Goodbye Sunshine
"Dances at a Gathering", "Union Jack"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
February 9, 2014
Jerome Robbins' "Dances at a Gathering", the most famous of the piano ballets, is also one of the most fragile. The dancers must have vibrant yet complimentary personalities to create that self-enclosed, nostalgic world. For me, many recent performances are haunted by ghosts of former dancers, and it has seemed to be a series of unconnected slightly saccharine exercises. But it burst alive again this season, with a newish, beautifully rehearsed cast. One of my ghosts is Jenifer Ringer, with Christopher Wheeldon, soaring through the so-called giggle dance--also known as Apricot. The music seemed to come directly from her back, float through her arms, and served to the audience with grace and charm. Ringer has graduated from Apricot to Pink, and she danced this at her farewell performance. Pink is a much larger and richer role, but her early qualities still shown through. She danced simply and graciously, with eloquent and soft arms, focusing on her fellow dancers. There were a few small pauses, as if she were savoring this last performance; rarely have I seen the moment when Pink offers her hand to Mauve (the elegant Jared Angle) performed with such elegant deliberation, as if she were thinking about her choice, which once made, let her completely surrender to her partner for that final elegiac pas de deux.
The other dancers were equally engaged, savoring each movement and dancing apparently only for each other. Gonzalo Garcia, as the boy in Brown, had the most touching moment, when he reached to the floor in the final scene and looked into Ringer's eyes before he laid his hand down feeling the ground, as if he wanted to offer her the stage. It was Ringer's performance, to be sure, but Megan Fairchild and Antonio Carmena danced the giggle dance with a piquant musicality. Rebecca Krohn as Mauve, showed off her intensity and her beautifully curved back to carve out some haunting shapes. And Jared Angle showed a fine comic flare staring down Garcia in the jumping competition with a "pliés at dawn" sneer.
Ringer got her own comic turn with Amar Ramasar in the Costermonger pas des deux in "Union Jack", as the cockney tippler. Like so many other Balanchine burlesques, the pas de deux is as formal as any of Mr. Petipa's, with an adagio, individual variations, and a sparkling coda; the more you know about classical ballet, the wittier the dance becomes. Ringer got to blow kisses the the audience, to the orchestra, and to her partner, and metaphorically, they blew them back to her. Ramasar gave a fine, loose-limbed, exuberant performance, though I missed the smell of the sawdust that some others (especially Nilas Martins) have given.
The massed symmetry of the opening section cast its usual spell, as they clans poured in marching to the irresistible melodies of the TopTen folk songs. "Auld Lang Syne" was not one of them, but it would have been appropriate, as the audience savored the performance of one of NYCB's truly loved dancers, who is leaving, it seems, on her own terms, with her technique still in full bloom, and who leaves behind so many radiant memories.
copyright © 2014 by Mary Cargill
