EVEN 25 years after his death, George Balanchine’s heritage to New York City Ballet pays the most extraordinary dividends, not simply through his stature as a choreographer, but also from his sheer versatility.
He left City Ballet a repertoire which, including its works by Jerome Robbins, also now 10 years dead, is unsurpassed anywhere.
Programs this past weekend, all season premieres, displayed these enduring patterns of richness.
At least three styles of Balanchine are on view. There is the pure dance, practice-dress Balanchine of ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’ and ‘Square Dance’; the storytelling Balanchine of ‘La Sonnambula’ and ‘Prodigal Son’; and the atmospherically evocative Balanchine of the duet ‘Tarantella’ and ‘Bugaku.’
The pensive courtly dances to Ravel in the ‘Couperin,’ with its eight youthful couples, went with the right elusive ambiguity, and the sprightly, Vivaldi-inspired ‘Square Dance,’ led by Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette, showed an elegant but properly bouncy charm.
Bounce in plenty came with a dazzling ‘Tarantella,’ with Gottschalk music and a fizzy – I suppose ‘spumante’ would be the appropriate Italian – stage-embracing performance from Fairchild and the happily irrepressible Daniel Ulbricht.
I have seen more authoritative performances of all the other three – the Japonaiserie wedding ceremony of ‘Bugaku’ (a ballet now looking frayed even in its pretensions), the biblical ‘Prodigal Son’ (dating from 1929 and an enduring masterpiece) and the ultra-romantic ‘Sonnambula.’
Maria Kowroski seemed unusually out-of-form, lacking even her customary presence in both ‘Bugaku’ and as the Prodigal’s undoing Siren in ‘Prodigal Son,’ although Damian Woetzel proved as passionate as usual in that title role, while Nikolaj Hubbe was commandingly aloof yet entranced as the Byronic poet in ‘Sonnambula.’
‘The Four Seasons,’ the odd ballet out in these two programs, being by Robbins, was exhilaratingly given, with Sara Mearns making a well-modulated debut in the ballet’s ‘Spring’ section and Ulbricht dominating all with cheeky virtuosity in the ballet’s final ‘Autumn’ bacchanal.
NEW YORK CITY BALLETNew York State Theater. Lincoln Center. (212) 870-5570. Runs through Feb. 24.