American Ballet Theatre
American Ballet Theatre is known for full-length story ballets. Every spring, at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, the company presents conservative renditions of 19th-century classics, plus more recent blockbusters.
Lately, critics have complained that there are not enough excellent narrative ballets—and choreographers capable of making new ones—to justify a season’s worth. They may have a point. Of the seven evening-lengths that ABT trotted out this spring, only four rewarded repeat viewing.
It’s not the plots that make keepers of Giselle, Swan Lake, Frederick Ashton’s 1952 Sylvia and Kenneth MacMillan’s 1965 Romeo and Juliet. After all, MacMillan’s tawdry Manon and the stunt-laden Le Corsaire have plenty going on. It’s the transformation of the characters, and the fact these transmutations lend themselves to movement.
In Swan Lake, Odette changes not only from bird to person, but also from fearsome leader of the swans to submissive lover to a stoic resigned to her fate. As a winged creature, the dancer gives visible form to mutable feelings.
It’s thrilling to watch a dancer invest herself in steps and then change those steps and that self, as Diana Vishneva, on loan to ABT from the Kirov, did in Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet and Giselle.
As Giselle, Vishneva didn’t just tone down her dancing when the maiden goes mad, she barely moved at all. She stood with her head and arms pointing in one direction and her feet in another, and shuffled sideways. Vishneva understands that insanity isn’t a reduction of sense, but its thorough derangement. Giselle may be tracing a memory in the air when she lifts a craggy arm, but she speaks in a private language now.
As a Wili intent on rescuing her lover from her fellow ghost-brides, Vishneva made her steps as smooth and opaque as marble. Death has leached this Giselle of passion; she dances for the sake of a love she can no longer feel. Vishneva mined the full tragedy of the role.
The season’s single evening-length première, James Kudelka’s 2004 Cinderella, has all the makings of a great ballet: the vibrant 1935 Prokofiev score reinforcing and deepening the story, and protagonists whose destinies hang in the balance. In a fruitful update, Kudelka’s char girl is no longer passive, but actively shapes her future. Cinderella doesn’t clean up others’ messes, she makes her own. She doesn’t just dance, she devises steps.
Unfortunately, the steps aren’t that interesting.
Kudelka’s uneven achievement doesn’t make the goal of creating an enduring story ballet any less worthy, however. As Vishneva recently pointed out, “It looks like you’ve spent two hours onstage, [but] a whole life is behind certain performances.” I don’t think we’d be privy to that life if she only had one act.
Apollinaire Scherr is the Newsday dance critic and has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times.
