Coming Attractions
CATTON, PIA
Coming Attractions A changing of the guard at the American Ballet Theatre. BY PIA CATTON I do not approve of fantasy football as a topic of conversation: With all the real-life sports out there,...
...Gong mocks ballet idiom...
...The work calls for a leading man who is willing to look off-kilter on stage, one who can enjoy exploring the angles and unexpected, spare movements...
...And because the repertory is so vast, these up-and-comers can do it all...
...This was made quite clear over three performances (with different casts) of George Balanchine's 1928 masterpiece, Apollo...
...She is too green for the role...
...They have on their faces a mock-serious air...
...A few other performances were notable only because they were cringe-worthy...
...Maxim Beloserkovsky succeeded more in this regard, but he lacked gravitas...
...He needs a creative soul...
...David Hallberg lent so much drama to the plotless Les Sylphides that I mentally cast him in Onegin...
...Well, that would be a fantasy line-up...
...And there's plenty of the real thing to talk about...
...It is heavy-handed and obvious...
...The dancers needed more time to search their souls and learn how to make the audience cry...
...Veronika Part handled Terpsichore sexily, with a gentle expression and lush phrasing...
...Which means the next few years should be thrilling for ABT...
...A couple dances a pas de deux in silence...
...Ethan Stiefel emerged as the best, giving a mesmerizing performance...
...When Stiefel led the muses in the end, he was no longer uncoordinated and silly...
...That was a pleasant change...
...But Apollo does not need a splashy tour de force...
...her feet were so pliable that my guest, who had seen little ballet, couldn't stop talking about it afterward...
...In a stab at politics, ABT presented Kurt Jooss's The Green Table...
...The intervening scenes show soldiers, lovers, and innocents suffering...
...But now, I sort of get it...
...As for the muses, Paloma Herrera danced a sublime Terpsichore with minimal coyness and maximum confidence...
...to imagine them in very different roles and on improbable "teams" in ballets to come...
...This 1932 ballet begins and ends with suited diplomats posturing and gesturing around a green table...
...The ranks are swelling with fresh talent just as several of the big names of the last generation have retired (Susan Jaffe, Amanda McKer-row) or cut back (Julio Bocca...
...What was needed was a slower, firmer tempo and more depth...
...Maria Riccetto floated through hauntingly...
...This struck me while watching Agnes de Mille's Rodeo, a modern-dance version of a Saturday rodeo set to Aaron Copland's music...
...Julie Kent, in the same role, faced the problem that Carreno did: No matter what she does she'll look beautiful, but sometimes that is not enough...
...And it paid off...
...The more senior dancers do not necessarily possess the same fungible talent...
...These days, the company is so loaded with interesting, versatile dancers that it's a kick Pia Catton is an editor and columnist at the New York Sun...
...He made clear that Apollo is born naive and ignorant, but becomes a master of music and movement...
...Erica Cornejo and Craig Salstein sizzled with such youthful, vibrant chemistry that I'm sure they would make a heart-breakingly potent couple in Romeo and Juliet...
...Melanie Hamrick was totally miscast as Calliope...
...Also in Les Sylphides, Kristi Boone fluttered her arms like a woman bound for Swan Lake...
...Apollo is born on stage, then learns the arts of poetry, mime, and dance from three muses: Calliope, Polyhymnia, and Terpsichore...
...Dancers walk off the stage as if they're walking down the street...
...That flat expression, combined with their candy-colored, sharp tutus (by Isaac Mizrahi) made them look like a bunch of angry LifeSavers...
...But it was danced from the heart, much more so than Antony Tudor's Dark Elegies, set to music by Mahler...
...Morris is hailed as the most musical of all living choreographers, but his musicality comes with irony...
...But things do improve with time, which happened in the case of Michel Fokine's Les Sylphides...
...He was a romantic prince whose every move was pure and dignified...
...Though guilty of overacting, he chose to dance with intensity and passion...
...But in Apollo she appeared to be a different dancer entirely...
...Or rather, his many facial expressions precluded him from creating gravitas...
...he became Apollo...
...This piece looked like a collage of so many Balanchine works that it should have been labeled a homage...
...While there were a number of individual successes, the credit goes to the ensemble for creating a misty, beautiful mood...
...But that is no great accomplishment...
...What if we had been spared his ballet and given another actual Balanchine work...
...Death is in almost every scene—and death wins...
...On his thin frame, the sharpness of the steps was clear and clean...
...Jose Manuel Car-reno's Apollo was careful at best, uninspired at worst...
...BY PIA CATTON I do not approve of fantasy football as a topic of conversation: With all the real-life sports out there, why noodle over make-believe match-ups...
...They certainly got the audience laughing with Mark Morris's Gong...
...Michele Wiles and Irina Dvorovenko were both too hammy as Polyhymnia...
...Last year, it was ho-hum...
...This year, it became dreamy and magical...
...throughout the ballet, her nervous eyes skittered to check out what the big girls were doing...
...And it's because of American Ballet Theatre's fall season at New York's City Center...
...In her classical roles, she often looks nervous, and can seem to lack musicality...
...The choreography simply did not suit his strengths...
...His pirouettes are the current gold standard...
...What's exciting is that these dancers are still soloists or members of the corps de ballet...
...The season included the premiere of Kaleidoscope, by choreographer Peter Quanz...
Vol. 11 • January 2006 • No. 16
