Clarissa and I met on the first day of intermediate French our freshman year at Bryn Mawr.  I was wearing a black t-shirt that said “The Royal Ballet” and had an outline of Alina Cojacaru in William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude.  I had decided that wearing a souvenir t-shirt from Notre Dame was perhaps trying a bit too hard to impress the French teacher, and so I had nixed one black-shirt-with-image in favor of another.  This proved to have been a great choice.  Clarissa noticed my shirt, and asked about it—turns out that we had ballet in common.  We ended up in the first day of advanced ballet as well, and continued to take ballet, modern, and French together throughout college (until her French far surpassed mine).  That was fall 2004.  It’s now fall 2017 and we’re still friends, staring down the gauntlet of our 10 year college reunion next spring.

I owed Clarissa a visit, so I called her up and told her I was coming to see her in October and that we should go to the ballet.

The performance I had chosen for us was part of American Ballet Theatre’s fall season at the Koch Theater (formerly the New York State Theater).  It was a triple bill:  Alexei Ratmansky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Jerome Robbins’ Other Dances, and Benjamin Millepied’s Daphnis and Chloe.  I had seen Daphnis in the spring as part of a long-delayed cinema broadcast from the Paris Opera Ballet.  Eager but nervous, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it.

Of course, we’re never sure if we’re going to like something we haven’t seen before, are we?  There’s a leap of faith involved.  From a ticket sales standpoint, ballet companies are constantly trying to help audiences make that leap.  Full-length story ballets sell well in part because the chasm of doubt for the potential ticket buyer is much smaller.  Audiences tend to be familiar with stories, and so feel safe buying a ticket.  But a mixed bill of “repertory works”?  That sounds threatening.  Daphnis and Chloe is, at least, a story.  But I still wasn’t sure.

As it happens, I really, really liked it when I saw it at the cinema.  I loved the costumes, found the abstract sets interesting, and most of all appreciated the economy of Millepied’s storytelling.  The ballet does away with mime and gestures that would explicitly move the story forward.   But even though I still needed to Google the plot to get the full picture, I could follow along.  Millepied created a whole world onstage, and the atmosphere changed as tensions came and dispersed and the lovers ended up happily ever after.

So when I saw that ABT was performing this same piece, I knew I had to see it in person.  I had also always wanted to see Other Dances, and so that left the Ratmansky as the bonus piece on the program.

In fact, there really was a bonus piece!  At intermission, ABT Apprentices, Studio Company members, and students performed a short work on the second, third, and fourth ring balconies.  With choreography by Millepied, music by Steve Reich, and costumes by rag & bone, Counterpoint for Philip Johnson captured the flash mob spirit with pedestrian movement performed enthusiastically yet casually.  As I was watching these young dancers, I found myself thinking that this was the very thing that was needed to dispel criticisms of elitism.  Counterpoint was accessible.  The dancers were in sneakers, and although it was performed in a theater, it could easily have been staged for an alternate venue.  It was also upbeat in mood, which I think is important.  Ballet is so often imagined as dark and dramatic, but it is just as often joyous and celebratory.

Clarissa and I enjoyed the entire performance.  Ratmansky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher was a fine opener, easing us into the evening.  We both wondered whether the title was meant to be taken literally in any way—a “memory of a dear place”?  Ultimately, we agreed that it was not.  It was simply two couples, dancing.  And the women had great dresses.

The intimate concert piece idea was distilled even further in Other Dances, an extended pas de deux to four mazurkas and a waltz by Chopin, played onstage by a pianist.  This simplicity of concept was part of what made Other Dances Clarissa’s favorite work of the evening.  “It’s as if we were there in the studio with them, watching a pair of really good dancers goof off, almost.”  The Koch Theater seats 2500, so it’s all the more impressive that despite the grandeur of the space, the piece itself maintained its intimacy.  But perhaps what sealed the deal was Gillian Murphy’s effortless performance of the role originated by Natalia Makarova.  “You didn’t want to take your eyes off her,” Clarissa said.  “Her suspension and her musicality—the way she played with the phrasing—that for me made the piece such a treat to watch.”

Musing on the performance later on, Clarissa mentioned that it had been a while since she’d been to the ballet; more recently, she had attended a couple of operas.  “I liked the mixed bill,” she said, “because I thought it was really interesting to see how the choreographers explored different themes over different lengths of time.”  This is a great point.  The Ratmansky piece was only 14 minutes, and yet in that time we see relationships shift between the four dancers until they end, seemingly good friends, dancing in harmony.  At the other end of the spectrum, Daphnis and Chloe clocked in at nearly an hour.  It felt leisurely but not overlong.  Ballet companies have long struggled to sell “mixed bills,” an evening composed of usually three, but sometimes two or four, shorter ballets, each by a different choreographer.  Paul Vasterling used to say that the great thing about a mixed bill was that if you didn’t like a piece, it would soon be over, and perhaps you would like the next one.  I’ve also heard mixed bills compared to tapas-style dining.  On a practical level, this makes sense to me.  And as I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate mixed bill programs for those very reasons.  Also, I enjoy the variety, in particular of dancers.  When you go to see Swan Lake, you get one principal couple.  But on this program at ABT, I saw three.  I don’t live in New York, and I don’t get to see ABT very often, so it was lovely to see so many of their “stars” in a single performance.

There was nothing I didn’t like at the performance.  Certainly, I preferred some moments to others, but taken as a whole, it was a wonderful and well-danced program.  ABT is touring a bunch in the coming year.  Catch them if you can!

American Ballet Theatre
October 26, 2017, 7:30 pm, at the David H. Koch Theater
Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Other Dances, Daphnis and Chloe