Karinska's crucial contribution to the Balanchine corpus is especially so in the chamber-scaled Liebeslieder Walzer. Only four dancing couples appear. The first half is given over to glorified ballroom dances. Then the curtain falls briefly, the women change from floor-length ecru evening dresses and pumps to black-laced romantic mid-length tutus and pointe shoes, and rapturous ballet ensues. The musicians—a standard-issue vocal quartet accompanied by piano four-hands—appear onstage with the dancers, likewise in romantic 19th-century attire.
The score consists of two albums of songs in three-quarter time by Johannes Brahms. Both albums interweave light and shadow in artful fashion. But Op. 52, which gives the ballet its name, tilts towards the flirtatious and nostalgic, while Op. 65 (Neue Liebeslieder) churns with tumultuous heartache. "If in January your wife wishes to sing new love-song waltzes," Brahms wrote the great violinist Joseph Joachim, referring to the new set, "this nonsense will, unfortunately, be at her disposal."
Nonsense? He can't have meant it, although many commentators on the ballet have sniffed at the verse, even as they have extolled Balanchine's Liebeslieder for its supposedly exhaustive exploration of the infinite facets of love.
I've often wondered what attention these booster-detractors have paid (or are equipped to pay) to the texts. Brahms found his material in Polydora: Ein weltpoetisches Liederbuch ("A Book of Songs From All Over the World"). The compiler of that anthology, Georg Friedrich Daumer, was a world-class eccentric and minor-league poet in his own right, one whose lyrics Brahms championed with remarkable insistence. The Polydora mosaic consists of translations and/or imitations of folk songs from many cultures. Most of the bits are concise in the extreme; to try to ferret out a story line would be the proverbial fool's errand, as an enigmatic farewell to the muses—lifted from Goethe—spells out.
 Love by starlight. Sara Mearns and Chun Wai Chan in the tempestuous second part of Balanchine's Liebeslieder Walzer, danced to Brahms's second album of quartets in three-quarter time, Op. 65. Photo by Erin Baiano. |
Balanchine was very fussy about the casting for Liebeslieder. Though he had been on cordial professional terms for some time with the Hamburg State Opera's general director Rolf Liebermann, Balanchine denied him the rights to stage it there. As reported by Jennifer Homans in Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century, Liebermann learned through Balanchine's administrative right-hand Barbara Horgan that such a project would be "impossible." "Only the eight original dancers know the ballet, and even he [Balanchine] could not mount it." But that was 60 years ago; in the meantime, innumerable casts have danced it, in several companies.
This winter, City Ballet fielded two casts. On February 16, I caught Isabelle LaFrenière with Tyler Angle, Ashley Laracey with Preston Chamblee, Sara Mearns with Chun Wai Chan, and Indiana Woodward with Andrew Veyette. The bevy of ballerinas touched the flickering chords of amorous caprice with great delicacy, each with her own inflections. The men barely registered. Some will say that's a given in this ballet, which is all about the women. Yet in the bad old video from Berlin (1973), Peter Martins holds his own in his devotion to his partner, and not just for his stature, cornsilk mane, and tragic eyes.
Other cavils that are not merely cavils. The vocal quartet and duo pianists made a poor showing. The lighting, too, wants an upgrade. Where we once saw candle glow and starshine (and even cold pinpricks of stars), the stage just looked dim. As Balanchine taught us over and over again, there are no insignificant decisions. More magic, please.
Other dances
Woven of spindrift and sunbeams, Ballo della Regina is set to Giuseppe Verdi's ballet music for the Paris Opéra premiere of Don Carlos. Though Balanchine jettisoned the little allegory that ties the divertissement to the main plot of the opera, its frothy marine atmosphere remains. The ballet marked the coronation for Merrill Ashley, to whose diamond-sharp yet pearlescent technique Balanchine tailored the exceedingly virtuosic ballerina role. Megan Fairchild, who has danced it often, pulled it off with high honors.
A contemporary choreographer welcomed into the City Ballet fold with open arms is Justin Peck, 36. His Rotunda (seen February 4 and 20), set to music of Nico Muhly, bounces along airily, punctuated by occasional circle formations that may or may not allude to the architectural title. Peck's far more ambitious full-length Copland Dance Episodes (seen February 17, matinee), by contrast, is a heavily padded affair. Totaling 22 episodes in two acts, the piece keep lots of dancers on the move, mostly without taking them anywhere, though much of the music demands real attention. As in Rotunda, the mix-and-match gummi-bear palette of the dancewear underscores the atmosphere of a carefree playground, bouncing with tots.
Roman Mejia's verve and daring struck sparks in "Tumbleweed," where he was backed up by a male quartet of similar accomplishments. Mejia aced it again in "Alone Together, Part I," a pas de deux with Alexa Maxwell. But there wasn't much there there. The long-limbed, fearless Miriam Miller and the broad-shouldered, athletic, yet never ponderous Gilbert Bolden III got to dive deeper in two pas de deux. Before intermission, they danced the affectionate "Two Birds" (Part 1). After the break, they were seen in "The Split" (Part 2), in which, as per the title, their worlds fall apart. I wished they had performed the sections back-to-back.