Jerome Robbins Festival Program B

This year PNB is celebrating the 100^th anniversary of Jerome Robbins’ birth with a Jerome Robbins Festival. Artistic Director Peter Boal created two separate programs using seven of the twelve Robbins’ pieces in the PNB repertory. Tickets for the two programs are sold separately. It’s a lot of ballet for one weekend, but I think it’s worth attending both programs. If you have to pick one, Program A is a little easier to process. That said, I think I liked Program B best.

Program B

The remaining performances of Program B are the evenings of September 27 and 28, and the matinee on September 29. Buy tickets here. In contrast to the five dances of Program A, this program has only three pieces, but at 2 hours and 11 minutes, it’s almost as long as the first program.

Circus Polka

Circus Polka is on both programs because it is a lot of fun, gives dozens of young dancers a chance to be on stage, and is only 3 minutes long. I’ve never liked the circus, and I don’t think anyone really likes polka music, but Circus Polka is a true crowd pleaser. Here’s the story:

In 1942, Ringling Brothers got George Balanchine (who was a contemporary of Robbins and later worked with him at New York City Ballet) to choreograph a ballet for elephants. Balanchine commissioned Igor Stravinsky to compose the music. Yes, Stravinsky wrote music for a circus act with elephants. In 1972, Robbins wrote a new ballet, replacing the real ringmaster with a professional dancer, and the elephants with ballet students.

At this festival, there are several different ringmasters. At the matinee, I saw Jonathan Porretta, returning to the stage after an injury; in the evening performance, I saw retired PNB principal Ariana Lallone. Depending on which performance you attend, you might see Otto Neubert (the dance master who works most closely with kids), or Ariana Lallone.

Guided by the ringmaster, three groups of successively younger dance students perform a simple dance with movements that occasionally evoke elephant trunks and circus animals’ high stepping parade. It’s pretty much the cutest thing since the internet invented cat videos. Alas, I scoured the internet in vain for a video of Circus Polka.

Dances at a Gathering

In 1969, Robbins set Dances at a Gathering to a collection of piano music by Chopin. It’s nearly an hour long. That hour is broken up into numerous vignettes that express different aspects of human emotion and relationships. But I’m not gonna lie, there were moments where I started to feel like I had always been in that chair, looking at those dancers on that stage. Robbins did that on purpose.

Yes, he lived in a pre-internet age when people had more time and better concentration. But even in his time, he created stretched out moments and awkward gaps between the actions that built tension. The ten dancers come together in different combinations, as you do at a gathering. Sometimes these transitions are smooth. Sometimes, as in real life, they are awkward. Every dancer expresses a unique personality, and some of those personalities “mesh” better than others. For the longest time, odd numbers of dancers on the stage create an odd man out. When the numbers finally become balanced and every dancer has a partner, you can actually feel unacknowledged tension drain out of the audience. The “odd man” never separates from his partner for the rest of the hour, and you wonder, did he find a partner worth the wait? Or is he just desperate to avoid being alone again?

The movement in Dances is a little old fashioned and romantic (witty, character-building touches aside) but the things Robbins does with time, and the awkwardness he builds into the relationships between the dancers, build tension to the point that the hour of Dances at a Gathering is almost as trying as navigating a party full of strangers for an hour.

It’s a lot of effort, but it’s rewarding. The ballet is beautiful to watch, and despite having no real plot at all (it’s only from the title that we even have the premise of people coming together at some sort of “gathering”) it covers a lot of emotional territory. By the end, you almost feel like you’ve gotten to know a bunch of new people, and even if you don’t quite know their “stories” you have felt them.

The Cast I Saw:

Pink: Sarah Ricard Orza
Mauve: Elizabeth Murphy
Apricot: Noelani Pantastico
Green: Laura Tisserand
Blue: Elle Macy
Brown: Lucien Postlewaite
Purple: Seth Orza
Green: Jerome Tisserand
Brick: Kyle Davis
Blue: Joshua Grant

*Indicates first time in role

The Concert (or, The Perils of Everybody)

You’ve been working hard at this ballet, and The Concert is your reward. I recommended this ballet for kids when I saw it in 2015, and it’s still a favorite.  Robbins’ wit is frequently cited, and it’s apparent in all the ballets in this festival. But The Concert is straight-up slapstick comedy. It comes close to a story ballet in the premise of a group of people attending a concert of – you guessed it – piano music by Chopin. There is some sharp satire in the beginning, as a bunch of stereotypical characters come in and engage in all the social awkwardness of finding seats and dealing with the people seated nearby.

Once the concert begins, we get to enter the daydreams of the listeners. Robbins somehow manages to make all his characters ridiculous (that part is easy) while still celebrating the imaginative nature of their daydreams in response to the music. From a flighty woman trying on hats, to a henpecked husband flirting with flighty women, and finally to the generally flighty nature of wandering thoughts (made literal with wings and butterfly net), Robbins mocks the concert audience without ever becoming mean-spirited. The audience can’t always hear the music, because they are laughing so loud. Even the piano soloist gets in on the act.

I have a short list of books and movies I turn to when life gets me down (Ex: The Phantom Tollbooth, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). I dug around for a video of The Concert. It’s no substitute for the live performance, but now I can watch it when I need a reason to laugh.

Cast I Saw:

Ballerina: Lesley Rausch
Shy Boy: Benjamin Griffiths
Wife: Lindsi Dec
Husband: Ryan Cardea
Angry Lady: Angelica Generosa
Matinee Ladies: Emma Love Suddarth
Sarah Pasch
Usher: Miles Pertl
1st Guy: Steven Loch
2nd Guy: Joshua Grant*