Bad News for the Muses
May 5, 2005
Here's what I really want from a ballet: either to be transported out of my body into some fantastic heady realm, or to be transported into my body via some kinesthetic magic. What I don't want is to sit around thinking up snappy one-liners and experiencing various worrisome somatic symptoms, so that instead of drifting out of the theater, I hobble home cackling to myself like Carabosse, the embittered self-invited fairy spoiler in "Sleeping Beauty."
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| Wendy Whelan and Peter Boal in "Distant Cries." Photo: Paul Kolnik. |
Thus I am grateful to Edward Liang for "Distant Cries," his beautiful duet for Wendy Whelan and Peter Boal set to Albinoni, the 18th century Italian composer, which I saw first in the smaller confines of the Joyce Theater. It took well to the New York State Theater, gaining in poetry what it lost in intimacy. And how nice to see Boal, in his last season at the company before leaving to head the Pacific Northwest Ballet, take the stage in a piece he had commissioned for himself, so we might see that the excellent taste he has shown in his dancing runs deep. What a partner he has been, though it is his classical line and refinement that are usually most commented upon. He's been romantic with romantic girls, like Jennifer Ringer. He's been courtly. And here, with Wendy Whelan, he is a tragic lover. Nobody wafts or is wafted better than Whelan, who seems to be the choreographer's partner of choice for parting-gift duets. I've never seen a clearer dancer, except maybe Fred Astaire, whose gifts were of course otherwise altogether different—but for one other thing, which would be flattering one's partner.
The stalwart Jock Soto, as it happens, is also retiring this season, but his tribute ballet by Peter Martins went on without him. While I am not saying he was lucky to be injured and not in it, one might as well look for the silver lining–because what a weird ballet "Tala Gaizma" is, starting with its inhospitable violin score by Peteris Vasks, and proceeding to its inevitable conjuring of Apollo, the Balanchine role Peter Martins himself danced with such blond godliness. Either he intended this piece to look like a retirement party for Apollo, or he didn't. Who knows? How can you conjure three Muses and not have people think of Apollo? And who knew Apollo was a hairdresser?
You should see those Muses! With Jared Angle filling in for Soto, there appeared—I am making this up from looking at it, this isn't in the program—the Muse of Gynecology, played by the magnificent Sofiane Sylve, sporting an Afro; Miranda Weese, as Medusa, her hair done up in corn rows and a French twist; and Darci Kistler, her strawberry blonde hair streaming, who did everything but lean on Angle and murmur "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." This is a better idea than depending on the kindness of Martins, who, after interminable comings and goings of this ill assorted quartet, has a penultimate moment when you think he is going to kill off his hero, in a kind of symbolic retirement. (That's what Wheeldon did with Soto.) But no. Wait. The girls are down. Bad news, Muses! You're toast.
