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Old Ballets, New Faces
 
“Ballet Imperial”, “Afternoon of a Faun”, “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux”, “The Firebird”
The Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London
February 4 to March 8
 
by John Percival
copyright 2006 by John Percival

We just stole one of your dancers. Makes a change after all those from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cuba, Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Italy, Japan, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Ukraine etc. whom we recruit.  We even have some from Boston and California.  But now here comes a native New Yorker, and not just born and bred there: Alexandra Ansanelli has given up a position as principal with New York City Ballet to join the Royal Ballet.  Arriving here as a mere first soloist too, but word is that’s only until an expected principal vacancy. Presumably she wanted a different repertoire, so I imagine she must reflect wryly on the unlikely chance that her first two roles here are in works she danced with NYCB.

This is in fact not at all a typical RB programme. You could say (as Monica Mason does in her directorial programme note) that it has a distinctly Russian feel: music by Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky; Fokine and Balanchine as choreographers; designs by Gontcharova and Berman. But there’s also Robbins and Rosenthal with their “Afternoon of a Faun” giving very American new life to “Afternoon of a Faun” to Debussy’s French score, which was used by, but not written for (sorry, Monica, you’ve been misinformed) Nijinsky and Diaghilev. “Firebird”, you remember, was created 1910, and it entered the RB repertoire in 1954. The other three works were created in New York, 1941-60, and they had their RB premieres 1950-71, but the old repertoire has been so neglected lately that I think a large proportion of the audience was seeing them, and greatly enjoying them, for the first time. Surprisingly, although we are told mixed bills are hard to sell, this one sold out, which I hope will encourage more variety in future.

“Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux” was added to the originally announced triple bill after Ansanelli signed up.  You don’t need me to tell you how beautifully her swift, light exactness and convincing musicianship suit this voluptuously virtuosic duet; she’s not quite a match for memories of its inspiration, Violette Verdy, but lovely all the same. Federico Bonelli makes an eager partner for her. And the RB put out a truly excellent second cast: Marianela Nunez equalling the amazing technique, lightness and scintillating vivacity she showed in “Fille” last season, again matched with Carlos Acosta at the top of his brilliant form.

Acosta had been the first-cast man in “Faun”; it’s good to see him for once in a role that is more acting than dance, the sleepy, stretchy occupant of a ballet studio, and he carried it off perfectly in this revival feelingly mounted by Jock Soto.  Sadly, however, Sarah Lamb lacked projection as the girl who interrupts him, which weakened their quietly dramatic encounter. By the time I was due to see a second cast of Ivan Putrov and Roberta Marquez, he was injured and she was ill, so they were unexpectedly replaced by Edward Watson and Ansanelli. She was terrific, smilingly self-absorbed as the guy tries out his partnering skills and even the highly unromantic kiss, but Watson, in spite of his concentration and his broad shoulders, looked pallid in every sense.

These small-scale works made a handsomely contrasted centre-piece for the show. In the larger pieces, for some reason the Covent Garden orchestra sounded half-hearted in “Ballet Imperial” (Philip Gammon’s dreary playing of the solo piano didn’t help) but later on they woke up for “Firebird”, so Stravinsky’s rich score, Fokine’s expressive dances and the vivid designs by Natalia Gontcharova successfully evoked their colourful legends of a powerful magic bird.  Leanne Benjamin dances the title role brilliantly with wonderful detail of arms and legs, and Mara Galeazzi (another substitute through illness) later made a very reasonable shot at it.  In the other leads, the second cast of Thiago Soares and Elizabeth McGorian made more of the two rural royals than the opening night’s Edward Watson and Genesia Rosato—although I have to say that none of them matched what we saw all those years ago, or the best seen intermediately. How far is this a question of teaching and coaching?

Dare I mention that, in spite of Patricia Neary’s presence to revive “Ballet Imperial”, and the casting of Darcey Bussell and Alina Cojocaru in the ballerina role, this ballet also was less commandingly danced than when Balanchine himself mounted it at Covent Garden in 1950. Yes, the demanding entries for the ensemble are confidently done, but with less glamour from the women: I suppose the unfamiliar attack must have been more exhilarating way back then. But the RB dedicated the first night (why only the one performance?) to the memory of the newly deceased Moira Shearer, and her photo on the cast sheet, with those long straight legs and flamboyantly curved torso, showed what we’re not getting now. Not to mention that Margot Fonteyn wasn’t anything like so unsuited to it as people are pretending, nor that some of us preferred Violetta Elvin to either of them in the role. Bussell now gives us rather wildly waving arms and some odd phrasing, and Cojocaru offers neat little steps, but it seems neither of them sees the work as a kind of abstract parallel to “The Sleeping Beauty”. Zenaida Yanowsky tackled the second woman’s solos briskly, and Sarah Lamb demurely—but that too used to be a real ballerina role when Beryl Grey first danced it here (with John Field and Kenneth MacMillan, if you please, as her partners—three future ballet directors in one pas de trois!) The most promising performance, I’d say, came from Rupert Pennefather in the reticent male lead, and Ferderico Bonelli also wasn’t bad in that; I hadn’t remembered so many showy steps, but the great thing about Pennefather was his calm dignity.  I have quite a few quibbles about the way Anthony Dowell has adapted the designs which Eugene Berman made in 1950; in particular, adding a gloomy front cloth to clash with the up-beat overture shows clearly why someone rightly decided at that time not to use it.  But Berman’s grandeur is better than either Mr B’s subsequent preference for flimsy modern dress, or any of the three (!) later versions commissioned by the Royal, so let’s be thankful for the present approximation.

Photos:
First: Alexandra Ansanelli in "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux." Photo: Dee Conway.
Second: Sarah Lamb and Carlos Acosta in "Afternoon of a Faun." Photo: Dee Conway.
Third: "Ballet Imperial." Photo: Dee Conway.

Volume 4, No. 8
February 27, 2006
copyright ©2006 John Percival
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last updated on February 20, 2006