gems of abstraction
by Douglas Messerli
George Balanchine Jewels, performed by
the Mariinsky Ballet / Glorya Kafman Dance at the Music Center, Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion / the performance I attended with Diana Bing Daves McLaughlin
was on October 24, 2019
Last night I attended a performance in Los
Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of George Balanchine’s iconic, three-part
ballet, Jewels, performed by the renowned St. Petersburg, Russian
company Mariinsky Ballet along with their own
orchestra conducted by the august Alexey Repnikov. This is the same company, if
you recall, which gave us Ggalina Ulanova, Alexei Yermolayev, Marina Semenov,
Vakhtang Chabukiani, along with, much later, Irina Kolpakova, Natalia Makarova,
Alla Osipenko, Irina Gensler, Alla Sizova, Rudolf Nureyev,
Mikhail Baryshnikov, and numerous others.
Created in 1967 by George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet—who
himself began his career in St. Petersburg and worked at the Mariinsky until
emigrating in 1924—Jewels is one of Balanchine’s most popular works,
with good reason.
If
it’s a simple device to break these rather un-related dances through three
lovely “gems,” emeralds, rubies, and diamonds, Balanchine subverted into his
terpsichorean text another connecting link, the three major sources of his own
dancing experiences.
Emeralds,
the first of the three, refers through its musical scores of Gabriel Fauré’s Pelléas
et Mélisande and Shylock, to the choreographer’s early experiences
with French dance, where, in this case, the “emeralds” dance in light green
longer tutus, spinning through the forests, with principals Daria Ionova and
Maxim Zyuzin (in the evening in which I saw this), creating such lovely pas
de deuxs that you might almost cry for their balletic balance. And then, of
course, there are so many “emeralds” spinning nearly out of control, their
tutus flying, that you almost begin to perceive the preciousness of the glimmer
of the green jewels they represent.
I
loved this piece, but it was in Rubies that, for me, things began to
come alive. All in red and white, dancing to Igor Stravinksy’s Capriccio for
Piano and Orchestra, the stage stuttered and stirred itself alive with the
struts and playful, jazz-like stretches of dancers Kimin Kim and
Here, in a far more Americanized version of life, the brilliant dancers
Kim and Cheykina seemed more equally matched than in the traditional holding
and lifting positions of the males in relationship to the females that you
usually think of in traditional ballet. Drawing on Balanchine’s Russian roots,
you oddly enough felt that perhaps the Socialist-Communist notions of equality,
combined with the references to his US experiences, broke through the puffery
of the French dance tradition. Kim, in particular is a male dancer to watch,
with incredibly air-deifying leaps and spins into space that, if not quite
matching those of Nureyev or the sometimes quirky positions of the great
Baryshnikov, made you realize he is certainly a challenger to that tradition.
I
might have watched the red nuggets of that piece all night; yet, it was the
shortest, perhaps simply because of the technical impossibilities put upon
these wonderful dancers, and, in some senses, realizing the impossibility of
their playful, yet incredible movements—skipping, jumping, spinning, leaping,
all in relationship to one another—you had to realize that their legs and
breath simply couldn’t hold on forever.
The
last great piece brought back the Mariinsky’s own older traditions in a grand,
almost wedding-like gathering of the full cast in Diamonds, accompanied
by, who else could it be, that most Romantic of all Russians, Peter Ilyitch
Tchaikovsky, with his Symphony No. 3 in D Major, representing Balanchine’s
personal relationship with this very company.
Many reviewers have described Alina Somova and Vladimir Shklyavo’s dances
as one of the most amazing performances of the season. But despite that
remarkable duo, to me it appears that this is a corps de ballet performance,
as dancers, gradually accumulating—who, arriving out of the wings, so to
speak—weave and turn in and outside of one another as if this were a formal
dance being performed in court. It is a lovely thing to behold, and we realize
that this is the final
This might almost be something out of the famed company’s production of
Leonid Lavrovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. And how could one not love the
glorious female and male meetings of these so incredible performers. Even when
a single dancer falls a bit out of sync with the rest of the perfectly
synchronized others, we easily forgive him; after all this is so much better
than the Rockettes, who just kick and kick. These dancers give their entire
hearts and bodies to the performance and make for such lovely scenes that it
appears to be out of some kind of fantasy of what dance can become.
Diamonds
maybe one of the best dances ever performed; it is the final jewel in
Balanchine’s great work. Yet I still wanted to go back to that over-enthusiasm
of Rubies. Balanchine evidently said “I’m Georgian. I love beauty!” So I
might reply, “I’m American (actually of Swiss heritage), let the jazz of
US-like rhythms provided by the Russian Stravinsky’s wild strums go forward
without the resolve of the other two pieces. Let Kim dance his heart out.
Los Angeles, October 25, 2019
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and
Performance (October 2019).
