BALLET AND BALANCHINE
Last spring the American Ballet Theatre and the English
Royal Ballet brought loud cries of release from the prisoners of that
tyrant at the New York City Ballet. But since Balanchine seems to me
not only one of the very greatest but also one of the most richly inventive
artists in the world, I didn't need any release from him. Compared with
his variety, the heralded variety of repertory at Ballet Theatre seemed
rather an illusion: some evenings you did get four ballets by four different
choreographers, but often there was only one you really wanted
to
see.
It is true that five new ballets by four choreographers were mounted
and a Danish classic revived, but of these only Robbins'
Les N oces
was
a major work; the other four (including two feeble tries by Agnes de
Mille) were far less than minor, and the classic,
La Sylphide,
was a
tedious bundle of romantic cliches. It was good
to
see once again some
of the older ballets of Robbins, Lander, Tudor, de Mille, Loring, Ross
and Fokine--Balanchine ought to acquire some of these. But of all these
choreographers apparently only Robbins can be counted on for distin–
guished new work. Nor was the dancing at Ballet Theatre what it was
cracked up to be. It was really quite bad at the top, among the stars,
most of them strikingly ill-favored and cold. There was fine work by
Sallie Wilson, Ruth Ann Koesun, William Glassman and a few others;
the company as a whole was capable; the whole enterprise was ambi–
tiously planned and it turned into a sellout. But for me going night
after night proved depressing. I
have
been spoiled by Balanchine, then,
the way Mozart spoils your interest in Cimarosa.
But Robbins is no Cimarosa and Ballet Theatre may be proud of
having spent the effort and money it took to mount his handsome new
piece. There are some tantalizing descriptions of Nijinska's
Les Noces
that make her ballet sound shatteringly intense and powerful-Denby
uses the word "frenzy"-and I was at first disappointed that Robbins
had not achieved something on this emotional level. Later I realized
that he hadn't wanted to and still later I realized that he had made
an impressively right choice. For
Les Noces
isn't
Le Sacre du Printemps:
