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Special Preview Section Lincoln
Center Festival
Ashton, 2001 by Alexandra Tomalonis The Kennedy Center celebrated the Millennium by celebrating its greatest artists, and it dedicated the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 seasons to presenting the works of those artists. In ballet, the Center designated Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Antony Tudor as the century’s greatest choreographers. Robbins was represented with an evening of ballets danced by the San Francisco Ballet; Antony Tudor (underrepresented through no fault of the Kennedy Center’s; his works are barely in repertory today) by American Ballet Theatre’s Jardin Aux Lilas. There was a very successful, and exciting, two-week celebration of Balanchine, where his works were danced by a collection of companies: Joffrey Ballet, Miami City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet and the nascent Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Companies shared programs and brought whatever Balanchine happened to be in repertory that season, and the result was a fascinating look at how different Balanchine can look while still remaining obviously Balanchine—and how alive the ballets and their aesthetic is. Ashton was the last of the Center’s Millennium Choreographers. The Royal Ballet brought two all-Ashton programs to the Kennedy Center in May. (Mary Cargill reviewed the company’s excellent revival of La Fille Mal Gardee in detail in the Summer issue of DanceView; this article will concentrate on the triple bill.) The week also became the unofficial farewell of one of the greatest and most loved Ashton dancers—Sir Anthony Dowell, who stepped down from his position as artistic director at the end of this season, and who danced Soupirs, a slight pas de deux that Ashton had fashioned for Dowell and his long-time partner, Antoinette Sibley, with the idea that they could dance it forever. While the week was not a sell-out, it generated an immense amount of excitement within the ballet world. Vast chunks of New York—fans as well as critics—came down for it, and there were people in the audience one recognized from seasons past who hadn’t been seen at Kennedy Center ballet programs in years. It’s difficult to make a program out of Ashton ballets. His career doesn’t fit the mold. He spent his life creating for a company that saw itself partly as a successor to the Diaghilev tradition, partly as wanting to recreate Russian Imperial splendor with the full-length Tchaikovsky ballets—and he created ballets to fit that repertory, pieces that suited this time, these dancers, the need to fill an empty slot in a program. His major works, though, seem made because he had to make this or that particular ballet. These work best as centerpieces, and it’s hard to make an evening out of three middle ballets. The mixed bill danced in Washington was Les Rendezvous, Symphonic Variations, and Marguerite and Armand. All three ballets looked cared for and well-rehearsed. Marguerite and Armand was the season’s curiosity. Made for Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev in the white heat of their early partnership, it is often denigrated—merely a vehicle, certainly not one of Ashton’s greatest works, etc. I disagree that it’s a trivial ballet. It seems to be viewed, in these post-MacMillan times, as a mini-Manon, a truncated full-length ballet, and one that doesn’t tell the story in a linear fashion. But it wasn’t Ashton’s intention to try to retell a tale better told in novel form. As do many of Ashton’s narrative ballets, Marguerite and Armand expands the traditional structure while retaining an unerring sense of what ballet can and cannot do. There is no filler (the brief scene where Marguerite flirts with her past and potential lovers was once not as static as it is in the current revival). The story exists only in the mind of the dying Marguerite, and is told in flashbacks as she remembers the most significant moments of her life with Armand—their meeting, their happiness together in the country, the intrusion of Armand’s father into this happiness, and the final public humiliation. The ending—where the two are reconciled and she dies in his arms—may well be her fantasy; in the book, she dies before he can return home to her. When Fonteyn and Nureyev danced it, there was a meeting, an explosion, of two people from different worlds, both as characters and as dancers. She, calmer, more mature (not really older, in the novel); he, living life in a rush, the personification of romantic youth. What I remember most about Nureyev (I saw only the final performances of this ballet) is his power and his speed. He never entered a scene. He rushed on, as though trying to outrace fate. In the current production, both Armands (Nicholas LeRiche, on loan from Paris Opera Ballet, and Jonathan Cope) took the solos at half-speed, a puzzling and disturbing change. Missing, too, was Nureyev’s passion—neither man mated well with Sylvie Guillem, today’s Marguerite, and an almost anti-Fonteyn. Guillem was very touching, but, as several writers have pointed out, not in Fonteyn’s league as a dance actress. The original intention was that Marguerite and Armand would be a repertory piece; Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable were the second cast. The ballet became so identified with Fonteyn and Nureyev that no one else ever performed it—reportedly this was Ashton’s wish—although alternate casts may have assured the ballet’s life as an important part of the company’s repertory. It would then have been seen less as a star vehicle and more as a ballet, and forty years of alternate interpretations would have enriched the work as well. What is left is a skeleton with a few nice moments, but the ballet’s tautness, as well as its romanticism and poetry, are gone. Les Rendezvous, that little trifle from the ’30s, has proved surprisingly durable, although it’s difficult for contemporary dancers to dance it naturally. Ashton’s classicism has become a foreign language to today’s Royal dancers. Some master it rather well, but even with the best dancers (for me, Jaimie Tapper in the pas de trois and Johan Kobborg in the pas de deux) have a visible accent. Films of Royal dancers of yore show that they danced with what can only be described as a swoosh. One of his favorite movements—sweeping the arms behind the body, often down to the floor, then up again—looks thrilling when done in one fast, joyous motion. When there’s a pause, or the dancer has to make a point that he’s holding his arm on his shoulder, or touching it to the ground, that effect is lost. When not danced smoothly, Ashton’s arm positions can seem quirky to the point of irritation. They certainly did when Gillian Revie danced the ballerina role. Miyako Yoshida’s soft arms were much more in the style, but her dancing overall lacked dazzle. Kobborg, who would have been the brilliant demicaractere dancer of his generation had he stayed in his native Denmark, mastered the steps and danced very cleanly. I thought Kobborg the most Ashtonian of the principals, though even he was a bit overcareful. Despite this, and despite Andrew Ward’s too-cute designs (polka dots, party hats, boaters, striped blazers, all in neon sherbet colors) the ballet still holds the stage in both its steps and structure, and it was lovely to see it again. Symphonic Variations, one of Ashton’s greatest works, got two bumpy, and one probably-as-good-as-you-can-expect-today performance. The ballet is so difficult: deceptively simple, the dancing skimming along the music, its technical terrors hidden beneath an implacable, angelic calm. The final moments of the ballet, when the dancers seem at first happy, then quietly triumphant, has the same effect as seeing the sun slowly emerging from behind clouds . At times, the work seemed too difficult for the dancers, and neither cast seen here quite jelled as an ensemble. Two of the ballerina roles were danced by the company’s youngest and newest female stars—whiz kid Tamara Rojo, the quieter (and potentially more interesting) Alina Cojacaru—neither of whom made as much of an impression in this ballet as they might have elsewhere. Cojacaru—lyrical, liquid poetry, one of nature’s Giselles—is only nineteen and as yet lacks the authority for the central ballerina role. It was Sarah Wildor’s clear and placid dancing, and acute musicality, that made the work look most like itself. (Unfortunately for Ashton, Wildor, considered by many to be the Royal’s premiere Ashton ballerina, resigned from the company several weeks ago.) Symphonic Variations, when new in 1946, was a revolutionary ballet in its purity and in its simplicity. It came right after the War, and must have seemed like an odd fish in the age of Massine and after-Massine character ballets and the early attempts to bring realism to ballet. The other new work the company’s first season back in Covent Garden was Robert Helpmann’s Adam Zero, a dance theater piece about death, destruction, and an uncertain future—the disintegration of man, as one biographer described it. While Adam Zero looked at the complexities of modern life, Symphonic Variations was an affirmation of classicism, of the civilization that had prevailed over darkness, of the need to challenge the limits of man’s imagination and the possibilities of the human spirit, not depict what was going on in a neighbor’s living room, or a dark alley around the corner. There were several neoclassical ballets created in the years after the War: another masterpiece, George Balanchine’s Symphony in C, and two minor works, Harald Lander’s Etudes and Serge Lifar’s Suite en blanc. They signalled the re-emergence of neoclassicism. In New York, the strain took root. But in Europe, realism was often preferred to classicism and abstraction. “Serious content” was defined as dealing with contemporary issues, works that show us as we are. Works that celebrated beauty (a dirty word for the past several decades) or that show us as we can be were thought trivial. In a picture book to celebrate the then-Sadler’s Wells first season in the newly renovated Covent Carden (by Merlyn Severn), there are nineteen photos of Adam Zero (and twelve of another Helpmann piece, Miracle in the Gorbals) and only four of Symphonic Variations. Significantly, none of these are the serene images that have since become identified with the ballet, but action shots, as though an eye trained to see drama only finds a jump, or a deep backbend, interesting. Helpmann (an Australian) had been the dominant choreographer while Ashton served in the armed forces; he reclaimed his post upon his return. Ashton’s vision of classical ballet was synonymous with the way the Royal Ballet danced until he retired, very reluctantly, in 1970. Now, thirty years later, one might say that Adam Zero won. This isn’t the place to chronicle the diminution of the Royal Ballet as a great national company, although it’s worth mentioning in passing that only three of the principals who danced in Washington were British. The problems started more than a decade before Dowell’s directorship. In the first season under the directorship of Ross Stretton—a dancer completely outside of the company’s traditions, who came here by way of the Australian and Joffrey Ballets, and American Ballet Theatre—Ashton is represented only by Marguerite and Armand. The dancers won’t have to worry about mastering his now-foreign style. Ashton is as integral to the Royal Ballet as George Balanchine to the New York City Ballet, or Petipa to the Kirov, or Bournonville to the Danes. He gave the company its language, its way of moving, its own, contemporary approach to the 19th century classics that became the company’s bread and butter. It would seem that someone in Britain would understand that there’s as great a national obligation to keep his works alive as there is to do the same for Britten’s music or Gainsborough’s paintings. Ballets can only stay alive if they are danced. They cannot be put in cold storage and dragged out for a festival or other special occasion. Ashton ballets seemed to be exciting British audiences again last season, as younger viewers were introduced to his work and, seeing several ballets in a single season, began to become familiar with that repertory. Ashton could well become the company’s calling card. As the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Celebration showed us, at the end of a century, it’s about the choreography. Originally
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