NYCB Vol. 15 No. 4 - Ballo della Regina

"Light, airy, surprising, George Balanchine's new Ballo della Regina is not a great ballet. It is merely terrific. There is such a distinction and it was evident Thursday night at the New York State Theater when the New York City Ballet presented the official premiere of this new plotless work set to music by Giuseppe Verdi.

"Like many ballets that have entered the City Ballet's repertory, Ballo della Regina was whipped up in no time as a novelty for a new season or a special performance. In this case, it was seen at the benefit preview that opened the company's season last November. Yet like many Balanchine pièces d'occasion, it will probably outlive its occasion.

"It was not meant to break any ground, but it is danced so wonderfully by Merrill Ashley, Robert Weiss and an ensemble that it justifies itself as the diverting divertissement it was designed to be. For those who care, it also contains some of the most original combinations of steps that Mr. Balanchine has devised in a long time.

"A great deal of thought, in fact, has gone into this "Ballet of the Queen." With its lovely interlacing patterns, swift moving ensembles that criss-cross in diagonal, its unusually difficult steps for the principals and its overall formal context, Ballo della Regina is beautiful as just what it appears to be: A neo-classic story ballet set to the ballet music from Act III of Verdi's opera "Don Carlos." Yet it is also a ballet that shoots out subliminal messages. And these are internal clues that suggest why the ballet has taken the shape it has.

"Like several other Balanchine ballets that draw their music from scores with a programmatic content, Ballo della Regina carries an abstraction of the original scenario. The first hint of where we are is provided by the back cloth with a sea-blue projection. Anyone who has ventured into the ramous Blue Grotto at Capri will get the picture. Ballo della Regina is Mr. Balanchine's underwater ballet.

"When the premiere of 'Don Carlos' took place in 1867, Verdi was obliged--through convention at the Paris Opéra—to insert a ballet divertissement into the opera's third act. It was, interestingly, a ballet that took place in a deep-sea grotto with a fisherman in search of a pearl. Four ballerinas three pearls and the Queen of the Waters—were the soloists, but the most perfect pearl of all was a synthesis of the others. This was the Queen of Spain, a character in the opera for whom this court ballet was an allegorical homage.

"Well, there are four soloists with as many solos in addition to a nymphlike corps of 12 in aquamarine chiffon in Ballo della Regina. If no one suggests Mr. Weiss is a fisherman, his first entry nonetheless has its own questing nature. There is no doubt that Miss Ashley, right down to regally leading the anthem-like processional at the close, is very much the pearl and queen he seeks.

"As a boy, Mr. Balanchine became familiar with the whole tradition of 'underwater-pearl' ballets. The most famous was the 'Ocean and the Pearls' scene from 'The Little Humpbacked Horse' by Athur St.-Leon, created in Russia just three years before 'Don Carlos.' Marius Petipa's 1896 coronation ballet 'The Pearl' contained a pas de deux that Aleksandr Gorsky used in his 1912 version of the 'The Little Humpbacked Horse.'

"Very typically, Mr. Balanchine has leaned upon such precedent to create something new. In its outline, structure and mood, the Verdi music has given him his cue. It is just as much a Balanchinian method that his choreography here is tailored to the very specific gifts of the dancers he has selected.

"Mr. Weiss, for instance, has perhaps never found a role that suited his precise leg batterie and his airborn spirit so well as this one, with its two virtuosic solos. In Miss Ashley's phenomenal speed and outstanding technique, Mr. Balanchine has a dancer with whom he may try the untried: Her main variation and the second solo presumed steel ankles for its varied hops on toes. The unusual combination of a piqué turn ended by a leg shooting out in arabesque that she is given, becomes, wondrously before our eyes, an addition to the language of classic ballet. The component movements of the step are familiar, but the way they are juxtaposed is totally new.

"Ballo della Regina is just as happily inspired in some of its ensemble passages. Its underlying structure is one of prologue, pas de deux, variations for principals and four soloists and a coda that flows into the processional. The four soloists are often set dancing to a waltz, and while Bonita Borne and Stephanie Saland did nicely enough, It was Sheryl Ware, in diamond-sharp pas de chats, and Debra Austin, soaring into space in "ecarté," who reigned supreme.

"Ballo della Regina is not, of course, the only Balanchine opera-inspired ballet, and his 1976 Chaconne, drawn from Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice, was on the same program to prove it. Some of the soloists have lost its sense of wit. But Peter Martins and Suzanne Farrell were on hand to lead its Baroque manners with Olympic confidence.

--Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times, 1978