George Balanchine’s “Duo Concertant”

Having just written about Igor Stravinsky’s “Duo Concertant,” composed in 1932, by citing George Balanchine’s decision to set the music to choreography for the 1972 Stravinsky Festival presented by the New York City Ballet, I decided that it was time for me to revisit the ballet itself. It did not take me long to find a YouTube video of a performance by the dancers for whom the ballet was created, Kay Mazzo and Peter Martins. As I had previously observed, they shared the stage with the violinist and pianist performing the music. On this particular video the violinist is Cees Van Schaik, accompanied by Gordon Boelzner at the piano. The source is a film by Hugo Niebeling, jointly produced by Unitel and the ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, second German television) public television channel. The film itself was made in 1975.

When I think about Balanchine’s settings of music by Stravinsky, I often speculate on the extent to which Stravinsky’s music often inspired Balanchine’s sense of humor. This was certainly the case in the choreography for “Jeu de cartes” (card game); and the “Rubies” movement of Jewels is riotously funny. Indeed, there are even subtle winks of wit in a ballet as austere as “Apollo.”

Kay Mazzo and Peter Martins listening to Gordon Boelzner (screen shot from the video being discussed)

In that context I enjoy “Duo Concertant” for the many ways (subtle and not-so-subtle) in which it undermines the tradition of the pas de deux. For one thing, the two dancers seem to spend the majority of their time standing next to the piano, listening attentively (and utterly silently) to the music. When they move away from the musicians, they remain attentive; but there is a rhetorical dimension in their attentiveness. Much of the time there is a playful give-and-take of a core “vocabulary” of simple patterns. If an adagio can be associated with a more “classical” pas de deux, the “vocabulary” for that association tends to undermine observer expectations. If it is a pas de deux adagio, then it is followed by a variation that is identical for the two soloists compressed into the same music from Stravinsky’s score. The humor of “Duo Concertant” is not as raucous as that of “Rubies;” but it is still hard to watch without succumbing to a fit of the giggles.

It may also be that Balanchine was mocking his own approach to abstraction. Any sense of a personal relationship between the two dancers is seriously muted. Every now and then, however, there is a crack in that ice of emotional frigidity. The viewer lets out a sigh. The experience may be one of people dancing, but there is more than a bit of relief when the nature of the people rises above the nature of the dance!