83. Contraband: New York City Ballet’s Winter Season, the complete “Chips” Channon, and “Le pupille”, reviewed by Sandy
Cheryl and I were summoned yesterday by our employer, Louise Ebersdorf, to discuss the outside world’s view of our aborning project: The Ballet and its proposed repertory. Backstage life at the Ebersdorf Tower now involves a removal from various environmental threats, including possible political actions. Our Tower has become, in effect, a bunker. We live in steel panic rooms that supplement the heavily guarded entrances and corridors of our building. How to organize a new dance enterprise under such conditions? It is not as though the hardy among us (Pippa, Belle, Mme Sesostris, Master Raro, Cheryl and I) do not still manage brief shopping sprees and occasional theater and gallery jaunts. It’s just that modern social media allow us to avoid what Louise refers to as Present Dangers, including any lingering air-borne viruses. Louise early impounded her collection of prize felines. They have their own version of a safe room (read Cat Shelter), downstairs, but Paco, their wrangler, has now been equipped with extra protocols and munitions. This fraught situation was the context for the meeting with our boss, which dealt primarily with life in an artistic bubble: our promised forum becoming a ballet workshop or laboratory rather than a producing organization for the large public.
What are two young choreographers (Cheryl and myself) to do, coming out of a Covid limbo which placed the staging of our work on hold? Louise feels that any ballets which we might show with a relation to the classical dance tradition would end up as contraband goods in a newly conflicted world. A developed, artful style of dance would have to be smuggled out of our Ebersdorf compound.
Louise predicts that a continued interregnum may be our best bet for long-term survival. She notices that established international ballet companies are not interested in discovering new classical values in the art. For example, when was the last time you saw a serious emphasis on academic steps in a new ballet? When did you encounter an original work in the Petipa-Ashton-Balanchine line? Our Louise has to keep the practical side of stage production in mind. She assumes that the public mood might change – eventually.
Let’s face it: today’s typical balletomane may react privately to the poetry of a classical style while never admitting its import or methods to the conscious mind. New works out of the main tradition may be seen as “difficult” for the younger audience. (So much easier to indulge in cornball emotion and claimed social cure-alls in new dance.) The classicizing tendency in ballet may currently be viewed as démodé, this despite the fact that the large audience still congregates for the dance details of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. Established companies appear to encourage only four types of novelty: (1) “exotic” forms from downtown, especially folk and street dance varieties (for example, from the Joyce Theater, Village and Soho venues); (2) exaggerated Euro styles for an “international” cachet; (3) salvific dances aiming to correct the wrongs of history and current injustice; and (4) full-length narrative ballets based on well-known movies. Managements claim that they can always turn to past repertory for a “classical” work, a programming policy long ensconced in opera houses around the world for that elephantine art. Ballets in a traditional style are not encouraged because they can be seen as “elitist”: they may presume an audience with a visual and auditory acuity denied to the mass public through lack of exposure or education. Arts institutions now embrace a grants-lucrative “outreach”, instructional programming like the current Martha Graham company’s lecture-demo regimen, the revivalist “Encores” series at City Center, and many of the concert repertory evenings at the New York Philharmonic. Veteran dance and music audiences are expected to survive on something like war-time rations. Aesthetics are replaced by socially responsible “dialogues”. Dances and ballets must parade either a certified novelty or an implied ability to shake things up.
Simultaneously, newspaper and magazine writers currently fail to discuss dance as dance. As in Pauline Kael’s substitution of sociological commentary for cinematic analysis, specific subject and means in a ballet are postponed, deflected, traduced. A once mighty art form becomes an excuse for the “personal essay” stuffed with received opinions. Today’s dance reviewers specialize in mumbled vacillation and rank equivocation.
The art of ballet is now regularly attacked from several directions as to its institutions and history. The form is described as sexist, patriarchal, and exploitative. Our company, The Ballet, will be none of these, of course. A renewed poetry and imaginative reach for the art would be our aim.
As a result, Louise suggests a further postponement of the opening of our company. During this hiatus, Cheryl and I will become choreographers for an audience of one: Louise herself. She will be the lone connoisseur of the productions shown for her eyes in the Tower’s thirty-third floor performance space. She has, of course, always been our first audience, she whom we must entertain and move. We must “astonish” her – the in-house Diaghilev.
Louise again proposed a politically-sensitized feline program for our company’s opening night. In the Balanchine Le chat, the heroine will be promised the feminist reward of a runaway mouse rather than a human lover of the masculine gender. (That old thing!) In Petipa’s “Puss in Boots”, the bewhiskered ballerina will give her partner What Fur? The Cat Demon in Cheryl’s Nekomata ballet will have her dark triumph. And what about animal rights? Albertine’s Catalytics is planned to be staged soon in Paris at the confidently all-female Le Swing company. Should Louise allow the ASPCA here in New York to inspect her pets’ safe-house and our video of A&P’s animal act? Cheryl and I have suggested that the above bill of fare (perhaps with the exception of Albertine’s Cats) would work. But my proudly reactionary Cheryl is privately dubious. She wants to dance now – to perform -- as well as to show her choreography. And Cheryl feels we should perhaps open a school where we could teach in order to reconnect with the world and posit a future.
I, too, would like to see my own dances on stage. Meanwhile, I now place my reportorial hat on my head. Master Raro and I went to several performances of the New York City Ballet’s winter season, and here is my report on the current performing talent in the company, dancers who manage to uphold their artistic tradition despite all odds. The highlight of the season was Tiler Peck in both Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante and in the Peter Martins production of The Sleeping Beauty. In Allegro, Peck was partnered by a fine-tuned Roman Mejia. (His Bluebird at the end of the season was feathery-soft in its batterie.) Together, they brought new rhythmic virtuosity to the ballet. As Aurora, Peck has consolidated her portrait of both the young and the mature Princess. Her musical subtlety places her among the great dancers of our time. The audience is riveted from the moment she enters. There are many beauties in this ballerina’s performance. I will long remember her manège of jetés in the Spell act and her mime, which is always clear and touching. Peck’s Prince was Chun Wai Chan, who was sensitive to her timing in the Wedding pas de deux. What Peck now needs is a choreographer who can work with her in a classical style for new roles. She deserves a stylistic sensitivity in fresh dance materials equivalent to her performance genius.
Unity Phelan gave a performance in the second aria of the Stravinsky Violin Concerto that featured a degree of passive aggression that I have never before encountered in this pas de deux. Phelan always has interesting ideas, and she works them out thoroughly in motion. Her audience can follow her explorations because she creates a movement texture through dance rhythms which grow out of one another. In other words, she has a classicist’s mind. The logic behind her choices is persistent, sustained.
In another cast, Ashley Laracey had a success in the first aria of the Violin Concerto. She brings a lightness of address and a svelte complicity in her relation to her partner (here, an elegant and awe-struck Joseph Gordon). Laracey was also effective as a sweet-tempered Lilac Fairy in The Sleeping Beauty.
Mira Nadon took on the Stephanie Saland role in the revival of Jerome Robbins’ Rondo, where her arabesque line was eloquent. She was a striking Diamond in the “Jewels” divertissement in Beauty. We need to see Nadon in a new role devised just for her, perhaps in a neoclassical style. A young ballerina needs to be presented. All of the NYCB ballerinas need to be presented. Neither of the house choreographers (Justin Peck and the soon returning Alexi Ratmansky) is expert in this duty. Their principal aim appears to be to present the choreographer. Ensemble effects replace substantive female roles.
Emilie Gerrity shone in the first aria in the Stravinsky Violin Concerto and in the Emerald role in Beauty. She is now a principal dancer in the company, and her range is being expanded in areas of the repertory beyond its “modern” works. Gerrity’s sense of musical exactitude is a model for all of the junior dancers.
I was not able to respond to the second half of the new full-length Copland ballet by Justin Peck (for me, his Billy the Kid component was especially gauche), but two of the dancers held my interest. Alexa Maxwell and Jovani Furlan were the “Alone Together” couple to music from Appalachian Spring. Their pas de deux touched a nerve beyond the sentimentality on which this choreographer relies. Maxwell distinguished herself later in two roles in Beauty: Courage and Ruby. And in mid-season, Furlan was brilliant in the Latin solo in Fancy Free.
Emily Kikta is one of my favorite dancers in the company. She always brings a relaxed authority and a true sense of style to the stage. In Beauty, she was a commanding Lilac Fairy, and her Diamond opened up the tight Martins busywork. Davide Riccardo partnered in the latter and held his own against his trio of ballerinas.
Three corps dancers caught my eye throughout the season: Sara Adams, Olivia MacKinnon, and Cainan Weber. I will be interested to follow their work in upcoming repertory.
The most anticipated Aurora debut in Beauty was that of Isabella LaFreniere. A tall, long-limbed ballerina, LaFreniere reminded me of films of Margot Fonteyn in the role. The quality they share is the ability to polish each step in a dance sequence so that it speaks with its individual luster as well as in its relation to the other components of the enchaînement. This “pearl necklace” effect helps the audience focus on the details of classical dancing; it has its “educative” function. The viewer is being instructed how to watch academic movement in the midst of the sway of the full classical gesture. Such an approach calms the public even as it responds to the impetus of a dance. The viewer can’t help but admire such beneficence. We find ourselves watching the corps de ballet’s details through the unique lens provided by LaFreniere.
Speaking of British traditions, I have just completed my traversal of the three volumes of the unexpurgated journals of Henry “Chips” Channon: more than three thousand pages of true confession and personal documentation. (The publisher is Hutchinson.) Out of the devouring maw of the past, the Channon testimonials have been rescued – literary contraband, indeed. The diaries take us through World War Two and to the end of Channon’s life in 1958 at the early age of 61. We follow his activities as a Member of Parliament and as a popular host of London society, thanks to the wealth of the Guinness family into which he married and thanks to his writer’s skill at portraiture. By the second volume, Channon has divorced his wife and sent his son, Paul, to safety in the U.S., while observing the House of Commons from a back bench and the denizens of high society from his front row seat. He reports on the city during the Blitz from the relative security of his country home, Kelvedon, and he serves oysters and champagne to his guests even during the years of mid-century scarcity. Potential readers have to be warned: Chips’ anti-Semitic remarks do not abate as he ages. They are a stain on his character. But he does eventually come to see Hitler for what he was.
Chips’ gallery of friends and enemies is immense and fascinating. I was particularly interested in his ongoing relation to Winston Churchill. Channon’s political career was constrained by his early fealty to Neville Chamberlain, but this does not keep him from admiring Churchill’s ability to shepherd his country through parlous times. He allows the aging titan to go out with a flourish in Volume Three in his report on the great Prime Minister turning eighty years of age, complete with public celebrations.
And I do mean celebrations! What especially held me is this writer’s description of the elaborate London fêtes of the period. Channon became romantically involved with the young playwright Terence Rattigan, and this alliance allowed him access to theatrical parties in addition to the dinners, balls, and galas of London society. (Chips was a high-spirited figure on the dance floor, where he could cut a rug all night.) A key figure in London’s seasonal revelry is revealed to have been Oliver Messel, famed for his designs for the Royal Ballet’s world-conquering The Sleeping Beauty. Messel and his partner Vagn Riis-Hansen (the Great Dane, as he was called) designed and gave parties that involved elaborate decoration equivalent to immersive stage fantasies. If you attended as a guest, you were one of the players. This suggests that necessary crossover between society and the arts which Louise has always claimed exists whenever there is a flowering of the ballet in a culture. Where are such evenings today in New York? Or in London, for that matter? Where would one discover such a talent today: the rare animateur? Here is a new challenge for Cheryl and myself. Instead of social “dialogues”, what today’s world needs is lavish party-time!
Channon lived the full, exhausting life of a social snob and host. I found that the diarist becomes even more unbuttoned and hilarious in his reportage with full maturity. Many will read the journals for their comedy, politics and sex. But I read them for the moments when Frederick Ashton crossed Channon’s path and for the author’s appetite for life. Here he is in 1953, demanding more of what he enjoys: “. . . I don’t want to die – ever . . . How can one envisage a day when one doesn’t read The Times with one’s breakfast coffee? When one doesn’t telephone before ten o’clock to all the reigning beauties and hostesses of London? Plots, gossips and intrigue. Please, dear God, if you do exist, let me live to be 100.” For such prayers, I would eagerly have read another volume of these extraordinary diaries. The three which we now possess have been edited with enormous erudition by Simon Heffer.
In the new Alice Rohrwacher film, Le pupille (The Pupils), a sinfully pink Christmas cake (70 eggs) has been delivered to a strict Catholic girls orphanage in return for the prayers of the resident children on behalf of the gift-giving supplicant who has lost her lover to a rival and wants him back in her arms. So Italian, so white telephone! The orphanage’s Mother Superior prefers to seize the cake as ecclesiastical contraband and to redirect it to the local Bishop in seasonal tribute. Therein lies the drama of this delicious Italian film, which manages to be freshly humorous, beautiful and moving in under forty minutes of running time. Rohrwacher is the director of one of my favorite recent movies, Happy as Lazzaro (2018), and like that film The Pupils has elements of social realism that ally Rohrwacher with the works of Roberto Rossellini. But there is also a seductive, fable-like fantasy in her style that suggests an inheritance from Pasolini and De Sica. She is wonderful at showing the vulnerability of institutions to the sway of their leaders’ psychic aberrations, as well as the vulnerability of the young and the needy in the grip of such powers. (It’s a #WeeToo protest movie.) The film is now showing at the I.F.C. theater as part of a Live Action series of short films nominated for the Academy Award. And the Disney channel has picked it up for streaming. Alfonso Cuarón, an advocate, has co-produced Le pupille and has helped aim it toward on-line distribution. Alice Rohrwacher is one of the most artful directors of our time. Not to be missed.
To sum up. Tiler Peck needs a choreographer. (I can confidently recommend one.) My Cheryl feels we should not give in to what Louise describes as a philistine element in our dance culture. For all we know, the big companies would view a strong young classicist as a threat to established repertory and to the instilled training necessary for its maintenance. In curatorial reflex, they may reject such choreographic talent out of guarded self-protection. As Master Raro claims, bringing in dance-makers from outside the tradition becomes a ploy to cover conscious or unconscious insecurity. Classical talent from within will always inspire and demand change, which is inevitable and risky. A board will opt for safety every time. The big companies can avoid classicizing choreographers by giving support to the mods and the rockers. Flash is “in”. But as long as someone somewhere is making authentic classical ballets, the line continues and the form persists. Let’s hear it for stolen goods!
S.
__________________
Comments