by Leigh Witchel
Towards the end of its run, New York City Ballet slipped in a new troika for “The Sleeping Beauty.” An Aurora, Désiré and Lilac all made their debuts together and the results were good.
Aurora is not a complex character; she’s any number of ingénue tropes: Younger than springtime and 16 going on 17. Pick your stereotype. But Indiana Woodward is also well suited to Aurora’s technical demands. The bright allegro entry Tchaikovsky wrote for Aurora set the tone. Woodward is an allegro dancer, she hummed out like a sports car for a swift, placed entry.
But Aurora’s stereotypical dew needs to be droplets of steel. She heads right into one of the main tests of the 19th century ballerina repertory: the Rose Adagio. Woodward had debut butterflies – she hedged her bets in the first set of balances, though she was more on balance than she thought she was. Once she got through the initial nerves, she stuck the second set.
Woodward is a turner, so the variation following was all clean double pirouettes, one after another down the diagonal. This is what Woodward does, and her go-get-’em preparedness stamped the role onwards. The Vision Scene was easy stuff for her; her variation was smooth and she had no trouble with the chains of turns and balances.
As her prince, Anthony Huxley has never been a demonstrative dancer. In much of the abstract repertory he’s poker-faced and he lets his movement speak. Yet if he’s never going to be a capital-A Actor, he pushed himself to fill the role. His mime was neat but not frigid. Peter Martins’ production, which aims to get to Happily Ever After by the last train home to Chappaqua, hustled through a truncated hunt scene. There was little for Huxley to do in the abbreviated journey to Aurora: pilot the boat, saw the brambles, kiss the girl and Bob’s your uncle.
But Huxley’s main challenge with Prince Désiré was clear from the moment he entered – his height. This isn’t an arbitrary issue any more than it is for a basketball player; short men are at a disadvantage in partnering and this is a partnering role. That’s what limits Huxley’s repertory.
He pulled it off. The wedding pas de deux happened without a hitch. All the tricky fish dives went smoothly including the final no-hands pose. This was far harder for Huxley than the beautiful double cabrioles in his solo or the elevation he achieved in the coda. He lifted beyond his weight class and squired Woodward firmly when that was what she needed. He partnered without any adjustments or fidgeting as if he were several pounds heavier and several inches taller.
Megan LeCrone was also challenged by her first outing as the Lilac Fairy. All attenuated limbs, she wouldn’t seem challenged physically by the role, but she was having trouble getting value in her side extension. It kept the grand arcs of the leg in her opening solo from being expansive. By nature, LeCrone is angular and astringent – she’s great in leotard roles – but she hasn’t yet figured out how to make the Lilac Fairy not look pinched.
Miriam Miller has that expansive quality naturally. She danced the third fairy variation in the prologue – appropriately named Generosity – and you could see the fullness and connection of her movement from her first entrance: as she took a half-circle at the front of the stage or motioned her little attendant towards the royal couple to offer a gift. Even with walks and hops on pointe in her variation, she made the movement full and complete.
The rest of the fairies looked hectic. The exaggerated stance the women affect back on their weight in the prologue gave them a particular line, but they have to figure out how to get that arc in the body without sitting into it.
Gretchen Smith was a small-screen Carabosse that would have worked perfectly on television but didn’t project on a stage. With little, conversational details, she brushed away her fly attendants or pointed at the king warning him to remember, miming with an inside voice. Her mime was angular, her hand gesture for “speak” was a claw. Laughing at the King and Queen’s misfortune without joy, her Carabosse was an angry Mean Girl.
In the Jewels pas de quatre, as the Diamond, Unity Phelan moved avidly yet barely jumped. She led with her chin and neck like a bejeweled waterbird. Harrison Ball shone in Gold, climaxing a series of turns à la seconde by pulling in to retiré for quick multiples.
Daniel Ulbricht danced the Bluebird with his usual elevation and tight axis, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen him miss a landing that even a slight bobble came as a surprise. Erica Pereira’s Florine solo was rushed and brittle, coming as well to a stuttering ending. Ulbricht made up for them both in the coda with beautiful brisé volés.
Woodward’s approach to the role was a tiny quibble in a strong debut. She struck the same youthful note from the Rose Adagio to the Wedding and did her marriage solo with sweeping port de bras as if she were skipping through a meadow. The role has little space in it for character development; that solo is about the only spot to show that the character has matured from a girl to a woman.
Unlike Woodward, who was in a role right up her alley, Huxley was cast against type and still succeeded. Woodward made his job as easy as possible – she was calm and on balance. He never had to save her or muscle her back on her leg. Still, he partnered like he cared, with all attention on her. He shone in his strengths, met his challenges honestly and came out ahead.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“The Sleeping Beauty” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
February 21, 2019
Cover: Indiana Woodward in “The Sleeping Beauty.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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