In Tallulah\u2019s autobiography, she talks about returning with friends from a Diaghilev performance in London\u2014\u201cCaught up in the graces of that artistic riddle we felt we should celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, Laura had to get up early the next morning, so we didn\u2019t go out for a drink after taking in the Sarasota Ballet\u2019s all-Ashton program at the Joyce\u2014playing through the weekend.<\/p>\n
But we did rap about it the next day.<\/p>\n
Valses Nobles et Sentimentales<\/strong><\/p>\n LJ: Ashton loves ballet. He makes no bones about it.<\/p>\n JL: So refreshing in an era when ballet is tempted to apologize for itself.<\/p>\n LJ:\u00a0He loves it down to its tiniest pieces\u2014a tendu, a fourth position, a notch of epaulement. He loves these pieces just as they are and doesn\u2019t feel the need to make them anything extra beyond what they are.\u00a0 He\u2019s exploratory in the way he puts the pieces together, not so much in the way he stretches or distorts them.<\/p>\n JL: He wants to beguile us with beauty. He\u2019s geisha-like almost.\u00a0Valses Nobles et Sentimentales<\/em>\u00a0is one of the last in that long series of haunted-ballroom ballets, which began perhaps with Balanchine\u2019s\u00a0Le Bal<\/em>\u00a0in 1929.<\/p>\n LJ: Did Ashton see Balanchine\u2019s\u00a0Cotillon<\/em>?<\/p>\n JL: Oh yes, the Ballet Russe did it in London all through the 1930s.<\/p>\n LJ: I\u2019ve always loved Ashton’s commitment to croise and it\u2019s everywhere in this ballet.<\/p>\n JL:\u00a0What does it mean to you? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n LJ: I guess there\u2019s something quintessentially English about it. Propriety, containment, this not spilling yourself all over everybody\u2014in efface and en face. And the wit of telling it slant, with a bit of shadow.<\/p>\n JL:\u00a0 Ashton arranges things that fit the music expertly, he heeds the mood of the music, but Balanchine choreographing\u00a0La Valse<\/em>\u00a0in 1951, to the same music, seems to reach into its deepest, unspoken dreams, desires, anxieties.<\/p>\n LJ: Yes, Balanchine\u2019s anxieties\u2014the snake in his garden\u2014the sense that death is always waiting. In this music Ashton plays with the lighter shadows of love; Balanchine goes for a more preying and expressionistic darkness.<\/p>\n Tweedledum and Tweedledee\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n LJ:\u00a0 This side of Ashton\u2014the dance hall, pantomimes, folk dance\u2014is pure joy.\u00a0 He just seems to toss it off, as if he never had to learn it because it\u2019s in his DNA.\u00a0 And it really gives you the fun of dance, which is something that has gone missing from choreography today.\u00a0 Ratmansky tries sometimes, but it\u2019s too self-conscious and comes off as faux or labored.\u00a0 This is light and true.<\/p>\n JL:\u00a0A knockabout romp that is deliciously silly\u2014let\u2019s us laugh like kids again.<\/p>\n Paradise<\/strong>\u00a0Garden<\/strong><\/p>\n LJ:\u00a0The Walk to the Paradise Garden<\/em>\u00a0duet is like MacMillan\u2019s Romeo<\/em>.<\/p>\n JL: Definitely Ashton\u2019s gloss on MacMillan.<\/p>\n LJ: Was it Ashton who called himself lazy? Even if he was, his invention eventually kicks in, usually metaphysically. That Brahmin-esque Figure of Death, so William Blake with those outstretched arms and hanging panels, he\u2019s like a bas relief chiseled on a tombstone. The lovers aren\u2019t afraid of him, but attracted and curious, like they\u2019re playing in a cemetery.<\/p>\n Friday\u2019s<\/span>\u00a0Child<\/strong><\/p>\n JL: \u201cFriday\u2019s<\/span>\u00a0Child\u201d from\u00a0Jazz Calendar<\/em>\u00a0was done originally for Sibley and Nureyev, and for me they are inscribed all over it\u2014the toasts of London in 1968. They were integrated into the city\u2019s cultural “elite”\u2014that dreaded word in today\u2019s cultural discourse\u2014in a way that today\u2019s ballet dancers might have a hard time comprehending. At the same time, they were accessible, because ballet was economically accessible. Sarasota\u2019s young man should have worked his arabesque more, like Nureyev undoubtedly did.<\/p>\n The ballet steps don\u2019t always sit organically on the bluesy score, but who cares? I don\u2019t know Richard Rodney Bennett\u2019s concert work, but he was a great soundtrack composer.\u00a0Have you seen 1967\u2019s\u00a0Billion Dollar Brain<\/em>?<\/p>\n LJ : No.<\/p>\n JL: You must.<\/p>\n LJ:\u00a0 Please explain why.<\/p>\n JL:\u00a0 <\/strong>Fabulous, haunting theme, and altogether a score that goes hand in glove with what the movie\u2019s trying to say. It\u2019s a seminal Cold War thriller. The arch-villain is a clearly insane Texas mogul who makes the very same noises that today are given credence as geopolitical pieties.<\/p>\n LJ:\u00a0 \u201cFriday\u2019s<\/span>\u00a0Child\u201d made me think of\u00a0Blow-up<\/em>.\u00a0 The bedroom threesome with Jane Birkin, etc.\u00a0 I don\u2019t exactly know why it made me think of that, something about sex and spontaneity and not caring that the act should be more than some physical manipulation and an orgasm\u2014oh that\u2019s nice, gotta go.<\/p>\n JL:\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s some romance there, too. So long as the warmth lasts, the affection is real. Of course Ashton knew company culture and he knew metropolitan culture.\u00a0\u00a0Furtivity may have had its own allure, but he was clearly pleased that what was once covert was now more moving into the sunlight. Yes, Ashton\u2019s Mod exercises of the 1960s were a little self-conscious\u2014but there\u2019s a real appreciation there, a love for youth in its high season.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Sinfonietta<\/strong><\/p>\n JL: In the\u00a0Sinfonietta<\/em>\u00a0adagio, the multiple men lofting the woman around recall \u201cBeauty Beauteous\u201d in his\u00a0Illuminations<\/em>. Always interesting the way a great creator can return to the same themes or ideas and make them new.<\/p>\n LJ: It\u2019s like \u201cLost in Space\u201d or \u201cStar Trek.\u201d So it fuses spirituality with space.<\/p>\n JL: Lunar.<\/p>\n LJ: The patterns he makes with the 5 men and one woman are like one of those floating campuses in space that we get in the movies. But with Ashton, it always comes back to the woman and the pointe. Her supporting leg in arabesque is the axis of the universe.<\/p>\n Facade<\/b><\/p>\n LJ: I don\u2019t love\u00a0Fa\u00e7ade<\/em>. I should, given what I said earlier about\u00a0Tweedledum and Tweedledee<\/em>.\u00a0 Maybe it doesn\u2019t add up for me.<\/p>\n JL: I\u2019ve never seen it before, so it was exciting to see something that\u2019s been written about so much. A suite of variety and exhibition dance numbers\u2014fun, and a bang-up finale.<\/p>\n LJ:\u00a0 The Swiss Jodeling Song had me thinking about the \u201cTwo Ladies\u201d number from\u00a0Cabaret<\/em>. Again, louche while innocent. But then, the primal\/feral is very much in the system of ballet\u2014\u201cL\u2019Apres-midi d\u2019un faune\u201d after all!\u2014and it\u2019s surprising that it doesn\u2019t express itself more than it does. Ashton, though, is very much aware of this impulse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Tallulah\u2019s autobiography, she talks about returning with friends from a Diaghilev performance in London\u2014\u201cCaught up in the graces of that artistic riddle we felt we should celebrate.\u201d Well, Laura had to get up early the next morning, so we … Continue reading