From Squares to Stars and Stripes

The first performance of New York City Ballet’s demanding new repertory program, “Essential Balanchine,” was also a tribute to Melissa Hayden, a company star during the 1950s and ’60s, who died last August. The combined emotional and artistic freight put the evening in danger of sinking under its own tonnage, but the repertory was well fielded by the company, and the tribute quotient was more recognizably honorific than last Saturday’s tribute to Lincoln Kirstein. Peter Martins, NYCB’s artistic director, and Jacques d’Amboise, one of Hayden’s most frequent partners, both offered perspicacious recollections of Hayden prior to the second ballet on the bill, Balanchine’s “Liebeslieder Walzer.” And both “Liebeslieder” and the concluding ballet, “Stars and Stripes,” contained roles made for Hayden.The evening opened with “Square Dance,” which Balanchine originally made in 1957 as a take on a real square dance, with a live caller on stage cuing the dancers into their slightly square-danceinspired steps and patterns. Later, Balanchine threw out all the vernacular paraphernalia and the work became another exhibit in his neo-classical gallery. A little more vernacular in the repertory might not be a bad idea; how much formal “purity” can a repertory stand? But “Square Dance,” performed to a selection of Vivaldi and Corelli, remains one of Balanchine’s most perfect compositions.Megan Fairchild danced the ballerina’s role conscientiously, though she didn’t supply the last word in bravura sparkle, while Sébastien Marcovici bravely attacked the male lead, a treacherous role by virtue of its contrasting demands. Mr. Marcovici got through the fleet and steppy passages well enough, but the jewel in this role is a solo Balanchine added in 1976. The solo’s movement is slow and exposed, and while Mr. Marcovici wasn’t flawless here, he was more comfortable in his native territory of shape-making dance plastique.Since the 1980s, “Liebeslieder” has been danced in David Mitchell’s baroquely styled ballroom, which may be more upscale than what Balanchine originally intended. Nevertheless the ballet remains provocatively unmoored from constraints of time, space, and locale.The ballet is split in two halves, and a transformation occurs midway: the ballet’s four couples walk through the doors of the ballroom and into an outdoor setting — a traditional transition from civilization’s inhibitions to a more primal state of authenticity. The curtain comes down, and there’s a pause. The curtain rises again, and the same four pairs reemerge. This time, the women are on pointe — thus paradoxically more rather than less stylized, and also more poetic and fantastic.In both halves of the ballet, the two suites of vocalized waltzes by Brahms are matched by Balanchine with near- infinite attacks on the three-fourths meter. The couples’ spins in one another’s arms, their occasional exchange of partners, their coming together and coming apart — all are endlessly intriguing, intellectually and emotionally.On Tuesday night, the four couples of “Liebeslieder” were danced by Jared Angle and Miranda Weese, Wendy Whelan and Nikolaj Hübbe, Darci Kistler and Charles Askegard, and Nilas Martins and Kyra Nichols. Both Ms. Kistler and Ms. Nichols played the first half of the ballet as very young — Ms. Kistler was even a bit kittenish — which allows them to demonstrate a rising emotional arch in the deepened tones of the second half. But “Liebeslieder” isn’t a 19th-century novel, so the characters don’t really develop in linear fashion. It’s possible to seek and find more candle-flickered raptures and transports in the ballet than this cast pursues, but frankly I appreciated the cooler touch applied by these four couples.After Mr. d’Amboise’s recollection of visiting Hayden on her deathbed, and the somber “Liebeslieder,” “Stars and Stripes,” performed to Sousa marches, was somewhat anticlimactic. But this was neither the performers’ or the ballet’s fault.Is “Stars and Stripes” a send-up or a loving invocation of paradeground patriotism? Probably both, and Balanchine gives many witty cross-references between our new world ways of salutation and the old world respect for authority with which he was raised. But most of all, “Stars and Stripes” is an inexhaustibly exhilarating display of aerial pyrotechnics, or at least it was on Tuesday night.Leading the First Campaign, Sterling Hyltin showed off her light, high, quick jump, while Abi Stafford was rousing in the Second Campaign, but sometimes belabored her own elevation. Daniel Ulbricht performed his tricks with class in the Third Campaign. In the Liberty Bell and El Capitan pas de deux, Ashley Bouder had all the speed and bravura one could ask for, but her fierce energy verged on heavyhandedness. Andrew Veyette, her partner, got through many of his virtuoso passages confidently and pristinely.

From Squares to Stars and Stripes

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