NYCB 4/23 matinee
Utterly brilliant

Just saying – if that was a final salute to a role yesterday, it was one that the Balletomane Brigade will never forget. To be clear, we have no information to the effect that it was Maria Kowroski’s final Symphony in C. But the ballet is not slated to be performed during the 2017-2018 season (nor is Jewels) and our Maria is at the most delicate and precarious stage of her career. Her instrument may allow her to decide when and how to depart or it may not. Perhaps though, there is a crafty plan afoot to persuade Maria to stick to her discipline so she can stick it out for 2018-2019 – assuming that both Symphony in C and Jewels will reappear. It would certainly be a crime if these ballets were kept in storage while common riff raff from contemporary wannabes littered NYCB’s great stage.

Haglund agrees that it is important for NYCB to build new work into its repertory, but – and this is a but bigger than Beyonce’s – it has to be incredible world class art that is good enough to stand along side Balanchine’s. If it’s not good enough, then NYCB shouldn’t keep torturing the audience with it just because it is recent work. The new works should earn their places in the repertory, not ascend and replace Balanchine’s works because they have cultivated obnoxious media attention. If NYCB believes that it can force people to watch its new works (after the premieres) by taking away or severely reducing Balanchine’s works, then they should do some re-thinking.

The works on yesterday's program were 61, 71, and 70 years old. People still flock to see them; dancers still adore dancing them and dream of the day when they will dance a lead role; audiences still gasp at their beauty. This has been going on for 61, 71, and 70 years now. Does NYCB think it’s going to suddenly stop and they need to have trendy new work to replace it? That’s what Pillsbury thought back in the 1970s when it came up with Wiener Wrap. (We have to create something new and different to bolster up our refrigerated biscuits and keep us going. Wiener Wrap will be the next big thing!) Today one of Pillsbury’s top selling products is still its basic refrigerated biscuit which celebrates its 66th birthday this year. Where’s Wiener Wrap these days? It doesn’t even make the list.

The lesson here is for NYCB to be careful not to put Wiener Wrap on stage. In Haglund’s view, the next four weeks of the spring season contains a lot of it, sadly.

Back to yesterday's matinee –

What a treat it has been this week to watch Tiler Peck grow to Sequoia heights in the ballerina role of Allegro Brilliante. By the time she finished her fourth performance of the week on Sunday, she had achieved Hyperion status. There are those who will debate that assertion by sniffing that she takes musical liberties that Merrill Ashley would never dare to during Balanchine’s time. But who really knows what Balanchine might have created if Tiler had come along in his time? He seems to be inspiring her from afar – enough to make us think that this is Balanchine’s time whether he is with us or not.

Tiler’s breadth of musicality and daring inspired her demi-soloist couples as well. Sara Adams, Megan Johnson, Meagan Mann, and Lydia Wellington have never danced as freely and as luxuriantly as they did on Sunday. Their partners – Devin Alberda, Daniel Applebaum, Aaron Sanz, and Andrew Scordato – were as gallant and precise as could be. If those arabesque lines and cabrioles from Aaron Sanz and Daniel Applebaum become any more brilliant, we may need to start wearing protective sunglasses at their performances. Both men, along with Andrew Scordato, danced energy-draining demi-soloist or principal roles in all three ballets yesterday and did so magnificently.

In The Four Temperaments, Scordato was paired with Lydia Wellington in the First Theme, Applebaum with Lauren King in the Second Theme, and Sanz with Ashley Laracey in the Third Theme. Maturity becomes all of these dancers. A sense of “getting the steps right” has been replaced with the higher obligation of “doing the steps justice.” It’s a realization that comes at different points in dancers’ careers, and when it finally does come, it is most gratifying for the viewer to see.

We can’t say that Sunday's casting of the other principal roles in The Four Temperaments will ever be at the top of our list, but we can say that the performances were serviceable. As Haglund grew a little bored, he imagined the dancers with cat whiskers. It helped pass the time.

Symphony in C apparently is not taking well to the idea of being mothballed for all of next year. She made quite the spectacle of herself yesterday, “You’re going to miss me because you know I am the most beautiful of all.” Well, she certainly was yesterday. The remarkable and ever exquisite Corps de Ballet and demi-solists were led by Megan Fairchild & Chase Finlay in the First Movement, Maria Kowroski & Tyler Angle in the Second Movement, Alston MacGill & Harrison Ball in the Third Movement, and Brittany Pollack & Taylor Stanley in the Fourth Movement. Chase had a more even performance than earlier in the week but he is quite off his game this season. Megan, who had to miss her first performance of this ballet this season, was in fabulous form. Crystalline clear feet and legs, graceful upper body, and no pushing at the audience helped to make this a beautiful afternoon for her.

Maria and Tyler were simply dazzling in their elegance and grace. Signature suppleness and royal refinement were evident throughout their dancing, whether together or as soloists. The linear relationships of their limbs was a geometric heaven. While Maria has never been known as a virtuosic pirouetter – the length of her legs makes that all but impossible – she managed the very fast sequence of two unsupported double pirouettes in the finale as well as ever and as well if not better than Sara Mearns earlier in the week. Ditto for the series of fast supported double pirouettes where the working leg opened first to the front, then to the side, then to the back. At least we saw the shape of the extended working leg and foot each time – something that Sara was unable to show us in either of her performances.

Alston MacGill, who danced the Third Movement for the fourth time during the week, finished with a skilled and confident performance opposite Harrison Ball. Thank goodness Harrison is finally throwing some hints to the audience that he actually enjoys performing. Brittany Pollack and Taylor Stanley gave the Fourth Movement a big jolt of electricity. All four principal ladies got their acts together for the finale. They found their ensemble coordination and precision which gave the final moments of the ballet its brilliance.

The matinee was such an extraordinary afternoon of dancing; it almost felt like a closing performance to the season. In some ways it was. That was the last of the Balanchine repertory pieces until fall. Only a week of Midsummer Night's Dream remains, and it is preceded by four weeks of ballets commissioned over the past 30 years – most of which do not even hold a candle to Balanchine's works. It's not going to be a happy time for balletomanes or for those who count tickets sold.

The HH Pump Bump Award, a First Position Award with diamonds from the House of Borgezie ($250k with Haglund's discount), is bestowed upon Tiler Peck and Maria Kowroski for their incomparable performances in Allegro Brilliante and Symphony in C.