I just finished watching the first live broadcast through YouTube of what the New York City Ballet (NYCB) is calling its “Digital Spring Season.” For six weeks NYCB will broadcast full ballets and excerpts twice a week. Tuesdays will be devoted to the works of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Fridays will present ballets by contemporary choreographers, including Kyle Abraham, Pam Tanowitz, and Alexei Ratmansky.
It seemed appropriate that this evening the season would begin with one of the best known of Balanchine’s works, “Allegro Brillante.” The music for this ballet is by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, his Opus posthumous 75 (third) piano concerto in E-flat major, which survives as only the first movement. The choreography features one female and one male soloist (Tiler Peck and Andrew Veyette), accompanied by a corps of four women and four men. The NYCB Orchestra is conducted by Music Director Andrew Litton, and the piano soloist is Susan Walters. The recording was made on January 18, 2017.
Balanchine himself described “Allegro Brillante” as “everything I know about classical ballet in thirteen minutes.” He created it in 1956 and one can certainly make a case that it is in the top five of his catalog, if not the very top. It is one of those rare examples of a ballet whose experience can be enhanced by video direction sensitive to the geometrical patterns best seen from directly above interleaved with the more “standard” front-and-center point of view.
Back in the days when I was writing about dance, I lost track of the number of times I saw “Allegro Brillante,” as well as the number of companies I saw performing it. Thus, in many respects, this evening amounted to encountering an old friend I had not seen in decades. What was interesting is how the cultivation of my capacity for listening quickly meshed with my capacity for observation that, in turn, reflected on past encounters with the ballet.
Because the opening section of the concerto is played before the curtain rises, it should not be a surprise that the dancers are already energetically at work when we see them for the first time. Those who dislike Balanchine accuse him of treating his company as if it were a machine. Even if one accepts that premise, there is no arguing with the elegance of the mechanics! The best way to describe the structure is as the smooth flow of an abundant variety of geometrical shapes, each of which pauses long enough to register with the eyes before moving on to the next one.
Mind you, this is a technique that goes all the way back to “Serenade,” the first ballet Balanchine created in the United States. However, the abstractions of “Serenade” gradually give way to a poignant narrative. A foundation of the dynamics of shapes in motion presented with no need of narrative only emerged later through such ballets as “Concerto Barocco,” “The Four Temperaments,” and “Symphony in C,” the last of which continues to leave my jaw dropping in the face of its diversity.
Nevertheless, I appreciate Balanchine’s own evaluation, simply because he was able to distill so much content into so little clock-time. It is almost the case that “Allegro Brillante” is over before you know it; and you feel as if you barely had enough time to process it. The good news is that the YouTube Web page for the live stream will remain available for the next three days. My guess is that those choosing to return for another visit will be surprised at seeing shapes and flows that they had not previously recalled!
“Allegro Brillante” is almost 65 years old; but, through the freshness of the performance captured on this video document, the ballet never shows its age!
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