Dulcinea en Pointe
CATTON, PIA
Dulcinea en Pointe Balanchine's Don Quixote gets an elegant revival. BY PIA CATTON What a summer of love this has been. Tom Cruise fell for the nubile actress Katie Holmes, just in time for the...
...When she leaves, she walks toward one of the giant books...
...they did not attempt a replication...
...A slow procession of clergy, carrying crosses and religious banners, walks through his room for his final rites...
...In Farrell's hands, Balan-chine's "Don Q" is a streamlined story with powerful imagery and well-crafted dances, all of it designed to make you consider the big stuff: love, life, death, and religion...
...But as Farrell wrote about the scene, in her 1990 autobiography Holding on to the Air, "[Balanchine] wanted it to be uncomfortable, he wanted everyone to be waiting, to feel the loneliness that life can have...
...Aiding that distance is the fact that this is an entirely new production, created in partnership with the National Ballet of Canada...
...Balanchine had bequeathed the rights to her, so the choice to dust it off was entirely hers...
...Suzanne Farrell coached Sonia Rodriguez closely, but wisely...
...As a whole, this ballet clips along at a smooth pace, with many emotionally sharp or visually intriguing scenes...
...The dream sequence in Act Three features more of her, in solos and ensemble dances with the corps...
...At the age of 61, Balanchine created this narrative ballet as an open declaration of his feelings for the 19-year-old dancer Suzanne Farrell...
...Rodriguez has an attractive sense of control, simultaneously heightened and loosened by this challenging choreography...
...Such compact, emotional stagecraft is rare these days...
...Her arms move in smooth, full strokes that made me think of panna, the curvy dollop of whipped cream that is served atop gelato...
...The legacy is there in the air, lingering like the scent of baked goods that were taken out of the house...
...Until now...
...She carefully washes his feet—and dries them with her hair...
...As the sharp, Stravin-skyesque music unfolds, Don Quixote, played by Momchil Mladenov, reads in his study...
...And the time was right: Cer-vantes's novel, on which the ballet is based, celebrates its 400th anniversary this year...
...For a ballet that was meant as a public love letter, it is perhaps an odd, tragic choice...
...Tom Cruise fell for the nubile actress Katie Holmes, just in time for the premiere of War of the Worlds...
...Mrs...
...Her demeanor was just right for the role: charming, understated...
...It could be argued that what Balanchine saw in Suzanne Farrell was his deliverance from that loneliness—and the ballet immortalized that idea...
...The defeated Don returns to his study, where he is to die...
...With "Don Q," she became known to the world as his muse, the one who would lead him through his later creative years...
...And that was the case with George Balanchine's 1965 ballet Don Quixote, which was revived last month at Washington's Kennedy Center...
...Balanchine's "Don Q" is deeply artistic and quite soulful—especially as opposed to Marius Petipa's comic version, which calls for virtuoso splash and a buffoon-ish Don...
...In Act One, Rodriguez appears as the pretty shepherdess Marcela...
...Of course, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt want to be delivered from that loneliness, too...
...And in light of such calculated coupling, it's a relief to remember: Love affairs that play out in public were not always timed to the release of blockbuster movies...
...The ballet opens with a prologue in the score by Nicolas Nabokov, cousin of the novelist...
...What we sense, rather than see, in her dancing is the notion of the off-balance abandon that Balanchine created for (and from) Farrell...
...The set, by Zack Brown, creates a dark, spare mood: giant books, some standing, some flat, surround a reading table and chair...
...Farrell, 59, is today the artistic director of her own eponymous ballet company and, as such, brought "Don Q" back to the stage this season with a fresh cast and new look...
...But more important, it has been 25 years since the ballet was last seen, a period that allowed the industry and Farrell enough distance from the original...
...In the early 1960s, Farrell was still in the corps of the New York City Ballet, but she so Pia Cation is an arts and features reporter at the New York Sun...
...At the premiere, Balanchine himself performed as the doddering Don, spellbound by his ideal woman, Dulcinea—a role that no one but Suzanne Farrell danced...
...As the action gets underway, the Don stumbles about town, trying to do good, but finding his attempts at justice rejected...
...She places the cross on the Don's chest, just as he dies...
...When a barefoot servant girl (Sonia Rodriguez) comes to him, he is entranced...
...She walks flirtatiously en pointe to the Don, bestows a kiss, then leaves without much ado...
...As she ascends to the light, Dulcinea's musical motif begins—and so does the Don's quest for her...
...Once upon a time, such romances inspired the creation of new works of art (rather than just publicity for them...
...It opens to reveal a staircase flooded with warm light...
...Her dancing makes more of an impact later, in a duet, after she rescues him from mockery at a high society ball...
...One red carpet at a time...
...She adhered closely to Balanchine's choreography by working from memory and a grainy, straight-shot videotape, but at times had to extrapolate...
...The result is a thoroughly engaging ballet that in no way requires knowledge of the real-life back story...
...Brad Pitt became smitten with his costar Angelina Jolie, conveniently prior to their film Mr...
...Mladenov handled the role, which is more acting than dancing, with impressive clarity, if not magnetic gravitas...
...Smith...
...Most effective of all is the final scene...
...The servant girl, Rodriguez, picks up two sticks, holds them in the shape of a cross, and walks across the floor—very slowly—to him...
...Farrell commissioned new sets, costumes, and lighting...
...And they are...
...fully captured the master choreographer's heart and mind that he was inspired to make the full-length ballet for her...
Vol. 10 • July 2005 • No. 42
