TERRY TEACHOUT
293
while the repertory of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, by far the most
influential company of the first half of the twentieth century, has largely
disintegrated. In retrospect, it seems clear that it was Balanchine who
forged out of the technical language of classical ballet an esthetic suffi–
ciently rich in implication to serve as the basis for future stylistic evolution.
His oldest surviving dance, "Apollo," dates from 1928, and is still being
performed. Of how many other ballets made in that year-indeed, in that
entire decade-can the same be said?
If I am right, then presumably it will take a certain amount of time
before a new generation of choreographers, trained in Balanchine's tech–
niques and familiar with his ballets but uninhibited by the memory of his
personal presence (he died in 1983) , starts to produce works that descend
from Balanchine without imitating him. These choreographers will
undoubtedly also be informed by modern dance, and especially by those
modern-dance choreographers, in particular Taylor, Tharp and Morris,
who have been willing to work with classical companies. But the ballets
they make, however "modern" their flavor, will nonetheless be firmly and
explicitly rooted in the classical tradition, not because it is the only valid
way to dance-many of the greatest dancers of the past quarter-century
have come from modern companies-but because it so far appears to be
the only practical basis for the establishment of institutionally stable com–
panies capable of preserving their repertories over the long haul.
The flaw in this theory is obvious: where
are
all these young classical
choreographers? And the reply, though no less obvious-they should be
coming along any time now-is inevitably unsatisfying. New York City
Ballet has lately produced one promising young choreographer,
Christopher Wheeldon, who to date has shown two ballets in New York,
"Slavonic Dances" (made for NYCB) and "Souvenirs" (made for the
School of American Ballet, NYCB's sister institution), plus a pas de deux
set to Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante defunte." But three promising
dances do not a style make, and though Wheeldon is currently at work on
a Stravinsky ballet scheduled to be premiered in May, it is far too soon to
say how good he is. Other names come to mind, Kevin O'Day, Septime
Webre and Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros among them, but their work is
not now being seen regularly in the dance capital of the world, and so one
must take their gifts largely on faith.
In the meantime, there are always the classics and neoclassics, though
we don't see nearly as many of these as we ought to. Kevin McKenzie, who
runs American Ballet Theatre, apparently prefers mounting expensive–
looking borrowed productions of kitschy story ballets by Ben Stevenson
and his ilk to the less glamorous but far more challenging task of reviving
such older, rarely seen works as, say, Antony Tudor's "Romeo and Juliet"
