THE PATIENT IS BREATHING Again
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162 DANCING chine’s style, and also his last wife, and the honoree of the festival’s opening night, and, not incidentally, the holder of the American rights to most of his repertory, on which N.Y.C.B. depends. The video was thrilling. Even if you knew it (it’s famous), it gave you chills THE PATIENT IS BREATHING again. Le Clercq stood at arm’s length from her partner (Jacques d’Amboise), Signs of life at New York City Ballet. and pirouetted, now inward, now out- BY JOAN ACOCELLA ward, against him. Her movement had a whiplike momentum: this was some- thing private, something understood be- “ HE audience is changed,” the among the new patrons, trying to see tween them. Yet, again and again, as she New York City Ballet dancer what they saw. Of course, I also saw turned to face us, she opened her arms to T Darci Kistler said to the Times what I saw—turns bobbled, details lost. us, gathering us into the event. There it a few years ago. “I don’t know what Still, you can’t lose the whole ballet. In was, the Balanchine style: objective—no happened.” I know what happened. “Agon,” the lead woman whipping her dramatics—and yet piercing. The film George Balanchine, who founded the leg around her partner’s neck, simulta- having been shown, the curtain was company, with Lincoln Kirstein, and cre- neously embracing and garroting him; raised, and Yvonne Borree, one of the ated its style and its repertory, died in in “Symphony in Three Movements,” company’s young principal dancers, 1983. Peter Martins, the troupe’s fore- the diagonal lineup of sixteen women launched into “Concerto Barocco.” And most male star, took over, and the com- unfurling one by one, like a great wave, her performance could not have been pany went into a terrible decline. Old tipping, curling, and then down it comes: more different from Le Clercq’s. No patrons walked out. “It’s over,” they said. these are wonders. If they are badly whip, no dynamics, no sense of life’s old The company then went into action, done, they are nevertheless done, and story—just a young person doing the or the marketing department did, to with Balanchine half a loaf looks like steps she had been told to do, and trying attract a new, younger audience, one a meal. not to make a mistake. with no fixed ideas of what City Ballet But the new audience should know, if This kind of dancing—dancing with- should look like. only for truth’s sake, that there was once out emphases, without any phrasing to The campaign succeeded. Glancing another half. This season is City Ballet’s speak of, without courage—is one of the around the theatre today, I see an au- fiftieth anniversary, and the company is current company’s two radical breaks dience considerably younger (better celebrating it with a six-month festival with the Balanchine tradition. The other dressed, too), and very appreciative. If a that will include performances of a hun- is the loss of technique. There are a dancer can’t get his leg up ninety degrees, dred ballets. The message of the festival number of reviewers who will tell you he is still applauded, for he got it up a is continuity, the idea that the Martins that the company’s technical strength re- little bit, didn’t he? If the orchestra man- administration is simply carrying for- mains undiminished. I wish that they gles the music, which it regularly does— ward the tradition of Balanchine and had been at the “Nutcracker” I saw in one night a few weeks ago, in the Bal- Kirstein. “This is their place, this is their early December. The leader of the Mar- anchine/Bach “Concerto Barocco,” the house,” Martins said in his opening- zipan shepherdesses couldn’t do the pi- second violin sounded like something night speech. No mention of the fact rouette to the knee. Coffee, the Arabian- screaming in hell—the musicians never- that since Balanchine’s death a large dance soloist, couldn’t do the pirouette theless get a hand. The new fans don’t number of his ballets have been shoved into arabesque. The Sugar Plum Fairy clap just at the end. They clap at the be- into storage—formerly the staple, his and her cavalier seemed never to have ginning. They clap when the curtain works now constitute only about half of met before, let alone rehearsed together. goes up: for the set, for the mere sight of any repertory season—while their place But it’s not just a matter of this or that ballet dancers pointing their feet. They has been taken by a series of almost uni- step. Season by season, the dancers are think that looks terrific. formly forgettable ballets by Martins and losing their turnout, the hundred-and- One watches all this with mixed feel- others. (Martins’ “Walton Cello Con- eighty-degree rotation of the legs which ings. On the one hand, the new audi- certo,” the new offering this season, was opens the body like a book, making it ence is applauding some very bad things. just one more.) fully readable. As a result, steps that used Yet it is also applauding good things. No discussion, either, of any changes to look as though they’d been etched with Ballet dancers pointing their feet do look in Balanchine’s unique style of dancing, a calligraphic pen now seem smeared in terrific. And the ballets of Balanchine, that mesh of steel and soul which he with a heated crayon. however poorly danced, are worth ap- spent his whole life developing. On the I once cornered a dancer who had plauding, particularly if you have never contrary, the opening night was pro- worked under Balanchine and then un- seen them before. Last month, City Bal- grammed to demonstrate that the Balan- der Martins, and I asked her what was let spent the better part of a week per- chine style was still in force. First, we the matter. Why couldn’t the dancers do forming Balanchine’s so-called leotard were shown a 1956 video clip of “Con- the steps? “Company class,” she said— ballets: “Agon,” “Episodes,” “Symphony certo Barocco,” as danced by Tanaquil the hour-and-a-half class that the danc- in Three Movements,” and so on. I sat Le Clercq—a personification of Balan- ers take at the theatre every morning. Maria Kowroski, New York City Ballet soloist, Broadway and Sixty-fifth Street, January 11, 1999. During the late Balanchine years, the old did not have this edge. On the contrary, slack legs and blubbery feet you have master himself taught the class, and it was he needed supporters, needed to be never seen. If Martins was going to glo- notoriously hard. “Your muscles would liked. Not surprisingly, class got easier. rify his men, he should have kept their burn. You’d feel awkward. It hurt,” the “We used to start with thirty-two ten- technique up. dancer said. “And you learned. But for dus. Now we do sixteen. Feels much someone to ask that, he has to have the better!” the dancer said. We are seeing UT things could change. In the past dancers’ ultimate respect.” the results. B two or three years, the company Actually, Balanchine had more than Nor should anyone think that the has started looking better. I can’t say the dancers’ respect. He was the focus of problems come only in the Balanchine why; I can only say what—the younger their keenest ambitions. He was a great ballets, where the steps are so hard, the dancers, mostly. There is a small crop of artist, they knew. More to the point, he critics so watchful. In 1987, Peter Mar- newcomers, some still in the corps de bal- was a creator of great artists. If they tins made a ballet for nine men, “Les let (Rachel Rutherford, Amanda Edge), showed him speed and soul and turnout, Gentilhommes,” that seemed designed others recently promoted to soloist rank he might cast them as leading dancers in to show what Martins—who was trained ( Jennie Somogyi, Christopher Wheel- his ballets. They would become beauti- at the Royal Danish Ballet, where men don, Sébastien Marcovici, Alexandra ful, profound, famous. “Dancers would are as important as women—could do Ansanelli), who are suddenly dancing do anything for Balanchine,” my infor- for male dancers. “Hey,” we all said, with a spiritedness rarely seen around mant said. (Other Balanchine dancers, “maybe he can’t do much for women, but N.Y.C.B. even three years ago. And such as Maria Tallchief and Suzanne look how gorgeous he makes the men.” Martins, who once appeared reluctant Farrell, have said the same thing in their Last month, the company revived “Les to give important assignments to any memoirs.) But when Martins came in he Gentilhommes,” and such a spectacle of dancer, no matter how promising, who 164 “The social conservative in me tells me to pay for dinner, but the fiscal conservative thinks we should split it.” • • had not put in his or her “time,” is ener- of the early Whelan. This season, in getically promoting these youngsters. “Symphony in Three Movements,” Weese Ansanelli, who just turned eighteen, has clearly saw that the slow sections were been thrown into role after major role. different from the fast ones, that the pas Her feet are knobby, and she tends to fall de deux—just her and a man out there— down, but she’s a ball of fire.