11. Hands-On: New York City Ballet Reviewed by Cheryl S.
On the potential work-front, no word from Wonkov in Yakutsk. Sandy says no worry, Russians tend to blow hot and cold. And Madame Beach flew straight to Paris from Beijing, no stopover time in New York: something about yellow vests in the Marais district. (Those French are so into fashion.) But I’ve been reading Adrienne Rich as Madame suggested, and I really liked the poem “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”. Sandy says the French prefer a “hot” subject and a “cool” style, and Rich certainly gives gender stereotyping the cold eye in her poetry. So political. Madame Beach says next trip we’ll meet.
But the big news is that I have been interviewed by Louise Ebersdorf, who once funded a ballet company, the Ebersdorf Ballet, and who had a theater built and named for her (“The Louise”, closed) here in Manhattan! Sandy decided I should go to the meeting alone, so I dressed formally (last year’s black sheath, my old faux-leather coat, my new shiny brogues) and showed up at Ebersdorf Tower at 10:00 a.m. sharp last Monday. There was a private elevator and a guard. At the 39th floor, I was met by a handsome young man named Master Raro (black eyes, raven hair, long brushed with fade), who took me to a video room before the big meeting. I was nervous, but Master (one addresses him that way, I hope) had an immediate calming effect on me, which is often the way I know I may develop a crush on a guy.
The video room was in orange-red, walls and drapes, with a huge video screen at one end and a red couch for viewers. Master asked me if I would like a drink, and I said no-thank-you. He put on a blu-ray disc, lowered the lights, and left me alone to watch. Well, the video was primitive in comparison to what Sandy and I are doing, just one stationary camera shot of what turned out to be a rec room with white walls. There were two dancers in practice clothes doing the “Puss in Boots” duet from The Sleeping Beauty. The music was a recording, distantly reproduced. The dancers were what Sandy would call “proficient”, but the ballerina (as the White Cat) did have a style and finish to her dancing, I have to admit. While I was watching, a wheelchair entered the room through a rear door, and when the lights came up, there was Mrs. Ebersdorf. She was dressed in a Chinese silk robe, with Arabian scroll-tipped footwear on her tiny feet. She is probably about 90 but looks younger, with voluminous steel-gray hair piled on top of her head and chilly blue eyes that seem to look through and beyond you. I got the feeling I was being cataloged. (Where have I seen that wheelchair before?)
“Welcome to our Tower,” she said. “Call me Louise.” I rose and offered to shake her hand, but she waved me back to the sofa and chirred her chair up to my knees. Louise locked into my eyes, and I was utterly hypnotized. It is partly her voice, which is young sounding and resembles a TV announcer in its enunciation, like she’s reading from a prompter. She asked me about my background and seemed impressed. What she wants is a solo or duet for her ballerina, Albertine (possibly with her partner and husband, Paco). Mrs. Ebersdorf is thinking of reviving her ballet company and reopening The Louise. I suggested that she first consider making a video of a new dance choreographed especially for the occasion as a sort of teaser. Louise (it was easy to call her by her first name) was enthusiastic. She is all for appealing to the Millennials in today’s audience, and from the internet evidence (“Digits Ballet”) she feels I am perfect for the job.
As Louise put it, the future for the arts is in the East. Louise is currently interested in the New Silk Road in China, connecting much of the world now and tomorrow for trade, but especially the Silk Road On Ice (SROI) from Khorgos Gateway over the Arctic to New York City. Louise follows reports on Greater China’s Xinjiang Province with close attention, especially what that state is achieving in de-extremification among the local Turkic Muslims and the Uighur population. Louise says that videos of the area remind her of her childhood in Odessa, Texas. She feels that a ballet company from the West (her own, obviously) should tour Xinjiang and offer corrective images of human rights, or, as Louise put it, “I’d like to buy the world a ballet. A ballet that honors our American innovation. You don’t mind collaborating toward change, do you? Learning to collaborate will be increasingly important in the future. Antique Eastern grip combined with a touch of Western innovation -- it’s win-win.”
Louise informed me that her two current dancers are from France. She called them “neo-nomads” and is proud that she has given them a home here in New York, or as she put it, “an internment”. “How generous,” I offered. Master Raro entered with a package for me. “You can meet my dancers soon,” Louise reassured me. “I am having a dance studio, complete with sprung floor, added to our laboratory down below. That’s where you could rehearse. Albertine has suggested a subject for the dance: the Japanese Cat Demon called the Nekomata.” (Louise and Albertine are obviously working closely together on repertory plans.) “The Nekomata is a magical beast that can revive the dead and devour the living. Obviously, a topic of some interest to our Millennials today. Fantasy fiction and the horror movie angle, you know.”
I knew. So I took the package which Master Raro handed me, told Louise I would give her proposal my immediate attention and make a decision. When Louise took my hand in farewell, she pressed a card into it. “World Art Trade: Smooth as Silk”, it read. WAT-SAS. There was a local private telephone number and an email address. Obviously, the Ebersdorfs think big. So heady! So political. Master Raro escorted me to the elevator and I learned he was a former dancer in Louise’s company. (I wonder if he’s still in shape? If only.) I opened the package on the subway, and it contained three blu-ray discs: a copy of the “Puss in Boots” duet and two old movies, Cat People by Maurice Tourneur and Kuroneko (Black Cat) by Kaneto Shindo. When I told Sandy all of the details of the meeting, he was not overly impressed. Although he did say that Albertine’s pointe work looked strong on the video. I forgot to ask what my fee would be. Sandy and I have to mind-meld.
We went to two performances of New York City Ballet over the last week of its repertory. We saw casts in Prodigal Son and Liebeslieder Walzer. We were both fascinated at the use of hands in the ballets. (So related to our “Digits Ballet” on the internet: now nine million viewers!) Balanchine was on the same wave-length that we are on, obviously.
In Prodigal Son, you get the Father’s prayers for his children wafting to heaven with alternating hands, like doves ascending. And, of course, the Siren has that iconic, cobra-like hand-signature above the back of her head. So ominous. Sandy pointed out that the War Games dance for the Prodigal, his servants and the Siren’s party-boys has fists that resemble the nodes on early electrical power generators. Sandy says this is a Russian Constructivist motif that you can also see in Balanchine’s Kammermusik. Of course, all this manual display climaxes with the Prodigal’s begging for help with cupped palms after he has been crippled at the orgy. We saw two casts, and I was impressed by Teresa Reichlen’s Siren, so witty, so implacable, so seductive.
Then Liebeslieder Walzer. What a beautiful thing! Four couples and endless variations on waltzing to Brahms’ songs. Sandy and I were mesmerized. Here’s how I identified the couples. There are the Neophytes (Jillana and Conrad Ludlow in the original cast), newcomers at dance parties, all unleashed enthusiasm like beginners everywhere. There’s the Ideal Couple (originally Diana Adams and Bill Carter), in which the male partner finds new ways to discover his idealized beloved through their dance. There’s the Expert Couple (Melissa Hayden and Jonathan Watts), in which Balanchine shows what virtuoso ballroom technique can accomplish. And there’s the Past-Master Couple (Violette Verdy and Nicholas Magallanes), lover-graduates on a super-adult level of skill and imagination.
At the end of the Neophytes’ opening dance, the ballerina appears to give her partner a kind of benediction with one hand as he kneels before her, and this is echoed in the following group dance, which ends with all four men kneeling and kissing the backs of the hands of their partners. In the middle of Part One, the Ideal Couple begins a duet with the male partner whispering to his ballerina and hiding his lips with a hand as he confides the secret.
The Expert Couple begins its Part One duet with the man pushing the ballerina forward before him with both hands, encouraging her to lead him into the dance, and later he takes her on a circular promenade, shielding her face by holding one free hand above his own forehead as she leans back into the turn.
The Past-Master Couple has a section in Part One where they waltz across the stage with the male partner shielding his face as through saying, “Looking at all that you are is too much: you blind me.” Later, in a second encounter, he places his hands above her with fingers spread as through indicating rays of light streaming from the ballerina’s forehead.
This couple has some of the most elaborated dancing in the ballet – as though they have reached a peak of expression in fantasizing about dance and love. Verdy’s skills allowed Balanchine to switch the choreographic focus from hand to shoulder, to arabesque, to head, to arching back. And the ballerina must do this on one count and with no sign of effort. In other words, not only does the ballerina change the image in her dance; she shifts the viewer’s focus within that image, time and again, magically. Balanchine redefines the conception of ballet technique around issues of rhythmic precision and variety. What a lesson for me!
The couples not only provide contrast in the ballet; they also appear to learn from one another, sharing danced motifs. For example, the lively Ideal Couple of Part One turns its dance in Part Two into a display of the ballerina’s melting arabesque line. The Neophytes pick up on motifs expressed earlier by the Past-Masters: those lifted assemblés travelling laterally across the stage. And the Experts inherit something as well: their great final dance (with its weighted ronds de jambe just over the floor and its pitch-falls forward thanks to expert partnering) converts the brio of their earlier encounters into a swimming lesson in mutual ardor, the experience of love itself become a medium, like Brahms’ music.
In other words, once the viewer learns to recognize manual motifs, you learn to look for other motifs in the dance movement itself. The choreography teaches the viewer how to watch, including very sophisticated movement inventions. The ideal cast at NYCB this season would have been Ashley Laracey in the Jillana role (with Justin Peck), Maria Korowski (with Ask la Cour) in the Adams, Sterling Hyltin (with Jared Angle) in the Hayden, and Tiler Peck (with Joseph Gordon) in the Verdy role. Liebeslieder Walzer was scheduled to be performed twice in the coming spring season, but those performances now appear to have been cancelled. Our audiences were very attentive to the ballet this winter, very few walkouts at the pause between the Parts and warm responses at the close.
Sandy says he has been told that in the forties and fifties of the last century there were German restaurants on East 86th Street which had dance floors. Balanchine would take a favorite dancer there to waltz and polka the night away. Seeing Liebeslieder, I can believe it. If I have any criticism of today’s casts, it would be that perhaps young people don’t go out ballroom dancing now. These are dances with sharp stylistic profiles which need lots of practice both backstage and out-and-beyond in real life. (From the evidence he left us, Balanchine seems to have had a very “real life”.) But both the NYCB casts -- although perhaps somewhat under-rehearsed? -- were worthy of respect.
So much to do. My life is becoming very real, and only I can live it.
C.S.
__________________
Comments