A Robbins Revival

Dance

By JOEL LOBENTHAL
February 5, 2007

New York City Ballet's revival of Jerome Robbins's "Dybbuk" on Friday night made clear that Robbins's habitual dithering and rethinking had deprived audiences of one of his better works for too long. His "Dybbuk," which made its premiere in 1974, was inspired by a classic of Yiddish theatrical literature, S. Ansky's 1917 "The Dybbuk." By the 1970s, however, Robbins had seemingly become so immersed in the Balanchine aesthetic that he fretted that the ballet followed the play too closely, and then started whittling it down to make it less of a transposition of dramatic exposition. It became "The Dybbuk Variations," but when that exercise didn't satisfy him either, he restored it to his original dimensions, before dropping the work altogether. The San Francisco Ballet , however, recently revived the work; Helgi Tomasson, SFB's artistic director, had danced the lead at the NYCB premiere. Now it has returned to NYCB, and on Friday night it showed itself to be eminently stage-worthy.

In Jewish folklore, the Dybbuk is a revenant, a returning spirit that dominates the body of a living soul. Ansky's play tells the story of two friends who pledge that someday their as yet unborn children will be wed. When the children are grown, they meet and fall in love, however, without their parents' intervention. But disparate economic circumstances doom the seemingly ordained union. Chanon, the young man, seeks refuge in occult exploration that instead sends him to his death. He returns as Dybbuk, however, to reclaim Leah, his beloved, who joins him in a limbo netherworld.

The work Friday night succeeded in telling the story of the play and succeeded as well in achieving Robbins's self-imposed criteria that his work not become bogged down in too many narrative twists and turns, but instead provide enough movement interest to succeed as freestanding choreography. But it's the ballet's actual adherence to a narrative, the idiom in which Robbins had spent his formative years, as well as its grounding in Jewish folklore and the extensive use of a male ensemble, that combine to mitigate the ersatzness that sometimes affects his work. Here Robbins accomplishes impressive feats of compression — telescoping plot incidents to their essentials — and equally impressive feats of expansion. The ballet is almost an hour long but isn't tedious or padded. Among the dance highlights are the hero's invocation of the kabbalah, in which his plunge into the unknown realm of the spirits is illustrated by solos for various men that include gestures of prophecy, spell casting, and epiphanic illuminations. Also noteworthy is the long pas de deux between Leah and Chanon Dybbuk, a rite of possession by which he reclaims her for eternity.

Not much is told of the arranged marriage to which Leah's parents insist she surrender rather than wed Chanon; instead there is a scene in which Leah rejects a wedding veil held out to her. As Leah, Jenifer Ringer made this and all her dramatic points with exquisite understatement. Benjamin Millepied proved a good choice to impersonate Chanon, although some of his solo expostulations could have been performed with more fluidity.

Leonard Bernstein's score helps the ballet, as well, making enough of the appropriate noises —the vocal contributions by baritone and bass recalls Stravinsky's "Les Noces" — and allows the ballet to unfold cogently.

Friday night's program opened with Balanchine's "Serenade," performed in honor of the late Ruthanna Boris — dancer, choreographer, educator — who had danced in the 1934 premiere and died earlier this month. "Serenade" featured a remarkable performance by Kyra Nichols, who is retiring this year after 33 years in the company. As impressive as Ms. Nichols's technique, which on Friday night still seemed in sterling condition, was her determination that it never get in the way of her dancing, that it release rather than inhibit a cascade of raw dance energy. She also acted up a storm; this is supposedly heresy in Balanchine's "abstract" ballets, but sometimes it does work. Friday night there was no gainsaying Ms. Nichols's ardency and conviction. Philip Neal, who partnered her, seemed aware he was assisting in something special.

The two other lead women were Ashley Bouder, in a debut performance in which her entrance passage was thrillingly phrased, charted, and delivered, and Maria Kowroski, who moved with lovely elasticity. Ms. Kowroski's biggest moment, a promenade in arabesque supported by the man recumbent on the floor, didn't quite come off, however, perhaps because her partner, Stephen Hanna, was making his debut in this role.

The program closed with Balanchine's "Stravinsky Violin Concerto," led by Yvonne Borree, Nilas Martins, Wendy Whelan, and Albert Evans. It wasn't a bad performance, but didn't reach the heights of what had come earlier in the evening.

A Robbins Revival

Dance

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