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“La Bayadere”(Act II), “Drink to me Only”, “Fancy Free”, “The Green Table”, “In the Upper Room”, “Sinatra Suite”, “Spectre de la Rose”, “Symphonie Concertante” and pas de deux
American Ballet Theatre
Sadler's Wells, London
February 14 – 18 2007

by John Percival
copyright ©2007, John Percival

Here's a surprise: 24 hours after American Ballet Theatre completed its latest London season, following a gap of seventeen years, I learned that even before that company's first visit here in 1946 the dancers of what was then Sadler's Wells Ballet had been thankfully indebted to their transatlantic cousins in Ballet Theatre for food parcels sent during the war, supplementing their meagre official rations and thus helping them maintain the required eight shows a week.

What was not a surprise to me was that ABT's biggest hit this time was the same as in 1946: “Fancy Free”. That wonderfully vigorous comedy had introduced, sixty years ago, a choreographer and composer both then unknown to us, Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein starting their illustrious careers. And did either of them do anything better than this portrait of three sailors on shore leave in New York? Adroitly based on Robbins and his friends who first danced the roles, its brilliant combination of virtuoso display and truthful characterisation remains totally exhilarating. “Time: the present” announced the original programme note, which could have posed the risk, a lifetime later, of seeming dated. But it doesn't. To watch those gobs in and around the bar that constitutes Oliver Smith's convincing design, boozing, chewing gum and picking up broads, is still true and enduring dance theatre, and (this is what got us all those years ago) real Americana.

Happily, too, it was very well danced by its two casts — and that wasn't true of everything this time round. Craig Salstein and Herman Cornejo in the acrobatic first solo, Sascha Radetsky and Ethan Stiefel in the romantic role created by John Kriza, Marcelo Gomes and Jose Manuel Carreno in Robbins's original part, all were pretty good. Curiously, although it was ABT's male dancers who most impressed us in 1946 (and again this time), the person most missed from the past is Muriel Bentley, unglamorous but irresistible as the first passer-by. However, Paloma Herrera and Julie Kent, or Stella Abrera with Gillian Murphy, weren't at all bad as the women this time.

At the opposite extreme, every programme started with a ballet featuring a female ensemble. I guessed, rightly, that Balanchine's name would be enough to get a good reception for the Mozart “Symphonie Concertante”, but I personally found no reason to modify the opinion I and many others formed when New York City Ballet brought it to London in 1950: an able but uninteresting arrangement. I quite liked Veronika Part as one of the leads but other dancers impressed less, and ABT certainly doesn't have the equivalent of Maria Tallchief and Tanaquil LeClerq for the soloists linked to violin and viola. (I'd have been more glad to see “Waltz Academy”, a more enjoyable ballet and one that Mr B. actually made for ABT, but perhaps nobody remembers it.) However, the corps de ballet danced neatly enough in the Mozart and in the Kingdom of Shades scene from “La Bayadere”, even though Makarova's staging is less rewarding than Nureyev's version of the single act. I very much admired Sarah Lane one night in the first Shade's solo; a pity that she's so tiny. Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky were grossly disappointing in the leads — she morose, he doing a simplified solo. Paloma Herrera and Angel Corella were more at home but rather flashy. The cast I liked best comprised the smoothly able Part with David Hallberg. The latter, new to his role, needs to work up the bravura but proved aptly elegant.

It was not a good idea to bring “Le Spectre de la Rose” in Kirk Peterson's freaky version, especially as they gave it without decor, and the dancing of Cornejo and Xiomara Reyes wasn't enough to make up for this lack and the choreographic faults. Likewise, although Corella made a fair shot at Tharp's “Sinatra Suite” he doesn't really match Baryshnikov, for whom it was originally mounted, and Misty Copeland was only OK as his girl. We were given, different nights, two showpieces from “Le Corsaire”. Reyes and Carreno were enthusiastically received in the usual sequence (but was he just marginally holding back in his solo to be more brilliant in the coda?) However, I saw little point in a so-called Bedroom pas de deux for Dvorovenko and Beloserkovsky: boring choreography, dull dancing. “Swan Lake” also provided two pas de deux. I'm not convinced that the duet from Act II works well out of context, but others liked Kent and Gomes in it. The Black Swan number from Act III is fine, however, especially in the stylish interpretation by Murphy and Stiefel: her multiple fouettés are totally dazzling.

Last time here, in 1990, the company was struggling to recover from Baryshnikov's highly uneven period as director, and only two ballets really succeeded. Both came again this time. Mark Morris's “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” is one of his best works and one of ABT's best too. Dancing to Barbara Bilach's on-stage playing of piano music by Virgil Thomson, the whole cast — a dozen strong, all of solo quality — look good in its playfully casual classicism. Cornejo, Corella and Salstein in turn bounced exuberantly through its stand-out solo role; Hallberg, Michele Wiles and Murphy were also notable.

Tharp's rowdy, energetic “In the Upper Room”, to a screeching, thumping soundtrack by Philip Glass, was not quite as thrilling this time around, but on opening night it was lit up by Ethan Stiefel's joyous performance (only just back from long absence through injury), and you couldn't complain about lack of enthusiasm from the others taking part.

What I found disappointing was that we were shown none of the less familiar works by ABT's first great choreographer, Antony Tudor, and also no recent creations at all. In fact the only new production in the three programmes was a really old work: Kurt Jooss's celebrated anti-war drama from 1933, “The Green Table”, adopted by ABT in September 2005. This is almost certainly the finest example of European modern-dance, its only possible rivals being by Jooss's pupil Pina Bausch. And it still thrills even though nobody today fully matches Jooss's own original performance as Death. Both Hallberg and Isaac Stappas do their best with the role (the latter, as second cast, marginally the better), but it really needs more physical and emotional weight than they can give it. However, the ten Gentlemen in Black, whose hypocrisy around their green conference table begins and ends the action, are as uncomfortably amusing as ever, framing the powerful dance of Death, and two casts managed to make something of all the supporting roles. The important thing is that many spectators had their first chance of experiencing the ballet, and clearly were rightly impressed by it.

Sadler's Wells Theatre apologised for having to charge in effect Covent Garden prices in order to bring the company here, and even so could not recoup the full costs. Still, at last we have a theatre which, thanks to its recent rebuilding, can house ABT's City Centre repertoire, and it was packed out night after night in spite of those high prices. No doubt then about ABT's popularity; let's hope for an earlier return next time.

Volume 5, No. 9
March 5, 2007

copyright ©2007 by John Percival
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