The spring gala offered a light smorgasbord (after all, it is ballet) of what’s to come during the next eight weeks. Not particularly innovative, even the advertised pièce d’occasion, Kevin McKenzie’s Shadow Song, a duet choreographed to music by Meyerbeer sung by Ruth Ann Swenson, was cancelled owing to the singer’s indisposition. Other than a new production of James Kudelka’s Cinderella, unrepresented here, the season is just a matter of which classic or neo-classic you prefer.
Following in the Royal Ballet’s footsteps, a revival of MacMillan’s Manon joins Sylvia, debuted here last summer. In an extract, Diana Vishneva made an alluring if somewhat passive Manon as she was borne around from gentleman to gentleman in dolphin dives over their heads. Jose Manuel Carreño had little to do except stand there. His turn had come earlier in Le Corsaire, highlights from acts one and two put together by Anna-Marie Holm, crowd- pleasing gala fare with Gillian Murphy nonchalantly tossing off triple fouettés, a sparkling Xiomara Reyes and Marcello Gomes and Carreño and Herman Conejo all outdoing each other in bravado.
Julio Bocca, who is giving his farewell performance from the company next month, shadowed it with Chaconne to J.S. Bach’s Partita No 2 in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, well played by Ronald Oakland. Carla Maxwell staged this remarkable solo by the great modern dance choreographer José Limón, who came from Mexico to study here and form a company back in the 1940s. “The music of Bach dances”, Limón wrote. Bocca, in simple black, gave passionate, kinetic substance to those words.
The act three pas de deux and coda from Sylvia looked odd with the cast in costume but without decor. It was adequately if unexcitingly danced by Michele Wiles, partnered by David Hallberg, newly promoted to principal. Paloma Herrera’s dainty little Terpsichore tripping around to Carlos Acosta’s stalwart Apollo proved that there are some ballets that should not be done except in their complete form, Balanchine’s Apollo being one of them. Julie Kent and Angel Corella in Jerome Robbins’s Other Dances nicely proved just that point. ★★★☆☆
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