PERFORMANCE
David Koch theater
New York City Ballet
The trailer for this event...
Fifty years after its premiere at Lincoln Center, three of the world’s most celebrated ballet companies come together for a once-in-a-lifetime presentation of George Balanchine’s masterpiece, Jewels. For five performances on the same stage where it was premiered, the Paris Opera Ballet embodies Emeralds. New York City Ballet and the Bolshoi alternate Rubies and Diamonds, illuminating the different facets of Balanchine’s masterpiece like the sun catching on one of its namesake gems.
The three-part, evening-length work traces Balanchine’s life and loves. Emeralds, set to Fauré, evokes the mystery and grace of France. Fueled by Stravinsky, Rubies crackles with jazz-inflected wit and sass, channeling the mid-century audacity of Manhattan. And breathtaking from the moment the lights go up, Diamonds conjures the grandeur of Imperial Russia, set to Tchaikovsky’s lush Third Symphony.
Review: Balanchine Jewels from Paris, Moscow and New York
Green! Red! White! On Thursday night after the Lincoln Center Festival’s international production of George Balanchine’s “Jewels,” it was exhilarating to behold the dancers of “Emeralds” (Paris Opera Ballet), “Rubies” (New York City Ballet) and “Diamonds” (Bolshoi Ballet from Moscow) assemble in three bright stripes, on the stage of the David H. Koch Theater where, 50 years ago (it was then the New York State Theater), “Jewels” had its premiere.
The separate jewel colors met to make the stage like some tricolor flag. More relevant to Balanchine (1904-83), these companies represent the three countries most vital to his long career. He learned to dance and to make ballets in Russia, where he lived until 1924; he reached an early maturity in France, in particular working under the aegis of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes; and New York is where he, with Lincoln Kirstein, founded the School of American Ballet, in 1933, and City Ballet, in 1948.
“Emeralds,” to Fauré music, has long been seen as French. “Rubies,” to Stravinsky, is quintessentially New York — its speed, density and jazzy modernity characterize this city rather than this nation. And “Diamonds,” to Tchaikovsky, suggests, first, Russia’s vast rural landscapes and, finally, its grand imperial cities. As a rule, it’s better to watch a single troupe demonstrate the diversity required to dance all three, and companies now do so from St. Petersburg in Russia to Seattle. But big anniversaries deserve big treats.
Debates on these troupes’ individual merits in “Jewels” will continue until Sunday: the Bolshoi and City Ballet are taking turns dancing “Rubies” and “Diamonds,” while the Parisians and the Bolshoi offer changes of casts. On Thursday, the illustrious performance by the Bolshoi’s Olga Smirnova in the “Diamonds” prima ballerina role was just what festivals should be about, while City Ballet’s three lead dancers for “Rubies” — Megan Fairchild, Joaquin de Luz, Teresa Reichlen — exemplified what the home team can do best.
You can see how the Bolshoi and City Ballet styles are related: long phrases, luxurious texture, expansive physicality, calmly off-balance emphasis. The Paris style, marvelously chic, proves far less right for Balanchine, above all in the women’s clipped phrasing and anti-musical dynamics (dwelling archly on transitions, flicking lightly through important linear points). “Emeralds,” although Gallic, does not suggest Paris anyway: It seems to belong in some Fontainebleau-like forest glade, whereas these dancers emanate big-city polish.
Ms. Smirnova, still young, first danced the “Diamonds” role in 2012, near the start of her career. The refined arc of her raised arms; the elegance with which she holds and turns her head; the plucked, lucid emphasis of her arched feet are all riveting. She marvelously leads the role from chivalrous Romantic mystery to brightly classical celebration. Her partner, Semyon Chudin, has gained immensely in assurance since New York’s last Bolshoi season three years ago.
In “Rubies,” Ms. Reichlen’s gleaming, sly, huge-scaled performance of the soloist role has long seemed definitive, while Mr. de Luz’s charmingly assertive style is effective. The surprise was Ms. Fairchild. As in other recent performances, she has suddenly bloomed into a marvelously free personality: adult, decisive, engagingly robust, merrily witty.
Nobody worked harder than Balanchine to establish plotless pure-dance choreography as theatrically engrossing. He was also, in several works, ballet’s greatest dramatist — there is no contradiction here, for drama pervades his non-narrative work. “Jewels,” often described as the first full-length abstract ballet, yields more rewards if you see it as containing multiple stories, situations and worlds. Its three parts, though dissimilar, are connected. In each, dancers repeatedly move from a bent-forward position — with arms together pointing like a unicorn’s horn — to an expansively arched-back open gesture. Each has a pas de deux in which the ballerina seems like a magical wild beast whom her partner keeps at arm’s length.
The European companies, though they keep the basic color schemes and jeweled emphasis, have brought their own costumes — by Christian Lacroix (“Emeralds”) and Elena Zaitseva (“Diamonds”). Since City Ballet maintains the original costumes by Karinska, locals are likely to object to these alternative versions. (The blue-cyan Lacroix couture feels especially wrong.)
Yet the visitors may look with similar distaste at City Ballet’s three décors (made by Peter Harvey in 2004, coarser in emphasis than his 1967 originals, which now look marvelous with the Mariinsky of St. Petersburg). I suspect close scrutiny will show that the Paris Opera and Bolshoi perform “Emeralds” and “Diamonds” in texts slightly different from those currently used by City Ballet.
“Jewels” has long been a perfect introduction to ballet’s poetry; but only this century has it taken off in international repertory. At the climax of Thursday’s bows, the three companies were joined onstage by their artistic directors: Aurélie Dupont (Paris Opera), Peter Martins (City Ballet), and Makhar Vaziev (Bolshoi) — an entente cordiale before our eyes.
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