Instead of rousing him or dancing, her first action is to place her hand tenderly over his mouth, as if to stop the words he is ready to utter. This largely ebullient and pure-dance work, whose premiere was given by American Ballet Theater on Thursday night at City Center, is studded with such private incidents, indicating a secret, darker drama we can only guess at.
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
From left, Joseph Phillips, Eric Tamm and Arron Scott
with fellow members of American Ballet Theater in "Symphony #9,"
choreographed to music by Dmitri Shostakovich.
The ninth symphony
that Mr. Ratmansky has choreographed here is by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Its premiere occurred in 1945, and the composer — an artist of secrets,
codes and double messages — seems to have been addressing the largely
positive mood brought on by the close of World War II.
Because the end of Hitler did not mean the end of Stalin, and because
some of the eventual Russian gains were to prove as appalling as the
incalculable losses, postwar relief was laced with tension.
Mainly, like its music, "Symphony #9" is bright in energy. To watch it
the first time is to keep finding surprises. Its dance language, its
unfolding structure and its moods are dynamic, as if the terrain about
it were continually shifting, like a kaleidoscope. Whereas previous
Russian-themed works by Mr. Ratmansky have suggested a single imaginary
world, "Symphony #9" has no such sense of fixed place. History strangely
whirls through and around it.
At first the choreographic structure recalls George Balanchine's
"Stravinsky Violin Concerto," with soloists chasing around (first Craig
Salstein, then Simone Messmer), each accompanied by four lively
supporting dancers. Meanwhile the dance language blends Balanchine
(steps off balance, and foot-circling gargouillade jumps for the women)
with Frederick Ashton (brisk hops on point and vividly pliant upper
bodies). Mr. Salstein's role is unstoppably Puckish; Ms. Messmer is
ardently playful. Often we see bodies leaning two ways at once — the
lower body is forward, while the torso plunges back — but this
self-contradictory mood is jubilant, unconflicted.
A second-movement pas de deux for Ms. Semionova and Mr. Gomes brings
calm; the tone is trusting, loving, quietly lyrical. They too are
joined, though later, by four men and four women.But when Herman Cornejo
arrives, the ballet's structure veers in other directions. His role
keeps it perpetually unresolved until the final curtain.
What contribution does this late arrival make? Mr. Cornejo here is part
of the same world, and yet he has no retinue and partner. He is maybe
the genius of the place, the force of history. The impetus and fervor of
Mr. Cornejo's dancing are superb, and his personal beauty has never
been better displayed. In the third movement he pounces gloriously, only
then to hover on one leg in a luminously sculptural attitude. The
ballet ends with him alone, spinning like a tornado. This marvelous
artist, rightly, has the final bow.
On further viewings it will be fascinating to analyze how the changes of
thread in Shostakovich's score have prompted aspects of Mr. Cornejo's
impersonal but thrilling role. Shostakovich's third, fourth and fifth
movements run together; their moods, both onstage and in the score,
include the symphony's most ominous as well as the most vivacious parts.
Mr. Cornejo personifies their force. But the others, especially Mr.
Gomes, carry the ballet's more human and mortal feelings.
At the end of the second movement, accompanied by a solo piccolo, Ms.
Semionova and Mr. Gomes lie down, as if to sleep, and yet the timing is
amusing. They descend to the floor in abrupt sections, bit by bit. And
no sooner do they lie there than Mr. Gomes raises a finger: he's
signaling, "Wait." In the third movement Mr. Gomes waits on the floor at
the back of the stage, then slowly rises. It seems to take ages for his
torso and eventually his head to become upright; he is apparently
coping with an immense internal burden. Like Ms. Semionova's early
"hush" gesture, these dramatic images haunt the ballet without ever
being explained.
In Jennifer Tipton's lighting the backdrop changes from dark to bright
and back again. Keso Dekker's patterned costumes are predominantly black
and white.
There will be much more to say of this ballet, which returns to New York
as part of Mr. Ratmansky's all-Shostakovich, all-symphonic trilogy
during American Ballet Theater's spring season at the Metropolitan Opera
House. This will be an unprecedented choreographic undertaking, which
Mr. Ratmansky considers as a single work.
The configurations for the corps de ballet are full of individualizing
strokes as well as remarkable numerical and geometric shifts. Here we
see three of them, here six, here seven. At one point we see a
Semionova-Gomes scene through a passing colonnade of women slowly
walking across the front of the stage. The texture of the movement is
often colored by rich transitions; you feel dancers stretching their way
from A to B.
After this first viewing my applause is tempered by three reservations.
Though Mr. Salstein dances admirably, his need to communicate with
knowing facial expressions — in a role that starts the work — misleads
the audience into thinking that he holds the key to the ballet.
Ms. Semionova, though glowingly lovely, seems to dance only with Mr.
Gomes's assistance, whereas he, gorgeously, often slips in sumptuous
steps in between partnering in their pas de deux.
And there are too many instances of women carried with snug fondness
across their men's chests, joining their arms around their partners'
necks. On Thursday this fond neck hanging was all too reminiscent of the
evening's previous ballet, Antony Tudor's "Leaves Are Fading," which, a
friend remarked, may be the most boring (but by no means the worst)
ballet ever made by a great choreographer. The program ended with
"Rodeo."
Ballet Theater's season, crammed with repertory and cast changes, ends
on Saturday. I look forward to reporting on it further.
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