If the instruction were to program joy – a commodity in short supply at the moment – Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux sandwiched between his Divertimento No. 15 and Wheeldon’s Carnival of the Animals could not be beat. All yielded a trove of incandescent episodes, dazzlingly delivered on opening night.
“I’m here for the fish dives,” someone behind me whispered candidly as Tiler Peck wafted onstage in a swirl of apricot chiffon. She extended her hand coolly to Roman Mejia as if challenging him to keep up with her. (They are engaged IRL so it was all a delightful act). The ballerina’s mad dashes into a heart-stopping fish dive mark the end of Tschai Pas’ nine-minute bravura display but the beating heart of the ballet is an exquisite series of slow partnered revolutions, ornamented with a sweeping leg into an off-kilter spin and a languid tangle of arms overhead. This slowly resolves into the luxurious embrace of a fish dive before the pair take turns showing off their power moves. Peck didn’t float on air, she commanded it with the precision of a jet fighter pilot, zooming off into the wings at one point in scorching piqué turns. Mejia got an impressive volume of air in his jumps and nailed his grands pirouettes but did not display the ease and flair of The Royal Ballet’s Reece Clarke, who has given a dashing account of the role.
Virtuosity of a different stripe – unflashy, but just as fleet and gorgeous – marked the steady rush of solos and duets in Divertimento No.15. Cheerily hinting at the courtly manners of a bygone era, the piece is peppered with gracious révérences but also with Balanchine’s trademark hip thrusts – as if time had collapsed between the 18th and mid-20th centuries and sassy powder-puff tutus were the rage.
Opening night soloists went from strength to strength, starting with Andres Zuniga’s emphatic beaten jumps and Charlie Klesa’s impeccable lines and airy jumps. Unity Phelan found time to luxuriate in velvety stretched-out lines. Emilie Gerrity conquered a fiendish set of relevés, including backward-traveling ones, with lush arms and a disarming smile. Chun Wai Chan exuded power in his clean, brilliant jumps, proving that one can operate at Balanchinean speeds and still make time for juicy demi-plié on landing. First among equals, petite powerhouse Megan Fairchild was so excited to show us her skittering, floor-skimming footwork and turns traveling down the freeway at dangerous speeds yet marvelously precise.
A slew of duets proved similarly enthralling. Zuniga seemed besotted with Erica Pereira who danced with an entrancing look of mystery in her eyes. Klesa and Sara Adams made an elegant, soulful match as they pushed their way through an invisible thicket. Chan and Phelan negotiated tricky promenades, airy lifts and lush backbends with style and urgency. The corps formations however were sometimes ragged, their execution tense. Untidy hands with floppy wrists and splayed fingers further distracted from Balanchine’s crystalline geometries.
The transcendent item on the agenda was Wheeldon’s enchanting and endlessly inventive Carnival. Designed by the brilliant Jon Morrell and set to the immortal Saint-Saëns score, the sophisticated piece does not pander to kids.
It transpired that the animals of New York’s Natural History Museum have peopled the dreams of young schoolboy Oliver Pendleton Percy III, invented by actor-writer John Lithgow and danced by the cheeky and adorable School of American Ballet student Hannon Hatchett. The animals morph into people from Oliver’s life: his schoolteacher the Lion, his male classmates the wrestling Jackasses, and so on, etched wittily in classical dance terms. Chun Wai Chan’s splendid double tours en l'air substituted for a lion’s roar. Grace Scheffel and Rommie Tomasini made a hilarious pair of aging can-can dancers or ‘turtles,’ poking their heads around umbrellas and stretching their creaky legs to the strains of Saint-Saëns’ take on Offenbach’s ‘Can-can’ played at a funereal tempo. Unity Phelan as a bookish bouncing ‘kangaroo’ librarian daydreamed of becoming a mermaid and found herself adrift in a watery Ziegfeld Follies-meets-La-Sonnambula scenario.
As the ‘cuckoo’, Oliver’s mother (the sublime Ashley Laracey) imagined the cruel fate that has befallen her son, who’s been missing for two hours, while her husband (Andrew Veyette) tried to reassure her in what is surely one of Wheeldon’s finest duets, skirting the edges of the comic and surreal. And before the rousing final tableau, the ‘swan’, embodied by Sara Mearns as a ballerina of a certain age, wistful and dignified in a chic black dress, her back turned to us, her muscle memory engaging her eloquent shoulders and arms.
Lithgow was a spirited narrator onstage, his original verse clever but not essential to the ballet. A few key lines could have been projected onto the proscenium to mark the scene changes, for Wheeldon’s marvelous invention stands on its own.
