BALLET
575
slow love duet puzzles you with hints of some disturbed relation with
her lover, hints even of shame on his part, when he hides his face
from her with his hand. But this seems never to have existed when she
flirts wittily with him and his mock-rival in the
pas de trois:
nothing
could be more clear-spirited than this innocently sophisticated badinage.
Disturbing implications return in the second slow duet and are then
concentrated in the most intimately emotional imagery of the whole
ballet, when Magallenes slowly carries her almost perversely inert form
about the stage - an unparaphrasable image of a private emotional
encounter, for which she seems to be forgiving him in her last benedic–
tive gesture. And since this is the last dance before the final assembly,
and Verdy the last woman to be caught up in the social whispering of
the game, she remains for a long moment still rapt in this private emo–
tion. It is in fact through Verdy, almost alone, that Balanchine creates
the elusive, fragmentary drama that is the special beauty of the first
section of
Liebeslieder.
In
Emeralds
Balanchine exploits her individuality more abstractly.
After the curtain rises on a complex motionless grouping it is Verdy
who initiates the dance with majestically deliberate gestures: a long
glance upward establishes relationship with her partner; then a slow
arching of the back and extension of the arm accentuate her step for–
ward that brings the whole group into motion. These gestures have an
impact far out of proportion to their materials which only Verdy's
powerfully inflected style could achieve: it is Balanchine's tribute to
her authority. And her variation, which begins with a dance of the
arms alone in movements which Verdy follows with her eyes, at once
directing and relishing her own grace - this is Balanchine's tribute to
her beauty. For Verdy seems to love being on stage and being charming
and chic. You can see this in the variation of the Tchaikovsky
Pas de
Deux,
where you can also see how freely she has shaped Balanchine's
conception into her own personal reading. Few American dancers can
attempt such conscious art or explicit theatricality without looking either
provincial or greedy. Few European dancers can either. But no dancer
except Verdy can give conscious artistry and theatrical charm the ur–
prisingly noble effect of pride, even of courage, all the more moving
because she is not only small but continues to look small in many roles,
as some dancers don't. And all this makes her a beautifully womanly
dancer, a quality that has nothing to do with age but a lot to do
with depth of feeling and thinking.
Suzanne Farrell's first important appearance was in
Movements.
In
this ballet the dancers wear practice-clothes, and when they finish one
"movement" they reassemble for the next in the limber businesslike walk
athletes use ; the movements themselves, neither theatrical nor intimate,
