{"id":1387,"date":"2013-02-22T23:58:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T04:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1387"},"modified":"2013-02-23T08:26:29","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T13:26:29","slug":"fair-winds-from-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/02\/fair-winds-from-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Fair Winds from the West"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Carla<\/a>

Carla K\u00f6rbes and Seth Orza of Pacific Northwest Ballet in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Rom\u00e9o et Juliette<\/em>. Photo: Angela Sterling<\/p><\/div>\n

Lincoln Kirstein has written that while the New York State Theater (now the Koch) was under construction, George Balanchine wandered in and saw that the pit would hold no more than 35 musicians. He immediately threatened to withdraw the New York City Ballet as the principal designated tenant. The pit was redesigned to accommodate 70 players.<\/p>\n

Had Balanchine, to whom music was so important, visited City Center during the Pacific Northwest Ballet\u2019s recent season, he would, I\u2019m sure, have been overjoyed to hear the scores for three of his greatest ballets, Concerto Barocco<\/i> (1941), Apollo <\/i>(1928, and Agon<\/i> (1957), played so superbly by the company\u2019s orchestra, under the accomplished and dance-sensitive baton of Emil de Cou.<\/p>\n

Bach and Stravinsky, had they strolled from the spirit world with Balanchine, might have been equally entranced.<\/p>\n

\"PNB's<\/a>

PNB’s women in Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco<\/em>, Front: Laura Gilbreath (L) and Lindsi Dec. Photo: Lindsay Thomas<\/p><\/div>\n

As you might expect, the dancers in Concerto Barocco<\/i> and Agon <\/i>(staged by the company\u2019s Founding Artistic Director) and in Apollo <\/i>(staged by PNB\u2019s current Artistic Director, Peter Boal) perform with musical aplomb and accuracy. In Barocco<\/i>, the eight women of the ensemble bring a breezy crispness to the opening vivace movement of J.S. Bach\u2019s Double Violin Concerto in D minor, and they calm themselves sweetly down into the sisterhood that forms bowers and arbors for the female soloist and her partner (who has fortuitously arrived just in time to replace the second leading woman and make the largo movement into a blissful courtship). From the front row of the loges, you have the heady experience of seeing both the two dancers weaving through the corps de ballet and the two solo violinists (Michael Jinsoo Lim and Brittany Boulding) doing the same with the Bach\u2019s string ensemble.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that Lindsi Dec, Laura Gilbreath, and Batkhurel Bold were experiencing a slight case of opening-night nerves in the New York City Ballet\u2019s hometown, where Concerto Barocco <\/i>has had a long history. They danced finely, even expansively, but seemed slightly reined-in. At that pungent moment in the duet when the woman, grasping the man\u2019s right hand in hers, pulls slightly away from him and then toward him again, I missed the intensity of the connection between Galbreath and Bold, and when she traveled around him while he stood facing front, he was as implacable as a pillar, not seeming to sense the woman whose hand he held. Yet the clarity and gentleness of all the dancers in this movement was lovely to see.<\/p>\n

\"Seth<\/a>

Seth Orza as Balanchine’s Apollo<\/em> with (front to back) Carla K\u00f6rbes, Maria Chapman, and Lesley Rausch. Photo: Lindsay Thomas<\/p><\/div>\n

Let me now switch to the present tense. I owe it to Carla K\u00f6rbes, who dances in Apollo <\/i>as if unconcerned with yesterday and unafraid of tomorrow\u2014that is, without a trace of mannerism, she fills each passing moment and shapes each phrase as if she understood and cherished it. She is the Terpsichore to Seth Orza\u2019s fine, boyish Apollo, and you could see why he chose her as his principal muse over the handsome Calliope of Maria Chapman and the charming Polyhymnia of Lesley Rausch. Balanchine, of course, weighted the competition in favor of Terpsichore, but that\u2019s not what I mean.<\/p>\n

In this ravishing and stirring little ballet (a quartet in Balanchine\u2019s shortened version), the god and the muses are young and frisky\u2014teenagers perhaps\u2014and the ballet takes place in those threshold moments when Apollo and his companions are readying themselves to take their places on Mount Olympus (when the summons comes, you can hear it in the music and see it in his demeanor). He\u2019s been testing his own powers and his ability to master these three fillies as if he were yoking them to his artistic chariot. But when he tires or loses confidence, they\u2019re ready to play the big sisters and let him lay his head in their hands.<\/p>\n

What K\u00f6rbes brings to her performance as Terpsichore beyond musicality and beautiful line is her sense of wonder and discovery. This has partly to do with her focus. When she lies on her belly on Orza\u2019s bent-over back as he kneels for the sequence that aficionados know as the \u201cswimming lesson,\u201d she looks far beyond her gently breast-stroking arms as if taking in the seas beyond. At the end, Apollo and the three muses walk around the stage to arrive at their final sunburst pose, while Stravinsky\u2019s music is climbing the stairs they used to mount in the earlier version of the ballet. Chapman and Rausch, of course, look where they\u2019re going, but K\u00f6rbes\u2019s gaze takes in the space she\u2019s traveling through on this great adventure, and what might be stars just above the horizon. This isn\u2019t just a matter of where her eyes are focusing. It\u2019s an act of really seeing\u2014with the entire being.<\/p>\n

\"(L<\/a>

(L to R) Kylee Kitchens, Jonathan Poretta, and Elizabeth Murphy in Balanchine’s Agon<\/em>. Photo: Lindsay Thomas.<\/p><\/div>\n

It was musically exciting on the part of PNB to follow Stravinsky\u2019s neo-classical score for Apollo<\/i> with the denser, more astringent music that he wrote for Agon <\/i>almost 30 years later. You return from intermission to find the pit stuffed to overflowing; winds, brass, and percussion instruments, harp, piano, and mandolin have joined the string players.<\/p>\n

The controlled brashness of the four athletic males who open the piece acts as a fanfare for Stravinsky\u2019s made-in-America hymn. Not that the two ensuing trios, the pas de deux, and the sections performed by the twelve who make up Agon<\/i>\u2019s cast aren\u2019t mannerly. The composer named the sections after baroque court-dance forms, such as the branle, the galliard, and the sarabande, and Balanchine honored that formality, even as he skewed it off balance.<\/p>\n

Kylee Kitchens and Elizabeth Murphy aid lively Jonathan Porretta in the first pas de trois (I appreciated Murphy\u2019s forthright enthusiasm). Andrew Bartee and Jerome Tisserand ace the fiendishly close canon in their duet in the second pas de trois and as partners for Chapman. Rausch comes alive in a pas de deux that necessitates extreme flexibility on the woman\u2019s part and excellent timing on the man\u2019s, and steady nerves for both. \u201cHmm,\u201d you imagine Balanchine thinking as he choreographed, \u201cwhat if he\u2019s supporting her in arabesque on pointe and suddenly he falls to the floor without releasing her hand or knocking her down?\u201d\u00a0 Watching this moment, you still hold your breath.<\/p>\n

In PNB\u2019s too-short season at City Center, the Balanchine program was given only once; the remaining three performances were devoted to the company\u2019s production of Jean-Christophe Maillot\u2019s 1996) Rom\u00e9o et Juliette<\/i>, which was seen in New York in 1999 when the Ballet de Monte Carlo brought it here. I can understand why Boal chose to add it to PNB\u2019s repertory. It suits the performers, it doesn\u2019t stand on ceremony, it\u2019s full of dancing, and its Romeo and Juliet behave like lusty teenagers\u2014healthy young animals at play, with shyness and boldness tugging them this way and that. And Prokofiev’s score is a great one.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>

Friar Laurence (Karel Cruz) with his acolytes, Jerome Tisserand (L) and Andrew Bartee in Maillot’s Rom\u00e9o et Juliette<\/em>. Photo: Angela Sterling<\/p><\/div>\n

I can\u2019t decide whether it\u2019s better to know Shakespeare\u2019s story well enough to fill in the blanks or not to have read it and make up the details from what you see. Who can be sure at first whether that tall, reserved fellow is Paris (Joshua Grant), the Capulet\u2019s chosen suitor for their daughter, or a wimpy version of Capulet himself?\u00a0 But no, Lady Capulet (I saw Gilbreath in the role) wears widow\u2019s weeds, albeit slit up the side; it\u2019s just that she seems to have the hots for Paris herself, as well as for her nephew, Tybalt (Bold).<\/p>\n

Maillot had the fanciful idea of making Friar Laurence (William Lin-Yee, substituting for Karel Cruz on opening night), a kind of Greek chorus. He has to fulfill his role in the plot (marry the pair, give Juliet something to make her appear dead), but he also slinks around suffering, because he knows what\u2019s going to happen but can\u2019t stop it. He even masterminds a puppet show with obvious Capulet and Montague protagonists, but the families watching it in the public square don\u2019t get his point. He travels with two \u201cacolytes\u201d (the estimable Bartee and Tisserand). Does he feel an anguished backbend coming on? They\u2019re there for him.<\/p>\n

\"Seth<\/a>

Seth Orza (Romeo) strangles Tybalt (Batkhurel Bold). Photo: Angela Sterling<\/p><\/div>\n

This Verona, designed by Ernest Pignon-Ernest, is a handsome Frank-Gehry-manqu\u00e9 affair of curved and straight and slanting white surfaces, with panels that move to convey different locales. Romeo (Orza) strangles Tybalt (in a mighty struggle) on the same ramp that Juliet slides down to meet her lover for what we know as the Balcony Scene. Dominique Drillot\u2019s lighting turns the stage sunny or ominous or moonlit. J\u00e9rome Kaplan\u2019s costumes fit the modernist look of the stage; they\u2019re relatively plain (except for Juliet\u2019s shimmering gold party skirt), very becoming, and muted in color.<\/p>\n

There are some nice dramatic touches. Rosaline (Chapman), far from being the girlfriend who spurns Romeo and disappears in the first scene, is a party girl who sees no difference between Montague men and Capulet men; they all have tights. The fateful scene in which Tybalt kills Mercutio (Poretta) and Romeo kills him in return starts out with the rival gangs moderately amicable, mingling in the village piazza until a chance word or gesture acts as a spark to the abundant underlying tinder of hostility. Juliet, on learning of Tybalt\u2019s death at Romeo\u2019s hands, opens her mouth wide, like an infant, in two silent howls. Although Friar Laurence doesn\u2019t give her a sleeping potion (his touch seems to be enough to daze her), Romeo, in the moment when he tries to see if any \u201cpoison\u201d remains for him on Juliet\u2019s lips, draws her whole inert upper body up with a kiss, as if he\u2019s trying to suck her soul into life or himself into death. When he lets her go, she drops back onto the \u201cbed\u201d (another slanted platform), and he falls away from her, huddled into his grief.<\/p>\n

\"Mercutio<\/a>

Mercutio (Jonathan Poretta) has at Tybalt (Batkhurel Bold). Photo: Angela Sterling<\/p><\/div>\n

Prokofiev\u2019s glorious music, eloquently played, tells us much of what we need to know about this society, these characters, and their feelings. Maillot\u2019s choreography follows its lead, but not always its ambiance. In his effort to emphasize the vigor of its townsfolk (almost everyone in this town seems to be under 21), he has the ensemble dancing almost constantly. They leap and pirouette; the men throw the women high in the air. These are Capulets and Montagues on speed; they don\u2019t spend much time sneering and spitting and making rude gestures\u2014or wrestling, for that matter. And they rarely take stock. The choreography rolls on with almost an aerobic zest.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The ill-fated lovers: Carla K\u00f6rbes and Seth Orza. Photo: Angela Sterling<\/p><\/div>\n

The heart of the ballet is the dancing for Romeo and\/or Juliet. K\u00f6rbes and Orza play a couple of teenagers so full of inexplicable lust and delight in one another that they flirt and tease until shy abandon gradually matures into love. They\u2019re not proper at all. She stands, feet planted, and he dives onto his belly and slides between her legs and past her. She backs away from his attempts to kiss her, but quickly learns the strange feelings that a caress can stir up now that she\u2019s\u2014what?\u2014 14. A curiously significant but awkward motif in which the two join their palms and make them undulate together seems to indicate both the flame of their passion and the precariousness of their future.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The wedding night: Juliet (Carla K\u00f6rbes) and her Romeo (Seth Orza). Photo: Angela Sterling<\/p><\/div>\n

I regret not seeing the other cast (Kaori Nakamura and James Moore), but K\u00f6rbes and Orza (both former NYCB dancers) perform with endearing frankness and ardor, nuzzling like puppies. In the end, it is their dancing and acting that moves you the way Shakespeare\u2019s words do. Maillot made some of the roles less nuanced. Lady Capulet is more a slinky bitch with a low boiling point than a stern parent. And the nurse (Rachel Foster), conceived of as young, is almost a caricature of zealous bustle in the early scenes. Mercutio might have been made to order for Poretta. What a devilish imp he is! And Benjamin Griffith\u2019s Benvolio is more mischievous than this character usually seems in other R & J ballets. Bold isn\u2019t the sly, snaky Tybalt we often see, or the haughty one. He\u2019s strong and solid and he knows what he wants. Because Bold comes across as earthy, it\u2019s an especial pleasure to see how nimbly and incisively he flashes his legs in the air and what a fine, soaring leap he has.<\/p>\n

Having seen these New York performances, as well as Pacific Northwest\u2019s Ballet\u2019s Giselle<\/i> in its home city, I hope the company doesn\u2019t wait too long to pay us another visit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lincoln Kirstein has written that while the New York State Theater (now the Koch) was under construction, George Balanchine wandered in and saw that the pit would hold no more than 35 musicians. He immediately threatened to withdraw the New York City Ballet as the principal designated tenant. The pit was redesigned to accommodate 70 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[644,642,641,354,121,638,645,646,637,640,639,643],"class_list":{"0":"post-1387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ballet","8":"tag-batkhurel-bold","9":"tag-carla-korbes","10":"tag-emil-de-cou","11":"tag-george-balanchine","12":"tag-igor-stravinsky","13":"tag-jean-christophe-maillot","14":"tag-jonathan-poretta","15":"tag-lesley-rausch","16":"tag-pacific-northwest-ballet","17":"tag-peter-boal","18":"tag-romeo-et-juliette","19":"tag-seth-orza","20":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}