578
ROBERT GARIS
have to believe your ears to hear that Toscanini's performance of the
Haffner Symphony isn't too fast to be graceful. Some things don' t seem
humanly possible, but when they do happen in front of you it doesn't
make good sense to get annoyed. Think of the configurations of Farrell's
body in that most eloquent moment in the slow dance of the first part
of
Liebeslieder,
for instance, when Stowell folds her over in his arms
before he raises her up: Farrell unifies this sequence by instinctively
fluid modulating movements that no head-intelligence could contrive:
it is like a happening in nature. You see the same thing in the large
lifts in the
Brahms-Schonberg,
where every part of her body is in freely
curving movement, where nothing is at rest yet everything is beautiful,
clear and coherent; you see it
most
gloriously in the lifts in the last act
of
Don Quixote,
the most sensuous movements in ballet.
Balanchine's roles for the magnificent Edward Villella, one of the
one of the most exciting dancers who ever lived, show
him
almost as
a character dancer.
Tarantella, Harlequinade,
the
Brahms-Schonberg
and
Rubies
are none of them heroic and noble, and while these 'words
could indeed be used about the role in
Bugaku,
the exotic atmosphere
of this piece is not conventional ballet heroism; even Oberon in
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
is
demi-caractere.
But Villella has rightly
aspired to the style of the
danseur noble,
and it has been extraordinarily
moving to watch him work independently to develop this style which
he has now achieved so beautifully. In light lyrical dancing, to be sure,
he had the most delicate refinement from the beginning, in the
pas
de trois
in
The Figure in the Carpet.
But in
danseur noble
roles he has
had to master both the liability of his lack of height and the dangerous
asset of his phenomenal electric force. For some time, then, there were
discordant elements in his classical style: a slight swagger, a studied
virility in entrances, and that curious approach to his partner that
B.
H,
Haggin called his "boxer's weave." H e sometimes neglected those boring
but indispensable refinements of quiet shoulders and mechanical regular–
ity in stationary spins; in bravura feats he sometimes looked chunky
and too vehemently powerful. In
Apollo
there was a beautiful lyricism
from the beginning and a tender concern for and control of the muses;
but in the heroic sections a few exaggerated accents showed that he had
learned the role from the wrong teacher, d'Amboise, and the overall
effect used to be at once not powerful enough and too powerful.
Now, after his
Apollo
at M.I.T. last fall, and his debut as Albrecht
in
Giselle
tlus spring in Boston, it is no discourtesy to recall these earlier
flaws, so triumphant has been Villella's success in overcoming them;
and when one realizes that this self-discipline was happening during the
period of necessary overwork that led to his muscle cramp on stage in
Raymonda Variations
last November, one feels far more than a merely
