PLAYBILL -- February 1989 ee A NEW ERA IN AMERICAN BALLET Orpheus (1948) The opening night of the New York City Ballet on October 11, 1948, was a curious thing. Not one of the works presented— George Balanchine's Concerto Barocco, Orpheus and Symphony in C— was new, though the oldest, Concerto Barocco, was a company premiere. The two works most indicative of his vaunted American style had their world premieres abroad— Concerto Barocco in 1941 in Brazil and Symphony in C (as Le Palais de Cristal) in France in 1947—in productions that seem miscalculated to audiences accus- tomed to current austerity; Concerto Ba- rocco in elaborate constructions by Eugene Berman, Le Palais de Cristal glittering in a series of jewel-like tones. The modest NYCB of 1948 managed to recruit 50 dancers—many of them students—for the first performance of Symphony in C but thereafter doubled corps members from one movement to another, making the color scheme unworkable; Berman’s de- signs were soon abandoned for modified practice clothes, first black, then white. The Balanchine-Stravinsky-Noguchi Or- pheus, by contrast, has remained relatively unchanged. A work of theatre dance whose identity would be lost without its costumes and decor . . . of how many Balanchine works can that be said? All three works have survived and flourished in the repertories of the New York City Ballet and companies around the world. The first night of the company’s Winter 1988 season brought these ballets together again, and, though historic, the program was in no way dated: Concerto Barocco, Orpheus and Symphony in C appeared fresh and vital. The following selections were drawn from reviews of these ballets written throughout the years. oo ty tae “Concerto Barocco] is straight dancing, animated, complex and completely clear ..- It does not register emotion, it presents an infinite variety of energy and repose, a ballet of force that expresses itself in a happy movement of the spirit. “It is in the new Balanchine manner; there is no deformation of gesture, the dancer’s body dances as a unit, fluent and at ease .. . But the variety of invention in the choreography is unparalleled. In the adagio the lifts are breathtaking as well as unheard of. And the syncopations of the first and third movements are wonder- fully apt and American.” Edwin Denby (New York Herald Tribune, November 1, 1943) “Balanchine’s ballet dispenses with all story, all psychological complications: a series of pas de deux, enchainments, en- sembles and solos, nothing but dance in its pure state, Le Palais de Cristal is a grand jewel box whose dimensions are those of the great stage of the Opera, where gems shimmer, personified by the harmonious groups of dancers.” Rene Dumesnil, (Une Semaine Dans Le Monde, August 9, 1947) “[Concerto Barocco's] whole composition Compiled and edited by Maitland McDonaghis admirably phrased to the music and flows now quickly, now slowly like a run- ning brook, but the steps and movement are not born of emotions engendered by hearing the music, but more to exploit the possibilities of setting dancers in ac- tion. The dancers have the air of being the units of an elaborate piece of smooth running clockwork rather than human beings. Thus the ballet has an astringent impersonal, robot-like quality.” Cyril Beaumont (Ballet, October 1948) “Orpheus . . . was the outstanding piece of the evening, as, indeed, it is also the outstanding piece of this and many other seasons . . . More than a ballet, it is a superb theatre work, with such a synthesis of music, movement, setting as one must usually remain content to dream about . . . “Mr. Balanchine’s choreography finds him in his most intuitive vein, with a gentle dramatic warmth which, instead of inter- fering with his flair for formal design, actually reinforces and inspires it.” John Martin (The New York Times, Octo- ber 12, 1948) “[With Symphony in C] Balanchine has once again given us that ballet of his, this time for some inscrutable reason to the Bizet symphony .. . he [has] used virtually all of his familiar tricks, some of them charming, some of them forced, and some of them slightly foolish.” John Martin, (The New York Times, March 23, 1948) “If there was ever any doubt that Balan- chine was the greatest choreographer of our time, this doubt was dispelled when the curtain came down on Symphony in C. Here is a classic ballet that will go down in history as the finest example of this thrilling art form. Symphonic ballet at its greatest, it builds with ever mounting force toa thrilling climax . .. And the strength of the ballet is achieved by dancing alone.” Anatole Chujoy (Dance News, April 1948) “Orpheus . . . It is a profoundly subjective conception, uneven in texture and con- fused in idiom, but full of strokes of bold invention. The score has a directness and unity of style that Balanchine did not achieve in his choreography.” Robert Sabin, (Musical America, March 1950) “The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has been sung by poets again and again with undiminished power and beauty and George Balanchine’s ballet, though a con- temporary creation, continues to exert its sorcery after many seeings . . . All is told tenderly in movement but with that strange coolness and studied pace which defines ritual. Through the choreographer we are, in effect, invited to attend a rite, an ageless archaic rite which celebrates an ancient singer of songs.” Walter Terry (New York Herald Tribune, September 9, 1954) “Concerto Barocco is one of the keystones of the American classic repertory—a ballet to music by an 18th-century German with choreography by a 20th-century Georgian —and yet with results clean, clear and architecturally beautiful that could only have been produced right now (give or take two decades) in New York City. “[The] . . . choreography is terse and unpretentious. It suggests nothing it can- not deliver, and delivers nothing that hasn't a stripped-down honesty of purpose. It is a ballet with no furbelows, no trimmings. It is a ballet whose simple complexity abso- lutely matches the music.” Clive Barnes (The New York Times, Oc- tober 24, 1965) “The question of whether any outstanding ballet of its time does in fact outlive its time is one that continually springs to mind in regard to two special works, both of which are on view this season. One is the 1938 Billy the Kid . . . the other is the 1948 Orpheus... “Both have been dubbed classics of theee American ballet repertory although by common consent, Orpheus is considered the masterpiece that Billy the Kid gener- ally is not. And yet Billy the Kid has been able to endure the weak performances ‘Symphony in C (1948) that Orpheus cannot. At its least success- ful, Orpheus has appeared sadly dated while Billy the Kid has appeared happil dated. That is, in poor production and per- formance Orpheus may not work at all, trapped in a symbolism and style of move- ment its dancers can no longer convey. Billy the Kid, whatever its lowest ebb, ap- pears dated in the sense of a period . It is the kind of ballet that can still irritate an impatient artist no longer keyed to its deliberately naive style. But this very style is so watertight that the work can be rec- ognized for what it is, a product of the 1930's. One can like it or dislike it but one can recognize it. “At its revival a year ago, however, Orpheus was barely recognizable. With the current production and a new cast . . . Orpheus re-emerges in its true greatness. One might even venture that. . . [they] have created a new vision of this ballet, a reinterpretation and yet one totally true to its original concept.” Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times, June 15, 1980) “In the finale of Symphony in C, surely the most exhilarating finale ever devised by Balanchine, there comes a moment when. the profuse invention of the choreography clears away like mist and the stage turns into a classroom, its three sides lined with young women doing battements tendus while the four principal ballerinas compete like dervishes in the center. In this mo- ment, at once the simplest and the most complex in the ballet, Balanchine seems to be outlining both his dream for American Ballet and the foundation necessary to achieve it. Then, the vision having been disclosed, the happy dazzle of invention returns, mounting and mounting until, with an abrupt flourish, it ends.” Arlene Croce (The New Yorker, May 16, 1983) “Perhaps the litmus test of the New York City Ballet's standards will always be the way in which it dances George Balan- chine’s greatest ballet, Concerto Barocco . in this encounter between Bach’s music and Balanchine choreography, the essence of the Balanchine esthetic is at its most absolute. Music and dance become one and dance finds its own autonomy in time and space. “Tt was with the creation of Concerto Barocco in 1941 that Balanchine became Balanchine—that is, he established the definitive model of the neoclassic plotless ballet that became his signature. . .. With Bach’s double violin concerto, Balanchine was able to find the purity of form and content toward which he had been mov- ing.” Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times, November 21, 1983) “The most inveterate hater of ballet would have a hard time hating George Balan- chine’s Symphony in C . . . It’s so grand, beautiful and joyous only a churl could resist it. And certainly no one could dis- miss it with the weak excuse, ‘I don’t un- derstand ballet.’ You may as well say, ‘I don’t understand diamonds.’ . . . The ballet is first of all a marvel of architectural construction, perfectly rational and clear in its organization and delineation of parts. Secondly, it has a joyous, upbeat spirit that radiates through each of the three allegro movements, and shines mores Sees al brightly for being offset by the second slower and more reflective adagio . . . Third, its strictly classical lines and the aristocratic bearing of the dancers give the ballet a harmony and elevation appeal- ing to one’s sense of order and decorum. Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, the interplay and development of crisp geo- metric patterns occur with an ever-in- creasing rapidity that is positively ex- hilarating. . Margaret Putnam (Dallas Times Herald, May 26, 1984) “[(Concerto Barocco] . . . one of the most pristine examples of Balanchine's abstract neoclassicism ..... The miracle of its chore- ographic architecture is ceaselessly amaz- ing—how can the unadorned. geometry of human movement constitute so perfect an analogue of the structural and expres- sive contours of Bach’s music?” Alan M. Kriegsman (The Washington Post, October 23, 1987) “As Heraclitus said, you cannot step into the same river twice. But you can attempt to reproduce the initial program that the New York City Ballet .presented four decades ago. Thus, the opening bill was entirely by George Balanchine and in the same order . . . Of course, none of these ballets are the same as 40 years ago, Bal- anchine having modified the choreography over the years. In short, the program now on view served as a symbol of the City Ballet’s esthetic. Distinguished music (Bach, Stravinsky, Bizet) and loyalty to the classical idiom tell the Balanchine story.” Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times, November 24, 1988)