This morning I used my lunch break to catch up on the PBS broadcast of performances by the New York City Ballet (NYCB) in Madrid. The program consisted of two early works by George Balanchine and a significantly later one by Justin Peck, which was so much of a departure from the first half of the program that it did not take me long to bail on it. The Balanchine selections were “Serenade” and “Square Dance.” While both of them provided a solid reminder of Balanchine’s meticulous attention to music, I have to say that both of the performances came across as a relatively inadequate account of present-day dancers to evoke the spirit of Balanchine’s creativity during the middle of the twentieth century.
For those that do not already know, “Serenade” was the first ballet that Balanchine created after moving from Europe to New York. The dancers were students at the School of American Ballet. The ballet was first performed in 1934, a time when the very idea of a professional ballet company was little more than a consummation devoutly to be wished.
An example of the “geometry” of Balanchine’s choreography (screen shot from the YouTube video being discussed)
While Balanchine had some very strong ideas as to how choreography could reflect the abstract structures in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 48 four-movement serenade for string orchestra, he was also smart enough to work with the relatively inadequate materials available to him. This was particularly evident when, while working on the Allegro con spirito tempo of the final movement, one of his dancers collapsed from exhaustion. In the language of my fellow students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Balanchine immediately recognized that this was a feature, rather than a bug. Thus, what Tchaikovksy had composed for the Finale of his serenade become the penultimate movement of Balanchine’s choreography, which concluded with the poignant “Elegie,” which had been the third of the four movements in Tchaikovksy’s score.
The good news is that this highly emotional response to an abstract scenario carried the same impact that made “Serenade” one of the most powerful works in the NYCB repertoire when Balanchine was in charge. It did not matter how many times one saw this ballet, whether in New York or when it had been “exported” to another ballet company. The circumstances leading up to that “Elegie” and the narrative that responds to those circumstances remain some of the most powerful examples of what the “modern ballet” of the last century could achieve. Even when now danced by a corps whose members had not been born when “Serenade” was first created, the ballet continues to sustain a gut-wrenching impact, even for those that have not perviously seen any Balanchine choreography.
“Square Dance” did not enter the repertoire until 1957, over twenty years after the creation of “Serenade.” Nevertheless, like its predecessor, it is a ballet that Balanchine created in reflection on his selection of musical composition, drawing entirely on works by Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi. Nevertheless, the title of the ballet was no mere gratuitous gesture. While the strings in the orchestra pit were churning away at challenging virtuoso passages, Elisha C. Keeler was on stage serving as the square dance caller, drawing upon American style to cue the performance to music from the Italian Baroque period.
Sadly, there was no caller for the performance in Madrid which was subsequently broadcast on PBS. I suspect that one problem was that finding an authentic square dancer willing to work with Balanchine musical selections would not have been an easy matter; and, had a caller been recruited, the Madrid audience would probably not know what to make of him (or her). The down-side to this approach to “Square Dance” is that the spirit of that particular dance form has been all but obliterated. Instead, one views a ballet setting music by Corelli and Vivaldi that seems to be following in the steps of music by Tchaikovsky. The very idea of a square dance is left to the viewers to scratch their respective heads.
As I wrote at the beginning of this article, I passed on Peck’s choreography when, after only a few minutes, I realized that, when compared with Balanchine, he had nothing to say. What I fear, however, is that there is a chemistry about Peck’s work that “speaks” to his audience in ways that Balanchine’s tradition no longer does. This program was yet another reminder that the NYCB legacy of my approach to the performance of ballet is a far cry from the ways in which those sharing the audience with me tend to think. Thus, if I am accused of being too rooted to the past, I can only reply, “Guilty as charged.” Nevertheless, I would rather live with that guilt triggered by past experience than endure most (if not all) of the present-day alternatives.
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