New York City Ballet: Chaconne, The Four Temperaments and Vienna Waltzes

(The finale of Vienna Waltzes, choreographed by George Balanchine. Photo: Paul Kolnik)

Sat, Jan 10 - New York City Ballet's winter repertory season began earlier this week, and I attended my first performance on Saturday evening. It was an all-Balanchine program that included Chaconne, The Four Temperaments and Vienna Waltzes. I was jazzed for the season to start, with its promise of eight weeks of wonderful ballets, one after another. This performance looked great on paper: a solid program of Balanchine, starting with soft Romanticism, then contrasted with sharp neo-classicism, ending with a crowd pleasing spectacle at the end. In performance, however, only Vienna Waltzes truly satisfied; the other two were oddly airless, raw and slightly undercooked.

Chaconne began the proceedings on a subdued note. The work is comprised of ballet music from Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice. The choreography here is based on Balanchine's 1963 staging in Hamburg, created as a standalone ballet in 1973 with new choreography in the principal and solo sections. It's a quiet, serene ballet, starting with the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits," a lilting flute solo from the middle of Orfeo that evokes heavenly spirits. On stage, girls in flowing dresses and long hair walk in patterns that circle and cross the stage; clouds are projected onto the blue cyc backgroup.

(The finale of Chaconne, choreographed by George Balanchine. Pictured here with a
different cast than at the performance reviewed here. Photo: Paul Kolnik)

The principal couple (Maria Kowroski and Sebastien Marcovici at this performance) enter similarly costumed with the ballerina's hair down, and they dance a pas de deux that has the ballerina gliding across the stage, constantly pulled back and thrust forward to swells in the music. The mood changes after the Dance of the Blessed Spirits to a brighter, yet equally heavenly gathering: the costumes switch to more formal ballet attire, with men in tunics and girls wearing shorter skirts with gold detailing, hair tied back up and accented tiaras. The ballet progresses through sections of formal choreography, with a pas de trois, a demi solo pas de deux, a pas de cinq for five girls and the culminating pas de deux and alternating for the central couple. At the finale, the entire company returns to the stage for an intricate grand dance set to the culminating music from Gluck's opera.

This performance was quiet and underpowered. The dancing was there, but just "there" where I felt the choreography was asking for transcendence. The beauty of this ballet is in the mood and the small details, and this letter correct performance failed to capture that magic. Kowroski (pictured at rigt) and Marcovici gave lovely enough performances in the principal roles, Kowroski in particular with her long legs and super arched feet that seemed to wrap themselves around the music. But Marcovici looked tentative in his partnering, the occasional bursts of energy in his variations seeming more random than part of a sustained performance. Erica Pereira (replacing an indisposed Ana Sophia Scheller) was a bright spot in the demi-soloists' pas de deux, and Ask La Cour a noble courtier with Saskia Beskow and Gwenyth Muller in the pas de trois. I was disappointed that the finale didn't build to its usual crescendo, as the ensemble seemed determined to just hit the right marks instead of actually get swept away by the music.

The Four Temperaments was cast with fairly young dancers tonight, and it was a raw, undercooked performance. In the principal roles, everyone bounded onto the stage and shot through the choreography with an overeager attack that the made the dancing appear jerky and skewed off balance. This ballet should appear unforced - Balanchine's choreography is choreographed with clear, uncluttered bunches of stripped down, severely classical ballet steps and movements made to look even more stark dressed in unadorned black and white rehearsal costumes. Tying everything together is Paul Hindemith's score, from which the choreography emerges elegantly, with an illusion of seeming effortlessness.

(Balanchine's The Four Temperaments. Photo: Paul Kolnik)

The ballet does not come across as brilliantly when you see the effort behind the steps. In Saturday night's performance, Rebecca Krohn, in the third part of the opening theme and variations section, threw her legs up with extra force and held extensions extra high: seeing the high kick, one was suddenly made aware of her gymnastic ability and skill, but this detracted from the choreography's natural elegance. Lower legs and smoother movement could have created an effect more in line with the music and this section's more quiet mood. Similarly, Savannah Lowery and Jared Angle threw themselves whole-heartedly into the Sanguinic section, but in doing so, the movement was jerky and loud, flubbing the more intricate details of the duet. In my recent viewing past, I found Los Angeles Ballet's performances of Four Temperaments to be more fully satisfying than the New York City Ballet's – the Saturday performance seemed more like a test run for the dancers, less of a complete performance.

One notable exception to the tentativeness was Ask La Cour and the four women in the Phlegmatic section. Their performances, more reigned in and less effortful-looking, offered nuance and detail with the varying sections of choreography reading with bright clarity. There was also the ballet's finale (pictured above). This momemnt never fails to thrill me, with the brilliant crescendo of music, stage formations and ensemble patterns: performance-wise things really come together here and the Four Ts ended for me with its usual uplift.

Vienna Waltzes provided a grand cap to the evening. With such spectacle and sweeping romanticism in the choreography, it is nearly always a crowd pleaser. Set to five grand waltzes by Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár and Richard Strauss and complete with three full scenic changes, the ballet journeys through time with the Viennese waltz in many of its forms, from its 19th century beginnings through the turn of the 20th century. There are lots of beautiful ball gowns and twirling couples, plus gorgeous stage-fuls of dancers in made-for-the-movies images of grand balls.

The first section is "Tales from the Vienna Woods," with music by Johann Strauss. The scenery is, appropriately, a woods, which one imagines is ballroom where young guests have wandered away for a break in the evening. In the hazy distance behind a curtain scrim is a mirror, on which we can see a faint reflection of the stage activity. Couples, with the women dressed in pink ball gowns and men in formal 19th century military jackets, waltz full heartedly through this wooded glade. On Saturday, they were led by Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle. Even with four trees breaking up the stage space, the waltzing is free-wheeling and moves expansively through the space.

The next section is set to Johann Strauss' "Voices of Spring" and features a principal couple and a corps of eight girls in ballet costumes and shoes. It is a virtuosic, fast moving section of ballet choreography, with lots of jumps, turns and quick footwork. At this performance, Yvonne Borree made light work of the speed, and Benjamin Millepied pleasantly wowed the crowd with his acrobatics. A short polka follows this section, showing Viennese waltz and polka from a music hall.

With a grand flourish of the orchestra, the woodland disappears and the scenery shifts into a late 19th century salon. To Franz Lehar's "Gold and Silver Waltz," there is a short waltz scene recalling the scenario for Lehar's opera The Merry Widow; couples waltz in a salon as a solitary man (Nilas Martins on Saturday) wanders alone among them. Attention is drawn to an elegant woman in a black dress (Jennifer Ringer) as she makes an entrance. Men crowd around her for a dance, but she and the lone man make for each other for their own dance.

When this scene finishes, the scenery melts away into an early 20th century ballroom, women in bright white dresses and men in tuxes, branchlike chandeliers hang from the ceiling and a large mirror at the rear of the stage adds a glassy glamour to the stage setting. Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavelier waltz sets the grand tone for this finale and it's hard not to be swept away. Darci Kistler danced the main role tonight– the role waltzes alternatingly with herself, wistfully reminiscing for a partner one imagines, and an actual tall partner himself in the form of Charles Askegard. As the music climaxes, the entire company in gorgeous white dresses and formal black tuxes fills the stage and the curtain comes down on an ecstatic celebration of waltzers (pictured above). Grand indeed.

All photos by Paul Kolnik: (1) Vienna Waltzes, choreographed by George Balanchine. Captioned above. (2) Chaconne, choreographed by George Balanchine. Captioned above. (3) Maria Kowroski in Chaconne, choreographed by George Balanchine. (4) New York City Ballet in the finale of The Four Temperaments, choreographed by George Balanchine. (5) Ask La Cour in the Phlegmatic section of The Four Temperaments, choreographed by George Balanchine. (6) Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle in the "Tales from the Vienna Woods" section of Vienna Waltzes, choreographed by George Balanchine.