American Ballet Theatre: opening night 2007 in Los Angeles

(Michele Wiles, Maxim Beloserkovsky, and Gillian Murphy with the corps de ballet at Symphonie Concertante curtain call.)

American Ballet Theatre: Opening Night Mixed Repertory Program
Thursday, July 12, 2007, 7:30pm
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles

It was a beautiful summer day today, warm but not overly so, and ABT's opening program tonight was a a similarly pretty if subdued affair (especially when I think back to the raucous howling at the LA gala two years ago). The evening started off with George Balanchine's Symphonie Concertante, followed by a bizarrely chosen set of three pas de deux in the middle act - the bedroom pas de deux from Le Corsaire, the drunken Lescaut/Mistress pas de deux from Manon, and the Grand pas de deux from Don Quixote. The evening was capped off on a rather more light-hearted note with Agnes deMille's cowboy evocative ballet, Rodeo.

SYMPHONIE CONCERTANTE filled the evening's tutu quotient; from the get-go the ballet is an elegant visualization of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola and string orchestra. The music is a charming but quiet chamber piece played by a small string orchestra, and Balanchine mines the melodic lines it to a calming effect. With two soloists dancing to the violin and viola lines, he has the corps women weaving over and around them to the string orchestra's music in clever yet ordered patterns. The stage shapes and the transitions in between them are always surprising and yet completely logical for that moment in the music, much in the same way that Mozart's musical theme and variations unfold aurally.

All that being said about Balanchine, Symphonie Concertante doesn't quite achieve the status of "major" Balanchine in the same manner of Serenade and Ballet Imperial, or even Divertimento No. 15, Balanchine's other Mozart ballet. Having now seen all of these I can see why. The pieces share the same effortless musicality, but the the latter three also have an unidentifiable something more - a hint of a special relationship between the principal soloists, a subtle sense of mysteriousness to the proceedings, or an exploration of the music that builds throughout the entire piece. Symphonie Concertante is gorgeous to look at, but Balanchine expends his movement ideas in the first movement and basically rehashes them for the remaining movements but with less purpose. We see in the second movement, a male cavalier enter: the two female soloists dance with him and lead him away, then exit the stage - he dances alone momentarily, but then the women enter again from the side as though no dramatic exit has just occurred, and repeat again. (Compare to Ballet Imperial: the woman exits with a flourish and man looks longingly after; she stays off stage until a musical and suggestively dramatic reason for her return arrives.) In the end, what we have with Symphonie Concertante is a frothy confection - and it's costumed in pretty pink tutus to match.

At tonight's performance, Michele Wiles and Gillian Murphy were wonderful as the violin and viola soloists respectively, playing off each other with an easy fluidity. Murphy looked a bit more at home in the Balanchine style than Wiles did (training-wise, Murphy trained with Balanchine NYCB alum Melissa Hayden, while Wiles trained at the Russian run Kirov Academy in Washington DC), but Wiles' performance was much improved from the last two times I've seen her dance. (Her Sylvia in Orange County last year was unfortunate, and she ran out of steam early in Theme and Variations the year before.) Tonight though, she maintained an easy elegance throughout, which bodes well for her scheduled Aurora next week. As to Murphy, I've often enjoyed her performances and she didn't disappoint here. Maxim Beloserkovsky was an elegant cavalier, and he brought some extra light to the stage when he did a few jumps in the third movement. The corps was sprightly and wonderful tonight; I haven't seen ABT do classical corps work for quite some time, and last time it was messy, so it was lovely to see it so delicate and graceful tonight.

After intermission, we were treated to three pas de deux excerpts from full-length ballets. Except for the Don Q pas de deux, which seems to get brought out at every ballet gala or competition, I was scratching my head wondering why in the world they chose to do those particular excerpts: the LE CORSAIRE BEDROOM PAS DE DEUX first of all isn't the famous Corsaire pas de deux, but rather a transitional pas d'action that comes later the narrative course of the ballet. It gets Medora and Conrad the pirate into his bed chamber, where they flirt with each other before she hands him a poisoned flower. It's pretty, I suppose, but it lasts all of five minutes and doesn't show off anything particularly special for either Medora or for Conrad. Tonight, Irina Dvorovenko turned the dance into a virtual gymnastics routine, exaggerating her gorgeous extensions and feet, plus that bendy Russian-trained back. David Hallberg was a sturdy partner, but barely had anything to do in this pas de deux except return glances and do some lifting. He was quite the presence on stage with his height and blond hair, but I wish they had chosen something different to show off both of their talents more equally. Curtain call was amusing: in Dvorovenko's hands it was a grand ballet unto itself.

The excerpt from Kenneth MacMillan's MANON was TRULY random. In the full ballet, it occurs in the middle of the Act 2 ballroom scene as a comic relief divertissement: Lescaut stumbles around drunk, and his Mistress tries to calm him down but ends up doing a rather silly pas de deux with him - he drops her, lifts her in awkward positions and crashes around on the stage. Sure, it's funny, and the audience giggled a lot during tonight's program, but it was so completely and randomly out of context. What were we supposed to gain from watching Stella Abrera and Herman Cornejo stumble through this excerpt, however skillfully? Yes, Stella can do quick splits, and Herman can act drunk. There are many, much more interesting bits of choreography in Manon, like, say any of the four passionate pas de deux between Manon HERSELF and her lover Des Grieux. This was truly random and pointless.

For the DON QUIXOTE PAS DE DEUX, the curtain rose to burst of applause and cat calls - clearly people were excited for Paloma Herrera, Jose Manuel Carreno and this pas de deux. It's a very flashy classical pas de deux filled with fun tricks, and as such, it needs to be performed with big personality and pizazz. Now, I've seen Paloma do this pas de deux countless times with Angel Corella on the ABT Variety and Virtuosity video - and tonight it was not like that. She looked like she was sleep walking through the role, and though all her positions and placements were pristine and gorgeous, there was no spark. Jose Manuel Carreno tried valiantly to be charismatic and sexy, but you can only do so much when your partner looks unengaged. Was she tired? Who knows. She seemed to come alive some for the fouettes in the coda, spinning like a daredevil, but by then it was almost too late. Such a shame, too, since she was so beautiful in every other respect - fabulously arched feet, beautiful hands, everything. Her subdued manner, though, did hint that her Aurora in next week's run of The Sleeping Beauty could be fantastic...

(Curtain call for Rodeo. Left to right: Kelley Boyd as the Ranch Owner's Daughter, Jared Matthews as the Head Wrangler, Marian Butler as The Cowgirl, and Sascha Radetsky as the Champion Roper.)

RODEO gave a change of pace to finish the night. The ballet features no pointe shoes and the dancing much more closely resembles Broadway than classical ballet. Agnes deMille, who also choreographed Broadway's Oklahoma choreographed Rodeo to a commissioned score by Aaron Copland. The music in and of itself is a delight - you know, the beef commercial song - and that is what for me truly sustains the piece. The ballet itself is cute, about a tomboy cowgirl who despairs when her cowboy crush rejects her for a feminine beauty, but instead finds love with a fiesty tap-dancing champion roper. The story is always heartwarming in that the very unique individuality that sets her as an outcast in the beginning of the ballet is what makes her the well-liked heroine at the end. In the few other times I've seen this piece, I've never been bowled over by it though. The ballet's structure is never smooth and satisfying - classical dancers suddenly doing a square dance with clapping and no music in the middle of the piece is always jarring, and the tap dancing doesn't always come off right. Character dancing at tonight's ABT performance was adorable: corps member Marian Butler was a lovable tomboy cowgirl, and Sasha Radetsky hammed it up as the champion roper - the cow pattern black and white vest, plus decent tap dancing helped a lot.

It was all a nice evening of ballet tonight, despite the oddities. There weren't any thrilling highs like there were at the last ABT gala - but tonight's Symphonie Concertante set my mind perfectly at ease. Now onto the rest of ABT's SoCal season, with Othello coming next on Saturday afternoon!

A few more photos: (1) Symphonie Concertante curtain call, with Ronald Oaklin, violin, and Robert Becker, viola. (2) Marian Butler and Sascha Radetsky out in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion's big gold sunburst curtain for a final curtain call.