Boston Ballet in Serenade and La Sylphide
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 31, 2007
SERENADE: Warning signals, disappearing dancers. |
| Serenade and La Sylphide | Serenade: Music by Peter Tchaikovsky | Choreography by George Balanchine | Costumes by Karinska | La Sylphide: Music by Herman Severin Løvenskiold | Choreography by Sorella Englund, after August Bournonville | Set and costumes by Peter Cazalet | Lighting by Karim Badwan | with the Boston Ballet Orchestra Conducted by Jonathan MCphee | Presented by Boston Ballet at The Wang Theatre through October 28 |
“El Boston Ballet deslumbra” (“Boston Ballet dazzles”), exclaimed Madrid’s El Pais, Spain’s biggest daily newspaper. “L’apotheosi del romanticisme” (“The apotheosis of romanticism”), chimed in Barcelona’s El Periódico. They were reviewing Boston Ballet’s performance of August Bournonville’s La Sylphide at the Castell de Peralada Festival this past August, part of a six-week tour of Spain — and it didn’t hurt that the company featured its Hispanic dancers, notably Carlos Molina and Lorna Feijóo at Peralada. Now it’s our turn to be dazzled as Boston Ballet opens its subscription season with a well-rehearsed performance of one of the oldest (1836) classics in the ballet repertory. La Sylphide is a short two acts — not much more than an hour — and the company is pairing it with George Balanchine’s Serenade (1934-’77), which it also took to Spain. (The last time Boston Ballet staged La Sylphide, in March 2005, the piece went stag; before that, in October 1988, it was preceded by Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, which the company will do again in May.) It’s a good pairing: together, Serenade and La Sylphide write an essay on doomed love. Serenade sends out warning signals from its opening tableau — 17 women all with right arm extended and hand flexed — and yet by the end of Tchaikovsky’s sportive Sonatina, a man and a woman have hooked up. They gambol in the Waltz that follows (hence their usual casting names, Waltz Boy and Waltz Girl) and in the jaunty Tema Russo. Meanwhile, Russian Girl (another casting designation) comes and goes, at first blessing the couple, then joining a quartet of women who appear to spin out the pair’s fate. At the end of the Tema Russo, Waltz Boy runs out — or off — with the 16 women while Waltz Girl crashes to the floor. Two (afterlife?) figures appear: Elegy Man and, her hand over his eyes and heart, Dark Angel. Russian Girl enters and the four of them dance, à la Balanchine’s Apollo, the three women with their hair down; after a bit, Russian Girl, like Waltz Boy, disappears, Elegy Man and Dark Angel move on, and Waltz Girl is comforted by some of the women and and borne aloft by three men — into the Light? — as the curtain descends..
Related:
State of the art, Smaller, bigger, better, Theme and variations, More 
- State of the art
Maybe it’s the economy, but Boston Ballet’s third-annual season-opening gala was a sober evening, without the orchestral overture that graced the first two affairs.
- Smaller, bigger, better
Is Boston in the midst of a ballet boom? You could certainly believe that if you attended Boston Ballet’s fourth annual season-opening gala last Saturday.
- Theme and variations
George Balanchine was famous for “non-story” ballets, but when you put three of his works — the usual number to fill up an evening — together, you always get some kind of narrative.
- Lambarena redux
All summer long I’ve had the phrase “Do the Lambarena” running through my head, as if it were a dance craze, like the la-dee-dah or the lambada.
- Mastering the masterpieces
It’s not exactly a trip down Memory Lane, but this weekend Boston Ballet is revisiting some pieces and choreographers it hasn’t performed in the Mikko Nissinen era.
- Brava Larissa!
The end of an era loomed last night as Boston Ballet opened The Sleeping Beauty — what's likely to be the last story ballet ever to be staged at the Wang Theatre.
- Where the chips fell
Dance history reverberated across Boston during the past few weeks, affirming that how we live now owes a lot to how we’ve chosen to remember — and forget.
- Happy returns
George Balanchine didn’t go in for productions of the old classic ballets.
- Moonbeams
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a dizzy dance of a drama, meandering mystifyingly between May Eve and Midsummer Eve under a moon that goes from new to full swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.
- Here’s looking at you
Set in the usual small village — this one in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe — Coppélia might look like just another pleasant 19th-century ballet about a boy, a girl, and another girl. But appearances can be deceiving — and that’s theme of this work, whose title character is a life-size mechanical doll.
- L’Allegro, fuss and feathers, and the ICA blues
This year we were looking forward to dance performances at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater in the new ICA.
- Less
Topics:
Dance
, Entertainment, Boston Ballet Orchestra, Jennifer Dunning, More
, Entertainment, Boston Ballet Orchestra, Jennifer Dunning, Peter Cazalet, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Dance, Performing Arts, Peter Pan, Boston Ballet, Mikko Nissinen, Less
