Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg of the Royal Ballet in Jerome RobbinsDances at a Gathering. Photo by Bill Cooper.
When Jerome Robbins made Dances at a Gathering for New York City Ballet in 1969, he was already known as an artist who never repeated himself. But none of his previous successes--from Fancy Free and Afternoon of a Faun to West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof--prepared the world for this hour-long suite of lyrical dances, flowing seamlessly through 18 of Chopin’s lilting piano pieces and changing character with each waltz and mazurka. Lightly spiced with folkloric steps, but unencumbered by explicit narrative or theatricality, Dances at a Gathering deployed the evocative power of pure dancing so effectively that lesser choreographers have been imitating it ever since.
A year after the première, Robbins set the work on the Royal Ballet, filling the 10 equally important roles--five men and five women--with an incomparable cast that included Antoinette Sibley, Lynn Seymour, Monica Mason, Rudolf Nureyev and Anthony Dowell. Now, after an absence from the repertory of 32 years, ballet masters from the Robbins Rights Trust have matched it to the company’s current stars: Alina Cojocaru, Tamara Rojo, Sarah Lamb, Johan Kobborg and Federico Bonelli in the opening-night cast, with Marianela Nuñez, Leanne Benjamin and Carlos Acosta featured in subsequent ensembles.
Propelled by Robbins’ invention and the musical momentum, these performers become jaunty, teasing, tender, competitive, taut with foreboding and buoyant with camaraderie, illuminating the shifting moods and emotional encounters with breathtaking subtlety. Rojo and Nuñez compel you to watch their eyes and thoughts as well as their bodies, inhabiting the music as if it were their home, and Kobborg’s natural modesty makes reticence irresistibly appealing. Because Cojocaru seldom begins a movement without deliberately showing a pretty preparation, she often lags behind the music, but her delicacy and sweetness suit the ballet perfectly, as does Bonelli’s gracious calm.
Entrusted to their care, Dances’ intrinsic beauty shone as brightly as ever, and the dancers responded to it with elegance and musicality unadorned by fussy, physical mannerism or artificial emotion. But read those names again. With the exception of Benjamin, not one of those principals was predominantly trained in this country. In fact, of roughly 17 artists who made up the various casts, the Royal Ballet school produced only a small contingent, including the principals Lauren Cuthbertson and Laura Morera.
So you could easily conclude that the revival’s success derived from the concentrated effort of the non-British dancers who now head the company, and from the patience and meticulous attention of Susan Hendl and Ben Huys, who prepared them on behalf of the Trust. Of course, an international array of leading dancers now dominates companies everywhere, and the combination of those artists adds a fascinating texture to the respective repertories. But perhaps some element of each troupe is lost, too.
For a change of pace, and possibly to offer the audience something familiar, the company followed Robbins’ masterpiece with Ashton’s The Dream, which occupies the opposite extreme of choreographic expression, infusing dance with atmospheric drama and rollicking humour. Ashton is billed in every Royal Ballet program as the “Founder Choreographer” and his work is still considered the bedrock of the company’s style. Yet, the dancers struggled with the lightness, swiftness and pliancy that Dream demands and with the dramatic nuances of their characters. Though crammed, by comparison to Dances, with homegrown performers--the younger, lesser known corps dancers and soloists portraying lovers, rustic and fairies--nothing but obediance unified their effort and nothing at all animated the ballet.
Making her debut as Titania on opening night, Roberta Marquez grinned from her first entrance to the final curtain, as if the fairy queen were no more than a flirt whose smile alone could conquer Ivan Putrov’s glowering Oberon. The attendant fairies flitted in neat, straight lines, the rustics galumphed for laughs, and the lovers broadened their comic mime into melodrama. The best of that initial performance emerged from the worst circumstance. When the suddenly injured Ludovic Ondiviela had to be quickly replaced, James Wilkie made his debut as Puck without warning, warmup or makeup, and his focused energy and attack gave us a brief glimpse of the ballet’s true spirit.
The English National Ballet in Derek Deane’s Strictly Gershwin. Photo by Patrick Baldwin.
Despite its name, English National Ballet doesn’t claim to be essentially English or to represent the nation, and ballet is only one aspect of its latest creation. Derek Deane’s Strictly Gershwin is a canny attraction with something for everyone--for accuracy’s sake, let’s call it a revue. Unlike Balanchine’s Who Cares?, which molds the ballet vocabulary to the jazzy inflections of Gershwin’s songs, this new work involves ballet, ballroom and tap dancers, sometimes performing in their own discipline, sometimes invading each others’ turf, all backed by a gigantic, amplified 50-piece band. Overhead, presumably to establish some context, three huge screens decorated the proceedings with period photos of Broadway theatres, Hollywood stars, and even--the mind boggles--slow motion film of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, hoofing away in triplicate while the live and merely life-sized dancers tried to hold our attention.
Leaving the specialists to their own choreographic devices, Deane supplied the show with ballet in an opening number called “Classe” that resembled a mini-Études; a few swoopy, romantic pas de deux; and complete stagings of An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue led by the Royal Ballet’s Tamara Rojo and Guillaume Côté from the National Ballet of Canada. Along with the voice and presence of the inimitable chanteuse Barbara Cook, who sang four numbers while the dancers caught their breath and changed costume, those two stars alone would have been worth the price of admission. But there was more, much more, that wasn’t.
Well-known here for his ambitious, in-the-round productions--Swan Lake (1997), Romeo and Juliet (1998) and The Sleeping Beauty (2000)--in Strictly Gershwin Deane again displayed an admirable grasp of space and structure, covering the oval arena stage with kaleidescopic patterns that offered everyone an equally good view of the action. But his limited vocabulary means, if you’ve seen one of his romantic duets, you’ve seen them all. Though Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur threw themselves into “The Man I Love” and Daria Klimentová and Stuttgart Ballet’s Friedemann Vogel emoted passionately to “Summertime,” they could have been dancing the same piece, rejigged and re-costumed to fit the different songs.
You could never confuse them, however, with Lilia Kopylova and Darren Bennett, whom the program described as “the most successful dance partnership on the BBC’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ series, a show that has attracted audiences of over 11 million per episode.” Rhinestones and teeth flashing, hips jutting and hands flapping, this pair lunged and wriggled as if the viewing figures alone justified their crude, glittering style, which perhaps they do. What was once ballroom dancing has become mass entertainment, shaped to satisfy popular taste rather than any social or artistic standard, and the cheering audience proved its commercial value even to a ballet troupe.
I might have cheered the tap dancers, Douglas Mills and Paul Robinson, if the amplification and blaring band had allowed me to hear their feet, and I was happy to applaud the entire cast, whose skill, verve and commitment never faltered. As for the rest of it, the pedestrian ballet choreography and the relentless razzmatazz, well, with Gershwin’s tunes for company, who cares?
