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Los Angeles Ballet Balanchine: See the Music, Hear the Dance
March 6, 2010 -- Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, Redondo Beach, California Three of George Balanchine's pieces created during his earlier and later years comprised the program for Los Angeles Ballet's show on March 6, 2010, at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center in Redondo Beach, California. To illustrate Balanchine's favorite saying, "See the music, hear the dance," co-Artistic Directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary chose "Serenade," "Kammermusik No. 2" and "Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2." The choreographer, who died in 1983, created the first selection in 1934 on students from his School of American Ballet. His first ballet conceived in the United States, "Serenade" used a varied number of dancers to Tchaikovsky's famous music (Serenade in C for Strings Opus 48) depending on who showed up for rehearsals. According to Neary, he included a dancer falling down when she fainted during practice. He liked when another dancer unbound her hair or when one arrived late and snuck into line. Dressed in long tulle skirts and pale leotard tops, 17 ladies posed, scattered across the stage, with one arm lifted as the music began. On a grace note, each flicked her wrist up and curved the uplifted arm down to her head. Eventually they shifted their positions until they created a beautiful, four-person tableau at the four corners of the stage. A couple kneeled while two stood. The whole piece became a moving painting of various dancers, wending around each other with the soloists breaking through lines and groups. Every move flowed into another. The ladies would flip their skirts up when crossing the stage with large moves. Especially notable was how Balanchine had a line of ladies hold hands that crossed, uncrossed and crossed again depending on how the dancers twisted or interwove among themselves. Each section finished with the dancers again in the beginning lyrical pose.
Balanchine gave the men simple cabrioles derrière, tour jetés and tours en l'air, while he had the ladies chug their arabesques, emphasize the sauté battement devant with a bend forward and turn a series of double pirouettes. Each of the corps ladies heard the music differently as they weren't quite in sync throughout the section. The third part ends when Barak let down her hair and threw herself to the floor. The fourth part introduced a couple (Andrew Brader and Monica Pelfrey) as a pair so closely in tune with each other that she laid against his back while covering his eyes with her hands. They crossed the stage in step to where Barak lay and they enfolded her into their divertissements. Pelfrey stood en pointe in arabesque in front of Barak's stretched out leg. Brader turned her by her thigh into a promenade. During a section with eight corps women and four men, the latter partnered two women, moving between two lines of them. They weren't quite together in their frantic switching back and forth. However Balanchine created a beautiful picture when he had the four men lift four of the ladies, who then held the on-floor ladies' hands while they made arabesque. The section ended when Barak laid back down, and Brader and Pelfrey walked off in the same position with which they entered. Six corps women returned onstage by twos, faced Barak and lifted her onto her feet. The corps ladies fanned from Barak while a seventh stood at the apex with her arms outstretched. Three men surrounded Barak, lifted her by her feet and carried her off. To Paul Hindemith's Kammermusik No. 2, Balanchine used his men to follow the orchestra line and two couples (Barak and Brader, Grace McLoughin and Drew Grant) to highlight the two pianos. The 1978 piece of abrasive, unmelodic music inspired angular moves and shapes. The principals did the same moves but a beat off each other in canon. For the allegro beginning, Balanchine had the dancers keep their arms straight and shift them like robots -- quick and stop. He had his ladies dance with bent knees, prance and turn low pirouettes. A more andante section had the 10 men backing up the couples with Egyptian arms, wide seconde grande pliés and elbows on their knees. The choreography incorporated song-and-dance moves, as well as hitch kicks, emboités and bunny hops. What might have been considered avent garde in the '70s seems more conventional in 2010. The final piece, created in 1941 as a tribute to Petipa and Balanchine's Russian training, ended the evening with the more melodic Piano Concerto No. 2 by Tchaikovsky. Featured soloists included Pelfrey, Nancy Richer and Zheng Hua Li. Ladies in light-colored, knee-length tulle skirts and men in white tights and decorated jackets, declared we were back in Balanchine's classical era. Richer's first solo showed her clean beats and nice smile. She ended it with lame-duck pirouettes and a tour jeté before the women bourréed in a circle outside the men, who walked in the opposite direction, creating a pleasant pattern. The second soloist filled up the music with her reaches and dragging tombé failli. She jumped in fouetté arabesques and grand jetés. She turned with emboités and chaînes. She ended with a piqué arabesque. Balanchine grouped the dancers in beautiful patterns. A line of men stretched diagonally across the stage with hands clasped. A separate guy stood behind them and reached over a pair of clasped hands toward another two who angled themselves toward him. As in the first piece of the evening, the choreographer partnered two ladies with one guy. The men either held their ladies' hands or alternated between two rows of ladies to hold their waists on sauté arabesques. When one lady bourréed by, a man caught her hand and she leaned away from him. While she hopped on point backwards, he held her hips. His overhead lift of her seemed effortless, although he made obvious preparations later for his pirouettes. For another divertissement, two men partnered one lady. One man tour jetéd while the other promenaded the lady in arabesque. All jumped in sync with battu before twirling in a double pirouette. While Li executed his solo batterie cleanly, he struggled to lift the ladies and leaped weakly. One man worked with 10 ladies in an amusing section. He mimed about where his partner was to the corps ladies. They turned their faces away from him. Then he supported the waist of the first lady in a five-girl line. He promenaded her, and the rest followed around in a balletic crack-the-whip. Both lines got a turn. The ladies created two staggered lines, then the lines switched positions front to back. The corps separated the guy from his partner like in “Swan Lake.” He gestured to her, but the corps blocked with their reunion. Eventually, she reached him, hugged him, and flitted off stage while the corps ran interference for her. The man again questioned the corps where his partner was. The ladies again turned their heads away. After another crack-the-whip sequence, the man bowed and left the stage. More of the dancers smiled, which indicated they enjoyed dancing the piece. The Tchaikovsky sounded and looked gorgeous, was danced lovingly, with the occasional Balanchine invention (unconventional holds and lifts, fast petit allegro, off-center balances), and ended the program on a high note.
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by Kathy Lee Scott
For the melodic waltz section, Melissa Barak partnered with Peter Snow, one of the more charismatic dancers of the company. While he balancéd, she ran around him en pointe. Barak tended to rush the music, especially in a soutenu, piqué arabesque sequence. It seemed that Barak forced herself to look at Snow, which brought a coldness to their partnering.