The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, 9 November 2013 (evening): Program A, the Costumed Complaint

As promised in my last entry, here is (more) whinging about costuming. For actual performance impressions, scroll to the end and read my meager conclusions.

Program A: Mozartiana/Episodes/Romeo&Juliet

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet

Eisenhower Theater, Kennedy Center

Washington DC

Saturday, 9 November 2013, 7:30 PM Evening Performance

Orchestra U120

As I remarked to someone recently, I never knew that I had such a wellspring of vitriol for poor stagecraft. Of course, I once stopped a period movie because one of the actresses wore a dress without sleeves (infuriatingly inaccurate unless you were Russian and several decades later), so perhaps it wasn't that unexpected.

Balanchine created Mozartiana for the Tchaikovsky festival. Both the NYCB and the Balanchine Trust tells me that both composer and choreographer pay homage to Mozart in it. The music is texturally lighter than most of Tchaikovsky's usual chamber output, and both casting and costuming evokes an earlier European sensibility rather than the Franco-Russian hodgepodge of the late 19^th Century.

The closest historical analogue for lead ballerina's costume is the robe à la anglaise, featuring a narrow bodice and a very full pleated skirt in a bell shape. The Eisenhower Theater exhibits TSFB costumes, including one of the original Mozartiana ballerina costumes with its bodice rendered in  black velvet bodice with long narrow sleeves ending at the wrist. I could complain (slightly) that more accurate sleeves should end at the elbow with frilled or lace-trimmed sleeves from one's chemise, but it is a better example of the aforementioned robe than the revision, which has moved those needed frills to the neckline, flapping like a string of flags on a naval ship. While Ter-Arutunian's original costumes were also sleeveless and had lace at the necklines (a design copied by most other companies mounting this piece), the results are restrained, appropriately boudoir rather than vulgar.

N Magnicaballi in Mozartiana. Image taken from but not linked from the Kennedy Center.

Ian Grosh (and unnamed female performer) in Mozartiana. Image taken from DanceTabs, sorry!

Once again, poor Ian Grosh gets the brunt of my exasperation with his sartorially anachronistic jester.  Slashed sleeves and hip-length garment equals doublet, which fell out of fashion over a century before the women's costumes in this ballet. Louis XIV certainly contributed to its decline by codifying court dress that included nothing of the sort.

When I watch a ballet, I expect all of the parts to work in harmony in supporting the illusion that the dancers create. In this case, it was like watching Esmeralda shaking it at court with Flouncy Shakespeare. The illusion is broken, and I cannot simply excuse the disjunctions because the costumes are "pretty enough".  

Anyway, onto impressions. 

Heather Ogden continued to be amazing. The expansive dancing on Wednesday night looked like a mere dress rehearsal compared to the lush textures and shapes that she leaned into tonight. She was an earthbound spirit, dancing to create a path between worlds. I would have been more awed, except I was highly caffeinated and my nerves too deadened to summon that particular emotion. The marathon performances seemed to have got to her a little as well, as she lost her legs during the final pirouettes and fell into her closing pose. Michael Cook also improved, handling his ballerina and the choreography with more confidence than his earlier outing. 

The other parts, Grosh and the four attendant ballerinas, proceeded on course and I remained unmoved. My complaints about the Jester (Grosh and everyone else) is a general complaint about the transmission of choreography, or rather the prioritization of what to teach. In contrast, I treat choreography of the four attendant ballerinas like I do the first movement of Diamonds, as an exercise in patience before more interesting stuff happens. This performance was better than Thursday's exercise in incoherence, but the ending movement (Theme and Variations) did not exceed its choreography and ended tonally as one of "general revelry" rather than of celebration.

As to Episodes, I've posted my conspiracy theories and have all but stood on my head trying to find my way in. Looking at it has increased my understanding of the other black-and-white Balanchines, but neither the choreography or the music is as coherent or as interesting as those pieces. It's not a doodle like Haieff Variations, but it is definitely not a masterpiece either. 

I don't have much to say about Episodes during this performance besides that it was tautly danced. in the Ricerata, Natalia Magnicaballi and Pavel Gurevich made the choreography personal but did not dip into tragedy as they had done on Wednesday. However, the lighting technicians seem to have thrown subtlety right out of the window in the second movement (Five Pieces). Jordyn Richter and Ted Seymour were now fluorescent under the harsh full lighting, making them hard to look at directly. Whether a result of audience complaints or emanating from "artistic improvements", the changes sucked.

Making stink bombs out of expired eggs (or would readers prefer lemonade out of lemons), the slightly enhanced look did put Richter and Seymour's attempt at a pas de deux strongly in mind when I watched Agon again recently. Whereas Agon is a courtly competition between dancers, the juxtaposition of purpose in Five Pieces seems to suggest that the competition hasn't even started. Seymour was game, wrangling with a passive-aggressive Richter who seemed to prefer that the competition will never happen. She was always a hair too far from his hands, crouched down when he points up, hiding behind his back and making rude gestures with her legs, in general plotting sabotage by attrition against an oblivious nice guy. 

I don't have anything new to add to my impressions of Romeo & Juliet. There is only so much that commitment can do to mitigate ineffective choreography. At its best, the dancers helped me to ignore the unmusical choreography. At its worst, I was incredulous that this was actually happening.

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, Program A, 7 November 2013

Program A: Mozartiana, Episodes, Romeo and Juliet

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet

Thursday, 7 November 2013

Eisenhower Theater, Kennedy Center

Washington DC

Orchestra Left, S3

Everything was a little off-kilter in Mozartiana tonight, as if the energy hoarded for last night had bursted at a few seams. We were left with some interestingly conceived dancing that didn’t seem to belong to the same ballet.

Natalia Magnicaballi has a luscious rubato and uses it intelligently. While I liked Ogden yesterday, she anticipates the music too much and that occasionally comes off as a lack of confidence. Magnicaballi allows her phrasing to flow through the music, never hurrying her movement for the sake of the next beat. Part of that power comes in her calm upper body, extending her head, back and arms so that the movement always feels completed to its full potential.

Perhaps it’s part of Magnicaballi’s emploi, but there’s always a sense of fragility in her dancing. Today it colors the Preghiera (as it did in the Riccercata yesterday) as tragedy. It was not an invocation as yesterday, asking divinity to use her as instrument; it was instead a sacrifice and she was the courtly victim, Andromeda on the rocks as appeasement or intercession.

There was a new cast of girlish attendants, attendants to the doomed bride. These girls are older than yesterday’s cast, and there is not enough physical contrast between them and the womanly attendants, nor between them and Magnicaballi.

It was yet another interpretation from the four (or five) that I have seen, and I was looking forward to how that theme would be developed. Unfortunately, the Gigue happened.

Kirk Henning has elongated limbs that seemed more suited to the geometry of petit allegro. While still not quite satisfactory, it was an improvement over Grosh. However, his usual musical intelligence seemed to have failed him today. This was a frolic worthy of the Soviet clown out of Swan Lake. I won’t say that he simpered, but the uncomplicated cheeriness made the fine music insubstantial. It did not follow what has come before and made me wonder whether I had sleepwalked into a different ballet between movements. Once again, as with Grosh, he was most effective while standing still in the Menuet. His leave-taking was flirtatious and seemed oddly inappropriate for a courtly jester, whose dreams of dignity exists only on my soapbox.

Again, not much to say about the Menuet. Once one sees the shepherdess curls, one cannot unsee them.

In the Theme et Variations, Magnicaballi gave a command performance of the solo variations. It was a masterclass in phrasing. Again, like Ogden, the execution seemed spontaneous and yet endlessly complex.

Pavel Gurevich is Magnicaballi’s cavalier today. While the two are long-limbed and seem physically suited, their dancing was less harmonious than what was promised by their promenade. Gurevich moves well for his size and build, but his upper body lurches oddly upward when jumping. The partnering looked curiously underrehearsed. Their spacing was off, and there were a few parts in which he looked like he was manhandling Magnicaballi in the partnering.There was one turn en attitude in which I could only focus on his hand gripped around her wrist, while her hand trembled above like an autumn leaf. Magnicaballi looked visibly off-center after the pas de deux, and all but staggered off the stage. It was more than a little disastrous, and the whole thing made me think longingly of Momchil Mladenov, one of Magnicaballi’s former partners of a similar build, since retired from the company.

The Finale was an uncomplicated relief. Henning and the girlish attendants came together in joy, Gurevich and Magnicaballi tried to remember the distance between their respective limbs, and the whole thing came to a triumphantly relieved end.

Allan Lewis conducted the orchestra. As with last night, it was a finely textured rendering, marred only by the clarinetist, who seemed to have forgotten his fingers. The reed also seemed suspect in the higher notes. The lighting changes were more noticeable than tonight. I started to squint during the pas de deux and realized that my eyesight was not in error. It is a modern intrusion and was unappreciated. Also as with last night, I tried very very hard to ignore the flouncy flounces on Magnicaballi’s gown. It was easier today with all of the other bewildering things that were happening simultaneously.

I mentioned last night that black-and-whites are hard for me to digest. Unlike the gentleman sitting next to me, I cannot follow the tone rows without sheet music. I spent most of yesterday’s performance sorting the bodies on stage so that I can match the action to the music. It’s a cheat, of course, but repetition and a perverse appreciation for arbitrary musicality yields enough amusements to make the endeavor equitable.

Last night I ranted on the opacity that is Episodes. Episodes of what indeed. My growing suspicion, planted last night, that these were episodes of episodes. In other words, it’s a sequence of events that loop back upon themselves in reference. It is much like the Four Temperaments, except the repetition is not both melodic and choreographic. Instead, it is only choreographic, integrating thematic ideas and the choreographic conventions that came before in tighter and more enclosed rounds.

At intermission today, I mentioned that the whole thing reminds me of PDQ Bach’s Art of the Ground Round (Opus 3.19/pound). That was a tour de force of parody upon the convention of the round (think row, row, row your boat). The idea of rounds is something that keeps popping up in this piece, and the whole thing makes me wonder whether Balanchine has constructed one hell of a joke.

Symphony, Movement 1, is a masterclass on rounds. The opening tableau is even vaguely circular, as are the opening arm isolations. The dancing starts with simple rounds, in which one couple does a movement, the next couple replicates two beats later, repeat until finished.

The dancers then start a second round, escalating the complexity as dancers find rules to play with. First, the corp chooses to replicate the main couple in the same direction, in the next round they choose to replicate in contrast. Then the corp decides that moving in unison among themselves is boring and that they should move in tight contrast to each other even as they are still moving in counterpoint to the leads.

The pairs then get tired of each other, and suddenly it’s time for rounds with genders. First it’s straightforward rounds with men and women, but then for added complexity, the lead man and woman extract themselves to create two more layers of moving bodies. I felt like a giant game of choreographic Twister and I was a little cross-eyed, trying to keep score.

Valerie Tellmann and Matthew Renko were the leads today. Both the music and the dancing were more confident when compared to yesterday, which also made it easier to keep track of the action.

Webern is difficult, and the dancing can be obscure. I heard one audience member behind me muttering in dismay. She was advised to “try to take a nap, if she could”. Disappointment is to be expected, but I wish it didn’t have to be so loud during the dancing.

Jordyn Richter and Ted Seymour were the leads again in Five Pieces today. At first glance, they seem like anecdotes that seem to to have nothing to do with rounds, but they provide thematic material for integration later.

I labeled these as “episodes of unreadyness” in my head. The woman and the man are never in the same physical or mental place. Richter plays it straight. Her acrobatic antics are tools to befuddle poor Ted even further. He wants to look up, she looks down. He looks for her, she hides behind him, legs in the air creating the ballet equivalent of bunny ears (antlers!). Ted wisely does not overact, letting the absurdity of the choreography enhance his guileless expression.

Concerto, the third movement, puts elements of the first two movements to work. The dancers start in a simple round, but as they escalate in difficulty as in movement 1, the lead couple incorporates the juxtaposition of purpose seen in movement two into their dancing.

Michael Cook and Elisabeth Holowchuk danced again today (Holowchuk substituting for the scheduled Paola Hartley). I hadn’t particularly liked his dancing with Magnicaballi, as their reciprocal comfort often looks like complacency, but he’s working out quite well with Holowchuk, who seems to to have an adversarial relationship with him on stage.

The last movement of Concerto made me laugh, as it was literally a round of women surrounding Cook. Just to make sure that we haven’t missed it, we also start with Holowchuck tightly encircling Cook with all the limbs she could find. It’s got to be some sort of a joke, but the final choreography for Cook is that of a man desperately looking for a way out of a round.

Last night, the preceding contrast of bodies stood in counterpoint to the physical homogeneity of Riccercata. Tonight, the preceding fugue of choreography was startling when we arrive at the conventional choreographic voicing of the Riccercata, an orchestration of Bach’s Fugue in 6 voices from Musical Offering (BWV 1079). Webern’s orchestration adds instrumental texture even as it preserves the (dare I say) conventional harmonics of Baroque music. It was a weird return to normalcy after the stringent compositions that preceded it. (I felt the audience members behind me stir in interest, and then in appreciation. Nicely done, Mr B.)

Six groups of dancers, five corp groups and the lead couple, represent the six moving voices, though the lead couple retains the singing melody at all times. It is a moving tableau of bodies, exploring permutations on a motif. Heather Ogden and Ian Grosh were the lead couple tonight. She was majestic in contrast to Magnicaballi’s restrained melancholy, and Ian Grosh found the dignity and simplicity in movement that should have gone into Mozartiana. When they finally bade the curtains to go down, Ogden gestured with authority, imbuing her hands with weight. Here endeth the masterclass, they say.

I don’t have anything to add to last night’s observations about Mejia’s Romeo and Juliet. Holowchuk and Henning make it work despite the choreography, though they were less spontaneous in performance tonight. Despite some sour flourishes by the french horn, Tchaikovsky got another elegant performance, its floridity sufficiently subdued to keep it on this side of parody.

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, Program A, 6 November 2013

Program A: Mozartiana, Episodes, Romeo and Juliet

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Eisenhower Theater, Kennedy Center

Washington DC

Orchestra U 107, V103

Mozartiana was the first ballet that I ever saw live. I love the solemn pageantry, the evocation of French courtly manners, and best of all, the feather light displays of petit allegro.

What continues to amaze me is the range of emotion that different ballerinas call forth in the same choreography. Suzanne Farrell, in her 1983 televised performance, was joyfully spiritual, even triumphant; Whelan, the first woman I saw in the role, evokes dignity and command even seen years apart, though the initial imperiousness seems to have melted into a calmer self-reflection; and Veronika Part, an earthly Dulcinea, warm and loving.

Heather Ogden in the same ballet called forth serenity. Her dancing brought to mind teachings from the taoist canon, which emphasizes naturalness, simplicity and spontaneity. It was not a static performance; there was always the sense that we see only those bright facets that the ballerina chooses to show to us, that there is more of the enigma hovering just out of reach.

Preghiera is an invocation, but last night my mind veered off of Christian prayer to that of invocation of the Muse at the beginning of the Iliad, asking for divine inspiration to guide his hand in dance. It's rather appropriate: his first surviving masterpiece is a celebration of Muses (Apollo, 1927), while what is more or less his last work calls on them for their favor.

Ogden sets the stage with four girl attendants. Despite the mismatch in size, as some attendants were visibly and bigger than others, their solemn dignity complemented Ogden's prayer well. Ogden has a very lovely and calm bourrée, and she uses it well, though I would have liked to see Ogden utilize her back and head more fully to match.

Ian Grosh was the courtly jester in the Gigue. He is not yet comfortable in the role, more concerned with the fiendishly difficult footwork than the proper conveyance of manner. However, this is a complaint not unique to this performance. I continue to scream (in a vacuum, it seems) that this jester should be the most dignified person in the room. He is not a clown, and nobility bearing should permeate his upper body. I have yet to see sufficient consideration and weight given to the sparse simplicity of the port de bras. In this respect, Grosh was more effective in the Menuet, as he remembered to give proper attention to his carriage as he took his leave of the audience.

On that note, I would like to give a discommendation to his execution of the petit allegro. The dancing should give more consideration to distance covered rather than the height attained during steps. What I saw last night was all up-and-down and flattened the choreography to an unhappy extreme. 

I continue not to have much to say about the Menuet. From memory, I think it's a piece better seen straight on than from above. It was excellently performed, but it is the choreographical weak link in Mozartiana and thus hard to make much of. Despite the suggestions of Dresden Shepherdesses in costuming and hairstyle, these women are courtly attendants. I wanted the women to demonstrate solemnity that their girlish counterparts had displayed to great effect, as I think the elegance would keep the pastoral portrait from imploding in triteness.

Mozartiana is a ballerina's ballet, and Michael Cook very intelligently recognizes this, devoting himself to displaying Ogden like a shining treasure. Occasionally his bearing is too ardently yearning, but that is a slight correction.

Despite the disparity in petit allegro — that is, Cook demonstrates an understanding of its execution and goal (that of clean, fleeted footwork that hovers over and across space rather than simply measuring its height) — the casting demands that we compare he and Grosh as doppelgängers. They are sufficiently similar in coloring and build, calling back to the mirroring of girl and woman attendants, and who are ultimately refracted shadows of the ballerina herself.

Cook initially tries for sharply etched movements in his solos, calling equal attention to the choreography as well as the occasionally blurry execution of it. I think I (and he) enjoyed it more as he relaxed into the music, and it showed in his increased ease (and ironically, clarity) of movement.

I wish that I have other Farrell stagings of this ballet for comparison, especially when it came to the final tableau. What came to mind was not of the ballerina ascendant, but a sense of reconciliation, of disparate parts reaching rapport, celebrating a harmonious oneness in purpose. It was joyous enough to make this perpetually grumpy observer burst into discreet tears.

Allan Lewis is the new(?) conductor this year, and he lead the orchestra in giving a finely textured performance. However, I will note that like cowbells, one can never have too much glockenspiel in the variations.

Holly Hynes's costumes worked well for the female attendants, but the fringes on Ogden's bodice detracted from its elegance. The swooping excess seemed more appropriate for a gypsy dress meant for the tavern scene in Don Q. Similarly, Michael Cook's vest was too low cut. The objective is courtliness, not Eurotrash.

Ballet Austin provided the corps for my first and last experience with Episodes in 2008, which incidentally was my first experience with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet. I find that I rather miss them in this iteration. I miss the full-bodied physicality that their dancers brought to the round. It is too refined this time.

I won't bore my gentle reader with too many wild theories about the name. After all, Episodes? Episodes of what? They could be called "anecdotes", but episodes imply repetition and continuity.

Episodes is a weird, dreamlike echo of Four Temperaments and Agon. We see quotations from both works, some weirdly abandoned in the middle of its execution. When I first saw it, I stared at blankly and wondered if perhaps Balanchine was having me on. Who, what, antlers?!

On a more serious note, if we were to talk about progressions, we could talk about the progression of womanly bodies from the petit, short-waisted Paola Hartley in Symphony, to the statuesque but long-waisted (shades of Aroldingen!) Jordyn Richter in Five Pieces, to the shapely but humanly sized Elisabeth Holowchuk in Concerto, to the Balanchine archetype that is Natalia Magnicaballi in the Riccerata. The juxtaposition of soloist and (where available) corps bodies in the first three movements is especially piquant when compared to the physical homogeneity of the Riccerata.

But then, I could be reading into it too much.

I don't do too well with black-and-whites on my initial viewings, so I will save more detailed choreographic comments for the second night. The first movement (Symphony) was tentatively performed, though it settled down as the orchestra grew in confidence. Jordyn Richter was all cool nonchalance in contrast to Ted Seymour's guilelessness. He is a very intelligent dancer and carefully rations his theatricality to delicious effect. Holowchuk and Henning  (substituting for Cook) performed the Concerto. Holowchuk never makes the same movement twice, and she coolly twists Cook into knots of bodies and limbs. I really appreciated Cook's ability to make the choreography look natural rather than silly (which did happen later in the program, but more on that later). Magnicaballi and Guervich were the courtly leads in the minor-key Riccercata, conveying a sense of subdued personal tragedy into the moving tableau. Their downward sweeping gesture at the finale is done with great delicacy; it is equal parts request and reminder that we must now leave them.

(I moved to V103 for this portion of the program)

While I enjoyed Mejia's Eight by Adler, I didn't hold much confidence for his Romeo and Juliet, if in part because I have no confidence that anyone can overcome the musical cliché of the Tchaikovsky suite. I am sad to say that my suspicions were mostly confirmed. Holowchuk and Henning did marvelous acting (poor Ian Grosh had a thankless job as a thrashing Tybault), but it wasn't enough to save the brawny and sometimes anti-musical choreography, by which I mean that the action on stage clashed against the musical mood. Mejia does have a fine sense of theater, and I liked his neo-German Expressionist staging, especially in the costuming. Some of the action made me think (rather uncomfortably) that the choreographer had a series of striking tableau in mind, but not the steps to fill and link them. At the end, I remarked to my friend that I liked it better when they weren't dancing, and I still can't bring myself to retract that statement.

Russian National Ballet Theatre, 18 January 2011: Chopiniana/Romeo and Juliet

(I've seen about seven performances since I last posted. Will try to whittle at backlog. Nothing to do until TSFB next performs anyways.)

Russian National Ballet Theatre
Chopiniana/Romeo and Juliet
18 January 2011
Tryon Festival Theater, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
Orchestra Row R, Seat 6

Chopiniana
(lead couple: Marianna Tchemalina and Ruslan Mukhambetkaliev)

From what I saw of this program (mishaps - both weather and a fundamental inability to keep time), it was a rather politely danced program. It was academically sound but pallid. Where is the mystery? Mukhambetkaliev tried for bravura (in a ballet blanc?) and Tchemalina projected beauty. They danced well separately but together gave the impression that they were dancing two different ballets. The corp couldn't decide whether they were grabbing ears or chins as they indicated the necessary port de bras with their fingers.

Romeo and Juliet
music from the Tchaikovsky suite
choreographed by Elena Radchenko

Juliet: Ekaterina Egorova
Romeo: Dmitri Schemelinin

I couldn't bring myself to write an actual review, so here's what happened in my head during the performance, more or less.

(Tableau for the Capulets)
Juliet: Oh woe, oh arabesque en attitude, oh parents.

(Tableau for the Montagues)
Romeo: I'm too cool to have parents, just a posse.

lighting technicians: Let's play with the red colored gels!

(Scene opens upon the party at the Capulets)

Paris (Samat Abdrakhmanov): My hat is substantially bigger than my head.

(A bunch of poorly masked people burst in - Mercutio taunts everyone and is quickly found out. For some reason not made clear on stage, they are allowed to stay. General revelry ensues. Somewhere in here Juliet wanders onto the stage with her girlfriends, sees Romeo, falls in love very quickly. I think there was a love duet but I may have fallen asleep during it. Suddenly Tibault becomes angry. He seems a very volatile fellow. He and Mercutio fight. Predictably, Mercutio dies.)

Lady Capulet: I have taken off my fake curls and will now perform the Mad Scene from Giselle. Oh whiplash. Ow.

(Romeo finishes the job, looks confused but then appropriately devastated. Gives solo in front of the curtains that involves much bravura jumping. Suddenly realizes that it is not a good idea to linger and runs away Somewhere)

Scene 2:
(Romeo bursts into Juliet's room. Juliet greets him joyfully. They roll around on the floor. No, really, they Roll Around on the Floor.)

Parents Capulet: Oh good morning there, Paris will marry you!

Juliet: Um, okay. Oh, wait a minute. No. NO!

Parents Capulet: Death by drawing and quartering! Well, this is a family performance, so we'll just drag you around the floor for a while.

Juliet: Heave, Cry, Woe. (Parents stomp off stage, nearly treading on each other's hems in the process.)

(Suddenly a Robed Man appears behind a colored window, waves his arms and makes the cross several times)

me: Didn't anyone ever tell you not to take unidentified bottles from strange men?!

(Romeo wanders in again, sees Juliet prone on the floor, pointedly not rolling around this time.)

Him: (in the style of teenagers everywhere) OH NOES.

(Suddenly women wearing translucent curtains wander in en pointe. This wakes up Your Critic in a cloud of befuddlement. Apparently he is now reliving their very short Acquaintance. It was a very fondly remembered time with lots of lifts. They exeunt, pursued by no bears.)

Romeo: I fumble around my back for MY poison!

(He drinks and he dies. Juliet wakes up.)

Juliet: I'm alive!

(She makes a circuit around the stage before realizing that Romeo is prone directly behind where she had been sleeping.)

Juliet: (gasp) Romeo! You're not dead! (picks up an arm) You are!

Romeo: (FLOPS audibly on stage)

Your critic: (completely loses her composure into her elbow)

Juliet: Oh well. (stabs self and Dies)

(Your Critic manages not to kill herself on the performing center's steps afterwards and staggers home to write this Account of Events.)

Mark Morris Dance Group, 14 March 2009: Romeo and Juliet Lives, News at 11.

Romeo and Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare
Choreographed by Mark Morris
Performed by the Mark Morris Dance Group

14 March 2009
Krannert Center - Tryon Festival Theater
Orchestra Center, Row V, Seat 5 (last row, approximately center, on steep incline to stage)

I gave up my initial idea of adding yet more profundity to the subject of gender politics somewhere between the first and second scenes of Act I. What more can I say that others have not stated already? That women were cast Tybalt and Mercutio and added a predictable but curiously heterosexual slant to those characters (and to those interactions with their male peers)? That indeed the sexual politics of the adult world include a heavy element of violence; and of, in Mr Morris's words, women's ability to fight back (only) in context of their positions and roles?

Krannert does not have the best acoustics from the pit - the orchestra must sit very low and the sound (which logically follows location) emanates from a boxed opening before the stage, affecting the quality greatly. There were a few scary moments with the strings at first, but tensions were worked out as musicians dug deeper, both dramatically and chronologically, into the score. Prokofieff's restored score was a revelation. I heard it with some disbelief, not believing that such minor changes could have wrought so much. There is a lushness and delicacy of timbre and tone that was missing previously, and it seems to have become more thematically varied. I no longer felt as if the various leitmotifs directed the brass to relentlessly pound my ears into submission.

The New York Times review disliked the production with more energy than I was capable of last night. I will not repeat Mr Macaulay's exact words on the needless repetitions of steps except to say that I share them, and that I began to cringe halfway through the second scene as the hitch steps and the endless low arabesques detracted my attention from the action with their predictability and their regular devotion to the melody. The choreography is not not musical, but it is wedded to an annoyingly regular melodic sense that positions the steps within the music instead of through the musical phrases.

Morris's Verona is a sensual and interactive world. Dancers form relationships with each other, indulge in games, clumsy plots, and occasionally transparent enmities that are covered over with cartoonish displays of friendship when the Prince (or perhaps the parent) approaches. Tho' brutal in the machinations of men and women (see Lady Capulet's introduction of Juliet to Paris by a shove, also Paris's manhandling of Juliet during the banquet), it is one in which the men and women seem to have apparent sexual lives without relegating it to the realm of MacMillan's courtesans or (even worse, perhaps) yet another psychological drama involving Siegfried's tutor.

Maile Okamura was a superb Juliet. Her restraint made Juliet poignant, deeply unhappy and in search of something more equal and tender than what Paris, merely a rich thug in this production, was capable of. It was clear in her duet with lady Capulet that she was not a fully grown woman. Where as Lady Capulet, all heavy skirts and sombre hair, sank into the steps as if mired in the concerns and power games of that fair city, Juliet in white floated above them, delicately sculpting the air as if to delineate a higher realm in which she still dwells. However, even in her independence there is some level of resignation - the poison holds no perverse fascination for her, she takes it as is her duty.

Romeo, whose name I will recall if only I had my program - where oh where is it, was a peculiarly gentle man, his bearing often reminding me of Dear Ashley Wilkes (for good or ill) off in world parallel to this one. However, as mystically and ecstatically connected as the young people were at first meeting, neither provided sufficient dramatic motivation to the audience for taking action in order to be together; instead, they were pulled and pushed in various directions, subordinate to the Needs of the Plot instead of the Dictates of Emotion.

These dramatic inconsistencies proliferate throughout the production. Mercutio is still a jester, a mad cap prankster whose character is fleshed out during a pantomime sequence with Juliet's nurse, but the dramatic development comes too late, as Romeo is instead convinced to go to the Capulets' party by unknown means. Rosaline was included in this production and explicitly rejected Romeo at the party for sake of emotional closure. However, was this rejection out of duty? Sheer dislike? I could not read it clearly and she faded into the general obscurity in the company of other townsfolk soon after. However, as this scene came at the expense of establishing Mercutio's relationship and importance to Romeo, the poignance of Mercutio's death is undercut by his portrayal as simply the Jester and I could have done without it.

Two other relationships were of special note: that of Friar Laurence, now a much younger and vital man, with Romeo, and that of Nurse and her servant. We see Romeo glancing sharply at Friar Laurence during the establishing scene - the relationship is never explained. Was it a warning from the Friar, a warning to Romeo over his impetuous emotions? Had the Friar identified his likely instrument for reconciling the ancient feud? We are never told. Instead the Friar resumes his wiseman role before briefly transforms into a dancing role in Act III, illustrating a non-point to Juliet for reasons that are dramatically obscure. Second, the Nurse oscillated between moments of intense identification and blankness with Juliet. Was her servant (the man in the green cap she dances with) simply a servant? It seemed like her sympathy toward Juliet could have been motivated by a similarly confounding relationship with man (perhaps that servant) but it is never entirely made clear. Again, her rejection of Juliet is not dramatically consistent in Act IV - there is no inner struggle, the Nurse does so because the plot demands it but there are no hidden feelings nor conflicts. One other outstanding character had no set choreography: he is simply the Prince's flag-bearer. Perhaps even more self-important than the man he serves, he paces about the town with a measure of self-important insouciance that even his master could not (or would not) match.

Macaulay discussed several plot inconsistencies, so I will skip over those (I share most of his objections) and expand yet again on my perception of Morris's logic of setting dance to music. The choreography was most effective for pairs and single dancers - the dance of the townsfolk with their stylistic poses and shuffle steps was repetitive and in many cases made me cringe. What was it meant to do? However, there was also great gentleness in moments, particularly by the women with their soft port de bras, lifting the air with their arms and torsos, but in most others I was distracted by the preponderance of steps. There were steps in isolation, repeated sequences, mirrored sequences, sequences repeated to other characters. In addition, at moments there seemed to have been isolated quotes from the MacMillan choreography. Regardless, all in all it was an overload of choreography in places that really did not need it, almost as if the choreographer did not fully trust the music to carry the moment.