BWW Reviews: NYCB Dancers Prove Their Worth in ALL BACH

What determines an artistic institution's longevity? How does such an institution thrive after the social, political, and economic forces that engendered it have disappeared? Museums, orchestras, theater and dance companies face these questions as they struggle to succeed in the cultural Darwinism that determines their survival. Some succeed. Others don't.

New York City Ballet is a notable success story. Since its inception nearly seven decades ago, the group has remained at ballet's frontier, continually expanding its boundaries with a uniquely American style. The list of now iconic ballets and choreographers that premiered at New York City Ballet is long indeed.

Yet New York City Ballet doesn't just create the future of ballet -- it also preserves its past, functioning as a living museum of an important aspect of America's cultural heritage. Just like an art museum gathers, preserves, and displays the works of visual art in its collection, NYCB preserves and displays the significant works of the art of ballet that comprise its repertoire, and -- like any successful museum -- regularly provides its patrons fresh means of rediscovering and enjoying them. NYCB doesn't just maintain ballets of the past, it reinvents them in ingenious, surprising, and daring ways, allowing audiences of any background to gain something in 2015 from a ballet created in 1948.

This quality was on particularly fine display during a recent performance of the Ballet's "All Bach" program, one of three shows that comprise this winter season's "Hear the Dance" series. In a "Hear the Dance" show, the audience is invited to enjoy portions of the Ballet's repertoire in combinations that are determined solely by their music, rather than by more common criteria such as choreographer, time period, or popularity. (In addition to the "All Bach" program, the current batch of Hear the Dance shows includes groupings of ballets set to American and Russian music.) All Bach allows audiences to consider how two of NYCB's seminal figures, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, responded to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, resulting in Concerto Barocco (1948) and The Goldberg Variations (1971) respectively. The Ballet performed both of these pieces with spectacular skill, dramatic range of expression, and several unforgettable solos by its top dancers.

All Bach begins with the older of the two ballets, Balanchine's Concerto Barocco. Stylistically, Barocco features some early examples of recognizable Balanchine trademarks: simple costuming that keeps the focus on the dancing, a constantly shifting, overlapping, and unfolding geometric choreography, and a trust in the corps to do just as much of the heavy lifting as the featured soloists. Ashley Laracey, a current NYCB soloist who narrates the video profile of Concerto Barocco that plays in the lobby of the David Koch theater, claims that being a corps member usually means being "filler," merely "one of those people that stand on the side and wave a rose." Laracey beams as she tightly laces her pointe shoes in the video. "Barocco," she explains, "is the complete opposite of that because you get to dance, and you're in the spotlight the whole time." It's worth noting that every other video profile (which kept huddles of ticketholders gathered around the screens that displayed them even after the theater doors had opened) featured interviews with principals and soloists, rather than corps members.

The reason for this choice became obvious during NYCB's performance of Concerto Barocco, during which eight NYCB corps members elegantly accomplished Balanchine's challenging ballet with a poise that belied the difficulty of the choreography. It was no surprise that each individual member of the corps showed remarkable, effortless skill. What made this performance surprisingly special was they way they did so together. The corps elevated their individual skill into synchronous collective expression, creating a living geometry that realized the subtext of Balanchine's work, namely that a corps is more than the sum of its dancers. It's rare to see an individual dancer so expertly expose the interesting inner features of a ballet, much less a whole team of them.

Indeed, the soloists in Concerto Barocco -- Sara Mearns, Teresa Reichlen, and Ask la Cour -- were not merely dancing against a backdrop or between filler, but rather dancing with a living force that responded to and informed their own movements. If anyone in Concerto Barocco plays the role of support, it's the male soloist, who mostly serves as an armature for the female soloists, lifting them over and leading them around the constantly moving corps. In this way, Balanchine's Concerto Barocco isn't just set to Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, it operates with the same fundamental expressive functions, where the two female soloists act as Bach's two solo violinists, the corps as the orchestra that supports them, and the male dancer as the conductor that smoothly guides its components to a successful conclusion.

While their choreography was often very similar, Reichlen and Mearns both imbued their roles with distinct voices. Reichlen's long, thin limbs moved through Balanchine's choreography with a gentle beauty. The alternating, retreating jetes she made with the aid of la Cour's steady support towards the end of the second movement were breathtaking, her extension and subtle gestures creating the illusion that she was leaping ten feet into the air in dramatic slow motion. Mearns, on the other hand, was pure magnetism. She brought an electric, almost volatile power to her passages, constantly catching the audience's eye with a sharpness that was breathtaking and yet somehow impossible to pinpoint.

The second half of All Bach, which consisted of Jerome Robbins' "Goldberg Variations," differed stylistically from the first, but nonetheless showed the same strengths. As a whole, the dancers teased out the complexities of both choreography and music by exposing the varied emotional and stylistic shades Robbins' choreography reads into Bach's Goldberg Variations. Bach's Goldberg Variations (adroitly executed by NYCB pianist Cameron Grant) consists of thirty contrasting variations on a single baseline and chord progression. NYCB brought these contrasts to life, articulating an immense spectrum of tones, moods, and sentiments. The dancers showed passion and restraint, grace and power, joy and melancholy. They were competitive and chummy, sophisticated and silly, serene and acrobatic, classical and modern all at once. Their emotive range was just as flexible as their nimble bodies, reminding the audience that dance -- when done this expertly -- is an expressive art form with no fewer hues than its musical counterpart.

Bach's Goldberg Variations, originally written for a harpsichord with two separate keyboards, consists of two tightly intersecting musical lines. Robbins' choreography similarly weaves together many overlapping dance passages, seamless creating opportunities for memorable solos that were performed memorably by NYCB's dancers. Zachary Catazaro's handsome posture and agility in even the small, simple phrases of his opening duet with Faye Arthurs made his limited involvement in the rest of the ballet feel like a regrettable omission. Throughout Part I of the variations, Taylor Stanley almost unfairly stole the show from his male colleagues, tempering the power surging from his strong legs with regal composure and a warm smile.

Part II of the Variations introduces three couples (echos of the couple that opened the ballet) whose solos and pas de deuxs are the ballet's focus until it's dramatic conclusion. Jared Angle accompanied his partner Sterling Hyltin quite pleasingly and managed to catch her by the waist in the midst of a headlong lunge, drawing nervous gasps from the audience. Angle's own dancing, however, felt a little sluggish, even blunt at times, and he was outshined by his younger brother Tyler and his partner Maria Kowroski. Throughout this couple's pas de deux, the beguiling movements of Kowroski's long limbs had an alluring, otherworldly quality that made the other expert dancers seem boxy by comparison. In one of the most memorable moments of the ballet, their duet concludes with Kowroski suddenly abandoning Angle, leaving him alone and visibly forlorn onstage. Angle, however, quickly transforms this brief moment of despair into a triumphant solo passage so stellar that the audience feels grateful for Kowroski's desertion.

These were just some of the many wonderful moments in "All Bach." Throughout the evening, the dancers of NYCB proved how much they each deserve the coveted positions they hold within the ballet community. Yet the value of their dancing doesn't just lie in the skill with which it is performed. The value of this kind of show -- and where NYCB reveals the source of its impressive staying power -- lies in the important questions that arise from comparing a work like Concerto Barocco with work like Goldberg Variations. What's the ideal relationship between soloist and corps? How do you create choreography that speaks to the music that accompanies it? Can a choreographer create emotionally charged moments without the tools of plot and costumes?

If NYCB can continue consistently generating performances that inspire questions as compelling as these, any questions about the institution's ability to survive will become irrelevant. NYCB doesn't just allow its audiences to enjoy world-class dancing, it challenges its audiences to think deeply about dance as a singular mode of expression, a stimulating sensory experience that lingers on the psyche, and a fundamental tradition that deserves vigilant maintenance for as long as we have the means to do so.

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