Dance
McDonagh, Don
DUTCH TREAT PLUS NUREYEV'S LA SCALA SINCE ITS INCEPTION in 1959 as an insurgent group rebelling against the then reigning Dutch National Ballet, the Netherlands Dance Theater has functioned as a...
...His dancing now possesses an obvious athletic quality that used to be hidden in his characterizations...
...At times they compress the space by their bulk and at other moments serve as mammoth outside bulwarks of various buildings...
...As in others of Kylian's works, the dancers often faced away from the audience, crouched, and ran sweepingly across the stage but to little effect...
...While at the Prague Conservatory he was well grounded in music in addition to dance study which included mime and basic Graham technique as well as ballet...
...Black sculptured objects like huge armoires are shuttled in and out to frame the various scenes...
...and rapid beats of the legs provide the excitement ordinarily provided by...
...Nureyev's presence was felt both as performer and choreographer...
...It was quite clear that any lack of bloodthirstiness on her husband's part would be more than made up for by the matriarch of the Capulet household...
...He is a talented choreographer, though one wonders whether talented enough to sustain an entire season with his ballets alone...
...The intimacies of rooms and public spaces are backed by grand vistas of the city and its monuments...
...It is, in fact, difficult to think of Kylian's ballets in terms of moments...
...Of the three Juliets, Carla Fracci's was the most successful in its combination of childlike innocence and awakening knowledge of tragedy...
...There are very few actual steps in the ballet but those that are used are presented in a wide dynamic range...
...Most of the solemnity of the event derived from brute historic fact rather than from the inventiveness of the choreographic patterns...
...For the most part they were too slight to support visual transcription because of their highly similar variations on a single theme...
...DUTCH TREAT PLUS NUREYEV'S LA SCALA SINCE ITS INCEPTION in 1959 as an insurgent group rebelling against the then reigning Dutch National Ballet, the Netherlands Dance Theater has functioned as a forcing house for choreographers interested in creating a middle road between modern dance and classic ballet...
...The resolution of the piece finds all of the dancers proceeding slowly at a walk back toward the rear of the stage as the light dims...
...Men found themselves surrounded by a hoard of predatory corps de ballet females and struggled bravely to make the most of an obvious mismatch in choreographic numbers...
...Tiziano Mietto's brooding height perfectly suited the surly and easily offended Tybalt, and Bruno Vescovo's light quickness made his Mercutio notable...
...With Nureyev she showed a beautiful sense of dramatic proportion, moving from the light-heartedness of infatuation to the nobility of enduring and faithful love...
...The scenic investiture of his works most frequently features a backdrop indicating a limitless surrealistic plain not indicative of any specific time or place...
...It was a homage with little artistic focus...
...These steps, presented with intense ardor, still generate a genuine audience response...
...It was a production that Miss Fracci had earlier won considerable acclaim for, and she continued to demonstrate why she-has a special claim to the role...
...As the choreographer'of the company's major presentation during the season, "Romeo and Juliet," Nureyev styled the work for his present skills...
...At all performances of the ballet Mar-got Fonteyn appeared as Juliet's mother and showed a most eloquent carriage of the arms and head with expressive facial expression...
...The variety of the carpets in the decor suggests that an infinite number of patterns could be woven from similar discrete threads...
...Sustained poses such as the attitude have replaced, in large measure, air work...
...Most others close with the death scene...
...The quality of his performance is clearly less on a purely technical basis than it once was...
...Men ordinarily partner women so, of course, Kylian had the reverse take place, at times with great effect...
...The "Giselle" was modeled after the American Ballet Theater version designed by the late David Blair...
...varieties of jumps...
...Lifts by the men appear to push the women upward through an invisible barrier that they are trying to break, or else present the women in great arcs swinging outward as if to be launched in a scythelike assault on another dimension...
...The names include John Butler, Glen Tetley, Jap Flier, Hans van Manen, Rudi van Dantzig, and most recently Jiri Kylian, the company's artistic director...
...The design looked inevitably correct in both scale and detail...
...Again and again though, one was drawn to appreciate the splendor of the settings more than the inventiveness of the choreography...
...The evenings of shorter ballets were very mixed in quality...
...In a way, Kylian is the most interesting of the group, having emerged from the classic ballet tradition of an Iron Curtain country, Czechoslovakia...
...One is aware of space as an element of the dance in a way that owes much to modern dance...
...Amidst the high seriousness of the season, "Symphony in D" stood out as that rarity in dance, a truly humorous ballet based on balletic convention and technique rather than a series of inane anecdotal situations...
...The ballet follows the text of the Shakespeare play quite closely down to the somewhat sudden reconciliation of the Montagues and the Capulets in the tomb of the two lovers...
...They are more like spurts of energy that whip out over the stage space in jets of activity...
...the pattern of their lives has been recorded...
...At each crossing, individuals drop out of the line to remain stationary at various spots on the stage...
...The company obviously has a flair for dramatic ballets but included too few good ones in the schedule...
...Without such a guarantee, it is doubtful whether any management would have risked producing such a large-scaled troupe with a modest reputation...
...The corps is well schooled if somewhat timid but the season was dominated by guests who gave their best but would all too soon depart...
...As conceived by Nureyev, Verona is a city of raw vitality and elegance whose energies are directed toward the fatal intersection of dalliance and death...
...The remaining peformances were given over to "Giselle" and a few scattered mixed bills of shorter ballets...
...Hers is the life that is sacrificed but she makes it quite clear that the tragedy is the betrayer's, not the betrayed's...
...A similar artistic thinness afflicted'' Overgrown Path,'' which was based on a series of piano pieces written by Janacek after the death of his daughter...
...The trio, so long an established ballet triangle, was pushed to its logical and humorous extreme by having the covert competiton for the man's attention emerge into open rivalry...
...The line between humor and seriousness is a fine one in a highly stylized art form, as caricature so clearly shows, and Kylian cast a wickedly funny eye on his chosen metier...
...Visually the production is stunning...
...They have had their moment...
...RUDOLF NUREYEVS continuing ability to attract audiences by sheer stage presence accounts in large part for the appearance of La Scala's ballet Company at the Metropolitan Opera House this summer...
...The solos and the duets that are sprinkled throughout the work are like the various design figures one would encounter in the overall patterning of a luxurious carpet...
...It exists as the atmosphere in which the dancers have their being as water would be to aquatic creatures...
...Unlike classical choreographers, Kylian is not so much interested in steps, per se, as he is in flowing surges of movement that strive for seamlessness rather than photographic images...
...DON McDONAGH...
...Sinfonietta," to Janacek's score of the same name, is prototypical in its use of such space and dance energy...
...DON McDONAGH depart...
...the dance is done...
...The newer dances were less successful...
...Unfortunately, a certain number of Kylian mannerisms began to get repetitious in a way that would not occur in a more balanced repertory...
...Soldier's Mass," commemorating the loss of a Czech detachment during the Second World War, featured a dozen men in grey work shirts and trousers who were banded together by a single tragedy...
...The "Symphony of Psalms," to Stravinsky's powerful score, is danced against a hanging background of oriental rugs, and the piece itself suggests a certain loom-like shuttling of dancers as they cross and recross the stdge in long, vertical files...
Vol. 108 • October 1981 • No. 19
