Stravinsky and Balanchine Part 2

And so to continue with the rest of the evening…

The second ballet of the evening was ‘Agon’ from 1957.  This is a wonderful work, one that I have seen described as being the ‘most complex and sophisticated of ballets’ (in the Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet).  It is one of those pieces that gets written about and discussed at great length, the wonderful relationship between the music and dance, the striking shapes and forms of the piece.

Balanchine structured his piece around Stravinsky’s score.  The ballet is built around 12 dancers (4 men and 8 women) and has 12 movements (4 sections of 3 dances).  The music alludes to 17^th century French court dances (bransles, galliards and sarabande).  Brass instruments are used to identify the men and woodwind the women.  I can highly recommend The Ballet Bag for an excellent overview (http://www.theballetbag.com/2009/10/05/agon/ )

The structure takes this form:

Pas de Quatre for the men
Double Pas de Quatre  for the women
Triple Pas de Quatre for all 12 dancers
Prelude for 1 man & 2 women
Saraband-step for 1 man
Galliard for 2 women
Coda for 1 man & 2 women
Interlude for 2 men and women
Bransle simple for 2 men
Bransle gai for 1 woman
Bransle double for 2 men and 1 woman
Interlude for 1 man & 1 woman
Pas de Deux for 1 man & 1 woman
Four Pas de Deux for the men & 4 women
Four Pas de Trois for all 12 dancers
Coda: all the dancers

Now to the performance on Thursday!  Apart from one of the dancers nearly falling over (but gracefully recovering), the dancing was fine and technically competent.  However, as usual I am afraid, there was no ‘oomph’, no dynamism, nothing to remember.  The central pas de deux, which should be a show stopper, passed me by.  I have just watched a rather poor quality video I found on YouTube of Agon danced by New York City Ballet in the 1980s and, even watching on my computer screen, I was entranced and gripped by the exciting and enervating performance. That was what I had hoped for on Thursday but as usual was disappointed with RDB.

However, I would like to heap praise on one dancer, Jon Axel Fransson from Iceland, who had energy, verve and a sparkle lacking in the other dancers. 

Part three to follow…..