“Rubies” Misses the Mark in the “Digital Spring”

The fifth program in the “Digital Spring Season” of the New York City Ballet (NYCB) was devoted entirely to a single, relatively short, ballet choreographed by George Balanchine, “Rubies.” This was the middle portion of the full-evening composition entitled Jewels, preceded by “Emeralds” and followed by “Diamonds.” “Rubies” was set to music by Igor Stravinsky, his “Capriccio” for piano and orchestra. I have very fond memories of Jewels, which I was fortunate enough to see in Saratoga in the summer of 1967, following up on its premiere at the New York State Theater the preceding April (which I had read about in The New Yorker). Memories of “Rubies” are even stronger for its rolling-on-the-floor sense of humor.

I have a personal theory of how “Rubies” fits into Balanchine’s biography. In 1936 he served as the choreographer for the Richard Rodgers (partnering with George Abbot and Lorenz Hart) musical On Your Toes. The plot is basically about a Russian ballet company, all of whose members were refugees from the Revolution. At the heart of the narrative, these Russians find themselves in a Broadway show, which features a jazz ballet entitled “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.” (When this show returned to Broadway in the spring of 1983, Balanchine was still the choreographer.)

If “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” involves a corps of highly traditional Russians trying to cope with a ballet set to a jazz score, “Rubies” turns that plot on its head. We now have a crew of dyed-in-the-wool hoofers who, without any apparent explanation, happen to find themselves on the stage of a world-class ballet company, dancing to music by a cosmopolitan Russian émigré composer. They do their best to do justice to the requisite “ballet moves;” but every now and then a hip throws out or both men and women succumb to high-kick prancing. In other words the first sight gags show up as soon as the curtain rises, and they keep coming until the music stops.

The “Digital Spring Season” video was recorded on September 19, 2019. The leading soloists were Principal Dancers Megan Fairchild and Gonzalo Garcia. The other extended solo work was a debut performance of Corps de Ballet Member Mira Nadon. Andrew Litton conducted the NYCB Orchestra with piano soloist Stephen Gosling. Sadly, there was more rib-tickling humor coming out of the orchestra pit than could be found on stage. The video credits gave no indication of who took charge of the reconstruction.

What I found particularly disconcerting is that I have a video of Jewels performed by the Mariinsky Ballet & Orchestra, the latter conducted by Valery Gergiev. I wrote about that video on Examiner.com back in October of 2011, and it is a recording that I continue to revisit frequently. The bottom line is that all of the performances of these three distinctively different ballets continues to leave me in rapt attention, and I still laugh uncontrollably during “Rubies!” In comparison, the video presented this evening felt like a dusty museum case.