The tall would very much be Veronika Part. It’s a given that she dominates any theatrical space that she’s in. But after watching her for more than fifteen years, Part can still surprise me. As the Mistress in Lilac Garden at ABT this week, she embodied Tudor’s adage about humans being able to live without extremities but not without a center. Let’s say her back can grab you by the throat! Tudor, whose rehearsals I loved watching in the 1980s, would have been thrilled.
The opening Theme and Variations was led by Sarah Lane and Herman Cornejo. Lane is always a good dancer, but sometimes when I’ve seen her in the past she seemed to be trying to acquire length by stretching herself into a kind of perpetual allongee stiffness. But tonight she accomplished more by doing less. She danced with altogether admirable aplomb and no sense of trying too hard. She was marvelously on top of her technique as well, except for a couple of what must have been nervous moments.
Cornejo was brilliant all the way to his very last tour. Some interesting personal expression in the arms too.
In the closing Rodeo, Xiomara Reyes dominated the stage without pushing her petite self at us over on the other side of the proscenium. Because of how she used her entire body, how she paid attention to details, how much she could convince us that she believed in what she was doing. It’s like something baritone Gerald Finley once said to me–it’s the focus of your tone not the exertion of voice production that lets you fill a huge theater without strain.
Lilac Garden and Rodeo haven’t been seen on the Met stage for a long time. I’d forgotten how they live up to that scale. Those infinite plains and vistas on Rodeo’s backdrop–did they ever pull us to the horizon. The ballet and the stage became partners.