I’d seen the 1951 La Valse tape in 2012 and thought, Oh, there are things in there that we no longer see on stage, but I liked NYCB in La Valse in 2014. Nevertheless I totally agreed with Macauley. Original source material needs to be studied. It is the nature of ballet that details fall away with time and works are diluted.
I don’t know what Hyltin looked at, what whomever at NYCB rehearsed her looked at, etc. That backbend by Le Clercq as she is mesmerically drawn to Moncion’s Death that enthralled me seemed to be more present in Hyltin’s performance than it had been previously on stage at NYCB.
But anyway, I was interested watching her performance to notice, oh, she did it that way, rather than that. . .instead of thinking what the F–is s/he doing?, as I sometimes do when I see the old ballets revived.
And no, she didn’t look like a facsimile of Le Clercq, and whatever study she’d done didn’t make for what looked like a “calculated” performance, as carefully calculated as it may have been.