On Dance
GUREWITSCH, M. ANATOLE
OnDance MAKAROVA ON BROADWAY BY M. ANATOLE GUREWITSCH V JL. our of the most influential presences in classical dance in the West today are the custodians of a single great tradition. George...
...The first program consisted of a very scaled-down Act 2 of Paquita, a Petipa classic staged by Makarova "after the Kirov version" (way after...
...This fall, as artistic director of a unit called Makarova and Company, the dancer struck out for Broadway...
...He has now been before the Western public for close to 20 years...
...5 looked positively olympian...
...Nureyev's impact was more sudden...
...For all her taste, ingenuity and application, she was back at square one, in St...
...The male trio of this all-star debacle consisted at first of Denys Ganio, Bujones and Dowell...
...Although age and the indiscriminate company he has kept as a perennial, increasingly aimless, guest artist have long since doused his exotic brilliance, at the box office his draw endures...
...his contribution to broad acceptance of the form would be hard to exaggerate...
...It was in Vendetta that Makarova herself at last appeared, bedizened in beads and bangles to bewitch and destroy the men who strayed into her ambit...
...Alas, compared with Vendetta, So-nataNo...
...At the very moment when he might have paused to find that he had left all dancing frontiers far behind him, the mantle of the artistic directorship of the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) was dropped upon his shoulders...
...Makarova's substitute was Antonia Franceschi, an accomplished 18-year-old—recently seen in the movie Fame —whose serene authority and refinement promise great things...
...A troupe could be exactly what she needs...
...While still in her prime as a performer, she could cultivate the classics and have the pick of the available choreographic talent in the course of raising new generations in the pure classicism of the Maryinsky...
...and the new Vendetta by Lorca Massine, which unfolded against the tacky gypsy rumblings of a commissioned score by Konstantin Kazansky...
...Makarova, though, danced very little...
...In 1974, with ABT, Makarova made an auspicious debut as a producer, mounting "The Kingdom of the Shades," a crystalline excerpt from Pe-tipa's La Bayadere...
...The principals, Elisabetta Terabust and Fernando Bujones, went through their paces without rapport...
...Her performances as Giselle and in Swan Lake set standards by which her contemporaries are privileged to be judged, yet she has not made much of a mark beyond such roles...
...Artistically, it verged on scandal...
...and heavy insurance in the form of international stars...
...Bujones, got up like a pirate boy from the chorus, shimmied and leered with a glee that was not infectious...
...Maurice Bejart's Sonata No...
...Moreover, by the end of the first week (!) she casually began stepping aside in favor of young protegees, transforming her personal showcase into a recital hall at Miss Makarova's Finishing School for Budding Ballerinas...
...The title role of the hapless temple dancer almost filled the bill as the custom-made full-length dramatic role Makarova has so long been demanding...
...Balanchine came to America in the '30s to found a training center and a company, and has quietly built an empire...
...In Balanchine's body of distinguished work, as with no other transplanted artist, the traditions of the Maryinsky have flourished and blossomed into the supreme classical dance of this or any age...
...Last spring, a sumptuous three-act version of the piece followed, skilfully interweaving Makarova's own inventions (including an entire final act) with the surviving fragments of the Petipa original...
...nevertheless, the familiar "Kingdom of the Shades" scene outshone the balance of the evening...
...In consolation it may be noted that with the New York City Ballet's winter season just under way, there is no reason to cry over a missed Pas de dix or worry over Makarova's artistic missteps...
...Certainly the repertoire was not all it might have been...
...The dozens of dances Balanchine has created for the popular stage and the screen as well as for his own ensemble are unparalleled for their intricacy, variety and depth...
...Indeed, Bujones, one of the most dazzling technicians of his generation, seemed tentative, inhibited and slack...
...The role in Raymonda was the plum of Makarova's repertoire as well as the greatest challenge for her, and night after night she persisted in giving it away...
...She had hardly arrived in the West in 1970 when the complaints began that choreographers were neglecting her...
...Bach's harpsichord-violin composition...
...A few nights into the run Ganio (lucky fellow) sustained a slight injury, leaving his part to the choreographer, Lorca Massine, who looked too incongruously cleancut to be trooping through this steamy garbage...
...The woman's part was created for Suzanne Farrell, Balanchine's most glorious ballerina, during an unhappy chapter in her career, and one can sense her presence in the sky-high extensions, despite the kinetic constraint of larger phrases...
...The blessed spirit did not dance for me...
...We will run the gamut from the Stravinsky Apollo, as lustrous and incandescent today as it must have been when newly-minted in 1928 for Diaghi-lev's Ballets Russes, to last season's mysterious meditation on genius, love and isolation, Robert Schumann's "Da-vidsbiindlertdnze...
...Petersburg, circa 1880...
...a hand-picked corps of rather modest dimensions...
...Now in their fifth decade, the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet are two of the strongest and liveliest institutions the dance world has ever known...
...Makarova began by dancing no more than two ballets out of three per show...
...When Nureyev played Broadway, he handled staggering programs of four ballets per performance and delivered—seven shows a week...
...During the second week, Makarova went on as announced in Barry More-land's new duet, Ondine...
...For example, Ashton's Dance of the Blessed Spirit, set to the haunting flute melody from Gluck's Orphee as a piece d'occasion for Anthony Dowell, appeared unannounced, was scheduled for repeats and then withdrawn...
...guest choreographers...
...Her personal appearances in Balanchine's "Pas de dix from Raymonda" (after Petipa) were postponed until well into the third week...
...The cosmopolitan Baryshnikov, at the peak of his powers, has devoured the challenges of Western dance even faster than Nureyev and ventured fur ther afield...
...Small inconsequential pieces were commissioned for her, and thus she had to content herself primarily with classics and hand-me-downs like Caroline in Antony Tudor's Lilac Garden, the title role in Kenneth Mac-Millan's Manon, Tatiana in John Cran-ko's Eugene Onegin, or Natalia Petrov-na in Frederick Ashton's A Month in the Country...
...The company's first season under his rule opens next month in Washington...
...George Balanchine, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshni-kov, and Natalia Makarova all were trained at the school of the Maryinsky Theater, now the Kirov, in the city Tsarist Russia knew as St...
...5, set to J.S...
...A JLpart from the false advertising (yes, I know casting in dance is notoriously subject to change), I can hardly blame Makarova for passing on her part in the Bejart Sonata to another dancer...
...At the performance I saw, the structurally indispensible pas de trois was dropped without excuse, and the remaining solos and pas de deux, framed by ensembles, made a shapeless and dreary parade...
...Dowell, whose predominantly stolid role is peppered with foolish little squibs of impish fancy, maintained a remarkable dignity throughout, but his restraint broke into beaming as Franceschi took her bows before a cheering audience...
...As it happens, some debuts went down as highlights of the run...
...in time, the new instrument he has at hand may well inspire his most visionary and lasting creations...
...Throughout their wanderings, the four emigres have carried their heritage within them as a compass and a conscience, but their careers have otherwise had next to nothing in common...
...In this duet the choreographer's celebrated pretentiousness and vulgarity are held in check, leaving only pointlessness and stilted repetition...
...The Paquita excerpt amounted to no more than a little touring version of a Petipa grand finale, yet even in miniature it ought to have conveyed far more of the intended crescendo of gaiety and brilliance...
...The young ladies of the corps were willing and eager, but their preoccupation with keeping their elbows and fingers light had the perverse effect of making them look wooden, and the accuracy of their footwork left a good deal to be desired...
...Still, what the advance casting and the very fancy prices were selling was Makarova, very secondarily her guests, and her "company" altogether as an afterthought...
...By means of shuffling and reshuffling, two programs' worth of material were stretched into four, changed weekly...
...In four weeks starting October 7, the troupe presented six ballets, plus an occasional bonus in the form of a short solo...
...Commercially, there was probably no choice but to give the new bauble precedence...
...In the early days of his free-world career, his flamboyance took by storm vast audiences who had hitherto scorned or ignored the dance...
...In contrast to these three Maryinsky graduates, Makarova has had a troubled, lackluster career...
...Makarova and Company, however, does not look like it will be around for long...
...Petersburg, where in the late 19th century the transplanted Frenchman Marius Petipa raised the art of classical ballet to its pinnacle...
...Between now and February 15, Balanchine's own company will present in the neighborhood of 40 of his ballets, covering every phase of his output...
...To Makarova's advances Dowell, purple-vested and hung with heavy-duty golden chokers, conveyed complete immunity, but the lady seemed so tickled with her own vamping that she didn't seem to mind...
...an orchestra under ABT's music director, John Lanchberry...
...The Broadway engagement was a risky commercial venture that fell prey to grandiose ambitions and a cavalier disregard for the expectations of the public...
...If only there had been a better vehicle...
...but the bulk of the premiere season left most of the daily critics cold, and ticket sales were discouraging...
...Liberal financial backing from the Nederlanders (theatrical entrepreneurs and of late great sponsors of dance attractions) secured the expensive if tawdry decor and costumes by Rouben Ter-Artunian...
Vol. 63 • November 1980 • No. 21
