89. Celebration: New York City Ballet at Seventy-Five, an Editorial by Michael Porter
A festival in the arts justifies itself when what is celebrated is alive, ongoing, sustainable, and sustained. When, toward the end of his career, George Balanchine threw lavish musical fêtes, you might be surprised to learn that his long-time audiences could fear at that time that the celebrations might signal a diminution in the leader’s powers of choreographic invention. Such festivities could constitute a smokescreen for what was conspicuously missing, the lavish group efforts toward new work become an apology for reduced creative means. We live once more in a time of official tributes. At this moment in our city there is an extensive Dance Reflections series honoring modern choreographies, underwritten by Van Cleef and Arpels and featuring primarily the work of contemporary French dance-makers.
The recent New York City Ballet four-week fall mini-season of Balanchine programs marking seventy-five years of the company’s existence could all too easily be looked upon by today’s fans as a gesture toward the ghettoization of the founder’s core repertory. How convenient to get the classics of Mr. B out of the way in order to make room in coming winter and spring seasons for what NYCB claims it is really interested in: contemporary “innovation”.
The emphasis on George Balanchine’s choreographic riches could distract attention from the extensive efforts of the company toward “innovation” over the last four decades. If you examine the company’s digital home site and its list of repertory -- and if you discount Balanchine’s and Jerome Robbins’ works there – you immediately find an oversupply of ballets on the honor roll awaiting possible return stage appearances in seasons to come. From the Balanchine years, for example, we can count sixteen ballets by John Taras and seven works by John Clifford. But it is in the decades of Peter Martins’ stewardship when such matters became truly ecumenical. Martins himself has ninety-six ballets threatening revival, with Christopher Wheeldon (his closest rival) a mere thirty. Justin Peck has twenty-two ballets in the pipeline. Richard Tanner contributes twelve ballets, Robert La Fosse ten, and Alexi Ratmansky nine.
According to the NYCB site, there are now nearly four hundred inactive -- indeed, cryogenic -- ballets in the repertory list, once again not counting works from the canons of Balanchine and Robbins. Between 1983 and 2023 – the “innovative epoch”, to coin a phrase – that number would constitute an average of almost ten works per year, the majority of which are now in cold storage, probably never to be seen again. Most were the products of Martins’ inclusiveness in commissions toward large company celebrations (for example, the bloated American Music Festival of 1988), where certain invited choreographers produced one representative work -- and one only for all time. The festivals were augmented by several seasons of Diamond Project ballets: choreography on demand.
To revise Proust’s Marcel when musing on Albertine’s hastily improvised, makeshift lies: makeshift ballets may quickly be forgotten. In the arts, the bloom may not be forced. The repertory list (alphabetized by the title of ballets, not by choreographers) is almost as long as the end-credits of modern movies made with armies of CGI technicians. Perhaps that is how today’s NYCB sees its commissioned ballets -- as indulged special effects.
Across the last forty years the assumption appears to have been that there were infinite numbers of professional and tyro choreographers, nationally and internationally, all worthy of inclusion in local fests and doubtless deeply grateful for the chance to work with the skilled dance artists of the company and consequent exposure to an uptown Manhattan audience. I count approximately sixty-five such hirelings during the Martins and post-Martins seasons. During the thirty-five years (1948-1983) when Balanchine was ballet master and himself actively contributing works, the total of such invitees came to a mere nineteen.
Therefore, a representation of the real majority of the choreographic labors of the company will inevitably be omitted from the 75th year celebration. When you include the ballets to be presented in the upcoming winter and spring (2023-24) as part of the ongoing observance, one conclusion has to be reached: NYCB will not recognize, honor, or admit responsibility for its profligacy in the commissioning of new works across its later history, in allowing so large a dormant – an undistinguished and ultimately abandoned – repertory to accumulate. I suppose we can be grateful not to be subjected to the company’s myriad miscalculations during the current celebration, and yet this in no way excuses so many decades of squandered resources masked as largesse. What price such “innovation”? The proof is in the math: too many choreographies unable to hold up to repeat viewings. Aside from the ballets of Balanchine and Robbins (and the favored innovators of the present), the enormous repertory listing consists mostly of dead recollections. A once formidable producing organization for the art of dance is now an atelier without a ballet master.
Such subvention represents a longtime financial waste in addition to promiscuous support for errors in artistic judgment. As a choreographer of ballets, Martins himself coasted for decades on his weak version of Balanchine moderne. Since the majority of Martins’ works on the list cannot justify revival, the conclusion must be that there was an equivalent dereliction in his curatorial regard for classical dance values on the NYCB stage, if not in the School of American Ballet classrooms. As an artistic director given to allowing so many candidates to stage disposable ballets, Martins’ catholic taste could be said to have been unprofessional as well as anti-classical.
To find an equivalent example of consequential artistic misjudgment in the American media, you would have to turn to the past and present critical overvaluation of the worth of the dominant style – cinematic pastiche -- found in the motion pictures of Altman, Bogdanovich, Coppola, Lucas, Scorsese, and Spielberg beginning in the 1970s. To borrow the terminology of the writer Frederic Jameson, our native pasticheurs were unable to intuit how postmodern their works could seem to veteran cinephiles resistant to sentimental nostalgia. The American commercial cinema’s failure to reinvent or supplement its past themes and forms has led straight to 2023’s The Marvels. As Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive officer, said of its current Marvel debacle: “I’ve always felt that quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality. . . . And I think that is exactly what happened. We lost some focus.” His term “we” should be read as expansive in its application: first DC bites the bullet; now Marvel takes it.
The time for a redefinition of New York City Ballet’s unfocused aesthetic policy is long past due. Basically, the current board and administration of NYCB are continuing the anything-goes commissioning program put in place during the Martins era. There is no conspiracy to be found in such a decision, nothing dark or depraved. The mistake more likely derives from the naive expediency in company claims for quick-fix renovation. In other words, the result of a knee-jerk PR exercise underwritten by private funding and Le Board.
As our national government learns to its regret, a senselessly administered past can lead to an overdetermined future. At NYCB, the search for a serious, first-rate classical choreographer has been replaced by a diversity of “innovation” which takes a hypertrophied commissioning of “content creators” to the next level. In that sense, Martins’ influence on the company continues in force.
In its new choreographies, NYCB shows no governing idea of what the inherited Balanchine tradition might be in terms of new classically-based works. The execution of a dance by academically trained performers is not alone sufficient to turn a commissioned work into a ballet. Style and form must derive from compositional depths. NYCB’s present version of inclusiveness has at length diminished the company’s past high standards. The vital connection with its inherited base in traditional style and form has become blurred. In terms of choreographic thought, its artistic identity is up for grabs.
Anyone familiar with the NYCB repertory listing has to conclude: such institutional policy and practice cannot and must not continue. Individual cynicism, organizational decadence, or corporate fatuity are not themselves enough to explain so solemn a failure. Cultures thrive through the contributions of individual genius, a unique ingredient in short supply in today’s NYCB administration and staff. There is no sign that the institution is alert to its responsibilities in this crucial matter.
The four weeks of Balanchine repertory contained too many performances of Balanchine’s ever-popular Jewels, and the company could achieve only one revival: Bourrée Fantasque. (Miami City Ballet revived Bourrée recently, presenting it on the Koch stage on tour.) The lead ballerinas were some of the most promising artists of their generation, but they showed little sensitivity to the ballet’s playful satire of 1950’s Parisian chic. The NYCB orchestra distinguished itself despite its threat of a strike, but the conducting by its music director, Andrew Litton, has at length become a liability. There was no forward momentum in performances of Emeralds. Litton tends to over-cherish what he determines to be musical values, and this emphasis can suppress all forward impetus for the dancers.
The four-week celebration (what its advertisement termed The Foundation) featured one ballerina who holds up company standards in her dancing: Tiler Peck. Her five roles (Rubies, the First Movement in Bizet Symphony in C, and the leads in Allegro Brillante, Tschaikovsky Concerto No. 2 and Theme and Variations) led the company and established a direct connection to essential Balanchine dance values. She is musically intelligent, sensitive to the poetics of the individual ballets, and able to give revelatory interpretations at each performance. The Balanchine repertory is in expert hands when she appears. Here was dance genius.
No choreographer now dedicates herself or himself to giving Tiler Peck serious new roles related in any serious way to the company’s Balanchine tradition. As a result, in the winter season (what the company flacks call The Evolution), this ballerina will herself contribute a ballet as its choreographer. She will become one of the company’s “creatives”. Alexi Ratmansky will report as NYCB ‘s new artist-in-residence after more than a decade of undistinguished work at American Ballet Theatre. In the spring (The Future, as it were), Justin Peck – Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor – will provide that youthful type of “concept design” valued by corporate leaders and sneaker salesmen. In order to present “innovative” works from the company’s past and present, the Balanchine rep will inevitably shrink on repertory programs to the usual subsistence rations for dancers and audiences.
The celebration continues.
M.P.
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