Back from City Ballet

This Sunday matinee was the third and, I think, last performance this season of the Fancy Free, Prodigal Son and Firebird bill. I get an inordinate chuckle out of how evenly split the three-ballet program is between Balanchine and Robbins. Fancy Free is Robbins,' Prodigal, Balanchine and Firebird, Balanchine and Robbins. So each has one-and-a-half ballets. OK, Robbins only did the monsters in Firebird, but still....

This was the B cast, which had quite an act to follow after staggering, face-meltingly hot performances by Bouder (Firebird) and De Luz (Prodigal) in the two preceding, A-cast programs. The B cast did just fine, thanks for asking.

In Fancy Free, the sailors were Joaquin de Luz, Tyler Angle and Amar Ramasar. Amanda Hankes was the red-pocketbook girl, and Jenifer Ringer the purple-dress girl. I loved the guys' teamwork and, dare I say it, interplay? Hankes was more playful and lighter than the other cast's Georgina Pazcoguin, who was, as usual, pulling out all the stops (I think she does that every morning before brushing her teeth) and was just too conspicuously an hactor. And Hankes does the Forties hair thing to perfection. Angle was sweet indeed with Ringer, who was a simpler, sweeter and less-complicated purple-dress girl than Tiler Peck. Ringer's a gal, perhaps slumming a bit, who's just out to have fun. Once she sees that Angle's sailor can really dance, she's all grins and smiles "catch me!" She's oblivious to Angle's abortive ass-grab as they return to their barstools; here he just loses his nerve. Peck (also with Angle), knew exactly what was what, and flashed Angle a look that said, "just try it, bub."

In the solos, I loved De Luz's impetuosity and bravura and bravura. He's just about the best guy City Ballet has, and he's been setting the stage on fire this season; I've seen a spectacular Oberon and even more spectacular Prodigal (A cast). What puts De Luz's Sailor No. 1 above Ulbricht's for me is that De Luz has a throttle, not an on-off switch. He can vary his power, so his solo's more subtly shaded than Ulbricht's, who has one speed only: full, even Ludicrous. Just as Pazcoguin acts as if she'd underlined every word of her script,  Ulbricht dances as if he regarded modulation as an admission of failure, or perhaps weak principles. Anyway, De Luz' solo was a thrill, the E-ticket ride of the evening. (Yeah, I'm old. Google it.) I liked how Angle makes bigger and bigger the second sailor's dreamy leg-swinging jumps from side to side. He's floating on his dreams; I suppose it's a good thing for a sailor to be buoyant. Ramasar's third sailor was sensuous and sinuous, swinging his butt flirtatiously through the rhumba (is there any other way to do it?). Ramasar has always been a charmer onstage, with a smile more winning than his technique. He's stronger here, but still sparkles at the ladies.

I liked this cast a lot. I've been a bit stunned at how full-out they dance through their opening scene's breathless and boisterous moments. They all jump so high, so cleanly, with such perfect uniformity of line and shape, the purity of their style almost overshadowed their drama. "Oh look, it's the three shades from Bayadere going out on the town!" Well, if they were male shades. In white bellbottoms. Nevermind. Their slapstick was also quite fine, almost vaudevillian. Which brings me to:

Which of the Three Stooges would be which sailor in Fancy Free?

Of course Sailor No. 3 has to be Moe. Moe's the ringleader, the smart, cool one. Or so he thinks. No. 2 would have to be Larry, and that leaves No. 1 as Curly. Hmm.

Maybe we need to set our comedic sights higher: 1: Chico; 2: Harpo; 3: Groucho, with Zeppo tending bar, and Margaret Dumont as the purple-dress girl. God, I'll have nightmares tonight.

In Prodigal, Ulbricht was technically brilliant in his opening temper-tantrum bravura, but, as usual, he doesn't master a role so much as beat it to a pulp and scare the living crap out of it. He's got an amiable personality onstage, and he's dancing his heart out, but. Every. Step. Is. Big.Bang. Boom. I couldn't shake the mental image of his playing "whack-a-mole" with the choreography. "Eh, you want me to do a big foot-smacking lunge forward and snap my arms to the side like I'm shouting? You've got it. Take THAT. And THAT. You little pirouette, you're no match for me! Who's your daddy?" As usual, he also brings to mind the adage that when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Ulbricht has a very, very big hammer.

I really loved Teresa Reichlen's Siren. I don't usually think of the reedlike Reichlen as sexy. She's whipcord strong, clean, confident and, usually, interesting, but sexy? She doesn't do voluptuous, and her Arabians in Nutcracker have been, um, unfortunate. But she's a sexy and scary Siren, the best since the sadly departed Monique Meunier. The Siren isn't about sexy curves and isn't seductive in any familiar sense of the word. She's about power (in an attractive, leggy female form, of course), and Reichlen's got power to spare. It's not titillating when she runs her hand down her leg before the Prodigal; it's enthralling. Reichlen's Siren doesn't pursue the Prodigal so much as present herself and will him to come to her. Sexy as a moth and a flame; that is, not very sexy, but awesome, awful and terrifying. And don't you love the little bit of toe-shoe fetishism when she steps on his chest with her pointed foot, as if stabbing him with it? Yummy.

Amazingly, Ulbricht brings the same sort of overbearing intensity to his stumbling, crippled progress back to his original home. When he falls to the stage he hits with a satisfying smack. He puts so much energy into being weak and frail that it's exhausting to watch. There are, basically, two ways for you to stand (or sit or lie down) motionless. You can either release your muscles and stand still because nothing's pulling you in any particular direction, or you can tense and tighten all your muscles until your eyes pop. In this case, everything's pulling you in every direction, or rather your muscles are pulling you in opposing directions simultaneously. You might appear to be just as motionless as if you were standing on utterly relaxed muscles, but this motionlessness would thrum with the balanced, opposing energies of your rapidly cramping muscles. The Laban Effort Shape folks would call this "strong" movement, even if you're hardly moving at all; the opposition of muscle to muscle give this movement a gravitas beyond that of merely flaccid immobility.

So, yes, it does seem like Ulbricht pours as much of his not-inconsiderable energies into the Prodigal's crippled crawlings as he does into his express-elevator leaps in the ballet's opening. He works so damn hard at being weak, I'm sure he'll get it one of these days.

This isn't to say he's a bad Prodigal. He's a pretty damn good one. I want him to be great; he puts so much energy, heart and soul into his every movement that he should be great. But pretty damn good isn't "astonishing," and he's up against some pretty stiff competition from De Luz' own sensational Prodigal.

Moving right along. Maria Kowroski's in somewhat the same boat as Ulbricht: She's a really good Firebird following one of the best ever, in Bouder. I like Kowroski's Firebird. She's a big condor or eagle of a bird with those beautifully curved legs of hers. She's been dancing Firebird for years with Charles Askegard, and they're awfully good together.

Alas, dear readers, I'm fading. I need to clean this up and get it up on ballet.co. Soon....

I actually have a lot of things to clean up and get on ballet.co. Yikes.

Dances upon which a moratorium should be declared

Although Christmas has come and gone, it's never too late to Scrooge, so here's my list of Things that Should be Given a Long Rest, in no particular order:

Tango Ballets: By these I don't mean dances by real tango companies reframed, tastefully or otherwise, as a theatrical experience but  when ballet choreographers essay something in the key of tango, it's always the same damn dance, with one cliché after another. Chairs on either side of the stage, segregating the sexes, who proceed to glare smolderingly at each other for the entire piece. Two guys doing that "no-we're-not-gay-really-this-is-muy-macho" dance. Outre conjunctions of hips, thighs and crotches. Fishnets and toe shoes. It's both ironic and brilliant that Paul Taylor uses almost no recognizable tango steps in his wonderful Piazzolla Caldera, the most successful tango "ballet" I've seen. But you choreographic non-geniuses (you know who you are), give it up already. A tango ballet may seem like a good idea at the time, but trust me, it isn't. But if you must indulge, how about some girl-on-girl tango? That tango Stefania Saltarelli dances with Dominique Sanda in The Conformist is one of the most erotic movie moments ever.

Chairs: No more dances with chairs. Except thrones. Whenever the curtain rises on a dancer-chair duo, my heart sinks. Soon we'll see him twisting and tangling his limbs about the defenseless inanimate object, punctuated by some pointedly wacky cantileverings. Oh, dear God. Haven't choreographers seen this done a million times before? I admire the gusto with which they reinvent this particular wheel (or caster), but this act was probably old before the discovery of fire. I knew for sure I would want my wrists during Boris Eifman's not-quite-awful-enough Musagete when I found poor Robert Tewsley (as Balanchine -- can you imagine a more thankless role?) having some special moments with a chair. (I lie. By then I already wanted to cut my wrists.) When I am King, chairs will be made for sitting, and sitting only.

Carmina Burana: Please, please, please. Carmina Burana seems like it should be a natural for ballet -- all that pulse-pounding, thrusting metronomy, those hopefully naughty lyrics teasingly clothed in Latin, the ever-bubbling pot of sex! sex! sex! How could it fail? Alas, let me count the ways: about as many as there are Carmina Burana ballets. They always suck. They always present leeringly erotic clinches that are neither as original or daring as the choreographer would have us think. It's time to take the Carmena Burana ballet out behind the barn and shoot it. It may not put Carmena Burana entirely out of its misery, but it'll sure brighten up my day.

The Cage: Every time I see The Cage, I feel dirty. I think it's safe to say that Jerome Robbins had Issues with Women -- beneath even Fancy Free's happy-go-lucky surface beats a misogynist's heart. When the sailors confront the girl with the red handbag, it looks as much the prelude to a rape as it does playful flirting. And let's not forget the girl who (maybe) gets tossed off the roof in New York Export Opus Jazz. For all Robbins' brilliant stagecraft, The Cage is an ugly, ugly ballet. You'd think so much sex and violence might at least be fun, but it's not. It's oceans of ikky, Those awful wigs. The necrophiliac sex (if Bad Luck Guy No. 2 isn't entirely dead by the time the Novice screws him, he's pretty damn close). The awful wigs. And BLG No. 2 gets knocked down for the count when a few of those fright-wigged Amazon-insects lift the Novice up in a spreadeagle, and ram her crotch right into his face! Yikes. Attack of the Killer Vagina! Paging Dr. Freud! I used to think it was enough to see The Cage once a decade, but my next viewing will be half-past never. It's ugly, nasty and mean, verging on downright evil. Nuke it and pave it.

Old ballets set in modern dress: I cringe at the thought of the Met's new Carmen that I'm going to see New Year's Eve. Give me Olga Borodina and castanets, please. The Royal Danish Ballet's modernization of Napoli just scares me. I do not want to see Giselle become a toothsome morsel of a Congressional intern, or James a gay Hollywood actor marrying Effie as a beard. (He's actually in love with Gurn and, oh please, shoot me before I finish this thought). These ballets are windows into the sensibility of past generations -- they're already relevant to our modern condition, if we but look. Swaddling them in anachronistic clothes is a lazy assertion of a ballet's lasting values. They obscure what they're meant (I imagine) to illuminate.

I'm even happy to see the painted cat....

Ah, it's Nutcracker time and all's well with the world, mostly.

Read all about it on ballet.co .

I may go to hell for having some fun at Sara Mearns' expense with the splattering drop of dew line, but I couldn't help it. Drosselmeyer made me do it.

Robert LaFosse and a very spunky Marie.

Those dancing bumblebees, Megan Fairchild and Joaquin de Luz.

All photos copyright Paul Kolnik