DANCE REVIEW : Knowing Balanchine Through His Art

“It’s all in the programs,” the late George Balanchine once replied to questions about his personal life.

During the second week, which ended Tuesday, of New York City Ballet’s eight-week “Balanchine Celebration,” another dozen works entered this chronological presentation of 73 ballets. These programs spanned 1948 to 1955 and offered insights into Balanchine’s own life and times.

This period covered the choreographer’s marriages to ballerina Maria Tallchief, wife No. 4 whom he married in 1946, and ballerina Tanaquil Le Cler, No. 5, whom he wed in 1952. Both influential dancers left their mark on Balanchine’s work and this luxuriously laid-out view of it variously recalled them.

These were also years of a tug-of-war for prestige between America’s indigenous modern dance and Balanchine’s classical ballet.

In “Orpheus” (1948, to Stravinsky), a statuesque Tallchief created the central role of the lost and loving Eurydice, while the younger Le Cler appeared as the merciless “Leader of the Bacchantes.” Theirs are essentially isolated ballet roles. The work’s overall tone is one related to Martha Graham’s then-trendy modern creations. Isamu Noguchi, Graham’s favorite designer, gave “Orpheus” its simple but indelible props and sets.

The French-scented, almost wild “Bourre Fantasque,” (1949, to Chabrier) also included roles for both these ballerinas. A playful, leg-swinging and foot-flexing Le Cler led off the suite. A more mysterious Tallchief commanded the central movement. Both appeared with their partners, ensembles and the leads of the third movement in the freewheeling finale.

In 1951, Balanchine made his potent one-act reduction of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” around Tallchief’s powerful Swan Queen. From the same year comes “La Valse,” a poetic evocation of a dance-of-death cotillion (to Ravel), with Le Cler as a hellbent, iridescent debutante.

In 1952, around the time Balanchine was annulling one marriage and arranging his next, he made a roseate and luminous “Scotch Symphony” (to Mendelssohn) with Tallchief as its ballerina/sylph.

The special program billed here as “1954 Premieres” included three amazingly diverse works in which Tallchief and Le Cler continued to make Balanchinean history. “Western Symphony,” a romp for cowpoke ballet men and showgirl ballet women (to Hershy Kay orchestrations of American Western tunes) climaxed with a Le Cler role that wittily turned saloon hall high-kicking into porcelain classicism.

“The Nutcracker,” Balanchine’s first re-creation of a so-called full-length classic, is also dated 1954. Tallchief led the staging then as the Sugar Plum Fairy who presides over the all-dancing second act. The ’54 program here opened with Act II of “The Nutcracker” in its entirety.

The other 1954 sampling shown was “Ivesiana” (to selections of Charles Ives). With its dark, mysterious and unconventional music and moves, this now four-part suite reveals Balanchine meeting the so-called modernists on their own turf. Le Cler inspired the teasingly deadpan kicks and foot flexings of the “In the Inn” segment. Meanwhile, Allegra Kent, with whom Balanchine was becoming infatuated, led to the creation of the sphinxlike female for “The Unanswered Question” section.

Two showpiece pas de trois (one to Glinka, another to Minkus) and a pas de deux (to Delibes) from this period were also offered. Ever important to the effect of all these works was the dancing and partnering of their central men, in these cases largely roles made for Andre Eglevsky and Nicholas Magallanes.

Damian Woetzel was cast in both these precursor’s roles, and left his unmistakable mark, athletically and expertly in every instance. For example, as Eglevsky in the Minkus trio, and as Magallanes in “The Nutcracker” Grand Pas de Deux.

Of late, City Ballet under Peter Martins has shown more strength in male dancers than in ballerinas. While this imbalance has not changed conclusively over the past two weeks, the concentrated inspiration of Balanchine’s ballets has spurred the company’s women. However mixed the results, a happy number of performances evoked former ballerinas as inspiring muses rather than as implacable ghosts.

Kyra Nichols managed to take four grand Tallchief roles, in “Swan Lake,” “Bourree Fantasque,” “Scotch Symphony” and the “Sylvia” pas de deux, and add great luster to each. As Eurydice, Wendy Whelan performed with a keen intensity that contrasted unfortunately with the insubstantial dramatic and physical depth of Nilas Martins as Orpheus.

Adam Luders, compelling as the “Dark Angel” in “Orpheus,” brought an elegant anxiousness to the Magallanes role of “La Valse.” In the poignant Le Cler role, alas, Heather Watts was physically sketchy and dramatically overdone. Carried eerily aloft and aloof in Kent’s “Unanswered Question” role, Margaret Tracey was truly Balanchinean--mesmerizing and beauteous.