American Ballet Theatre

(The Music Center, 11 July 2013)

Balanchine's "Symphony in C" is a firework---a routine that is simple, aesthetically pleasing in its synchrony, musicality, and understatement, a routine that is about nothing in particular, but has been found to please, just as Bizet's accompaniment.

By contrast, Balanchine's "Apollo" is affectedly theatrical, dated in its narcissism. To prevent a work from evolving is to condemn it or confine it to a menagerie that is of interest only to historians and choreographers. Jazz standards and classical music are resilient because legally malleable. A performer of Bach's Cello Suites is under no obligation to imitate Rostropovich; a Berlin interpreter is under no obligation to imitate Astaire. A dance is not a precision instrument built to meticulous specifications, but a conduit of emotion, which originates with the choreographer and musicians and infects dancers and the audience. To starve the dancers of that emotion by replacing the artist with the technique is to abuse their bodies (for the dancers would be doing something they do not understand and hence would not live when life could have been at its fullest).

In Ratmansky's "Chamber Symphony," with Jason-Hartlinesque intensity and playful curiosity, the protagonist discovers that it is easier (and more gratifying) to inspire dozens than to control one. Creativity is spurred by bewilderment and the failure to fit in.