American Ballet Theater’s Opening-Night Gala




Does anyone at American Ballet Theater conceive of ballet as an art free of the manipulation of women by men, and of the clichéd pyrotechnics of repeated turns and jumps? It was hard to think so at its depressing opening gala on Monday.


True, there were a few exhilarating sections. Diana Vishneva and Marcelo Gomes were convincingly rapturous in the balcony scene from Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, even though they have left the Bolshoi Ballet, exemplified the best Bolshoi tradition of inflating a cartload of clichés (the “Flames of Paris” pas de deux, attributed to Vasily Vainonen) with outstandingly larger-than-life exuberance. Alina Cojocaru and Angel Corella, lovable dancers both, were mega-lovable in the Act I pas de deux from MacMillan’s “Manon.”


Still, there were many moments when I thought I was in the Inferno, and that ballet had gone there ahead of me. Even though the performance started late, some latecomers in the darkened Metropolitan Opera House stood and argued about where they should be sitting, so that whole rows behind them could seldom see the first piece at all. One man, who had announced “Throw ’em out!” during the music when he was told people were in his family’s seats, was still wandering slowly and confusedly up and down the aisle during the second piece while people hissed at him, “This is a ballet!”


Caroline Kennedy made the annual Caroline Kennedy Speech. This time she said that her mother would have been thrilled to see the children of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School dance later in the evening. This is not the kindest thing I have heard about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: the routine they danced, “Polonaise d’Enfants,” by Raymond Lukens, made the students look efficiently trite.


The solo violinist was seldom in tune throughout the evening, but he reserved his flattest and scratchiest playing for the pas de deux from Act II of “Swan Lake,” during which Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky delivered their steely version of soulfulness and pathos. The most famous American dancer present, David Hallberg, was confined to a partnering section of “La Bayadère.” I liked the slow, solitary exit he made doing a backbend, looking farther and farther up: It suggested that his ballerina (Polina Semionova) was hovering high above the Met stage and that he was hoping she might not notice his escape into the wings.


There were three bikini-tutus, three bedroom pas de deux and three sets of fouetté turns. The bikini-tutu is my least favorite form of dance apparel; the three odalisques (harem slaves, remarkably unlike those famously painted by Ingres or Matisse) from Ballet Theater’s version of “Le Corsaire” had sleeves. Here they are assigned to Act I, which would have been news to Marius Petipa — the main choreographer to whom all versions of “Le Corsaire” are now attributed — since in the original version (and the current Mariinsky and Bolshoi productions) they occur in later acts.


Purists would have been disappointed, anyway, by most of the 19th-century choreography on Monday. The worst offender came in the “Corsaire” Act II bedroom pas de deux, danced with prolonged upside-down overhead lifts by Paloma Herrera and Cory Stearns. The choreography is by Anna-Marie Holmes “after Marius Petipa”: “after” in the sense that Attila came “after” the Roman Empire.


The other bedroom pas de deux were from MacMillan’s “Manon” and John Cranko’s “Onegin.” The “Manon” had a bed; the “Onegin” heroine wore a nightie. The educator in me is glad to see that both bedrooms feature writing desks and that each scene begins with one character trying to write a letter (before passion and choreography arrive, like symptoms of attention-deficit disorder); in “Onegin” the heroine finishes her letter after the hero has departed.