Seeing Things: May 2003 Archives

NYCB and ABT, America's top two ballet troupes, have been playing rival spring seasons at Lincoln Center for more than two decades. Time was, the most profound and thrilling art lay with NYCB. Little by little, without Balanchine's galvanizing presence as chief choreographer and—this should not be underestimated—chief coach, the power of attraction shifted to ABT, with its warmer performing style, its growing complement of male virtuosi, its recent cultivation of tall, fresh, and athletic "American Girl" ballerinas (Gillian Murphy, Michele Wiles), and the occasional dazzling guest star. Overall, ABT's repertory can't compete with the stock of Balanchine and Robbins dances held by the NYCB. But with that unique heritage now unevenly performed and glutted and dulled with an excess of Martins and Wheeldon, ABT has slipped into first place. With its ingratiating performances, it's the company that offers more fun. Village Voice 05/28/03

The chamber-sized New York Theatre Ballet is determined not to let the genius of Antony Tudor disappear from view. . . .Tudor is neglected because he doesn't suit the dominant taste of our time, for grand-scale extravaganza, which degenerates all too easily into flash and trash. Having wrested a uniquely expressive language from ballet's traditional abstract vocabulary, he offers instead a piercing view of human psychology and a profound sympathy for the workings of the more-often-than-not defeated heart. Village Voice 05/28/03

According to Denmark's great Romantic choreographer August Bournonville (1805-1879), the idea of home is a splendid subject for a ballet because it raises the question of self-identity -- a profound and eternally fascinating theme that is a staple of art. The most affecting of Bournonville's works and a linchpin of the Royal Danish Ballet's repertoire, "A Folk Tale," created in 1854, explores the fate of a pair of infant girls who have been surreptitiously switched in their cradles. One is an heiress of genteel birth, the other a member of the troll clan that lives under Scandinavia's hills, emerging at intervals to do mischief to the human society it envies and loathes. Each of the changelings is brought up to a marriageable age in an environment incompatible with her nature; each, without knowing why, is perennially at odds with her surroundings. Each must be restored to her rightful place -- that is, her true home -- for one of those happy endings in which the nineteenth century could still believe. Dance Insider, Vignettes 09/26/02

American Ballet Theatre, frantic to sell tickets to its season at the Metropolitan Opera House . . . has embarked on an ad campaign that goes beyond the foolish to the offensive. Benjamin's Ailey-esque mix of jazz, modern dance, and ballet, used to depict easily recognizable sentiments and situations, is happily studded with unique touches, some witty, some poetic.Village Voice 05/07/03