by Leigh Witchel
Even a dance within living memory can get lost. On a mixed bill including works by Balanchine, Robbins and Justin Peck, New York City Ballet brought back Robbins’ “Rondo,” a gossamer duet that hadn’t been performed for 43 years.
The duet was created on Kyra Nichols and Stephanie Saland. Each had been promoted the previous year, Saland to Soloist and Nichols to Principal Dancer. The piece was performed just a few times, and only existed in rehearsal footage.
The pianist, Susan Walters, was placed at back, two women in brief, peach-colored dresses were at center. Olivia MacKinnon, who was promoted to Soloist recently, sat watching Indiana Woodward do a variation of gentle extensions and classroom waltzes in front of her, then joined her as the work escalated into circles of arabesques and jetés. The two spun in slow chainés, and swiveled to poses, more turns and clasped hands like London Bridge.
For those who thought same-sex partnering in ballet sprung into being this decade, Woodward partnered MacKinnon in a promenade, then MacKinnon supported Woodward in penchée. Woodward got where she is because of her technical prowess. Her phrasing wasn’t as lush as MacKinnon’s, but MacKinnon’s line was wonkier. A reverence, a bow and the brief duet was done. As lovely as it was to recover and better preserve one of Robbins’ works, “Rondo” didn’t seem to be one that would argue for preservation on its own. It felt as virginal as a school graduation exercise.
In a way that Balanchine’s works don’t, Robbins’ date more quickly. They dealt with the manners and mores of their time in a way Balanchine avoided. The composition, and the setting, of “Fancy Free” are now both nearly 80 years old. Time has muddied its intentions. Like “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” it’s easy with current perspectives to reinterpret a work that was originally intended to be about flirtation as being about male aggression. Still, that isn’t just reinterpretation, it bends “Fancy Free” out of shape. The tone of the work should be set by the first passer-by when she’s accosted by the three sailors: if she’s frightened, so are we. If she’s bemused, so are we.
Mary Thomas MacKinnon (Olivia’s younger sister) kept her interpretation appropriate and light. Wearing fabulous curls, she had a girl-next-door-who-happens-to-be-on-Broadway attitude, extroverted, presentational and street-smart. All the women in the cast made their debuts a week earlier, and MacKinnon never lost sight that this is musical comedy as well as ballet. She was a tough sweetheart; when she accidentally smacked one sailor or kicked another, she immediately checked to see if they were all right.
Harrison Coll and Alexa Maxwell (who was promoted along with MacKinnon) danced the central duet, and their characters were shaded by their movement: he smirked a little, she slinked a little, and they looked as if they enjoyed one another’s company. After, when MacKinnon and Maxwell spied one another, the quick hand gestures they made to the men indicating that the two of them go back a ways and are like this were so recognizable and so New York.
Jovani Furlan, who made his debut on the first outing of the bill, got tossed in for Sebastían Villarini-Velez. Perhaps because Furlan was thrown into this cast, the three men did well individually, but little things at the opening, like not being in sync during a tap shuffle, made them not yet feel like a trio of friends.
They’re also competitors. In a reverse “Judgment of Paris” (Tudor’s ballet entered Ballet Theatre’s repertory in 1940, the same year Robbins joined the company), the three men did variations to try and get one of the two available women. Roman Mejia began the first variation without SLAMMING into a split, so the high points were elsewhere. Coll gave a sweet, conversational performance in the second variation, dancing it all to Maxwell. Furlan took the Danzón like a toreador, aggressive and serious. He didn’t start to smile until after the Gypsy moments.
MacKinnon and Maxwell did smile and enjoyed the men competing for them; Maxwell signaling “one moment, boys” before deliberating with MacKinnon.
The farther we get from 1944, the more is up for reinterpretation. And that’s going to look strange the closer you happen to be to 1944 yourself. The bartender is a non-dancing role Shaun O’Brien did way back when as essential but almost invisible, even though he’s onstage the whole time. Maxwell Read made him a dreamy character, holding his cigarette at the opening as if he were doing a photo shoot in a glamour silhouette. At the end, his mannerisms were more Edward Everett Horton. It’s not a problem to play a character as gay, but if you’re broadcasting your story when it’s not actually the story, is it in balance, or extraneous noise?
In an encore run of Justin Peck’s “Solo,” originally created during the pandemic, Anthony Huxley found places to pause for a more spacious phrasing. The opening was slow, but then Peck kept Huxley moving in a circuit around the stage. The dance was made on him and he has always had a gift for phrasing movement. If anyone could make sense of an overactive solo, to shape it into a progression or a moment, it’s him.
As the score climbed to its crescendo, Peck made Huxley do so much more than seemed necessary. Stillness seemed obvious, but on that long, trembling ache of a chord, Huxley moved moved moved moved and only stopped on the actual silence. Even the last moments of the solo had two poses where one would have done. Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is so familiar that less would be more.
Isabella LaFreniere, who was promoted to Principal Dancer at the end of the season, had the same little wardrobe malfunction in “Episodes” as she had last fall: Her belt undid itself and came off. Not a big deal and she tossed it adroitly into the wing, but next time, someone might want to sew her in beforehand.
Mishaps aside, the Symphony is so transparent in structure that there is always something to look at. This time, Balanchine’s fractured unison, as he slid into and out of moving the three couples together or in canon. Balanchine loved to justify his choreographic choices by saying he was merely following the score, and he was . . . but he wasn’t. Rather than creating a piano-roll, he made an analog that moved in parallel. That’s what was so deft. And this: at the end of a movement, instead of stopping in a striking pose, the dancers went to neutral, downshifting to a low port de bras as might be used to finish an exercise. Instead of building up tension, he added texture by releasing it.
During the movement’s final theme and variations, Balanchine neatly deployed the couples in permutations: the men waited behind the women, then came forward, then the women again, then mixed. To close, the men pivoted their partners sideways to us, positioned them in equilibrium, and they arched back precariously. Again, it was less of an exclamation point than a moment of accumulated or released tension.
Ashley Hod and Gordon Bolden III encountered each other in the dark during “Five Pieces.” The most pungent piece was the shortest where Hod kept worming her hands out of Bolden’s grasp, and ended with her face framed and his face invisible, swallowed by blackness.
Emilie Gerrity, also promoted to Principal Dancer at the end of the season, and Taylor Stanley in the “Concerto” did the partnering that felt more like him making adjustments to her, but they were not a great match. He’s slightly too short for her, and more fluid, which is a similar faux pas in ballet-gender-land as when a ballerina’s partner is prettier than she is.
Another nearly invisible example of Balanchine’s craft: When Adrian Danchig-Waring and Mira Nadon (who rounded out the the trio of women elevated to top rank) moved through the corps on stage left, at the opposite side, where there are four dancers instead of six, he had two of the corps dancers echo the principals opposite. He goes with the brain’s tendency to make things whole to see symmetry in asymmetry
Nadon also made her debut in this part the week before, and doesn’t need to do much to be interesting. The steps in the Ricercata are simple and it’s up to the soloist to make them matter. When Nadon does move, it’s so full. She has the presence to make the almost biblical ending meaningful, and she could be the company’s next goddess figure. Whether it’s 1944, 1980 or 2023, Robbins’ dancers connect with you by showing you themselves and their time. Balanchine’s make their magic by stepping outside of time.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Fancy Free,” “Rondo,” “Solo,” “Episodes” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
February 12, 2023
Cover: Indiana Woodward and Olivia MacKinnon in “Rondo.” Photo © Erin Baiano.
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