Another triumph at the Ballet

Patrick Yocum, Bradley Schlagheck, Whitney Jensen and Lawrence Rines in Symphony in C. Photos by Gene Schiavone.

At 49 years of age (yes, next season marks their big 5-0), Boston Ballet has become the most reliable arts organization in the city - hands down. I go there with more confidence than I bring to any other local venue, in any art form. When my partner looks at me and says, "What are we seeing tonight?" and I say, "The Ballet," he always just says, "Oh, good." (Well, sometimes in a rough week, he says "Thank God.") Indeed, among Boston's "Big Culture" behemoths, the Ballet's consistency leaves the BSO, the MFA, the BLO, and the Huntington (great as they often are) in the dust. At the Ballet, a reviewer never has to separate the wheat from the chaff - it's all wheat; one merely teases the tastiest grains from the rest.  It's the easiest critical gig in town. (In fact it's not really a "critical" gig at all.)

Right now the troupe is in the midst of a suite of performances that by its close will have stretched several weeks. Tonight wraps their startling pairing of Balanchine classics with Chroma, by edgy new talent Wayne McGregor; next Thursday brings more Balanchine (the master's luminous Coppélia). In between we were blessed with a treat from the Ballet's "Next Generation," which included a delightful version of Jerome Robbins' Fanfare.  And all this came after a sumptuous Sleeping Beauty last month. Needless to say, dance fans have been happy campers this spring.

But back to Chroma, which couldn't be more opposed in spirit to Balanchine's Serenade and Symphony in C - and so showcases the expressive range available to the Ballet today. Balanchine is ballet's Shakespeare, and like the Bard, he is enraptured by the feminine.  Indeed, often when the boy (sometimes a single boy) does show up in a Balanchine ballet, he's an obvious factotum for Mr. B himself - as is the case in the luminous Serenade, which opens (see masthead) as a kind of apotheosis of ballet class (it was actually written for all the girls in training with Mr. B at the time). They might be a choir of angels, but these maidens are in an attitude of chaste denial, until Balanchine begins to work elegant variations on their solitude (complicated here and there by an apparently disposable boyish partner) led by Ashley Ellis and Misa Kuranaga, and set to Tchaikovsky's famous Serenade for Strings.  

A story of sorts takes shape (abstracted from standard ballet tragedy, like the choreography itself) as a mature danseur finally arrives (Nelson Madrigal), led blindly by a seeming angel of death (Dusty Button). It's easy (as it is in the case of Apollo) to equate this figure with Mr. B himself, but perhaps this nameless male is meant instead as a kind of embodiment of the masculine principle. At any rate, after a series of piercing duets with "the Waltz Girl," as she has come to be known (Ellis), he abandons her - led off again, blindly, by that dark personification of Terpsichore. Devastated - but supported, and perhaps mourned, by her bevy of vestals - she dances her own poignant apotheosis.

It is among the most haunting works in the canon, and the Ballet performed it all but flawlessly (and with a noticeably higher finish than they managed some five years ago). Kuranaga was, needless to say, exquisite, although Ellis seemed to me a bit too sturdy in her opening variations to hint at the ruin to come. Still, she seemed to mature emotionally as the dance progressed; Madrigal wasn't as technically dazzling as some of the Ballet's men now are, but he can cast a palpable romantic spell - and in her brief, stalking appearances, Button suggested a spooky alienation. The corps, however, outshone all the soloists, I think - which is a good thing, because Balanchine always makes intense, complex demands on his corps; here they were beautifully synchronous, technically pure, and superb in attitude - all but perfect.

It was a bracing plunge, however, from this elevated pathos to the harsh beauty of Chroma. Angular, jarring, knotty, almost painful in its extremity - yet set in a pure, pale box - Wayne McGregor's choreography seems to be about romantic partners who yearn for freedom more than each other. Thus it's worth mentioning, I think, that the sexual frame of Balanchine is here long gone; men and women are both in unisex costumes (at one point there's a same-sex variation), and the girls aren't emotional victims anymore (although sometimes they look like physical ones). Tragedy isn't an option, even though there's still a chorus - but it hangs back from getting involved, preferring to wait in judgment, peering at the combat from the back of the stage (below), or simply waiting for it to finish, with backs turned. 

The cold struggles of Chroma: Lasha Khozashvili and Lia Cirio.

Meanwhile, center stage, both sexes struggle, they writhe; they climb over, grapple, and all but attack each other, before suddenly drooping in exhaustion (above), or freezing in odd stand-offs. The men attempt to manipulate the women, and other times punish them; the women respond with oddly predatory japes and threats. McGregor is ceaselessly inventive, but almost cruel himself in his demands on the dancers' bodies.

So Chroma is not a pretty picture, but it's a fascinating one nonetheless, and set to one of the most arresting dance scores I've heard in years, by Joby Talbot and Jack White of The White Stripes. I know what you're thinking, but rest assured, this isn't the kind of ambience-driven simplistic pop one usually gets from rock musicians gone high-cult. Instead, it's more like Stravinsky gone bossa nova; the score calls for literally four kitchens' worth of percussion, as well as beefed-up brass and winds in the pit; but for once the point isn't just volume (although there's plenty of that).  The timbres are haunting, the motifs sophisticated; passion seems to fight it out with alienation as we listen - the score alone all but blew the roof off the Opera House (the ballet orchestra kicks *ss too, btw).

The dancers did as well - indeed, they received the longest, loudest ovation I've ever heard at the Ballet, or maybe anywhere; the audience wouldn't stop clapping, and wouldn't sit down. This was, to put it simply, because the performers were all brilliant across the board.  One expected superbly crisp work from Paulo Arrais, Lia Cirio, John Lam, Jeffrey Cirio, and particularly the coolly virtuosic Kathleen Breen Combes, who always excel in postmodern attack.  The surprising news was that more classic specialists like Misa Kuranaga, Whitney Jensen, and Lasha Khozashvili had the same relentless edge, and younger dancers Isaac Akiba and Bradley Schlagheck likewise seemed as strong or stronger than I've ever seen them.   

It's true that Chroma seems to just stop rather than end; it lacks the structural development of Serenade. But to be honest, it also leaves you with a haunting question: with the emotional underpinnings of classic ballet stripped away, is that kind of structure even possible?  Or has the frustrating "freedom" of postmodern life rendered the grand statement obsolete?

Such fraught doubts were banished, however, as the curtain rose on Balanchine's ravishing Symphony in C (at top) which arrived like the most powerful palate-cleanser ever devised.  It's set to Bizet's symphony of the same name, and of course key (written with sparkling exuberance when the composer was all of 17); and it is, I think, the divertissement to end all divertissements; Balanchine, who devised it at age 43 as Le Palais de Cristal (which gives you some hint of its thematic links to the later Jewels), seems to be able to tap into Bizet's youthful invention while retaining some deeper atmosphere of worldly experience.  The variations keep coming, the scheme keeps growing in size (by the finale there are some 50 dancers onstage), and yet the work never loses its butterfly-lightness, its knowing brilliance.

And amazingly, many of the dancers who had powered through Chroma came back and triumphed again without missing a beat. This time it was Jeffrey Cirio, Whitney Jensen, Misa Kuranaga, and Lasha Khozashvili who were in their element; but they were dazzlingly matched by Paulo Arrais, Lia Cirio, Kathleen Breen Combes, and Bradley Schlagheck (who this year seems to be coming into his own in a general way).  It was the kind of performance you never want to end, the kind that (like some negative twin of Chroma) really can't end until the curtain falls.  Indeed, I'm sure for many in the audience, it's still lighting up their dreams.

Such stuff as Dreams are made on

Titania (Lorna Feijóo) meets her Dream date (Gabor Kapin).

Boston is currently in the midst of a veritable May dance of Midsummer Night’s Dreams. Just a week after Boston Theatreworks opened its spirited production of the Bard’s immortal comedy, Boston Ballet has mounted a sumptuous version of Balanchine’s ballet – which offers a melancholy testament to the romance the play’s theatre tradition seems to have lost.

Dating from 1962, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is, surprisingly, Balanchine’s first full-length story ballet – and he picked quite a source for his initiation into the form. It’s not for nothing that ballets tend to be short on plot, as the demands of dance only fitfully align with those of drama; Shakespeare, however, packs a kaleidoscope of interlocking episodes into his famous tale of misguided lovers and quarreling fairies lost in the wood. Unfazed, Balanchine telescoped a truncated version of the script into just his first act, leaving the second entirely free for the kind of gorgeous divertissement we’d expect from The Sleeping Beauty. It’s a defensible strategy, even if at times, as the lovers dodge the fairies in the forest, we feel we’re speed-reading Shakespeare. What’s remarkable is how often Balanchine manages to, yes, align dance with drama – the bouts of jealousy and fits of infatuation between his couples are generally conveyed through movement, not mime, and were well served by the fluid work of Yury Yanowsky, Kathleen Breen Combes, Tai Jimenez, and Pavel Gurevich (Jimenez and Gurevich, above). When forced to, of course, Balanchine’s not afraid to stray from Shakespeare – he invents for Titania (Lorna Feijóo) a nameless Cavalier (Lorin Mathis, who after an early fumble displayed splendid poise) purely for the purpose of gracing her with a lovely pas de deux (which Feijóo delineated exquisitely). Still, all were almost upstaged by Joel Prouty, who was practically born to play Puck; and while he didn’t break any new ground in the role, Prouty inhabited it completely - every movement was alive with lithe detail, and his signature jumps were electric.

Another question, of course, hangs over the metaphorical pas de deux between Midsummer’s two geniuses – what can Mr. B. possibly show us that Mr. Bard hasn't already? In an unusual fit of modesty, Balanchine once admitted, “It’s really impossible to dance Shakespeare. He is a poet.” But perhaps he was wrong about that; I’d argue that the charming dance Mr. B. devised for Titania and Bottom, the working man transformed into an ass, somehow takes us deeper into the material than the Bard managed to do himself. In Shakespeare, these two tend to talk past each other (the innocent Bottom is far more enchanted with Titania’s attendants) – but in Balanchine’s extended duet, feminine sophistication swoons before masculine simplicity, and we sense, as if through a glass lightly, the poignant undertow of Balanchine’s (and our) yearning, eternal bewitchment with the ballerina.

It’s a triumphant moment, but only an aperitif before the wedding feast of the second act, where Balanchine just lets rip with pure dance. His “ballet within a ballet” may parallel the “play within a play” that crowns Shakespeare’s comedy, but it’s hardly the burlesque that wraps up Midsummer. Instead, the dance to Mendelssohn’s "Wedding March" (his overture and incidental music for Midsummer form the core of the score) may not be Mr. B.’s edgiest work, but its startling jumps and joyful geometries certainly place it among his most rewarding classical efforts, and the subsequent pas de deux (to the composer’s Sinfonia No. 9) is among his most extended evocations of rapture. The company was in fine form throughout (with Lia Cirio making a particularly bodacious Hippolyta), and in the pas de deux Larissa Ponomarenko worked her usual gossamer magic in the arms of Roman Rykine (though both, perhaps, seemed a bit remote).

There were a few missteps. In the role of Oberon, Reyneris Reyes projected precisely the right level of petulant grandeur – but his leaps, despite their soft landings, only had enough loft to just hold onto the double cabrioles Balanchine had layered into them. And the corps in the opening act sometimes lacked the definition the dance’s design requires – someone even fell at one point (an under-rehearsed, though not untalented, corps is becoming a repeated complaint at the Ballet, particularly after the recent dazzling visit from the Kirov). The child dancers, however, who flitted through as butterflies and fairies, were charmingly serious about their responsibilities (which are more demanding than the corresponding bits in, say, the Nutcracker). Alas, I was less smitten with the rather obvious set (borrowed from Pacific Northwest Ballet, the drops drooped with damask roses and glittery cobwebs), but the costumes, though traditional to the core, were superbly rendered – and needless to say, Jonathan McPhee conducted the Mendelssohn with lively affection and not a trace of modernist condescension.

This seemed somehow right for the dance’s nostalgic tone – Balanchine performed in Midsummer as a child, and perhaps those memories inspired him to write the play a valentine rather than push its envelope. His finale was especially magical: the children darted like fireflies beneath the falling mantle of twilight as the lovers made their way to bed (and another dream) in just the kind of sentimental image that today’s stage directors have been trained to avoid – and I realized how much I miss the romance that the Theatre of Revolt has drained from Shakespeare’s comedy. Thank God we have Balanchine, and Boston Ballet, to keep its memory alive.