Ur-texts

Keeping the Balanchine tradition alive

by Marcia B. Siegel

Since the death of George Balanchine, 15 years ago now, the choreographer's work occupies less and less of the ballet repertory, and his whole enterprise descends into the murk of mythology. Saturday night's recital program of the Massachusetts Youth Ballet, at Boston College's Robsham Theater, offered an intelligent case for classical ballet, and especially for the vitality of Balanchine as danced by an eager and devotedly trained new generation of dancers.

Massachusetts Youth Ballet is a pre-professional group out of the Ballet Workshop of New England, directed by Jacqueline Cronsberg. To say that this is a student company isn't to imply you shouldn't expect fine dancing. The most poignant aspect of the performance was that so many of the participants looked technically accomplished and hungry to be tested in the fires of regular performing life -- but they can expect few opportunities as challenging as the work they've just completed.

Ballet isn't just dancing on the toes, or hurling oneself around with passionate gestures. Saturday night's program demonstrated a fine continuum of discipline, from the 19th-century Russian classics to the reformer Michel Fokine to Balanchine, the master choreographer of our time. Having absorbed the glitter and virtuosity of Marius Petipa (represented Saturday night by the Kingdom of the Shades scene from La Bayadère), and the distillations of Fokine (as in the Waltz from Les Sylphides, transparent as an 1840 lithograph), Balanchine made a life work of reorchestrating a lexicon of steps and theatrical conventions. Somehow he never ran out of ways to do this, or of dancers who would go along with his game as far as he wanted to entice them.

One of those willing conspirators, Gloria Govrin, was on hand Saturday to talk about dancing and taking class with Balanchine. In the 1960s and '70s, the big, powerful Govrin demolished the stereotype of the Balanchine dancer as small, delicate, and submissive. At New York City Ballet I loved her authority and sensuality in classical roles, especially the important "extra woman" who leads so many Balanchine ensembles.

Govrin was entertaining at the Robsham, but it was the ballets that spoke most eloquently of what choreography can do for dancers, and what worlds it can open for us. Serenade (1934) was the first thing Balanchine choreographed in America, for the first dancers in his school. Placed on the program after the grand illusion of the 24 Shades, majestically sweeping down a ramp, and the ethereal waltzing Sylphides, the 16 women in Serenade look plain and prim at the beginning, as they carve their arms through the air, snap their feet into first position. But out of these first classroom moves they build the most unimaginable and unequaled drama of patterns and designs.

The company omitted the mysterious and somber last movement of Serenade, perhaps because it requires five men and male students are in short supply at the Ballet Workshop. It was strange to see the piece end as one of the soloists (Emily Waters) falls and all her companions leave. Yet it left me with a strong impression of heartbreak -- as if she'd suddenly realized how wonderful it was to be young, and that later, she'd remember the innocent and harmonious friends, the waltzing with her first partner, and the absolute joy of mastering one's body in a perfect pirouette. I think this image couldn't have struck me except that the dancers really were that young and expectant.

With tiny variations from two other ballets and a complete Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée, the company probed the remarkable range of Balanchine's thought. He could tackle Stravinsky's acerbic and syncopated modernisms (Agon) or the most engaging popular song ("Embraceable You," from Who Cares?). He could clean most of the story out of a Russian fairy tale (Baiser) and still show us a troubled love affair and a separation that turns into a final farewell. He could do this with classical steps and music and very little else, except his monumental creativity, of course.

For me the most enlightening part of Gloria Govrin's presentation was her discussion of Balanchine technique. Dancer Sophie Forman-Flack demonstrated a whole series of steps and combinations in both the "old Russian" style and the Balanchine revisions. Never has it been so clear what gives his dancing its attack, its directness and speed.