Has NYCB Forgotten “Metastaseis?”

Mira Nadon, principal with NYCB, preparing to perform “Pithoprakta” (from an article by Gia Kourlas for todays New York Times)

I see from a Web page for today’s New York Times that Suzanne Farrell is teaching the choreography for “Pithoprakta” to the current dancers in New York City Ballet (NYCB). The music, which has the same title, is by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis; and I first encountered it on an album that coupled it with another Xenakis composition, “Metastaseis.” George Balanchine created choreography for both pieces, beginning with “Metastaseis.” I remember seeing the performance of the two ballets in the original order, having already gotten to know the music through an album I had purchased.

Back in those days, I was a Balanchine fanatic. I particularly appreciated how he would create a ballet based on the music without necessarily introducing a narrative. In that context, both Xenakis ballets were about as abstract as could be imagined. This was no surprise, since I had come to know the composer’s book (in its English translation) Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition.

My guess is that Balanchine was never as well-versed in mathematics as Xenakis was. When it came to creating choreography for a composition like Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 48, the four-movement “Serenade for Strings,” he knew how to reflect his listening experiences into choreography. However, listening to any composition by Xenakis is a far cry from listening to any composition by Tchaikovsky. Mind you, I am not saying that Balanchine needed to know more about mathematics in order to listen to Xenakis; but a command of techniques for listening to Tchaikovsky just could not be deployed for just about any composition in the Xenakis catalog.

At the risk of being too harsh, I find myself thinking about Xenakis’ efforts as, according to the old joke, “music of the future whose time has passed!” According to my archives, he has not surfaced on my site since a performance of his “Miika” at the Center for New Music in May of 2024! My own listening experiences go back even further, to the performance of his “Theraps” by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players early in December of 2022. The “bottom line” for that occasion was that the performance was neither convincing nor memorable!

What I found interesting about today’s article is that, as the text unfolded, I felt as if abstraction was giving way to personality. Thus, while Balanchine was the original choreographer, I suspect that the revival will deserve to be known as “Farrell’s ballet.” So much has changed since the ballet was created in 1968 that both performers and audience would do best by dwelling on the present, rather than the past. Furthermore, since Farrell herself is not much older than I am, I am all for her continuing to make engaging dance performances when both of us are now in our eighties!