New York City Ballet: Divertimento No. 15, After the Rain and Firebird

Fri, May 1 - Another great performance in the first week of New York City Ballet's spring season. I was drawn to this performance for several reasons: one was a full staging of Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain, which has mostly only been seen as the long pas de deux that forms part II of his full ballet. There was also Balanchine's Divertimento No. 15, a ballet that I love pretty much anytime I see it, as well as Balanchine's version of Firebird, a version that I have not seen before. Though only Divert truly satisfied as a ballet, I was never bored tonight, thanks to great performances all around.

New York City Ballet dances Divertimento No. 15 fast, a lot faster than I am used to seeing it done, or than I remember. (The last two times I saw Divert, it was with San Francisco Ballet, who take it at a much more elegiac pace, and my introduction to the ballet was with Suzanne Farrell's troupe six years ago, where I admired the daring way the company seemed to attack the choreography. I wasn't very conscious of the speed of either troupe's dancing back then. Needless to say, Divertimento No. 15 has become one of my favorite ballets.)

Set to Mozart's divertimento for string and French horn of the same name, it is dressed in classical style tutus, danced on a bare stage with blue cyc backdrop, giving the ballet a tradition-meets-modern feeling. Balanchine's choreography effortlessly unfolds alongside Mozart's music, with group patterns developing and elongating with the musical themes. The dancing manages to keep in partnership with the music rather than being a slave to it - such is the ingenuity of Balanchine as a choreographer.

This performance featured several of NYCB's up and coming young dancers in the seven soloist roles. It was a great opportunity to see many of them in action; several gave remarkable performances, showing much promise coming up through City Ballet's younger ranks. Even those that didn't quite meet all of the challenges had redeeming qualities. even if they didn't all acquit themselves with complete success. The second movement is a musical theme-and-variations, and the choreography gives a short but devilishly fast and tricky solo to each of the soloists. In the first variations, Ana Sophia Scheller and Sterling Hyltin were a bit raw, a bit choppy in their attempts to keep up with the choregraphy. Yvonne Borree, a veteran City Ballet principal among the cast, rather alarmingly gave a very weak performance; her arms trembled in fifth position above her head and stumbled from step. The final three saved the day, however, with fantastic variations: Tiler Peck (pictured here with Amar Ramasar) displaying remarkable fluidity, musicality and stage presence, Andrew Veyette with impressive jumps and confidence, and Megan Fairchild with quicksilver clarity and speed. The adage duets mirrored the performaces in the variations; Peck was particularly impressive and authoritative here, saving the day after Borree's bizarrely weak dancing. The corps de ballet was wonderfully peppy and engaging tonight.

I had heard that Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain is among Wheeldon's better works, so I was particularly wanting to see it since I so enjoyed his Within the Golden Hour for San Francisco Ballet's New Works Festival. But despite strong dancing, this piece didn't strike me with quite the same inventiveness that his other work has. After the Rain seemed bound to the moody Arvo Pärt score that Wheeldon selected for the ballet, its emotions tacked on after movement found. In Within the Golden Hour, the steps seemed to flow on more equal footing with the music, Wheeldon playing and reveling in the music as much as using it for accompaniment. The most interesting part of After the Rain is the ballet's central pas de deux, performed at this performance by Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall. It really is delicate and layered all at once, "haunting" just as the program note describes it (though perhaps the haunting is a by product of the ghostly lighting and Whelan's long flowing hair as swishes through the air during the dance). My problem with it is that the woman in the pas de deux seems to lack a certain degree of humanity: she's tossed and thrown around into all manner of pretzel-like, interesting contortions, but to what end?

George Balanchine's Firebird, to my first viewing of it, might more accurately be called "Dances from The Firebird" than a full-on version of Fokine's one-act dance drama. The storytelling elements are almost entirely stripped away, and we're left with the dance episodes; adding to the brevity, Balanchine uses the orchestral suite for Stravinsky's score rather than the full ballet score. What I saw seemed to me more as random images on a theme of The Firebird and lots of stage business that come off as silly, like the Kotschei's goulish monsters running around for no reason with half-baked choreography. Why bother with such a lush production (with sets and costumes from the original by Marc Chagall) if you're not even going to tell the whole story? Maria Kowroski's performance as Firebird was the redeeming factor, she was spectacularly authoritative and mysterious. Her gorgeous technique and long lines were used to wonderful effect in this role, and she was emotionally present and alive in the Firebird's brief moments on stage.

All photos by Paul Kolnik: (1) Balanchine's Divertimento No. 15, pictured at an earlier performance of the work with a different principal cast than reviewed here; (2) - Tiler Peck and Amar Ramasar in Divertimento No. 15; (3) Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall in Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain; (4) Maria Kowroski as the Firebird and Charles Askegard as the Prince in an earlier performance of Balanchine's Firebird - Ask La Cour danced the Prince in the performance reviewed here.