This article originally appeared in the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times on February 12, 2006.
IN a New York City Ballet studio, backed by a tape of implacable drumbeats, a lesson begins, emphasizing driving feet, lashing kicks set against a twisting torso and sudden, ominous halts, all executed with ferocious force at a relentless pace.
“The movement takes more than just physical energy,” Karin von Aroldingen, a ballet mistress with the company, explains. “You have to give it will power — and spirit.”
The lesson is how to be the chief of a vehement 10-woman marching clan, a role that Ms. von Aroldingen created in 1976 for George Balanchine’s “Union Jack.” Today she is teaching the role to Sofiane Sylve, who this season or next is to share it with its much-praised incumbent, Wendy Whelan.
Clad in tartan, the clan, which appears in the first and longest of the ballet’s three segments, marches in formation, then charges and whirls, commandeering the stage. Ballet aficionados and casual observers alike generally agree that this three-and-a-half-minute dance, given the clan name of “MacDonald of Sleat,” is the most thrilling moment in “Union Jack.” The ballet, an hourlong extravaganza created as a bicentennial event, is currently being performed in the company’s winter season at the New York State Theater.
Since its inception, “Union Jack,” has enjoyed great popularity as an outsize, exuberant showpiece. But “Scottish and Canadian Guards Regiments,” the full name of that first segment, is something considerably more: singular, ingenious choreography.
This section is based on what is known as the Scottish tattoo — the presentation of clans in full regalia, parading in intricate formation. Here, almost surreptitiously, Balanchine expands parade-ground marching into dancing, without forfeiting either the powerful geometric patterning or the aura of ancient ritual.
Seven detachments of 10 dancers each are introduced one by one in a strict, solemn march, each group identified by its own tartan. Once assembled, they interweave swiftly and precisely, like threads shuttled through a loom.
The mood lightens as each regiment dances individually. Two male clans perform together, with frisky steps, as if in a friendly Highland fling competition. Members of a male clan and a female clan pair off graciously, inspired by country dancing. Three women’s groups perform alone, one delicately lyrical, another — Ms. Sylve’s clan — forceful, the last subtly seductive. All 70 dancers meet and interweave once more, then depart in a stately recessional as the lights dim, leaving the last figures in silhouette.
“When Balanchine began choreographing the clans’ marches,” Ms. von Aroldingen recalls, “he used a diagram he had drawn with little circles, colored differently for each group. He had figured out — for 70 people– exactly how many musical beats were needed to get from one place on the stage to another. The rest of the choreography just poured out of him so fast it was unbelievable. He gave off this tremendous energy.”
Part 2, an intimately scaled intermezzo, evokes the Edwardian music hall, where sentimentality and dopey humor went hand in hand. It depicts a husband-and-wife team playing a Pearly King and Queen, the mock-royalty of London’s legendary costermongers, or Cockney street peddlers. Laced with broad pantomime, the dance applies wit and charm to tawdry entertainers who have more resilience than talent. This section is essentially a pas de deux, but at its close two high-stepping little daughters arrive in a cart drawn by a live donkey whose training proves, at times, less effective than that of the girls.
Part 3 brings back all the regiment leaders from Part 1, but in an entirely new guise. This section, “Royal Navy,” is a rollicking suite of dances that would be entirely at home in a Broadway show. Sailor-suited trios, solos and chorus lines — both male and female — deliver countless variations on the traditional sailor’s hornpipe.
These antics are mixed with exuberant pantomiming — hauling rope, reconnoitering through a spyglass, flirting on the fly. Amidst all this jolly-tar stuff, classical ballet steps, executed by long-stemmed showgirls in fetchingly abbreviated naval togs, make a surprisingly easy fit. The whole business is executed with unquenchable glee, as if by sophomores on spring break. The high spirits calm only for the finale, in which the whole cast stands in formation, tiny bright flags in hand, to semaphore “God Save the Queen” to the strains of “Rule, Britannia,” as the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom, descends behind them.
“Union Jack” was clearly the project of Lincoln Kirstein, the man who, recognizing Balanchine’s genius, lured him to the United States in 1933 and fostered his career for the next half-century. The quirky pretext for the ballet was to make a Bicentennial offering to the kingdom from which America had wrested its independence. Kirstein was a self-confessed Anglophile, a condition related to his love of tradition, with its panoply, hierarchy and ritual. In a widely quoted program note, he presented his argument for the ballet in his inimitable prose style: “In the tepid euphoria of quasi-official celebration, dimmed by an exhausted peace and clownish public scandal” — a reference to Watergate — “it has been deemed fitting to recall roots.” In the course of the ballet’s making, its tone shifted, so the homage became alternately serious and tongue in cheek.
But why did Balanchine agree to the project? Exactly a half-century earlier, taking his cue from Victorian pantomimes, he had choreographed “The Triumph of Neptune” for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In it, apparently, he danced a hornpipe that brought down the house. Diaghilev’s death in 1929 left him searching for other employment, and Balanchine spent a few years enjoying London’s elegance, as well as its earthier music halls. By his own account, the kilted marching bands he saw at the Edinburgh Festival in 1952 inspired his Romantic Highlands ballet, “Scotch Symphony.” Perhaps the most compelling motivation of all, however, was the fact that an extravaganza promised healthy ticket sales.
The score for “Union Jack” was provided by Hershy Kay, who had done similar work for “Western Symphony,” Balanchine’s 1954 “cowboy ballet,” and “Stars and Stripes” (1958), inspired by Sousa marches. For the tribute to the Brits, Kay selected Scottish ballads, English folk songs, Edwardian music-hall ditties and sailor’s hornpipes, elaborating upon them in his orchestration.
Rouben Ter-Arutunian, another seasoned contributor to Balanchine’s enterprises, designed the backdrops and costumes. The regiments marched before an architectural fantasy: a “London Bridge” as it might appear in a picture book for children. The Royal Navy got a similarly playful drop, depicting jaunty ships on saucy waves. The Pearly King and Queen section was framed by a red-and-gold toy theater.
Ter-Arutunian dressed the Pearlies and the sailors in stylized versions of the types they meant to evoke. The regalia for the seven clans, however — the kilts in authentic tartans, with full accouterments — were not the trompe l’oeil work of a costume shop, but were executed by Toronto-based military tailors with a long tradition of producing the real thing. The prescribed uniforms were modified only slightly, mostly for greater lightness and mobility.
“As you put on your costume,” Ms. von Aroldingen says, “it gave you a feeling of aristocratic elegance and respect for order. It helped you acknowledge being part of a tribe and loving the place you belonged to. I know it’s not possible in this life,” she adds, “but I wish I could put on that costume and do that dance just one more time. Nowadays, when I see it performed, it has such an impact on me that everything — every part of me — is there, except my body.”
In the studio, Ms. von Aroldingen winds down her session with Ms. Sylve by showing her the complete “MacDonald of Sleat” section on videotape. Ms. Sylve scrutinizes the shifting-grid formations of the ensemble and the escalating demands on its leader as the dance progresses. So far she has learned a third of it. The dance finishes with the whole group spinning in place like individual cyclones, halting abruptly, then adding one more brief onslaught of turns for emphasis.
Ms. Sylve surveys the action and nods. “It’s hard,” Ms. von Aroldingen acknowledges, “but once you’ve got it …”
Ms. Sylve finishes her sentence: “… it gives you so much joy.”
Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.