by Leigh Witchel
Sterling Hyltin couldn’t have picked a better way to keep saying goodbye. Instead of one Hyltinathon performance, where she self-immolated trying to get through four or five roles in an evening, she took a whole season to say her first goodbye. Even before her real finale during “The Nutcracker,” she has danced one plum role after another, including her only performance of the waltzes from “Der Rosenkavalier” in “Vienna Waltzes.” To make the occasion more momentous, Robbie Fairchild returned as a guest to be her partner.
We had a whole Viennese program to enjoy before we got there. “Episodes” boasted several debuts. Isabella LaFreniere and Chun Wai Chan both had their first outing in the “Symphony.” They danced it classically, which was as it should be. Even the moment when LaFreniere kicked her flexed foot above her head like a wind-up doll wasn’t pushed. The vocabulary is punctilious, it’s the circumstances that are distorted. There were a few moments when they – and we – were deliberately thrown off balance: when she braced herself, waiting for Chan with her weight back. Or when tottered forward and back on pointe in second position.
LaFreniere dances like a soloist, with the gift of not disappearing on stage. Rather, she’s focused and catches your eye. She’s watchable without forcing herself on us. The man has to be more discreet and Chan was clean and unmannered. He was able to vanish into a partnering role but also not disappear. He was solicitous and adaptable as well. LaFreniere lost the belt of her leotard midway, and was able to hand it to Chan who discreetly got rid of it at the back of the stage.
“Five Pieces” had better timing than its earlier outing. The poses and predicaments Claire Kretzschmar and Gilbert Bolden III found themselves in registered, except for a slip during a partnering move. In his debut, Bolden righted her.
Emilie Gerrity was also a debutante, partnered with Taylor Stanley in the “Concerto.” She looked good with him even though she was slightly taller than him on pointe. “Concerto” is more gymnastic than the “Symphony.” The vocabulary breaks down, but in familiar ways if you’ve seen Balanchine’s other modernist pieces: the feet flex and the arms bend at harsh angles. Gerrity went limp in Stanley’s arms as he walked her backwards, bringing her legs with him. The concerto’s third movement pushed the daisy chains of “The Four Temperaments” into absurdity, with Stanley grabbing Gerrity and splaying her towards the ceiling. But they all ended drawn together in tendu back, ready for a courtly pavane.
The ballet closed with a cast repeat, Sara Mearns and Adrian Danchig-Waring in the “Ricercata in six voices from Bach’s ‘Musical Offering,’” But in repeat viewings, you can trace the route into the labyrinth in “Episodes.” Vocabulary and form breaks down from the Symphony to the Concerto and even the once-again-missing solo originally created for Paul Taylor to the “Variations.” And finally, the way out appears in the “Ricercata” with form as the twine.
In “Vienna Waltzes,” the entire group of leads was new, except for Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley in “Voices of Spring,” where Huxley sprang into splits as he crossed the stage in a fast, clean solo. In “Tales from the Vienna Woods,” Kretzschmar seemed young through her impetuous stances and movement. She was raw, but in a way we can identify with as she raced down between two diagonals of women in anticipation of meeting her partner. Aarón Sanz cut a fine figure and pulled her off impetuously on the last notes.
Watching Sara Adams and Harrison Coll in the “Explosions-Polka” made it clear what felt off about the earlier performance. Coll, rather than Adams, bore the brunt of the comedy, tossing her sharply, stomping and jumping with his huge hair and collar, throwing his head back and his arms up. That’s the general approach; where the man is the comic and the woman is a foil. By making her part more comic, Georgina Pazcoguin changed the focus.
Miriam Miller made an arresting debut with Adrian Danchig-Waring in the “Gold and Silver Waltz.” Another of the taller, newer soloists, Miller has the gift of holding our attention even when she’s standing still. Here, she dropped her weight back into her heels to give her character and posture more presence. It made when she walked an event as well.
Both Hyltin and Fairchild danced the waltzes from “Der Rosenkavalier” for the first and last time, but it was a good one-off. It’s a part with a tremendous amount of mystique, but there are no physical requirements to the role beyond presence and an imagination. Fairchild was in excellent form; Hyltin moved expansively but as in “La Sonnambula,” it’s not her way to be otherworldly. Bringing her leg up and round, leaning back, she turned a corner as he took her hand. Changing hands, she flirted with him as they waltzed to the first appearance of the theme. Fairchild wasn’t a fantasy from her dreams, he was a real man and he was right there. When she held the hem of her dress to shade her eyes, she wasn’t lost in fantasy, more she was trying to conjure it.
As much as soaking in the nostalgia and occasion of the performance, there was the craft to admire. The transition to the ball was Rouben Ter-Arutunian’s show; Balanchine did nothing as the set changed from a restaurant to a mirrored ballroom but send couples to walk in conversation across the stage as if there were all the time in the world. When light floods the stage and the other couples join in, Balanchine weaves in the leads from the other sections, now identically dressed in Karinska’s ball attire, almost invisibly. They pull on other dancers as if through centripetal force.
At the curtain pull Fairchild offered Hyltin a bouquet and a kiss. But she has spent the entire season having her bouquets and smelling them too. This wasn’t the final goodbye, even of the fall season.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Episodes,” “Vienna Waltzes” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 13, 2022
Cover: Robbie Fairchild and Sterling Hyltin in “Vienna Waltzes.” Photo credit © Paul Kolnik.
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