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THE BOSTON BALLET REFRESHES MADRID AIR · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · by Elna Matamoros, an exclusive for fotoescena.
The Boston Ballet seems to have come to Spain to show to the Spanish how they dance in America. And those being a bit bright went out from the theatre having learnt one’s lesson. It has been an enormous pleasure to see a company of this quality, with a so extraordinary staff of ballet dancers and with such a delightfully selected program. If also we bear in mind that they are going to perform along the whole Spain, then we have to be grateful to who has brought them to have tackled such an educational campaign The two programs the company has presented are a marvellous sample of good dance of his bet for two of the most important choreographers of the history and also of an absolute courage. Decades ago it was said that who could dance Bournonville, could do anything; later on it has been said that who could interpret Balanchine would be able to dance everything. Boston Ballet has dared with both; and in addition, in a tour of six weeks just when they were back from holidays, with continuous performances and mixing programs which implies permanent changes of casts and even premieres surprise, like in any long tour. Emotion is served. Nevertheless they seem very calm and seeing them rehearsing and working every day it is clear that they have all under control. They have even brought with them the prestigious journalist Christine Temin who is writing a book on the history of the company, so that she does a detailed tracking of the tour. |
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Balanchine program is about three key works of this choreographer: “Serenade”, “Who Cares?” and “The Four Temperaments”. “Serenade” was premiered in 1934 and its magic is still alive, in part thanks to the music (Tchaikovsky’s Serenate for Strings). It is probably Balanchine’s most represented piece worldwide (what implies, unavoidably, that we also had seen it many times quite damaged) and also one of whom has deserved much attention because it is full of anecdotes. George Balanchine started to choreography it for his students of a School of American Ballet that was not even three months old yet, so his obsession during the creation was “that it was not evident how bad they danced”. In this work, aiming only to recreate the vision of a group of ballerinas at the moonlight, many have found an indisputable influence of Fokine’s “Chopiniana”. Maybe. Balanchine will transform “Serenade” all along his life up to turn it to a difficult to perform work, particularly for the corps. The original staging scarcely lasted five days and along them the number of students invariably changed: so the always changing quantity of performers on stage. The beginning, with a frankly difficult number to work with – 17 girls- was solved in a simple way, placing them following the design of the boxes used to transport the oranges of California (similar to 2 united rhombus) ; from there, he used all the possible drawings as the number of dancers was also changing. The first movement is an authentic creative display that still impresses. Any anecdote arising during the creation was included by Balanchine in the choreography: a girl arriving late to the rehearsal and having to look for her place between her colleagues, a dancer who felt down in one of her apparitions on stage… all was valuable for the choreographer, anything, except not rising to the level of the music. So up to 1940 – when he re-staged the piece for the Ballets Ruses of Montecarlo – he didn’t want to use the fourth and last movement of the score (the well known Russian Theme), he would change its position, putting it between the Waltz and the Elegy, to avoid to alter the original final of the ballet. “Serenade”is, anyway, a dangerous work as at the less oversight it can look as an end course festival; specially if the company is not able to provide it with the just touch of balanchinian aesthetic, what it ¡s not so easy, in spite of having the aid of the Karinska suits.In the case of the Boston Ballet the interpretation was impeccable by all; the corps was perfect in lines and in the search of the equality of the diversity that had always fascinated Balanchine. |
Soloist shined with precision and with the extreme musicality this ballet needs, particularly Kathleen Breen Combes the first day and Misa Kuranaga the second. Men - in any of the casts – knew how to accompany them without nullifying the feminine prominence that this piece distils. “Who Cares?”shows all what Balanchine was able to absorb from America. With some of the most popular songs of George Gershwin (arranged and orchestrated by the exquisite Hershy Kay, as he also will do with “Union Jack” or “Stars and Stripes”), Balanchine made a tribute to the Broadway that so much success – and money – gave him along his long stay in the USA. All what is different in Balanchine technique is due to the jazz contribution; we could even go further: in Balanchine, all what is not Bournonville, is jazz. In axle changes, in the rhythmic games, in the cool aesthetics, in women of eternal legs… knew Balanchine how to find something new to offer to the classic technique. In this ballet we only missed to see the complete version instead of the “suite”, because the parts of the corps, the “pas de deux” of the five pairs of soloists and the beautiful final ensemble are a masterpiece. But the three “Pas de deux” we could enjoy and the three feminine variations (with any of the casts) were a great display of both technique and style, so that they got that the extreme difficulty of that solos were unnoticed. |
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Yuri Yanowsky, as the James of “La Sylphide” the following day, only complied and in both ballets he managed that his characters remain a bit confused with the magnificent ballerinas to whom he had to dance. Carlos Molina, however, was able to impose his personality to the work, without allowing us to loose ourselves remaining this or that dancer. And to close the night, “The Four Temperaments”; a classic in Balanchine’s black and white ballets (yes, black and white ballets are also a Balanchine’s idea and this was more than forty years ago) premiered in 1946. The score of Paul Hindemith was the first commission Balanchine could afford from his arrival at the USA and as well as the ballet, it was created according to the Greek idea of the four human characters and the four humours housing them: melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic and choleric (that according to Hippocrates were, respectively: black bile, blood, phlegm and yellow bile). With this work, Balanchine not only premiered in an official way the ballets without plot, but he flooded the stage of what it seemed to be (and was) a completely new technique. |
Today, wearing rehearsal clothes (original designs disappeared after the premiere) dancers pass through a very difficult test. The winner of the night –and nearly of the whole tour- was John Lam, who danced a Melancholic very rare to see, but the Sanguine by Erica Cornejo and Nelson Madrigal has also been outstanding. Carlos Molina reached in a very correct way the Phlegmatic ambiguity and Kathleen Breen Combes – without doubt a star – gave the adequate counterpoint with her extraordinary Choleric. The second program – “The Sylphide” – took us to a completely different atmosphere. This Bournonville ballet is the romantic piece by excellence and practically the only one who has survived without alterations up to now thanks to the continuity and the efforts of the Danish Royal Ballet. Filippo Taglioni’s version – premiered in 1832, only four years before Bournonville’s – completely disappeared few years after its premiere and the reconstruction made by Pierre Lacotte for the Paris Opera on the original score of Schneitzoffer has more from Lacotte than from Taglioni, what by now we do not know if it is good or bad. Filippo Taglioni being not known because of his choreographic talent and the great success of “The Sylphide” must be given – it’s not me who say this but the critics of that times – to the plot, to the spectacular mechanism on stage of the Paris Opera House... ... |
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...... and the insuperable and innovative Marie Taglioni’s grace. Lacotte based his work in the few notes of the choreographer and in the original libretto but do not mistake ourselves: what is only conserved of the ballet premiered in 1832 is the engraving of the initial scene. One of the many proofs is the great profusion of on pointe steps that appear in Lacotte choreography and that would not have been possible to execute with the shoes of that time. Bournonville saw “La Sylphide” in París en 1834 and he immediately wanted to present it in Copenhague. He only got his hands on the libretto (written by tenor Adolphe Nourrit, to whom he had a great friendship) as he commissioned the score to a 19 years old Norwegian composer: Løvenskjold, who reviewed it many times along his life up to complete it to be what we know (Schneitzoffer score was never to the same level and again I insist that it is not an appreciation of mine but from the critics of that time). Bournonville prepared his young student Lucile Grahn so that she was able to get close to Taglioni style and for himself he created a much more active James than Taglioni’s and with variations comparable to the protagonist ones, something surprising in the European Romanticism. In fact, one of the names of what this ballet in known in Denmark is “The Sylphide and the Scottish”. And from its premiere in 1836, “The Sylphide” of Bournonville shone over Taglioni’s one. Up to survive it. As it is logical, the Boston Ballet asked a Danish to stage the ballet and two years ago Sorella Englund went to Boston to work during months with the company, polishing up to the minimum detail. From the two casts we enjoyed in Madrid, we maybe could make a perfect one mixing them: Lorna Feijóo (The Sylphide), Roman Rykine (James), John Lam (Gurn), Kathleen Breen Combes (Effie) and Elizabeth Olds (Madge) would have been our election. Lorna Feijóo made a marvellous Sylphide because this role, that seems very simple, is frankly complex. If technically it is because it has so many steps that in the current technique they have been put out (although if Bournonville had added 32 continuous something, he maybe had got that people went aware of the difficulty of the ballet), as interpretation the difficulty lies in to not make it cloying, affected or languid. The Sylphide is nothing of this, and Feijóo went able to maintain a romantic aesthetic (even her pointe shoes seemed to have fallen from an engrave!) while her technique oozed modernity. In her case, in addition, there was the added difficulty of coming from a School as powerful and specific as the Cuban is and furthermore being the antithesis of Bournonville. Lorna managed that this didn’t appear in any way, maybe we had liked to see her with John Lam, if we can dream a bit more. The Sylphide by Erica Cornejo, who debuted in this role the following day, promised a lot. Mainly because she is an all-terrain dancer, with energy and nuances, musical and careful. |
In her debut she remembered us so much Trinidad Vives’ Sylphide – and consequently that of Carla Fracci – mainly in the first variation and when she gets to more adjust the pantomime to her partner (a sudden injury of Larissa Ponomarenko anticipated her debut), her performance will reach the adequate balance. The corps was adjusted in the style mainly in the difficult scenes of the pantomime. The Boston Ballet made a complete exhibition of human material and repertoire. Mikko Nissinen is proud of his wins since he assumed the direction of the company in 2001 and he can be so as the evolution it has had from when we saw it, also at the Conde Duque, some years ago has been spectacular. And as nearly in all Companies in the world, Spaniards have also made their room in it. Among dancers we find Yuri Yanowsky (Principal) and Raúl Casasola. Trinidad Vives, Madrid born and student of Carmina Ocaña, is Assistant to the Artistic Management and Nissinen’s right hand. Furthermore two Spanish young dancers have participated in this “The Sylphide” production: Teresa Saavedra, student from the school of Anatol Yanowsky and Carmen Delgado de Robles (Yuri’s parents) in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Elena Suárez, student from Carmina Ocaña school, who made her debut in Madrid and continued the rest of the tour with them. The amazing thing is that with this so great performances part of the audience got satisfied others left with ears dropping down after the reprimand and the rest –unfortunately- didn’t get aware of anything. Let matters take their course. by fotoescena © 2007 Elna Matamoros
English translation by Carolina Masjuan
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