The Bigonzetti is one of two new works this season, and it’s the most impressive of the three ballets he’s done for the company. Spirits sink when its 14 dancers troop on in the semi-dark carrying suitcases: Immigrants, heartbreak ahead. But it gathers together in a series of intense duets, climaxed by the encounter between Maria Kowroski, her natural glamour hidden behind late 19th-century steerage garb, and Tyler Angle. Kowroski has finally claimed the leading-ballerina role her beauty and opulent movement style have promised from the start. In Oltremare, she displays an aggressive power and a charged sensuality that significantly extend her range.
Bigonzetti has coaxed extraordinary results from his dancers, helped by the unsubtle but charged score by his frequent collaborator Bruno Moretti. Andrew Veyette has a thrilling explosive solo; Angle, Tiler Peck, Ana Sophia Scheller, Amar Ramasar, Teresa Reichlen, Sean Suozzi and Jonathan Stafford demonstrate how brilliantly the Soloist level of the company can perform when they’re engaged—and rehearsed.
The season’s other new work, Wheeldon’s Rococo Variations, to Tchaikovsky, is a careful, clever exercise in partnering for two couples: Sterling Hyltin and Giovanni Villalobos, Sara Mearns and Adrian Danchig-Waring. It’s playful, it’s decorative, it’s without inner life—in short, it’s minor. A question: Why, in a ballet so specifically constructed to mirror two pairs of dancers, are the pairs so physically and temperamentally unalike? Mearns—who has now more or less completed her sweep of the entire repertory, though she’s not yet listed as a principal—is slightly solid in build and somewhat stolid in style, and it’s an unofficial law that critics must always refer to her dancing as “creamy.” Hyltin is slim, sparkly—“quicksilver.” Danchig-Waring is blond and extra-tall; Villalobos is short and dark. Or is the contrast the point? I hope so, because if it is, it means the ballet has a point.
Otherwise, all at the State Theater is as it has been, only more so. (Alas, in the case of Nikolaj Hübbe, it’s less so—this beautiful artist has skipped town in order to take over the Royal Danish Ballet, from which he jumped ship 16 years ago.) Most of the senior dancers appear more superannuated by the moment. A performance of that great ballet Serenade was disastrously listless: Darci Kistler appeared wan and tragically underpowered—she even made Yvonne Bourree look semi-respectable.
Mozartiana, on the same program, was equally inadequate. It was never Wendy Whelan’s strongest moment, but this time out she was small-scale and dull—in a Farrell role. Tom Gold, soon to retire, has long since passed his shelf date, and Benjamin Millepied doesn’t have the necessary technical command or partnering strengths. As for the four “Menuet” girls, they seemed to be on automatic pilot.
As for the compan
y’s other senior citizens, bulky Albert Evans made it through Ratmansky’s lovely Russian Seasons, but as the Shirelles had it, my love for him is a thing of the past. And then there’s Nilas Martins …
Meanwhile, the youth brigade is settling into the repertory. Mearns, as I say, is everywhere—creamy in Ives, Songs and creamy in Thou Swell. Robert Fairchild is a definite comer; Georgina Pazcoguin a blast of energy (her Anita in West Side Story Suite steals the show); Veyette always a contender. Tall, blond Teresa Reichlen seemed over-parted in Stars and Stripes—the best thing about the performance I saw was the spirited playing of the orchestra under Paul Mann—but she was very persuasive in Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, a.k.a. Ballet Imperial, in fascinating contrast to powerhouse Ashley Bouder. Whereas Bouder is all glorious attack, Reichlen (invariably labeled “willowy”) dealt with the ballet’s formidable challenges lyrically, emphasizing its Swan Lake connections.
City Ballet remains a great company in perpetual artistic crisis. Everyone knows what it needs: more guidance from the top; more rehearsal time; more coaching from former Balanchine luminaries; more rigor in casting and programming. Everyone knows what it has: an endless supply of talented dancers; an endless supply of money. And an eager audience.
Let’s give that audience what it deserves.
