Word: barocco
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...program. “In the Upper Room” was one of three works excerpted and discussed. Also featured on the program were excerpts from Anthony Tudor’s “Dark Elegies” and George Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco.” “This is a sort of 20th century masterpieces program, so it’s a great chance to see three really superb, really contrasting works by real master choreographers of the 20th century,” Rachel Yurman, the program’s moderator, says...
...that Balanchine cultivated - and glorified in so many of his works. Consider the prevalence today of ballets stripped of fairy-tale plots and elaborate costumes and sets - no story, just a focus on the music and movement. That?s the aesthetic that Balanchine championed in pioneering works like Concerto Barocco (1941), Agon (1957) and Jewels (1967); he taught viewers to find drama solely in the beguiling patterns of his dancers massing, breaking apart, recombining, forming symmetries, tracing variations...
...models. That he wanted something bolder this time became apparent when he chose as co-choreographer Peter Anastos, best known as the former guiding spirit (and as Olga Tchikaboumskaya, prima ballerina) of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male travesty troupe. In such parodies as Go for Barocco (Balanchine) and Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet (Robbins), Anastos has poked amiable, witty fun at the conventions of classical ballet...
...such revolutionary works as Concerto Barocco (1941) and The Four Temperaments (1946), Balanchine reveled in the joy of pure movement, unencumbered by sets, costumes or plot. "Swan Lake is a bore," he declared. For Balanchine, dance was really about motion, not the Wilis; the choreographer's intent, he felt, should be made explicit without panoply or program notes. "The curtain should just go up," he said, "and if the spectators understand what's going on, it's good...
...past, Oates' touch has often been too heavy to sustain her fantasies. Ironically, in the barocco world of Bellefleur she is deft and self-assured. Even her contrived ending cannot mar a work that immeasurably enriches the 200-year-old tradition of the gothic novel...