New York City Ballet.

NEW YORK CITY BALLET NEW YORK STATE THEATHER, NYC April 27-June 27, 2004

This past spring marked the second half of NYCB's yearlong celebration of the Balanchine Centennial. The two-month span included four premieres: two by Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins, one by Resident Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, and one by Russian choreographer Boris Eifman. An array of guest appearances also studded the season. It concluded with a full evening by the Georgian State Dance Company. And on May 18 conductor Hugo Fiorato marked fifty-six years with the organization and became conductor emeritus.

Artists from companies to which Balanchine had given works cast an additional perspective on the NYCB dancers, especially the men. Stanley Williams, whose teaching helped them develop individual presence, died in 1997, long enough ago for his influence to have faded. Who is now the principal purveyor of style? When American Ballet Theatre's Angel Corella guested in Balanchine's Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3, his appetite for the steps eclipsed that of City Ballet's men. The same was true, to a lesser degree, of San Francisco Ballet's Gonzalo Garcia in Ballo della Regina. Of course, since the season consisted of sixty-four ballets, forty-two of them by Balanchine, the NYCB artists had plenty to cope with, and texture often gave way to speed.

The women tend to have more individuality than the men, yet they sometimes don't seem to think like ballerinas, with the sense of personal identity that magnetizes all audience. They might have absorbed some of this from Boston Ballet's Lorna Feijoo in Ballo della Regina, and from the Royal Danish Ballet's Caroline Cavallo they could have gamed a more serene port de bras.

For quite some time, Wendy Whelan has been subjected to unvaried casting. Because she has an incredibly flexible instrument, many of the serpentine roles have come her way. This season found her venturing into more poetic realms like La Sonnambula and Liebeslieder Walzer, in which the true ballerina blossomed.

A steady intelligence infuses the artistry of Kyra Nichols. How much the younger dancers can learn from her about musical phrasing in everything she performs.

In his new Shambards, Christopher Wheeldon sets up a tempestuous rebellion against the dream world of La Sylphide and its twentieth-century evocation in Scotch Symphony. Using James MacMillan's Piano Concerto No. 2, conducted by the composer, Shambards evoked not the world of glens and verdant valleys but of crags and fells.

Shadowed by its Scottish overtones, the journey, initially led by Cada Korbes and Ask la Cour, began austerely. Miranda Weese and lock Soto were then imprisioned within the confines of an eerie waltz. He manipulated her like an unloved doll and at one point calmly clutched her ankle and dragged her along the floor. They later returned to lead the finale, which they shared with two of the company's most interesting younger women, Ashley Bouder and Megan Fairchild, impressively partnered by Daniel Ulbricht and Joaquin De Luz. Wheeldon's mind appears to teem with choreographic ideas with which to challenge his dancers. He is also not afraid to tackle a bellicose poem like Edwin Muir's "Scotland 1941" to plumb the ferric darkness of his theme.

In 1998 Peter Martins drew upon the New Testament for his Stabat Mater; this time he turned to the Old Testament for his interpretation of Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. Its atmosphere was more ceremonial than Stabat Mater's, but to diminished effect.

The sixty-member Juilliard Choral Union joined the dancers upstage in an altarpiece from which the dancers descended. Headed by Korbes and Amar Ramasar on one occasion and Dena Abergel with Henry Seth on another, the corps de ballet's air of nobility verged on the static. Of the four featured dancers, Ramasar seemed the most confident.

Martins' second offering, Eros Piano, had music by his much-used composer, John Adams. In it Alexandra Ansanelli and Ashley Laracey, stylishly partnered by Nikolaj Hubbe, shared a cool idyll.

Boris Eifman's style could not be more distant from Balanchine's: He depends on dramatic imagery while Balanchine's vision is kinetic, with music coursing through its veins. In his Musagete, intended as a tribute to the maestro, Eifman borrowed key images from various Balanchine works, for example, the salute and the falling dancer in Serenade and the fingertips touching in Apollo. To these he affixed a purple tinged version of Balanchine's life. Robert Tewsley as the Balanchine figure, rolling about the forbidding environment on a wheeled chair, valiantly held together the action. However, his relationships with three women (Ansanelli, Whelan, and Maria Kowroski) took on a tabloid urgency as they performed with conviction but seemed more like victims than loves.

Solo performing reveals much about a dancer, but the detailed give-and-take of a duet can be even more telling. One of the season's surprises was a forceful performance of Balanchine's Variations Pour une Porte et un Soupir, re-created for Maria Kowroski and Tom Gold. The Pierre Henry score, with its (leaks and cracks, and the ever-mounting tension between a mesmerized male and a spidery female were rather tepidly received at the 1978 premeire. Now it's clear that the choreographer had simply been ahead of his time.

Other dancers who beautifully complemented each other were Rachel Rutherford and Jenifer Ringer in Dances at a Gathering; Fairchild and the spunky De Luz in Symphony in C; Boudel and Gold in Valse Fantaisie. And in Duo Concertant Peter Boal, one of the company's most generous partners, elicited a nascent rapture from Yvonne Borree that rarely turned up in her other portrayals.

The Georgian State Dance Company's repertoire stresses the far-apart worlds of males and females, sometimes with humor, most of the time with boldness. Because Balanchine was born in Georgia, this sanguine ensemble of thirty-nine dancers was invited to conclude the NYCB season.

Founded by Iliko Sukhishvili and Nino Ramishvili, the company is directed by their son Tengiz. Much care was given to the knifelike formality of their groupings, and the pacing of the generous program was relentless. The men are endlessly daring as they soar into the air and land on their knees, while the women calmly glide on demipointe. These handsome people in their sumptuous costumes constituted a joyous addendum to the season.

Their program was preceded by the presentation of the Shota Rustaveli State Prize of Georgia to Peter Martins on Balanchine's behalf. Perhaps the evening should have closed with New York's Handel Medallion being given to these intrepid dancers, and another to the NYCB dancers, who are equally intrepid in their own way.

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