NYCB to offer an exciting week at SPAC
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Dance fans’ hopes turned upside down when the Saratoga Performing Arts Center announced last fall that the 2018 New York City Ballet season would shrink back to a single week. New management at both SPAC and NYCB express optimism about a return to a longer season in the near future. In the meantime, the 2018 season, running July 17-21, is crammed with reasons to see the world’s most exciting ballet company.
Let’s start at the end of this topsy-turvy season, the closing night Ballet Gala on July 21. This year it celebrates the centennial of Jerome Robbins, the great American-born choreographer, opening with one of his best ballets, “The Four Seasons.” Set to Verdi, it is a brilliant classical ballet disguised as a romp, with comic dazzle and spectacular dances. Two distinctive pas de deux showcase ballerina Sara Mearns in Spring, partnered by Tyler Angle, and Tiler Peck with Andrew Veyette in Fall.
The Gala also includes Robbins’s “Other Dances,” a Chopin piano pas de deux from 1976, danced by two firecrackers, Ashley Bouder and Joaquin De Luz. The evening marks the dynamic De Luz’s last Saratoga performances before he retires in October, after 15 years with the company.
Justin Peck’s new “Easy” celebrates Leonard Bernstein, also born 100 years ago, and uses the composer’s jazzy “Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs.” Peck’s title pays homage as well to Robbins, who, seeking a more relaxed, more American ballet look, would urge his dancers, “Easy, baby!”
Bernstein and Robbins often collaborated, of course, and their Broadway work highlights the Gala’s closing blockbuster, “Something to Dance About.” For this anthology number, Warren Carlyle stages dances from “On the Town” and “West Side Story,” and from other Robbins hits, such as “The King and I,” “Gypsy” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” A fireworks display follows the fireworks onstage.
Peck’s “Easy” gets another performance Thursday evening, July 19, along with his acclaimed new Stravinsky ballet, “Pulcinella Variations.” The program celebrates young choreographers, including principal dancer Lauren Lovette and Gianna Reisen. Lovette’s 2017 “Not Our Fate,” to Michael Nyman’s music, includes a daring pas de deux for Taylor Stanley and Preston Chamblee. Reisen uses a Lukas Foss score for “Composer’s Holiday,” made last year, when she was all of 18.
Peter Martins has retired after 35 years as NYCB’s ballet master in chief, but his 2007 “Romeo + Juliet” lives on. Danced to Prokofiev’s brilliant score, the ballet streamlines the story, focusing on its romance and tragic violence, especially in the duets for the young lovers. NYCB’s original Juliet, Sterling Hyltin, performs with Harrison Coll on July 20, while Taylor Stanley partners Lauren Lovette at the matinees July 19 and 21.
Finally, we’ll end at the beginning— the July 17 opening night program (also on view July 18) presents three quite different masterworks by George Balanchine, greatest of all 20th- century choreographers. Balanchine came to New York in 1933 to teach Americans how to dance, and by 1948, his vision had crystallized into the New York City Ballet. Although born and trained in Russia, he helped create a distinctly American ballet style.
For example, in “Square Dance,” from 1957, the music is baroque—Corelli and Vivaldi—but the dancers promenade around the hall, sashay, do-si-do, swing their partners, and launch backward country-style kicks in the finale, all without ever leaving the ballet idiom.
His 1946 “The Four Temperaments” still looks strikingly modern 70 years later. Balanchine’s many strangelooking, invented steps, often with jazzy, italicized accents, provide a perfect analog for the difficulties of being human, danced dramatically to a commissioned theme- and- variations by Hindemith.
In “Symphony in C,” from 1948, all feelings of difficulty disappear. Danced to Bizet, it offers a vision of heaven on earth. We feel it especially in the slow second movement, in which Tyler Angle will partner the sublime Maria Kowroski, and the finale, with the four lead ballerinas whirling nonstop in front of the full company. It’s one of the greatest ballets of all time.
Any of the week’s programs makes a great introduction to ballet’s pleasures and especially to the unique brilliance of NYCB. SPAC offers several ways to make ballet affordable for the whole family, from $15 student rush amphitheater tickets, to $20 seats for children, to “family four pack” discounts for any performance, including the Gala. Evening performances begin at 8 p.m., and matinees at 2 p.m. For full information, visit spac.org, or call (518) 584-9330.