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Where Angels Tread: Honoring the Tradition of George Balanchine
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10985 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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11 / 1993 |
2,125 Words |
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Camille Hardy
Camille Hardy is a New York-based critic who publishes and
broadcasts on the arts internationally. |
Opening at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center on November 23 in its ninety-ninth metropolitan season, the New York City Ballet (NYCB) initiates a new chapter in its evolution as the most influential classical institution in the world today. Last spring the company completed a stunning tribute to its founding choreographer in the Balanchine Celebration (May 4-June 27), a retrospective of seventy-three compositions that easily demonstrated the range of George Balanchines gifts as, quite simply, an artist unmatched in the field of choreography.
Produced to mark the tenth anniversary of Balanchine's death in April 1983, the spring festival was essentially an aesthetic summing up of the ensemble to date, revealing the astonishing ability of a single individual to extend the vocabulary of dance so broadly and to shape a troupe of performers capable of making his visions palpable to an ever-expanding audience. On the other hand, there were some shortcomings in the present artistic governance of the company by Peter Martins, shortcomings that were sometimes offset by the emergence of a group of young dancers--products of Martins' direction--who grew from attractive soloists to authoritative artists during the course of the spring presentations.
The Balanchine Celebration can be compared with a rite of passage for the New York City Ballet. Such a heady chronological immersion in its roots cannot help but reinforce essential strains in the troupe's aesthetic canon, even while revealing elements of change--some regrettable, others necessary. The upcoming season will undoubtably be colored by both positive and negative lessons learned in the spring. Positive features are the rediscovery of some of the seldom-seen ballets that have been retained from the festival offerings, along with the artistic growth of many of the dancers.
A negative aspect is the loss of a quintessential Balanchine characteristic, the willingness to take extraordinary risks in performance, a hallmark of those ballerinas most closely associated with enkindling the choreographer's intuition. Certainly, flashes of that daring are visible at nearly every NYCB performance, and the company as a whole has never been in finer technical fettle. But what now is seen as intermittent incandescence in some ballets was previously a physical shape and radiance that lit many of the choreographies with a dynamic of white fire.
Rediscovered Gems
Two of the "rediscovered" works
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