Sometimes it pays to sit in the cheap seats. Although not literally cheap, but certainly less costly than sitting in the front of the prime orchestra section with the ballet glitterati, the tier seating in New York City Center gave the best view of the sensual spectacle that was Maurice Béjart’s Boléro as performed by Paris Opera Ballet’s Étoile Hugo Marchand and artists from Béjart Ballet Lausanne. One of the stars of the show was the bright red table top, best visible from a higher seat, upon which the shirt-free, shoe-free Marchand in black jazz pants hunked-out the melody of Ravel’s hypnotic orchestral piece. Originally choreographed for ballerina Dušanka Sifnios in 1960, Boléro gained international fame nearly two decades later when Béjart adapted it for Argentinian Jorge Donn whose mystical, feral qualities elevated the ballet-erotics to tribalistic sensation.
As the soft relentless snare drums at the beginning gradually built to the boisterous brass crescendo 15 minutes later, Marchand danced mostly in-place, his movements gaining intensity as the corpsmen circled the table like toreros admiring the ferocity of the bull. It all came crashing to a conclusion with the toreros rising up against the red table and Marchand collapsing in the middle. Quite a thrilling performance.
The program opened with Balanchine’s Sonatine to Ravel’s Sonatine for Piano which was played beautifully on sage by Elena Bonnay. Balanchine originally made this pas de deux for his two beloved French dancers, Violette Verdy and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux. Performed here by the Paris Opera Ballet Étoiles Leonore Baulac and Germain Louvet, it was danced as the best French dancers now dance, not as they did a half century ago. Baulac and Louvet did not try to imitate a New York City Ballet style. They danced as themselves as they were reared. The foot articulation was so pronounced that the feet almost looked like they had extra joints in the middle. The textbook turned-out legs looked as though they could never possibly stray from their perfect lines. The profiles were so elegantly defined that jaw lines carried straight through the port de bras to the tips of the fingers. That French physical geometry is something else! The ballet was beautifully danced with a natural sophistication and pleasing refinement.
Following Sonatine, Béjart’s The Firebird revealed the handsome Béjart Ballet Lausanne dancers’ great energy, athleticism and theatricality. In this creation, corps dancers moved as a uniform flock of birds — in revolutionary partisan uniform-like costumes — often in a circle. Including this ballet on the same bill as Boléro may have given us a little too much of dancers moving in a large circle although they certainly were precise. The flock of revolutionaries often surrounded the Firebird (the athletically airborne Konosuke Takeoka in bright red unitard on opening night) and gave their undivided attention to him somewhat like the toreros gave to Marchand in Boléro. When their Firebird partisan leader died, he magically rose from the ashes as a Phoenix and the revolutionaries presumably prevailed during the emotional and thrilling climax of Stravinsky’s score. Béjart may have supplemented his Firebird with a few too many of his previously used choreographic ideas, but all in all it was an interesting use of the music.
The first half of the program concluded with Angelin Preljocaj’s breathtaking pas de deux L’Abandon from Le Parc which he created for the Paris Opera Ballet’s Laurent Hilaire and Isabelle Guérin who was in attendance this night with husband Jean-Pierre Frolich. Dorothée Gilbert and Hugo Marchand performed the stunningly original duet that masterfully imbedded raw passions into Mozart’s pure and pristine piano concerto. It was one of those performances that was so good that it should not be followed. Haglund wanted to end the night there but stuck it out through the less interesting Trois gnossiennes by Hans van Manen and L’esprit du Bleu pas de deux by Carolyn Carlson to get to the very fine performance of Béjart’s Boléro.
The H.H. Pump Bump Award, from Alexandre Birman, is bestowed upon Dorothée Gilbert and Hugo Marchand for the dream-like quality of their Le Parc pas de deux.
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