Ballet

Wow, I'm just back from the Kennedy Center where I went to the opening night performance of Washington Ballet's winter repertory production, including the world premiere of Trey McIntyre's The Rite of Spring: The Engagement. There was a great deal of anticipation in the audience, partially because Trey McIntyre is one of the bad boys of opera and one of the top choreographers right now and partially because the advertisements for the show carried the warning that it "contains adult material and is not suitable for children." Spring was the third act, though, so we had to wait a bit to get to the headliner. This show was presented in the Eisenhower Theater, which is the smallest by half of the three major auditoria in the Kennedy Center.

The evening opened with "Stravinsky Violin Concerto," set to the music of Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major by, of course, Igor Stravinsky, with original choreography by George Ballentine. The concerto appears in four movements, Toccata, Aria I, Aria II, and Capriccio, with the first and fourth movements being large ensemble dances and the second and third movements having pas de deux for two different couples.

The second act was "There Where She Loved," an unusual set piece conceived and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon featuring alternating art songs by Chopin in Polish and Kurt Weill in German, performed with live piano accompaniment, a soprano singing the Chopin, and a mezzo-soprano singing the Weill. The dancing was very modern, but nicely done, and consisted of sets of small ensembles.

At last we got to the main event. Now, just as a bit of background, The Rite of Spring has always been a bit controversial. Stravinsky's music was definitely cutting-edge modern at the time, the choreography was harshly angular instead of the graceful flowing moves expected by French balletomanes, and the story idea based on Slavic pagan fertility rituals culminating in the on-stage sacrifice of a virgin all led to the riots which broke out in the theater at the original premiere. So, with this kind of tradition, I figured the R rating warning was just an overreaction to the Ashcroftization of modern American society with a show that might be a little graphic in the lovemaking. Trey McIntyre had a completely different concept.

This version was no pagan fertility rite, but it did, indeed, have its own figurative virgin sacrifice. McIntyre set his ballet at the engagement party of a less-than-thrilled modern American socialite. As the show opens, we see the young woman whistfully preparing for her appearance, and taking pills as she stares at herself in the mirror. Her assistant urges her to the party, where it becomes immediately apparent that the girl's domineering mother has made this marital selection. As the engagement party continues (with fabulous costumes and lighting!) the girl is trying her hardest to have a bad time. Eventually her fiance appears and is forced on her by her mother. Then in a private moment, we discover why the girl is so unhappy about her impending marriage: she is in love with her female assistant! Mother, of course, walks in on the lesbian love scene and violently breaks it up, dragging the girl back to the party. When mother reappears, the naked (well, he was in just a dance belt) fiance emerges from under mother's dress, and then crawls over to the girl for the obligatory date rape scene. Meanwhile, the party continues and the dance becomes wilder, with the other men soon frenetically dancing far upstage in just their dance belts, but directly obscured by the women and their big dresses. The frenzy plays out on the side walls from the amazing lighting. As mother and daughter have a great argument and physical confrontation, the ballet ends as the girl chokes and kills her mother.

Cheery little ballet, eh?

It was actually pretty amazing. I should have liked to have gone back to see it again. The girl was danced by a pouty Laura Urgelles, mother by Erin Mahoney, and the fiance by Jonathan Jordan. The company's chief principals, Michele Jimenez and Brian Corman, were slated to dance the premiere, but the second cast was called upon to dance tonight, and there was no explanation for the change. Corman was definitely in prominent roles in the first two acts and did not seem impaired. I'm not sure about Jimenez, since I don't know her, and the program rather annoyingly does not include photos of the major principal dancers, so it's hard to guess which dancer is which. Washington Ballet's next production will be a Romeo and Juliet in April. I don't know whether they will do the Tschaikovsky or the Prokofiev versions (or somebody else!).