School of American Ballet. - Juilliard Theater, New York, New York - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1996 by Anne Tobias

By now it has become a rite of spring. As soon as the trees have come into full leaf and the birds have started to sing their mating calls, the avid ballet watcher turns to thoughts of the School of American Ballet's workshop, an annual showcase of the academy's most advanced pupils performing the works of George Balanchine, among others. Like all true rites, this one smacks equally of delight and danger. The dancers are, invariably, glorious. In their youth, their accomplishment, their dedication to task, they seem to represent both a bright future for the art form and, touchingly, that art form in its purest incarnation. They celebrate dance.

But this idealism does not come without a darker underbelly. (This is New York City, after all.) For the workshop also represents the bitter competition that is endemic to the world of dance. Seen in this cynical light, these annual performances are something of a meat market. Balletomanes rally round to sniff out the next star, and heads of important companies attend to see what kind of talent is for sale.

The dichotomy appears stark: the divine beauty of dance versus seamy ballet-world politics. But the two may very well be inextricably intertwined. In competing for scarce jobs, dancers subject themselves to increasingly strict standards, and thus the art form evolves toward its own vision of perfection. In nature, it's called survival of the fittest. Over the years, the dancers' instrument, the body, has become leaner and longer. The dancers' material, the technique, has become bigger, higher, faster. Now and then there are lamentations about the cost of all this--on a personal level, for the dancers, and on the level of the art form itself, which may be sacrificing artistry for virtuosity. But in a culture that idolizes the new and improved, there's just no turning back.

The School of American Ballet has long been the national standard-bearer for notions of the ideal dancer. And the general caliber of dancing at the thirty-second annual workshop, held June I and 3 at the Juilliard Theater, was quite high. Yes, there were the bodies, especially the women's--the hyperfacile extensions, the exaggerated arches, the willowy, delicate arms. And, yes, there was the requisite technique--multiple turns, high jumps with steady landings, sustained, fluent adagio work. But there was also much more--musicality, fleetness, attack, daring. These are truly the qualities that set the school's dancers apart. (It was astonishing to see these very gifts in even the tiniest dancers, the children who romped through Jerome Robbins's Circus Polka and, seated in neat rows at the end, spelled out "L.K.," in tribute to the late Lincoln Kirstein.)

As if to prove ballet's own evolutionary tendencies wrong, the dancers who really stood out among this host of talent were the ones who had, along with malleable bodies and clear technique, something more--charisma. Laura Paulus, given leading roles in two ballets, took over the stage. Especially captivating in Valse Fantaisie, she was confident and vivacious, courting physical risks and seeing them through. Some of her qualities are those of a more mature dancer: her ability to lend different textures to different movements and to approach the dance in terms of phrases rather than just steps. Erin Tryon was lovely in the duet section of Concerto Barocco, seeming to surrender herself to the realm that the music shapes. In contrast, as the second soloist of the same ballet, Samantha Basford offered a response to the score that was more self-contained but equally beautiful, harboring the charms of delicacy and precision. In the program's rousing closer, Rubies, Aesha Ash stole the show. Flashing a smile that could melt stone, she lent the choreography both the camp and the candor it demands, twisting her wrists, flicking her legs, and standing, proud and defiant, with her hip jutting out.

This year's crop of men showed promise as well, from Darius Crenshaw, a particularly tender partner, to Michael Eaton, sharp and energetic, to Anton Pankevich, engaging for his modest demeanor, fluid physicality, fine lines, and swift beats.

The program, with ballets staged by New York City Ballet alumnae Suki Schorer and Susan Pilarre, gave us Balanchine in his varied moods: exquisitely pure (Concerto Barocco); lushly lyrical (Valse Fantaisie); and raucously jazzy (Rubies). This is challenging company for even the most experienced of today's dancemakers. So if Christopher Wheeldon's new Danses Bohemiennes faltered, it faltered while trying to keep step with the best.

Wheeldon, a current NYCB corps member and nascent choreographer, created a many-sectioned octet that lacks rigorous follow-through. For instance, the rather formal style of the vocabulary doesn't relate to the relaxed setting, which pictures boys and girls left to their own devices in the ballet studio. The division of the dance into smaller groupings feels simply like an exercise in choreographic craft; a solo or a duet or a trio hints at an emotion that then dissipates, lending no impetus to the narrative thrust. And an image of flying ribbons, a winsome visual gesture, surfaces twice but fails to connect meaningfully with the dance as a whole. Perhaps Wheeldon has more in him, but Danses Bohemiennes remains a serviceable vehicle rather than a ballet with an evocative, inevitable life of its own.