BWW Dance Review: PENNSYLVANIA BALLET Presents 'Balachine and Beyond'

"Balanchine and Beyond," the Pennsylvania Ballet's strangely named program that I saw Saturday, June 11, 2016 at the Merriam Theater in Philadelphia, was a very satisfying evening. Of course, beyond can mean anything, so the choice of Trisha Brown, Hans van Manen and Jean-Pierre Frohlich was a very strange, or very apt, combination, depending on how you view and take your ballet. So I decided, if this is what they are presenting, I'll sit down and enjoy myself. And, for the most part, I did.

Hans van Manen's "Adagio Hammerklavier," to the music of Beethoven, is choreographed for three couples, exhibiting some interesting combinations, but the effect was muted. Light, airy, technically a bit difficult, but the problem, like so many theatrical works, is that it goes nowhere at all. It's as if we're waiting for a payoff that never arrives. As each pas de deux morphed into the other, I had to force myself to focus on the stage. I have never been an admirer of van Manen's, finding his choreography polished but lifeless. It might be me, but I have yet to find a satisfying van Manen ballet; I'm always waiting for the next ballet on the program.

Jean-Pierre Fohlich's "Varied Trio (in four)," was a pleasant surprise. A pas de deux set to the music of Lou Harrison, it exhibits considerable joy in movement alone. There is no story, no pushing for effect. It's just two dancers having a good time. As I did too.

The first of the two major offerings of the program, Trisha Brown's "O zlozony/O composite," created for the Paris Opera in 2004 on three of the foremost dancers in the company, Aurélie Dupont, Manuel Legris and Nicolas Le Riche (you can't get better than that), and lasting a mere 20 minutes, is an important composition, and for good reason.

That being said, it's by a modern choreographer with no classical background. To choreograph the work, Brown had to devise an alphabet of gestures corresponding to the poems of St. Vincent Millay's "Renascence" and Milosz's "Ode to a Bird," which serve as a kind of narrative framework for the piece. These were then translated to dance movements which were, I imagine, very intricate for ballet dancers to assimilate.

But not so. The dancers grasped Brown's vocabulary, relying on a sway, a pull, or a lift into the air. Set to the music of Laurie Anderson and performed before Vija Celmins' starry night set, this is a dance that attests to both Ms. Brown's creative ingenuity (can I call it brilliance?) and the dancers' inherent lyricism, leaving the audience in a state of hushed contentment. Beautifully performed by Lillian Di Piazza, Ian Hussey and Aaron Anker, "O zlozony/O composite" is a worthy and highly unusual addition to the Pennsylvania Ballet's repertoire, steeped as it is in the Balanchine tradition. I look forward to other contributions by choreographers such as Ms. Brown.

Speaking of Balanchine, the evening ended on a high note, his monumental "The Four Temperaments". While I had some minor quibbles with the performance as a whole -- the third theme in the opening could have been cleaner, Sanguinic's pas de deux a bit tighter, and Choleric a bit angrier -- overall the performance was every bit as good as one you can find at New York City Ballet these days, and there are many who can find fault even with that company.

The music, commissioned by Balanchine, always struck me as ponderous, the kind that would only produce a boring ballet. How time-and Balanchine-has proven this wrong. Although the four temperaments of the ballet, Melancholic, Sanguinic, Phlegmatic and Choleric, all correspond to their named music, it is of very little consequence. As in many Balanchine ballets, you can make up a story or watch (incredibly) the rich images, the constantly shifting patterns, the sheer volume of space that the dancers seemingly swallow. The movement almost betrays a certain belief that one had an imagination so fertile, overflowing with ideas and images that it still seems as fresh and vital today as when it was first presented in 1946. I have to say it, Balanchine is still modern, post-modern, or whatever modern you want to call it-the others can't match this. Like "Agon," "Episodes," and "Concerto Barocco," "The Four Temperaments" has been imitated but never rivaled. Nor could it be. That a ballet created 70 years ago, and not from the golden age of Russian ballet, still stands and attracts people from all facets of the arts attests to its high ranking in the ballet canon. I imagine it will still be on view in 2116.

Photo: Alexander Iziliaev, Artists of Pennsylvania Ballet in George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments."