Spring 2016 Ball et Review From the Spring 2016 issue of Ballet 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 Paris – 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 George Balanchine ’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. New York City Ballet 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 ballets were the bread and but - classic than Harlequinade ’s. In fact you could ter of Diaghilev ’s Ballets Russes , that projec - call Sonnambula a haunted, even Hoffmanesque tion of Russia ’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 Apollo and Prodigal Son . 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, Bronislava Nijinska, 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 ballet company (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.