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“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
New York City Ballet
Opera House, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC, USA
 February 28, 2007

by George Jackson
copyright ©2007, George Jackson

There are always things more beautiful than I remembered in George Balanchine’s program filling “Dream” ballet: Puck’s call as he leans forward cupping both hands around his mouth, the Divertissement Ballerina as she swoons into her partner’s arms at the end of their long adage, Titania’s bourrée as she leads the beastly ass to her bower. That call must echo thru the forest forever, that swooning spins balletic line around the dancer’s body as if it were the silken thread for a cocoon, and those tiny steps on toe must be the most appealing of seductions. There is more in the choreography, yet what always stays with me is a thorn: the lack of fit between Act 2 and Act 1. Why could Balanchine, that master of the finale, not concoct a satisfactory conclusion to the tale he told well in the first half?

I think the trouble starts with the music, and not because there’s nothing more to say after the plot has been resolved prior to intermission. There’s always something more to say and Balanchine was adroit at that. Assembling the music for this ballet, however, proved to be difficult. Balanchine labored at it a long time. It is all Mendelssohn. Unlike many other choreographers, Balanchine didn’t mix composers (“Vienna Waltzes” is a collection of four separate ballets to music by three composers, not a mix; in “Square Dance” there are two distinct rounds, one for each composer). A Mendelssohn, though, isn’t necessarily a Mendelssohn, isn’t necessarily a Mendelssohn. Act 1 of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is mostly to music this composer wrote for productions of Shakespeare’s play. These are romantic passages that lend themselves to dramatic situations. Melodic flow is more apparent than strict phrasing and the orchestration is sensual. Music in Act 1 from other Mendelssohn sources is in a similar style.

The score for Act 2 is highly hybrid. There is some of the composer’s “Dream” music, notably the Wedding March, but also Mendelssohn symphonism of the classical sort — tightly phrased and theatrically reticent. Appropriately for the latter but inappropriately for the ballet as a whole, the dancing Balanchine devised (particularly in the Divertissement) is classical rather than romantic. Moreover, the form of Act 2 is peculiar: A, B, A-and-B, C. There seem to be three classes of dancers:  A) the Athenian retinue, B) the Divertissement dancers and C) the denizens of the Forest. Rather than adding up to a grand vision, the classes clash — not dramatically (there’s general jubilation for A and B plus a separate peace for C) but clash they do stylistically and even historically. Is Balanchine blind to this? Or is he letting us in on a secret?

The secret would be a sad one if what we see is taken at face value: civil society (A) and artists (B) don’t live apart but should because they clash; both are out of touch with nature (C). I don’t really believe that is Balanchine’s message. The choreographer has said that the Divertissement alludes to the Bible, perhaps it is a view of heaven. According to this reading Balanchine’s meaning is quite direct: that on earth it is dancers who provide a glimpse of heavenly perfection. Moreover, this heaven would be a very Mozartian or even Bachian place according to Mendelssohn’s compositional style and Balanchine’s choreography.  If such an interpretation is correct, it might help to explain a quite other piece of Biblical choreography, Twyla Tharp’s “In the Upper Room”. Was Tharp, with her two classes of interacting dancers, commenting on “Dream”?

Balanchine’s ballets lend themselves to speculative trains of thought, but they are also entertainments and part of that is showing dancers off. On opening night there were comely ladies (Maria Kowroski, the Titania, foremost among them) and gallant men (Benjamin Millepied as Oberon, Charles Askegard as Cavalier, Philip Neal as Divertissement Partner). Yet they and the company danced under a lid of bland efficiency that few individuals managed to lift. Wendy Whelan did: odd bodied and with starched épaulement, Whelan nevertheless wafted thru the Divertissement as sumptuously as if it were eiderdown. Daniel Ulbricht, as Puck, pushed the lid off and lit up the stage, though he could use a better bathing suit and body makeup. Precision distinguished Tiler Peck’s Butterfly.

Five of the six lovers (Jared Angle’s Lysander, Amar Ramasar’s Demetrius, Rebecca Krohn’s Helena, Jennie Somogyi’s Hermia, Henry Seth’s Theseus) were hampered by the men’s Marx Brothers wigs and everyone’s ungainly costuming; Teresa Reichlen’s leaps as the Amazon Queen needed more substance; she’s supposed to shoot across the stage like an arrow, not a toothpick. Coming right after the Bolshoi’s “Don Quixote”, NYCB needn’t have duplicated the Moscow company’s hard sell, but could have tried to court us with more flair. Paul Mann’s conducting of the NYCB Orchestra, though, did much to meld the diverse Mendelssohn.      

Volume 5, No. 9
March 5, 2007

copyright ©2007 by George Jackson
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