School of American Ballet
The School of American Ballet unearthed a rarity for this year’s Workshop Performance in June at the Juilliard School’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater in New York. Balanchine’s Gounod Symphony, choreographed in 1958, has not been seen at the school’s parent company, New York City Ballet, since 1993. Legend has it that Charles Gounod’s “Symphony in D” was the model for Georges Bizet’s “Symphony in C;” and a decade after choreographing the Bizet, Balanchine turned to Gounod to make another large-scale, Parisian confection.
The result is Gounod Symphony—a garden of marigolds and roses in an autumn haze. In Gounod Symphony and the earlier Symphony in C Balanchine deploys the corps in ever-moving geometry, but Gounod has a single lead couple fronting a corps of 10 men and 20 women in burnished golds and rusts. Thirty-two dancers are a lot to get on the Sharp stage. Despite some small traffic accidents and other mishaps, the dancers pushed on with bemused and ingratiating grins.
Peter Martins’s Romeo + Juliet was choreographed on 16-year-old SAB student Callie Bachman, but a knee injury thwarted her chance to perform it with NYCB. Martins added the Act I pas de deux to the Workshop program to give Bachman her shot. Long-limbed and angular with a sharp and precipitous attack, she recalls another Martins favorite, NYCB principal Janie Taylor. Bachman’s Romeo, 17-year-old Russell Janzen, partnered her ardently and with strength.
Martins originally cast teenagers in the ballet for authenticity. We saw that authenticity, as well as good dancing, in Bachman; the passion was real, honest and immediate. Authentic teen romance doesn’t always overflow the stage, and with all the rushing around Martins packs into the duet, it’s a wonder the two ever find the time to fall in love. I hope Bachman soon gets the chance to dance Juliet for NYCB.
The treat of the Workshop, as it has been several times before, was Suki Schorer’s setting of a Balanchine ballet. The Four Temperaments glowed like a painting restored by an expert conservator. Schorer’s sense of timing and detail is acute and so is her ability to convey it. The young ladies attacked the infernal “Devil’s Dance” toward the end of the ballet at top speed with every hip-twist clearly etched. Matthew Renko bent so far back at the end of “Melancholic” that his arms were parallel to the ground; it looked as if an unseen pair of hands was pulling him offstage. Samuel Greenberg danced a sophisticated “Phlegmatic.” Of the opening Themes, Amanda Clark danced the first with mystery; while Puanani Brown and Joshua Thew gave a precociously exotic reading of the third.
Schorer managed to impart to these young men and women not just the details, but the magic of the ballet as well. Teen ritual and mystery—imagine that!
Leigh Witchel is an independent choreographer who writes for Danceview Times online and Ballet Review.
