Having decided not to go to a
few of the recent productions by the Danish Royal Ballet, I thought it was
about time to go to something again, especially as it was a triple bill of
‘Balanchine & Stravinsky’. I am one
of those who like Balanchine (and there are many who don’t). It stems from the first time I saw some of
his work when I was a child in Paris and I was totally bowled over by the
neo-classical style and the simple black and white leotards – it was so
different from ‘Nutcracker’ and the other classics I had seen up until then.
The programme consisted of
‘Apollo’, ‘Agon’ and ‘Symphony in Three Movements’. Since Hübbe took over as artistic director in
2008, DRB have added a number of Balanchine works to their repertoire, no doubt
due to his previous career with New York City Ballet.
The evening began with
‘Apollo’. It was first performed in
1928, and still looks contemporary and fresh.
The ballet is basically about Apollo, god of the sun and the arts, when
he was young. He meets three muses:
Calliope, the muse of poetry, Polyhymnia, the muse of mime and Terpsichore, the
muse of dance. Each of the muses dances,
but Apollo is mostly charmed by Terpsichore, with whom he dances a pas de deux.
The ballet is set against a bright blue
background, the dancers in white. The
end is a wonderful arrangement of the muses and Apollo, the muses legs in
arabesques, forming a shape like the rays of the sun. Deborah Bull wrote that ‘the deceptively
simple choreography requires intense concentration and a constant steadying of nerves,
from the first entrance' which I can well and truly imagine! (Quote from The Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet,
2004).
Apollo is one of those pieces
I have seen a few times, and have to say I always have great expectations and
am usually disappointed, not by the ballet or the choreography, but by the
dancing. Last night, Apollo was danced
by Alban Lendorf, the rising star of DRB.
While he may be technically proficient, he has absolutely no charisma or
stage presence. Moreover, while it may
be considered that Balanchine’s work are abstract and emotionless, a certain
amount of passion and expression is needed if we are to believe in Apollo. The three muses were all very good (danced by
Caroline Baldwin, Holly Jean Dorger and Alba Nadal), with Baldwin proving to be
the strongest.
I think I may have mentioned
Lendorf before. His Blue Bird in the pas
de deux from ‘Sleeping Beauty’ was dreadful, yet it was executed by the text
book. And therein lies the problem with
Lendorf – he looks as if he is in the classroom going through the motions. He is still young with a career ahead, but I
am not convinced he will ever be one of the ‘greats’.
I’m going to write about the
other two pieces later, and also return to my theme of ‘where to sit’ as I was
in the stalls last night. The picture below is from a review of New York City Ballet in Paris in The New York Times of 2008.
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