Jewels at the New York City Ballet

By Mary Sheeran
 
         There’s an apocryphal story, repeated so many times it may as well be true and maybe it is, a little, that George Balanchine visited Van Cleef and Arpels and was inspired by the gems on display to create what became the first full-length plotless ballet, Jewels. Don’t try this yourself. Inspiration like this only works if you happen to be George Balanchine. As jewels take years to form and be finished, this ballet represents the enormous range, style, musicality, and resources Balanchine had accumulated in his own jewelbox by 1967.
 
         For resources, he had the dancers of the New York City Ballet, the company he’d been making dances on since 1948, and the theater he’d designed for dance, the New York State Theatre at Lincoln Center. As for stylistic range, one could divide the ballets of his vast repertory into categories of Emeralds (romanticism), Rubies (brassy, jazz, Stravinsky), and Diamonds (distillation of Russian imperial style – a typical Balanchine approach that looks forward even while looking back. There’s a reason he was born in January.)
 
         For the record, Balanchine did say of Jewels, “The ballet had nothing to do with jewels. The dancers are just dressed like jewels.” (They are, and beautifully, thanks to the brilliance of costume designer Karinska.)
 
         Jewels may be considered a three-act ballet, but each section is performed separately, and there is no “mix and match” finale. It begins subtly, with Emeralds. The more you see this piece, the more you grow to love it and the more its music (from Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Shylock) haunts for days after its hearing. Some may feel this section is too slow (company ads refer to the music as being at a “mesmerizing pace,” whatever that means), but it seems to me an essay about time, love and loss, its subject being an aspect of woman that cannot be captured in the other two sections. Some of Emeralds appears to be youthful frolicking, especially that impish pas de trios (Erica Pereira, Anthony Huxley, and Ana Sophia Schiller at Saturday’s matinee performance). There are two delightful solos for women: Rachel Rutherford danced my favorite of the two, delightfully discovering her arms and feet; the applause from her colleagues and her solo curtain call confirmed that this lovely dancer is leaving the company.
 
         In watching Balanchine’s work, one needs to interact with music and dance more than usual. In Emeralds, the music is slow, but the dancers move fast, capturing the music’s inner pulse. The result is an innocence mixed with longing that permeates the piece, a sense of the fleeting nature of time even when it seems to move slowly. In the final moments, as the women disappear, the three men are left reaching after them into the empty air.
 
         Bam. That would be Rubies. The piano shoots out Stravinsky’s jazzy “wake ‘em up” chords from his Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, banishing the ethereal green forest (a little too green, I’d say) of Emeralds, and we have eight women, brassily flashing in red. (Susan Walters was the jazzy pianist.) The women’s legs seem to have grown longer, certainly they become powerful weapons; you wonder if they let Teresa Reichlin take hers on airplanes. The music insists on her centrality; and she is central.  Whereas we had three men reaching for their ideal in Emeralds, now we have four men who leap forward, each taking a very real leg or arm. They proceed to (take your pick) a) attempt to manipulate her, moving her limbs – a frequently used Balanchine motif; b) be the four partners she has picked to dance with. Whichever you choose, their suggested capture doesn’t last long. This section is a brilliant blend of the Siren from The Prodigal Son and the Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty. And by the way, Gonzalo Garcia, while admirably understated here, proved a dynamic gem when he needed to be. Watching him, I was reminded that the role was made on Edward Villella.
 
         And, speaking of The Sleeping Beauty, the final segment is its sophisticated distillation, Diamonds, an extended pas de deux (interrupted by other dances), whose lead couple are generally considered to be the company’s royalty (here the marvelous Maria Kowroski and Charles Askegard). The man must be strong alone and as a support for his partner, who doesn’t seem to need him much. However romantic this section seems, and however it may appear to be a “wedding” pas de deux  from The Sleeping Beauty (implied by the diamonds and white costumes), the man here is as longing for the ideal, elusive woman as his earlier companions at the end of Emeralds. The finale here, a lively processional that fills the stage with dancers, followed by a solemn and courtly reverence, pays homage to the land of Petipa and Tchaikovsky, and certainly to the woman who rules over all at the end, but also to the men of Jewels, with their arms outstretched, reaching for her. Taking his place among them is Mr. Balanchine himself.
 

Jewels. Choreography by George Balanchine; Scenery by Peter Harvey; Costumes by Karinska. Emeralds: Music by Gabriel Fauré (from Pelléas et Mélisande and Shylock); Rubies: Music by Igor Stravinsky (Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra; Diamonds: Music by Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky (from Symphony No. 3 in D major). Premiere: April 13, 1967, New York State Theater, with additions to Emeralds in 1976). For  information about New York City Ballet, go to www.nycballet.com.
 

Mary Sheeran is the author of Quest of the Sleeping Princess, a novel set during a gala performance at the New York City Ballet, and Who Have the Power, a historical novel set during the Comstock Lode era about a pianist discovering that her mother was a healing woman of the Washo tribe.

Can You Live Without Labels?

VICAR BUDDY STALLINGS' WEEKLY MESSAGE/St. Bart's Episcopal Church


"What do you mean when you say you are a progressive?" It is a good question, posed by someone in one of the Transition Forums we had last Sunday. Though I was pleased enough with my answer, maybe too pleased, I have given it some more thought over the last couple of days.

The truth, of course, is that when I say that I am progressive, the real message is that someone else is not. Progressive=good; not progressive=bad. That seems so "last decade". Surely we can do better.

This is what I have decided: I am finished with labeling myself. I can't stop others from doing it to me, but I am not going to make it easy for them by slapping it on myself like a badge. And I am going to attempt not to label them. That will be harder, and I am realistic about my possibilities for succeeding. It is marvelously easy to dismissively say, "well, she is such a 'you fill in the blank.'" Easy and dismissive but also lazy and always somewhat incorrect, certainly partial. It is a shorthand way of interacting with one another that does not benefit us in the long run. Surely we are insightful enough to know that each of us is infinitely more than some primary identification.

So much of what we know about Jesus comes through the lens of narrators with clearly defined group identities and agendas. (The Matthean Jesus, for example, is quite different form the Johannine Jesus.) Despite that, the picture we have of him is of a man who just didn't go there. I don't think he talked to the Samaritan woman because she was a Samaritan or because she was a woman. He talked to her because she was present at a well where he stopped for a little break. Beyond a doubt, his interaction with her is a remarkable and didactic moment, but I don't think he was deliberately crossing boundaries to teach us something. He wasn't being a hip, progressive Rabbi; he was just being Jesus. Maybe that is the real lesson.

Buddy just being Buddy is not nearly as good as Jesus just being Jesus. No doubt about that, but all in all it is the best I have got. Living without labels isn't really going to happen. I do know that. But it is early summer and the living is easy; it is cool enough to pretend it is never going to get really hot again. We can imagine anything we want-and maybe even make some of it come true.

A Little Journey

When A Little Journey opened on Broadway in 1918, a critic for the New York Herald wrote that audiences were so moved they lingered in their seats afterward “to cling to the men and women of Miss Crothers’ imagination as one would hold onto friends.” 

I felt the same way at Monday night’s opening of the Mint Theater Company’s revival of this sacramental play by Rachel Crothers, which is expertly directed by Jackson Gay. As we were standing to leave I said to my friend Brenda, “I want to see this again.” The next morning I started e-mailing my Drama Desk friends to ask them if they were going and had an extra ticket would they please take me. And dear Brian came through -- I went again last night and was so grateful to be back in that world with those special characters.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this play, and don’t want to. It’s a simple story, set in 1914, of people thrown together on a westbound train from New York in what will end up being a life-changing four-day journey for each of them. The first two acts are charming as we get to know the characters -- Julie Rutherford (Samantha Soule, in photo left), a dispirited young woman who is ready to jump from the train because she feels the future holds nothing for her; Jim West (McCaleb Burnett), a young man who has reformed his life by giving up alcohol and opening a ranch to help others get sober; Mrs. Bay (Rosemary Prinz) a hard-of-hearing grandmother traveling with her granddaughter, Lily (Chet Siegel); Annie (Jennifer Blood), an unwed mother with her baby; two college students, Frank (Ben Hollandsworth) and Charles (Ben Roberts); Mrs. Welch (Laurie Birmingham, in photo right), a demanding busybody; Mr. Smith (Douglas Rees), a cantankerous old man who prefers to stay holed up in his cabin and the ordered-about porter (Anthony L. Gaskins). The acting is first-rate across the board.

Martha Hally’s Victorian costumes, Paul Whitaker’s lighting and Jane Shaw’s sound design enhance the mood perfectly, and Roger Hanna’s set is a joy -- train seats on a revolving stage that allows each of the characters some time in the spotlight as their stories unfold.

As delightful as the first two acts are, it was the third that really did it for me. Up until then I had been enjoying the play immensely, which is my typical reaction to a Mint show. That company consistently presents the highest quality productions of any Off-Broadway theatre. In Act Three, however, the tone becomes deeply spiritual as the characters are brought together by an event that strips them of their egos and status (jewelry and expensive clothing gone), their loneliness and even their racial differences. With no private compartments to escape to, they form a primitive gathering around a bonfire, presenting a vision of the Kingdom where everyone is united and “there’s plenty of room.” It is so quietly powerful that my heart fills whenever I think of it. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you by saying more, but in looking back on it and then experiencing it again I can see how skillfully Crothers set the stage for this journey’s end.

A Little Journey, which was a nominee for the first Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is the second Crothers play I’ve seen at the Mint. My friend Peri and I were moved by her Susan and God in 2006, but Journey has affected me more deeply.

  This kind of reaction has followed the play from the beginning. Its original production was greeted by the New York Times as “a simple, moving story deftly and very convincingly told.”

Crothers was inspired to write the play while riding on a train. She was struck by how travel “brought together such characters as I required.”     

After playing for 252 performances on Broadway, A Little Journey toured the country, making notable stops in Washington and Chicago. In 1927, it was made into a silent film (now lost) starring Harry Carey, Billy Haines, and Claire Windsor. A handful of amateur and stock productions followed in the 1920s and ‘30s, but then it was the end of the line. The train stopped, and A Little Journey hasn’t been seen since. 

Finding and resurrecting these lost gems is the mission of the Mint. Plays like this shouldn’t be allowed to be lost to history. Like any well-written work of literature, A Little Journey is perfectly at home in any era.

As for Crothers (1878-1958), she was among America’s most successful and produced playwrights during the first three decades of the 20th century. Nearly 30 of her plays opened on Broadway between 1906 and 1937. 

“Although it rare now to find anyone who has heard of her,” wrote the New York Times in 1980, “Miss Crothers at the apex of her career was a symbol of success in the commercial theater.”  

Program notes offer interesting insights into the writer and her plays, which often highlighted her interest in strong women characters and social concerns.   A Man’s World (1910), heralded by one New York critic as the “first great American play,” followed a young woman’s struggle to establish an artistic career while raising an adopted son.  Nice People (1921) examined the flapper phenomenon through the eyes of three young women and provided Katharine Cornell and Tallulah Bankhead with their first important roles.  In Susan and God (1937), a socialite discovers the difference between public façade and personal faith while reconciling with her husband and daughter.   

According to the notes, Crothers directed her own work.  Her consistently high standards helped professionalize the role of director in American theater.  She was also a dedicated philanthropist.  She helped found many important charities, including the American Theater Wing for War Relief (established 1940), which evolved into today’s American Theater Wing.    

By the late 1940s, the program notes continue, Crothers’ comedies fell out of fashion.  She continued writing, but she did not produce any new plays, preferring to focus on her charity work. She died in her sleep on July 5, 1958.  The Times wrote in her obituary “She was as skillful as she was prolific.  Miss Crothers mixed an enormous amount of common sense with smooth craftsmanship and a rare knowledge of and faith in human nature.”

For tickets and further information call (212) 315-0231 or visit MintTheater.org. The Mint Theater Company is located at 311 W. 43rd St., on the third floor.

A Burst of Enthusiasm that Changed the World

VICAR BUDDY STALLINGS' WEEKLY MESSAGE/St. Bart's Episcopal Church

Creative people make me less tired. Even when I feel as though I have been run over by a truck, in the presence of real creativity I am suddenly back - alive and hopeful, earnest and insightful, and amused and playful. All things once again can be imagined.

Earlier this week I spent some time with a truly creative spirit, one whose life oozes enthusiasm. She is no Pollyanna; life for her has had some hard edges. On more than one occasion, circumstances have required that she recreate herself. From my vantage point, it seems that each newly tweaked incarnation has gotten better and better.

Putting a fine point, or even a dull one, on precisely what set of dynamics, genetic or environmental, create such a composite of personhood is not possible. But the more of these wonderful characters I encounter, the more I am able to identify some things that seem to be common to them. With all due respect to the proverbial moody, miserable, and misanthropic creative genius, the folks I am talking about are the exact opposite, seeming to live from a place of joy that no amount of cynicism lurking about them can extinguish.

In our scripture there are frequent references to the idea that God is up to something new, creating again and again within the people of God a spirit of newness, of hope, of joy. I know that does not mean that we are guaranteed to be happy campers every minute. Heavens, I have been a testy camper a couple of times already today, and it is not yet noon! But it is not too much to hope that our faith will generate in us a sense of joy that lasts even when life is far from peachy. At its best, our faith, our experience of Christ in one another, develops within us a reservoir of joy that allows us to bounce back, to keep on hoping and loving and imagining.

It helps to remember that the Church, this lumbering, perplexing and often maddening entity, began in a burst of enthusiasm that changed the world. Far from the stodgy uptight reputation we have managed to earn and cherish, the church began with some wild and crazy carrying on! On Pentecost, I don't think there was one speck of meanness to be found; people were filled with joy and absolutely nothing could stop them from spreading some really, really Good News. Through all the twists and turns of the church, many of which, old and new, make us cringe, the Good News remains an invitation to a new thing, to a new life, to a life of creativity and joy.

Kelli O'Hara, Always Enchanting

Three-time Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara launched her new solo CD, Always, Friday night at Manhattan's Town Hall with a 90-minute, intermission-less concert of nearly 20 songs from Broadway and the American Songbook, with a little taste of rock and roll thrown into the mix.

O’Hara has been one of my favorite Broadway performers since I first noticed her onstage, in Sweet Smell of Success in 2002. In the years that followed she continued to charm me in The Light in the Piazza, Pajama Game and South Pacific. I even ventured out in blizzard in January just to see her in Knickerbocker Holiday.

Looking festive in a blue, green and white print sarong dress with strappy high heeled sandals, her blond hair in a shoulder-length bob, she didn’t disappoint, at least not in a major way, in Friday’s concert.

I appreciated her creativity in song selection, choosing several of what she called “man songs,” numbers from shows or recordings that have traditionally been sung my men. Two of these in particular are ones I’ve always loved, “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George and “How Glory Goes” from Floyd Collins. It also was nice to hear her sing “This Nearly Was Mine” from South Pacific, which she listened to “hundreds of times” when her costar, Paul Szot, sang it during the critically acclaimed run of the show at Lincoln Center in 2008.

Another highlight of the evening was when she was joined by her father-in-law, singer/actor James Naughton, and husband, singer/songwriter Greg Naughton, for a moving a cappella version of James Taylor’s “Lonesome Road.” Later Kelli and Greg shared the stage with Broadway performers Sherie Rene Scott, Gavin Creel and Julie Foldesi for a spirited “Carry On,” a Crosby, Stills and Nash song that took me back to my youth.

While I was drawn into all of the numbers O’Hara sang and the way she sang them, what I wanted more of was her. Her interaction with the audience consisted mostly of talking a bit about the songs. Even when some technical difficulties with the bass player kept her improvising conversation while a technician worked away onstage, she still steered clear of the intimacy that some personal stories would have given.

I wanted anecdotes about what she called her “schizophrenic musical biography,” more than just the mention in passing that she had grown up on a farm in Oklahoma singing country and gospel while listening to Frank and Ella at her grandparents’ house, before majoring in opera in college. I knew most of that but would have liked to see that life more fully. Did her parents and siblings sing and if so, did they sing together at home or church? What were some of her early singing experiences?

I also was left wondering what it was like to be part of a musical family now. She said Naughton gatherings often include singing and I wanted a window into that world, a story or two of how that happens -- is it spontaneous or do they plan these times together? I craved some snapshots of that talented family singing together.

But other than that, the evening was all I could have hoped for. When she sang she was the same enchanting singer who has always captivated me, and she was well served by her band -- musical director Dan Lipton on piano, Howard Joines on drums/percussion, Antoine Silverman on violin/fiddle, Mark Vanderpoel on upright bass and Matt Beck on acoustic guitar, banjo and mandolin.

She sent us away with a shimmering “I Could Have Danced All Night,” which was appropriate because that’s exactly how I felt.

Little things mean a lot

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
--Traditional

"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars and to change the world."
- Harriet Tubman