Balanchine night at Los Angeles Ballet

(Curtain call for George Balanchine's Apollo at Los Angeles Ballet's May 26 performance, UCLA's Freud Playhouse. L-R: Melissa Barak as Polyhmnia, Oleg Gorboulev as Apollo, Corina Gill as Terpsichore, and Erin Rivera-Brennand as Calliope.)

LOS ANGELES BALLET: Serenade, Apollo, Rubies
Friday, May 24, 2007, UCLA Freud Playhouse

LOS ANGELES BALLET gave its second program of repertory performances at the end of May, with an evening of top shelf ballets by George Balanchine. I saw the second performance of the run, FRIDAY MAY 25 at UCLA'S FREUD PLAYHOUSE, and I continue to be impressed by the company's energy even though this performance was more uneven than the last run. The corps was a problem in Serenade, but Apollo and Rubies were earnest enough to keep the evening afloat. Fact is, the Balanchine choreography is so sublime that things couldn't be messed up too badly.

If nothing else, the company makes its mark on the local landscape by performing great ballets that just aren't seen around here enough (for my taste, anyway). New York City Ballet regularly performs the whole canon of Balanchine in New York, but in LA we have to wait, hoping that a visiting ballet company will tour with just one Balanchine ballet much less any of the lesser-known pieces. So I'm thrilled that not only is Los Angeles Ballet doing Balanchine, but they're doing some really wonderful pieces like Agon on their March performances, and then the three ballets on this program.

Serenade is lit in pale-blue "moonlight" and costumed in flowing blue Romantic tutus (the ones that hang below the knees). It's a kind of evocation of the Romantic ballet, but the steps are anything but that traditional Romantic - they're much faster (neoclassical). The piece is driven by the music, Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, and the steps and formations flow seemingly effortlessly out of the music.

Except that the steps didn't flow effortlessly at the performance I saw; they instead looked studied and tentative. It looked more like the dancers were performing a sequence of pre-planned steps instead of their appearing to be swept along by the music. Serenade's glow was diminished here. But to be fair, I couldn't quite tell whether things were tentative because the Freud Playhouse's stage was small (when the herd was on the move, side corps dancers occasionally disappeared into the wings). And also, some the 'effortless' quality is a product of having the ballet ingrained in the company blood, like at New York City Ballet, or having a technical style that comes naturally, like with the Kirov. Los Angeles Ballet's staging was well coached and put together, but it came off as merely pretty ballet in skirts instead of that extra special mood ballet.

Apollo, the second ballet of the evening, is one of my favorite ballets. It has a spare visual simplicity and conveys the Greek myth of Apollo and the muses minimally, using only classical steps and occasional gesturs and props. The ballet is much smaller than Serenade, cast-wise, with four main roles danced by more seasoned principals dancers - dancers that were ready to bring much more to their roles. Corina Gill and Oleg Gorboulev, as Terpsichore and Apollo respectively, had a smooth sheen and confidence in their performances; no tentativeness here. The technical elements had been largely internalized and they could instead focus on interpretation and music. Melissa Barak as Polyhmnia and Erin Rivera-Brennand as Caliope, the other two muses, also showed particular verve. Apollo needs a clean technical execution of the steps to have the desired effect, and this requirement the four dancers achieved very well with an extra element of elegance. (In fact, Los Angeles Ballet's performance was miles better than the Joffrey Ballet's rather unfortunate and clunky performance in March!)

Rubies, performed at the end of the program, showed the flip side of the company's corps. Here, there was an exceptionally fresh and fizzy performance, led from the outset by Lauren Toole in the 'tall girl' soloist role. After seeing the ballet done with several different companies, I find that the ballet's mood is particularly hard to capture. Rubies is the second of three one-act ballets in George Balanchine's evening-length tryptich themed around three schools of ballet - and visually themed around gemstones. Rubies represents the American school of ballet, with red accentuating a jazzy Stravinsky score and angular, showy dancing. (The other sections are Emeralds for the French school and Diamonds for the Russian.) Some interpretations of this "Americanism" go for sly, sexy and overly sophisticated (like the Paris Opera Ballet production recently released on DVD), giving the ballet a rather odd, sinister and altogether wrong feeling. Others only awkwardly stumble through the jazziness of the piece (like the Kirov). So Los Angeles Ballet's straightforward and bright - but not too smiley - interpretation was a breath of fresh air. The company did the steps without trying too hard to overlay an interpretation. And the dancers looked excited to be doing the choreography, and the soloists in particular had a great bounce and spring in their steps. Corina Gill was delightfully bendy and playful in the leading pas de deux role, with Sergey Kheylik her athletic cavalier, whose jumps drew applause from the audience.

So, another set of good performances from Los Angeles Ballet. It's nice to have a rep company in town, and hopefully the company will only grow from here.

A few individual dancers have stood out to me at both performances: Corina Gill is my favorite. She's tiny - both in height and body - but her stage presence is big and bright. There's a confidence and abandon to her steps; if there's a struggle with the technical demands, she it doesn't show in her performance, and that elevates from mere execution of steps. Company directors Collean Neary and Thordal Christensen evidently agree, as they've cast her in the principal ballerina role in 5 of the 6 ballets the company as performed this season. I was also impressed with Melissa Barak, a former corps member with New York City Ballet, who has a spunky musicality to her dancing; I didn't get to see her to many big roles, and missed her turn in the Rubies pas de deux (at the final performance, she alternated in the role that Corina Gill did at the one I saw). But she was a strong presence in the company's soloist ranks.

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An e-mail blast from the company indicates that the 2007/2008 season will be announced in July 2007. I'm looking forward to seeing what they will pull out of their hat for their next season. The program lists a few venues: the usual UCLA Freud, Redondo Beach PAC and Alex Theatre in Glendale - but then, interestingly enough, it also lists the Ahmanson Theatre. Hmm... they're not being presented by Dance at the Music Center or Center Theatre Group, and I don't remember seeing any holes in either of their schedules. So they must have ponied up the cast to rent the Ahmanson, and if they did - wow. That's quite an expenditure to try and force their way into the big time.