Resurrection?

Boston Ballet looks for a new beginning

by Jeffrey Gantz

RESURRECTION AND THE FOUR SEASONS, Resurrection choreographed by Daniel Pelzig; music by Samuel Barber, set by Loy Arcenas, costumes by Paul Tazewell, lighting by James F. Ingalls. The Four Seasons choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon; music by Antonio Vivaldi, set and costumes by Santo Loquasto, lighting by James F. Ingalls. Presented by Boston Ballet at the Wang Center through October 10.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Boston Ballet finds itself at a crossroads. After a growth spurt under general manager and artistic director Bruce Marks from 1986 to 1997, the company has been consolidating and even retrenching (cutting back productions from three weekends to two and moving the smaller ones from the Wang to the Shubert) under his successor, artistic director Anna-Marie Holmes. Now, just three years later, Holmes is out (did she jump or was she pushed?) and the company has brought on Maina Gielgud (John's niece), late of Australian Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. Certainly it was encouraging to hear, at the press conference a few weeks back, board member and search-committee chair James Wilson declare Boston Ballet's intention of becoming "one of the five best ballet companies in the world" -- but does that mean one of the five most popular companies or one of the five with the best productions of the most worthy repertoire? And what might that repertoire be? At the press conference we were fed the standard issue about preserving the best of the past while moving boldly into the future; Gielgud, while keeping her options open, has mentioned European choreographers like Maurice Béjart, Jiri Kylian, and Mats Ek. In any case, before Boston Ballet can address its long-term goals, it will have to deal with the lawsuit that has been filed by Patricia Harrington alleging that the company caused the 1997 death of her daughter, Boston Ballet corps member Heidi Guenther, by insisting that Guenther lose weight.

For now, the first production of the 2000-2001 season is up, two world premieres by the company's two regular guest choreographers, Daniel Pelzig and Christopher Wheeldon. Pelzig's Resurrection is set to Samuel Barber's 1945 Cello Concerto (a BSO commission) but also inspired by Walt Whitman's 1865 poem "The Wound-Dresser." Both works were completed in the aftermath of a traumatic war, but otherwise it's an uneasy marriage. The jagged themes of Barber's opening Andante moderato recall Bartók (especially the Concerto for Orchestra in the first theme), Prokofiev, and Janácek, but also Charles Ives, and Aaron Copland's settings of American folk songs. The cadenza follows the development (rather than, as is usual, the recapitulation); near the end there's a hint of martial side drum. The Andante sostenuto slow movement is a elegiac siciliano in 6/8 with a flavor of Lark Ascending Ralph Vaughan Williams. The concluding Molto allegro e appassionato alternates a restless scurrying with a slow five-bar basso ostinato. This is a tight, enigmatic work; "The Wound-Dresser," on the other hand, is typically sprawling Whitman, a graphic description of the poet's experiences as a nurse during the Civil War.

Pelzig resists the temptation to try to illustrate the poem -- he takes from "The Wound-Dresser" Whitman's horror of war and what it does to young men, and he matches that sensibility to the somber tone of Barber's concerto. Loy Arcenas provides a kind of rough-stone-wall backdrop that changes color under James F. Ingalls's lighting; Paul Tazewell dresses the men in a loose sacking of beige shirts and trousers, the women in similar short tunics. The spotlight is on a fluffy-haired pin-up girl (Christina Elida Salerno last Friday night) as the curtain rises, but the focus immediately shifts to the men, who are rolling on the floor in evident distress or kneeling with their hands before their eyes or marching off stage. Flights of flowing-haired women run in and out (there's a feeling of "Excursions & alarums" to the entire piece). Three couples emerge, and there are trademark Pelzig elements: canonical imitation, geometric pacing, whirling arms. Jennifer Gelfand and Paul Thrussell have a touching solo during the first-movement cadenza, as if she were trying to lift his spirits and nurse him back to health. In the Andante the men's shirts come off and we see the bandages beneath. One ineffable sequence finds Lyn Tally on stage with two couples, one mixed, one all-male; here Pelzig achieves a Balinchinean sense of unbalance and sexual tension. In the closing movement, too, the women race about like Valkyries, suggesting dual role. At the end, they kneel in supplication (or resignation?) while the men form a pyramid that Paul Thrussell climbs to . . . a better world?

Resurrection is an unsettling work that would repay repeated viewings, though I think it captures Whitman's pacifist sentiment better than Barber's craggy musings. The sadness and the waste come across, and there are exquisitely unsettling moments, but the three couples are too generic to make the kind of impression that, say, Balanchine achieves in the slow movement of Serenade. Like a number of Pelzig's creations -- Cantabile and Passages come to mind -- Resurrection goes down easy but doesn't really stick. Or is that because the company hardly ever brings his work back?

Pelzig's half-hour entree is followed by a 45-minute dessert, Christopher Wheeldon's The Four Seasons. (Opening night was sponsored by the Four Seasons Hotel -- let's hope the idea for the ballet preceded the sponsorship link.) Vivaldi's four violin concertos come with their own program: Spring is marked by chirping birds, gentle breezes, and sleeping shepherds, Summer by blazing sun, gnats and flies, and a looming thunderstorm, Autumn by drunken harvesters and huntsmen with guns and dogs, and Winter by snow, a fireside, and skaters testing the ice. Wheeldon does some rejiggering: his Spring is a Baroque shepherds' pastorale that recalls the Marzipan section of The Nutcracker; his Summer sets down in a Mississippi Delta swimming hole; Autumn finds the village (Spanish? Gypsy) lads clustering around the local good-time girl; and Winter takes us to the elegance of Maryinsky St. Petersburg. Santo Loquasto's set frames Apollo's lyre with a huge laurel wreath, and as the curtain rises a waning moon gives way to the sun. The pinks and greens of Spring are followed by the heat and haze of Summer, the red gold of Autumn (with a blue curtain), and the blue and white (with snow) of Winter.

It's an enchanting concept, and at the end Wheeldon completes the cycle by bringing on the four principal couples and suggesting the return of spring. But Vivaldi is not Bach, and these concertos, all glitter and grace, don't afford the dancers much scope. Pollyana Ribeiro and Christopher Budzynski are Marzipan light and superficial in Spring (they could hardly be anything else); Jennifer Gelfand and Paul Thrussell are audience pleasers as a gnat and the guy she annoys in Summer; Lyn Tally does get to strut her considerable stuff in Autumn, but there's no real interaction with the boys (here the Nutcracker comparison is with Chocolate); and for Larissa Ponomarenko and Simon Ball in Winter, it's back to choreography by the numbers, icy beautiful but cold. Balanchine used music by Vivaldi (and Corelli) to witty effect in his 1957 Square Dance; it's no disgrace to say that Wheeldon isn't Balanchine, and The Four Seasons certainly is a sumptuous dessert. But after 75 minutes of dancing, I was still hungry.

Jonathan McPhee's Boston Ballet Orchestra was in its usual thoughtful form on Friday. I can't say that cellist soloist Ronald Lowry played with quite the intensity and sweetness that Yo-Yo Ma displayed when Resurrection was previewed at the Wang Center's "Generations" Gala the previous Saturday, but he emerged with credit from Barber's technically and interpretatively demanding concerto. And apart from the odd moment of less-than-perfect intonation, Michael Rosenbloom shone in The Four Seasons -- the slow movements of Autumn and Winter were especially affecting. As a package of world premieres with eye-catching sets and costumes and innovative choreography and orchestral proficiency, Boston Ballet's 2000-2001 season opener passes muster, but it gets failing marks for not giving its fine dancers enough to do. A company that aspires to be one of the five best in the world will need to aspire higher.