#14 - JRL 7277
New York Times
August 5, 2003
A Homecoming for Balanchine
By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, Aug. 2 — Crowds of Russian ballet lovers are abandoning their dachas this week and braving a heat wave to see the New York City Ballet perform at the Maryinsky Theater, home of the Kirov Ballet. Patrons of the company have flown in en masse from New York, arriving with a sense of history. For this is George Balanchine's hometown, and the visit is the first by the company — Balanchine's company — since 1972, when the choreographer himself made the trip.
Audiences and critics have responded enthusiastically, with packed halls, prolonged applause and curtain calls. The engagement began on Wednesday, featuring all-Balanchine and all-Jerome Robbins programs on alternating evenings, with a Balanchine matinee today.
"The Maryinsky has been dancing Balanchine since the beginning of the 1990's," Yulia Yakovleva, a critic for the newspaper Kommersant, wrote, using the familiar name for the Kirov Ballet here, "and never once could one have suspected that it can be like this."
The occasion was the opening-night performances of Balanchine's "Serenade" and "Symphony in C," both of them now part of the Kirov repertory. "That `Serenade' is incredibly erotic," Ms. Yakovleva wrote. "And `Symphony in C' is provocatively theatrical." The review concluded, "Not bad for a ballet company that many regarded as half dead up until now."
When Balanchine, who died in 1983, visited St. Petersburg in 1962 and again in 1972, adherents of Soviet Socialist Realism were shocked by his plotless Neo-Classical ballets, which grew out of his training at the Imperial Ballet School and the freedom he found as an émigré. But devotees of the avant-garde underground were enthralled. Today City Ballet, founded by Balanchine with Lincoln Kirstein in 1948, has returned on something of a mission, said its artistic director, Peter Martins. "We want to show that his art is alive and well and thriving still," he told reporters here.
Some longtime fans of the Kirov, remaining true to their dancers, were less impressed. "I didn't feel any emotions," said Irina Daskovskaya, her tone that of a strict schoolteacher, as she stood in the theater's foyer after "Serenade." "They did their job, but it didn't stir up any enthusiasm. It was cold. Compared to the Maryinsky, they're worse."
Larissa Abyzova, a critic who works at the Vaganova Academy, formerly the Imperial Ballet School, where Balanchine soaked up the influence of Marius Petipa and Michel Fokine, said she was surprised by City Ballet's emotional depth but tempered her praise. "Sometimes they didn't hold the line, or there was a stray elbow or wrist, but then again it shows that they're not a soulless machine," she said after a performance. "It turns out deep psychologism is accessible to American dancers."
In perhaps the ultimate compliment, she compared the performances of Maria Kowroski of City Ballet and Ulyana Lopatkina of the Kirov in the same role in "Symphony in C," saying, "They are both the best."
St. Petersburg audiences already embraced Ms. Kowroski for her performance as a guest with the Kirov in "Swan Lake" earlier this year.
The City Ballet will be performing through Tuesday night. The tour is part of the Balanchine centennial celebration this season and next. He was born Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg in 1904. The City's Ballet visit is also the culmination of the conductor Valery Gergiev's annual Stars of the White Nights Festival, which has been especially grand this year in honor of the city's 300th anniversary. The Royal Ballet and the Hamburg Ballet, directed by John Neumeier, preceded the City Ballet.
At the Maryinsky Theater, large banners advertising Nestlé, a corporate sponsor of the festival, decorate the foyer. Howard Solomon, until recently the City Ballet's chairman, was instrumental in getting the company to Russia. He was visibly moved just before the first notes of Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings" sounded and the curtain went up on "Serenade," with City Ballet's Darci Kistler in the lead.
"Balanchine chose her to be prima ballerina when she was 16, just 16," Mr. Solomon said.
Inna Sklyarevskaya, a dance critic who did research on Balanchine, was also impressed by Ms. Kistler. "She revealed some facets to the piece that I hadn't seen before, with her serene smile accompanied by Tchaikovsky's dramatic music," she said. "This is a foundation of Balanchine. It's cinematic. Music manifests the essence."
Vadim Gayevsky, a leading dance historian and critic who came from Moscow to see the City Ballet, had witnessed both of Balanchine's visits to the Soviet Union. "We've gotten used to Balanchine," he said.
As he watched the troupe rehearse Robbins's "Glass Pieces" set to Philip Glass's music on Friday, Mr. Gayevsky reminisced, recalling the Soviet audience's embrace of Allegra Kent, Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell, particularly Mr. Mitchell, who perplexed them at first because they had never seen a black classical dancer.
Today, he said, the male presence in City Ballet's corp de ballet is stronger than in the past. He also said that American critics are "very severe" in their criticism of City Ballet; these critics wish it danced as it did in the 1960's, he said.
"For the theater to continue existing for 20 years after its leader's death is a miracle," he said. "Mr. B. is gone. Things have to change."
In 1972 City Ballet's performances were relegated to the Lensoviet Palace of Culture, but Soviet authorities were unable to stifle the power of Ballanchine's dance. Balletomanes here seem to measure their life in ballet highlights, like Baryshnikov's leaps and Balanchine's visits.
"It was a feast for us when Balanchine came in 1972," Eva Tseitlina said after opening night. A tiny woman with a wizened face and twinkling eyes, she has attended the Kirov with religious fervor since the 1940's. "We didn't have this kind of ballet. Balanchine was so touching with his corps de ballet. He presented each of them with flowers."
On Friday Ms. Tseitlina stood near the stage door and stared lovingly at City Ballet dancers as they exited the theater.
Rosemary Dunleavy-Maslow, the company's main ballet mistress, and Sara Leland, another ballet mistress on the staff, are the only two people on the tour to have accompanied Balanchine on both his trips to St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad. The first tour coincided with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The second lasted for weeks in 1972 and covered several Soviet cities.
Sitting in the elegant wood-paneled bar of the Hotel Astoria, they recalled a strict off-hours schedule, sinister secret police and dancers fainting backstage from a monotonous diet of cabbage and bread. This time company members have enjoyed fine meals with caviar, nights at the hotel casino and an impromptu disco cruise down the Neva River.
"It's like Europe here now, like Paris, all the outdoor cafes," Ms. Leland said. But one thing hasn't changed, she said: many of the theater's toilets are still just holes in the floor.
The production stage manager Perry Silvey, who had worked in the Maryinsky Theater twice since 1991, described backstage "moments when you feel like you're in a Dilbert cartoon."
Stage left and stage right mean opposite things to the theater's carpenters and electricians, who are typically at war. While some backstage equipment is state of the art, some dates to 1947. Maryinsky carpenters built two piano platforms to City Ballet specifications for John Adams's "Hallelujah Junction" choreographed by Mr. Martin. But when the company arrived the pianos were not ready.
The performances themselves have had some unusual if not comic moments. During the matinee's intermission today the first flute disappeared, and the conductor, Andrea Quinn, could not begin because the flutist had taken his score as well. The musician turned up about 15 minutes late, delaying the beginning of the second ballet, Balanchine's "Symphony in Three Movements." On opening night Mr. Gergiev stretched an intermission to 45 minutes when he took the orchestra upstairs to rehearse.
St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary celebration was intended to restore this former imperial capital's luster, so revered by Balanchine. He left the Soviet Union in 1924, as Stalin ascended to power and set about crushing the remnants of artistic freedom and czarist splendor. (Balanchine eventually joined the Monte Carlo-based Ballets Russes and in 1933 accepted Kirstein's invitation to come to the United States).
Now the Petersburg in Balanchine and the Balanchine in Petersburg are being rediscovered and reassessed.
"Just walking on the streets, I think imperial, diamonds, the huge building and streets," said Wendy Whelan, who performed with Jock Soto in the "Rubies" of the Maryinsky's production of Balanchine's "Jewels" in February. "Going into the churches here, I've seen how hands are held on icons and I realize that's how we hold our hands. I get a feeling of his spirituality here."
Mr. Soto added, "It all comes together."
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