N.Y. City Ballet Honors Its Father

N.Y. City Ballet Honors Its Father
By Sarah Kaufman

What a bonus it is that, in this centennial year of George Balanchine's birth, we have witnessed not only fine performances drawn from the choreographer's unrivaled body of works but also, finally, his other great artistic achievement: the New York City Ballet.

The company, which last raised the curtain at the Kennedy Center Opera House during the Reagan administration, opened a five-day run there on Wednesday with a well-conceived program of early Balanchine works.

Although it was far from a perfect evening, marred by a frequent muddiness among the corps and some key mistakes by a few principals, it was nonetheless cause for figurative high-fives and champagne-uncorking. City Ballet marked its arrival with a familiar roster of works ("Serenade," "Apollo" and "Symphony in C") that it danced with a proprietary air and stylistic nuance -- qualities that set it well apart from other companies that performed the same works here in recent years.

Add to that the richness of detail and emotional pull that "Serenade," especially, possessed, and one has ample reason to return (three different programs alternate through Sunday) to see what we have been so long denied, even if those blessed moments of greatness remain as sporadic as they were on Wednesday.

The evening offered a masterly collection of landmarks: "Serenade" (1934) was the first ballet Balanchine created in this country; "Apollo," which he made in 1928 for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, is his oldest existing work, and "Symphony in C" figured on the first program of the New York City Ballet, in 1948. Both "Serenade" and "Symphony in C" reflect Balanchine's efforts to educate his new public about the basics of ballet, of which America knew little at the time. With their strikingly reformulated classicism, all three pieces attest to the imaginative capacity and formal fluency that was to exert such a profound and lasting influence on dance.

Together, the works delivered a compelling treatise on how the man so brilliantly stretched and updated his Russian heritage. Yet each presented a very different look and feel. In "Serenade," the ballerinas are the calm, cool counterpoint to the heart-stirring rush of Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings." There is a delicious, plunging surge to the movement, but no overt sentiment.

As contradictory as it may sound, this unemphatic tone, in fact, is what made the slow, careful trio of Darci Kistler, Carla Korbes and James Fayette so exquisitely stirring. As Fayette supported one or the other of the ballerinas, and as the women lay at Fayette's feet or draped themselves around him, they all seemed united in ineffable tenderness, as if they were part of some heavenly family, or represented splinters of the same being. I have never seen this movement, with its ever-shifting dependencies, danced with such absorbing ease and comfort, combining to create an arresting portrait of harmony.

Kistler, one of the company's most senior ballerinas, gave this ballet its soul, even with her ruined feet and diminished amplitude. She had a keen sense of how to give her role emotional shape without distortion. At the end, as she is raised up ramrod-straight and daringly high by a cadre of men, she paid special attention to her hands, flaring them just slightly, as subtle as a breath, before her arms circled up and over her head to reach, one imagines, for the stars.

Philip Neal was Kistler's fine, attentive partner in their earlier duet.

Korbes, a corps member, merits further attention. The same cannot be said for the third leading female, Yvonne Borree, a deplorably mannered dancer who unfailingly crooked her head to make eyes at the audience at the height of her leaps, even though this mugging was entirely out of keeping with the ballet's self-contained atmosphere. The corps was often ragged -- an unfortunate distraction -- though it was notable for a expansiveness in the rib cage and a pronounced swoop in the spine that produced a proud, attenuated profile. This is a Balanchine hallmark, and only this company bears it as a consistent stylistic stamp. We have seen many a "Serenade" drift across the stage here, but none with this particularly elegant sense of lift.

"Apollo," accompanied by the Stravinsky score, was significant for Peter Boal's quietly gathering majesty in the title role and Alexandra Ansanelli's unforced, serenely aloof Terpsichore. Theirs was a particularly satisfying partnership -- he, with his grand, godly presence tempered by an eager, distinctly human expressiveness, and she with her emotional distance and subtle wit. Yet their performance seemed a bit reined-in, rather than spontaneous. Perhaps nerves are to blame for a disappointingly botched image, when Ansanelli balanced across Boal's shoulders as he knelt beneath her. She nearly slipped to the floor -- Boal's quick save kept that disaster from happening -- so the singularly lovely picture of the muse floating over the body of the artist never happened.

There was much to savor in this "Apollo," however. (City Ballet dances Balanchine's later, edited version, not the earlier account with Apollo's birth and ascension to heaven that we have seen the Suzanne Farrell Ballet perform.) Ashley Bouder as Polyhymnia and Rachel Rutherford as Calliope lent their roles fine character shadings and lyricism.

Especially lovely was the final sunburst image, as Boal is framed by the never-ending, outstretched legs of his muses. Girly gams met classical metaphor in this marvelously showy and touchingly poetic effect.

The ordinarily effervescent "Symphony in C" was the least successful of the ballets; the corps was uneven and the principals lackluster, with the exception of Maria Kowroski in the second movement's dreamlike adagio, partnered by Charles Askegard. Joaquin De Luz, who joined City Ballet from American Ballet Theatre, brought bounce -- somewhat curtailed from his ABT days -- and an irrepressible joy that begged for applause in the third movement, though his lonesome bravura act clashed with the overall tone of the ballet. His partner, Megan Fairchild, paid him scant mind.

Perhaps she was thinking what I was: that what this ballet needed most was not a hard sell but a more deeply musical and authoritative approach, aligned with the regal, crystalline Bizet score for which it is named.

Source: Washington Post