fri 29/03/2024

American Ballet Theatre, Prog 1, Sadler's Wells | reviews, news & interviews

American Ballet Theatre, Prog 1, Sadler's Wells

American Ballet Theatre, Prog 1, Sadler's Wells

So promising on the page, an evening that could not survive bad music-making

Was it the worst-played and worst-danced performance of Duo Concertant I’ve ever seen? I can’t remember a direr in my experience of quite a few DCs. But then the opening night of American Ballet Theatre’s London tour was a set of fine promises falling flat with a thud. A delicate new sextet ruined by the piano player. A masterpiece of musical ballet murdered by the violinist, the pianist and the ballerina. A cod-ballet duet by Twyla Tharp deflated by an unhumorous leading lady. And the only tick - inasmuch as at least the dancers gave it what it needed - was a piece of ensemble window-dressing that ticked the “modern” boxes that used to pertain two decades ago.

So am I in high dudgeon, as an American friend of mine put it? Absolutely. ABT rarely visits London, despite its strong similarity of lineage and repertoire to the Royal Ballet. I’m ardently hoping that the second programme, or perhaps other casts in the first programme this week, will undo last night’s impression of a company without enough care for music.

And music is the chief or only motive for many of America’s loveliest ballets, from George Balanchine,  Jerome Robbins and now Alexei Ratmansky, the former Bolshoi Ballet director who recently sought a healthier creative life in New York. Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas is of that timeless genre, the “piano ballet”, with a group of dancers around a piano, and everything is down to the inspired improvisation that seems to be aroused by hearing the Scarlatti, as if for the first time. No hope here - a team of dancers, including the exceptional David Hallberg, zesty Xiomara Reyes, bravura Herman Cornejo and elegant Julie Kent, sabotaged by the underprepared and overpedalled mediocrity of Barbara Bilach, listed as ABT's "rehearsal pianist".

ABT_SevenSonatas_cGeneSchiavoneRehearsal pianist isn't good enough - Scarlatti demands accurate attention, a sense of momentum, a command of texture and steady pace. In this billowing, light-touched ballet the currents blown by the seven sonatas into the choreography find a soft Toile de Jouy sweetness, six flitting lovers with shades of Paul Taylor in their ebullience (pictured right, Stella Abrera and Gennadi Saveliev, © Gene Schiavone/ABT). At the heart is a passionate central duet that was underwhelmingly performed by Yuriko Kajiya and the stoic Saveliev, and I was mentally re-casting it for the Royal Ballet, who would not only plumb its choreographic gradations and use their feet with more beauty, but provide a classier musical understanding too.

But was the music-making in Balanchine's Duo Concertant even worse? Yes, I think it was, considering. This is an initially stern, dissonant violin and piano duo by Stravinsky, whose anxieties and troubles in the opening section are gradually calmed by the coming and going of two dancers, who end in the purple romance of a farewell in a spotlight.

With four performers breathing the same musical and theatrical air, it can become a marvellous, swift conversation of dance and music. Ronald Oakland, ABT’s concertmaster, and another “rehearsal pianist” David LaMarche treated the musical text with all the finesse of two men mowing their lawns. Meanwhile Paloma Herrera, whom I recall from long past as having a darting attack that was exciting in the classics, looked muddy and muscular in such instinctual choreography and unmusical in her responses, leaving her young swain, Cory Stearns, to try eagerly to rescue the jangle and jumble. The vital final spotlight was badly handled. Why do this specific ballet if there is too little of the right talent to show its graces?

Tharp’s Known by Heart duet nudges boxing and tap dancing motifs into ballet in an elbow-digging, ho-ho kind of way, which demands (to my innocent eyes) a mad frivolity and relish for its clichés. The music is made by Donald Knaack, a composer known as The Junk Man, who advances the cause of environmentalism while playing percussion on “recycled materials”, mostly torn from old cars and washing machines, it sounds like.

Recycling in turn, Tharp makes a junky version of classical pas de deux, with a man portering the woman while she shows off, and then they each get one-upping solos, bit of the gym for him, bit of pointe-tap for her, and only in its fooling-about finish hits proper Tharp funnyland. But Gillian Murphy is a stolid dancer, beating out the repartee last night with strong unmysterious limbs. Blaine Hoven was cursed with an all-pale-grey outfit - collared, buttoned, but sleeveless, an antiseptic city look for a gent doing boxing feints. Very odd. Mentally undressing him, spraying tan on him and sticking him in a pair of shiny red satin shorts seemed to make it look better in my mind.

Millepied (Mr Natalie Portman) ticks sub-Forsythean boxes but has a lot to learn about grabbing attention

The clattering syncopation thing returns in the live band upstage in Benjamin Millepied’s ensemble, Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once, using music by David Lang that sounds like recycled Thom Willems, William Forsythe’s favoured composer. Millepied (Mr Natalie Portman and her porteur in Black Swan) ticks sub-Forsythean boxes everywhere - uncurtained stage, highly dramatised lighting, black sliced costumes, geometric leg kicks - but the steps lack the daring or mastery of tilt and balance that make Forsythe so original and vital a choreographer. Ashley Page used this music, called cheating, lying, stealing, at the Royal Ballet a dozen years ago for a ballet featuring a horny Irek Mukhamedov, Viviana Durante in a raspberry see-through lace thing, flames on set, and a lesbian kiss. By comparison Millepied has a lot to learn about grabbing attention.

Watch a group playing David Lang’s Cheating, Lying, Stealing

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