Spring 2016 Ball et Review

From the Spring 2016 issue of Review

Elizabeth Kendall on The Origins of Balanchine’s La Sonnambula

On the cover: Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild in Balanchine’s Who Cares? (Photograph by Paul Kolnik, NYCB)

© 2016 Dance Research Foundation, Inc. 4 New York – David Vaughan 6 New York – Karen Greenspan 8 New York – Nancy Reynolds 9 Stuttgart – Gary Smith 11 Washington, D . C. – George Jackson 12 New York – Joseph Houseal 14 – Vincent Le Baron 16 New York – Karen Greenspan 19 Hong Kong – Kevin Ng 21 New York – Karen Greenspan 22 Vienna – Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller 25 New York – Eva Shan Chou 26 New York – Harris Green 56 29 Stuttgart – Gary Smith 31 Jaco b’s Pillow – Jay Rogoff 33 New York – Karen Greenspan Ballet Review 44.1 34 Jaco b’s Pillow – Jay Rogoff Spring 2016 36 Chicago – Joseph Houseal Editor and Designer: 37 Saratoga Springs – Jay Rogoff Marvin Hoshino 39 Brooklyn – Karen Greenspan 41 New York – Harris Green Managing Editor: 43 Chicago – Joseph Houseal Roberta Hellman 44 Miami – Michael Langlois Senior Editor: 46 New York – Karen Greenspan Don Daniels 84 47 Chicago – Joseph Houseal Associate Editors: 48 New York – Harris Green Joel Lobenthal Henry Danton Larry Kaplan 50 Alla Sizova (1929-2 01 4) Alice Helpern Webmaster: Robert Johnson David S. Weiss 56 Misty Copeland Copy Editor: Joel Lobenthal Naomi Mindlin 67 A Conversation with Pat McBride Lousada Photographers: 96 Michael Langlois Tom Brazil 72 A Conversation with Roberto Bolle Costas Associates: Merilyn Jackson Peter Anastos 84 Julie Kent Robert Gres kovic Leigh Witchel George Jackson 88 A Conversation with Myles Thatcher Elizabeth Kendall Paul Parish Elizabeth Kendall Nancy Reynolds 96 Night Shadow James Sutton David Vaughan Peter Porter Edward Willinger 88 103 Jurassic Beauty Sarah C. Woodcock Daniel Jacobson 106 A Conversation with Tiler Peck 116 London Reporter – Clement Crisp 124 Creative Domain – Susanna Sloat Cover photograph by Paul Kolnik, NYCB: 126 Music on Disc – George Dorris Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild in Who Cares? 132 Check It Out Night Shadow mistress ); their elegant guests ; a Poet who ar - rives late ; the “entertainment ”: dancers of a bucolic quartet, a blackamoor pas de deux, a literal Harlequin solo . But the figure on whom the story turns Elizabeth Kendall comes in latest of all, and she ’s right out of ro - mantic opera: the Baron ’s mysterious wife . She Choreographer ’s oeuvre is descends, after much action has left the poet usually thought of as “plotless ” – or “abstract, ” alone onstage, from the castle ’s upper room – “formalist, ” “ neo-classical ” – with a vague im - sleepwalking, in a nightgown, holding a can - age attached of black-leotarded dancers strik - dle. She seems to embody the eternal, moon - ing angular poses on a bare stage. But when I lit mystery of woman , and true to type, she in - think back to my own first exposure to the directly causes the Poet ’s death. in 1973, what pulled me This layered lineage – commedia, Roman - in were the opposite qualities : some ancient ticism – is present in the music , too, not pre - essence of theater on Balanchine ’s stage that cisely composed by the Italian neo-classicist I knew nothing about. Vittorio Rieti, but rather gathered from the I was a young dance critic , imbued with my works of Vincenzo Bellini. That is, Rieti based generation ’s hunger for what we thought of his score on melodies from Bellini ’s 1830s op - as authentic – that is, vaguely rural and vague - eras, among them La Sonnambula. ly anti-performative . Imagine such a person So – music by Rieti, choreography by Bal - encountering elemental artifice in the form of anchine . But one question about the ballet re - Harlequinade , Balanchine ’s 1965 homage to a mained murky until a few months ago, when work he had known in his student days, Mar - I (rashly) agreed to undertake this research . ius Petipa ’s 1900 evening-length Les Millions Who wrote the libretto – that is, the story? d’Arlequin (peopled with those elemental types, NYCB ’s performance programs credit the Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot , and Pierrette ). music, choreography scenery, costumes , and Right after Harlequinade I saw another com - light ing of Sonnambula , but not the story. It ’s media -flavored Balanchine work, the 1946 not mentioned. The Balanchine biographers one-act La Sonnambula that hit me even hard - must know, I thought. But the four biogra - er . I saw it danced by possibly the greatest- phers (Taper, Buckle, Gottlieb, Teachout) ei - ever Sleepwalker, Allegra Kent. The curtain ther fail to mention the ballet or simply re- rose on a castle courtyard in a blue evening lit tell its story – with enthusiasm ,. by torches; masked guests were already fever - To find the story ’s origins we must go back ishly dancing; the grand hall doors opened at to the ballet ’s moment of origin – the mid- stage right to what might be a banquet hall . . . 1940s. Viewed in its own time, Sonnambula and I was caught . is not so much an anomaly as we think now . The commedia of Sonnambula is a little less One-act story were the bread and but - classic than Harlequinade ’s. In fact you could ter of Diaghilev ’s , that projec - call Sonnambula a haunted, even Hoffmanesque tion of ’s Silver Age that hit Europe in tale whose commedia elements evoke not so 1909 with the shock of the new, and ended with much ancient Italian street theater as the Diaghilev ’s 1929 death. Ballets like Schehera - doom-eager theatricality of the Petersburg zade , Carnaval , Petrushka , and later, Balan - Silver Age . The story concerns a Baron, the chine ’s own and . And later host of this ball ; the Coquette, his hostess (and on, with various reincarnations of the Ballets Originally presented at the 2014 annual conference Russes , that mode of programming persisted: of The Association for Slavic, East European, and with La Boutique Fantasque , Gaîté Parisienne , Le Eurasian Studies. Beau Danube , Cotillon , Concurrence . 96 ©2016 Elizabeth Kendall Allegra Kent in La Sonnambula . (Photo: Costas) A word of clarification about the many Bal - After employing an assortment of choreogra - lets Russes . After Diaghilev ’s 1929 death, his phers (Massine, , David debt-ridden company retreated back to the Lichine, Agnes De Mille), Denham ’s company Monte Carlo Opera under the direction of the settled, in 1944, on Balanchine, as more or less fascinating René Blum (brother of Léon Blum, house choreographer. mid-1930s prime minister of France, later Sonnambula , 1946, whose title was changed killed in a Nazi camp ), and Colonel Vassily de to Night Shadow before its premiere (and later Basil, then in a minor managerial role . It rose changed back) , was the last Diaghilev-style again, and again, under several would-be ballet Balanchine made for the Ballets Russes . Dia ghilevs (such as Colonel Vassily de Basil, You could even say that it marked the end Sergei Denham), who employed, in revolving of his professional associations with the Eu - fashion, several of Diaghilev ’s former chore - ropean-flavored émigré world (until it crowd - ographers. ed back into some of his final ballets) . After Around 1938, Russian émigré American it, Balanchine , too , left the Ballet Russe, to banker Denham fronted the last of the Ballets rejoin his original American sponsor, Lincoln Russes ,which fled Europe for America in 1939. Kirstein, so that both could try , once again spring 2016 97 after several earlier attempts, to make a sta - “Nous sommes nobles, mais nous sommes pauvres ” ble American (a company that (We are noble, but we are poor). By October would become, in 194 8, the New York City Bal - 1942 Rieti had almost finished the orches- let). tration and sent Denham an ultimatum: he But we still don ’t know where Sonnambula ’s couldn ’t devote the rest of his life to Bellini. story came from! By early summer, 1943, he must have been paid, As it happens, the New York Public Library since on June 11, Rieti thanks Denham for a possesses a treasure trove: Sergei Denham’s check and encloses “le sujet du ballet, avec le ca - professional papers, which offer an overview davre qui vous fait si peur ” (the subject of the of émigré life in New York – and not just Rus - ballet, with the cadaver you ’re so afraid of). sian émigré life . Various composers, artists, What follows, over a page and a half, is the dancers, costume creators had fled here from ballet ’s “Synopsis, ” in French, which offers all over Europe ,all seemingly in desperate need more or less the outline of the “story ” that we of work. One of them was Max Ernst, the Sur - see onstage today – with a few minor differ - realist German painter, whose American wife, ences; we ’ll note them later. The action hap - painter Dorothea Tanning, created Night Shad - pens around 1835, writes Rieti at the top – the ow ’s original Salvador Daliesque scenery and year of Bellini ’s premature death. costumes. Another émigré was Vittorio Rieti, So . . . Rieti wrote the “story ” of Sonnam- the Egypt-born (in 1898), Jewish Italian , neo - bula , and finished it three years before the classical composer, who ’d arrived here in 1940, ballet ’s premiere (which came in February of had gotten some teaching jobs , and was 1946). But, we might ask, where had Rieti found scrounging for commissions from types like or dreamed up this seemingly elemental sto - Denham. ry? First of all, he went back to Bellini ’s times, The earliest mention of this ballet comes the heyday of grand opera and of Romanti - in a June 9, 1942 , letter from Denham to Rieti, cism, when the opera coloratura had to go setting forth the conditions under which the mad or be hypnotized or at least sleepwalk. Ballet Russe would accept his new piece – “ the Some of Rieti ’s melodies are taken from the musical arrangement which you made of the actual La Sonnambula opera ,although the main various compositions of Bellini, to be used by tragic theme is from Bellini ’s I Puritani. us in connection with a ballet production ten - And Rieti went to Bellini ’s life , too, with its tatively called Sonnambula .” tempestuous erotic intrigues. Bellini was once At this moment, four years before the bal - thought to have been poisoned by a jealous let ’s premiere, Balanchine wasn ’t the chore - husband, and Rieti took this and some other ographer, although both Rieti and Denham wild elements from Bellini ’s life for his pas - hoped he would be. Balanchine was then in tiche story. Hollywood “making something for Zorina (his But there ’s this other aspect of Sonnam- then wife), ” as Rieti wrote to Denham , but bula ’s story that we must consider , too: Rieti ’s heading soon to Mexico and Argentina for earlier experience as a ballet collaborator. professional gigs . On August 18, 1942, Rieti He got his start from none other than Dia- informs Denham that he ’d “seen Balanchine ghilev himself , who was always searching ‘passing through ’” New York for only a day, for new composers. In 1925 Diaghilev heard but despairs of getting him for Sonnambula . from Poulenc about Rieti ’s Concerto for Five He suggests Bronislava Nijinska as choreog - Wind Instruments and Orchestra, and sum - rapher. (“ Je crois que c ’est ce qu ’il y a de mieux .” moned the twenty-seven-year-old to Paris [She seems to be the best we can do. ]) from Rome. Rieti played all his music, includ - Ensuing letters feature Rieti ’s repeated ing Barabau , a ballet, with music and story by pleas to be paid his $1000 fee, and Denham ’s him – based on a peasant -outwits -soldiers excuses for not paying, his favorite being , Italian nursery rhyme . 98 ballet review Diaghilev chose Bara bau , asked for the usu - And Balanchine did , too! He ’d worked with al extensive musical changes , and gave the Meyerhold; he loved Mayakosky; he ’d grown piece to his new , young , house choreographer, up in the thick of twenties theater experi - Balanchine (who, at age twenty-one, had left ments . One only has to glance at his later work Russia only a year ago). This was Balanchine ’s to see these stock commedia characters re- first original Diaghilev ballet, if we don ’t count appearing again and again, camouflaged in his 1925 remake of . American garb or even in just stripped-down Rieti and Balanchine worked together for tights and leotards. Diaghilev again, four years later, on Le Bal , the So with Sonnambula , Rieti knew the drill. He last ballet premiered before Diaghilev ’s death knew to return to romantisme viewed through in the summer of 1929 . Boris Kochno (Diaghi - the Russian despairing commedia lens (not lev ’s young secretary -turned -key collabora - to speak of Rieti ’s own mischievous Italian tor) wrote the story – not Rieti – basing it on theatrical tastes) . All those things were in the a tale by a Russian “romantic, ” Count Vladimir Sonnambula story before Balanchine got offi- Sologub, about an officer at a ball pursuing a cial ly involved , but they may have come as young woman who ’s not who she seems to be. much from Rieti ’s thoughts about the Balan - Illusions, deceit, a ballroom . And Balanchine ’s chine-Kochno sensibility as from Rieti ’s view contribution? “I had the idea that we should of Bellini. use masks ,” he said later. “Two masks for the In late 1944 Balanchine did manage to free young woman, so that first, when she took off himself to choreograph Sonnambula , and was her mask, there was this ugly old hag, and at handed a finished musical score and a finished the other end, after that, she removed that story. But was it finished? What is the story of mask and she was seen in her own natural a ballet? As you ’ve probably guessed, I want beauty. ” to make a larger point in this article concern - Three years after that, in 1932, Rieti, Koch - ing ballet history and the practice of writing no , and Balanchine collaborated again on it. A ballet ’s “story ” cannot be only what ’s on Cotillon , yet another “heartbreak ball ballet ” paper, nor can it be the “scenario ” of its mu - (in Rieti ’s words ), for de Basil ’s Ballet Russe . sic . So what is it? Does it lie in words, or mu - Rie ti was not the composer this time but the sic, or steps, or individual performances – or orchestrator of music by Chabrier. The syn - all of the above? opsis, by Kochno, was about a ball attended by Let ’s start with a simple question: what did young girls , the famous 1930s “baby balleri - Balanchine add to the story? nas ” ( ballet-trained children of Russian émi - First, he added the masks, as he had done grés ), and also by Fate, wearing black gloves. in Le Bal . In Rieti ’s Synopsis it ’s just a fete, not Another haunted ballroom, where life and a masked ball. Balanchine also added comme - death take turns masquerading as each other. dia to the four divertissements , which Rieti (And there was one more Rieti-Balanchine named merely “, Variation, Pas de collaboration, Waltz Academy , 1944, for Amer - deux, Coda. ” In the ballet they ’re Pastorale, ican Ballet Theatre .) Blackamoor Pas de Deux (nowadays it ’s the So Rieti had experience with the Kochno - same pas de deux , but not in blackface) , and Balanchine aesthetic (the two young Russians a solo for a literal Harlequin . (There was a were the same age and saw eye to eye on many fourth divertissement in Rieti ’s synopsis, a things ). This Kochno-Balanchine friendship hoop dance, later dropped when four diver - needs more study . What is clear is that Kochno, tissement seemed too many to keep the nar - a self-appointed literary type, brought from ra tive flowing . It can be seen, however, on Russia a grasp of that literary-theatrical nar - You Tube in the Ballet Theatre Sonnambula .) rative sensibility we could call the “Silver Age But Balanchine added much more than de - commedia ” – of Blok and Bely and Meyerhold . tails: he added heft, weight, the undertow of spring 2016 99 passion and the immediacy of longing , to yet, Balanchine didn ’t seem to have a profes - match what had been , in Bellini ’s time, the sional future. He was shuttling back and forth composer ’s groundbreaking long melodies . between Hollywood, New York, Mexico, and Sonnambula ’s choreography contains possibly Argentina . Even worse, he was between wives the most poignant enactment of unrequited – that is, between muses (the wives longing in the whole balletic repertory . More were muses stamped into legality). It became about that in a moment. Here I want to mention one of the things that makes Balanchine such a ripe subject for critics and scholars: his apparently effortless merging of his personal story – his per - sonal narrative – with the life described on his stage. If you study Balanchine ’s childhood, you could say he swallowed Russian prerevolutionary theater whole, in that childhood, after he was shut up at age nine in the Imperial Ballet School. It ’s as if he buried all his familial experiences and replaced these, at great depth, with the artificial illusions of the theater – as if these had shaped his inner life. In Sonnambula , as it went from Rieti ’s paper to Bal - anchine ’s stage, the two main characters became three . For the third, Bal - anchine enlarged the oth - er woman ’s role in the ballet – the Coquette, the mistress of the party host, Ruthanna Boris as one of the original Blackamoor dancers, 1946. the Baron. In Rieti ’s Synopsis she ’s just “une clear in the late summer of 1945, just when he dame ”who drops her handkerchief so the poet turned to choreographing Sonnambula ,that his will notice her. Her rise to narrative impor - marriage with his most unrequited of loves, tance creates a triangle – two ballerinas and dancer-actress Vera Zorina, was ending. (He one poet – and an implied struggle. befriended two young choreographers at that To see the parallels between life and art, time, John Taras and Todd Bolender; to each let ’s look at Balanchine ’s own situation at the he broke down and wept about his romantic time of the ballet ’s creation, 1945- 1946. The war situation.) And yet, even as Balanchine was had ended ; the world was settling down. And undone over one woman leaving him , the new 100 ballet review one had entered . The very young Maria Tall - eti had “laid over ” the Bellini track . The effect chief (still twenty in 1945), caught his eye in is to signal that this ballroom is out of synch the Ballet Russe ’s late summer tour . with time – it ’s in the past, but contains pres - It was just then that Balanchine took up ent-day frissons of danger and dystopia. Rieti ’s libretto for Sonnambula , with central This theme of turning in/turning out in characters of the Poet and the Sleepwalker zigzags finds its ultimate expression in one of – and now the Coquette. One of these two the two main pas de deux at the ballet ’s cen - ballerina roles he ’d promised earlier to the ter: that between the Poet and the Coquette. Ballet Russe star, Alexandra Danilova, who It ’s often overshadowed by the more famous had been his (common-law) wife before Zori - one following it, but this one , too , is a master - na, from the late Diaghilev years to the early piece – of folding in, to open out, to fold back 1930s . That ’s already a life-art collision. Dan - in again. It comes after the moment when, ilova chose the Sleepwalker, she reports in one by one, the women have removed their her memoir, Choura , since she usually played masks to show their faces to their partners Co quette roles – the seducer, the Other Wom- and both have run offstage. The last to reveal an. The Seducer role went to . . . the real Oth - her face is the Coquette – to the Poet. They er Woman – , Balanchine ’s new don ’t run off. The Poet enfolds the Coquette ’s love and soon-to-be wife. They were married arms from behind – like the Prince and Swan in August of 19 46, a half-year after Sonnambu - Queen trope from . What follows la ’s premiere. are swoops up and down the stage diagonal, So who ’s to say that Sonnambula didn ’t merge with the two tightly entwined, the poet hold - with Balanchine ’s interior landscape ,and that ing her from firmly at her waist. It ’s a pas de his own romantic anguish didn ’t get grafted deux of extreme closeness and extreme devi - onto its story ? But this personal stuff, if it ’s ousness. It ’s physical . relevant, is not enough to explain the elegant The other, contrasting pas de deux , the Poet poignancy of Sonnambula , as told in dance and the Sleepwalker, happens after the crowd matched with music. When chronicling dance, has surprised the Poet-Coquette ’s tête-à-tête personal emotions in the creators aren ’t in dance . At the end of the sweeping Polonaise enough to note. One needs to follow their procession of partners toward the dining translation, via craft, into a wordless medi - hall offstage, with Poet and Coquette bringing um. up the rear, the just-romanced Coquette is The whole ballet is “narrated ” through whisked away by the Baron. The Poet, left alone dance steps “interrupted ” by gestures be - in the courtyard, quiets down as music and longing to real-life intrigues. There are eight mood change; he looks around and sees a light couples in ball gowns and tails, and Venetian descending through castle windows, and sud - masks, dancing. But their steps are somehow denly . . . the Sonnambula appears with her feverish – speeded up, and decorated with candle, heading across the stage on pointe in moments of faux bravado, especially for the a mysterious hurry. The Poet tries to engage. men (Russian-peasant-like stamping in cir - What ensues is all about the opposite of cles around partners). And the concept of the entwined pas de deux . It ’s about the space zigzag powers it all . If there ’s one way to de - between them – sometimes the width of the scribe the “family ” of steps in this ballet – it ’s stage – that can ’t be crossed. First, he tests this zigzagging : the steps turn in on them - her, tries to embrace her; realizes she ’s asleep. selves; they trace over themselves, causing Then as the melody opens up, he experiments : dancers ’ bodies to rapidly close in and open he pushes her backwards from the chest; she out – bodies alone, in pairs, in groups. This is responds like the wind; he runs to intercept, somehow Balanchine ’s physical analogue for then swirls her around by holding her candle. the edgy rhythms and atonal dissonances Ri - This is not physical , but metaphysical. spring 2016 101 All of the stage space is set in motion. When ous errand. But this time she almost runs into he finally tries to embrace her – she ducks. He the body ;she comes up against it . lies down and puts an arm in her path – then To another melodic climax, the Sleepwalk - the other arm. Each time she steps over. At er stops. She heaves her head and chest around the absolute climax of the aching melody, he in somehow formal mourning – like a grand attempts to encircle her, bringing his joined port de bras, back and around, but without arms around backwards over her head, then the arms. This for me is the ballet ’s most pro - still enclosing her, lowering himself in a found moment. Rieti didn ’t write it. His script slow-motion backbend to the floor. This is only has her bending down to hold the dead the climax of the unrequitedness I mentioned Poet in her arms, at which point the assem - earlier. As he lies there with his once upflung bled guests wake her up ( On la reveille pendant arms encircling her feet – she pauses, then qu ’elle tient dans ses bras son ami mort . [ They wake steps out again. her up while she holds in her arms her dead “Why can ’t I reach her ?” the whole pas de deux friend. ]) seems to ask. And , “ Why do I want her – so much In the Balanchine version she never wakes more than the available earthly one? Even when it ’s up. She steps over the body, but her intuited so hopeless and so dangerous ?” grief has transformed her “errand ” into a fu - Those are the questions asked over and over, neral procession toward the castle door. The in different ways, in a surprising number of commedia performers fall in behind her. Four Balanchine ballets that ranged over his whole of them lift the Poet high in the air (he ’s a fel - creative life. In 1960 when the NYCB had al - low artist – one of them) , then place him, in ready been in existence for twelve years, Bal - pieta position, in her arms . anchine had a new prodigy, the 23-year-old This is another moment when someone ’s Allegra Kent. He decided to restage Night Shad - very personal emotion seems to pierce through ow for her – and he re-renamed it La Sonnam - the stage action. The audience can ’t help but bula . That ’s why we have it today, this Ballet see an almost embarrassing vulnerability, Russe anomaly in the spare repertory of the belonging to the moment ’s creator, the chore - NYCB. Once again in 1960, the longing and ographer . Still holding the Poet in her arms, deviousness and heartbreak of 1946 were re- the Sleepwalker backs into the shadowy cas - enacted – as well as the striking end, with the tle. Then “their ” light seems to again climb up “cadaver ” that had so bothered Denham . the castle windows until it breaks free and Only this time, Balanchine had already giv - heads into the sky (at least in older NYCB pro - en this tragic end his own twist , too. In Rieti ’s ductions – now the castle is enclosed), as the version the Poet falls to his death from a castle assembled guests watch in wonder. window, pushed (offstage) by the Baron. In So whose story is it? Rieti ’s? Balanchine ’s? Balanchine ’s, he ’s stabbed inside the castle (also The dancers ’ who dance it? offstage) by the Baron who has rushed in with a It ’s all of theirs. To exist, La Sonnambula ’s knife. The poet staggers out onstage and dies story must be told in performance, in several there. Then the Sleepwalker re emerges, as be - media . It ’s a collaboration – across time and fore, from the same door, again on a mys-teri - space – across even life and death.

102 ballet review