Gillian Murphy in 'Sylvia.' (Courtesy ABT)

Half a dozen years ago, American Ballet Theatre unveiled a new production of The Sleeping Beauty. The veil should never have been lifted. In a lifetime of attending important premieres, I can’t remember a more disastrous one. After the first act, critics were roaming the aisles asking each other things like, “Can you believe this?” and “How can this have happened?” Part of the problem stems from the fact that Beauty is, for many of us, a sacred text—ballet’s greatest score and the summit of ballet classicism, a work filled with emotional and spiritual resonance. Also, for some of us, the memory of the great Sadler’s Wells production with Margot Fonteyn that came to New York in 1949 impinges on our enjoyment of lesser versions (including the many since mounted by the Royal Ballet itself). This latest ABT version—staged by the company’s artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, with the ex-ballerina Gelsey Kirkland and her husband, Michael Chernov—was defaced with distorting concepts that undermined everything noble and beautiful about the ballet. There were no redeeming features.

Within days, helpful adjustments were being made, and slowly the whole thing has grown more or less respectable. But one of the basic problems hasn’t been solved: the physical production. Not only are the costumes (by Willa Kim) garish, but Tony Walton’s Disneyish set impedes and undercuts the action. Worst is the stone staircase down which Aurora must cautiously pick her way—partly obscured—to make her entrance to Tchaikovsky’s great entrance music. The poor girl is practically dead on arrival—just as she’s about to go into the notoriously exposed Rose Adagio. And then at the climactic moment of the act, after Aurora has been poisoned by the evil Carabosse, her rescuer, the Lilac Fairy, has to fumble her way down those same stairs. One can only wonder how a major ballet company could have entrusted the design of so demanding a ballet to a designer, however talented, who so far as I know has no experience in ballet and certainly doesn’t understand this one. Why ballerinas don’t go on strike is beyond my understanding.

First cast this season was Paloma Herrera, who has been in the company for more than 20 years and has had her ups and downs. She’s musical, she has lovely feet and legs, and she’s been clever enough to scale her performance down—she’s always been more contained than expansive. Was she everything you want in an Aurora? Not by a long shot. But she was pleasing and consistent (we forgive ballerinas the odd wobble in the Rose Adagio). Her best moment was her third-act solo during the transcendent final pas de deux: you could sense her relief at having made it through—and her gratitude for having the nonpareil Marcelo Gomes as her partner.

The rest of the cast was more or less on top of things. Lilac is Veronika Part’s most satisfactory role—it doesn’t demand the allegro virtuosity she lacks, and the grandeur of her physique and her somewhat bovine complacency suit the occasion. The wonderful Martine van Hamel, a superb ABT ballerina in the ’70s and ’80s, made one of her return (and always welcome) appearances as Carabosse—definitely in command. She can’t help it that her costume and the staging of her big scene are so counterproductive.

The high point of the performance—the one thrilling passage—was the famous “Bluebird Pas de Deux.” In the long-ago past, this was often danced by a pair of stars—Nijinsky and Pavlova, for one. But it’s been downgraded, presumably because it’s so short, and second-level executants don’t make it the showstopper it’s supposed to be. On this occasion, the Princess Florine was Isabella Boylston, by far the most talented of the younger women who are coming up. Indeed, she’s come up, to major roles like Odette-Odile and Don Quixote’s Kitri; she just hasn’t been made a principal. (Instead, management crowned the pleasing but less gifted Hee Seo.) Boylston gave us the freshness, the expansiveness that Herrera’s cautious performance lacked. And talk about musical! But what made the whole thing so exciting was her being paired with that ex-Bolshoi extrovert (to put it mildly), Ivan Vasiliev. With his postwar Soviet thighs, his thrusting chest and his sculpted hair, he’d be a parody if he weren’t so explosive, so committed, so impressive. Usually we see him with Natalia Osipova, his partner and fellow Bolshoi escapee, and they’re two of a remarkable kind. But I liked him more contrasted with the delicate and modest Boylston. Yes, as with Tracy and Hepburn, he gave her sex and she gave him class.

In Beauty, as well as in the company’s other classic showpieces, ABT’s corps was in excellent order—not just background but a positive force. The ballet masters are doing a good job. How strange, then, that in Balanchine’s Symphony in C, they were so awful—the first movement, in particular, was a shambles. Some of the principals were up to the task: Paulina Semionova’s beauty helped her elegant interpretation of the magnificent adagio; the fascinating Simone Messmer—who, alas, is decamping for San Francisco—was on top of the final movement; and of course Herman Cornejo was superb in the third (let’s restrain ourselves from characterizing Xiomara Reyes, his partner). Osipova and Vasiliev, in the same movement and true to form, were way over the top. Balanchine style and Bolshoi style are far from compatible.

Symphony in C was part of a triple bill that also gave us Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, a 12-dancer company piece in which the company looked at ease and happy, the only star being Gomes in the first cast. Boylston, Messmer, Joseph Gorak, Sascha Radetsky and James Whiteside, the excellent new soloist in town, stood out, but everyone had the spirit and the tone. The big event was the company premiere of Frederick Ashton’s A Month in the Country (1976), to Chopin, after Turgenev’s famous play. With its famously pretty sets and costumes by Julia Trevelyan Oman and its faithful rendition of the plot, this work is a kind of Masterpiece Theatre ballet, but when danced with feeling, it works. No one at ABT is on the level of the original English cast—Lynn Seymour and Anthony Dowell—but on the whole, the company did Ashton justice.

It was a fascination to compare the two Natalia Petrovnas. Julie Kent, fading gently into history, gave a touching performance as an aging woman with an aged husband, eager for a last romance with the young tutor who arrives to teach her son; Hee Seo was a young wife bored with her life, for whom the tutor is a break in the monotony of her country existence. Kent’s tutor, Beliaev, was Roberto Bolle: tall, broad, matinee-idol handsome, who to me looks and dances like a circus strongman—what a hunk, what a good partner, but one with no affect. David Hallberg—second cast!—was, as always, superb: subtle, detailed, convincing in his casual and confused response to the drama he’s precipitated. Daniil Simkin, who looks like a boy, played the boy, but he’s too cute for me; the very talented Arron Scott, who looks like a man, was more convincing. Both Stella Abrera and Messmer brought charm and character to the rather conventional flirty maid. But apart from the specifics of the performances, the important thing is that ABT put together a brilliant program—Balanchine, Ashton, Morris—while bringing an important Ashton work into a major American company.

The other gratifying event of the season also involved Ashton: the return of his version of the full-evening ballet Sylvia, created for Fonteyn in 1952. Sylvia’s great distinction lies in its ravishingly melodious score by Delibes—together with his Coppélia and La Source, it constitutes a triptych worthy of comparison with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker, and indeed Tchaikovsky revered Delibes in general and Sylvia in particular. The plot involves a huntress who is a votary of Diana, the goddess of chastity; a simple shepherd; an evil hunter who kidnaps the heroine; and Eros himself, the god of love. Needless to say, everything turns out happily for boy and girl in this Arcadian fantasy, because the ballet’s real subject—Ashton’s eternal subject—is love itself. Nowhere is this more explicit than in Sylvia, in which Eros convinces Diana to release Sylvia from her vows and permit her to marry her swain. In Ashton—here, in La Fille Mal Gardée, in The Dream, in The Two Pigeons—love conquers all.

Sylvia is a complicated role. She’s an Amazon in the first act, a sad prisoner and a faking-it seductress in the second, a rapturous lover in the third. Semionova had a lovely quality in the lyrical passages, and she has the technique, but she doesn’t have the athletic command in the opening; one problem is a kind of lethargy in her arms. Gillian Murphy is the company’s paradigmatic huntress—when she shoots you with an arrow, you’re shot. And she’s found the softness the latter scenes require.

Osipova, alas, was hurt and canceled the season’s last two weeks, so we missed seeing her in this role. She was highly visible, however, in those go-for-broke spectacles Don Quixote and Le Corsaire, in which she can scorch and burn better than anyone else on the ballet stage today. Oddly, though, her finest moment in Don Q was in the formal, quiet vision scene—no flashing fans, no swirls of the skirt, no clicking heels, just pure and exquisite classicism. Vasiliev matched her, flash for flash and swirl for swirl. In Le Corsaire, Osipova ignores the fact that Medora is meant to be vulnerable and at times melancholy. She and her guy dance up a storm more convincing than the actual storm the libretto requires—somehow, in rethinking this production’s costumes and sets, ABT has weakened the whole effect: money down the drain. Craig Salstein—always improving, always evolving—was a fierce Birbanto; Boylston was a moving Gulnare. The peerless Herman Cornejo was as wicked as you would have him be as the slave trader. But it was a terrible idea to have Simkin shirtless as Ali the Slave in the famous Corsaire pas de trois. He’s so slight, so seemingly undernourished, you want to rush up onto the stage and feed him a chocolate malted. Yes, Nureyev bared his chest, but Nureyev had a chest.

There were three other full-evening ballets, each one on for a week. It is a matter of principle with me not to see Onegin, and I recused myself from Kevin McKenzie’s treatment of Swan Lake on the grounds that it’s so irritating. And then there was the Kenneth Macmillan Romeo and Juliet—Lift that girl! Slash that sword! Smooch that harlot! Against my better judgment, I went to one performance—there were eight separate casts—in order to see Semionova and Hallberg. She was appealing, he was ardent. There was an unthrilling Mercutio and a blank Tybalt. About the rest—and there’s a lot of it—let there be silence.

Roberto Bolle
in 'Excelsior.' (Photo ©Luciano Romano, 2012)

Did you know that this was the Year of Italian Culture in the United States? I didn’t, until I read the program notes for Roberto Bolle and Friends Gala, an antipasto of dance snippets put together by the Italian star who reigns supreme over Italian ballet and became a principal at ABT in 2009. Bolle is very tall, very handsome, with super-elegant legs and a huge jump, and he’s a good partner. It’s just that his dancing isn’t very interesting. He has been touring the past 10 years with many versions of this program, which, as he tells us, “is about brotherhood, about inviting the best in the world to create something spectacular.” If only.

Things got going with a bang. Bolle, his chest bare (as it so often is) and wearing a kind of Ancient Greek Speedo, leaped onto the stage with those impossibly extended legs, together with Alina Somova, a young Kirov star, in a pas de deux from the famous Italian dance spectacle of 1881, Excelsior. It was exactly as flashy and meretricious as one has always assumed Excelsior to be. There were 11 numbers in all, best in show the two featuring everyone’s favorite ABT dancer, Herman Cornejo. With Luciana Paris, he gave us Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite, and, though some of us have seen them do it many times, it was like water falling on scorched earth. And then in the second half of the program, Cornejo took on Balanchine’s wonderful Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux—the best performance of it I’ve seen in years. His partner was the very capable Maria Kochetkova, from the San Francisco Ballet, who came close to sabotaging herself with her relentless determination to make eye contact with the audience—just as irritating a form of flirtation as the more usual crime of relentless smiling. With the Tharp and the Balanchine, we had two sips of first-rate choreography. And then we had the rest.

Somova reappeared as the Dying Swan—the healthiest, most robust bird you’ve ever seen. She had the steps, such as they are, but not the slightest understanding of what this famous solo is about. It’s about dying, Alina. Bolle reappeared in a well-known spoof of classical ballet called Le Grand Pas de Deux by someone named Christian Spuck. The ballerina carries a red handbag (sometimes in her teeth) and grows dizzy from her fouettées. All too many of the jokes are pale versions of the fun in Jerome Robbins’ The Concert and the parodies by the Trocks. Sorry, Roberto, but looking up the tutus of the girls when they bend over and expose their undies just isn’t very funny.

There were pas de deux by Uwe Scholtz and Mauro Bigonzetti in the same earnest Euro-style and with the same pair of dancers. It came as no surprise that the Bigonzetti was the better of the two since he’s the better choreographer. Bolle’s shirt was off again in the anguished pas de deux from Roland Petit’s L’Arlesienne, but acting isn’t his strong point. A really lovely young Italian girl, Erika Gaudenzi, was his partner. There was a bland balcony scene from Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet and something ferociously jagged and trendy called Mono Lisa—yes, Mono. And finally a solo for Bolle called Prototype, with “concept and choreography” by Massimiliano Volpini, co-direction by Avantgarde Numerique and Xchanges Vfx Design, plus visual effects by Xchanges Vfx. You’ve got it—technology triumphant, with flashing images of Bolle projected behind Bolle himself. First there was one of him, then two, then three, then seven, then a horde—a thrilling climax for much of the audience, a lot of it swanky Italian-American, who cheered throughout when not chatting and texting.

A couple of nights later, up at the Koch, we had a different kind of gala—this one celebrating the new City Ballet season with three brand new ballets. The big effort was Spectral Evidence, by the leading French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj. I’ve been impressed by some of his work, but this was more depressive than impressive—to be expected, since its subject is the Salem witch trials. It’s not a literal retelling, thank goodness, but a reimagining: four men, four women, the men in sinister clerical black, the women in white dresses with silicone blood on them. There’s a clever construction of white slabs that comes apart, reforms, tilts, and turns into gravestones. The action involves the minister types chastising (while lusting after) the girls—there’s grabbing, struggling and surrendering, as the slabs rearrange themselves. Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild perform the central pas de deux, and they’re superb. But then they always are. The whole cast is upper-echelon, though it hardly matters—there’s nothing particular in the movement to reveal a dancer’s qualities. The score is John Cage vocal music, punctuated by gasps and groans. Why waste perfectly good principals on something like this? Well, why not, since the company now has 27 of them! They might as well earn their keep.

Neverwhere, by Benjamin Millepied, is set to his favorite composer, Nico Muhly. Millepied is at his not-very-good best with small groups, and this piece uses only six dancers, three guys and three gals. Again, there’s a couple with an effective central pas de deux: Sterling Hyltin and Tyler Angle. Everyone’s in scaly, glittering black, including, for the women, boots (with pointes) practically up to the knee. The movement is smooth, the effects are small-scale, and the whole thing swiftly comes and goes. It’s Millepied modest, which is certainly preferable to Millepied ambitious.

Justin Peck, the young choreographer of choice these days—and properly so—came up with another brisk, bright, satisfying piece, his fourth for the company (in which he also performs as a soloist). One of his great strengths is a total understanding of what City Ballet dancers know how to do best: He appreciates and perfectly deploys their speed, attack, technical panache and humor. Here he employs five of them, on a more or less equal-opportunity basis, who share the stage with a cellist and pianist performing very appealing music by Lukas Foss. The three girls are in attractive short dresses—red, white and black. The two men handle the girls easily, happily—most happily, maybe, when they good-naturedly slide them under the piano. The ballet is called Capricious Maneuvers, but it’s far from capricious: One of Peck’s other strengths is confident structuring. This new piece doesn’t extend his range, but it confirms his mastery of it. Where will he go next?

The theme of the gala was a salute to costume. Each premiere was introduced by a short film showing its designer at work, all three of them from the world of fashion—a horrible echo of last year’s Valentino debacle. But Prabal Gurung (Peck), Iris Van Herpen (Millepied) and Olivier Theyskens (Preljocaj) show more respect and understanding of what dancing requires than Valentino did. I do think, however, that I heard one of them stating on film that costumes are as important to ballet as music and choreography. Does Peter Martins really believe this?

The evening opened and closed with appropriate gala cheer. To start off, a buoyant percussive “Fanfare for Orchestra” by John Adams; to end up, the final go-for-broke movement of Balanchine’s Western Symphony. Let’s face it, no choreographer looks good compared to Balanchine, and no designer compares to his favorite, the incomparable Karinska. Comparisons, our mothers told us, are odious, but how to avoid them?

And then, down at the Joyce, there was The Metamorphosis, the much-heralded dance-drama (or something) from England’s Royal Ballet, starring principal dancer Edward Watson. Yes, Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning turned into a giant bug, but not until we’ve seen him going again and again through the dreary motions of his salesman’s job. Is it the deadening routine of bourgeois life that brings on the transformation? Not in Kafka’s great novella, in which the metamorphosis just … happens, in the first line.

This entire elaborate piece, created by Arthur Pita, is a pretext for Watson’s tour-de-force performance. He thrashes, he spasms, he crawls and climbs and clambers. He slides and slips through the brown ooze he’s been secreting. At times, he seems more simian than insectoid, but who’s counting? Watson is terrific, but enough is enough. His family feels the same way, as their initial repulsion/sympathy morphs into irritation. At first, the young sister—in Kafka, an aspiring violinist; here, an aspiring ballet dancer—tries to protect Gregor, but she gets fed up. The sensitive, conflicted mother is helpless. The angry father is alternately belligerent and pathetic. Three men in beards and black hats stomp around. (In the story, they’re lodgers; here, they’re apparently refugees from Fiddler on the Roof.)

We also have a brusque, no-nonsense maid who deals with the bug with neither repulsion nor sympathy. Her job is to clean, and she sweeps, scrubs and mops, shooing Gregor aside whenever he gets in her way. In Kafka’s tragic denouement, he wastes away in shame and guilt—and his family’s negligence. In the Pita version, the maid solves everybody’s problem by deliberately leaving open the high casement window, and we last see the wretchedly obliging Gregor preparing to defenestrate himself—he knows he’s not wanted. Poor bug!

But what a maid! You just can’t find help like that these days.

Richard Alston Dance Company performs 'Devil in the Detail.'

This was the tenth anniversary season of the wildly popular Fall for Dance series at City Center, and it’s been one of the best. Which means what? Not that we were treated to 20, (count ’em, 20) dance masterpieces over the course of five programs, obviously an impossibility, but that the outright misfires were few and the points of interest many—just what you hope for when confronted by a smorgasbord.

Things got off to a terrific start. The first item on the first program was Richard Alston’s The Devil in the Detail, a piece just as fluent and pleasing as his Roughcut, which FFD brought us two years ago. In Britain, Alston has been a major player for many years, but he’s only now beginning to be appreciated on this side of the pond, partly due to his championship by the small but irreplaceable New York Theatre Ballet (whose existence is being threatened by approaching eviction from its headquarters of 34 years—and by a church landlord!) What’s outstanding about Alston’s work is the combination of rare musicality and endless vibrant invention. He has learned from Ashton, from Balanchine, from Robbins, the last of whom he perhaps most closely resembles. In fact, the current piece can be seen as a distant response to Dances at a Gathering—a piano and 10 dancers who turn up in various combinations and carry us away with their breezy, ingenious proceedings. Two important differences: The composer is Scott Joplin, not Chopin, so the dance emphasis is on jazz, rag, swing rather than waltz, mazurka, etude. And, unlike Dances, the Alston piece doesn’t swell; rather, its individual fragments are mostly in the same range and seem to follow in no particular order. It could be longer, it could be shorter; it could be rearranged. So, yes, the Devil—the pleasure—is in the Detail not the whole, but how much pleasure there is!

The rest of Program One followed the standard FFD pattern. After the bang-up opener, a performance by a virtuoso, this one by the celebrated tango dancer Gabriel Missé. Perhaps he’s been over-praised, perhaps he’s aging, but, although his feet flash with their accustomed fire, he now appears somewhat stubby rather than lithe, and he’s not very sexy. Didn’t Valentino teach us that the tango is sex? You have to smolder, but there was no smolder between Missé and his partner, Analía Centurión, in Esencia de Tango. As for a brief pas de deux by City Ballet’s Justin Peck—The Bright Motion, commissioned by City Center, to music by Mark Dancigers—it was a Sara Mearns op, designed to show off her qualities but not wholly convincing. Her white, tight bathing-suit-like costume didn’t give her body the help it needs, and, although the moves certainly demonstrated her capacity, they didn’t give rein to her most telling characteristic: her go-for-brokeness. Her partner, Casey Herd, brought nothing but brawn to the table.

Last up: the return of DanceBrazil with Fé do Sertão, yet another of its storms of tempestuous leaping and flailing and hip-hopping and tumbling—happy, kinetically exciting and inconsequential. The name of one of the dancers reflects the naiveté of the entire enterprise: “Kamiklah Shownté Turner (aka Bambi).” When you’ve seen one of these Brazilian whoop-de-dos, you’ve seen them all.

Program two led off with the Indian group Nrityagram and a piece called Vibhakta, which we’re told demonstrates that “in the union and separation of the male and female principal [sic] lies the secret of all creation.” And for all I know, it does. Two wonderful-looking women, in matching gold costumes, represent both principles, and they perform traditional Indian dance movements, including stomping their feet and fluttering their fingers. The on-stage musicians, including vocalists, were highly effective. Then came 605 Collective, a Canadian sextet, with a piece called Selected Play. The men and women—three of each—are in street clothes, the music is danceable if generic, the tone is roughhouse. Nothing happens beyond the ongoing rumble, a lot of in the semi-dark, a lot of it hip-hoppy (again), all of it strongly danced, all of it arbitrary, none of it necessary.

Worst in show: Light Beings, a mercifully brief duet by Mats Ek to Sibelius. Charlotte Broom and Christopher Akrill, who happen to be the co-artistic directors of the presenting company, Headspacedance, are a mature but jokey couple, dressed in what I assume are traditional Swedish costumes. The tone is cute-rhapsodic. Let it pass, so that we can move on to an event of real consequence: the reemergence here of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, now under the directorship of Virginia Johnson. It presented the highly ambitious Gloria (to Poulenc) by Robert Garland, a large-scale and complicated ballet—yes, the women are on pointe—celebrating the spiritual life. It’s fresh and vigorous, not portentous, but most significant is that it demonstrates the strength and dedication of the new DTH. These dancers are long-limbed, handsome and robust, their energy clearly revved by determination to see their company prevail. They have talent and leadership; let’s hope their financial situation is equally healthy.

Next up, in Program Three, was a modern classic, José Limon’s Moor’s Pavane his four-character reduction of Othello, from 1949. It’s been danced by dozens of companies, this version supplied by the American Ballet Theatre. It boasts glorious music (Purcell), gorgeous costumes and effective, compact storytelling. For the Moor, ABT borrowed Francisco Ruvalcaba from the Limon company. Maybe it will field a Moor of its own when it brings Pavane to the Koch in November. To my surprise, I enjoyed Colin Dunne’s Turn, maybe because I’m one of the six people in America who’ve never seen Riverdance, in which he used to star. Turn is a long stretch of step-dancing—a kind of heavy tap—to an original score by Linda Buckley, performed by a string quartet. Dunne is fast, playful and savvy, although his look is Irish-naïve. Too much amplification, too much repetition, but still he puts on an appealing show.

Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced. Its new piece is called Sombrerisimo, and it features six men and their hats—bowlers, though, not sombreros. Those hats are tossed up and around and passed from guy to guy when the guys aren’t busy being Hispanicly sultry. Twyla Tharp did the hat trick once and for all in Push Comes to Shove—witty and surprising. This was neither. Nor was an early effort by Nacho Duato called Sinfonia India—pretty Mexican folkiness. Its score by Carlos Chávez and its populist choreography were a weak reflection of an Aaron Copland-Martha Graham collaboration. Not only was there watered-down Graham, there was watered-down Agnes de Mille from when she was doing watered-down Graham. Why anyone exhumed this feeble oddity is beyond me.

Dorrance Dance kicked off the fourth program with a work called SOUNDspace, calling attention to the crucial importance of SOUND to this ambitious tap event. A dozen tappers, including the genial Michelle Dorrance herself, keep going and going and going, with considerable variation and smarts, and, of course, a lot of amplified sound. They work in a nice balance of small and large groups, and, at one point, when they’re all tapping away in their white shoes, the shoes are all you can see as they skitter across the otherwise darkened stage. It’s a gimmick, but it’s a good gimmick.

The Doug Elkins Mo(or)town/Redux is less a gloss on Othello than a gloss on the Limon Othello we’d seen a few nights before. The music wasn’t Limon’s Purcell or taken from the Verdi opera; it was Motown songs, the best known being “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” (It’s from Marvin Gaye that the Moor gets the word about Desdemona.) Elkins’s contemporary take on this most harrowing of stories is fluent and lively, but the premise undermines the horror—and the point.

The up-and-coming British choreographer Liam Scarlett brought two major Royal Ballet dancers, Zenaida Yanowksy and Rupert Pennefather, in a new duet called Fratres, to an over-used score by Arvo Pärt. One can see why Scarlett is having so much success so quickly—commissions abound; he’s forceful and can be exciting, though I prefer his fuller pieces to this intense pas de deux, too much in the Christopher Wheeldon mold. As for the grand climax of this program, alas it was Martha Graham’s Rite of Spring in this centenary year of the revolutionary Stravinsky-Nijinsky ballet that caused the famous riot at its first performance. This is the desperate Graham of 1984, and, although The New York Times was still propping her up, it’s a wretched come-down from her years—her decades—of glory, at its worst when it cannibalizes, and dilutes, passages from masterpieces like Night Journey. Its chief claim to notice is the use of Halston for the costumes and the bolts of cloth that get flung across the action as the Chosen One prepares to die. The ultimate word on it back then came from the caustic critic and wit Dale Harris, who headlined his review “Slaughter on Seventh Avenue.”

The last program opened with another reimagining of a Nijinsky ballet, L’Après-midi d’un faune, here reduced (in more ways than one) to Faun. The choreographer is Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the provenance is Sadler’s Wells London, and the music is the great Debussy score—except that Cherkaoui has improved on Debussy by adding music by someone called Nitin Sawnhey: the Big Two, Debussy and Sawnhey. There’s only one nymph in this version, the somewhat stolid Daisy Phillips, but the Faun, James O’Hara, makes up for her stolidity with his mega-narcissistic archings and humpings—lots of bare chest, lots of tossed hair. Think of the Jerry Robbins masterpiece Afternoon of a Faun, first seen on this very stage 60 years ago—think of it and weep.

Then a group called Bodytraffic, from L.A., had fun with some numbers set to classic jazz—Ella, Billie, Oscar Peterson. The low point was an ultra-camp version of “All of Me,” danced and lip-synched by tall, thin Andrew Wojtal. I’m afraid the audience thought he was funny. The other four dancers were clearly at home with this music and the minimal originality brought to it by choreographer Richard Siegal. The whole thing was harmless and mildly pleasurable—a holding operation until the sublime Trocks turned up with their very special Black Swan pas de deux. Odile was the voracious Yakatarina Verbosovich (Chase Johnsey), and Prince Siegfried was the pint-size, bewildered but adoring Innokenti Smoktumuchsky (Carlos Hopuy). She ate him up and spat him out several times, but he didn’t seem to notice, and then she launched into her fabulous fouettées, proving that anything a “she” can do a “he” can do just as well.

This anniversary Fall for Dance went out with a big bang. Robert Battle’s Home, new a couple of years ago, gives us 14 terrific Alvin Ailey dancers, led by their biggest talent, Matthew Rushing (now a guest artist) and the ravishing Linda Celeste Sims. They’re in a club, clubbing away in their jivey, hip-hopping fashion, with Rushing as a somewhat forlorn outsider until he blasts his way into the gang as they’re all swept up together in kinetic bliss. Home will be on at least four Ailey programs here at the City Center starting in early December. Go for it.

Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle in 'Slaughter On Tenth Avenue.' (Photo by Paul Kolnik)

When the City Ballet program labeled “Balanchine Short Stories”—Prodigal Son, La Sonnambula and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue—was announced, it sounded as if we were being asked to consume three main courses in a single meal. And it sort of was like that. But in a way the event turned out to be rewarding, because it contrasted so tellingly with an earlier program, “Balanchine Black & White,” that showcased the abstract Balanchine—the Balanchine which so many people consider his major contribution. They forget not only these three works but other narrative masterpieces like Apollo, Orpheus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Nutcracker.

The black and white program had its ups and downs, beginning with The Four Temperaments, one of Balanchine’s greatest works—one of anyone’s greatest works—now more than 65 years old and still blazing with originality and richness. The high point of this performance was Ashley Bouder’s “Choleric”—she took charge and motored the entire ending. Neither Sean Suozzi as “Melancholic” nor Adrian Danchig-Waring as “Phlegmatic” has yet solved his subtle and demanding role, though each has made a decent start. That Savannah Lowery is inadequate in the central role, “Sanguinic,” isn’t her fault: She’s miscast. Lowery is a large woman with a plush quality; “Sanguinic” was originally the dynamic Maria Tallchief, more recently the territory of Merrill Ashley and Jennie Somogyi. It demands thrust, not plush, and with a nonthruster it loses its energy, and Four T’s droops.

As for the three story ballets, the performances all too strikingly revealed the weaknesses in City Ballet’s coaching these days. Prodigal Son, the greatest of these works, shot itself in the foot at the very beginning—and then again at the end—by assigning young Jonathan Stafford the role of the patriarchal Father. Stafford was shrouded in robes and beard and hoary locks, but every step, every gesture betrayed a man no older, maybe even younger, than his son. This was just ridiculous and added insult to the injury of the sentimentalizing changes to the staging of the final scene—the boy climbing up into his father’s arms. Old Testament rigor is no longer acceptable. And then there’s the disaster of the lighting. Everyone who has known the ballet over the years must remember the glorious shock when the Siren becomes the prow of her boat and her gorgeous burgundy cloak billows out behind her as the sail. For some time now, this breathtaking moment has taken place in such obscurity that you not only don’t see the color of the cloak, you can barely make out that there is a cloak. Something similar happens earlier in the same area of the stage: When the Prodigal first encounters the predatory goons, they viciously thrust their hands out from their massed bodies to provoke him, but now what they do can hardly be seen. Whose turf would be invaded if this self-destructive error were to be corrected?

Both the Sirens we were given were convincing. Teresa Reichlen has the cold, ruthless demeanor of the company’s finest early Sirens, Yvonne Mounsey and Diana Adams. (Edward Villella, the strongest of all Prodigals, talks of how Adams used to petrify him with her icy look.) Maria Kowroski is sexier, bolder, but equally inhuman—in her embrace, the poor boy looks like a trapped puppy. As for the two Prodigals, at least Joaquin De Luz has the right look—dark and wiry—and he has the spring for the opening passages. He doesn’t, however, yet fill the anguished later moments of the Prodigal’s abasement. But he’s far more successful than rosy, ebullient Daniel Ulbricht, who seems to have no inner life whatsoever. His crawl of shame and despair after his despoilment at the hands of the Siren and the goons should expose his tormented awareness of his moral degradation; Ulbricht’s convulsions are all athletic, not internal, and he can’t make up for this by streaking red makeup over his legs and torso to simulate the hardships of his passage. Isn’t anybody in charge watching? If you needed additional testimony to Ulbricht’s lack of connection to this profound role, you could find it in his first cur tain call, where he was not only grinning but blowing a kiss to the audience. He has always been a terrific virtuoso dancer, but he’s never been an artist.

La Sonnambula was also in a sad state. Janie Taylor is an effective Sleepwalker—she has some mystery to her presence, and real intensity; Sterling Hyltin, in her debut, lacked everything except a proficient backward bourrée. She was neat, she was agile, but there wasn’t a scrap of mystery or danger; she might as well have been awake. Robert Fairchild, her Poet, is appealing, but seems too robust for the role and doesn’t understand who he is—that some part of him is complicit with his tragic fate. Taylor’s Poet was Sébastien Marcovici, but one can only suspend disbelief so far. He’s an interesting dancer, but someone—Peter Martins? His mother?—should tell him lovingly that he can no longer appear in pale tights. As for the Coquette and the Baron, it should be explained to them that they’re not a pair of genial hosts at a pleasant masked ball but are in some kind of wicked collusion at a decadent party. Detail after detail is wrong in the current Sonnambula. The best things in it were Lauren Lovette in the divertissement pas de deux, Ulbricht as the Harlequin and the wonderful (and well-rehearsed) action of the corps in the ballroom scene.

Despite all the inadequacies, Balanchine’s storytelling genius comes through: We still grasp what he’s trying to tell us about the poetry and mystery of the Romantic period. If only the dancers could grasp it. If only Martins would forget his pride and bring in the experts to clean things up. The greatest Prodigal and Sleepwalker in the company’s history, Villella and Allegra Kent, are right here in New York. That they’re not being invited to coach “their” roles is a crime against art—and against Balanchine.

(A peculiar detail: Before the first performance of the program, Andrew Sill, City Ballet’s appealing music director, led the orchestra in a demonstration of how Vittorio Rieti, the composer, darkened the texture of the music of Bellini that he was adapting. Sill, however, left out the essential thing: Bellini’s Sonnambula is a joyful comedy, whereas Balanchine was creating a violent, ill-fated drama. Rieti wasn’t responsible for the change, he was simply – and brilliantly – giving Balanchine what he needed.)

As for Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, it’s the least of the three works, but when in 1968 Balanchine exhumed it from the 1936 Rodgers and Hart musical On Your Toes, he knew exactly what was he getting: a raucous, boisterous, sexy hit. Critics were snooty, but audiences loved it and still do—and rightly so. The score, the story, the dance ops are terrific—and just about nonfail. The central role, the Stripper, is simple: It’s all about legs. And that’s what Maria Kowroski is about, too. Her sublime legs flash, strut, scissor; you can’t take your eyes off them—and why should you? That’s what Balanchine intended. Sara Mearns tries hard in the role, but she’s all thigh, not all leg. I have nothing against thighs, far from it, but not these thighs in this role. Mearns is more a zaftig blonde than a ravishing moll, more Alice Faye than Cyd Charisse. She’s at her best in the coda when she can just dance full out, having fun.

Each of the Hoofers—Tyler Angle, then Andrew Veyette—hoofed valiantly, but this is more a role for a great character dancer and tapper than a classicist slumming. Remember, the original Hoofer was that goofy genius, the pre-Scarecrow Ray Bolger. And the 1968 revival was led by Arthur Mitchell (opposite Suzanne Farrell), another outsize personality, while the finest recent exemplar was the beguiling showbizzy Robert LaFosse. Yes, Slaughter is showbiz. And like Balanchine’s other story ballets, it’s brilliantly constructed, seamless, perfect of its kind. It just doesn’t belong on this program. Mitchell reports (in Nancy Reynolds’s essential book, Repertory in Review), “Balanchine often said to me, of this and others, ‘You know, Arthur, when you’re serving a meal, you can’t give all meat.” The only irritating thing about George Balanchine is that he was always right.

One of the oddities of the season was that we were given exactly one performance of Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering. Why? I can only assume that because it uses only a piano, and when it’s programmed with Mauro Bigonzetti’s slick, empty Vespro (piano, mezzo, saxaphone) and Balanchine’s lovely Duo Concertant (piano, violin), it makes possible a night off for the orchestra—at a considerable saving of money. But it was good to see Dances, whatever the reason, since it gave us the chance to relish Tiler Peck (“pink”) in what may be the most moving performance of the final duet I’ve ever seen. It’s also a pleasure to be able for once to appreciate Megan Fairchild. She has the right spunk and bounce for “apricot.”

Nevertheless, over the years, Dances has lost something. That excellent critic Nancy Goldner, describing its early performances, zeroed in on the last moments of the sumptuous waltz for three couples: “Finally, at the climax of the last series of jumps, a girl positively catapults herself with multiple turns in the air into the man’s waiting arms. He catches her and quickly swings her to the floor. Her head misses the floor by an inch or so. This is some joy ride!” Also a scary ride—once I thought Sara Leland was a goner. For years now, the joy and the scare have been gone: The company has gone tame on us.

Sofiane Sylve in
Wheeldon's 'Ghosts.' (Photo by Erik Tomasson)

Here’s what the renowned San Francisco Ballet hasn’t brought to the Koch Theater: anything classical or anything by Balanchine, Ashton, Robbins or Tudor. Instead, it has counted on recently commissioned ballets (all new to New York) by current name choreographers they’ve counted on before—Mark Morris, Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky—plus its version of house choreography, beginning with a recent piece by the artistic director, Helgi Tomasson. Well, there’s nothing to stop an artistic director from presenting his own work, and nothing has stopped Tomasson. The first ballet of his I remember seeing was a pretty, fluent piece called Ballet d’Isoline, which he made for the School of American Ballet in 1983 when he was still dancing for City Ballet. It had nothing to tell us, but it deployed the kids pleasingly. Thirty years later, he’s given us his recent Trio (Tchaikovsky), which is pretty and fluent, deploys his dancers pleasingly—the first duty of a house choreographer—and has nothing to tell us. He has made almost 50 ballets, and he has made no progress at all. There’s no sign of a choreographic personality; Trio is implacably generic.

Another house choreographer, Yuri Possokhov, was a leading dancer in the company and, like his boss, knows the dancers and dishes up material that shows them off well. The music is Prokofiev’s “Classical Symphony,” and the ballet is indeed called Classical Symphony. The company’s men are strong jumpers, and he has them madly jetéing around in circles (gasps from the audience). Little Maria Kochetkova tosses off the obligatory fouettés (more gasps). It’s all predictable, efficient, provincial. Edwaard Liang has worked for San Francisco before, but Symphonic Dances is more ambitious than anything he has done until now. The Rachmaninov score is long, hard-driving, exciting, and Liang doesn’t have the wherewithal to fill it. The chief weapon in his armory is the lift. Those poor ladies: They’re swung up, over, behind, around, through; they’re coiled, curled, spiraled. Let’s hope they’re airsick-resistant. Liang isn’t particularly musical, but he keeps the energy level up. I wish he wouldn’t.

Energy is also the main ingredient of Wayne McGregor’s work, but it’s a different kind of energy—a modern dance kind. McGregor is a leading British choreographer, and whenever I see his work I find myself responding to the unsparing attack, the convulsive movement, the exaggerated penchées, the huge extensions, the thrusting, the kicking. Yes, Borderlands all seems arbitrary—we’re not talking structure here—but the dancers are relentlessly on the move; it’s one long climax. Tomasson, Possokhov and Liang exhaust your patience; McGregor exhausts your powers of resistance.

Alexei Ratmansky’s From Foreign Lands is a far cry from such recent works of his as New York City Ballet’s odd and wonderful Namouna and his thrilling version of the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances for Miami City Ballet. It’s a lovely divertissement, presenting a series of modest national dances for small groups of dancers. The music, by Moritz Moszkowski, is from 1884—appealing numbers that elicit from Ratmansky charming vignettes: Russian, Italian, German, Spanish and Hungarian in character. There are no big effects, but there’s a cornucopia of fascinating small ones—the hallmark of this superb choreographer is constant invention, never fussy, never assertive, always alive. I was reminded of the stylish restraint and warm humanity of Bournonville. Ratmansky’s From Foreign Lands couldn’t be more different from McGregor’s Borderlands, and it’s a tribute to Tomasson’s dancers that they looked so good in both.

Christopher Wheeldon’s Ghosts (no connection to Ibsen) was strangely opaque. Was the set a dark glade? There was certainly a big fuzzy moon up in the nighttime sky. Were the women’s pale flimsy dresses meant to suggest the afterlife—like the Wilis in Giselle? Was there a touch of Kabuki? The vocabulary was rhapsodic (lifts again) for beautiful Yuan Yuan Tan in her duet with Damian Smith, more edgy for Sofiane Sylve and her two admirers, Tiit Helimets and Shane Wuerthner. Wheeldon knows all about partnering, but the various elements of this ballet—including the score by heavy-metallist C. F. Kip Winger, though more soupy than metallic here—don’t add up to anything much beyond anodyne.

It always distresses me not to enjoy a new work by Mark Morris, but his Beaux left me more perplexed than stimulated. The music, by Bohuslav Martinu, seemed distancing, not inviting. The Isaac Mizrahi costumes—all nine boys in sherbet-colored camouflage unitards—blended together in an unhelpful way. Ditto his background mural, in more or less the same colors. And why do without women if you’re going to have your men do exactly what women would do? Is one man borne, soaring, across the stage by two other men any more interesting than if he had been a woman? Is the idea to affirm that “anything they can do, we can do better”? It wouldn’t matter if the individual tropes took Morris into new territory, but they don’t. There are engaging examples of his talent for group action, for ingenious patterning, for repeated gestures, but the similarity of everything to everything and everyone to everyone makes for a bland exercise rather than a compelling dance.

So the repertory this far has been less than convincing (we still have Wheeldon’s Cinderella to come). But the company was convincing—considerably stronger than when it was last here. Then it was the men who dominated; now it tends to be the women. The big plus is Sylve, who joined up after an interesting but not defining stay at City Ballet. There, her European star quality wasn’t essential; here, it’s transforming, because this isn’t a company of stars, of larger-than-life individuals who dominate the stage. Instead, the dancers tend to be alike—not characterless, certainly, but all on the same level and in the same mode. The boys in particular, even when they look unalike, dance alike, almost as if there were an institutional resistance to anyone standing out, though Pascal Molat and Hansuke Yamamoto can strike sparks.

Sylve stood out in everything—the Ratmansky, the Wheeldon, the McGregor and the Liang. Tall, dark, handsome, electric, she animates every passage she’s assigned. You can see her succeeding in any major company—anywhere except City Ballet. (I guess, given her European background, she just wasn’t meant for Balanchine.) Sarah Van Patten is a dancer who has steadily grown and now glows with confidence and command. Kochetkova, from ABT, is a Natalia Osipova wanna-be, her allegro attack more irritating than exciting. Frances Chung, though, handles assertive roles more naturally, while Tan and Vanessa Zahorian possess ballerina beauty and classiness.

It was a pleasure watching this excellent company, and it would be even more of a pleasure, I imagine, watching it in less trendy, more substantial repertory. Let’s hope they’re back soon to show us what else they can do.

To prove that I haven’t been sitting at home nights: a quick dash through some other recent events. Bill T. Jones in collaboration with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company couldn’t resist adding a version of The Rite of Spring—called by them A Rite—to the centenary celebrations of its notorious premiere. This pretentious undertaking took place at BAM and involved deconstruction, reconstruction and just plain destruction—of my usually placid and benign take on life. Jones can choreograph persuasively, but here his work was undercut and overwhelmed by concept. With luck, we won’t have to see it again until the bicentenary.

And speaking of BAM, that’s where William Forsythe’s even more pretentious and conceptual Sider was greeted with huzzahs by his ardent admirers and the Brooklyn audience’s unflagging delight in being in on the latest wave. Eighteen performers, some of them in medieval get-up, ran around kicking large slabs of cardboard. That, essentially, was it, for well over an hour. Well, yes, one head-shaven guy spouted a lot of garbled language that, we’re told, was triggered by a Shakespeare tragedy (Hamlet, I believe). There were occasional supertitles: “She is to them as they are to us” and variations thereof. One sheet of cardboard carried the message “In disarray.” The gang cleverly pieced together from the cardboard a tottery structure that I thought was an air-raid shelter (there were plane noises just then), but one of my colleagues thought it was a shantytown shack. Take your pick. To appreciate the full dreariness of all this, you had to have been there, but I’m happy for your sake if you weren’t. The saddest part is that Forsythe, whether you admired him or not, was once a serious choreographer.

We’ve also had the venerable Lar Lubovitch down at the Joyce. He has been doing it for 45 years, and hats off to his persistence. The program I saw (one of two) began with three duets, no doubt designed to display his versatility. Duet from Concerto Six Twenty-Two (that’s Mozart’s “Clarinet Concerto, K. 622”) shows us two men in white, inching toward each other, connecting and separating. Vez, a premiere, is a reworking of Lubovitch’s Fandango, with new music by Randall Woolf replacing Ravel’s Bolero (a true mercy). It’s all black and red and flamenco-ish, as Clifton Brown and Nicole Corea do things to each other in that unavoidable Hispanic way, while a guitarist and vocalist strum and moan. Whereas in The Time Before the Time After, Katarzyna Skarpetowska and Reed Luplau do their violent and frustrating modern things to each other accompanied by Stravinsky’s “Concertino for String Quartet”—to not much avail.

The big piece on this program was called Men’s Stories: A Concerto in Ruin to “Audio Collage and Original Music” by Scott Marshall. Now here’s something amazing: Just like Mark Morris’s Beaux, it featured nine male dancers! A coincidence? A conspiracy? The Lubovitch is a free-flowing, expressive piece without much depth that gives the company males both individual opportunities and challenging interactions. The music is a raid on Beethoven’s “Emperor” piano concerto, with shreds of other things flung at it—here a “Chiri Chiri Bim,” there a jazzy “Caro Mio Ben.” For me, the most appealing aspect of the Lubovitch experience was seeing the exemplary Clifton Brown, sprung from Alvin Ailey. As always, he gave his all, and he fitted right in.

Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada in 'Cinderella.'
(© Erik Tomasson)

The fairy gods were smiling last week (when they weren’t grimacing) as, against all odds, two important choreographers, on consecutive nights, brought their cheeky versions of two of our best-loved fairy tales to town. Are these ballets timeless, like the stories themselves? Far from it. Do I want to see them again? Nope. Do they have virtues? They do, and no surprise, since both Christopher Wheeldon and Matthew Bourne have smarts and audacity. What more do you need? Well …

Wheeldon, creating his Cinderella for the San Francisco Ballet and the Dutch National Ballet, faced the same problem all Cinderella ballets face: the score. It’s Prokofiev, and there’s too much of it. (The same is true of his Romeo and Juliet—there’s more music than is needed, and choreographers have to pad and vamp.) The best version is Ashton’s, on view this coming spring season at ABT, which has ravishing passages and effective slapstick (the stepsisters) and is coherent. But it’s defeated, finally, by the absence of a satisfying conclusion—the romantic resolution just isn’t there in the music. Besides, Cinderella isn’t an interesting figure; she’s a projection of young girls’ fantasies—things happen to her, but she doesn’t take action on her own. It doesn’t take a lot of gumption to be fitted for a glass slipper. ABT’s recent version, by James Kudelka, was dull, duller, dullest, beginning with a first act in which nothing happens except that Cinderella sweeps and sweeps. With luck, it’s gone forever.

Wheeldon has swept, too—he’s swept away lots of traditional business. Most crucially, he’s sidestepped the only tension the story really has, the desperate moments at the ball as the clock ticks toward midnight and Cinderella is about to be unmasked. The tension-filled music is there, but the dance doesn’t respond to it. Likewise, we don’t get to see the stepsisters being (over)dressed for the ball or being put through their paces by the dancing master. And Cinderella, who in any case isn’t seriously oppressed, is protected and succored not by her fairy godmother but by the Fates—four stalwart, masked Nubians who tote her around when they’re not busy doing the housework for her. Now there’s a girl’s fantasy fulfilled!

We do get young Prince Guillaume, first as a mere lad, horsing around with his pal, Benjamin, then as a young man pretending to be a mendicant and being ministered to at the fire by kind Cinderella while her stepfamily is being mean. (They’ll live to regret it.) In a flashback, we’ve had the child Cinderella watering the ground with her tears after seeing her mother die—there’s a blood-soaked handkerchief, so it must be TB. And from that tear-stained ground grows a mighty tree that comes to dominate the stage and which—in the ballet’s most brilliant coup—is transformed into the carriage that will carry Cinderella to the ball. (This stunning sequence was designed by the virtuoso puppeteer Basil Twist.)

So the Prince has met Cinderella before the ball, spoiling the impact of their first spotting each other there. Clementine, the sweeter of the two sisters, is allowed a romance with Benjamin (the other sister is barely characterized). The father is a man without qualities. The stepmother gets drunk and vomits. (Ha, ha.) These and other variations on the story as we know it are the work of the librettist, playwright Craig Lucas.

The strength of the production lies mostly in the sets and costumes by Julian Crouch. But Wheeldon has also invented some charming passages for the cast, like the lineup of pretenders to the missing gold shoe (not a glass slipper, who knows why?) seated in a long row of chairs downstage. Some of the dances for the Spirits of the four seasons who come to help Cinderella as she prepares for the ball are interesting and amusing pastiche, Wheeldon slyly and affectionately tipping his hat to Ashton’s brilliant rendering of these dances. And he has some fun (and we do too) with the foreign princesses—Russian, Spanish, Balinese—brought to the ball to entice the Prince to choose a wife. The waltzes at the ball are sprightly if not highly original, but how do you fill all that ball music?

The rest of the choreography, unfortunately, is pallid, particularly the duets between the lovers—conventional stuff that relies all too heavily on ecstatic lifts, the curse of today’s ballets. There should be a law. This leaves the ballet without a heart, and the dancers with not much that’s interesting to dance. The first cast was, in the San Francisco way, solid and attractive but without thrills. Maria Kochetkova was a pleasing lyrical Cinderella but not individual enough to make you fall in love. The Prince was a sturdy (perhaps too sturdy) old San Francisco standby, Joan Boada. Frances Chung was a funny and appealing Clementine. Taras Domitro made something fresh and appealing out of Benjamin. But the real stars were Crouch and Twist—and Christopher Wheeldon for unleashing them. And of course the company’s exemplary conductor, Martin West.

I hated Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake when it first turned up, and then when it was televised, and then when it returned. Not because of the gay agenda and the gender-bending—all those husky guys as the luckless Swan Queen and her girlfriends—but because of the puerile adolescent angst (“Oh, how I suffer because no one understands my tormented psyche”) and the I’m-a-naughty-boy pleasure in distorting a great work of art. But at least it had a highly charged point of view. Bourne’s latest, The Sleeping Beauty, has no point of view except its determination to score. The result is a not very provocative hit that doesn’t undermine the great Tchaikovsky-Petipa masterpiece so much as fiddle around with it harmlessly before imploding in confusion and dopiness.

The first half—The Prologue and Act One—tell an amusing story, even if it isn’t the story’s story. The baby Aurora’s christening doesn’t take place with pageantry and celebration; instead, the six good fairies and the wicked Carabosse swarm into the princess’s bedchamber and bestow their gifts and curses in private. (Not having a court scene either here or at the Wedding saves a lot of money in dancers and costumes.) But before that, there has been a prologue to The Prologue—we find out in a flashback that the reason Carabosse is so pissed off isn’t just that she hasn’t been invited to the Ceremony but that it was she who produced a baby for the King and Queen when they couldn’t produce one for themselves. (This is back in 1890, pre-in vitro.)

Bourne gives us a darling puppet baby—a baby with a strong personality, who scampers about the room, climbs the curtains, makes mischief but, of course, is lovable. And this is the same Aurora we next meet when she’s 21 at her birthday party: She’s cute as a button, a handful, a hoyden, all chugging arms and perky smiles and—who would have thunk it?—rolling around in the rosebushes with young Leo, the Royal Gamekeeper. Since she’s already met her man, what’s the point of the suitors vying for her hand? No one’s going to make this minx marry Sir Right. The scene is a lawn-tennis party at the height of the Edwardian era, and it’s furnished with nostalgia and amusing invention—Petipa meets Downton Abbey.

And then: Carabosse’s curse! But the poor old witch has died offstage—from an overdose of plot—so that she can be replaced by her son, Caradoc, a hunk from hunkland. There goes the ball game (almost). He’s wicked, he’s dangerous, he’s sexy. No wonder Aurora is mesmerized. She’s pricked by a rose (black, not red), she’s saved from death by the (male) Lilac Fairy, she falls asleep, and the curtain falls—but not until Count Lilac (note his title) sinks his fangs into Leo’s neck so that he too can come back in a hundred years. Sensation!

All this narrative has been handled with a light and pleasant touch, almost letting you forget the original fairy variations (Bourne’s take on them has wit and energy) and the Rose Adagio (Margot Fonteyn lived in vain). But the Second Act is a disaster. Now it’s all about Good and Evil, basically in disco mode—Caradoc is relentless with his swirling black and red effects and his ruthless snatching of Aurora, whom Leo has revived with a kiss. (Caradoc’s kiss didn’t do the trick.) But Lilac is on hand to save the day—if there’s one thing Bourne likes it’s two macho guys wrestling—and Aurora is released from the spell of Caradoc’s blatant sexuality and is back where she belongs, in the arms of the true-blue if ingenuous Leo. The vampire caper is forgotten and Princess and Gamekeeper, dressed in today’s casual democratic garb—the time is Now—enjoy yet another pas de deux of ecstatic lifts, as a result of which a new adorable puppet baby is born.

Forget the silliness of this part of the plot—why, for instance, a Vision Scene when Aurora and Leo already know each other all too well? Forget the clichéd nature of the big dance numbers and romantic encounters. The Sleeping Beauty will be restored to itself in far less time than 100 years.

Bourne’s real crime is one of omission: There’s absolutely nothing left of the profound implications of what Tchaikovsky and Petipa created. But the costumes and sets are terrific, some of the plot deviations are amusing, and a lot of the dancing was fine, although Hannah Vassallo’s frisky Aurora was too reminiscent of Eloise (of the Plaza) for me. The believable and appealing Chris Trenfield was Leo. Carabosse and Caradoc were both played by a menacing Adam Maskell. (Is this the first time a single performer has impersonated both a mother and her son?) Strong or weak, all the dancing is subordinate to the concept: Matthew Bourne is more a stager than a choreographer.

Better an overcooked Beauty, though, than an undercooked Cinderella.

Sarah Lane as Miranda, Marcelo Gomes as Prospero and Daniil Simkin as Ariel in Alexei Ratmansky's 'The Tempest.' (Photo by Marty Sohl/American Ballet Theatre)

The most highly anticipated dance event of the fall was Alexei Ratmansky’s staging of The Tempest for ABT. In recent years he’s been our most satisfying choreographer; Shakespeare’s play—his final statement—is unutterably beautiful; and there’s wonderful incidental music for it by Sibelius. What’s more, Ratmanksy has finally traded in (I hope permanently) those Euro-trendy designers he’s used in the past and turned to the experienced and brilliant Santo Loquasto for his set and costumes. The result may not be everything I hoped for, but it comes close: This is a Tempest to savor.

Ratmansky’s most startling departure from the norm is his reimagining of the exiled Duke of Milan, Prospero, the motor of the drama, as a young(ish) and virile dramatic figure rather than the usual elderly magus. It couldn’t be done for the play—the plot doesn’t really work with a young Prospero—but it’s fine for the ballet, since it makes possible a less static leading character than Shakespeare’s grave savant. Marcelo Gomes is both moving and sexy in this role, although there’s no one for him to be sexy with. Except, perhaps, his gentle servant Ariel, thrillingly performed by Daniil Simkin, who is just as androgynous, just as not-of-this-world, as Ariel is meant to be. He’s impossibly thin in his tight, white unitard, his bizarre look crowned by blazing red spiky hair, and Ratmansky ingeniously exploits his aptitude for airborne movement while providing him with the opportunity for the most moving passage in the ballet, his farewell to his master when Prospero frees him from his servitude. This role justifies Simkin’s place in the company.

The one serious flaw in Ratmansky’s conception is his failure to create a Caliban who acts as a sufficiently powerful counterforce to Ariel, the subhuman as opposed to the suprahuman. In Shakespeare, Caliban’s relation to Prospero is as important, as meaningful, as Ariel’s, but not here. This Caliban barely has anything to do except look scruffy and roll around on the ground; he’s hardly malignant, he hardly matters, and we’re not prepared for the emotional ending when he’s left alone on the island, abandoned by the master he hates. Alas, instead of giving us a large menacing creature, Ratmanksy has cast the superb Herman Cornejo—small and lively, imposing in his virtuosity rather than his person—in a role that in no way exploits or acknowledges his great natural talents. Without a Prospero-Caliban relationship to balance the Prospero-Ariel one, The Tempest loses much of its resonance.

Everything else is ingenious and appropriate. The Miranda of Sarah Lane—at last coming into her own—and the Ferdinand of the exquisite Joseph Gorak are exactly right, and they’ve been given a lovely pas de deux that reflects the famous speech of Miranda’s on first seeing Ferdinand: “O brave new world that has such people in’t.” Roman Zhurbin is particularly moving as King Alonso, both when he learns that Ferdinand, his son, is missing, and then again when Ferdinand is restored to him. The Tempest, after all, like Shakespeare’s other late romance-comedies The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline and Pericles, is a play about forgiveness and reconciliation. Ratmansky gets this just right. As for the comic relief, the drunken Trinculo and Stephano, they’re no more tedious here than they are in the original.

Loquasto has done a first-rate job with the décor. There’s a big shipwrecked boat that serves many functions as it’s moved about and adjusted to the needs of the plot, and the costumes are handsome and serviceable, although I found those for “Chorus of the Winds” over-elaborate with their vibrant shades of turquoise and their extravagant head pieces—they distract from the inventiveness of the choreography. But that’s a minor complaint to bring against Ratmansky’s major achievement—a Tempest that rings true as both an homage to Shakespeare and an accomplishment in itself.

This season’s opening night gala began with a radiant performance of Theme and Variations, which Balanchine created for ABT in 1947 and which remains the most important work the company has ever commissioned. It’s famous as a template of classicism, demanding the clearest demonstration of ballet technique: The dancers have no place to hide. The original lead couple were Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch, two paragons of strength and style, and since then such technically magnificent ballerinas as Gelsey Kirkland and Kyra Nichols have brought to it the perfection it requires. There’s no one at City Ballet today with the qualities of grandeur, strength and command it demands, but ABT has Gillian Murphy, and we’re the grateful beneficiaries. Her performance last Wednesday was both towering and luminous. The technical difficulties presented no problems for her, as we’ve come to expect, but beyond that, the musicianship, the flow, the ease were ravishing.

This was Balanchine as he is meant to be. Murphy’s partner, the less experienced James Whiteside, handled himself honorably—the infamous series of double air turns to the knee were clean (enough), and he was generally accomplished. He isn’t really, however, the right partner for Murphy: Their disparity in experience and breadth of expression is evident, and she is better shown off by a partner with a grander physique. But if she felt under-partnered, you wouldn’t have known it from her demeanor or her performance. Like Kyra Nichols, she’s an Apollonian dancer, a true Balanchine dancer, and a living treasure.

Gillian Murphy and Marcelo Gomes in 'Bach Partita.' (Photo by Gene Schiavone/ABT)

What should have been the most anticipated dance event of the season was the revival of Twyla Tharp’s Bach Partita, an absolutely stunning ballet, first seen in 1983 and in mothballs ever since. Is ABT crazy? This is the finest classical ballet since Balanchine’s death, which also took place in 1983. A coincidence—perhaps. Tharp’s response to Bach is in the glorious spirit of Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco: This is joyous, almost jazzy Bach, uplifting without being sententious, endlessly inventive without being fussy, light-hearted yet at times piercing. From the first moment to the last—and it’s a long piece—Tharp here does what Balanchine does: She follows the rules while making them her own. The result is total exhilaration.

Bach Partita is big. There are three principal couples, 14 demi-soloists and 16 in the corps, and they’re all stretched to the limit—what a gift to a company of artistically ambitious dancers! First among almost equals is—no surprise—Gillian Murphy, with her inimitable aplomb and staggering technique. Watch her toss off a quadruple turn or balance effortlessly on her toe—she’s a paradigm of cool excitement, and she’s set off beautifully by the stalwart and supple Marcelo Gomes. If only he had been her partner in Theme and Variations.

The beautiful Polina Semionova has the clarity and allure Tharp demands for her role, and James Whiteside is a more suitable partner for her than he was for Murphy: He’s an eager, capable dancer, but he’s still a work in progress. As for the third ballerina, Stella Abrera, Tharp has provided her with a career-making role. She’s been on the second level of ABT casting for far too long; here, she’s dynamic, glamorous, expansive; she’d be stealing the show except that everyone is stealing the show. And her partner, Calvin Royal III, with the tremendous reach of his legs and arms and his happy spirit, is another attention-grabber. He needs polish, but he’s on his way.

The demi-soloists include many of the company’s important dancers, from Misty Copeland, Yuriko Kajiya and Luciana Paris to Craig Salstein, Blaine Hoven and Joseph Gorak, and they’re all out there carrying the Tharpian ball. (The girls have a particularly interesting challenge: At one point, they switch costumes, then switch back.) Again, Santo Loquasto is the tactful and satisfying costume designer, and Jennifer Tipton’s lighting is as always perfection.

There’s so much going on in this work that you want to see it again right away (at least with this cast). Although it’s full to bursting with invention, nothing gets in the way of anything else; it’s a lesson in lucidity. And it leaves me regretting that Tharp didn’t push herself further, or wasn’t pushed further, in this direction. But at least this major work has at long last been resurrected, and the audience gave it a real and heartfelt ovation—you can always tell the difference. I’m happy for her, I’m happy for ABT, and I’m happy for us.

And let us remark on the pleasure of seeing the company back at the Koch Theater after an absence of 37 years. The City Center is too small for it, the Met is too big for it, but the Koch is just right! And Twyla is ABT’s Goldilocks.

Gillian Murphy and Marcelo Gomes in Twyla Tharp’s 'Bach Partita.'

First, hats off to ABT, that schizophrenic organization, which has grown steadily in stature these last few years. Yes, we get all those tired full-evening potboilers every spring—the Romeos, the Swans, the Onegins, all too often featuring tired principals and tired corps—but look what else the company has given us this year. First and foremost, the revival of Twyla Tharp’s intoxicating Bach Partita, a big work brimming with invention and energy, that’s been lying dormant since its ABT premiere 30 years ago! Three principal couples, 14 demi-soloists, a corps of 16—every dancer on that stage was giving her (his) all, moving as if his (her) life depended it. And given Tharp’s perfectionism, maybe it did. Joyous, jazzy, brilliantly structured, Bach Partita is the most exciting classical ballet of the past few decades. And what a set of performances! Gillian Murphy, on top of every technical challenge; Polina Semionova, radiantly lyrical; and Stella Abrera—glamorous and expansive—proving how ready she’s been to move into the top ranks.

Speaking of Murphy, her towering performance in Balanchine’s Theme and Variations was a revelation—commanding yet relaxed, so strong and grounded there was no need for push or punctuation. She’s a paradigm. And speaking of paradigms, here’s to Marcelo Gomes, who brings his strength, dignity and generosity to everything he dances. As Prospero, he anchored Alexei Ratmansky’s new staging of The Tempest, itself a mixed blessing—this final statement of Shakespeare’s doesn’t lend itself to dance the way A Midsummer Night’s Dream does—but notable for its handsome look and for providing the bizarrely androgynous Daniil Simkin with the role of his career: the bizarrely androgynous Ariel. A flaming performance. (The ballet’s greatest flaw: no counterbalancing Caliban.)

Ratmansky was everywhere this year. His exciting Concerto DSCH at City Ballet, his intriguing Nutcracker (for ABT, at BAM even now). ABT also presented Ratmansky’s triple bill of knotty and demanding works to Shostakovich. This was the most artistically ambitious venture of the year, and it will take time to see whether the three ballets work best together or absorbed separately into the repertory. But compare this kind of ambition to City Ballet’s recent run of meretricious works involving Paul McCartney, Calatrava and Valentino. Oddly enough, PR ops rarely compare favorably with large talent and serious intent.

But City Ballet, despite its rudderless artistic leadership, gave considerable pleasure this year. Tiler Peck is the company’s finest dancer. Everything she does is clear, easy, supremely musical. She was the most affecting “Pink Girl” in Dances at a Gatheringsince Patty McBride, the strongest Allegro Brillante ballerina in decades, a wonderful Aurora in Peter Martins’s Sleeping Beauty. Other City Ballet ballerinas come in and out of focus—the over-praised Sara Mearns more out than in this year, and Sterling Hyltin either enchanting or miscast (as in La Sonnambula). I’m not sure you can miscast Tiler Peck. And let’s not take the gorgeous Maria Kowroski for granted: Her leggy turn in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue was a complete knockout. (But then who else has legs like hers?) The company’s new works were neither awful nor glorious, but one old work was good to have back: Martins’s Hallelujah Junction,his strongest and most convincing ballet.

Let’s hear it for some other exemplary performers: Michael Trusnovec, Paul Taylor’s leading male dancer (and maybe America’s, too)-—everyone, really, in the Taylor company, which is looking so good in its new home at the Koch Theater. (So did ABT did in the fall.) Special applause for Taylor’s Parisa Khobdeh and Sean Mahoney. Sofiane Sylve, who has made herself essential at San Francisco Ballet, having failed to do so at NYCB. She vivified the company’s New York season. Just about everyone at Alvin Ailey. (Keep an eye on Daniel Harder and Rachael McLaren.) The new artistic director, Robert Battle, is giving both the repertory and the dancers a needed jolt. Again, just about everyone in the current Mark Morris family, who had their usual triumph in the Lincoln Center summer season with L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, but also gave us a fascinating program in the Morris studio that included an extended, and riveting, duet called Jenn and Spencer, danced by Jenn Weddel and Spencer Ramirez. (What will they call it if some other couple takes over?)

As always, Fall for Dance offered some revelations, beginning with its first offering of the season, Richard Alston’s The Devil in the Detail. Alston, a major figure in Britain, is finally coming into his own in our town. And it was a happy harbinger to watch the return of the Dance Theatre of Harlem with Robert Garland’s ambitious and moving Gloria. Also, thank you Fall for Dance for the year’s only sighting of the irrepressible Trocks, with their very special take on the Black Swan pas de deux. Poor little Prince Siegfried (Carlos Hopuy as Innokenti Smoktunovsky) is helpless up against Odile (Chase Johnsey as Yakatarina Verbosovich) and her merciless fouettés.

And three cheers for New York’s most essential dance institution, the School of American Ballet, whose annual student performance this year was one of its finest—not due to any individual star who stood out but to the general high level of ability and focus, spurred on by those superb teachers and stagers, Suki Schorer and Susan Pilarre. As long as S.A.B. is doing its job, the future is possible.

Finally, what a terrific performance from Irina Dvorovenko as the Russian ballerina in the Encores! revival of Rodgers and Hart’s On Your Toes! When she was being a real Russian ballerina at ABT these past years I found her hard to take. Who knew she had such a great sense of humor and was so sexy? On her toes in On Your Toes she really let it rip!

Let’s not linger on our stroll down the dark side of Memory Lane—this isn’t the season for schadenfreude. And yet … it was a year that more and more choreographers overworked ecstatic lifts and rhapsodic swirls. (Kenneth McMillan has a lot to answer for.) Most recent example: Martha Clarke in Chéri. It was also yet another year of inappropriate grinning. And alas, it was the centenary year of The Rite of Spring, resulting in the Martha Graham company giving us her pathetically weak, Halstonized 1984 version, and BAM presenting the pretentious Bill T. Jones-Anne Bogart version, lots of philosophizing and attitudinizing. One reviewer said it was “more than a choreographic rendering of Stravinsky,” but it was actually a lot less. Equally tedious at BAM—maybe even more tedious—was William Forsythe’s Sider, in which a lot of dedicated dancers kicked slabs of cardboard around the stage and chanted garbled Shakespeare. Matthew Bourne brought us his Sleeping Beauty, complete with vampires, and Christopher Wheeldon, via the San Francisco company, brought us a Cinderella with a vomiting stepmother but no countdown at the ball. Someone named Nitin Sawnhey added some music of his own to Debussy’s score for L’Après-midi d’un faune—“Dear Fall for Dance, thanks. Claude.” And someone else allowed ghastly décor by Faile to deface the lobby of the Koch Theater—trendiness never sleeps at Peter Martins’ City Ballet. On the other hand, to end on a positive note, the new acoustics continue to thrill.

'Grace.'

Robert Battle became the new artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2011, succeeding the formidable Judith Jamison, who had herself succeeded Ailey, the founder. The company was always wildly successful, the dancing spectacular, yet for almost 15 years now, I’ve been attending with a heavy heart, because the repertory was so inferior. Almost all of Ailey’s own pieces, with the exception of the inevitably stirring Revelations (seen on nearly every program), came across as dated and tiresome, with their lumpy mix of Martha Graham, Broadway, Africanisms and faux spirituality. (This year’s Memoria is a case in point.) As for Jamison, she was a force of nature but useless as a choreographer. A few outstanding works slipped into the repertory—the worthiest being Ronald K. Brown’s Grace—but on the whole, what we were given, year after year, through the company’s sold-out, five-week seasons at the City Center, could be compressed into four words: terrific dancers, lackluster dances.

It quickly became clear that Battle was determined to refresh the repertory. His most daring move was to bring in Paul Taylor’s Arden Court, that highly charged, ebullient masterpiece set to the exhilarating music of the Baroque composer William Boyce. The dancers gave it their all—in the first season, a little too much of their all; they had the energy, the drive, the delight but not yet the refinement of the Taylor way of movement. This year, they found that refinement without losing their propulsive attack. This was an Arden Court to be proud of, and the audience’s passionate response was the real thing, not the automatic applause it gives everything.

Another happy acquisition was Rennie Harris’ Home, in which a loner—originally the great Matthew Rushing, now, alternating with him, the very bright comer Daniel Harder, who even resembles him—circles a bunch of dynamic and colorful hip-hoppers, striving for a way to join the community. The core group struts its stuff, individually and together, until at last it makes way for the stranger. Or is he an outcast, returning “home”? The individual bits aren’t particularly original, but the accumulative effect is heady. Ailey dancers live on energy, and Home, like Arden Court, demands it.

So, too, does a new addition to the repertory this season, Bill T. Jones’ D-Man in the Waters (Part I), to Mendelssohn’s glorious “Octet for Strings.” Alas, the music is exploited, not embodied, and the piece as a whole, for all its special effects—the slides, the tumbles—comes across as the work of a choreographer who has seen Taylor’s Esplanade too many times without learning anything from it. Scheduling it on the same program as Arden Court didn’t help: the similarities were all too apparent—and so was the difference in quality.

Much more daring, and much more successful, was Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, a high-voltage, high-risk ensemble piece by this important British choreographer. Some people find his work arid and forced. I’m always drawn to its go-for-broke excitements, even if it’s not always clear what they’re leading to. The look is white, severe; the difficulties daunting. The company rose to them with all the relentless drive McGregor demands. This is highly exciting work, and again the audience rose to it wholeheartedly.

Lift, a new piece by the trendy Aszure Barton, was no more convincing than anything else I’ve seen by her. Poor new music, poor new costumes, poor dance invention; only the spelling of her name is original. Far worse, though, is Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, a piece of Eurotrash that has crept into the repertory of all too many companies. We didn’t need it in your company, Mr. Battle; it’s your one real failure of taste.

A new piece by Ronald K. Brown, Four Corners, didn’t make as strong an impression as his Grace continues to do. The movement—all undulation and thrust—is strong and seductive, but I don’t yet see its structure or its point. Whereas Grace continues to challenge and move us. Linda Celeste Sims is inspiring as the spiritual leader, perhaps the God, who leads her people to redemption. Alicia Graf Mack, delicate and powerful, is her wonderful counterpart—in red until she and her group join the Sims group in white and depart, purified, through the pearly gates. 

The repertory was punctuated by duets, including a revival of Ailey’s Pas de Duke, a pièce d’occasion made in 1976 for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jamison—contrasting her height with his slightness and making jokes about their so-different dance styles. Pas de Duke makes less of an impact with less charismatic, though highly attractive, performers. 

So many Ailey dancers are so good that there’s no way to list them all or single out all those who made a special impression. Even so: I was especially taken by Sean A. Carmon, a thin, wiry man who’s both technically strong and a discriminating artist. (He stood out, for instance, for the subtlety of his performance in the “Sinner Man” section of Revelations.) 

The lesson I take from the season’s programming is that Robert Battle is deliberately moving away from the corny old rep in favor of dances that demand higher and higher levels of energy and dynamism, and choreographers whose talents he’s hoping will revitalize the imagination of his dancers. His personal appearances seem calculatedly cute and low-pressure after the often-grandiose Jamison, and there’s less celebration of the sacred past. The Aileys have come off their high horse and are doing stimulating new work. This year, I found myself actually eager to get to their performances, and most of the time, they didn’t disappoint.

Kaitlyn Gilliland, left, and Michele Wiles in Brian Reeder’s Surmisable Units. (Photo: Stephanie Berger)

I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I last saw a David Parsons program or what I saw whenever it was, but that isn’t surprising, since I can’t really remember the first half of a David Parsons program while I’m watching the second half. If Parsons were worse than he is, things would be easier to understand: A debacle is far more memorable than mere blandness. Alas, the typical Parsons piece is generic, derivative, respectable—mind-emptying.

But that isn’t true of his most famous effort, Caught (1982), a strobophonic (if that’s the word) specialty solo in which a bravura dancer, on a pitch-dark stage, is “caught” is a series of white flashes as he leaps across the stage, apparently never touching the ground. He’s so fast, and the flashes come so quickly, that at times you think he’s just running on air. It’s staggering, and though it’s corny, it’s valid: This is technology brilliantly deployed in the service of honest bravura dancing. No wonder audiences are bowled over! Caught is Parsons’ calling card, the way, with equal justice, the Ailey company’s Revelations is theirs.

This season, four different Parsons artists ran on air: the wonderful Clifton Brown (guesting), Steven Vaughn, Ian Spring and Elena d’Amario. I saw Vaughn, and he was spectacular. I’ve seen Brown, and he was spectacular. I’m sure both Spring and d’Amario were spectacular, too—they’re excellent dancers, and they have the technique. We’re not talking interpretation here.

Gender-choice programming was also a feature of Robert Battle’s The Hunt, which we’ve been seeing recently at Ailey where it features six bare-chested males in long, slit, black skirts with red underlining. Battle was a dancer with Parsons for half a dozen years through the late ’90s and made The Hunt for him in 2001. Parsons gives us a choice: four bare-chested males or four more modestly costumed females. (There can’t be six of either variety, because the entire company consists of four men and four women). I saw the women—strong and assertive as they perform this hybrid of ritual hunt and disco moves. Wham, wham, bang, bang—the implacable law of diminishing returns asserts itself all too quickly.

There was a new piece by Parsons, The Introduction, whose point seems to be the introduction of the company to the audience in a group effort during which each of the eight is given his or her moment in the spotlight. Like most of Parsons’ efforts, this one has no discernible shape, let alone structure, and no originality of any kind. It’s just lazy.

Far more interesting, and actually memorable (partly because of the Stravinsky score), is Brothers, a piece Parsons made together with Daniel Ezralow back in 1982, when they were both superb dancers in Paul Taylor’s company. (To get a sense of how beautiful a dancer Parsons was, take a look at him and Ezralow in the YouTube posting of Brothers.) The two guys do all the brother things—the competing and the loving, the assertion of independence, the dependency. They strut, they jab, they needle, they collapse into each other’s arms. None of it is original—you can see the line back through Taylor to Graham, with an odd touch of the two servants in Balanchine’s Prodigal Son—but it’s effective. Spring and Vaughn, who dance it in the current season, which runs at the Joyce until Jan. 26, aren’t on the level of their precursors, but they’re perfectly fine.

Two other Parsons works round out the program. Kind of Blue (to “So What” by Miles Davis) is for two couples, and I don’t remember a thing about it—sorry! Finally, Nascimento Novo, for the entire company, is a Latin-inflected romp that’s an honest reflection of Milton Nascimento’s cheerful music, with lots of percussion and swirl, no structure and no harm done. Would I mind seeing it again? No. If I saw it again, would I remember I’d seen it before? Probably not.

Next, Ballet Next, the small company started three years ago by ex-principal dancers Michele Wiles (ABT) and Charles Askegard (City Ballet). The first two seasons were inauspicious, but this third one has been interesting, because instead of spreading itself over an uneven repertory, it’s focused on a single talented choreographer. Brian Reeder, who danced for City Ballet, William Forsythe and ABT, began choreographing a number of years ago—for ABT, among other companies—and showed us a string of intelligent, musical and often witty pieces. None was major, all were engaging. Now Wiles (Askegard has vanished without a trace from Ballet Next) has programmed three works by Reeder that demonstrate the range of his talent.

Different Homes (to Britten’s “Cello Suite no. 1”) is a fraught duet for Wiles and Jens Weber. A one-time principal dancer at the Berlin Ballet and the Ballet de Monte Carlo, Weber dances in a highly dramatic European way (he has been studying acting), but he’s a good contrast and complement to Wiles’ somewhat unusual classical style. This piece is highly Balanchine-inflected without being pastiche—and it’s no crime to create a ballet that couldn’t have existed without Balanchine’s pioneering Four Temperaments and Agon. Reeder is very attentive to the Britten score (handsomely played by Elad Kabilio), and although there’s no strong through line to the ballet, we know enough by the end to understand why this man and woman, clearly in love, separate for their “different homes.”

The centerpiece of the program was a semi-story called Picnic, a muted and condensed version of the film Picnic at Hanging Rock, based on a mystery-laden Australian novel about the disappearance of several nice Victorian girls and one of their schoolmistresses who vanish from a quiet picnic and are never found. The teacher is played by Wiles, whom we first see seated on the ground in an Alice dress observing the others. The four girls cluster in twos and threes and dance together chastely; Wiles and a young man (Weber again) wander through the scene, interacting with the girls, until eventually he gently propels them out of the scene and into ...what? The ballet doesn’t tell us, just as the movie and the novel don’t. The music is for cello again (Shostakovitch’s “Cello Sonata in D Minor”), and the pretty period costumes are by Elena Comendador. The ballet is less edgy, less eerie than the movie: The effect is very much in the vein of Antony Tudor’s Leaves Are Fading, romance tinged with regret. 

The final piece, Surmisable Units—a world premiere—was the most stimulating. A pianist (at the performance I attended, Juan Carlo Fernández-Nieto) sits on a small bench at the apex of a V formed by two grand pianos, one hand on each piano, playing Steve Reich’s complex and challenging “Piano Phase.” His bravura performance might have overwhelmed the dancing, but Wiles and her group—in particular, the beautiful Kaitlyn Gilliland, who melted away from City Ballet a few years ago, after showing great promise—have been given passages of movement that are inventive and at times compelling.

What Reeder shows us is a distinctive imagination, a strong response to music and a sophisticated vocabulary of steps. Is this great choreography? It isn’t, but it’s more valid than most of what we see from most ballet companies in their desperate search for repertory. If the School of American Ballet, or Juilliard, were to commission work from him, he would do them proud.

As for Wiles, she was front and center in all three ballets, and that was overkill (as well as leading to interminable intermissions). She’s too quirky to be so ubiquitous. Let’s hope that she continues to expand her company’s horizons, not only with worthy repertory but with other ballerinas with whom to share the honors. 

Joaquin De Luz
and Tiler Peck
in 'Dances at
a Gathering.' (Photo by Paul Kolnik)

To start off its new season, City Ballet put its best foot forward: its Balanchine foot. Much as the company tries—year in, year out—to come up with novelties, specialties, celebrities, gimmicks to attract what it must assume is a jaded audience, it’s inevitably Balanchine who makes the company what it is and gives the audience what it treasures. The first four performances last week brought us Jerome Robbins’ marvelous Dances at a Gathering, one pas de deux each from Peter Martins and Christopher Wheeldon—and Balanchine. And a Balanchine being danced with renewed vigor and attention; there have been times in recent years when certain of his ballets have looked not only under-rehearsed but slighted, as if they were elderly relatives brought down from the attic and hastily dusted off for visitors.

Concerto Barocco, one of Balanchine’s supreme masterpieces, has—like The Four Temperaments, like Liebeslieder Walzer, like Agon, like Theme and Variations—suffered spells of exhaustion or indifference. Not this time around. The corps of eight girls is crucial here: They’re as important to the ballet as the three principals. At one time, it was felt to be an honor to be one of them, and that’s the way they seemed to be dancing now—full strength, full attention, full out, inspired.

 As the lead woman in Barocco, Maria Kowroski has finally reached a glorious maturity as a performer. From the start, she has looked wonderful, and she was rushed into principal roles quickly—maybe too quickly—after joining the company in 1995. But for most of this time she’s lacked a certain kind of strength, of confidence. Kowroski will never be a powerhouse, but she has become something rarer—a true ballerina, combining delicacy with expansiveness, making the most of her gorgeous body and line, taking charge. Her Barocco was ravishing—the great lifts thrilling, reminiscent of Farrell’s, whom at times she eerily resembles; indeed, she’s at her best in Farrell roles. Tyler Angle’s masterful partnering helps give her the security she’s at times seemed to lack. The second Barocco woman was Sara Mearns, diving in with everything she has but, as all too often recently, more impetuous than elegant. This was true as well of her almost matronly “mauve” girl in Dances at a Gathering—exciting one moment, awkward the next.

Kowroski, again with Angle, also triumphed in the “Diamonds” section of Jewels, one of the greatest Farrell roles. Her interpretation has deepened over the years, and although she lacks ultimate power, she succeeds in being both wistful and majestic, and always beautiful. Another triumph in Jewels was that of Ashley Bouder in the Violette Verdy role in “Emeralds.” Bouder is a powerhouse—never for a moment has she lacked strength or confidence, any more than a tornado does. But she has worked hard to develop the softness and playfulness—and the inwardness—that “Emeralds” demands, and the results are highly impressive. The second ballerina, Mearns again, danced with her usual appealing intensity, but I’m not sure she knows what this haunting role is meant to be. She’s a natural, but she needs shaping.

 The “Rubies” section of Jewels now seems to be the property of Megan Fairchild, and she has certainly improved in it, but she dances it like a soubrette—cutenesses layered onto her strong technique. What she lacks is amplitude, full expressivity. Patricia McBride, the original Rubies girl, danced the classic Balanchine soubrettes—in Coppélia, in Harlequinade—but she was far more than a soubrette; although she was small, like Fairchild, she danced large, in dramatic roles, classical roles, romantic roles. She and Edward Villella, her partner in “Rubies,” had high-voltage energy, wicked humor; she was fun, not cute. Fairchild was at her attractive best as the “yellow” girl in Dances at a Gathering—free and easy and likable rather than grimly adorable. The star of this “Rubies” was Teresa Reichlen as the towering second-lead girl, her rock-like technique combined with her flamboyant showgirlisms gave the ballet the kick the whole thing should have.

Two of Balanchine’s oddest pieces were back on view. His Kammermusik No. 2, with its difficult, cranky Hindemith score, has never been a favorite. (Back in 1978, while saluting its brilliancies and excitements, Arlene Croce found it “fairly unappealing.”) Two ballerinas and their cavaliers, in almost twinned movement. A corps, or block, of eight men—unique in Balanchine, who once said, “Put 16 girls on a stage, and it’s everybody—the world. But put 16 boys, and it’s always nobody.” And that’s the idea—Kammermusik is impersonal, relentless, Germanic. It’s fascinating to watch Balanchine “solve” the music, but it’s more a lesson than a pleasure. It’s like watching pistons at work.

And then there was the unique and bizarre Union Jack, Balanchine’s tribute to Britain for the bicentenary of the American Revolution. (The ungrateful British disliked it intensely.) First, the seven “regiments” of marching Scots, all kilts and bagpipes, in constantly changing patterns—70 dancers in slow procession, except when they break out into charged solos and duets. Then the “Costermonger Pas de Deux,” a jokey, sequinney love letter to a very different British tradition. And finally, the Royal Navy, everybody romping up a storm, with hornpipes and jigs climaxed by “Rule Britannia” as a huge Union Jack unfurls upstage while everyone semaphores “God Save the Queen” and cannons roar. Standouts were Abi Stafford, for once lively, relaxed, enjoying herself, both as the leader of the “Green Montgomerie” regiment and as a bubbly sailor girl; Andrew Veyette (“Dress MacLeod” and raunchy Royal Navy lad; Peter Martins was the original); and Amar Ramasar as the Costermonger “Pearly King.” Ramasar is another vastly improved dancer. He was always talented, but in the last couple of years, he’s been taking his talent seriously.

The standout this season, though, is Tiler Peck, the company’s most spectacular talent and superb in every role. She’s today’s McBride, with a vast range, uncanny musicality and deep understanding of everything she does. She’s the best “Man I Love” in Who Cares? since McBride, the best “pink” girl in Dances at a Gathering since McBride, and exceptionally fine in Wheeldon’s After the Rain. And she keeps getting better and better. The audience has found her and is in love. Me too.

The red dress from ‘The Red Dress.’ (Photo by Paul Kolnik/NYCB)

Let’s reverse the usual trajectory “from the sublime to the ridiculous” and try going from the ridiculous to the sublime—or as close as we can get. Feeling guilty because I’ve never reported on the various full-evening Chinese dance spectacles that turn up at Lincoln Center every once in a while, I took a deep breath and exposed myself (and a long-suffering friend) to an award-winning extravaganza recently staged by China Ningbo Performance & Arts Group at the Koch Theater. It was called The Red Dress and was about a wealthy young man and woman in “an ancient town” in Southern China who are in love but somehow can’t seem to find a way to marry.

In the first act, we encounter Yue’er and A’yong, who pledge their love amid general hope and merriment. We rejoice in their happy expectations during the busy silkworm-hatching season, and, according to the program notes, “The fingers-crossing leaves a promise of mystery, while the red bellyband serves as a token of their love.”

The fingers-crossing isn’t the only mystery we’re left with. In the second act, Yue’er and A’yong “plant two pomelo trees for the engagement, symbolizing their marriage vow of lifelong loyalty,” but shortly thereafter, A’yong heads out of town carrying a neat little suitcase and swearing to return “when I have achieved success through work. Then I will marry you with the phoenix- and dragon-decorated Sedan, as well as a thousand red dresses.”

At this point, I myself headed out of town, or at least out of the Koch. If you’re worried about how it all turns out, the program tells us, “Seasons go away one by one, and the heavy snow falls down year by year.” At the close, “The maiden’s dream of Yue’er becomes the eternity in her memory at the very moment when her red dress veil is raised.”

Bewildering as the action is, the dance style is even more bewildering. It’s a kind of throwback to the kitschy musicals of yesteryear—perky Chinoiserie with mincing steps, exaggerated lyrical lifts, folky explosions from cheerful peasants, accompanied by squeaky exclamations and simpering smiles and moues. Lots of parasols, lots of pretty pink bushes, execrable music, and choreography by Yin Mei, who to my astonishment turns out to have been a professor of dance at Queens College (CUNY) since 1995 and has won a Fulbright and a Guggenheim. What dance has she been looking at in her many years in New York? The Red Dress has apparently triumphed in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere and has won the 11th National Spiritual Civilization Five Top Project Prize and the Excellent Repertoire Award of the 7th China Dance Lotus Award. The predominantly Chinese audience at the Koch seemed to be having a good time.

Earlier in the week, two ex-Balanchine dancers presented their relatively new companies in mixed bills. Tom Gold capered at City Ballet for 21 years—he was the bouncy short soloist who jumps and twirls (“Candy Cane” in Nutcracker, for instance); the current avatar is Daniel Ulbricht. To perform his choreography, Gold calls upon his ex-colleagues, including the ravishing Sterling Hyltin, as well as a few outsiders like the stalwart Stephen Hanna, an ex-City Ballet principal, and Luciana Paris, of ABT, whose energy and polish stood out in a beach romp called La Plage. There were three dances, all smooth, all pleasing and all inconsequential. Urban Angels was propulsive (and the women made wing-flapping gestures); The Ladies Room (to Debussy) gave us three soignée ladies revealing their inner states of mind while primping; and La Plage had some amusing swimming tropes and cute costumes. It was all over in less than an hour (blessedly without intermissions), and it was as if it had never been.

The Gelsey Kirkland Ballet was a far cry from the modesty of Tom Gold’s offering. Kirkland fled Balanchine early, for the lure of Baryshnikov and the classics at ABT, and her talent made her a great star, her exquisite technique and dramatic imagination carrying her through severe emotional crises—until they couldn’t any longer, and she desperately floundered. She has made a determined and largely successful comeback as a teacher and coach, a comeback almost derailed by the debacle of ABT’s most recent production of The Sleeping Beauty, which she staged with her husband and partner, Michael Chernov, and Kevin McKenzie. (It’s about to be replaced.)

Her company springs from her Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet, and the word “academy” suggests the nature of her ambition and the rigor of her approach: Kirkland today is first and foremost a pedagogue, and her dancers have clearly been trained and trained and trained. Few of them are major talents (true as well of most dance companies, of course), but they know what they’re doing: They have energy, they’re turned out, the boys have strong, clean beats, the girls are accurate and responsive to music. And Kirkland put them through their paces with a long, varied and demanding program, stretching from a standard Raymonda suite, a Bournonville Ballebille, a bang-bang kitschy pas de deux (The Flames of Paris), the sweetly pretty and very outdated Pas de Quatre (about four of the great and rivalrous ballerinas of the Romantic period) to the pas de deux from the ballet Antony Tudor made on Kirkland, The Leaves are Fading. This duet, like the entire ballet, is overextended, but it was performed movingly by the lyrical Dawn Gierling and her manly partner, Cristian Laverde Koenig. And finally, a complete one-act Petipa comic ballet, never before seen in America, called Cavalry Halt: a young couple, a saucy flirt in red, a cavalry troop led by an elderly general, an intense “Rotmeister” and a horny young coronet, all hoping to score with the flirtatious one. It’s all stuff we’ve seen again and again, but it’s harmless and gives the company experience in character dancing.

In fact, for all its virtues, what the Gelsey Kirkland Ballet program most resembled was a school graduation performance, showing off what the students at the academy have been working on and giving appropriate opportunities to its more talented students. As of yet, though, it’s not quite a professional ballet troupe.

Now for what should have been sublime: the final performances of the City Ballet season. For once, the repertory was almost spotless, because it was primarily Balanchine and the best of Robbins. And there was a sense of occasion—the farewell performances of two admired principals, Janie Taylor and Sébastien Marcovici. Taylor’s departure provoked a special kind of sadness: Here was a dancer of immense possibilities—frail-looking but powerfully dramatic, an Allegra Kent in the making—who was undone by serious injury and illness. She struggled back, but her technique was eroded, and her repertory thereby limited. Still, she always made a strong impression, her waywardness adding to her lovely qualities. Marcovici also never really fulfilled his promise, but his promise was less than hers, so we can honor his accomplishments without mourning what might have been. They appeared together in Afternoon of a Faun and La Valse, underpowered but valiant. And they were seen off with the ardent good will of the City Ballet audience.

But Taylor and Marcovici were not the problem with La Valse, one of Balanchine’s most beautiful and mysterious creations. The problem is the company’s failure to grasp what it’s about, what its highly specific perfume has been through most of its 63-year history. This was Tanaquil LeClercq’s most famous role, but there have been other glorious interpreters—Sara Leland, Suzanne Farrell, Patricia McBride, Darci Kistler and more. But the triumph of La Valse is a group triumph. From the moment the curtain goes up and the three tall, elegant “fates” are seen standing close together in Karinska’s most striking costumes, their hands partially covering their eyes, we’re in a rarefied world—the world of French glamour, of the New Look and its great models and fashion photographers. They’re not just standing—they’re posing. They’ve seen everything, they know everything—they epitomize the world of the ballet, and if the dancers are callow or blank, the ballet is dead on arrival.

And so it proved. Whoever is responsible for this section of La Valse is either mood-deaf or ignorant. The wrists are all wrong, the ominous gestures are empty, the great costumes and hairpieces have been disastrously “freshened.” Balanchine never stopped coaching these roles, and there are many of his alumnae within shouting distance of the Koch who could demonstrate what’s needed. But they’re not welcome. Nor are the elders who could explain Balanchine’s intent to the three agitated couples who follow. Today, they dance capably, but it’s generic dancing—the turbulence, the foreshadowing of tragedy are gone. The most serious problem of Peter Martins’ City Ballet has been and remains the failure of the coaching. Even so, the genius of Balanchine’s patterning and his fluency with La Valse’s large corps shines through.

The Four Temperaments was equally lax, with only Ashley Bouder as “Choleric” displaying any temperament at all, the three couples of the Themes (with the exception of Ashley Laracey) particularly bloodless. So was Concerto Barocco with the bizarre mismatch of the mantis-like Teresa Reichlen and the zaftig Sara Mearns as the First and Second Violins, Reichlen doing too little and Mearns doing too much. (Mearns, however, was at her best in the amusing if unexceptional Walpurgisnacht Ballet, playing with the music and letting herself rip—if there’s no rip in Walpurgisnacht, there’s no ballet.)

The best performance of a major Balanchine work was of Stravinsky Violin Concerto. Maria Kowroski is too balletic, not contortionist enough for the first duet, but she and Amar Ramasar gave it an appropriate glamour. Hyltin, in the Kay Mazzo role of the second duet, is charming and polished; her partner, Robert Fairchild, was equally appealing, though utterly unlike the great original, Martins himself. Martins stalked, Fairchild frisks, but no one’s complaining. And what a great ballet! The company tears into it, and 42 years after its premiere, it’s as fresh as ever.

Finally, we had the young Liam Scarlett’s new Acheron, to Poulenc’s Concerto in G Minor for Organ, Strings and Timpani. It’s a large, dark work, with an all-star cast, but I don’t see it as an advance over the two auspicious works he created recently for Miami City Ballet—it’s longer but not different in kind. Scarlett, from England’s Royal Ballet, knows how to move dancers on and off stage, and he has a strong sense of structure, but it’s all lifts, lifts, lifts in the murky lighting. Scarlett is beginning to look pretentious—the opposite of City Ballet’s own young star choreographer, Justin Peck, who, in the manner of Balanchine, takes everything seriously except himself.

Katherine Crockett as The Pioneering Woman in Martha Graham’s ‘Appalachian Spring.’

Merce Cunningham decided that the company he founded should be shut down after his death, and so it happened. Paul Taylor, happily still with us, is making arrangements to preserve his own works plus those of other important choreographers after he’s gone. José Limon’s company is still with us, though it’s really more interesting historically than artistically. The early giants of modern dance—Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis—barely left traces of their art. And that leaves Martha Graham: the central figure, the great genius, along with Balanchine one of the two most significant dance-makers of 20th-century America. Is she too going to vanish? If not, how will she survive? And what can contemporary audiences make of her art?

Graham died in 1991, 96 years old, recovered from severe alcoholism, extended hospitalization and attempted suicide. Her implacable will brought her back, to decades of new dancers and new works, but not to the artistic heights of her early and middle years. Late Graham was a shadow, if not a travesty, of her days of greatness. Her decline was painful to observe, and I, along with many others, just stopped going. But the company that evolved from those sad days is with us still, led by the fine Graham dancer Janet Eilber, who is trying to preserve and reinvigorate much of the repertory while adding to it work by current choreographers. It’s a noble endeavor, and a crucial one—because to lose the masterpieces of Martha Graham would be an artistic tragedy. But as of now, it’s not wholly successful.

Last week at the City Center, we were offered one undisputed masterpiece, Appalachian Spring, with its compelling score by Aaron Copland and its brilliantly simple décor by Isamu Noguchi. From the moment of its premiere, in 1944, with Graham as The Bride, her husband, Erick Hawkins as The Bridegroom, May O’Donnell as The Pioneering Woman and Merce Cunningham as The Revivalist (now called The Preacher), it is has been acclaimed as a major work. The current company—well-rehearsed, dancing full out—succeeded in at least suggesting the power of the piece. No, not every detail was there, and no, these very good dancers simply don’t dance with the same emotive power earlier generations of Graham dancers displayed, but they were strong enough—and the work is strong enough—so that the young woman with me, who had never seen a Graham dance before, was moved to tears. That alone justifies the endeavor.

But after that the law of diminishing returns set in. The other major work on offer was a curiously condensed version of Graham’s full-evening Clytemnestra from 1958—as it happens, the first work of hers I ever saw, in the week of its premiere. Back then, it was overwhelming in its ambition, its authority and in the amazing talent of the entire cast. Graham herself, as the doomed Queen, was, of course, the center of attention, and she was riveting (she was always riveting), but Bertram Ross, the company’s leading man, was deeply moving as he progressed in anguish toward the inevitable murder of his mother; Helen McGehee, as Electra, was a coil of hatred and fury as she urged him on; Ethel Winter was a ravishingly beautiful Helen; Paul Taylor was a coarse and dominatingly sensual Aegisthus; and on and on. Graham’s complexity of vision, even though there were longueurs and confusions, honored the intentions of Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy.

The new truncated Clytemnestra (“arrangement by Janet Eilber and Linda Hodes”) is far more linear than the original, and although it has effective passages, it isn’t just a shorter work, it’s a diluted one. Again, the performances were tame in comparison with the originals. It’s not that these are inferior dancers, it’s that they’re outside their comfort zone with Graham’s fervent embrace of the highest passions; they don’t know how to transcend the mortal to reach the level of myth. The present company has only recently managed to present the entire Clytemnestra in its two long acts, but perhaps that’s no longer possible, for practical or financial reasons, and in the future, it’s this or nothing. I’ll take this, then, since it does at least remind us of Graham’s achievement. But it’s not the real thing.

The other Graham works on showwere two late ones, both inconsequential and one distressing. TheRite of Spring (1984) is a tawdry tip of the hat to this work so central to the history of 20th-century art. At this point, Graham was deep into her trendy period—the notorious Blackglama fur ads and collaborations with Nureyev and Fonteyn (so much for the High Priestess of Modern!)—and she conscripted Halston to design what turned out to be hideous costumes. Eilber has done the world a service by dropping most of them. But she can’t disguise the fact that by now Graham was cannibalizing and vulgarizing her powerful early tropes, and that just about every passage was shallow and exploitative.

As for Maple Leaf Rag, her final work, rumored to have been concocted by many hands in addition to hers, it’s a kind of self-parody set to Scott Joplin rags, in which she (or they) make affectionate fun of some of her more obvious motifs. The large-scale Katherine Crockett, for instance, keeps wheeling across the stage swirling her huge white skirt—an instant joke about Graham’s lifelong love affair with cloth. Here the dancers can have some fun, and it’s good to see how really talented they are when they’re not under pressure to embody myths. Lloyd Knight, acceptable but unremarkable as the Preacher in Appalachian Spring, is liberated to just dance, and he does it with joy and bounce. The hard truth is that today’s American dancers aren’t naturally dramatic, and so their Graham can’t be fully effective.

Or else their natural dramatic instincts are of a different kind from hers—they’re narcissistic. Graham’s dramas were always projections of her own experience, but she was using her dramatic imagination to tell us what Clytemnestra or The Bride or Medea or Emily Dickinson or the Brontës were feeling, not to expose her own pain. In the two new commissioned works Eilber gave us, we have something else: the self-dramatizations of Eurotrash. A new piece by Nacho Duato, called Depak Ine, proceeded TheRite of Spring on one program. Bizarrely, both works feature bunches of young, semi-naked guys zeroing in on a female victim, who in both cases is garbed in a flesh-colored unitard and in both cases ends up dead. And they’re both performed in the semi-dark. The difference is that Depak Ine is set to the music of Arsenije Jovanovic and John Talabot, whereas The Rite of Spring is Stravinsky. You can tell the difference.

The Duato piece is endlessly propulsive and convulsive, the dancers whipping themselves into a frenzy and the audience into whoops of applause. The Girl lies unmoving downstage for most of the ballet until she’s roused to hysterical thrashings, her long black hair spiraling around, before falling back into her comatose condition. The opening passages are repeated, and for a terrible moment I thought the entire thing was going to be repeated, but fortune smiled.

The other new work, Echo, by a up-and-coming Greek choreographer named Andonis Foniadakis, was marginally more bearable, because it seemed to be about something. Poor Echo is in love with Narcissus, but Narcissus is in love with himself, or at least with his reflection in the pool. Girl loves boy, boy loves self—a very contemporary phenomenon. They make a sad threesome until the two Narcissi find each other more irresistible than they find Echo and vanish together into the waters. The music, by Julien Tarride, occasionally channels Philip Glass, which perks it up. The two guys were superbly danced by Lloyd Mayor (Narcissus) and Lorenzo Pagano (Reflection), and they make a strong case for auto-eroticism. Or is it gay love? Or the most radical kind of incest: self-incest? The forlorn Echo was danced by a lovely young woman named PeiJu Chien-Pott, who was also the moribund heroine of Depak Ine. At least she wasn’t condemned to be the slaughtered “Chosen One” in TheRite of Spring.

What can we hope for from Eilber’s Martha Graham company? Apparently, she feels they must do new work to survive, but anyone can do this kind of new work, and in fact everyone does. Their raison d’être is the Graham repertory, but we see the problems they face with it. My guess is that they’ll go on improvising, giving the world half-baked Graham, pleasing some but bewildering others who must be asking themselves, “What was all the fuss about?” But it’s not Eilber’s fault alone that this is the case. Today’s audience is no more conditioned to high dance-drama than today’s young dancers are.

Annmaria Mazzini, Eran Bugge, Sean Mahoney, Laura Halzack and Michelle Fleet in ‘Sunset.’ (Photo by Paul B. Goode)

At six in the evening on Sunday, March 23, the Koch Theater was filled to the (metaphorical) rafters for an extraordinary event. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, the great choreographer had decided to add to his three-week season a single performance of his 1965 satiric phantasmagoria From Sea to Shining Sea, a work he described in his memoirs as “old Miss America’s wrinkles, patriotism past its prime.” It has been revived before but not with a cast of thousands, or anyway more than 50, including a few current dancers, a bunch of recent retirees and—most precious to the clued-in audience—a group of real old-timers. Senta Driver as “Sweeper”? Roars of welcome. David Parsons (looking great and adorably funny) as the welcoming “Indian Chief” exterminated without a second thought by the Pilgrims? Gales of loving laughter. Eileen Cropley, Renée Kimball Wadleigh, Elizabeth Walton, Sharon Kinney. Everybody’s favorite, Carolyn Adams (one of the “Performers in Bathrobes” and doubling as one of the “Tooth Brushers”).

Here were heroes like Thomas Patrick, Thomas Evert, Andy LeBeau, Andrew Asnes (both “Super Mouse” and “Bossy Chair Remover”), Patrick Corbin (“Iwo Jima” and “Motorcyclist”). Three sublime women who left the company only recently and are still mourned: Lisa Viola, Annmaria Mazzini, Amy Young. Linda Kent, tapping away. Rachel Berman, looking great, as “Streaker.” And first, last and eternally, Taylor’s right-hand woman: tall, imposing, enchanting Bettie de Jong—“Big Bertha” herself, anchorwoman in Esplanade, and here, at the very end, poor Miss Liberty, slumped in a chair, dangling her crooked crown.

All the characters are played by a dispirited, exhausted gang of performers, dressed in bathrobes, hand-me-downs, cast-offs. Iconic images flash by—Iwo Jima, Betsy Ross, Al Jolson—all drained of life and significance. It’s mordant, wicked, funny, distressing. It was the time of Vietnam. Taylor makes no direct reference—he’s nonpolitical—but he’s clearly unhappy for his country. In his book, he says, “I viewed the U.S.A. backwards, sideways and askance.”

And when the cheers died down and the audience of what seemed like the entire dance world settled in after an intermission, we were knocked out all over again by a magnificent performance of Esplanade itself, Taylor’s signature work, as fresh and revelatory as it was in 1975. Yes, the old dancers are gone, but the new ones are sensational. Michelle Fleet has perfected her central role as the skittering solo girl, hopping and back-pedaling her way around the stage when not leaping into someone’s arms—and taking for granted that he’ll be there. It must have been inspiring and challenging for her to be dancing this in front of Carolyn Adams, the originator and by coincidence another African-American. Fleet had nothing to worry about. Neither did redheaded Heather McGinley, a relative newcomer, in the central de Jong role, but then de Jong is the company’s rehearsal
director, so McGinley learned from the source.

By the time Esplanade was into its amazing climax—what Arlene Croce called its “paroxysm of slides and rolls across the floor”—the audience was once again ready to explode with joy. Once more, Croce nailed it: “The dancers, crashing wave upon wave into those slides, have a happy insane spirit that recalls a unique moment in American life—the time we did the school play or were ready to drown in the swimming meet. The last time most of us were happy in that way.”

Paul Taylor’s Americanness more and more seems to me an essential, if not the essential, thing that sets his work off from that of most other choreographers, which may be why it seems harder for the English and the Europeans to take him to heart—they’re more at home with the abstractions of Cunningham or the mythic realms of Graham. (His heir in this regard is Twyla Tharp, who danced for him until she went off to be her own kind of American.) Dance after dance is situated in our country and its popular culture—from Company B (the Andrew Sisters) to Black Tuesday (the Depression) to the all-American horrors of Big Bertha; from the gangsters of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal) to the barbershop quartets of Dream Girls; from Alley Oop and that girl in the polka-dot bikini in Funny Papers to the traumatizing born-again Christianity of Speaking in Tongues to his most recent masterpiece, Beloved Renegade (Walt Whitman and the Civil War) to his two new pieces this season—both minor—American Dreams (Stephen Foster) and Marathon Cadenzas (dance marathons of the ’30s). And others. He’s American to the core, drenched in our decencies and our corniness (anathema to foreigners), deploring our violence and ugliness, and so both celebrating us and lashing out at our decadence. He knows us well, because he knows himself.

This season, his third on the stage of
the Koch, where the company looks so at home and so at ease, Taylor showed us 23 works—a cornucopia, and yet a fraction of the 140 pieces he’s made in these 60 years. The earliest was a revival of Fibers, from 1961, when he was still dancing for Martha Graham, and her influence is instantly apparent. There’s a bare, spiky tree-like construction inside which a man is hovering—immediately you think of Graham’s powerful Cave of the Heart. Two men, two women, music (unidentified) by Schoenberg, striking, colorful costumes and masks by Rouben Ter-Arutunian—it’s a drama of failed passions, with a touch of the mythic unattached to any specific myth. A major Taylor rediscovery? No, but a fascinating look at what he learned from Graham and where he was artistically a year and a half before his breakthrough Aureole. Fibers hasn’t been seen since 1963—never underestimate the crucial importance of continuity in a dance company—and it should be seen again.

The most recent work, apart from the new ones, was last year’s Perpetual Dawn, which if it’s not a masterpiece is a completely pleasing and touching group dance of couples finding and enjoying each other in a pastoral setting and mood. It’s proved that it’s a keeper. The masterpieces were with us, though—though never enough of them; I could easily name 20 from the repertory, an amazing number. Who in our time, other than Balanchine, can claim as many? This season we saw Esplanade, of course; Sunset, dearest to my heart; and Cloven Kingdom, Arden Court, Mercuric Tidings (though I’m still hoping for the return of the original costumes). Others would name Piazzolla Caldera, BlackTuesday and the ravishing Airs (with, on one occasion, a fragment from it danced charmingly by that star couple from City Ballet, Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild). It would make me sad to name the missing treasures. I console myself by remembering that we’re now only 49 weeks away from next year.

Two enigmatic works were back. I can’t claim to “understand” … Byzantium, if any dance work can be “understood,” but whenever I see it, I sense that it’s charged with meaning. In three sections—“Passing,” “Past” and “Or to Come”—it encompasses our lives today in the rough-and-tumble of modern athleticism; the hieratic stylizations of Byzantium both in the spectacular brocaded costumes of William Ivey Long and the majestic rigidities of the dance vocabulary; and the meeting of the two as the entire cast—moderns and ancients together now—witnesses the appearance of a new Saint among them. The other work, Dust, is equally mysterious, but although it’s constantly suggestive, I find it interesting rather than resonant.

I had forgotten just how funny and clever Funny Papers is—swaggering Robert Kleinendorst as Popeye the Sailor Man; adorable Eran Bugge and cute (sometimes too cute) Aileen Roehl and their “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”; “I Am Woman,” set to the voice of the great Jo Stafford in her mock-cocktail-lounge avatar as Darlene Edwards—it’s not right that she goes uncredited—was first strutted to by Michelle Fleet, then by Francisco Graciano, every bit as much a woman, and hilarious; finally, everyone romping to one of the great songs of the century, “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (on the Bedpost Overnight).” Roll over, Gershwin, Kern and Berlin.

But the greatest miracle of the season, apart from the miracle of Paul Taylor’s genius, is the ongoing strength of his company. The glorious Parisa Khobdeh was out with an injury, but in stepped a new girl, Christina Lynch Markham, more than holding her own in what seemed like a dozen new roles. Kleinendorst is a totally committed artist and the funniest guy on stage when he wants to be. The newest young man, Michael Novak, is utterly wonderful—again, totally committed, with a seemingly limitless range and an entrancing stage presence. Laura Halzack now dominates work after work, her beauty and elegance morphing into exciting sexiness. And how many times can one write of the utter brilliance of Michael Trusnovec, now the senior member of the company and as riveting today as he was 15 years ago when he joined up?

They’re all superb dancers, and those of us who from bitter experience are terrified of losing our favorites have learned to trust the Taylor operation to come up with replacements who, in a couple of years, will become our new favorites. Genius, yes, but also the most extraordinary practicality. That’s why today we can sit back and pick and choose from works a year old, a decade old, half a century old. What next from Paul Taylor? He’s only 83.

Roberto Bolle
in ‘Excelsior.’ (Photo ©Luciano Romano, 2012)

Did you know that this was the Year of Italian Culture in the United States? I didn’t, until I read the program notes for Roberto Bolle and Friends Gala, an antipasto of dance snippets put together by the Italian star who reigns supreme over Italian ballet and became a principal at ABT in 2009. Bolle is very tall, very handsome, with super-elegant legs and a huge jump, and he’s a good partner. It’s just that his dancing isn’t very interesting. He has been touring the past 10 years with many versions of this program, which, as he tells us, “is about brotherhood, about inviting the best in the world to create something spectacular.” If only.

Things got going with a bang. Bolle, his chest bare (as it so often is) and wearing a kind of Ancient Greek Speedo, leaped onto the stage with those impossibly extended legs, together with Alina Somova, a young Kirov star, in a pas de deux from the famous Italian dance spectacle of 1881, Excelsior. It was exactly as flashy and meretricious as one has always assumed Excelsior to be. There were 11 numbers in all, best in show the two featuring everyone’s favorite ABT dancer, Herman Cornejo. With Luciana Paris, he gave us Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite, and, though some of us have seen them do it many times, it was like water falling on scorched earth. And then in the second half of the program, Cornejo took on Balanchine’s wonderful Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux—the best performance of it I’ve seen in years. His partner was the very capable Maria Kochetkova, from the San Francisco Ballet, who came close to sabotaging herself with her relentless determination to make eye contact with the audience—just as irritating a form of flirtation as the more usual crime of relentless smiling. With the Tharp and the Balanchine, we had two sips of first-rate choreography. And then we had the rest.

Somova reappeared as the Dying Swan—the healthiest, most robust bird you’ve ever seen. She had the steps, such as they are, but not the slightest understanding of what this famous solo is about. It’s about dying, Alina. Bolle reappeared in a well-known spoof of classical ballet called Le Grand Pas de Deux by someone named Christian Spuck. The ballerina carries a red handbag (sometimes in her teeth) and grows dizzy from her fouettées. All too many of the jokes are pale versions of the fun in Jerome Robbins’ The Concert and the parodies by the Trocks. Sorry, Roberto, but looking up the tutus of the girls when they bend over and expose their undies just isn’t very funny.

There were pas de deux by Uwe Scholtz and Mauro Bigonzetti in the same earnest Euro-style and with the same pair of dancers. It came as no surprise that the Bigonzetti was the better of the two since he’s the better choreographer. Bolle’s shirt was off again in the anguished pas de deux from Roland Petit’s L’Arlesienne, but acting isn’t his strong point. A really lovely young Italian girl, Erika Gaudenzi, was his partner. There was a bland balcony scene from Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet and something ferociously jagged and trendy called Mono Lisa—yes, Mono. And finally a solo for Bolle called Prototype, with “concept and choreography” by Massimiliano Volpini, co-direction by Avantgarde Numerique and Xchanges Vfx Design, plus visual effects by Xchanges Vfx. You’ve got it—technology triumphant, with flashing images of Bolle projected behind Bolle himself. First there was one of him, then two, then three, then seven, then a horde—a thrilling climax for much of the audience, a lot of it swanky Italian-American, who cheered throughout when not chatting and texting.

A couple of nights later, up at the Koch, we had a different kind of gala—this one celebrating the new City Ballet season with three brand new ballets. The big effort was Spectral Evidence, by the leading French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj. I’ve been impressed by some of his work, but this was more depressive than impressive—to be expected, since its subject is the Salem witch trials. It’s not a literal retelling, thank goodness, but a reimagining: four men, four women, the men in sinister clerical black, the women in white dresses with silicone blood on them. There’s a clever construction of white slabs that comes apart, reforms, tilts, and turns into gravestones. The action involves the minister types chastising (while lusting after) the girls—there’s grabbing, struggling and surrendering, as the slabs rearrange themselves. Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild perform the central pas de deux, and they’re superb. But then they always are. The whole cast is upper-echelon, though it hardly matters—there’s nothing particular in the movement to reveal a dancer’s qualities. The score is John Cage vocal music, punctuated by gasps and groans. Why waste perfectly good principals on something like this? Well, why not, since the company now has 27 of them! They might as well earn their keep.

Neverwhere, by Benjamin Millepied, is set to his favorite composer, Nico Muhly. Millepied is at his not-very-good best with small groups, and this piece uses only six dancers, three guys and three gals. Again, there’s a couple with an effective central pas de deux: Sterling Hyltin and Tyler Angle. Everyone’s in scaly, glittering black, including, for the women, boots (with pointes) practically up to the knee. The movement is smooth, the effects are small-scale, and the whole thing swiftly comes and goes. It’s Millepied modest, which is certainly preferable to Millepied ambitious.

Justin Peck, the young choreographer of choice these days—and properly so—came up with another brisk, bright, satisfying piece, his fourth for the company (in which he also performs as a soloist). One of his great strengths is a total understanding of what City Ballet dancers know how to do best: He appreciates and perfectly deploys their speed, attack, technical panache and humor. Here he employs five of them, on a more or less equal-opportunity basis, who share the stage with a cellist and pianist performing very appealing music by Lukas Foss. The three girls are in attractive short dresses—red, white and black. The two men handle the girls easily, happily—most happily, maybe, when they good-naturedly slide them under the piano. The ballet is called Capricious Maneuvers, but it’s far from capricious: One of Peck’s other strengths is confident structuring. This new piece doesn’t extend his range, but it confirms his mastery of it. Where will he go next?

The theme of the gala was a salute to costume. Each premiere was introduced by a short film showing its designer at work, all three of them from the world of fashion—a horrible echo of last year’s Valentino debacle. But Prabal Gurung (Peck), Iris Van Herpen (Millepied) and Olivier Theyskens (Preljocaj) show more respect and understanding of what dancing requires than Valentino did. I do think, however, that I heard one of them stating on film that costumes are as important to ballet as music and choreography. Does Peter Martins really believe this?

The evening opened and closed with appropriate gala cheer. To start off, a buoyant percussive “Fanfare for Orchestra” by John Adams; to end up, the final go-for-broke movement of Balanchine’s Western Symphony. Let’s face it, no choreographer looks good compared to Balanchine, and no designer compares to his favorite, the incomparable Karinska. Comparisons, our mothers told us, are odious, but how to avoid them?

And then, down at the Joyce, there was The Metamorphosis, the much-heralded dance-drama (or something) from England’s Royal Ballet, starring principal dancer Edward Watson. Yes, Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning turned into a giant bug, but not until we’ve seen him going again and again through the dreary motions of his salesman’s job. Is it the deadening routine of bourgeois life that brings on the transformation? Not in Kafka’s great novella, in which the metamorphosis just … happens, in the first line.

This entire elaborate piece, created by Arthur Pita, is a pretext for Watson’s tour-de-force performance. He thrashes, he spasms, he crawls and climbs and clambers. He slides and slips through the brown ooze he’s been secreting. At times, he seems more simian than insectoid, but who’s counting? Watson is terrific, but enough is enough. His family feels the same way, as their initial repulsion/sympathy morphs into irritation. At first, the young sister—in Kafka, an aspiring violinist; here, an aspiring ballet dancer—tries to protect Gregor, but she gets fed up. The sensitive, conflicted mother is helpless. The angry father is alternately belligerent and pathetic. Three men in beards and black hats stomp around. (In the story, they’re lodgers; here, they’re apparently refugees from Fiddler on the Roof.)

We also have a brusque, no-nonsense maid who deals with the bug with neither repulsion nor sympathy. Her job is to clean, and she sweeps, scrubs and mops, shooing Gregor aside whenever he gets in her way. In Kafka’s tragic denouement, he wastes away in shame and guilt—and his family’s negligence. In the Pita version, the maid solves everybody’s problem by deliberately leaving open the high casement window, and we last see the wretchedly obliging Gregor preparing to defenestrate himself—he knows he’s not wanted. Poor bug!

But what a maid! You just can’t find help like that these days.

Richard Alston Dance Company performs ‘Devil in the Detail.’

This was the tenth anniversary season of the wildly popular Fall for Dance series at City Center, and it’s been one of the best. Which means what? Not that we were treated to 20, (count ’em, 20) dance masterpieces over the course of five programs, obviously an impossibility, but that the outright misfires were few and the points of interest many—just what you hope for when confronted by a smorgasbord.

Things got off to a terrific start. The first item on the first program was Richard Alston’s The Devil in the Detail, a piece just as fluent and pleasing as his Roughcut, which FFD brought us two years ago. In Britain, Alston has been a major player for many years, but he’s only now beginning to be appreciated on this side of the pond, partly due to his championship by the small but irreplaceable New York Theatre Ballet (whose existence is being threatened by approaching eviction from its headquarters of 34 years—and by a church landlord!) What’s outstanding about Alston’s work is the combination of rare musicality and endless vibrant invention. He has learned from Ashton, from Balanchine, from Robbins, the last of whom he perhaps most closely resembles. In fact, the current piece can be seen as a distant response to Dances at a Gathering—a piano and 10 dancers who turn up in various combinations and carry us away with their breezy, ingenious proceedings. Two important differences: The composer is Scott Joplin, not Chopin, so the dance emphasis is on jazz, rag, swing rather than waltz, mazurka, etude. And, unlike Dances, the Alston piece doesn’t swell; rather, its individual fragments are mostly in the same range and seem to follow in no particular order. It could be longer, it could be shorter; it could be rearranged. So, yes, the Devil—the pleasure—is in the Detail not the whole, but how much pleasure there is!

The rest of Program One followed the standard FFD pattern. After the bang-up opener, a performance by a virtuoso, this one by the celebrated tango dancer Gabriel Missé. Perhaps he’s been over-praised, perhaps he’s aging, but, although his feet flash with their accustomed fire, he now appears somewhat stubby rather than lithe, and he’s not very sexy. Didn’t Valentino teach us that the tango is sex? You have to smolder, but there was no smolder between Missé and his partner, Analía Centurión, in Esencia de Tango. As for a brief pas de deux by City Ballet’s Justin Peck—The Bright Motion, commissioned by City Center, to music by Mark Dancigers—it was a Sara Mearns op, designed to show off her qualities but not wholly convincing. Her white, tight bathing-suit-like costume didn’t give her body the help it needs, and, although the moves certainly demonstrated her capacity, they didn’t give rein to her most telling characteristic: her go-for-brokeness. Her partner, Casey Herd, brought nothing but brawn to the table.

Last up: the return of DanceBrazil with Fé do Sertão, yet another of its storms of tempestuous leaping and flailing and hip-hopping and tumbling—happy, kinetically exciting and inconsequential. The name of one of the dancers reflects the naiveté of the entire enterprise: “Kamiklah Shownté Turner (aka Bambi).” When you’ve seen one of these Brazilian whoop-de-dos, you’ve seen them all.

Program two led off with the Indian group Nrityagram and a piece called Vibhakta, which we’re told demonstrates that “in the union and separation of the male and female principal [sic] lies the secret of all creation.” And for all I know, it does. Two wonderful-looking women, in matching gold costumes, represent both principles, and they perform traditional Indian dance movements, including stomping their feet and fluttering their fingers. The on-stage musicians, including vocalists, were highly effective. Then came 605 Collective, a Canadian sextet, with a piece called Selected Play. The men and women—three of each—are in street clothes, the music is danceable if generic, the tone is roughhouse. Nothing happens beyond the ongoing rumble, a lot of in the semi-dark, a lot of it hip-hoppy (again), all of it strongly danced, all of it arbitrary, none of it necessary.

Worst in show: Light Beings, a mercifully brief duet by Mats Ek to Sibelius. Charlotte Broom and Christopher Akrill, who happen to be the co-artistic directors of the presenting company, Headspacedance, are a mature but jokey couple, dressed in what I assume are traditional Swedish costumes. The tone is cute-rhapsodic. Let it pass, so that we can move on to an event of real consequence: the reemergence here of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, now under the directorship of Virginia Johnson. It presented the highly ambitious Gloria (to Poulenc) by Robert Garland, a large-scale and complicated ballet—yes, the women are on pointe—celebrating the spiritual life. It’s fresh and vigorous, not portentous, but most significant is that it demonstrates the strength and dedication of the new DTH. These dancers are long-limbed, handsome and robust, their energy clearly revved by determination to see their company prevail. They have talent and leadership; let’s hope their financial situation is equally healthy.

Next up, in Program Three, was a modern classic, José Limon’s Moor’s Pavane his four-character reduction of Othello, from 1949. It’s been danced by dozens of companies, this version supplied by the American Ballet Theatre. It boasts glorious music (Purcell), gorgeous costumes and effective, compact storytelling. For the Moor, ABT borrowed Francisco Ruvalcaba from the Limon company. Maybe it will field a Moor of its own when it brings Pavane to the Koch in November. To my surprise, I enjoyed Colin Dunne’s Turn, maybe because I’m one of the six people in America who’ve never seen Riverdance, in which he used to star. Turn is a long stretch of step-dancing—a kind of heavy tap—to an original score by Linda Buckley, performed by a string quartet. Dunne is fast, playful and savvy, although his look is Irish-naïve. Too much amplification, too much repetition, but still he puts on an appealing show.

Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced. Its new piece is called Sombrerisimo, and it features six men and their hats—bowlers, though, not sombreros. Those hats are tossed up and around and passed from guy to guy when the guys aren’t busy being Hispanicly sultry. Twyla Tharp did the hat trick once and for all in Push Comes to Shove—witty and surprising. This was neither. Nor was an early effort by Nacho Duato called Sinfonia India—pretty Mexican folkiness. Its score by Carlos Chávez and its populist choreography were a weak reflection of an Aaron Copland-Martha Graham collaboration. Not only was there watered-down Graham, there was watered-down Agnes de Mille from when she was doing watered-down Graham. Why anyone exhumed this feeble oddity is beyond me.

Dorrance Dance kicked off the fourth program with a work called SOUNDspace, calling attention to the crucial importance of SOUND to this ambitious tap event. A dozen tappers, including the genial Michelle Dorrance herself, keep going and going and going, with considerable variation and smarts, and, of course, a lot of amplified sound. They work in a nice balance of small and large groups, and, at one point, when they’re all tapping away in their white shoes, the shoes are all you can see as they skitter across the otherwise darkened stage. It’s a gimmick, but it’s a good gimmick.

Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle in ‘Slaughter On Tenth Avenue.’ (Photo by Paul Kolnik)

When the City Ballet program labeled “Balanchine Short Stories”—Prodigal Son, La Sonnambula and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue—was announced, it sounded as if we were being asked to consume three main courses in a single meal. And it sort of was like that. But in a way the event turned out to be rewarding, because it contrasted so tellingly with an earlier program, “Balanchine Black & White,” that showcased the abstract Balanchine—the Balanchine which so many people consider his major contribution. They forget not only these three works but other narrative masterpieces like Apollo, Orpheus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Nutcracker.

The black and white program had its ups and downs, beginning with The Four Temperaments, one of Balanchine’s greatest works—one of anyone’s greatest works—now more than 65 years old and still blazing with originality and richness. The high point of this performance was Ashley Bouder’s “Choleric”—she took charge and motored the entire ending. Neither Sean Suozzi as “Melancholic” nor Adrian Danchig-Waring as “Phlegmatic” has yet solved his subtle and demanding role, though each has made a decent start. That Savannah Lowery is inadequate in the central role, “Sanguinic,” isn’t her fault: She’s miscast. Lowery is a large woman with a plush quality; “Sanguinic” was originally the dynamic Maria Tallchief, more recently the territory of Merrill Ashley and Jennie Somogyi. It demands thrust, not plush, and with a nonthruster it loses its energy, and Four T’s droops.

As for the three story ballets, the performances all too strikingly revealed the weaknesses in City Ballet’s coaching these days. Prodigal Son, the greatest of these works, shot itself in the foot at the very beginning—and then again at the end—by assigning young Jonathan Stafford the role of the patriarchal Father. Stafford was shrouded in robes and beard and hoary locks, but every step, every gesture betrayed a man no older, maybe even younger, than his son. This was just ridiculous and added insult to the injury of the sentimentalizing changes to the staging of the final scene—the boy climbing up into his father’s arms. Old Testament rigor is no longer acceptable. And then there’s the disaster of the lighting. Everyone who has known the ballet over the years must remember the glorious shock when the Siren becomes the prow of her boat and her gorgeous burgundy cloak billows out behind her as the sail. For some time now, this breathtaking moment has taken place in such obscurity that you not only don’t see the color of the cloak, you can barely make out that there is a cloak. Something similar happens earlier in the same area of the stage: When the Prodigal first encounters the predatory goons, they viciously thrust their hands out from their massed bodies to provoke him, but now what they do can hardly be seen. Whose turf would be invaded if this self-destructive error were to be corrected?

Both the Sirens we were given were convincing. Teresa Reichlen has the cold, ruthless demeanor of the company’s finest early Sirens, Yvonne Mounsey and Diana Adams. (Edward Villella, the strongest of all Prodigals, talks of how Adams used to petrify him with her icy look.) Maria Kowroski is sexier, bolder, but equally inhuman—in her embrace, the poor boy looks like a trapped puppy. As for the two Prodigals, at least Joaquin De Luz has the right look—dark and wiry—and he has the spring for the opening passages. He doesn’t, however, yet fill the anguished later moments of the Prodigal’s abasement. But he’s far more successful than rosy, ebullient Daniel Ulbricht, who seems to have no inner life whatsoever. His crawl of shame and despair after his despoilment at the hands of the Siren and the goons should expose his tormented awareness of his moral degradation; Ulbricht’s convulsions are all athletic, not internal, and he can’t make up for this by streaking red makeup over his legs and torso to simulate the hardships of his passage. Isn’t anybody in charge watching? If you needed additional testimony to Ulbricht’s lack of connection to this profound role, you could find it in his first cur tain call, where he was not only grinning but blowing a kiss to the audience. He has always been a terrific virtuoso dancer, but he’s never been an artist.

La Sonnambula was also in a sad state. Janie Taylor is an effective Sleepwalker—she has some mystery to her presence, and real intensity; Sterling Hyltin, in her debut, lacked everything except a proficient backward bourrée. She was neat, she was agile, but there wasn’t a scrap of mystery or danger; she might as well have been awake. Robert Fairchild, her Poet, is appealing, but seems too robust for the role and doesn’t understand who he is—that some part of him is complicit with his tragic fate. Taylor’s Poet was Sébastien Marcovici, but one can only suspend disbelief so far. He’s an interesting dancer, but someone—Peter Martins? His mother?—should tell him lovingly that he can no longer appear in pale tights. As for the Coquette and the Baron, it should be explained to them that they’re not a pair of genial hosts at a pleasant masked ball but are in some kind of wicked collusion at a decadent party. Detail after detail is wrong in the current Sonnambula. The best things in it were Lauren Lovette in the divertissement pas de deux, Ulbricht as the Harlequin and the wonderful (and well-rehearsed) action of the corps in the ballroom scene.

Despite all the inadequacies, Balanchine’s storytelling genius comes through: We still grasp what he’s trying to tell us about the poetry and mystery of the Romantic period. If only the dancers could grasp it. If only Martins would forget his pride and bring in the experts to clean things up. The greatest Prodigal and Sleepwalker in the company’s history, Villella and Allegra Kent, are right here in New York. That they’re not being invited to coach “their” roles is a crime against art—and against Balanchine.

(A peculiar detail: Before the first performance of the program, Andrew Sill, City Ballet’s appealing music director, led the orchestra in a demonstration of how Vittorio Rieti, the composer, darkened the texture of the music of Bellini that he was adapting. Sill, however, left out the essential thing: Bellini’s Sonnambula is a joyful comedy, whereas Balanchine was creating a violent, ill-fated drama. Rieti wasn’t responsible for the change, he was simply – and brilliantly – giving Balanchine what he needed.)

‘The Garland Dance.’

Gelsey Kirkland has had more than her share of demons, as her two distressing memoirs—and her violently checkered career—attest. Those of us who fell in love with the purity and intensity of her work when she was a baby ballerina at New York City Ballet watched in fascination and horror as she not only abandoned Balanchine for the lure of Baryshnikov and “the classics” but fell victim to the self-destructive impulses that led to profound eating disorders, dangerous drug addiction and plastic surgeries that could almost be considered self-mutilation. She was a ravishing dancer, and a beloved one, but her obsessive drive for perfection—unattainable in ballet as in most things—resulted in the frantic oscillations of her career and its eventual collapse.

But alongside those self-destructive impulses, she housed qualities essential to a dancer—determination and resilience—and in the course of time, they carried her through to a new stability and a remarkable achievement. After some years in Australia, where she worked hard to become a teacher, she returned to America and re-established herself as a valuable member of the ballet world, teaching and coaching—and, crucial to her temperament, in control of her situation, in charge. Despite a disastrous collaboration with her husband, Michael Chernow, and Kevin Mackenzie, the head of ABT, on a recent version of Sleeping Beauty—a humiliation for all concerned—she has emerged as the co-head, with Chernow, of a serious dance school and an ambitious company. They’re called the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet and the Gelsey Kirkland Ballet, in case there should be any confusion about just who is in charge.

Some months ago, the company—now comprising 23 dancers, plus backup from 72 full-time professional training students—presented a rich mixed bill with varying degrees of success but always reflecting the seriousness of Kirkland’s pedagogy: These dancers were trained. This past week, in an astounding display of … courage? nerve? chutzpah? … she and Chernow had another go at Sleeping Beauty, this time minus perversities and eccentricities.

There is no more daunting an assignment for a ballet company: Balanchine, for instance, always insisted that City Ballet didn’t have at its command the resources he required for Beauty and left us only one fragment: his enchanting version of the “garland dance.” Kirkland didn’t have the resources either, but that didn’t stop her, and thanks to her intelligence and dedication, what she has come up with is far more plausible than seemed in the cards. Her dancers, particularly the corps girls, made an excellent impression, no one disgraced him- or herself, and the staging was clever and appealing, making the most of the company’s limited resources and doing a good job of disguising its limitations. And certainly the endeavor has given badly needed experience and confidence to its young dancers.

But Sleeping Beauty makes demands that this start-up of a company can’t meet. To begin with, it didn’t give us a thrilling, radiant Aurora. Dawn Gierling is a hard-working and accomplished technician, and she clearly was coached down to the last detail. But she doesn’t as yet have the stage glamour Aurora demands; she’s a capable executant, but she lacks resonance. Her Prince, Johnny Almeida, worked hard and provided adequate support, but he’s not yet a danseur noble. Another big problem was the absence of mature character dancers: The King, the Queen, the Catalabutte looked and moved like youngsters—well, they are youngsters. India Rose was more lyrical than expansive as the Lilac Fairy, though she danced appealingly. The Bluebird Pas de Deux was cautious. The Carabosse, Eva Janiszewski, was effectively accoutered and danced strongly, but she came short of suggesting the scary malignity of this wicked fairy who represents the evil in our world.

The most successful passages were those that showed off the overall polish of the company rather than individual performances. Kirkland’s “garland dance” had a fresh charm, though it was somewhat hampered by the shallowness of the stage (impressively wide) of the Pace University theater. The Vision Scene was lovely, the corps fluid and precise and Gierling, Almeida and Rose more at home in it than when dealing with the more taxing demands of the famous set pieces. The Awakening Scene was especially well conceived—appropriately ardent, with the added touch of Carabosse fainting (dying?) and being carried out at the moment of the kiss that defeats her terrible curse. There were other such happy details throughout—a stunning tableau to open Act One, for instance. The handsome costumes, designed by Chernow, gave the impression of royal luxury; the courtiers had been carefully drilled in their posture and manners.

You can tell that an immense amount of thought and labor went into this Beauty, but for the central ballet in the history of the art form, with its profound story and glorious Tchaikovsky score, you need more than thought and labor; you need profound and glorious—and experienced—dancers. Most important, for your Aurora you need a Fonteyn, a Kolpakova, a … Kirkland. But this is only the third year in the history of the Gelsey Kirkland Ballet, and she has willed something remarkable into existence. Her pedagogy is secure and her ambition measureless. Where, though, do you go after Sleeping Beauty?

Pianist Cameron Grant and Russell Janzen as Schumann in Balanchine’s ‘Davidsbündlertänze.’ (Photo by Paul Kolnik/© The George Balanchine Trust)

Let’s think about George Balanchine. As with other great geniuses—Shakespeare, say, or Beethoven—there’s always more to think about, and this is a good moment to do so, with ABT as well as City Ballet dancing him this season.

For me, the richest sighting of these past few weeks was the double-bill at the Koch Theater of Robert Schumann’s “Davidsbündlertänze” (back after an unfortunate five-year absence) and Union Jack. As far as I remember, these two astonishingly disparate pieces haven’t appeared together before. Back in 1980, the year the Schumann premiered (only three years before Balanchine’s death), I admired it but didn’t quite get it. Despite its obvious beauties, it took several seasons before it gelled.

Today, the ballet seems Balanchine’s most directly personal. Clearly it’s not autobiographical—unlike Schumann, he was unambiguously sane—but the emotions it discharges as Schumann struggles to maintain his sanity appear to come from deep inside Balanchine himself, as they do in almost none of his other works. Perhaps it was Schumann’s passionate defense of art in the face of the Philistines that inspired him—daringly, almost defiantly, he introduces five black-clad, silhouetted “critics” brandishing threatening giant pens, who help to spur Schumann on to his tragic fate.

Davidsbündlertänze is a profoundly romantic—or, rather, Romantic—work, the searching, passionate music currently (and superbly) played onstage by Cameron Grant. The Rouben Ter-Arutunian pictorial backdrop, an explicit homage to the high Romantic style of David Caspar Friedrich, gives us a violently colored sky over the ruins of a Gothic cathedral submerged in the Rhine. The dances come in short takes, almost all of them duets except for three solos for Schumann, his wife, Clara, and his Muse. The couples dart on, reveal themselves, depart, until at the end, Schumann having slowly retreated to the river in which he will attempt to drown himself, Clara is left alone onstage, mourning. The only Balanchine work seemingly related to this one in period and approach is the Brahms Liebeslieder Walzer, but Liebeslieder is domestic in tone rather than tragic.

In the current revival, the Schumann role, originally danced by the quirky Danish Adam Luders, was taken by Ask la Cour, who had no depth, no inner life. It’s not enough just to be Danish. Second-cast was the young Russell Janzen, far more expressive and convincing. La Cour’s callowness was emphasized by the Clara of the more mature and turbulent Sara Mearns; she was so agitated in the opening scenes that at times it was Clara herself who seemed on the brink of emotional disorder. Maria Kowroski gave her usual beautiful Farrellesque performance in the Muse role, lacking only the ultimate genius that was Farrell’s alone. Unusually, the second cast—all eight dancers new to the ballet, and an indication of just how deep City Ballet is right now—was on the whole stronger than the first, and not just due to Janzen. Tiler Peck as the third girl was so brilliant that for the first time in the ballet’s history, this role became central. Rebecca Krohn, a beauty in the Farrell mold, was highly effective, and Ashley Laracey was as always musical and appealing. Janzen’s Clara was Teresa Reichlen, a big stretch for her, but a tantalizing one. We think of her as both a gorgeous showgirl and a model of technique; with experience, she may become a fine dramatic dancer as well.

The Schumann has finally become a hit—at the two performances I attended, the audience was almost raucous in its appreciation. Balanchine would not have been surprised at this delayed success; he took the long view. 

You could not get further from this tormented drama than with Union Jack, Balanchine’s Bicentennial tribute to the British. It opens with the hypnotic marching of seven regiments, 10 dancers each, all in kilts. On and on it goes, wonderfully particularized, magnificently organized—70 dancers in perfect sync. Then, the hilarious “Costermonger Pas de Deux,” donkey and all—yet another example of Balanchine’s masking the classical pas de deux form with a popular-culture veneer. Finally, the rollicking Royal Navy section, where the gobs are both guys and gals, climaxed by the whole company semaphoring “God Save the Queen” while the orchestra blares “Rule Britannia” and cannons roar. Talk about over the top! Union Jack was an instant hit for City Ballet; the Brits hated it. But the crucial point here is the impossibly vast chasm between it and the Schumann. Can one man have created them both? And that’s without considering his “modern” pieces, beginning with The Four Temperaments. Oh, yes, there are the great narrative works, too, from Prodigal Son to Midsummer Night’s Dream. And so much more.

City Ballet also gave us Walpurgisnacht Ballet, a rather silly but enjoyable French romp with rushing lines of girls, hair loosely flying, and a dynamic central role which is one of Mearns’ strongest creations—her unmediated, boundless energy and commitment are just what’s wanted. I appreciate her less in the “Diamonds” section of Jewels—she dances it lovingly, but I don’t find the expansive grandeur of Farrell and others who succeeded her. Part of the problem may be the limitations of her physique. Her most telling moments were those that echo Swan Lake, her finest role. The rest of Jewels had its ups and downs. The ups were primarily in “Emeralds,” provided not only by Ashley Bouder in the sublime Violette Verdy role but also by a newly animated Abi Stafford and a newly elegant Amar Ramasar. “Emeralds” remains for me the most subtle and moving section of Jewels, its ravishing Fauré score sounding more beautiful than ever under a new conductor, Koen Kessel. As for that audience favorite, “Rubies,” the combination of Sterling Hyltin and Andrew Veyette just didn’t work. They’re both terrific dancers, but there’s nothing between them onstage—no gleeful affection and complicity. She’s charming and he’s got the moves, but their “Rubies” is a workout rather than a thrill. Come on, Peter, bring in Villella and McBride to show them what it’s about! No one needs to show Reichlen, as the tall girl, what it’s about. She’s perfect. 

Meanwhile, ABT was dancing two Balanchineson one program. First was Theme and Variations, made on the company back in 1947. The stars were Igor Youskevitch and Alicia Alonso, both powerhouses. This season, I saw Sarah Lane, a very capable petite dancer with the right ideas but lacking amplitude, and opposite her, in place of an injured Herman Cornejo, the petite Daniil Simkin, so poorly miscast that someone should have alerted the ASPCB—the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Balanchine. Let us not dwell on this travesty. At another performance, the very talented Isabella Boylston and Andrew Veyette, on loan from City Ballet, did a convincing if not spectacular job. Theme, however, Balanchine’s glorious tribute to the high classicism of the 19th century, is a ballet that calls for greatness.

His Duo Concertant, though, does not. Originally created for the Stravinsky Festival of 1972, it was an immediate success. The pianist and violinist are onstage, and the dancers listen to them respectfully and respond joyously. Both casts pulled it off: Misty Copeland, at last being offered large opportunities, full of zest and pliancy, opposite Eric Tamm, another underemployed talent; and the veteran Paloma Herrera, relaxed in her comfort zone, opposite the increasingly useful James Whiteside. Best of all was the violinist, Benjamin Bowman.

Duo came along 25 years after Theme, which was in turn born almost 20 years after Balanchine’s first masterpiece, Apollo. And there was another decade of achievement to come.

Tiler Peck in ‘Who Cares?’ (Photo by Paul Kolnik Choreography/© The George Balanchine Trust)

City Ballet’s spring season went out with a bang: a week of Balanchine’s miraculous A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s a miracle first of all because in a single act it gives us almost the entire Shakespeare play, with its vast cast of characters and vastly complicated story, yet it’s so brilliantly constructed and so briskly yet fully told that it never falters and we never lose track. It’s a definitive lesson in narrative, and of course it’s married to Mendelssohn’s exquisite music.

Here are Oberon and Titania, the proud and feuding fairy king and queen; the two sets of rather dopey lovers (“What fools these mortals be!”); the irrepressible Puck; the Athenian “mechanicals”—Bottom and his pals—who are putting on a play; the Amazon Queen Hippolyta and her lover, Duke Theseus; the butterflies, the bugs, Hippolyta’s hounds, all milling and spilling across the stage. Among the most rapturous moments: Titania’s hilarious and sexy duet with Bottom-as-donkey; Oberon’s fiendishly demanding solo; the magic of the forest at night, with a troop of tiny children sporting wings.

We were given three casts, the first one familiar and time-proven. In the second, Sara Mearns made her debut as Titania, an appealing and persuasive performance; when she’s anchored by having to dance a specific character (she’s at her finest in Swan Lake), she keeps her sometimes indiscriminate exuberance from getting in the way. Her Oberon was Andrew Veyette, always expanding artistically, but as a couple these two are mismatched: from the start, Balanchine envisioned a short Oberon and a tall Titania. (Nancy Reynolds, in Repertory in Review, remarks, “The choice of the small Villella fit in with Balanchine’s conception of the character, which was based on a German source in which Oberon is an elf and Titania very tall.”) When they’re more or less the same size, something basic in their relationship is lost. The third-cast Titania was a lovely Teresa Reichlen, her unusual height and willowy body—and a charming girlishness—immediately convincing. Unfortunately, her Oberon, Antonio Carmena, is not really up to the pyrotechnics required, and he wisely finessed some of them.

There were other first-rate interpretations scattered about the various Dream casts. Sean Suozzi was a vital, amused and amusing Puck—an original and pleasing performance. Lauren Lovette was a standout Butterfly; Lauren King and Abi Stafford were dramatically convincing as Helena and Hermia; Craig Hall was a droll and sympathetic Bottom. But the truly extraordinary performance was that of Tiler Peck in the ballet’s second-act divertissement, coupled with Tyler Angle in what is perhaps Balanchine’s most subtle and refined pas de deux. Her musicality, her subtlety, her charm, her ease—not even the role’s original interpreter, Violette Verdy, was greater. Peck was dancing at the highest level. But this came as no surprise. She had already enjoyed comparable triumphs in the Patricia McBride role in Who Cares? (“The Man I Love,” “Fascinatin’ Rhythm”) and in Davidsbündlertänze.

There were other gratifications to be found throughout the season. Most important: the company redeemed itself with a mostly new cast in The Four Temperaments after several seasons of generally execrable performances. Sean Suozzi, again confident and imaginative, gave a remarkably resonant and moving interpretation of “Melancholic”—vulnerable and tender in contrast to the famously agonized reading of Bart Cook. Even Ask la Cour improved in his “Phlegmatic” role, and Mearns made a respectable if not commanding impression as “Sanguinic”—she doesn’t as yet totally embody the clean thrust of the role. Ashley Bouder’s “Choleric” remains unrivaled. Welcome back, Four Ts.

The big excitement was the premiere of the new and largest-scale work to date by the very talented and interesting Justin Peck, his sixth for City Ballet in three years. This time around he had the pick of the company to choreograph on: Tiler Peck (no relation), Maria Kowroski, Sterling Hyltin, Robert Fairchild, Amar Ramasar, Reichlen, Veyette, all of them at their best for him. As always with Peck, the invention is so clever, so prolific, that you’re constantly on alert lest you miss something. He’s particularly adept at sweeping people on and off the stage and deploying them in groups that merge and separate with what seems organic rightness. He’s expert at identifying and exploiting each dancer’s particular qualities—and why not: as a company soloist, he knows them all inside out.

Both times I saw this piece—which is called Everywhere We Go, for reasons that escape me—I had much real pleasure from it. And yet I have reservations. The first involves the commissioned score by a Peck favorite, Sufjan Stevens, which is not only bombastic at times (think Hollywood of the ’50s) but is too extended and too repetitive. As a result, the ballet sometimes seems both overpacked and overlong. I kept thinking it was over. Peck has learned and internalized a tremendous amount from Balanchine, yet doesn’t imitate him—the odd quote, as from Four Ts, is homage not pastiche. But he has yet to internalize a central principle that Balanchine said he took away from his experience creating Apollo: how the crucial thing is knowing when to leave things out rather than to pile them on. Peck has learned so much so fast that he will inevitably learn this too. Today he’s like a brilliant youngster learning to flex his muscles—not unlike Balanchine’s Apollo himself. New opportunities (and new composers) will unquestionably mature him. They’d better, because if not him, who?

But despite all the pleasures available at City Ballet this season—and the company is enjoying one of its highs—the single most pleasurable Balanchine event of the spring was the performance of Serenade at this year’s School of American Ballet annual workshop. Serenade—Balanchine’s 1934 masterpiece; his first work created in America—is one of his greatest and most frequently performed, a favorite everywhere, with its deep romanticism and tragedy-inflected lyricism. It’s a work for the corps de ballet (famously, it opens with 17 girls standing, posed and poised in a unique formation, gazing up at the sky), but it also has three featured female roles that must stand out, yet be integrated with the corps. Most of all, it demands an absolute consistency of approach in its relentless sweep and swirl of girls across the stage.

This SAB performance, breathtakingly staged by the irreplaceable Suki Schorer, was the finest rendering of Serenade I’ve seen in many years. Far from seeming not-yet-professional, it was a triumph of assuredness and cohesion, so moving and yet so unsentimental. Yes, SAB has months of rehearsal at its disposal, but those months don’t always pay off. I have to hope that the NYCB ballet masters who were present learned the lesson: you can’t take any three principal women who happen to be less busy than their colleagues, drop them in willy-nilly among the corps, and hope to end up with a satisfactory Serenade. Attention must be paid.