Also on Wednesday was Martins’ The Magic Flute, in which Tiler Peck demonstrated how far along her dancing has come. She doesn’t seem any longer to be in thrall to that doctrinaire Balanchine thing of not keeping her heels down, trying to always stay high and a little forward on pointe. It’s a positioning that aids the dancer’s speed, and it was something Balanchine certainly developed, but of course he didn’t want it all the time. However, like almost all of Balanchine’s concepts about ballet, it’s now sometimes adopted uncritically as almost a tic.
It robbed Peck’s debut two years ago as Swanhilda in Coppelia of a certain degree of power. When you don’t use your descent into the floor, when you scant plié you reduce amplitude: to go up and out you’ve really got to go down sometimes, all the more so when it’s a short dancer like Peck.