Ballet Review: ABTs Firebird and a new apocalyptic Rite of Spring

The Firebird

Music by Igor Stravinsky

Choreography by Alex Ratmansky

American Ballet Theater

Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan

May 24, 2018

Afte-Rite

Music by Igor Stravinsky

Choreography by Wayne McGregor

American Ballet Theater

Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan

May 24, 2018

After playing mindless French-Russian ballet scores for two weeks, the ABT orchestra finally got a workout with six performances of Stravinsky, playing two major scores each evening. They earned their money, playing well, but without the laser-like precision a professional symphony would give these scores (brass entrances were splattered at times). Both scores were choreographed by notable contemporary choreographers.

Alex Ratmansky (Firebird) is the resident choreographer at ABT; he was born in Russia and has had an international career as a dancer, then choreographer. His Firebird premiered in 2012. The ballet is yet another documentation of male promiscuity. The young Ivan wanders around in the forest, looking for a girlfriend. He encounters the dazzling Firebirds, but is spurned by their leader. He later stumbles on a group of princesses (maidens in this updated version), falls for their leader, but is thwarted by the evil sorcerer Koschei, who “owns” the girls, Manson-like. The Firebird returns and helps Ivan defeat Koschei by breaking his soul (contained in what looks like an ostrich egg), and the maidens come out of their trance, uniting with their real boyfriends. Ratmansky is pretty faithful to the original, but the princesses here become a group of socially awkward maidens, with amusing choreographic range. They first appear as narcotized, later just awkward (with angular, asyymetric steps), and still later angry and vengeful. The ABT corps performed all this beautifully and with great humor. I liked the sorcerer Kaschei (dynamic Roman Zhurbin), who’s punk attire and teal streak in his fauxhawk was matched in the maidens’ dress color. A true cult idol. The firebirds were strikingly contrasting in their red feathers, making for a colorful show. Both the Ivan of Thomas Forster and the Firebird of Christine Shevchenko were a little tame, and needed more energy in the miming. Ratmansky’s choreography was clear, with well-constructed ensemble dances. There was just as much humor as drama, sometimes at odds with the music. I did like the little pas de deux between Ivan and the Maiden (a terrific Catherine Hurlin). They dance for each other, first in completely disparate styles (his courtly, elegant, hers awkward, spastic). But over a minute or so, their styles gradually merge—choreographic love!

Wayne McGregor is the resident choreographer of the Royal Ballet (London), and works mainly in Europe, where his works are widely performed.  Afte-Rite, debuting this week, was the premiere of his version of Stravinsky’s 1913 shocker The Rite of Spring. Stories of its scandalous premiere in Paris are divided as to whether the audience catcalls and walkouts were because of the rhythmically violent music or the choreography by Nijinsky, featuring decidedly non-classical style. The reconstruction of the original Nijinsky choreography by the Joffrey Ballet a few years ago was one of the highlights of my ballet-viewing experience. What was revelatory was that Stravinsky’s complex rhythms were hyper-emphasized, with dancers always duplicating the myriad of rhythms appearing simultaneously in the orchestra. In this piece Stravinsky overlapped rhythms in the way Mahler and Ives overlapped tunes, creating a new modernism. Watch a couple famous minutes of the original choreography here and note how every accent is portrayed by a moving leg, arm, head, or torso. Literal, precise, and radical. Compare the very end of the Chosen One’s "dance of death" from the original Nijinsky/Joffrey,  the  very-1970’s Maurice Béjart, and the 2013 Kenneth McMillan versions. Like most other efforts, none honors the pulsating rhythms like the original, although Béjart certainly captures the orgiastic overtones!  The Rite has become a “problem” piece for choreographers. Narrative or symbolism? Literal or subliminal?  Leave it to Stravinsky to create just as much a problem for choreographers as he does for audiences, even one century later.

McGregor’s solution was to provide a new narrative to the drama, but choreograph within contemporary styles. The original “plot” is that a primeval tribe anoints a maiden as the Chosen One, then she dances herself to death. McGregor seems to have rethought this from the perspective of the mother of such a sacrificial lamb. In this Rite, part one consists of tribal dancing in front of a creepy glass-walled greenhouse containing plants and two young girls. Why are they there? Are they the remaining fertile humans? Is the world ending in nuclear haze around them? Eventually (part 2) an older woman appears (she is given a micro-dress, to distinguish her from the others in shorts). She is hooded and abused by the others, goes into the glass cage, emerges with the two girls, and sends one offstage. The other returns to the greenhouse. There is a violent dance between this “mother” and one of the male dancers, then he goes over and turns on a valve, gassing the girl in greenhouse in a mini-holocaust vignette. The end.

Quite a cheery night at the ballet! I wonder if a gas chamber has ever appeared in a ballet before? McGregor’s choreography was sinuous, gender-fluid (lots of male-male, female-female pairings) and confrontational, with lots of intertwining arms and legs. Dancers were mostly in flesh colored modern-dance underwear of various styles. His steps lacked some of Stravinsky’s energy and pulse--I prefer the more rhythmic Nijinsky approach. The plot was certainly provocative and would have been even better with some better-directed acting. The original’s violent plot could be seen as a prequel to later twentieth century carnage (also see Strauss’ Elektra or Picasso’s Guernica). 

But here, after the violent dance with the mother, the man just walks over to the greenhouse and flips the switch without much drama—mom just stands there. Why? They had just had a violent dance-conflict! Also, a camera on a tripod stood on stage the whole time, pointed at the cage. It never was involved in the plot or dance. I kept waiting for a Fred Astaire-like ballet with the tripod. I give McGregor credit for his re-invention of the Rite with a mid-twentieth century plot overlay, but this Rite was ultimately forgettable except for the gas chamber.