Balanchine’s Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la Fée”
Nancy Reynolds: “Balanchine’s gift for choreographing to the strength of his dancers was brilliantly in evidence. McBride’s delicacy, particularly her baroquely eloquent and assertive yet filigree arm movements, were memorably used in a variation that produced a kind of silvery tone.
Clive Barnes: “At times her multifaceted dancing has the unexpected twists and turns of a Calder mobile.”
Photos by Martha Swope, 1985.
New York Public Library
It is with Tómasson’s solo that the heart of the piece reveals itself. His variation, which begins with joyous leaps, suddenly suggests his lack of freedom/ In a series of croisés assemblés élancés that cleave the air, he falls in a broken motion to the knee. It’s as if he flies into the sky only to be struck by an intimation of doom. But that fall is no release, no resolution. His weight never relaxes into the floor. He springs up again, over and over. Tomasson performs the solo with tremendous restraint, and yet there is an extraordinary texture here. He is a brilliant technician and musician,, but that is nothing new. Here he seems to have grasped a necessary and very special timing that projects in the space of a few moments a whole world of contradictory emotions. He is half the free mortal, half the creature of another dimension.”
—Gallen, Ballet Review, Vol. 4 No. 3 pg. 72
Helgi Tomasson. Martha Swope, 1972
(bottom left) Jerome Robbins, Helgi, and Peter Martins,
at Helgi’s retirement performance. Martha Swope, 1985.
“Balanchine has reserved the most inventive sequence for Tomasson. The man’s variation, with its unexpected changes of direction, suggestions of swoons, and a series of jumps followed by galls to the knee, appears totally original.”
--Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times, 1974.
Balanchine’s Divertimento from Baiser de la Fée Footage is from the 1973 Berlin filming, posted by John Clifford on YouTube.
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