NYCB Vol. 17 No. 9 - Antique Epigraphs

Lauryn Johnson
12 hours ago
2 min read

Updated: 4 hours ago

Stephanie Saland, Simon Schumacher, Helene Alexopolous, Jerri Kumery, Kyra Nichols, Maria Calegari, Victoria Hall, Florence Ftizgerald. Photo by Martha Swioe, 1984.

Anna Kisselgoff, New York Times, 1984

“The curtain rises on eight women, standing in profile in single file to the right of the audience. The azure blue surface of a bright Aegean Sea or its dazzling southern sky dominates the opening moment, introducing this Hellenic world of the imagination.

“The all-female cast, draped in Florence Flotz’s high-waisted ‘Greek’ filmy gowns, steps out progressively into two sides of a triangle. This walking motif and placement into simple geometric floor patterns becomes a recurrent theme. The women raise their arms in simple gestures and eventually hold them up partly bent. They walk to the back and face us.

“Three dancers in one corner now sit in attentive poses while three others in a rear corner stand or sit as Stephanie Saland begins a solo that recalls a sorceress’s incantation. Her idiom is initially and recognizably classical—turns, attitudes, flat-foot pirouettes, bourées, and a sudden multiple spin. Unexpectedly, she locks into an archaic profile and drops to the floor into the kind of twisted sitting position Martha Graham’s technique would label a pretzel. In a flash she is up, pevis forward, coming to rest—the magical moment having run through her like a fever—into a more conventional balletic position.”

“The ensuing pas de trios, in which Jerri Kumery and Helene Alexopolous partner and frame Maria Calegari, brings to the surface the note of Sapphic love and lyric tenderness that gives ‘Antique Epigraphs’ its special quality.”

“Like the three Graces, three sisters or three lovers, the female figures are above all three ballet dancers moving through ballet’s academic idiom. Their motif is that of arabesque and attitudes. And while Miss Calegari leaps toward the other two initially, she is never really apart from them. They watch her, sometimes putting one hand to the shoulder of the other. The music ripples as Miss Calegari, two hands together, swims fish-like into a pictorial image—a Botticelli grouping of a nymph and her attendants.”

Maria Calegari (blue)

Jerri Kumery (light brown)

Helene Alexopolous (red)

Photos by Martha Swope, 1984

“The buzzing sound of the sixth section reunites the eight women—two units that compose themselves into one frieze, a chain of friendship. Some of the patterns recall the first section except that the figures at the end collapse forward, bent at the waist. A flute sounds. Stillness envelopes the stage as the dancers sit, stand and listen. Each places a hand across her own chest. Each then gently touches another--a hand to a cheek, a hand to another’s shoulder. At this point, Mr. Robbins leads the dancers into one linked frieze after another. ultimately, he creates a flattened strip: each woman stands, torso twisted to her left, the bottom half of her body in profile to the right.”