Ravel Revisited

By John T. Elson

The New York City Ballet's ambitious "Homage to Ravel" (TIME, May 26) appears to have been a great commercial success: performances of the 16 new ballets based on Maurice Ravel's music played to satisfying sold-out audiences at Lincoln Center. But when it comes to aesthetic values, this exercise in choreographic creativity will have to take the cash and let the credit go.

Of the new productions, only a handful deserve a second viewing. One of them, certainly, is Jerome Robbins' Concerto in G, with its fleet, jazzy ensemble footwork and an elegantly lyrical pas de deux for Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins. Two other works by Robbins were also notable. Ma Mere l'Oye is a suite of piano pieces illustrating five Mother Goose fairy tales. Robbins uses these old childhood favorites to create a kind of instant, in-joke history of ballet as it might have been written by the Monty Python crew. In retelling the stories Robbins puckishly creates tableaux that parody scenes from such classics as Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. A parade of slow-moving, sheaf-waving dancers, moreover, suspiciously resembles the static, peasantlike figures in Robbins' own Watermill. Chansons Madecasses is a remarkable example of Robbins' professional skill at making something out of nothing, since the music (a highly stylized version of Madagascar folk tunes for mezzo-soprano, piano, flute and cello) is all but undanceable.

No fewer than eight of the new works were created by George Balanchine himself. Sadly, his failures involved some of the program's most ambitiously costumed and designed ventures. The most garish was a mod-Gothic rendition of Ravel's funereal Caspard de la Nuit, which looked like an Alwin Nikolais version of life in a heavy leather bar. Illustrating a macabre poem called "The Gibbet," black-clad dancers hung limply from ropes while other members of the corps carried about huge, shield-shaped smoky mirrors that from time to time flashed disconcertingly in the audience's eyes. Balanchine's best was probably Le Tombeau de Couperin, in which two quadrilles of eight dancers pranced with military precision through steps evocative of 17th century court dances.

Unquestionably, the star of the Homage was Suzanne Farrell, who was the focus of three ballets: Robbins' Concerto, Jacques d'Amboise's Alborada del Gracioso and Balanchine's Tzigane. The latter two items are fluffy bits of Espanoiserie, full of torrid lurches and foot-stamping bravura. If nothing else, though, they allowed the long-limbed Miss Farrell to prove that she is the sexiest lady in ballet today.

sb John T. Elson

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