Talk about a rare show of bipartisan support! Both first daughter Caroline Kennedy and right-wing billionaire David Koch were part of a cheering crowd Thursday night for American Ballet Theatre’s landslide evening of dance, featuring the premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet.
In works like “Concerto DSCH” or his recent version of “Firebird,” he throws the kitchen sink at us. This ballet’s no exception, filled with inventive steps that whiz by almost too fast to register. But if anyone could choreograph the mercurial moods of Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony, it’s his fellow Russian, Ratmansky.
“Symphony #9” takes us on a breakneck path through the music, opening with four men in sleek black-and-white costumes — as Craig Salstein comes out of the wings and dives headlong across their arms. After he extracts himself, Simone Messmer, her hair in an attractive bob, dances teasingly with him.
The mood darkens as Marcelo Gomes and Polina Semionova enter the next movement, where they’re alternately tossed and braced by the corps. Herman Cornejo enters to join in their dancing, and the couple ends with a slow enigmatic collapse.
But Gomes signals “just a moment,” and hauls his partner up as she flutters her legs comically like a mechanical doll. The final three movements, played nonstop, include a portentous section for Gomes where Semionova rushes on to comfort — and silence — him. It all ends with a virtuoso solo for Cornejo.
Ratmansky’s navigated the shifting emotions of the symphony — even its irony. What isn’t clear yet is what he’s being ironic about. “Symphony #9” is going to take more than one viewing to figure out.
This good, new ballet looked even better surrounded by two classics. Antony Tudor’s “The Leaves Are Fading” is a work of exquisite nostalgia. To a few string pieces by Dvorák, couples in pale dappled rose dance like a lingering fragrance. The subtle musicality whispers to us as a woman is lifted, almost imperceptibly, on a swelling chord.
Hee Seo was the long-stemmed blossom in this bouquet. Her smile glowed and her legs flicked high as she courted Roberto Bolle, who did the arduous partnering beautifully.
Agnes de Mille’s “Rodeo” closed the evening perfectly. Set to Aaron Copland’s unforgettable score, it’s a love letter to the American West — as written for Broadway. Salstein reappeared as the Champion Roper, who wins the girl with a virtuoso tap solo in cowboy boots.
Each of the three choreographers made a ballet that looks like no one else’s. Whatever side of the aisle you’re on, this is ballet that does America proud.