foot in mouth: July 2012 Archives

According to the great hoofer Honi Coles, bebop would not have happened without tap: "John Bubbles, of Buck and Bubbles, started dropping his heels. Baapy-do-do, baapy-do-do, bahp-di-do baam baam. And the drummer started listening." This splendid group show in the spirit and to the music of Charlie Parker does not argue for tap's precedence over bop; it simply makes a vibrant and eloquent case for their affinity. 

 The hour started at full throttle with Jason Samuels Smith, its choreographer, soloing to Parker's mad "Bebop", laid out beside the dancer by an excellent five-piece band. Samuels Smith tapped around and inside the riffs as well as on top. His tone was warm and full, and rang from more parts of the foot than seemed possible. He moved in quick jags like a temperamental gab session. 

 This sharp alternation between jabber and calm added drama but broke the musical line. In the female threesome that followed Samuels Smith, the wondrous Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards showed that you did not have to sacrifice one for the other. Rich-toned and nimble, she sustained the rhythms through the rests, as Parker does. Her elegant arms and head harmonised with her taps. 

Samuels Smith and company may belong to the school of Savion in the speed and power of their beats, but unlike the defiantly gawky Glover - the feet behind Happy Feet - these dancers let their rhythms play out in space and across their bodies. Like the original bebop tappers, they dance when they make music.

From the start - in 1995 at age 19, when he debuted at American Ballet Theatre - Angel Corella has radiated a sweetness so genuine it seemed to power his feats of wizardry: pirouettes so fast, for example, that you half expected him to spin out into the auditorium and blast through the back wall like a superhero. 

His warmth also inspired the ballerinas. During Balanchine's gruelling Theme and Variations, longtime partner Paloma Herrera, with her reserves of inwardness, would light up at his affectionate gaze. Diana Vishneva threw herself so completely into the role of Juliet opposite his Romeo that she once crashed into the wings on exiting. 

In recent years, the Spaniard has become a nuanced actor. At this Swan Lake with Herrera - Corella's last dance for ABT and final full-length ballet anywhere - I realised for the first time that the prince's happiness is wedged between burdens: the responsibilities of carrying on the royal line and of freeing Odette from her servitude, and the misery of having betrayed her. The shades of worry and melancholy that now colour his performance bring to mind Corella's own struggle lately to establish a troupe in a homeland in economic crisis and without deep roots in classical ballet. 

Of course we got the crazy turns. The pyrotechnics in the second act drove the audience into a frenzy. But at the entertainments in the prince's honour, this Siegfried visibly receded into rumination. And the suicide into the lake was not the usual spectacular swan dive but a simple fall - a man giving himself up to the waters and fate. 

During the 20-minute ovation when confetti bombs plastered the stage....