As for Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, it’s the least of the three works, but when in 1968 Balanchine exhumed it from the 1936 Rodgers and Hart musical On Your Toes, he knew exactly what was he getting: a raucous, boisterous, sexy hit. Critics were snooty, but audiences loved it and still do—and rightly so. The score, the story, the dance ops are terrific—and just about nonfail. The central role, the Stripper, is simple: It’s all about legs. And that’s what Maria Kowroski is about, too. Her sublime legs flash, strut, scissor; you can’t take your eyes off them—and why should you? That’s what Balanchine intended. Sara Mearns tries hard in the role, but she’s all thigh, not all leg. I have nothing against thighs, far from it, but not these thighs in this role. Mearns is more a zaftig blonde than a ravishing moll, more Alice Faye than Cyd Charisse. She’s at her best in the coda when she can just dance full out, having fun.
Each of the Hoofers—Tyler Angle, then Andrew Veyette—hoofed valiantly, but this is more a role for a great character dancer and tapper than a classicist slumming. Remember, the original Hoofer was that goofy genius, the pre-Scarecrow Ray Bolger. And the 1968 revival was led by Arthur Mitchell (opposite Suzanne Farrell), another outsize personality, while the finest recent exemplar was the beguiling showbizzy Robert LaFosse. Yes, Slaughter is showbiz. And like Balanchine’s other story ballets, it’s brilliantly constructed, seamless, perfect of its kind. It just doesn’t belong on this program. Mitchell reports (in Nancy Reynolds’s essential book, Repertory in Review), “Balanchine often said to me, of this and others, ‘You know, Arthur, when you’re serving a meal, you can’t give all meat.” The only irritating thing about George Balanchine is that he was always right.
One of the oddities of the season was that we were given exactly one performance of Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering. Why? I can only assume that because it uses only a piano, and when it’s programmed with Mauro Bigonzetti’s slick, empty Vespro (piano, mezzo, saxaphone) and Balanchine’s lovely Duo Concertant (piano, violin), it makes possible a night off for the orchestra—at a considerable saving of money. But it was good to see Dances, whatever the reason, since it gave us the chance to relish Tiler Peck (“pink”) in what may be the most moving performance of the final duet I’ve ever seen. It’s also a pleasure to be able for once to appreciate Megan Fairchild. She has the right spunk and bounce for “apricot.”
Nevertheless, over the years, Dances has lost something. That excellent critic Nancy Goldner, describing its early performances, zeroed in on the last moments of the sumptuous waltz for three couples: “Finally, at the climax of the last series of jumps, a girl positively catapults herself with multiple turns in the air into the man’s waiting arms. He catches her and quickly swings her to the floor. Her head misses the floor by an inch or so. This is some joy ride!” Also a scary ride—once I thought Sara Leland was a goner. For years now, the joy and the scare have been gone: The company has gone tame on us.
