NYC BALLET| Serenade/Prodigal/Paquita

Review by Celia Ipiotis

In dance, the best way to meditate is to let Balanchine’s 1935 Serenade wash over you.  A feeling of stillness frees overactive minds and relaxes the pulse. Set to Tschaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings”, Serenade is bathed in lunar blue infusing  a sea of 17 beautiful female dancers in long, filmy tulle dresses. Arms delicately reach skyward and then at the apex, wrists flex as if shading the eyes from the luminescence before quietly sliding down. When the ensemble’s feet crack open from parallel to turned out position, the effect is volcanic. From that point on, the melancholic music flows around the myriad of patterns, curlicues and daisy chains intermittently split apart by demi soloists.

The outstanding female leads, Marian Miller and Mira Nadon along with a breezy Indiana Woodward soared. Miller and Nadon expansively unfurl their long arms and legs mirroring each other in pique arabesques and airy turns tilting into daring leaps and quicksilver footwork. A cohesive performance, the corps and soloists imbued the ballet with elegance and poignancy that lingers the night long.

Rooted in European Expressionism and Russian Constructivism, Prodigal Son is born of George Balanchine’s ballet career in Paris. Created in 1929 to a score by Sergei Prokofiev for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Prodigal references the Bible’s parable of a son who leaves home for the sins and pleasures of the city only to return. Danced against the dark, swirling background by the fauvist painter George Rouault, the Prodigal son, portrayed by the athletic Daniel Ulbricht, establishes the tension between a rebellious young man and his father. Pacing around the front yard, Ulbricht charges upwards in leaps, fists pounding his legs and body.

Unable to contain his physicality, he breaks out of the family house to confront the hedonism of city life. There he face-to-face with “the forbidden”, losing his money to greedy bald headed, grotesque men and his virtue to the Siren.  Statuesque in her tall conical hat and long flowing red cape, the Siren, Sara Mearns, is a cooler, more calculating seductress than the usual representation of a brazen femme fatale. Ensnaring Ulbricht, Mearns lashes her legs serpent like around his body. They move in and  around in a tense circle marking the space for the final seduction.  Hardly able to walk let alone jump, Ulbricht is stripped of his clothes and pride, humbly crawling back to his father’s forgiving arms.

Inhaling new breath into Petipa’s 19th century version of Paquita’s Grand Pas, Alexei Ratmansky takes elements of the original and brightens the edges. An exhilarating revision of the classical vocabulary is pressed through the fertile choreographic mind of Ratmansky. With some hits and misses, the cast dives into the material juicing up the dance combinations that invert steps, constantly morphing from one direction to another.

The four variations received generally fine interpretations by  Olivia MacKinnon, Domenika Afanasenkov, Alexa Maxwell and Kloe Walker (substitute) with  Maxwell and Afanasenkov catching the audience’s eye. In the lead duet, Isabella LaFreniere, admirably regal, was supported by the high-flying Ryan Tomash…. someone to watch.

A fine way to open the season.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY–Celia Ipiotis