New York City Ballet Returns to London

As New York City Ballet return to London for the first time in 25 years, veteran critic John Percival recalls the thrill of their first visit and the genius of the choreographer who made them the best in the world.

Here's something remarkable. Those of us who were lucky enough to see New York City Ballet's first London season open at Covent Garden in 1950 cannot forget the thrill of seeing George Balanchine's Serenade for the first time.

The curtain went up on those lines of long-legged girls and we watched them gather into fresh groupings as Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings led them into some of the most exhilarating ensembles ever made for a large corps de ballet.

Entries for the principals included a long sequence with a man withheld by one of three women from his longing for another; we recognised allusions to the statue over Tchaikovsky's grave. There's no story, Balanchine wrote, but we felt a lot of emotion.

This had been the first ballet Balanchine made in America, and now that same work opens the company's return to London after a gap of more than 25 years - transporting a 90-strong company is costly.

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N.Y.C. Ballet's Four Voices

If last week's opening program of the New York City Ballet put the full company on view, the second set of works, performed over the weekend at the Kennedy Center Opera House, was a showcase of individual dancers. Dubbed "Four Voices," it was also a sampler of the creative output of the men who have contributed most to the company's current repertoire: former resident choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins and the two men who previously held that title, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins.

The four works -- Wheeldon's "Carousel (A Dance)," Martins's "Zakouski," Balanchine's "Agon" and Robbins's "The Concert" -- weren't in any way similar, but together they were a good fit, sharing a sense of cleverness, musical intelligence and polish. They furthered the company's brand attributes, if you will: the qualities of irreproachably good taste, well-directed physicality, clean technique and, in the brainy "Agon" as in the slapstick "The Concert," great wit.

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A Tale Of Two Productions

To ring in the new year, I decided to take in both the old and the new. I attended two hefty dance concerts: a program by the New York City Ballet featuring four old favorites dating from 1956 to 2002, and Dance Theater Workshop's Fresh Tracks, an evening of six brand-new pieces, all by relatively unknown choreographers. I hate to draw pessimistic conclusions about the future of our art form, but while the seasoned ballets proved devilishly delightful, the new works, though sometimes fresh in concept, were too undercooked for audience consumption.

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Source: backstage.com