Seeing Things: August 2006 Archives

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on August 28, 2006.

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Stay-at-home ballet fans will find themselves beguiled by the latest installment in PBS's Great Performances series: the Paris Opera Ballet dancing George Balanchine's ``Jewels.''

Created for the New York City Ballet in 1967, ``Jewels'' was the first plotless three-act ballet in dance history. Balanchine, for whom music always came first, chose the work of three decidedly different composers to evoke three cultures central to his life and art.

Music by the French Romantic composer Gabriel Faure, flowing like gently stirred water, sets ``Emeralds'' in motion. The choreography is dreamy, haunting, full of muted passions. It conjures up the France of our imagination.

``Rubies'' responds in kind to the raw energy and jazzy rhythms of Stravinsky's ``Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra.'' It's all urban America, dancing blithely on the edge of danger.

``Diamonds,'' to Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3, evokes imperial Russia. Balanchine was schooled at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in the final years of the Romanov dynasty. The choreography sums up the cool beauty of a classical dance tradition that reached its peak under czarist patronage.

The Parisians give ``Jewels,'' recorded at the ornate Palais Garnier, an impeccable performance throughout. They're at their sublime best in ``Emeralds,'' moving with unsurpassed refinement while conveying subtle fugitive emotions.

Farrell's Czarina

They make ``Rubies'' suaver than it is when danced by the NYCB. U.S. aficionados will miss the brashness, the rakishness and the spontaneity delivered by the home team.

Legs that slash the air like switchblades in New York translate in Paris into limbs stroking the space as if it were lined with velvet. The result is gorgeous in its own way.

In ``Diamonds,'' the Paris company's Agnes Letestu lacks the magical combination of sensuousness and hauteur that Suzanne Farrell originally brought to the ballerina/czarina role. But the overall clarity and assurance of the dancing emphasizes the architecture of the choreography. The exquisitely manipulated patterns become -- more clearly than I've ever seen -- a metaphor for order and purity.

PBS Great Performances: The Paris Opera Ballet in George Balanchine's ``Jewels'' will air Wednesday at 8 p.m. in New York on Thirteen/WNET (nationally some stations may show it Aug. 28; check local listings). For more information, see http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/shows/jewels/ .

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on August 18, 2006.

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The birthday candles were burning fiercely last night at the New York State Theater for the premiere of Mark Morris's ``Mozart Dances.'' Lincoln Center is celebrating the 40th year of its Mostly Mozart Festival, Mozart his 250th birthday, Morris his 50th and the Mark Morris Dance Group its 25th.

Morris appropriated a trio of Mozart piano works to produce three distinct, though intimately related, choreographies. The first two, glorious examples of the evocative power of dance, reveal a surge forward in Morris's already extraordinary powers.

The performance did more than justice to the occasion. The rendering of the music was celestial, thanks to soloists Emanuel Ax and Yoko Nozaki, and Louis Langree, who conducted the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.

The opening piece, set to the ``Piano Concerto No. 11 in F major,'' is called simply ``Eleven.'' It features Lauren Grant, a tiny, lushly fleshed, feisty woman with a mop of short blond curls. Though she looks like a soubrette, she delivers dancing that is deeply sculptural and projected to giant size.

Morris recognizes a heroine when he sees one. He sets her against a chorus of seven women, and the effect is that of a mortal in daring dialogue with a sisterhood of goddesses.

Their movements are basic, powerful and accented with colloquial gesture -- as when a hand is extended, index finger pointing as if to say, ``Wait a minute.''

Walking, Waiting

There's a lot of prosaic walking with firm strides, suggesting life's endless comings and goings, meetings and partings. A ravishing passage for the chorus has the women just waiting and watching, as if the music were a breeze occasionally shifting their positions.

Sometimes the movement is strange and hieratic, like postures on a Greek frieze. Emphatic gestures alternate with melting ones and a few sudden, tragedy-laden falls.

Though the choreography is essentially abstract, it wields an emotional impact, luring viewers into making up stories they dredge from their subconscious.

Joe Bowie is the central figure in the second piece, ``Double,'' danced to the ``Sonata in D major for Two Pianos.'' I assumed, from the handsome postmodern take on an 18th-century frock coat he wore, that he represents Mozart.

At any rate, he's an animating genius, conjuring up a bevy of men who seem to be peasants. After his introductory solo -- expansive arm gestures over busy feet -- he inspires and instructs them.

Circle of Men

Then, inevitably, he leaves them to their own devices, returning from time to time to counsel and support.

Later, under nocturnal lighting, six of the seven men, hands linked, dance in a circle, then take turns supporting one another in balances and recoveries from slow falls, like brothers irrevocably bonded.

The seventh man, the baby-faced, frail-bodied Noah Vinson, joins them. He remains distinct as the neediest of them and turns out to be the master's likeliest successor.

The beauty of this passage is breathtaking, and it's capped by a magical fantasy in which a bevy of sylphide-like women in long, gauzy skirts makes a fleeting incursion into the men's realm.

Then dawn breaks, the supernatural vision of strange, unattainable loveliness vanishes, and the guys go back to their workaday life, bustling and cheerful.

Those who would be embarrassed to find themselves weeping in the theater should skip this extraordinary piece.

Despite its musical intelligence, ``Twenty-seven,'' set to the ``Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major,'' is less resonant than the dances that precede it.

Obvious Moves

It elaborates a little too insistently upon earlier themes, such as the expressive quality of variously angled hands. And it emphasizes too obviously Morris's career-long preoccupation with the force of a group, setting off small, friendly crowds with brief solos that feature individual dancers' singularity -- another of his tenets.

It also introduces material that's rare for Morris: a series of stunning lifts. The men fling the women over their backs; sail them sideways through the air, oddly angled legs enveloped in the cloud of a flimsy skirt; or hold them aloft like prizes, their weight suddenly and touchingly evident.

But none of this churns your emotions and animates your thoughts the way the first two pieces do. They're wonders.

Howard Hodgkin contributed the bold-slashes-of-paint backdrops; Martin Pakledinaz, the simple, inventive costumes; James F. Ingalls, the rather simplistic lighting. The piece was commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Vienna's New Crowned Hope and London's Barbican Centre.

``Mozart Dances'' is at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, tonight and tomorrow night, Aug. 18 and 19. Information: http://www.lincolncenter.org and http://www.mmdg.org . Tickets: (1) (212) 721-6500.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on August 18, 2006.

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- At the Joyce Theater in Chelsea, through tomorrow, the San Francisco-based Smuin Ballet entertains the summertime audience with veteran choreographer Michael Smuin's showbiz flair.

The curtain raiser, ``Bluegrass/Slyde,'' to down-home music, is a cheery athletic piece with a gimmick. Its classically trained dancers romp through a jungle gym, swirling out from vertical poles planted on swiveling disks.

The recently created ``Symphony of Psalms,'' to Stravinsky's choral score, aims for solemnity, if only to provide a balanced program.

Granted, the piece is sleekly and handsomely designed. But it hardly incarnates the single-minded fervor of the music. The ballet platitudes Smuin comes up with seem to be a poor means of expressing Old Testament passions.

``Fly Me to the Moon,'' set to Sinatra songs, provides a deft choreographic equivalent of easy listening. Here Smuin is at his charming best.

Smuin has been around the block. He started out as a dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, where he began to choreograph. After doing time with American Ballet Theatre, he returned to SFB in 1973, directed that company for more than a decade, then formed his own group in 1994.

Along the way, he choreographed for Broadway and TV, won a Tony and an Emmy, and became very savvy about what makes the general public happy.

© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.