by Leigh Witchel
Ballerinas are born and made. You can develop a great dancer, but you have to start with a promising candidate. The Balanchine/Stravinsky bill that bowed the week before at New York City Ballet gave new dancers shots at juicy roles, and there was a lot of potential on display.
“Danses Concertantes” was one of the less touted ballets from the 1972 Stravinsky Festival. Created originally in 1944, it had an infectious score by Stravinsky and celebrated décor by Eugene Berman that recalled the commedia dell’arte. It was rechoreographed rather than revived. If the new version didn’t live up to the memory of the original, it’s still valuable in repertory for the number of small featured roles in it. It’s an ideal way to introduce and bring forward dancers.
The cast is structured with a lead couple – Daniel Applebaum and Brittany Pollack, both new to their parts – and four trios, each with two women and a man. The first trio, danced by Baily Jones, Kristen Segin and Kennard Henson, is twitchy, and Balanchine responded to it precisely, with neat footwork for the women and neat turns for the man. But he also responded humorously, with hip bounces. The ending snuck up out of nowhere, as if, like Applebaum in the opening, it had run offstage and left the three of them there to pose and bow.
After introducing itself by jogging in and cakewalking out, the second trio, Alston Macgill, Mary Elizabeth Sell and Maxwell Read continued jazzily, extending their legs front, stalking and kicking. Their trio ended by echoing another step from the opening, entrechats to grand plié for the man. That was a feat at the end of a long variation; Read let out a long exhale when it was done.
The stork-like third trio featured some of the longest legs in the company, Christina Clark, Isabella LaFreniere and Davide Riccardo. Finally Nieve Corrigan, Olivia MacKinnon and Jonathan Fahoury bounced forward and stammered back to some of Stravinsky’s most rhythmic music. Fahoury’s driving attack rode the music.
Applebaum and Pollack played off of one another charmingly. He’s extroverted; she’s fresh-scrubbed and seemed a throwback to when Balanchine’s women looked like cheerleaders. Both worked to color the steps, pushing far off their legs in front extensions. The final pose of their duet might have explained why “Danses Concertantes” didn’t hold in repertory: it was a complex offering of hands and a kiss that felt like a mash-up of “Rubies” and “Diamonds.”
Mira Nadon showed real promise taking on the double role in “Monumentum Pro Gesualdo/Movements for Piano and Orchestra.” Like Farrell, who was the first dancer to combine both roles, she is tall, lush, and softly curved. Even more, she had the angelic calm “Monumentum Pro Gesualdo” calls for, but also a looseness as she dove into a six o clock penchée. Even with a very human glitch – a lift aborted because it was happening in the wrong direction, the ballet still felt heavenly.
In “Movements” she sharpened her attack without making it harsher. She loosened up her torso into a roll as she walked forward, or slumped into Adrian Danchig-Waring’s arms. Danchig-Waring was also well-suited to the works. Discreetly gallant in “Monumentum,” in “Movements” he seemed in Nadon’s thrall as he reached towards her and turned away. He also made something clean and airborne of the dance moments allotted to the man.
Emilie Gerrity is new to Kay Mazzo’s role in “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.” She’s not a waif, but her partner, Ask la Cour, is very tall, so some of the physical dynamic of the original Mazzo/Peter Martins pairing was there. Like Nadon, Gerrity is long and ripe, also gentle, not sharp. But she was fearless as well, flipping her hip and throwing her leg on la Cour’s shoulder. He was also gentle with her. At the end of the duet there is a moment when the man brings the woman’s head far back to the final pose, and at times it looks as if he might snap her neck. Here, la Cour cradled her forehead and kept close contact. There was no implicit violence.
Claire Kretzschmar, like her role’s originator, Karin von Aroldingen, was more angular. Her pairing with Taylor Stanley was fascinating: they were opposites that attracted as they faced one another in a sudden pose, or combined as the violin made a pang. He moved smoothly, and his priority was line and form. She was astringent and tended to concentrate on energy. She’d throw herself into something without worrying about the pose she’d end up in.
Stanley heard satire in Stravinsky’s witty repurposing of folk and classical sources. In the opening, when he took Meaghan Dutton-O’Hara from the corps and lowered her as she walked forward, he gave her a small, comic look when he let her go. The movement in the finale was derived from Russian folk dancing, but Stanley was taking input from other sources as well. The arm positions weren’t folk dance, Paris burnt a little.
It looks as if the ballerina incubator is gestating Gerrity and Nadon. Still, one man’s ballerina is another’s travesty, but we all can agree that part of a ballerina’s magic is the effect she has the moment she enters: she captivates your imagination even when she’s standing still.
Gerrity and Nadon made you think of more than just what you’re seeing onstage. The vulnerability that Gerrity projected keeling alone in “Violin Concerto” carried to the end of her duet as she nestled in La Cour’s arms and he guided her gaze. And when Nadon looked down at Danchig-Waring at the very end of “Movements,” calm yet towering over him with her arms outstretched, was it the end of the ballet or a much worse finish?
copyright © 2020 by Leigh Witchel
“Danses Concertants,” “Monumentum pro Gesualdo,” “Movements for Piano and Orchestra,” “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
February 02, 2020
Cover: Emilie Gerrity in “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.” Photo credit © Erin Baiano.
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