Translated material
Space invisible to astronauts
New York City Ballet ends summer season
The current New York season of NYCB was marked by farewell concerts. As many as five artists of the troupe gave their last performances, including the main prince of the troupe Philip Neal, Albert Evans, remembered from the St. Petersburg tour seven years ago, and the last prima ballerina appointed by Balanchine himself, Darcy Kistler. The parade of pensioners did not set the mood for an intense theatrical experience. In addition, everyone knows that the New York City Ballet is the signature theater of George Balanchine. Created in the mid-30s with the patronage and organizational support of Lincoln Kirstein, the ballet troupe and ballet school remained under the wing of the genius until 1983, the year of the choreographer’s death. Balanchine was the lifeblood and skeleton of the NYCB (indeed, the entire American ballet) for half a century, and the fate of the troupe, like any author’s project, after Balanchine’s death was in great doubt. The company continued to exist, the quality of Balanchine's choreography, which forms the basis of the repertoire, was not in doubt, the school created by Balanchine also continued to supply personnel for the troupe. But from afar, this whole story smacked of a museum smell, a sort of mausoleum of a brilliant choreographer and person.However, the very first curtain, which opened the rows of beautiful maidens under the blinding sun of Balanchine’s “Serenade” to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, completely canceled the lazy and complacent state of the visitor to the obligatory provincial local history museum. Danced and over-watched, the choreography of the main ballet of the 20th century turned out to be a living story about love and separation, about salvation and hope, a sympathetic melodrama, without the usual transcendental reflection of the Mariinsky dancers. And the ballet, which seemed mothballed and so sublime, suddenly acquired a lively and mocking Balanchine gait, everyday history, cooing gossips, a passionate struggle for freedom, passionate dancing and a mannered descent to the ground.
At the same time, the cocky viewer's gaze powerlessly darted around the clear formations of the artists in search of a sloppy fifth position or a non-reversible batman. However, well-trained rows with symmetrical heights of arabesques and equally pressed thumbs in their hands lubricated the rusty gears of the audience’s attention with that oil that made it possible to painlessly swallow any choreographic reflection and the most complex combinations and only lick their lips from the aftertaste (like these strokes with an exit to the flip or supports with completion in chen in the masterly La Source or imposing port de bras in Chaconne).
The New York City Ballet presented seven premieres this season, including works by Alexei Ratmansky, Wayne McGregor, and Christopher Wheeldon. The new works are united by the common concept of using architecture in dance. The rapprochement of the two arts seems as banal as it is (just remember the textbook “architecture is a frozen dance”), but equally difficult to implement in reality. The star Santiago Calatrava (author, among other things, of the airport in Bilbao) was responsible for the architectural component.
It was he who created the design for all the premiere performances, abandoning the original idea of a single space in all performances and offering different designs to the choreographers. It appears that the experiment had more exploratory value than entertainment or aesthetic value. At least the set design of one of the premiere performances that I was able to see (Luce Nascosta by Mauro Bigonzetti) was witty - a blurring and re-focusing moon in the center of a black backdrop, but clearly did not look like a revolution.
However, this moon created a natural and quite theatrical atmosphere for choreography inspired by animal and bird movements. Mr. Bigonzetti's choreography, rather loosely connected with human experience, nevertheless evoked sympathy with its bold work with the body and a fair amount of irony and, not least, perfect execution.
Yet the New York City Ballet remains a Balanchine company and a Balanchine dancing company, and the main catharsis occurred at a performance of The Four Temperaments to the music of Paul Hindemith. This ballet, staged by Balanchine in 1946 on the somewhat scholastic theme of human temperaments, completely devoid of scenographic clues (the ballet is danced on a bare stage in training suits that are merciless for the performers), has the charm and beauty of a mathematical formula and poses an almost impossible task of communion with this beauty for the performers and spectators with all their earthly passions. However, the inclusion in the ideal composition of a ballet for four soloists with paired variations in each movement, with an apotheosis march at the end, allows us to see a picture of the cosmos that even astronauts are deprived of, since the scale of the universe allows them to snatch only individual pieces.
And suddenly it occurred to me that the New York City Ballet troupe was not in danger of becoming an orphan, since Balanchine’s genius did not leave this place even after the death of the choreographer, that Balanchine was able to create what before in the history of ballet only Marius Petipa had achieved at the Mariinsky Theater, and that transcends even time.