Perhaps our strange compulsion to pick up and buy all things plaid will subside now that Union Jack has been stored away for the season. What a terrific run it was for this old ballet which is always a pleasure to revisit when it’s on a vibrant, single-intermission program. The dancers were not only strong and properly proud while dancing it at every performance, but they were united in more ways than in just executing the steps. So many obstacles had been overcome by the many dancers on the stage — serious injuries, personal relationship implosions, technical challenges –– that seeing nearly everyone (70+ dancers) on the stage in one ballet dancing brilliantly gave us one more reason to celebrate the fall season.
Several regiments acquired new leaders. Lauren King, Brittany Pollack, Unity Phelan, Lauren Lovette, Amar Ramasar, Ask la Cour, and Daniel Ulbricht all debuted in principal roles and brought a fresh energy to the ballet. To be clear, the energy never flags in Union Jack when Clotilde Otranto is at the conductor’s podium.
Last Saturday night brought the season’s first performances of Balanchine’s Serenade and Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 along with Merce Cunningham’s Summerspace which had not been danced by NYCB since 1999.
Summerspace is an oddity in the NYCB repertory. When Balanchine first put it on stage in 1966, it was along the lines of an experiment to see what Cunningham’s style might look like on ballet dancers in pointe shoes who had been trained by Balanchine. According to critic Jack Anderson, the pointe shoes slowed everyone down. This may be why Balanchine lost interest in it – the experiment failed to produced the effect that he had hoped for, and he apparently had no interest in seeing his dancers perform Summerspace in soft slippers as did Cunningham’s company. Thirty-three years later, Peter Martins thought it was worth looking at again, but this time he kept the dancers in soft slippers during performances of the piece as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. Twenty years later, NYCB is giving Summerspace yet another try in conjunction with the Cunningham Centennial Celebration.
Balanchine and Cunningham connected via their appreciation for geometry in dance. Cunningham and composer Morton Feldman who wrote the sound-score for Summerspace were known to create their artistic outputs initially on graph paper.
The top photo is an example of Cunningham's graph composition; the bottom photo is of Feldman's composition that eventually accompanied Summerspace:
Often in Cunningham's works, the steps were created independent of the music. The art was not born as a relationship between the dance and the music. Rather, the relationship, if any, evolved through chance. The artistic process in the creation seemed more important than the end result. That’s always been a popular idea in the contemporary dance world, but not so for ballet audiences who expect an end result that moves them, engages them, thrills them, uplifts them, and makes them want to come back again and again to see a work. In ballet, the end result – that is, what finally appears on stage – is what counts, not the process of getting it there. Hate to have to say it, but it’s true, most of the ballet audience doesn't care if the dancers feel challenged, fulfilled, organically connected, or awesomely inspired by the choreographic process. The audience only cares about what ends up on stage to music in costume under lighting — in other words, the end product for which they have paid a lot of money to see.
On NYCB’s stage this season, Summerspace was slightly interesting and slightly curious, and we would be happy to revisit it in another twenty or thirty-three years. The NYCB dancers (Sara Adams, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Emilie Gerrity, Abi Stafford, Andrew Veyette, and Lydia Wellington) executed the Cunningham choreography with knife-sharp articulation. They soared when they were supposed to soar and dipped when they were supposed to dip, and basically looked under-employed throughout the whole dance in which their greatest challenge was counting. What they accomplished was to make Summerspace look as slick and acutely geometric as it could possibly look – which was probably the gist of the original experiment in 1966.
The highlight on the opening night of this particular program was the revelatory performance of Balanchine’s Serenade. But those awful, previously pale banana but now pus-colored panels inserted into the fronts of the women’s blue tulle skirts have got to go. What a misfire this change was. The panels look dreadful from every part of the house. It doesn’t matter if they are viewed from the orchestra level or the fourth ring, they impair the beauty of the ballet.
Erica Periera, who replaced Ashley Bouder as the Russian Girl, gave one of the best performances of her career. Something or someone has unleashed a brilliant burst of full spectrum color in her artistry this season. Full-bodied musicality and a wonderful new risk-taking element in her dancing suggest that we should be excited about what is on her horizon. Sterling Hyltin's Waltz Girl was breathtaking in its expansiveness and beautiful in its romantic inflection. Megan LeCrone as the Dark Angel also had a superb performance that included generous sweep and bend in her movement. At one point, she slipped to the floor and then immediately rose to toss off a perfectly rhythmic triple pirouette. Ask la Cour was a gallant partner to Sterling. Preston Chamblee as the second male principal looked handsome, strong and more streamlined but needed to rotate the Dark Angel’s arabesque a little more smoothly.
The Corps de Ballet was simply astonishing in its beauty and energy. That the corps didn’t have the opportunity to walk forward for a bow at the end was a little disappointing.
Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 received a strong performance to close the evening. Like Serenade, there are problems with the new costumes although they are certainly an improvement over the previous peach dresses. The ornateness of the women’s new bodices suggest that many people at NYCB probably think that this ballet would look better if danced in tutus as Ballet Imperial was originally, but no one has the courage to go all the way with the change. So what we now have are bodices that would look drop-dead gorgeous above classical tutus but instead are overweight atop the flimsy skirts.
The dancing on this night was grand. Lauren King gave a glorious performance as the third principal – grace, beauty, energy, speed, and joy infused her technically solid variations. She’s dancing at such a high level, and consistently so, that it wouldn’t surprise us if she was within reach of a promotion. Sometimes we wish she would use her plie more to deepen the dynamics in her dancing.
Sara Mearns and Russell Janzen looked mismatched at this performance. Her arms were flying all over the place with the front arabesque arm nearly whacking her in the head. Arabesque legs were loose battements without the position being held. Feet were not always as stretched as they needed to be. There was a sense that Sara was trying to beat this ballet to a pulp. Meanwhile, Janzen was a model of good taste and beautiful form.
The corps de ballet and demi-soloist pairs danced brightly and elegantly.
The H.H. Pump Bump Award from Manolo Blahnik is bestowed upon Erica Pereira and Lauren King who wore the blue beautifully and whose dancing was the highlight of the evening.