Stravinsky/Balanchine: The Collaboration

(New York City Ballet, 29 September 2012)

Many a classical ballet could have been improved had it been feasible to separate some dancers and eliminate others. A ballerina's spins and dives would have been greater technical achievements had she not been supported by the man. When a man has a dramatic role to play, it is typically one of watching the woman admiringly. Dancers hardly communicate. Their relationship does not develop onstage, but is delivered frozen in a rather dull state designed to look pretty. It often does.

Balanchine breaks with the aesthetic convention of classical ballet in Part II of the "Symphony in Three Movements." The dancing couple creates an entity that exists in its own right and imbues each constituent individual with life. The remaining dances are explorative, occasionally baroque---Citizen Kanesque in that they contain innovations (e.g., non-classical positions, no plot), but these innovations add up to a study, not a perfected work of art.

Balanchine's dances are Art Deco. They communicate little, worship the form, and suppress individualism. They worship the machine and subordination---with individuals being means, not human beings enriched and exposed in interactions with others.

One cannot blame Balanchine for not being a Hitchcock. Balanchine lacks Hitchcock's obsession with human relationships. Balanchine's interest is in that which transcends the human, and that which transcends is at risk of speaking little to humans.