Savoring the glories of a timeless all-Balanchine program with NYCB

In her substantial Balanchine biography, Jennifer Homans regales us with an encounter between the choreographer and a delegation from the Soviet Ministry of Culture during New York City Ballet’s epic 1962 tour of the USSR: “When [they] asked him, please, to cancel Episodes because ‘the people’ couldn't understand it, he responded succinctly with a Russian equivalent of ‘F**k you’ and walked out.” Russian audiences got it, and loved it.

Episodes, a stark work set to Webern’s pointillistic orchestral pieces, is back this fall and the people of New York greeted its thorny abstractions on opening night with joy. City Ballet fielded the big guns, starting with the mysterious, commanding Isabella LaFreniere and Olympian Chun Wai Chan. The ensemble made like flight deck personnel guiding fighter jets in for an arrested landing on an aircraft carrier. All coolly dispatched a cryptic semaphore, abrupt weight shifts, splayed-open shapes that suddenly turned inward, brittle extensions embellished with flexed feet, jutting hips and tilted heads. The classically disciplined geometries of a stately pavane flickered on and off like a strobe effect. LaFreniere’s intense yet faraway gaze suggested a preoccupation with cosmic issues. Chan slipped his arms under hers dispassionately like scaffolding.

The score alternately sang, squeaked, gleamed, whispered and blared, splintered by shards of silence. In ‘Five Pieces,’ Ashley Hod and Alec Knight had a tremendous outing, wanderers in Stygian shades skittering off-balance in tight spotlights. They flung their arms as if trying to get rid of incriminating evidence, their predicament encapsulated in the way she kept one foot flexed and pinned against the other ankle while he promenaded her around on pointe.

In ‘Concerto’, Alexa Maxwell disassembled the ‘Kitri jump’ and rebuilt it in myriad configurations à terre and en l’air, back arched and head flung back toward her raised foot. Taylor Stanley tried to keep her grounded, maneuvering her standing leg into various ungainly positions with his hands.

Serene resolution was found in Webern’s shimmering orchestration of Bach’s Ricercar a 6 from “The Musical Offering.” Mira Nadon and Adrian Danchig-Waring were haunting, ethereal presences backed by an ensemble impenetrably semaphoring in the background, sinking to their knees occasionally as if in church, fingertips to shoulders evoking broken wings.

Episodes sandwiched between Square Dance and Western Symphony, all 1950s vintage, underscored Balanchine’s embrace of a mythic idea of America. The beating heart of the program, though, remains the Russian imperial style, delivered at the speed of a 1957 Corvette. Square Dance was driven by dynamo Megan Fairchild, in her farewell season, still radiating delight in every audacious sequence of hops on pointe, consecutive pirouettes in retiré, and springy gargouillades, her feet whipping up tiny eddies in midair.

Not everyone kept up with her. The conductor fell behind when she came barreling out of the wings into a whirlwind of turning jumps. Her sidekicks, who in this ballet had to do everything she did, did not all uniformly fire their trailing leg in gargouillade, which diminished the energy of the moment.

Her partner, Anthony Huxley, was in fine form after a surgery. He delivered an achingly beautiful, brooding solo. Their pas de deux seemed an expression of compassion or grief rather than romance, as Fairchild repeatedly reached out to enfold an invisible being in her embrace while he steadied her.

Western Symphony is always a hoot, from the sparkly cowboy and showgirl costumes to the anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-faster-higher-and-with-beats vibe. Yet Ashley Laracey, who is known for her dramatic flair, inexplicably brought the delicate mien of a sylph to the role of a dancehall entertainer. Jules Mabie, debuting alongside her, was swallowed up by his hat but kicked up his heels with panache. Aarón Sanz pined goofily for Indiana Woodward who bourréed in from the wings with a hilariously blank look on her face, like a character who has found herself in the wrong ballet. Daringly, she eschewed the usual Italian fouettés in favor of the trickier inside whipping turns. The statuesque and glamorous Emily Kikta and the delightfully cocky Roman Mejia kicked the enterprise up a notch. Her single-double fouetté turns were bulletproof, matched by his series of pirouettes into double tours.

The Soviets in 1962 apparently approved of Western Symphony for its ‘folk’ appeal. Never mind that the image of the heroic cowboy and big-hearted saloon girl was largely manufactured on a Hollywood set. It was abstract ballet that worried them, the narrative-free form that could contain coded messages capable of bringing down the regime.

Today, American arts are being policed by an insecure administration which is vowing, in the words of the newly appointed overlord of dance programming at the opera house in Washington, DC, to “end the dominance of leftist ideologies in the arts and return to classical ballet’s purity and timeless beauty.” Does he know about the seditious messages encoded in Episodes and Square Dance?