I seem to be following up on my spring devoted to the choreography of George Balanchine by shifting my attention to the work of Jerome Robbins. Robbins was one of the earliest members of the New York City Ballet (NYCB), joining it in 1949 after Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein had created it the previous year. He had joined American Ballet Theatre (then known simply as Ballet Theatre) in 1940, distinguishing himself as both a dancer and a choreographer; and he oversaw that transformation of his “Fancy Free” ballet into the Broadway musical On the Town in 1944. While Robbins continued to work on Broadway during the Fifties, he was a major figure in the NYCB repertoire, particularly for his innovative approach to setting Claude Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’us faune” as “Afternoon of a Faun,” which was discussed on this site this past May.
In 1972 Robbins became NYCB Ballet Master. While his focus amounted to complementing the Balanchine repertoire with his own approach to both abstract and narrative choreography, he kept many of his other irons in the fire, including revivals of his best-known Broadway hits, West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof. One of his first additions to the NYCB repertoire following Balanchine’s death in 1983 was “Glass Pieces,” creating choreography for three compositions by Philip Glass. The first two of these, “Rubric” and “Façades” were taken from the composer’s Glassworks suite. The ballet then concluded with a setting of music from Glass’ opera Akhnaten.
NYCB provided Robbins with the opportunity to spend more time with abstraction than he had done at the beginning of his career. Some of his earliest NYCB efforts were conceived on a grand scale, such as Dances at a Gathering, an extended suite setting eighteen piano compositions by Frédéric Chopin, in 1969 and choreography for the entirety of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 “Goldberg Variations” in 1971. When it came to working with Glass’ repetitive structures, Robbins decided to frame his choreography on a more modest durational scale and was well-served by making that decision.
As a result, “Glass Pieces” emerged as an abstract study of bodies in motion, which does not differ that much from the spirit of Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco.” Both ballets are fundamentally about patterns and the smooth transitions that join one pattern to its successor. In that context both ballets emerge as a celebration of balletic movement itself. The primary distinction is that Balanchine’s choreography served to reflect the structures behind Bach’s approach to concerto form, while Robbins treated Glass’ repetitive structures as a richly woven fabric in which he could identify and elaborate on patterns of his own perception.
The foreground pas de deux against the rear background in “Facades” (screen shot from the video being discussed)
As was the case with “The Concert,” the YouTube video of “Glass Pieces” presents a performance by the Paris Opera Ballet. Sae Eun Park and Florian Magnenet are names as soloists in the opening credits; but the entire ballet is basically ensemble work for groups of varying sizes. Thus, while the opening “Rubric” movement uses costuming to establish a well-defined distinction between “foreground” and “background,” the foreground is established by different combinations of three male-female couples. In “Facades,” on the other hand, the background is a row of female dancers that really is at the back of the stage, providing a “continuo” of sorts for a pas de deux (danced by those aforementioned soloists). The Akhnaten music then concludes the ballet with an “all hands” affair. It begins with an energetic male chorus, followed by a contrasting female chorus, and concludes by bringing together all of the dancers.
Those familiar with Robbins’ work are likely to see influences from the past. The male chorus for Akhnaten will probably remind many viewers of the choreography for the Jets from West Side Story, while the “Facades” pas de deux may well have emerged from latter-day reflections on “Afternoon of a Faun.” Nevertheless, there are problems with the Parisian execution. They are most pronounced by the “continuo” for “Facades,” which is not always spaced with the exactitude that would reflect the music and sometimes reveals subtle (and not-so-subtle) problems with synchronized movement.
My guess is that an NYCB performance would be far more satisfying. However, to the best of my knowledge, such a performance has not yet been uploaded to YouTube. If the Parisians are not as meticulous as we would expect from NYCB dancers, they will provide the viewer with a clear sense of how Robbins decided to present Glass’ music with choreography. For my part, I found him to have much more to say about Glass than he ever managed to say about either Chopin or Bach.
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