Waitin’ on Mr. B.
Ballet San Jose
Balanchine's Serenade, Four Temperaments, Theme and Variations Center for the Performing Arts, San Jose, CA
March 31, 2008
Ballet San Jose in George Balanchine's Serenade. Photo by Robert Shomler.
To brand a dance program “just Balanchine” is akin to announcing a theater company repertory season as "just Shakespeare." It suffices, and then some. That enough of George Balanchine’s 435 dances survive to stock an entire season, let alone an evening, remains the continuing wonder of 20th century dance. There’s everything here, the world of neo-classicism in all its variety. Balanchine reshaped our consideration of dance, dancers and musicality.
Last weekend, Ballet San Jose produced for the first time in its history an all-Balanchine program, although the three masterworks in the repertoire-Serenade, The Four Temperaments, Theme and Variations- have figured previously in the repertoire of the troupe and its predecessor company in Cleveland. All three dances were staged here by Victoria Simon, formerly of New York City Ballet and a long-time régisseur for the Balanchine Trust. On Saturday evening (March 29) at the Center for the Performing Arts, the results from the 43-member company were, predictably, mixed, but oddly bracing. This was not the place to seek superlatives, but that’s understandable. This trio of Balanchine dances will always seem greater than the artists who dance them. That concept may sound a bit Platonic, but "definitive," an overused adjective in the critical vocabulary, seems positively anathema when applied to this choreographer. One felt that if one or all of these works were revived annually, the Balanchine style and the Balanchine ethos (they are the same thing) would become even more ingrained among the ranks.
Unfortunately, the decision by artistic director Dennis Nahat to settle for canned music may have been economically judicious, perhaps necessary. Yet, even with Robert Irving’s terrific recording of the Paul Hindemith Four Temperaments score, the policy was artistically deleterious. Theme and Variations suffered the most.
Serenade emerged the program’s most deeply felt entry. The reason is easy to explain. The 1934 ballet, Balanchine’s first on American soil, may be without plot but the moonlit aura, the emotionally charged music (Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, with the final two movements reversed) suggest all manner of scenario. Balanchine denied any hint of a narrative element, but that has not stopped dancers from finding a story line, and it was clear in Saturday’s performance that the performers, while heeding the steps, infused their assignments with something personal.
The familiar anecdotes surrounding Serenade only make it grow in stature. Balanchine uses 17 women at the start, because that’s how many signed up for the project. One woman was late for class one day, so a dancer enters hastily in the course of the piece. Male students trickled into the studio, so they come into Serenade only in the later movements. The iconic unison of arms held aloft at the beginning? According to the late Ruthanna Boris, who had appeared in that premiere performance, Balanchine was intrigued by the salute favored by a rising dictator in Germany. This may be speculative, but it does show the extent to which external circumstances influenced the shape of the work.
The unison opening as feet shift into first position (a bit squeaky here) seems to proclaim a new, indigenous era in American ballet, and, here, despite some wayward wrists, the Ballet SJ women in long tulle skirts were at their best. They sustained the air of enchantment in the cycling arms and testing balances. The company’s veteran ballerina, Karen Gabay, lavished a high degree of charm on the waltz duet, where her partner Rudy Candia, proved more a bit skittish at the recorded tempo. Erena Ishii, Alexsandra Meijer and Maximo Califano enlivened the other solo assignments.
Erena Ishii, Ramon Moreno and Jing Zhang of Ballet San Jose in George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments. Photo by Robert Shomler.
Judging from audience response, The Four Temperaments (1946) retained its air of strangeness, as it should. The angularity of gesture and the jutting hips signaled the neo-classic, black-and-white rehearsal-clothes Balanchine who would dominate American ballet for 40 years and reach his apogee with Agon in 1957. But The Four Temperaments, inspired as much by American bodies and the jittery rhythm of American life as by the music is as good a ballet as any to represent this aspect of Balanchine’s artistry.
The representation of the classical four humors allows younger dancers leeway for characterizing through the steps. Ramon Moreno may have been the cheeriest "Melancholic" of my experience; he needs to convey more gravity of attack in the arched back and the diagonal sweeps across the stage. Meijer and Travis Walker gave evidence of a superior partnership in the second, "Sanguinic," variation. Hao Bo, a wisp of a dancer, magisterially articulated the intricate footwork of "Phlegmatic" (I’d like to see him do it in five years). In "Choleric," Akua Parker released a torrent of energy in her solo (she’s to be watched). Much praise is due the three couples (Maria Jacobs/Rudy Candia, Yui Yonezawa/Preston Dugger, Haley Henderson/Easton Smith) who etched the opening theme with focused energies, if not total technical ease.
Theme and Variations (1947) was the misfire here. The entire performance moved at one consistent energy level that was far too tense and airless for comfort. Balanchine takes us from the tendus of the classroom to a souvenir of the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg in 25 minutes. But these dancers seemed too nervous to plot that progression. Maria Jacobs fussed over her opening moments. Maykel Solas delivered the fabled air turns acceptably (though the arm placement was eccentric, to say the least). But he partners Jacobs indifferently and she seemed to take no pleasure in those unfolding developpés, set to some of Tchaikovsky’s most haunting music. The floral combinations for the women’s corps, absolutely magical when well shaped, looked downright labored (blame it on height inequities).
David Guthrie’s black and plum costumes cast a pall and the women’s headdresses seemed to come from some discarded production of Raymonda. There are also more subtle ways of suggesting regal elegance than crowding the stage with eight chandeliers and miles of swag curtains. It’s a mystery to me why such a lovable ballet should need this kind of hard sell.
Ballet San Jose performs Nahat’s Mendelssohn Symphony and Firebird May 1-4 at the Center for the Performing Arts. www.balletsanjose.org. (408) 288-2820.
