The Firebird: A Hop into History

By Martha Duffy

The image of the firebird is one of the best known in ballet: a ballerina in a fantastical costume of glitter and feathers soaring through space in split leaps. The firebird most people have in mind, unconsciously or not, is Maria Tallchief, for whom George Balanchine created a dazzling version of the Stravinsky score in 1949. But Balanchine was not Stravinsky's first collaborator. In 1910 the composer and Choreographer Michel Fokine had worked out their conception at the piano.

The American Ballet Theater has gone back to the first Firebird for its latest, opulent new production. The impulse can scarcely be questioned: few companies have the resources to provide the public with a chance to step back in the history of movement. The sets are handsome mock-ups of those designed by Nathalie Gontcharova for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. In Natalia Makarova the A.B.T. has a ballerina who understands an older tradition and makes it breathe.

Benign Magic. The result of these efforts requires patience from a modern audience. There is relatively little dancing in this version, and it seems tame. After Balanchine, one expects this immortal bird to fly in the open grand jetes Makarova does like lightning. Instead, she uses a gentler jump that resembles a small arc or, less politely, a hop. For her prince (Ivan Nagy), there is no dancing at all. Audiences of an earlier time enjoyed a pageantry that now seems static, however pleasing the tableaux.

There are some rewards for those willing to enter Fokine's world of benign magic. The firebird has a taste for the golden apples that grow in an enchanted grove. She is caught in the act of munching one (Makarova actually does a few steps with a gilded ball in her teeth) by the prince, who, like any right-minded nobleman in Russian ballet, is out hunting. In exchange for her freedom, she gives him a feather that will bring her and her supernatural powers to his side in time of trouble. She knows there will be an emergency soon because the forest is controlled by a demon who imprisons young girls and can turn a man to stone. After a suitable confrontation with evil, the firebird triumphs. The girls are free, and the prince picks the fairest of them (Karena Brock) as his bride. In Balanchine's more sophisticated version, there are no golden apples, and the demon's spirit is not hiding in a big egg. It is refreshing to see the trappings of the fairy tales on display. The ballet's giddiest sequence is a brief game of apple catch, played with indolent good humor by the supposedly imprisoned girls.

The next item on the program at the New York opening provided some immediate comment on The Firebird. It was Grand Pas Classique, a showpiece that mocks technical virtuosity while flaunting it. Cynthia Gregory and Fernando Bujones were in dazzling form, and the crowd cheered them on as if it too had been let out of a haunted forest. In ballet, at least, there are apparently limits to museumship.

Martha Duffy

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