ABT at City Center: Tudor, Tharp, Stallings and Balanchine

I managed to catch only one performance during American Ballet Theatre's fall season at New York City Center, but I was glad that I got to go. Other people have frequently told me that the company is an altogether different, more interesting one from its usual bloated, story-ballet self during this brief run at City Center, where the company performs mostly one-act, more modern ballets. And I was inclined to believe that too, since the performances that I've seen ABT look most alive have been with mixed bills and contemporary work, like this summer when ABT danced its new Twyla Tharp ballet in Orange County.

The performance I saw (Sun Oct 26) included Anthony Tudor's The Leaves Are Fading, part of ABT's celebration of Anthony Tudor this season; Twyla Tharp's short ballet Baker's Dozen; a new work by Lauri Stallings called Citizens; and concluding with George Balanchine's Theme and Variations.

The middle part of the program was the least interesting for me: Tharp's Baker's Dozen had young corps dancers in white costumes and boots charging around the stage to the music of Willie "Lion" Smith". It's a "jazz" ballet, a genre which doesn't particularly interest me, and despite cute performances I didn't pay too much attention to the ballet. Lauri Stalling's Citizens was pretty bizarre by the standards of big-ballet repertory companies like ABT: screechy music, twitchy movements, unusual costumes that were gender bending and constructed in a mish mash of styles. I'm not sure I got much out of it except for some pretty remarkable, committed performances from Sarah Lane and Corey Stearns, both young, standout up-and-coming dancers from ABT's soloist and corps de ballet ranks, respectively. There was one fetching theatrical moment half-way into the ballet when the black drops peeled away and everyone backstage - stagehands with beer bellies, fellow dancers dolled up in tutus for the next ballet but covered in clashing legwarmers and sweatshirts - jumped on stage view to stare blankly and pointedly at the audience before disappearing again with no explanation. The program note Stallings provided was rambling and esoteric, offering not much by way of literal explanation for her ballet. Except, perhaps, if one equated the experience of reading her program note to the experience of watching the ballet.

Performed at the end of the program, Theme and Variations was perhaps the most traditional-looking ballet of the day, but its rapid footwork and overall speed place put it with the 20th century neoclassicism of George Balanchine. It was created as a tribute to the Imperial Russian ballets like The Sleeping Beauty, but translated into Balanchine's style and for the faster American dancers he later found. With its bright tutus and sparkly (huge) tiaras, the ballet reads as grand and majestic classical ballet. At the Oct 26 performance, Yuriko Kajiya debuted in the ballerina role opposite David Hallberg, a relative veteran in the ballet. Kajiya is a talented soloist in the company that is clearly being moved into larger roles (this season she debuted as Gamzatti in Bayadere at the Met). The two roles are a major challenge for the speed of the steps and the technical demands, so Kajiya was understandably nervous for her debut. Though she hit all the steps correctly, her fixed smile and nervous eyes read terror through much of the performance. Hallberg has relaxed into a confidant stage persona and here provided strong, comforting support to Kajiya while dazzling in his own right during his solo passages. In any case, Theme rarely fails to dazzle at the end, with the crescendo of the Tchaikovsky score and the masterful way in which Balanchine builds the choreography to a spectacular climax.

The heart of this program came at the beginning: Anthony Tudor's Leaves are Fading, a beautifully quiet, emotional ballet centered around four couples, each telling, in their duets, of different parts of a relationship. Corps dancers fill in around the sides as the ballet's twelve sections, set to serene string music by Antonin Dvorak, fold and unfold into each other. There are two main pas de deux, one of is an intimate, tender one exquisitely danced on Sunday by Julie Kent and Marcelo Gomes (its the dance that is most frequently excerpted from Leaves). The other was danced by Veronika Part and Alexander Hammoudi, a kind of leave-taking pas de deux for the dancers as one tries to move on from the other but ultimately cannot. I loved watching this one to see Part so completely throw herself into the role; the way she threw herself into her partners arms at the end of the dance was beautifully touching and emotional.

Photos: Top - Julie Kent and Marcelo Gomes in The Leaves are Fading, photo by Rosalie O'Connor; Second - David Hallberg in Theme and Variations, photo by Rosalie O'Connor. Third - Julie Kent and Marcelo Gomes in The Leaves are Fading, photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

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Speaking of Tudor, on October 5, I attended a panel/performance at the Guggenheim Museum on the life and work of Anthony Tudor, which included short excerpts of Tudor ballets performed ABT and ABT studio company dancers alongside commentary from ABT's artistic director Kevin McKenzie and Tudor stager/New York Theater Ballet director Diana Byer, moderated by Wes Chapman, director of ABT's studio company. There were interesting film bits with Tudor discussing his life and work, and there were interesting comments from the panelist about working with Tudor in the studio when he came to stage his ballets on ABT in later years. It was great to see the dancers up close and to hear a lot about the "psychology" of Tudor's ballets, the dramatic qualities that the dancers work to elicit in performance. Most excitingly, it was wonderful to see Veronika Part's remarkable performance from The Leaves are Fading up close.

I was bummed that this was the only Tudor ballet that I got to see during ABT's celebration of Anthony Tudor's work; they performed several of his ballets that are not regularly pulled out for repertory. My experience with his work has been through ABT's performance of Pillar of Fire a few years ago (I saw Amanda McKerrow give a wonderful, poignant performance as Hagar) and in Britain I saw Rambert Ballet Company give a performance of Dark Elegies (a moving portait of a community grieving) and The Judgement of Paris (a comic glimpse of three old, tired vaudeville performers trying to impress a patron). Each of them has provided some quiet image that pierces straight to the emotion being portrayed: like in Dark Elegies when a woman who has just finished mourning openly with huge gestures stops and sums up her emotion by smiply leaning her head softly back into the arms of supporters. The Leaves are Fading, new to me this time around, had many small moments like that. I wish I could have seen more of them.

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It's worth noting here too, perhaps that while I enjoyed ABT's program , I also left the theater wondering whether this was ABT's answer to a contemporary program, where San Francisco Ballet's program the week before was such a thrilling hit out of the ballpark. ABT's mixed bill was mostly comprised of work created several decades ago, while San Francisco's was slanted towards work created less than a year ago. I have to say: I was far more excited with the results of San Francisco Ballet's risk.