Cincinnati Ballet.

Aronoff Center Cincinnati, Ohio October 18, 2002

It was three celebrations for the price of one. First, this gala by Victoria Morgan's Cincinnati Ballet celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the company's founding, but as bonuses, it also honored 88-year-old British dancer, ballet master, and general man-about-dance Frederic Franklin, a former artistic director of the Cincinnati troupe (see Attitudes, page 142). Finally, it paid homage to the Ballet Russe with the exhibit "The Golden Age of Costume and Set Design for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo: 1938-1944," presented by the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Morgan took the opportunity to make the performance a Ballet Russe showcase. Nevertheless, the program was not entirely a backward glance, for it started with a subtly delicate and suavely danced world premiere, Reverence, set to Erik Satie music and choreographed by former San Francisco Ballet principal Julia Adam. It also included a fairly conventional, acrobatically inclined duet, using Richard Rodgers music (who isn't in this centenary year?), choreographed by another San Franciscan, Val Caniparoli, now resident choreographer of Tulsa Ballet. But then we got to the real business of the night, which was Franklin's take on the Ballet Russe, of which he was the iconic ballet master for many years. This part opened with a revival, sponsored by the Balanchine Foundation for an authenticating video recording, of Night Shadow (La Sonnambula), by Franklin and Bart Cook. Choreographically, the main interest was perhaps the restoration of the lost Hoop Dance (based on Bellini's famous "Mira, o Norma") for four girls, but the performance, led by Kristi Capps as the Sleepwalker, Dimitri Trubchanov as the doomed Poet, and Tricia Sundbeck as the Coquette, was perhaps more solid than inspired.

Far more rewarding from the audience viewpoint was Franklin's reproduction of the famous duet from Gaite Parisienne, made famous by him and his partner, the legendary Alexandra Danilova (and danced here by Stephanie Roig and Zack Grubbs). But the gems of the evening, which lured balletgoers from all over the world to the event, were apparently lost fragments from Leonide Massine's The Seventh Symphony, to the Beethoven music, and, most tantalizing of all, a solo and duet from Frederick Ashton's Devil's Holiday, a work scheduled to have had its world premiere in London in the aborted September 1939 Ballet Russe London season, cancelled by the declaration of war on September 3, and unseen since 1942. Many of the original Eugene Berman designs were preserved in the museum collection.

Massine's The Seventh Symphony was one of his allegorical symphonic ballets, like the earlier Les Presages and Choreartium; this one suggested, no less, the creation and destruction of the world. The fragment, restored by Cincinnati Ballet Mistress Johanna Bernstein Wilt from a movie, and coached by Franklin, is an ensemble piece, cleverly matching the moods and patterns of Beethoven's familiar scherzo and trio.

THE REAL TREASURE, HOWEVER, WAS FRANKLIN'S UNEARTHING THE PIECES--NEVER EVEN SEEN BY ASHTON HIMSELF--OF DEVIL'S HOLIDAY. Despite the few fugitive videos of the ballet, shown before the excerpts, no one can say whether Franklin is right or wrong in his reconstruction; even though his kinetic memory is absolutely remarkable, he admitted that he hadn't seen the piece, because he was dancing in it. Beautifully danced by Sundbeck and Trubchanov, with the solo vibrantly given by Andrey Kasatsky, the excerpts certainly looked and felt authentic. One wishes that Franklin, perhaps with Marc Platt, who originally danced the Devil, could find some way of reconstructing the complete ballet.