by Leigh Witchel
Christine Shevchenko made us wait all the way until Act 3 of Onegin at American Ballet Theatre to really get us. But she got there. And she got us.
The performance involved a full cast swap; Daniel Camargo and Devon Teuscher were originally scheduled. Instead, it was Shevchenko, whose debut in the part had been bumped to opening night, partnered by Cory Stearns. Most of the leads that night, except Stearns, made their debuts during this run.
Shevchenko’s conception of Tatiana from the first scene was to make her as recognizable as possible, showing us her normality, not her eccentricities. She was bookish, but also kind, with a happy family life.
Onegin is right in Stearns’ wheelhouse. He excels in roles that have shadows, and he’s done this one well for years. He played his first encounter with Tatiana as he has before: she’s too young and she can’t be serious, and he set her down from a lift without even looking at her.
Still, he added a dimension of kindness. You saw him trying to hide his weariness from her and not wallow in his melancholy: wiping his brow, but turning to her and smiling. In a more modern understanding of why people are that way, he was trying not to show what was likely depression, or live in it.
And that may have been part of the attraction for Shevchenko’s Tatiana. “I can help make him better. He needs me.” She did lovely parallel bourrées that showed her romantic impulses, floating and fluttering in a dream. But if there’s any lesson you should learn from Tatiana, it’s do not write correspondence late at night. Really. Not that I would know.
Skylar Brandt’s Olga was every stereotypical younger sister; pretty, vivacious, vain and convinced everyone loves her. Instead of books, she sat down and got lost in a mirror. Technically, Brandt was a wunderkind who nailed every balance and finish. Yet for all of Brandt’s scintillating virtuosity, is that all there is? She did a perfectly judged sky-high side extension with Joo Won Ahn as Lensky, then cantilevered into a penchée. Still, is Brandt ever not Kitri?
Ahn, unfortunately, was a disappointment. He has line, but he fidgeted on the plié between all his turns in his first solo. He’s either got nerves or he can’t stick turns.
The catechism among my generation of critics is that Onegin is barely a ballet, rather it’s a truckload of killer pas de deux. Keep watching. It’s certainly weighted towards showstopping duets, but there are continuous dances, the first being for Olga and eight of her friends. After that, there are duets for Lensky and Olga duet, a big number for the youths (with the applause-machine stage crossings in jeté), and more subdued duet for Onegin and Tatiana before the main Act 1 haul: the mirror pas de deux.
You forget all of the above because the mirror duet is both built and positioned to be a show-stopper. The pas de deux with a fantasy Onegin who springs from Tatiana’s fevered imagination is arduous, acrobatic and long as hell, but Stearns was literally a dream partner. Shevchenko could show off gorgeous leg lines and Stearns made the rest invisible though he was yanking, tossing and hauling her.
Though it’s as physical as anything MacMillan ever did, including some overhead flips, unlike MacMillan’s overhead lifts, the swings and lifts in the mirror duet felt like metaphors for the romance and abandon of falling in love, rather than sex itself.
Opening the second act, Onegin arrived at Madame Larina’s mansion for a party. It was sketched clearly by Cranko, and Shevchenko, that Tatiana is an eldest child who has a sense of responsibility for others. Larina is a widow; Tatiana and Olga are fatherless. You got the same sense from Shevchenko when she came out before the duel and went to the men; she wasn’t thinking about herself at all.
Onegin appeared at the ball, stifling a yawn: a different, crueler person than in even the non-fantasy scenes of Act 1. By the time Stearns spoke to Shevchenko, she knew it was not going well; she could see his anger as he demanded she take back her letter. Stearns has remained consistent in his performances about what happens; with two rips he quartered the letter neatly, put it into her hands and gently but firmly closed them round the pieces.
The second act, particularly the scene leading up to the duel is the hardest and the weakest in the ballet. The choreographic high points are in the outer acts, but that’s less of an issue. It’s the hardest for a modern audience to comprehend: how did things escalate to get so dangerously out of hand?
Pushkin’s Onegin is the most Russian of anti-heroes, the template for the “superfluous man,” an educated, wealthy gentleman disaffected from society so that he adds nothing to it. Lensky was his opposite, sensitive and too young (in Pushkin he is around 18 and Onegin is 26) and too inexperienced to contain his emotions. Pushkin’s readers, immersed in this milieu, wouldn’t have needed context.
Cranko doesn’t help us; he put Onegin at the side, playing cards, while dances distract us center stage. He also doesn’t show a plot point from Pushkin, that Lensky mischievously invited Onegin to what Onegin thought was to be an intimate gathering, and he arrived to find a ball he did not wish to attend.
Shevchenko did a lovely solo variation after Stearns’ rejection of her where she floated through attitude turns, nailing every one, but wondering what to say to Stearns.
Stearns jumped up, seemingly out of nowhere, and started dancing with Brandt. Olga was a vain flirt and Brandt’s reading of her was as a perky, vapid dodo. Beware all potential Lenskys: This is what you get when go out with Kitri. Ahn’s unfocused anger (what exactly is he going to do with Olga if he kills Onegin?) couldn’t make it feel like more than the most pointless of arguments and the stupidest of deaths.
Lensky’s Act 2 variation is beautiful in the hands of a someone with sustained line and technique. Though Ahn did beautiful 90° arabesques, every turn was saved, not one was clean all the way through.
Stearns underplayed Lensky’s challenge. With everyone around him hysterical, he picked up Lensky’s glove and gave a small nod. He lost his cool when he met Lensky again and Lensky goaded him further as Onegin tried to dissuade him from fighting, three pirouettes stamping as if to snip, “Fine.” Stearns rarely has trouble with making sense of what he’s doing, including Onegin’s final breakdown after shooting Lensky.
One pivotal detail missing in the ballet from Pushkin’s narrative is that Tatiana later goes to Onegin’s mansion once he’s quit the area. Reading through his books and notes in his library, she wonders if he is just a composite of the novels he has read, with no actual core.
This, perhaps unavoidably, was simplified by Cranko to a second-chances love story. Cranko likely could not have made the amazing Act 3 duet if he had stuck to Pushkin.
In a cinematic fashion, we flip points of view at the beginning of the act. Onegin arrived at a party in St. Petersburg. The lights changed color and for no reason except that it’s a flashback, everyone left so that he can dance with eight women, signifying his futile travels over the years.
Tatiana’s duet with Prince Gremin is where Cranko could show Tatiana trading her youthful abandon for a life with a solid middle in place of massive highs and lows. It’s all in the steps: the majority of time Tatiana is supported by Gremin or completely on balance. Every position is secure.
Still, as the music quickened Shevchenko leaped round and on the final diagonal she threw her head back on a few dips, offering the possibility of some abandon, a moment where her heart might race.
Anyone who knows the ballet is waiting for the final scene, where Cranko dispensed with all of Pushkin’s irony and made a full-on love duet burning with passion.
Shevchenko concentrated on Tatiana’s conflict. She chose to move mechanically, as if that were the only way to avoid paralysis. Every move she made, throwing her arms out or falling into his arms, was a discrete cry of anguish. When the big theme appeared (from Tchaikovsky’s “Francesca da Rimini” as orchestrated by Kurt-Heinz Stolze), Stearns popped her into the air and she hovered between rapture and collapse.
When he approached, Stearns dropped slowly to the floor and before Shevchenko could flee, reached one arm to clasp her hand. He played Onegin as a desperate penitent: Albrecht if he could have had one more chance with Giselle.
From there his partnering was at once thrilling but practically invisible as she flew round in his arms. As all Juliets in MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet can choose how they play their final moments, Shevchenko commanding Stearns to leave was her own: a moment of hysteria. It was done almost on autopilot as the only way she could get through it.
And so Pushkin’s story questioning Romanticism was turned into the most romantic and emotional of ballets. Yet it’s still a fabulous night at the theater, and Shevchenko ramped up to a marvelous, affecting finale. All was forgiven for making us wait. She delivered.
copyright © 2024 by Leigh Witchel
Onegin – American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House, New York, NY
June 21, 2024
Cover: Christine Shevchenko and Cory Stearns in Onegin. Photo © Rosalie O’Connor.
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