NYCB's Andrew Veyette passes the torch with grace

On Sunday afternoon, longtime New York City Ballet principal Andrew Veyette retired. It was a beautiful farewell that showcased Veyette’s range and also his modesty. At the end of the afternoon, some of the company members were openly crying during the curtain calls.

Veyette’s career definitely had distinct seasons. When I first started attending NYCB, Veyette was in the summer of his career. He was versatile and explosive, so he danced everything from the Eddie Villella role in Rubies to the tapping hoofer in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. He had great elevation in his jumps and was an excellent turner.

Then one night in 2015, he came down hard on a landing in Donizetti Variations and hobbled offstage. His partner Ashley Bouder improvised the rest of the ballet while nervously glancing into the wings. Veyette was out for months, and when he came back, he entered what might be called the winter of his career. There were very good performances in those years, but it was no longer a sure thing.

The pandemic interrupted the dance world for nearly two years, and when Veyette came back, he was miraculously in the Indian summer of his career. There were adjustments: he dropped many of his old bravura roles like Oberon in Midsummer’s Night Dream or the male lead in Theme and Variations. He took on new roles that required his expert partnering and wry sense of humor. Ivan in Firebird was one late-career Veyette triumph, another was Merce Cunningham’s Summerspace. His dancing had joy again. He looked like he was having fun.

So for his farewell, he looked like a dancer who still had plenty of fuel in the tank. He started the afternoon off in one of the loveliest retirement choices: as a corps member in the third movement of Glass Pieces. He ran on stage with the rest of the men, and the audience roared. It is rare to see a dancer retire with this sort of love letter to the lower-ranked company members. Veyette explained in a NYT interview, “I wanted to acknowledge that I didn’t just see my soloist and principal rep as what I considered success in this company.” Maybe that attitude was infectious, because the corps members in Glass Pieces danced with so much energy and precision.

Lynne-Taylor Corbett’s Chiaroscuro was a good showcase for the company’s more mature dancers. It’s a 15 minute piece set to some lovely baroque music by Francesco Geminiani. The dark lighting and somewhat moody couplings showed off the talents of Veyette's incredible partnering skills. He lifted Ashley Laracey up like silk. Daniel Ulbricht was jumping with the energy of a dancer half his age.

“Cool” from West Side Story was the one rather odd addition to the program. It showed off Veyette’s decent singing voice, but the excerpt was too brief and didn’t give much of a feel for Robbins’ choreography. The greatest part of the “Cool” excerpt was seeing principals Unity Phelan and Indiana Woodward and soloist Alexa Maxwell step back into their corps roles. It was a gesture that spoke volumes about the regard for Veyette within the company.

There was a little interlude in Ballo della Regina. Emma Von Enck and David Gabriel gave the kind of sparkling performance that should be the norm in this ballet but rarely is. Von Enck and Gabriel both have high jumps, incredible speed, and a lightness and breeziness to their dancing. Von Enck nailed those difficult pirouettes to arabesque and manège of jumps on pointe that I’ve seen the most sturdy technicians come to grief with. Gabriel is already dancing like a principal. There is something almost Bournonville-ian about the way he articulates each beat in a diagonal of jumps.

The final piece on the program (Stars and Stripes) was dimmed somewhat when Veyette suffered a last minute calf injury and the solo variations had to be scrapped from the Liberty Bell/El Capitan pas de deux. Nonetheless, he and Ashley Hod did dance the pas de deux adagio with humor and grace. In the thrilling finale (one of those Balanchine finales where the entire stage floods with people, all dancing at the speed of light), Veyette was unable to dance his part and he shrugged his shoulders and watched the rest of the company bring it home.

And that was, unironically, the best part of the performance. He was beaming, face filled with love and pride, as he watched the rest of the company dance on without him. It was a gracious senior dancer passing the torch.