Dance: Balanchine "Short Stories" at NY City Ballet

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I have become enamored of the works of the great 20th century choreographer George Balanchine, who began his career in the famed Ballets Russes in the early part of the century, and ended it in New York city founding what is now NY City Ballet in the 1940’s. Balanchine's work is a perfect bridge between the classical and modern styles (rather like Mahler in music), using each to great expressive purpose. He truly honors the music he chooses with close attention to its inner rhythms and meaning, and usually picks great music to set his ballets to, not hippity-hop ballet composers like Adolph Adam (Giselle), Minkus (La Bayadère), and Delibes (Coppélia).

Friday’s program at NYCB featured three short ballets, but not with the normal Balanchine abstraction. Each told a story. La Somnambula, set to “themes” from Bellini’s opera, distilled the convoluted opera into a simple romance, in which the man in a couple is tempted by the exotic sleepwalker (a coloratura soprano in the opera). Balanchine’s ballet conveyed the romantic expression well, with the sleepwalker (the beautiful and waiflike Tiler Peck) eerily floating about the stage, dancing indirectly with the man but not seeing or feeling his presence. I rather missed the bel canto and coloratura singing, but Balanchine’s setting of these passages to solo and ensemble dancers was appealing.

Balanchine’s The Firebird used the Stravinsky suite, rather than the whole three act ballet. I liked the condensed feel of it, focusing (rather like La Somnambula) on how an exotic feminine creature tempts and messes up romance-as-usual. This was a comprehensive artistic fest, with sets and costumes designed for the Balanchine version in 1949 by Marc Chagall. It was cool to see the brilliant colors of Chagall on arriving at Lincoln Center (they are prominently in front of the Metropolitan Opera House), then again onstage at the ballet. The mixture of Stravinsky, Chagall, and Balanchine created an appropriately fantastic effect, well linked to Russian folklore by colorful, primitive folk costumes that reminded me of those used in the redo of the “original” Rite of Spring done by the Joffrey Ballet a few years ago. See the tall character with the primitive mask to the right of the Firebird below, for example:

The highlight of the evening for me was The Prodigal Son (1929), set to music of Prokofiev, with sets by the French expressionist painter Georges Roualt. This was a redo of the New Testament parable of the dissolute son squandering his fortune and returning to a father who forgives him. In this version, the son journeys to a foreign land, falls into the clutches of a temptress-siren with a host of brutal male attendants, is robbed, beaten, and crawls back to dad. This wonderful ballet is full of contrasts. The son (a youthful, leaping, athletic, and short Daniel Ulbricht) contrasted superbly with the tall, angular siren (Teresa Reichlin), made even taller by an elevated headdress, and laserlike in her predatory intensity. 

The naturalistic leaping and cavorting of the prodigal son’s guy-entourage contrasts with the surreal, bestial choreography of the siren’s consort. I nostalgically remembered the entrance of these nine brutal consort-men from seeing it years ago on an old PBS telecast—they enter memorably, marching forward linked in a single file military line, but all in a squatting position with knees pointing outwards as they walk, and all set to angular Prokofiev march music (see it here). This is an unforgettable fusion of music, art, and dance. Ballets like this make one long for the opportunity to have been in Europe in the 1920’s, when collaborative art, dance, and music by the likes of Picasso, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Balanchine were commonplace.

It’s great to see such a young and hip audience at NY City Ballet, unlike the superannuated crowds normal for Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, and American Ballet Theater. They keep their prices down (I sat in a nice seat for $55) and advertise/market with a youthful vibe. The other companies should learn from them. They should, however, rein in the shrieking usher in my section who felt the need to supplant the announcement about cellphone muting with her own gravelly-voiced admonitions, sounding like an amplified Selma from The Simpsons.