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So let’s say you’re a lifelong Manhattanite and you’re about to
hit fifty—what better way to celebrate than with a $900 million
facelift?
On
May 11, 2009, Lincoln Center, the world’s largest performing
arts complex of twelve resident organizations, celebrated fifty
years—and while the old gal had been showing signs of age,
there’s nothing like a massive renovation and a considered
rethinking of purpose to attract new admirers. As those who have
recently wandered the sixteen-acre campus will attest, there’s a
lot going on at Lincoln Center these days—and a recent Saturday
afternoon at the former New York State Theater, now rechristened
David H. Koch Theater, home of the New York City Ballet, attests
to the fact that everyone’s feeling young again, and full of
promise.
Celebrating its 61st birthday, the NYCB has enjoyed
many years of brilliant seasons—as well as several lesser
seasons during which dance aficionados found themselves
bemoaning the loss of certain favorites while arguing about
perceived changes in the company’s direction. Of late, however,
a consensus from true balletomanes seems to be emerging: the
NYCB is back and better than ever. On the Saturday of that
birthday weekend, the matinee program featured four pieces
choreographed by Balanchine, as well as a fifth by new critical
sensation Alexei Ratmansky.
In keeping with the themes of revival sweeping around
Lincoln Center, the afternoon opened with “Scotch Symphony,” a
ballet set to music by Mendelssohn that beautifully evokes a
romantic evening in the
Highlands,
or Balmoral. NYCB principal (and upcoming choreographer)
Benjamin Millepied portrayed a Heathcliffian hero, dancing with
bravado and sensitivity.
To witness the NYCB in fine form and elegant line is to
comprehend how it is that corn-fed Ohio boys and California
beach girls, and boys from small towns in Europe, become princes
and princesses onstage. Their carriage more regal, their facial
planes more pronounced, dancers exist as a sort of other
species—and when they dance and soar through air, our own
desires for transcendence often accompany them.
The smallest gestures, the littlest bits of business take on
resonance when performed by dancers. Take the moment in
Balanchine’s “Monumentum Pro Gesualdo” when Maria Kowroski
kneels upon the back of Ask la Cour’s extended calf, as if upon
a prie-dieu—whereupon you are left with an elegiac image
that lingers long after the dust has settled and the toe shoes
hung up.
And then there was last season’s critical favorite, “Concerto
DSCH,” choreographed to Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2,
which was written for Shostakovich’s 19-year-old son. As danced
by a corps of fourteen, with five principals, the ballet is as
poignant as witnessing adolescents at play—think Tadzio and his
friends frolicking along Lido island at the end of Mann’s
Death in Venice—and particularly during the andante
movement, a soulful mix of strings, piano and solo horn.
There’s a sense of loss as the gloaming approaches, beautifully
expressed by the gradual separation and parting of the dancers
as they take their leave—before returning for the invigorating
allegro finale. In short, an apt metaphor for the times,
both on Lincoln Center’s campus and throughout the country: as
one chapter ends, another commences.
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