Photos by Gene Schiavone.

Balanchine/Robbins comes at the end of a long and rewarding season for Boston Ballet (it seems we've only just seen dazzling productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Bella Figura); yet it's surprisingly big and bold and beautiful; in its ambition and scope it might have been the centerpiece of an earlier season.  Now it's simply another week's work for this astounding company; frankly, Boston balletomanes have never had it so good.

It also makes amends for a gap in the company's programming: we've seen a lot of Balanchine, but not much of Jerome Robbins in recent years, even though he (born Rabinowitz) and  Mr. B (born Balanchivadze) worked together on a show or two, and were orbiting stars at New York City Ballet in the 70's. Arguably this pair had a greater impact on American dance than any other two men in the twentieth century.

But if you're hoping for some sort of thesis about their artistic relationship from Balanchine/Robbins, you'll be disappointed.  Indeed, the program chooses opposing modes of each artist's oeuvre, so we feel their contrast far more than any correspondence between them; from Balanchine, we get two sprawling works named simply for their sources, Divertimento No. 15 (Mozart) and Symphony in Three Movements (Stravinsky); from Robbins, we get the intimately slim Afternoon of a Faun, and the larger, but still somehow hushed Antique Epigraphs (both based on Debussy).

What was surprising was that the slightest of these, Faun, should have proved the high point of the evening.  In this haunting little cameo Robbins manages to compress both a critique and a hymn to the allure of ballet - while simultaneously offering a sly comment on its legendary source, Nijinsky's 1912 original. Nijinsky shocked audiences back then with a sensual dream both exotic and animal - which he froze into a kind of slowly-unfolding frieze. Balanchine's most brilliant gambit is to translate that frieze into the flat plane of a mirror, and allow the dreamy sex to play out on (and "through") its surface. In his version of that languid afternoon, the Faun is a male dancer (Sabi Varga) prone in a rehearsal studio; waking from (or falling into?) a daydream, he is joined by a blonde sylph (Whitney Jensen) seemingly there to warm up, but really there to contemplate herself in the unseen mirror that forms the "fourth wall" of the stage (at left). They share an exquisite series of lifts, which generate a heady romantic atmosphere, yet their eyes are almost always on that mirror (that is, on us) rather than each other; indeed, an impulsive kiss from Varga shatters the reverie, and ends the piece. That scenario may sound paper-thin, but the work feels surprisingly deep in its calm depiction of the narcissim that not only fuels ballet, but maybe love itself. And Varga and Jensen played Robbins' subtle, concentrated moves to literal perfection. Jensen in particular gave a surprisingly moving dramatic performance - she has always been a coolly superb technician; here she showed signs of the acting talent that truly great dancers have as well.

Next to this, Robbins' Antique Epigraphs looks a little under-powered, although it was danced lucidly by the women of the Ballet.  Like Faun, Epigraphs is a slow-motion daydream in classical Greek (this time sans update; the women wear sered, ancient drapes in earth tones); it was inspired by Debussy's piano settings for a group of phony translations of Sappho that were a small sensation in the nineteenth century.  But alas, not much Sapphic energy survives in Robbins' version; statuary seems to have instead been his inspiration (but then he was always one to half-suggest, then suppress, evidence of homosexuality, wasn't he). Thus the piece is lovely, but somehow obscure in its intents. Which is almost too bad, because it's rare in the ballet tradition to see a large work devoted entirely to women, in which they dance for, and with, each other, rather than waiting for some guy to show up (as almost always happens in Balanchine). Instead Ancient Epigraphs plays like a funerary rite, with the women rarely touching, and certainly never having any fun. Of course perhaps that atmosphere of stricken silence is Robbins' point - the women do link arms in solidarity at the end (at top), as if guarding the ancient mystery of their oppression.  If only said mystery were a little more dramatic! Still, the eight women of the Ballet danced with transparent serenity, and there were luminous moments from Lia Cirio, Luciana Voltolini, Kathleen Breen Combes, and particularly Erica Cornejo.

I've saved the Balanchine for last, largely because Robbins was the rarity on the program - but his smaller-scaled dances were actually almost overwhelmed by the titanic works by Mr. B. that framed them.  First came Divertimento No. 15, set to Mozart's Divertimento in B-flat, K.287. The title tells you this is pure music visualization, and it is - there seems to be no "plot" - although as is often the case with Mozart, there's a whiff of innocent promiscuity in the air as variation follows variation after variation, all in gold and robin's-egg blue. But even if nothing "develops," everything is pitched at such a high level, and the duets and trios and quartets are extrapolated so effortlessly, that somehow you sense Mr. B has matched Mozart at his own game - the dance is almost carelessly simple and free, yet at the same time gorgeously constructed and brilliantly executed.

Down in the pit I'm afraid the playing was a little rough here and there, but up on stage the dancers were in superb control. Lorna Feijóo was the stand-out, and it was good to see her really own something again, as she did in solos where her footwork was so quick and crisp it seemed to be almost flickering. And James Whiteside once again displayed the elegant attack which has made him the company's lead choice for Balanchine - and he seems to be able to sensitively adjust his partnering to just about any lady he's dancing with - although he was often given a run for his money by the more sensual Jaime Diaz, and the always-wired John Lam. Meanwhile younger company members Dalay Parrondo and Tiffany Hedman likewise made their own sparkling impressions.



By the time we got to Symphony in Three Movements, we half-expected some of the dancers to just poop out; a few of them seemed to have been dancing all night. The bouncing, booming work nevertheless came off, even though it's a bit cramped on the Opera House stage.  Still, it's a curiosity - Stravinsky's pounding score, from 1946, echoes with the ruthless song of war, but Balanchine has choreographed to it a kind of paean to all-American energy.  Thus it opens with a bevy of bathing beauties straight out of the Miss America pageant (at top), and it's full of prancing mobs of teen-agers, their ponytails bobbing, who march about in "armies" that crash into, and through, each other as if in some mad Busby Berkeley version of the Nuremberg rallies.  (That is when they're not burning off excess energy with bursts of calisthenics - see video above).  There are a few sweet moments, but mostly the tone is ironic - and sometimes downright chilly (as in a strangely alienated pas de deux between Lia Cirio and James Whiteside). 

The work ultimately feels like a kind of flipside to John Cage's triumphalist Credo in US, in which American pop cacophony happily drowns out European decadence.  Perhaps for a transplanted Russian like Balanchine, there was a certain rue to be found even in that triumph. Or perhaps he could see beneath the blank cheer of American confidence a different kind of menace.  You can decide yourself this weekend; this amazingly variegated program plays through Sunday at the Opera House.



Altan Dugaraa, Sarah Wroth and Yury Yanowsky in Bella Figura.





Two years ago, in its own words, Boston Ballet’s production of Jiří Kylián’s Black and White took the city by storm (it proved so popular the company reprised it last season); the production was one of those rare, thrilling moments in which a startling intellectual statement was also a roaring popular success. Now the Ballet is back with another Kylián premiere from the same fertile period (through this weekend at the Opera House), which poses an inevitable question: can the company catch lightning in a bottle twice?

And the answer is: yah, pretty much. Bella Figura (above) doesn’t  pack quite the shocking wallop of Black and White, even though it covers much of the same territory (gender, violence, and identity, for those of you keeping score). But if that earlier blockbuster was a choreographic call to arms, in which men danced with rapiers while women prowled the stage like lionesses, Figura is more of a rumination, sometimes tragic, sometimes bemused, on the smaller-scaled (perhaps even internal) struggles that Black and White treated as overt combat. Thus it has less of a sense of attack, but perhaps even more ambiguous depth. And it goes without saying that it’s danced peerlessly at the Ballet, where the women carry off with admirable sang froid the partial nudity (at top) the piece demands.

What’s more, Bella Figura shares its program with two other worthy postmodern works: William Forsythe’s The Second Detail, one of his seminal experiments from the 80's and 90's, and the brand-new Pärt I, II & III, from Forsythe disciple Helen Pickett, who is perhaps the Ballet’s second choreographer in residence (after Jorma Elo). Taken together, these pieces provide a solid sense of the breadth and depth of the ongoing, post-Balanchine intersection of ballet and modern dance.  And one of the most richly satisfying evenings of thoughtful high culture the city has to offer right now.



You could argue that with the great Balanchine's death in 1983, ballet had lost its Shakespeare, and maybe even its compass.  Certainly a sense of unspoken void is palpable in the works of William Forsythe, an American whose rise began almost precisely with Mr. B's demise (in an eerie coincidence, Forsythe's first landmark work, which won him the directorship of the influential Ballett Frankfurt, appeared the year of Balanchine's death).  The Second Detail - seen in snippets above - was set on the National Ballet of Canada some years later (1991), but it operates almost as a purification of the atmosphere of the time: it takes place in an abstract, white-on-white rehearsal hall, in which any leader or choreographer is strangely absent.  Elvis has clearly left the building, but the dancers are carrying on by themselves, trying this or that combination in various directions, searching for a new style to move them forward.  The score, by perennial Forsythe collaborator Thom Willems, is amplified electronic percussion, mournful and even a little morbid, and lacking a real melody - it's inching forward, too - but nevertheless weirdly energized.

The vibe may recall Balanchine in its techno-purity,  but it doesn't feel particularly committed; the dancers engage each other with a strict grace (with clean, incisive turns from Kathleen Breen Combes, James Whiteside, John Lam and Whitney Jensen, who I think was born for Forsythe), but they often just drop things in mid-step, to retire to a seat along the back, or saunter off stage, or even drop in exhaustion to the floor.  The work is thus a strange mix of the classic and the casual; everything only works until one of the dancers loses interest; meanwhile the question of exactly what they're all doing - or looking for - remains an open one.  In a quirky nod to that formal issue, there's even a title card with the word "THE" printed on it center stage, as in "The - what?" In a word, there's no name for this kind of dance (and there still isn't).

The Second Detail certainly haunts, but beautiful and striking as it is, you couldn't argue that it coheres - at least until its unexpected finale, when a very different figure - perhaps representative of that eponymous "second detail" - invades, and tries to shatter, the work's cool self-possession.  On opening night this impassioned figure took the form of prima ballerina Lorna Feijóo, who threw herself with abandon into (and through) the icy permutations going on around her.  Clad in what looked like a cross between a shower curtain and a wedding gown (she was, I think, a kind of bride), Feijóo may have been a madwoman, or perhaps some pagan spirit of the dance - but she couldn't in the end turn the tide toward her idea of passion; instead she collapsed, and then the title card did, too.  I'm not sure if that meant the work had ended on a hopeful note or not, but clearly the question was closed; the statement had been made, even if it was too ambiguous to name.

Next came Pickett's Pärt I, II and III, a triptych set to the mystically minimalist music of Arvo Pärt. Each dance had its own exotic name: "Layli o Majnun," (Persian for "Layla and the Madman") "Tsukiyo," (Japanese for "Moonlit Night") and "Tabula Rasa" (Latin for - you should know that one). The actual dancing, however, was in none of these traditions; Pickett is a Forsythe protégée, and you could feel his influence in her steps, but only subtly - perhaps because she was more interested in narrative and relationships than Forsythe usually is.

As you might guess from the variety of titles, the pieces didn't quite hold together as a matched set, although there were brilliant moments in each.  The strongest was probably "Layli o Majnun," which featured fierce turns from the great Larissa Ponomarenko and Yury Yanowsky as a troubled couple, shadowed by a mysterious Lorin Mathis (identified bluntly in the program as "Madness").  This is the kind of conceit that sounds corny, but that dance can bring off thrillingly, and Pickett conjured a gripping development that led to a spooky climax in which "Madness" mirrored Yanowsky's tormented moves as Ponomarenko clung to him desperately.  But Pickett didn't seem to know how to resolve her story (which she had changed from its source, anyhow: in the original fable, "madness" results from the frustration of the couple's being unable to marry; here it seemed intrinsic to them).  For while  Mathis was apparently driven off at the end, we didn't really understand why or how; it was just the power of Ponomarenko's luuhv, apparently. 

"Tsukiyo" likewise could have used a few more specifics and a bit more plot; it's a lovely pas de deux, in a highly traditional vein - a lonely swain woos the goddess of the moon, or something like that - but dramatically, it's curiously inert.  Set to Pärt's haunting, and by-now-ubiquitous, "Spiegel im Spiegel" ("Mirror in Mirror"), the piece is sweet, but at least as danced by Sabi Varga and Lia Cirio (above left) - that is exquisitely but with a shade too much self-conscious grace - its mirrored passion seems to be more about its own loveliness than about love itself. 

Pickett did more forceful work in the buoyant "Tabula Rasa" - set to a Pärt piece of the same name - which, as that moniker implies, was a kind of Forsythian blank slate: whatever "plot" it had seemed scrambled, and mostly it was just pure dance, and much in the master's manner, but without the formal questions and probing sense of cool that Mr. F brought to The Second Detail.  Still, Pickett's main prop - a giant mothership/chandelier borrowed from Close Encounters - was gorgeous, and she scribbled all over her "Tabula" with spirit, if not coherence; indeed, at times - as in the leaping romp for the company's young men  - she even tapped into a sense of competitive joy that I've never seen her mentor match.

At last came Bella Figura - itself both a striking formal statement and a complex construction freighted with metaphor - although the one thing everybody knows about it is that halfway through, the girls take their tops off. Before you point any fingers, though, ponder that the resulting imagery is curiously asexual - indeed, Kylián soon pulls together a crowd of topless men and women in flowing, blood-red skirts (see above), and we're forced to consider their lack of differentiation, the similarities of their "genders."

Sabi Varga, Rie Ichikawa and Tiffany Hedman. 

But from the top (sorry), Kylián has hinted that gender is a prison - the piece opens with two nude manikins, one male and one female, suspended in glass coffins over the action, before switching to a half-nude woman struggled to free herself from the stage curtain, while her male twin twists, upside down, within a box much like the ones that housed those earlier "bella figuras."

Immediately we sense a loose set of themes has been declared. "Bella figura" is both an Italian catch-phrase and an attitude; roughly translated, it conveys the need to meet life's challenges with a forceful sense of beauty and style. But Kylián's choice of music - yearning melodies from the likes of Pergolesi, Vivaldi and the contemporary Lukas Foss - tells you he's interested in the cost of beauty rather than its benefits. Thus in the iconic costumes of Bella Figura - which eventually everyone dons - the dancers are both flamboyantly beautiful (in flowing red bloomers) and yet simultaneously stripped; there's a vulnerability beneath their operatic beauty, and indeed it's the need to be beautiful itself that makes them so vulnerable.

Kylián rings many changes on this fundamental insight. We see duos and trios, romantic couples and, well, triangles, in which beauty is always present, but sometimes a problem, or even just superfluous - it can't always change an ugly power dynamic; the most attractive people, in fact, sometimes walk each other off stage like dogs (beauty as a form of degradation). Elsewhere coupling is even more awkward; dancers suddenly become knock-kneed puppets (above left), or fall into fetal positions, or to the ground.  Sometimes a partner will decide to twirl his intended mischievously, like a top.  The ludicrous is never far from the lovely in Kylián's sometimes-sardonic vision.

And always the stage itself shape-shifts with the dance, because the idea of self-presentation is always in play. Dancers drag the curtains after them, or push them aside, to change the shape and size of their playing space; at one point they're even holding up the curtain themselves. In the piece's most iconic moment, black drapes swoop down, like a camera lens focusing on a key detail, to frame Rie Ichikawa and Kathleen Breen Combes as they kneel before each other like two tentative wraiths, gingerly reaching out, but never quite touching. Finally they shed their gowns, too, abandoning one form of beauty for another; they come completely clean, not so much as naked bodies as naked souls.

This is a strangely tender moment - a transcendent one, actually, and Ichikawa and Combes play it perfectly; but Bella Figura isn't quite over yet, and it closes with an odd sort of fire dance that I admit left me scratching my head. But then part of what makes a Kylián dance fascinating is that he leaves some questions open, and other statements ambiguous; like Black and White, Bella Figura is made for repeat viewings (and luckily I'll get a chance to ponder it again - the Ballet will bring it back next year). At any rate, against a background of flames, most of the dancers return, in a final set of variations that are dotted with curious details. One man puts his hand over a woman's mouth to silence her (it wouldn't be pretty to complain about things, now would it). But another simply reaches out to his partner and gently eases her tense shoulder down in a moment that's as resonant as anything in the piece. There's nothing to be done about the beauty part, Bella Figura whispers in the end; so you might as well relax.

Photo above and masthead by Gene Schiavone.

It would be difficult to overestimate the pleasure given by Boston Ballet's current revival of A Midsummer Night's Dream (through this weekend at the Opera House). The dance represents, of course, the intersection of two geniuses - Shakespeare, probably the greatest artist of all time, and Balanchine, the choreographer who most certainly deserves a place in the Bard's pantheon of talent.  Not that Balanchine's ballet encompasses the full breadth of Midsummer - in fact, it doesn't even attempt to treat the whole play;  Mr. B (as he has become known) all but races through the plot, and leaves out whole chunks of Shakespearean theme and structure (don't expect, for instance, to see anything danced regarding the lover, the lunatic, and the poet, much less the "tragedy" of Pyramus and Thisbe).

No, as I said, this is a kind of intersection, not an interpretation; but Balanchine understands much of Midsummer, and brings to his ballet, almost without thinking, something of Shakespeare's own depth and nobility.  We don't like that word anymore, of course - "nobility."  Which is our loss, because it expresses something Shakespeare believed in, and which Balanchine simply takes as a matter of course.  Of course ballet elevates human experience, his every move tells us; of course even a flawed character, or society (or dream) has an inherent nobility to be discovered and appreciated.  Of course, of course.

Thus the centerpiece of Balanchine's Midsummer corresponds to one of his central concerns - the expression of romantic harmony through civilized ceremony. Perhaps because he's so devoted to ceremony, Mr. B disdains pantomime - hence the headlong dash through some sequences (like the arrival of the mechanicals in the forest); if he can't conjure a full dance from a scene, Balanchine just sketches it in, with an implied nod along the lines of "You remember this part, right? Right!".

So if for some reason you're not familiar with the play, it may be a good idea to check it out before going, so you're not wondering things like "What's with the donkey head?" Although frankly, even memories from a high school production might be all you need - or maybe even just the précis I overheard in the lobby from one young patron, which ran, "There are these people in the forest who are like in love with the wrong person, okay? And they meet these fairies, and you know stuff happens, and everybody ends up in love with the right person, and then they all get married."

Good enough for me! Although I have to say much of the most individualized dancing and acting came from those four confused young lovers - on opening night essayed by company stars Kathleen Breen Combes and Yury Yanowsky (now a married couple) as the warring Helena and Demetrius, and Erica Cornejo and Pavel Gurevich as the besotted Hermia and Lysander. These were four utterly specific performances in terms of emotion realized as movement, all set off by brilliant comic timing (but then the Ballet is full of terrific comedians).

Photo by Eric Antoniou

The lead fairies were perhaps slightly less compelling - it was great to see Lorna Feijóo return to the spotlight as Titania (with her peerless technique utterly secure), but she lacked a certain vixenish spark in her opening war with Oberon (the sinuously elegant John Lam, both at top), and she was indifferently partnered in her solo by the young Lorin Mathis. Elsewhere, however, fairyland was indeed aglitter with magic - as Balanchine's fluttering butterflies, the kids wrangled by ballet mistress Melanie Atkins were utterly charming (and in perfect synch, at left), and Jeffrey Cirio, though perhaps lacking a genuinely devilish streak - despite sprouting a tiny pair of horns - was nevertheless dazzlingly fleet of foot as Puck (see masthead), and with his happy élan had the audience in the palm of his hand all night.

There are a lot of great performances to mention here, however - that's the downside of being a reviewer when the Ballet's bench has become as deep as it is now! Robert Kretz, who has toiled largely in the background in previous seasons, struck just the right innocently earthy notes as Bottom (particularly while preferring provender to Titania). And Lia Cirio made a buoyantly darting huntress of Hippolyta, partnered with appropriately understated confidence by Bo Busby. But probably the most sublime dancing of the night came from Larissa Ponomarenko and James Whiteside, as the avatars of Balanchine's lengthy second-act divertissement.

This wouldn't be a Balanchine ballet without an enormous work for the corps at the climax, and Midsummer sports a doozy that's geometrically intricate even by Mr. B's heady standards. Here it was brought off with sparkling precision, however, which only set off Ponomarenko and Whiteside's sweetly simple pas de deux (just as it was meant to be). The keynote of their coupling is sympathetic attention - the moves in of themselves are only impressive as subtle call-and-response - a quality which these two dancers by now seem to have in their bones.

Then came that enchanting moment when the court dissolves back into the forest - an effect even more dazzling than usual on the exquisite new set the Ballet had borrowed from La Scala (which was simpler but more sophisticated than the design of previous productions). And when Balanchine's butterflies came back as fireflies, you heard one of those soft, unconscious sighs of pleasure rise from the audience that are almost more magical than anything occurring on the stage.

Oh and did I mention this production actually represents the intersection of three geniuses, not just two? For let's not forget Felix Mendelssohn, whose suite of incidental music (largely written when he was just seventeen) has long since become a classic in its own right; here it was skillfully extended to include excerpts from his Athalia Overture and String Sinfonia No. 9 (written when he was all of fourteen). Down in the pit, the Ballet's orchestra seemed a little uncertain of Mendelssohn's familiar opening notes, but soon, under the baton of Jonathan McPhee, they had settled into a sweetly vigorous interpretation as memorable as the rest of this ravishing production.

Elo in retrospect

Jeffrey Cirio and Larissa Ponomarenko in "The Elo Experience." Photos - Gene Schiavone.

I'm late with thoughts on Boston Ballet's "Elo Experience" (it closes this weekend), and Hub Review fans know that means only one thing: I haven't made up my mind about it. But it's time to give my mixed feelings their best shot.

Those unfamiliar with the high cultural scene might be surprised to learn that for the last few years our city has been home base for one of the hottest choreographers in the country: Jorma Elo, childhood friend (and fellow Finn) of Boston Ballet's artistic director, Mikko Nissinen. Elo was named the company's resident choreographer some six years ago, and since then has created a new work for the Ballet just about every year (including Plan to B, Brake the Eyes, and In on Blue, perhaps my favorite of his ballets, as well as re-interpretations of Carmen and Rite of Spring).  In between his Boston gigs, Elo has also set dances on many (if not most) of the A-list companies in America and Europe; his name and work are now everywhere.

So an Elo retrospective is certainly in order.  Rather than give us another in-depth look at his ballets, however, Boston Ballet has settled on a pastiche of the choreographer's greatest hits (coupled with a loose set of connecting dances), and pitched this as a world premiere, "The Elo Experience," which - as pastiches often do - had both its pluses and minuses artistically.

On the plus side, it allowed Elo to declare himself quite plainly, which is something I'm sure artists often long to do.  From the beginning, it seemed pretty clear to me that this choreographer was obsessed with forging some kind of relationship between ballet and pop culture, and in the connective "break" dances he has concocted here for Lisa Ponomarenko and Jeffrey Cirio, he comes right out and says the same thing himself.   At the very top of the show, in fact, he proffers an improbable romance between a club-boy and a ballerina: young Cirio, in sparkling club gear, enters as a kind of surrogate for the choreographer, pushing along a house-sized trailer that looks like an idealized computer equipped with a giant screen; out of it pops Ponomarenko, in a dark, slightly damaged tutu.  Something like a partnership immediately commences between them.

Every one of those details counts, I think, in what Elo is trying to say.  That giant computer screen operates in the same way the moon and the drooping trees do in Swan Lake: it's shorthand for the emotional setting, the cultural surround, of the work.  Only the pathetic fallacy is passé, Elo tells us; ballet now has to operate against the cool, minimalist chic of the i-Pad.   Of course his boy-meets-girl scenario assures us that in at least one way, he isn't really changing anything about ballet.  And as usual, his central duo are from different worlds - only not the peasants and the gentry, or the supernatural and the sublime, as we might expect in Giselle.  No, this time one is from the world of ballet itself: damaged, experienced but uncertain, yet hanging onto some kind of glamour and romantic ideal - while the other is from club-land, innocently into sensory overload and the multi-tasking of pleasure, not to mention Ecstasy, Ritalin, and who knows what else.

The crash between these two sensibilities is Elo's basic statement.  And if that sounds a bit simplistic, rest assured that Elo is a font of dazzling variations on this central trope, which has more resonance than you might at first expect.  The choreographer rarely concentrates on the climactic pas de deux, for instance, because today's lovers don't pledge their troth, they hook up instead; so in Elo we're always watching a kind of communal sex roundelay that never really resolves into individual statements.   These people aren't interested in achieving an apotheosis; instead, they're dedicated to optimizing their experiences.  Indeed, when something like a pas de deux coalesces, there's rarely a plausible love connection in it - the dancers often don't even touch, in fact, but instead carve out complementary musical spaces around each other before exiting in some sort of dazzling lift.  And when a girl leaps into her partner's arms in Elo, we understand the jump exists as a thrill in and of itself rather than as the culmination of an emotional commitment.

Dancers Lia Cirio and James Whiteside. 

If this sounds a bit cold, well - it is (but then so are your kids); at any rate, it seems to reflect the way we live now.  At least Elo is free of the drained sense of sado-masochism that often pervades the work of William Forsythe (with whom he is often compared); this choreographer clearly just wants to have fun.  And he's not free of nostalgia for the way things used to be; in In on Blue, for instance, he heaves a palpable sigh for the loss of romantic connection (it's set largely to Bernard Herrmann's mournful score for Vertigo, btw).  At any rate, if Elo's oeuvre is usually served slightly chilled, it's nevertheless almost always exciting, and there were plenty of thrills in "The Elo Experience" (even its name kind of conjures a thrill ride, doesn't it).

Although I have to say I always wanted a bit more of the individual rides, and less of the rather repetitive connective pit-stops.  Even the already-brief Plan to B (which first put Elo on the map, I'd say) seemed slightly abbreviated here, although it's just as dazzling as ever, and probably is the best argument for the real grace that undergirds his occasional freneticism.  There were similar chunks of gorgeous, if hyperactive, music visualization in the excerpts from dances choreographed elsewhere, like Double Evil (set to a blaring, but lyrical, Philip Glass concerto for timpani), and Lost on SLOW; but often in these dances you felt you'd only just gotten a handle on things (as in the mysterious Lost by Last, set to more Hermann, this time from Psycho!) when Elo cut back to his frame story (or the ongoing parody of its accompaniment, Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, in which a huge corps hurtled pointlessly through a quick variation or two before dashing offstage).

I should also add, I'm afraid, that the corps in these sequences was hardly a model of precision; things often got a bit sloppy, in fact.  The excerpts themselves fared far better - here the company consistently bowled you over, though always in flashes.  Still, Sabi Varga,  John Lam, Kathleen Breen Combes, Joseph Gatti, Lia Cirio, James Whiteside and Lasha Khozashvili all had their moments of brilliance under Elo's choreographic strobe, and for the first time I thought newcomers Paulo Arrais and Rachel Cossar made positive impressions.  And Cirio and Ponomarenko consistently charmed in their bickering "break" dances.

But the lack of star turns only points up another basic problem with an evening's worth of Elo: the very cultural conditions he illuminates - our short attention spans and craving for distraction - tend to prevent his works from developing or building.  Long or short, most of his dances achieve the same effect, over and over.  Not that he's unaware of this issue himself; in the ongoing dialogue of non sequiturs in his frame story,  the ballerina kept sighing to her club consort that "We always end up in the same place."  And indeed they did.  Perhaps now that he's had his retrospective, Elo may decide to set out for somewhere new.

The New Year's Eve Nutcracker

I was feeling a little Nutcracker'ed out this Christmas (I'd seen it twice so far), but I nevertheless settled into my seat at Boston Ballet on New Year's Eve for a third go round with this seasonal favorite (largely for the sake of the partner unit, who somehow had missed the other trips).

And believe it or not, I was glad I went.  The Ballet had advertised their New Year's Eve version - the first ever - would have a few twists, and these all proved good fun.  The basic idea was to goof around a little with the holiday chestnut (Luciana Voltolini as a snowflake, at left), to make it more of a party; Santa Claus (Robert Kretz) and Drosselmeier's dancing bear (Paul Craig), for instance, kept intruding on various scenes for a quick, scenery-chewing pirouette (which actually proved quite a bit funnier than it sounds).  And in general the company members - many of whom are superb physical comedians - were quick with little pratfalls and bits of comic business; the whole thing felt delightfully fizzy (without tipping too far into parody).

Plus Clara and Fritz were played by adults - Joseph Gatti got to ham it up as the bratty Fritz, while Misa Kuranaga took over as Clara.  Kuranaga's presence allowed the Ballet to experiment with an idea I've suggested before - that The Nutcracker should climax with Clara "growing up" a bit, and participating in the famous "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" (other ballet companies have toyed with this idea for some time).  Here, Kuranaga simply took over the solo, and danced it as beautifully as she has done before.  To my mind, this is an opportunity for a more original pas de deux between Clara and her Cavalier (or perhaps even a threesome with Ms. Plum!), but it was still intriguing to see the Ballet at least dip its toe in these more sophisticated emotional waters.

The company made other, fitting gestures toward the New Year - the whole evening ended with blasts of glitter into the audience, for instance, while the orchestra played "Auld Lang Syne" (and the crowd basically went wild).  These First Nighters weren't the usual ballet audience, btw - which led to loud gasps and various sounds of awe at the level of the Ballet's dancing.  Clearly many of these folks hadn't expected the show to be quite this good. In the lobby at intermission, in fact, the operative word seemed to be "amazing" - I must have heard it half a dozen times.  Which kind of made the Ballet's achievement fresh for me, too.  I had the feeling I was witnessing the start of a new Boston tradition - which was a great way to kick off the New Year.

Reviewing The Nutcracker, Boston Ballet's annual seasonal spectacle, has become an easy gig.  Since the kinks were worked out of its transfer to the Opera House, the show has become an ever-smoother entertainment machine; by now, almost every nook and cranny has been packed with amusing effects.  And while every season the Ballet tinkers a bit with some sequence or other (this year, the opening battle with the Mouse King seemed to have been streamlined), in essence, The Nutcracker doesn't change in its essential nature - or in its steps.

Thus it has become a kind of barometer of the company's technical growth - and judging from last weekend's opening, Boston Ballet has come very far indeed in a very short time.  I think every lead role was exquisitely danced, and while the choreography, by Mikko Nissinen, is neither deep nor daring, it's often quite sophisticated, and there's a mysterious fascination in watching these familiar steps re-enacted with the supreme precision in evidence here.  Indeed, the roll call of superb performances in this version would be a long one.  James Whiteside made a fluidly gallant Cavalier, and Misa Kuranaga was just perfection as the Sugar Plum Fairy.  Meanwhile John Lam was unbelievably flexible (as ever) as the Harlequin, and Dalay Parrondo impressed with a weirdly spirited Columbine.  Pavel Gurevitch brought a romantic elegance to the long leaps (and pillowy landings) of the Snow King, and Isaac Akiba was his usual irrepressible self in the Russian dance, while Kathleen Breen Combes (above) simply stopped the show as the sinuous odalisque of the Arabian dance (I think Combes is by now firmly ensconced as the troupe's new reigning diva).

There were still more pleasures to be had in a show almost dripping with them; the serenely poised Whitney Jensen made a luminous Dew Drop Fairy, for instance, and Paulo Arrais charmed in the Chinese dance.  The Clara of opening night, Fiona Wada-Gill, was both lovely and quite accomplished technically, and as Fritz, the pint-sized Max Pounanov proved an amusingly - and accurately - pouty little brother.  If there were a few bumps here and there, I'm afraid they mostly came from the corps.  The snowflakes seemed to skitter a bit at the end of the first act, and when Jensen wasn't around, the Waltz of the Flowers became a bit of a free-for-all.  And I missed the witty theatricality of Boyko Dossev as Drosselmeier (indeed, I miss Dossev in general - he decamped for Washington Ballet), but I slowly warmed to Sabi Varga's simpler, but more sexually charged, characterization.  Meanwhile, down in the pit, the orchestra played with spirit, and maestro Jonathan McPhee always kept his foot firmly on the gas (indeed, perhaps too much so here and there - in the Chinese dance, the bassoons got a little ahead of the piccolos).

It's true that at times, as I consider the wild success of the Ballet's Nutcracker (it's widely known as the best-loved version in America), I long for something a little less glossy, a little less candified. I wish we could let the Nutcracker be a little spookier, a little more Russian.  But I can't expect the Ballet to tinker with success - certainly not a success like this one.  And I confess there are moments in The Nutcracker that still, after all these years, give me a child-like thrill - I always fall for that moment when the giant Christmas tree begins to grow, its candles glittering, or when the Land of Sweets first appears, its cloud spilling out from the stage and down into the orchestra.  I'm happy to see it every year, particularly when, year after year, the dancing just keeps getting better and better.

As the curtain rose on the third act of Boston Ballet's La Bayadère last weekend, and the corps de ballet began the first of many arabesques cambré - pointed head-downward on a descending ramp - you could sense the entire audience holding its breath. This long, slow entrée probably beats the second act of Swan Lake (by a feather) as the most difficult and exposed sequence for the corps in the entire repertory. Just a few weeks earlier, at the Ballet's "Night of Stars," the hypnotic synchronicity of all those rising legs and drooping arms had wobbled well out of focus, and the spell of this geometrically-perfect dream had been broken.

But on opening night, it seemed some sort of miracle had been wrought in the "Kingdom of Shades" (as the scene is known): the corps bowed and rose in perfect synchronicity, and Marius Petipa's grand vision of death as a dimension of symmetry and peace floated before us with ravishing serenity.

"The Kingdom of the Shades" isn't the only treasure in Bayadère, but it's the grandest, and the key to its success - utter technical control - is really the key to the whole ballet. Choreographed by Petipa (below left) in mid-career flight, and acclaimed as his greatest masterwork to date, La Bayadère could nevertheless never be called original: it may be set, exotically enough, in India, but it's basically Giselle Goes to Bangalore. (Or Coppélia Goes to Bangalore. Or [Insert name of nineteenth-century ballet] Goes to Bangalore.) Boy meets girl, but he's already betrothed to another girl (surprise!), things go badly and . . . well, let's just say no nineteenth-century ballet is ever complete without a heroine returning from beyond the grave, is it. (Petipa's original wrapped with a vengeful cataclysm wrought by the gods, but the Boston Ballet version closes with a romantic clinch in a dreamscape of the dead.) Meanwhile there isn't a trace of Indian influence in the music - by Minkus - which follows a familiar "Dance-of-the-Hours" template, and only a few hints here and there in the choreography. To be honest, this ballet is "exotic" only in its costumes and backdrops.

But what costumes, and what backdrops! At any rate, what made Bayadère a landmark at its premiere wasn't its story or setting but its scope (it even includes a life-size elephant), which Boston Ballet brings off triumphantly. Still, such innovations as the development of character through dance was yet to come - and audiences may miss that tiny detail, at least until the grandeur seriously kicks in after the slow first act. Even as the scenic stakes grow bigger, however, Nikiya and Solor, the ballet's doomed couple, remain pretty much stock figures - tellingly, when we meet them, they're already in love, a narrative fact established immediately by a few ecstatic lifts; their movements declare rather than develop their mental state - and at other key emotional moments, Petipa repeatedly resorts to mime rather than dance.

"Dance" is instead reserved for divertissements (among both the living and the dead), as well as novelty numbers over burning fires, or with balanced jars, fans, scarves, or parrots, or by golden idols, slaves and whatnot. This is where that "utter technical control" kicks in - most of these dances are essentially graceful exercises, at times almost studious explications of particular positions and jumps - and luckily, the Ballet has a lot of technical control these days. Light, mischievously lovely work was done by Rie Ichikawa (with that balanced jar), and Misa Kuranaga, Adiarys Almeida and Whitney Jensen glimmered exquisitely as the reigning sylphs in the Kingdom of Shades; meanwhile, as the Other Woman, a radiant Kathleen Breen Combes brought more sympathetic complexity to her role than perhaps the choreography deserved.

Center stage, however, as the eponymous temple dancer, I found Lia Cirio somehow unconvincing. I adore Cirio in contemporary dance, in which she always has a confident, aquiline attack - she's a huntress by temperament, I think.  Demure suffering is not her bag, and while her dancing as Nikiya was sinuously graceful, for once in Bayadère, technique alone isn't enough (complicating matters was the fact that Breen Combes actually had more chemistry with Solor than she did).

Said Solor, of course, was the big news of the evening - freshly-minted principal Lasha Khozashvili, who had already made a huge impression at the "Night of Stars." That impression only deepened here. Khozashvili has long, lithe legs that don't betray the power he has at his command; leap after leap, tour after tour seemed to be merely tossed off, each more effortlessly than the last. Top that with an easy romantic manner, and by the final scene, the crowd was even more in love with him than Nikiya was. His only rival for the crowd's affection was another new addition to the Ballet, Joseph Gatti (at right), who in the "Golden Idol" dance blew through a series of spinning jumps and pirouettes that left the audience amazed.  He won a roaring ovation for his efforts - one that was only topped by the repeated applause for the ultimate technical achievement of the evening, that grand tableau - as exquisitely mournful and Gatti was exuberant - in the Kingdom of the Shades.

Big news at the Ballet

"The Kingdom of Shades" sequence from "Night of Stars." Boston Ballet photos by Gene Schiavone.

This weekend brought Boston Ballet's annual "Night of Stars" gala, which is always a pleasure - this time around, though, there were some real surprises in store; the company has grown its ranks (including Boston Ballet II) by 19 dancers, and "Night" marked our first peek at a few of them.

The good news (and actually the big news of the evening) is that the Ballet seems to have chosen well - and all but closed the last gap (among its men) in its "world class" status.  New danseurs Lasha Khozashvili and Joseph Gatti both made stunning debuts, Khozashvili in a brilliant new work by Helen Pickett, and Gatti in a virtuosic spin through the leaps of Le Corsaire that all but drove the crowd wild.  These talented guys will clearly refresh (and perhaps bring a competitive edge to) a bench that has sometimes been a bit uneven.  Of the new women, only Adiarys Almeida was featured prominently (below left with Gatti, in a jump that gives you some idea of the spring in his step), and while she didn't throw off many sparks of personality, she nevertheless sparkled technically.

Alas, the bad news was that the corps de ballet, which has improved markedly over the past few seasons, wobbled noticeably in its big number, "The Kingdom of Shades" from the upcoming La Bayadère. The dance - much of which takes place on a long, sloping ramp (at top) - is a killer series of slow (very slow) arabesques and rotations; it's one of the most difficult, and utterly exposed, sequences for the corps in the repertory - hardcore corps, if you will. And the girls just weren't ready - they didn't like that ramp, not one bit, but even once they were on solid ground things never quite cohered. Not that this is easy! But "The Kingdom of Shades" may have been one gamble the Ballet shouldn't have made.

Yet as if to compensate, the Ballet's established stars shone brightly.  Larissa Ponomarenko returned to the stage after a hiatus last year, opposite Khozashvili in the intense "Layli O Majnun" (at right) from Pickett, and demonstrated yet again that she's not only one of the Ballet's greatest dancers but its greatest actress, too.  The shock was that Khozashvili demonstrated a similar psychological depth; these two Russians are naturals together, and the Pickett should be stunning when it "officially" premieres next spring.

Elsewhere, the oft-imperious Kathleen Breen Combes seemed to open up a whole new wing of her stage presence as a glowing Terpsichore in an excerpt from Balanchine's Apollo (against Pavel Gurevich), and Whitney Jensen was eloquently light and free in Mr. B's "Tarantella."  The great Balanchine kept on coming, too - James Whiteside and Misa Kuranaga were exquisite in his "Theme and Variations" from Jewels, and the company danced elegantly in its dazzling finale (as they had earlier in Jorma Elo's "Plan to B," a crazy quilt of swiveling moves that basically sets Attention Deficit Disorder to dancing).   There was even a striking premiere, choreographed by dancer Yury Yanowsky, to a new piece of music by Berklee grad Lucas Vidal.  The up-and-coming Mr. Vidal came up with an appealing score that sounded a bit like Philip Glass with romantic film music threaded through it; it was derivative, but hinted at the development of its own original musical niche.  Mr. Yanowsky doesn't quite have his own choreographic voice, yet, either, but his dance had an aggressive, off-hand athleticism that was exciting and highly watchable, and drew committed, fearless performances from Rie Ichikawa, John Lam, and Jaime Diaz.

The evening's guest stars were Wendy Whelan, a long-time light at NYCB, and Damian Smith, of San Francisco Ballet, performing Whelan's signature piece, Christopher Wheeldon's heartbreaking ode to dysfunctional romance, "After the Rain."  I've seen Whelan do this before, and as always, she was peerless, and Smith provided perfect support.  Small-scaled rather than grand in its melancholy, it offered a haunting note of contrast to what was generally a night of high-stepping triumph.

"Black and White" returns

Last weekend's encore performances of "Black and White" at Boston Ballet (excerpts above) gave me a rare chance to reconsider what I thought was one of the signature cultural events of 2009.

And I changed my mind about it. A bit. Not that it struck me as any less brilliant - Jiří Kylián's masterpiece is one of the most ambitious and free-ranging evenings of dance of the last few decades, and Boston Ballet brought it off thrillingly. And the Boston press, which was positive, but lukewarm, last year - I think I was the only one really raving - all came around, as they are wont to do (if a bit slowly).

What surprised me about the piece's revival was how differently the individual components of "Black and White" - which was pulled together from a few seasons of work created by Kylián for Nederlands Dans Theater some twenty years ago - impressed me on this third viewing. The big, bold showpieces ("Sarabande" and "Falling Angels") seemed to me just as striking as ever, but a bit flatter than I remembered them, even as the work's first two sequences, "No More Play" and "Petite Mort," seemed to open up to surprising new depths.

This was partly because they were danced a bit better this time around - particularly "No More Play," whose bitter geometries were carried off with cold panache by Kathleen Breen Combes, Erica Cornejo, Nelson Madrigal, Yury Yanowsky, and especially Sabi Varga, who seemed to find his own voice in Kylián's physical language - a style which welds together folk and classical motifs in a way that conjures isolation rather than community. Indeed, almost all of "Black and White" had clearly settled further into the company's bones, which only argues for more repertory performances of dance; great dance perhaps most fully blooms when it has become unconscious - and that takes time.

It takes time to understand a dance, too. "Black and White" is often as thematically dense as many classic plays, and it's certainly denser than almost any recent play I can think of. (And part of its appeal is that it often straddles the conceptual line between dance and theatre.) It's a commonplace that our comprehension of a play accretes over many performances and interpretations. Yet dances, even great dances, get far fewer public outings. I've seen most of Shakespeare's plays half a dozen or even a dozen or more times - and of course I've read them several times, too. Only you can't "read" a dance, and I've seen the great Balanchine dances at most two or three times apiece.



Still, thanks to YouTube, you can ponder "Black and White" at length - it's all there (with even one dance, "Sweet Dreams," that Boston Ballet didn't do), although in a different order than seen here, and even though watching it on your computer screen (sometimes broken up by varying camera angles) is hardly like watching it live. Still, you get the gist of it, I think; and it was interesting to me to just check in about details of certain sequences I wasn't sure about (it can be tricky taking in all the details of a fully realized dance, even on your second or third try).

So after repeated exposures, what do I think about this dance? Well, the first thing is that a better title for "Black and White" might be "Sex and Death." Because its seeming sexual scenarios are always arenas of aggression, haunted by a persistent sense of darkness and doom. The standard subtext of a pas de deux is seduction; here, it's usually blunt force, or even rape. Or maybe murder. Often the spectre of death is just off-stage, embodied, for instance, in the black, rigid ball gowns that stand watching the action of "Petite Mort" (a sobriquet for the orgasm that pretty much sums up Kylián's theme). And there's more than a hint of mortality in the shroud that ripples through the same piece like a dark tsunami to sweep all the dancers from the stage. Elsewhere the fatal is even intertwined with the natal - those same rigid ball gowns "birth" male dancers at the top of "Sarabande," and at the close of "Falling Angels," the women of the company seem to freeze in a position of labor that's also stiff as rigor mortis.

Although we really should replace the "sex" in "sex and death" with "sexual politics," because almost every interaction in "Black and White" is about power - there's really not much actual sex in the ballet at all. Instead, sex infuses everything else, engendering anger, dismay and isolation. The men of "Petite Mort" silently wield phallic rapiers before they woo - and when they manage to mount their respective mates, the women respond with closed, blocking knees, above which the males hover like birds of prey (an image which recurs again and again in the ballet, like so many of its motifs). In "Sarabande," the dancers rage at the female forms from which they have been cast - at one point even holding their shirts around their faces like vaginal frames and screaming out at the world. And if "Sarabande" infantilizes men, then "Falling Angels" mechanizes women - they come striding out at first like lionesses on the savannah, calm and powerful, but soon are obsessed with ever-more intricate routines that make less and less sense. No real leader emerges from their ranks; no real "story" evolves - this is a collective, not a Mark-Morris-style community. And of course no men appear; by the time the dancers sink to their backs at the finale, their legs spread wide, we realize we may as well have been watching robots as women.

There are, of course, interludes of rapture in "Black and White" - beautiful duets dot "Petite Mort," and even the men of "Sarabande" get some devastatingly lyrical solos. These, however, are laughed off the stage at the close of the dance, and even the pair dancing of "Petite Mort" and "No More Play" is quickly subsumed into the ongoing battle; the participants only get reprieves, not release. And the battle goes on and on - history hangs over "Black and White" like a second shroud. Its last, wacky number - "Sechs Tänze" (Six Dances, to Mozart's German ones) - is a campy take on lords and ladies that quickly devolves into sexual anarchy, with power structures toppled, men leaping into each others' arms, and giant drag queens stalking the stage like amazons. What's funniest about "Sechs Tänze," however, is that it's the first piece Kylián choreographed in "Black and White;" although now a ditzy show-topper, it's really the source of the whole piece, and the suite might better be read in reverse, as a long investigation of the serious themes buried in its silliness. And the picture Kylián paints, for all its sexy glamour, isn't very pretty. "No More Play" is a portrait of modernist despair that ends in exhaustion, "Petite Mort" an elegant image of baroque sterility - meanwhile "Sarabande" and "Falling Angels" reveal men and women who have completely disengaged from one another. Meanwhile ""Sechs Tänze" is gay camp - that holds court against a persistent, menacing rumble. Still, it ends in a bemused shrug, as celebratory bubbles fill the stage. Freedom at last from the power games of the past? we wonder to ourselves. Well, even the dancers don't seem sure. Whether those bubbles are a sign of real hope or just one more seductive illusion remains an open question.

Lia Cirio and Pavel Gurevich in Ultimate Balanchine. Photos by Gene Schiavone.

You still have time to catch Ultimate Balanchine, an evening which demonstrates what even the New York Times has grudgingly had to admit: Boston Ballet now has the chops to float freely between the romantic, modern and post-modern repertory. Yes, Bostonians - New York says it's ok to go the Ballet! So what are you waiting for?

Well, if what you've been waiting for is artistic challenge, you'd better hustle: Ultimate takes its last bow this weekend, and its opening pieces, "The Four Temperaments" and "Apollo," are as astringent and stripped-down as any modern classicist could want. But hang on till the end, you traditionalists - the concert wraps with "Theme and Variations," one of those jewels in which Mr. B. lovingly cut the romantic tradition to a dazzling new precision, and you can feast your eyes on all the tutus and tiaras you could possibly want.

To be honest, I did have one caveat about the program: in the first moments of "Four Temperaments," the Ballet didn't seem to be putting its best foot forward. The work represents Balanchine at his coldest - and its structure may be his most rigorous, and that's saying something; plus its movement (set to Paul Hindemith's commissioned score, which is a small classic in its own right) is unusually aggressive. With its lunges and splayed legs and thrusting pelvises, you feel as if Mr. B. is turning angrily on the vocabulary of ballet itself. Which isn't to say the piece doesn't coalesce, like all his great works, from choreographic fragments into concluding grand themes; it does. But some of the younger members of the company - who took the opening duets - didn't seem to know how to express the work's atmosphere of alienation; they weren't able to express intent without emotion, so they seemed a bit blank.

Still, Megan Gray and Paul Craig threw off some sparks, and once the principals moved in for the major variations (named for the medieval "Four Temperaments": Melancholic, Sanguinic, Phlegmatic and Choleric), the piece righted itself. It was great to see dancer John Lam back, and back in his usual sinuous form, as "Melancholic," but the surprise was how well everyone danced - Eric Cornejo and Nelson Madrigal, not dancers one associates with cool modernism, cleanly essayed "Sanguinic," Kathleen Breen Combes (returning to the stage after a recent injury) tore through "Choleric," and even the somewhat erratic Carlos Molina impressed with a loose, gangly grace in "Phlegmatic."


The opening frieze of "Apollo."

The second work on the program (although in terms of Mr. B.'s development, its earliest) was the rarely-seen "Apollo" (above) of 1928, although here presented in the reduced version Balanchine completed in 1979. Set to a score by Stravinsky, it represents the choreographer at his least layered and most narrational: the sun god summons three muses (Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, and Calliope) with whom he, well, muses, before selecting one as his consort (Terpsichore, the dancer, in case you hadn't picked up that Apollo=Mr. B.). Here the dance came off beautifully, even if its ensemble seemed slightly mismatched. Gurevich is a god, yes, but not a sunny one, and he and the bodaciously grounded Cirio didn't seem to quite connect as a couple; yet their dancing, both individually and together, was superb. As Calliope (the muse of poetry) Rie Ichikawa seemed a bit frail, but rising star Whitney Jensen made a gleamingly poised Polyhymnia (the muse of mime). Watching Jensen - who I think is only 18 or 19 - I myself mused at how unfair the gods can be. All the young women of the Ballet (including Jensen) work themselves day and night to achieve technical perfection - but Jensen simply has that little something extra that you notice (and she seems to have had it since the first time I saw her on the Ballet stage); there's a sheen of serene poise to her work that simply seems to have been bestowed by, well, maybe Apollo.


James Whiteside and Jaime Diaz soar in "Theme and Variations."

The finale, "Theme and Variations," seemed a world away from the heightened clarity of "Apollo" and "Four Temperaments," but it shared with them an underlying sense of structure and attack. The audience gasped audibly ("At last!") when the curtain parted to reveal a dazzling chandelier, swaths of gauze, and a veritable army of dancers glitteringly dressed for Tchaikovsky (whose gorgeous Suite No. 3 provided the score). But needless to say, beneath the piece's plush surface, Balanchine's talent for thematic development was just as exposed as it was in "Four Temperaments:" "Theme and Variations" builds into a kaleidoscopic formal statement by its curtain. On opening night, this development was anchored beautifully by leads Misa Kuranaga and James Whiteside, who danced together with poised sympathy, and separately with something close to perfection. The gigantic corps likewise danced with truly stunning synchronicity, the clarity of its line never admitting variation. I know many look down on ballet for its relentless pursuit of what is essentially superficial physical perfection; but when confronted by that perfection in the flesh, it's hard to deny its power - or, ironically enough, its surprising sense of depth.

A doll's life

Misa Kuranaga takes down the competition in Coppélia. Photos by Gene Schiavone.

Balanchine's Coppélia (presented through this weekend by Boston Ballet) is unusual in his oeuvre because it's not actually all by him - and thus it has a strange artistic resonance with its own storyline. Based on the same sources as Offenbach's far-darker Tales of Hoffmann, the ballet traces the romantic competition between peasant-girl Swanilda and the eponymous Coppélia for the hand (and heart) of Frantz, the girl-crazy village hunk. Coppélia at first seems to have the edge, as she's too beautiful to be real - because she's not real, in fact; she's actually mechanical. Swanilda, of course, eventually wins the day (and Frantz), by revealing the truth about her rival, but we can't help but notice that as she does so, the ballet goes through its own funny transformation: like Pinocchio, Coppélia blooms from a sweet-but-synthetic confection into the real thing: genuine Balanchine.

This is because as the great choreographer adapted an earlier ballet he had adored as a young man (and which influenced him deeply), he left much of its dancing (devised over the years by the likes of St. Léon, Petipa, and Cecchetti) intact. Even so, we can feel him peeking out, as it were, from behind the curtain of the tradition he loved: there's a peasant dance in Act I, for instance, that must owe its unfolding complexity to Mr. B, and there are similar glints of inspiration in some of the solos of Act II; slowly, the dancing becomes more and more like his own. But it's not until Act III - which Balanchine re-choreographed in its entirety - that the mysterious power of his mature command of the form envelopes the stage. Don't worry - it's worth the wait; and in fact, Balanchine (perhaps through some unconscious sense of compensation) throws just about everything he's got at the finale, and then some - including two dozen little girls in tutus (below) who come on like a pink streamroller of adorability. If they don't break your heart, well, you may be as cold inside as Coppélia.


It just doesn't get any cuter than this.

And until then, it's not like there's nothing to watch - or hear: in fact, the score, by Léo Delibes (of Lakmé fame), is probably the best romantic ballet music to be found outside of Tchaikovsky (its mazurka and waltz have both entered the standard repertoire), and after a little opening roughness, the Ballet orchestra, under the reliable baton of Jonathan McPhee, played it with lively fire. The Ballet's corps likewise gave that mazurka a forceful stomp, and leads Misa Kuranaga and Nelson Madrigal both charmed in their opening pantomimes and dances (even if they were playing against a set, borrowed from Pacific Northwest Ballet, that felt somehow high-school level - although don't worry, the sets improved with each act). Kuranaga doesn't, perhaps, project as much raw personality as the Ballet's other prima ballerinas - but her porcelain loveliness, ironically enough, is rather doll-like, which makes her competition (in Frantz's mind) with Coppélia psychologically credible. And her technique has always been utterly impeccable, which gave the relatively simple steps of the first scenes a lovely transparency.

And Kuranaga found the smart, saucy mischief required to put over the second act - in which Swanilda sneaks into the spooky workshop of her rival's creator, Dr. Coppélius (the wonderful Boyko Dossev, with Kuranaga at left) to give him, and her future husband (who has climbed in at the window!) the what-for by impersonating their fantasy Barbie run amok. Here the ballet eschews entirely the weird undertones of the original E.T.A. Hoffmann tale (in which the hero, via a magic spy-glass, perceives the robot-girl as real, and his real-life sweetheart as a robot). Instead, Swanilda delivers a standard-issue spanking about the virtues of real life over fantasy - with dotty old Coppélius getting the brunt of it rather than the merely-naïve Frantz, who simply comes to his senses once he realizes he's been in love with a cyborg. Still, even if the action's basically sitcom-level, Kuranaga and Dossev - probably the Ballet's best comic actor - made it a hoot, and the pair played off each other beautifully "in the moment," as they say; when Kuranaga couldn't quite pin on a veil for her Spanish variation, she just tossed it, in character - and Dossev, not missing a beat, retrieved it and began tapping it like a tambourine.

Of course the dancing pyrotechnics begin once the story has wound down, and Balanchine clears the stage for a dazzling set of wedding divertissements in Act III. Here we got all those little sweethearts, led by a graciously poised Dalay Parrondo, in "The Waltz of the Hours" - there were 24 for of 'em, I guess for every hour in the day - as well as a set of sparkling turns by such domestic virtues as "Prayer" and "Spinning" (no "MBA" or "Independent Career" for Swanilda, I guess). Here the biggest impression was made by young Whitney Jensen, who seems to always etch her solos with understated-yet-dazzling precision: her carriage is consistently perfect, her legwork remarkably clean. Next came an unexpected explosion of camp, when "War" and "Discord" came prancing on with spears, and in get-ups that Cher might have worn to the Oscars: the variations were cute, but soloists Melissa Hough and Jaime Diaz seemed to be spinning their wheels. And Frantz's closing variation did not go well - Madrigal, who's blessed with a ripely romantic stage presence, often seems to wane in power as an evening progresses, and here, although he did fine in his cabrioles, he just couldn't land his double tours (to be fair, the Ballet doesn't really have any danseur who can nail these reliably - it's their last technical gap).

The girls came back for a fond farewell, however (once again wrangled expertly by Balanchine Trust rep Garielle Whittle and children’s ballet mistress Melanie Atkins), to banish any thoughts of this sudden wobble in the performance, and the whole company got to gambol in one of Balanchine's most dazzling conceits - a huge "galop" bursting with energy and high kicks. Which made for a terrifically charming close to what is, in the end, a terrifically charming ballet.