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The program was "Concerto Barocco," "Tchaikovsky pas de deux," "Pillar of Fire" (Tudor), and "Esplanade" (Taylor). Well, 75% ballet night.
I thought the "Pillar of Fire" was excellent. This is a ballet I honor but have never loved. I know Sallie Wilson is supposed to be the world's greatest Hagar, but I was never moved by her, and the last performances I've seen of this work at ABT seemed exaggerated on the one hand -- Hagar has cramps (contractions) so vividly that the choreography seemed reduced to them--I thought of Midor as an appropriate sponsor--the Man strokes his thighs so hard you think he'll wear through the cloth, but is is otherwise palid. The last time I saw it, with Kathleen Moore, a dancer I revere, I thought it really had past its shelf-life and was too dated to live. There are times that I love being wrong.
Somehow, Washington Ballet's revival (by Wilson) felt to me as though the whole cast had been dropped into the world of 1940s B movies and were right at home. I thought McKerrow was wonderful. She had been an extremely promising dramatic dancer as a teenager (I remember her pulling off playing a 35-year-old woman looking back, with regret, on a lost love when she was 16) but really hasn't had the chance to do much along that line at ABT, once the home of American dramatic ballet. She also danced it beautifully, and it was fascinating to me to watch the choreography. This isn't just expressionistic generalized movement, but a use of the academic vocabulary to tell a contemporary story (yes, it's in costume of the late 19th century, the time of the music, but it was very much of the Freudian Forties). The Man From the House Opposite could have used several 100 watts more electricity, but the two sisters and the Friend were fine, I thought -- as was the company.
The rest I felt was more mixed. The company used to do "Concerto Barocco" better. They often looked studentish, but students who could expect to graduate into the work. Last night, the dancing was rough -- not at all bad, but not celestial. I thought Erin Mahoney, as the second ballerina, was quite good. I've never seen her in a classical piece; she's always in high energy, usually underclad, mode in the rest of the repertory. I liked Michele Jimenez very much in "Tchai pas," but the man -- no jump, no turn out, no line. A for effort and a nice smile, but....
As for "Esplanade," I saw that its first season, I think it's one of the greatest dances ever made, and I bled a little every time one of the original Taylor dancers left because the work changed. It was made on such specific bodies and personalities: Carolyn Adams' extraordinary lightness, Ruth Andrien's ferocity, Bettie DeJong's (as the mysterious Woman in Pants) stiffness, which made her sobbing unbearable to watch...I still see their ghosts every time I watch the dance. Aside from that, I don't think ballet dancers can do this work. They don't have the weight for it, for one thing, and they don't make the walking-running-skipping look natural. It looks like Dancing -- the ballet style of presentation is so different from Taylor's, where you relate to the audience pleasantly, but never so directly. Also, while in Concerto Barocco, you should have a corps of clones -- at least stylistically -- in Esplanade, Taylor "paints" with bodies; it gives his dances their texture. Lila York, 4 foot 10 (?) and shaped like a little pear, and Bettie DeJong, nearly a foot taller, were the two extremes in this dance about being left out (they're the ones who never pair). When everyone is nearly the same height, the ballet loses a lot.
I'm being more negative than I felt while watching it. It was a very pleasant evening, much better than the trapeze and spangles night this time last year, and I would urge anyone in the area who has ever been curious about "Pillar of Fire" to run down.
Audience reaction was curious. They liked Barocco, but didn't seem to love it. There was a hushed expectancy before Tchaikovsky pas de deux -- as though they were expecting Corsaire -- and nice applause, though no whooppin' and ahollerin', like you'd get for a new Dwight Rhoden opus. I don't think they liked "Pillar," but at least nobody laughed. I thought they did like "Esplanade," and laughed, appreciatively, at some of the "games," but there wasn't sustained applause at the end. That's the view from the orchestra. Perhaps the balcony went wild and I missed it.
