Stravinsky II: A Hit Sequel

By Martha Duffy

New York City Ballet shows off its proud heritage "We are after all the Stravinsky company," said New York City Ballet Choreographer John Taras last week. The company was in the midst of its second Stravinsky festival, held on the tenth anniversary of the triumphant first one (as well as the centennial of the composer's birth). There were doubters who pointed out the obvious: the new celebration could only be a coda to 1972 because the best scores have already been used, and City Ballet's master choreographer George Balanchine, 78, is no longer quite so active as he was.

But Taras' observation suggests why the all-Stravinsky marathon was a success anyway. The troupe gathered and displayed its grand heritage, the modern classics (among them Apollo, Orpheus, Agon, Symphony in Three Movements) that Balanchine has set to Stravinsky over a period of 50 years. Balanchine worked out key elements of his style--bold, intricate, whip-fast--to this music. Stravinsky's rhythms and punctuation are the idiom of City Ballet dancers, so that their stab-kicking, hip-swiveling, long-leaping display is a unique ballet chronicle.

It was the dancers who put the fizz into this celebration--a surprise in a company that emphasizes choreography and does not publicize its stars. If this had not been a Stravinsky festival, it might have become a Suzanne Farrell festival. In a new work--Balanchine's aching five-minute lamentation, Elegy--as well as the great older pieces, she danced with the daring thrust and exquisite musicality that make her perhaps the finest ballerina in the country now. Or it could have been a Heather Watts festival, for this sexy, all-grit dancer seemed to be onstage and in command every night.

The company's three less well-known choreographers had their difficulties. Peter Martins did a brief, saucy Piano-Rag-Music for Darci Kistler, showing this explosive teenage star as a Ginger Rogers in pointe shoes. His longer work, Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, illustrated just how recalcitrant Stravinsky can be: Martins' formidable clarity and order were exhausted by the endless drill of notes. Jacques d'Amboise's Serenade en la had one irresistible sequence: a lighthearted duet for two very short girls (Stacy Caddell and Nichol Hlinka), in which the arms are usually joined but the steps are almost never the same. Taras produced, as usual, a well-made piece (Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments) notable mostly for its near veneration of Kyra Nichols, a young dancer whose purity, both in technique and presence, stands in eloquent contrast to the pushy, hard attack that Stravinsky can easily inspire.

Jerome Robbins, the company's other master choreographer, took a shrewd course of action: instead of struggling with a long, note-ridden work, he picked out some small pieces and came up with Four Chamber Works, a winner, even though it has a rough start. Musically, Septet is a droning harangue, and Robbins' setting looks like a Balanchine copybook. The most ambitious sequence is a pas de trois for three very strong dancers, Merrill Ashley, Sean Lavery and Mel Tomlinson. Sleek, vigorous, boldly plastic, it is a kind of message to portentous choreographers like Glen Tetley and Choo San Goh that in their lengthy constructs one might discover a really good six-minute ballet.

For his finale, Robbins did the kind of show-biz turn he seems to relish: an insider's update on the company itself. Octet might be called The Afternoon of Four Fauns (Christopher d'Amboise, Jean-Pierre Frohlich, Douglas Hay, Christopher Fleming). They emerge, stretching, just like the male dancer in Robbins' own Afternoon of a Faun. They strut about, making cheerful jokes on Balanchine's Rubies, Robbins' Marche from the 1978 fiasco Tricolore and--in the funniest, sharpest lampoon of all--Balanchine's brand-new Noah and the Flood.

In the past few years, Balanchine has been interested in television projects, like last year's incandescent The Spellbound Child, and in pieces that are as much pageant as dance. He is still primarily a master of ballet, as last year's Mozartiana shows, but he creates his ideas and movements during work sessions. It may be that as age slows him, he is using his imagination in situations where he can function forcefully. The festival's most ambitious project was Persephone, a work for dancers, singers and a speaker (Vera Zorina). Stravinsky's score, premiered in 1934, is warm and supple, but dramatizing its unwieldy elements might have given even Cocteau pause. Balanchine's staging was static and, rare for him, a bore. Zorina, an actress and former ballerina (from 1938 to 1946 Balanchine's wife), was regrettably old for the body-stocking costume and the near dance "moves."

The Flood, done originally for television in 1962, worked much better. It is scored for male soloists and chorus and a narrator (John Houseman). In pantomime and dance it tells the story of Adam and Eve (Adam Lliders and Nina Fedorova) and Noah (Francisco Moncion). The piece has a grave innocence and charm, especially in the gathering of a peaceable kingdom of beasts and birds--handsome, ample cutout figures, each with a young dancer-keeper. As one watches this final tableau, an image comes readily to mind, of a flourishing artistic enclave and its provident Noah. --By Martha Duffy

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