Thomas Forster, Cassandra Trenary and Breanne Granlund. Foster is very tall and the choreography made him look galumphing. In Summer things got more awkward. A group of young female students symbolized red poppies, but Ratmansky asked them to do about the most baldy exposing step he could: unsupported extensions. That’s hard enough for a seasoned professional corps in “La Bayadère.” The season trudged on to formations with men, women and young women. The men in particular looked overwhelmed – there were several Left Shark moments. The women partnered the girls in pirouettes. And Stella Abrera made it through some fast awkward pointe work – a dance for unhappy feet.
Partnering Catherine Hurlin, Hoven subbed in for Herman Cornejo in Autumn. Ratmansky’s Autumn is a similar prancing bacchanal to Robbins’. Hoven and Hurlin also came skipping in. That wasn’t thievery; any Walpurgisnacht ballet would have the same ingredients, but Ratmansky’s version was more of a goulash.
All the dancers returned for a reprise and Ratmansky showed off Trenary and Granlund in fast but lovely pointe work. He’s quite capable of clean phrases. But then Forster and Abrera danced a hyperactive grand adagio, running and lifting. Everyone joined hands to skip and hop in a line, and the principals got dragged back in. Literally dragged. The ballet ended in a tableau that looked as if someone tried to stick too many candles on a birthday cake.
“The Seasons” jam-packed frenzy looked as if it was rushed to the stage before the dancers had it under their skins. As usual, Ratmansky’s ballets need time to settle in, and some of the crazy salads he’s tossed have come into form once the dancers have figured it out. Let’s check back in a year.
It was a scattershot evening. While “Dnieper” showed Ratmansky’s heart, and the color he can bring to technique and emotion, “Bukovina” wasn’t his best effort and “The Seasons” is just not fully cooked. But that’s not the fair measure of a decade – it doesn’t encompass the poignancy of his best ballets or the work he’s done in reconstructing the Petipa repertory. You don’t need to agree with every turn the path of an artist takes in a decade to believe in them.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Songs of Bukovina,” “On the Dnieper,” “The Seasons” – American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House, New York, NY
May 21, 2019
Cover: The closing tableau of “The Seasons.” Photo © Rosalie O’Connor.
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