Jerome Robbins Peers Inside the Female Psyche

Jerome Robbins’s perspectives on female psychology made “In the Night” the most absorbing ballet on the all-Robbins “Baroque to Jazz” program Wednesday night at New York City Ballet. There is an element of psychological self-analysis to all of Robbins’s works that makes them fascinating even when they are not artistically the most compelling. Artistically, “In the Night” is successful, even though it is also rather obvious. The ballet is danced by three couples, and the three women form an increasingly willful and self-dramatizing trajectory. I’m not saying he saw all women the way he portrayed these three, but watching it while knowing even a little bit about Robbins’s life — the subject of three full-length biographies — you can’t help but, to some degree, try to put the pieces together. And particularly when the subject of the ballet seems to be the neurotic vicissitudes of romantic relationships.Robbins used Chopin piano nocturnes for “In the Night.” The first, danced on Wednesday by Rachel Rutherford and Tyler Angle, contains many sudden shifts and contrasting sections, and Robbins uses it to layer mercurial episodes in an overarching theme of passionate engagement. Ms. Rutherford and Mr. Angle slam each other, chest to chest. They flap arms at each other from across the stage. It’s all a bit overheated, which made Ms. Rutherford’s elegance and composure all the more rewarding. She seemed to arouse in Mr. Angle an attempt at almost regimental dignity.The second woman we see in “In the Night,” Sara Mearns, in a debut performance, is certainly high-strung. Her partner, Charles Askegard, turns her upside down, making her feet quiver agitatedly. In this duet, “In the Night” begins to resemble spoken dialogue played out in balletic movement, while in the third duet, this trope is fully realized. Danced by Wendy Whelan on Wednesday, the third woman in “In the Night” is outrageously capricious. She runs on- and offstage after spats with her partner — Jared Angle in his debut performance — before finally prostrating herself before him. Jared Angle’s essentially tolerant presence here provided a necessary foil to Ms. Whelan’s high wind of tempestuousness, which she managed to launch without mowing down herself or the ballet.In the final Nocturne, the conversational and domestic tone becomes semi-public.Ms. Whelan and Jared Angle make an extravagant swoop onto the stage together, while Ms. Rutherford and Tyler Angle are almost eavesdroppers. All three couples stroll and introduce themselves, and chat as the ballet ends.The opening ballet on Wednesday was Robbins’s final work, 1997’s “Brandenburg,” performed to different movements from the Bach concertos. Here, we’re all but assaulted by Robbins’s need to be liked, to succeed, to please, which led him sometimes to take formulas from popular entertainment and plant them bodily onto the ballet stage. The transplant might take or might not. In “Brandenburg,” an entire chorus of juveniles from a Broadway or Hollywood musical seems to have been transposed into balletic terrain. The poses and attitudes struck are at times stultifyingly cute.There are two lead couples. The first was Megan Fairchild, replacing the originally scheduled Ashley Bouder, and Gonzalo Garcia, who gave his best performance at NYCB to date.The second couple, quirkier and more mature, was danced by Janie Taylor and Philip Neal. They insert themselves into odd stances and postures, bourréeing stiffly like automatons and walking trancelike. Ms. Taylor is perfect for this oddball exploration.But nothing in this ballet goes very deep.It’s probably not entirely fair to call “N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz,” which closed the program Wednesday night, “dated,” because every work bears the imprint of its time.Nevertheless, it seems tame today. Robbins made it in 1958 for his company Ballets: U.S.A. Danced in sneakers, it revisits a lot of the ground covered by Robbins’s “West Side Story” of a year earlier. But, paradoxically, “Opus Jazz” is less balletic than what he made for the musical. This work instead seems indebted to Hollywood’s Jack Cole. Ballets: U.S.A. premiered this at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, and it sometimes seems a glossy-coated look at American pop culture and teenage malaise made for consumption by European tourists. And yet, Robbins was himself politically aware and socially conscious, more so, probably, than the slickness of this work would suggest. NYCB’s dancers moved through it with impressive skill, without being completely at home.

Jerome Robbins Peers Inside the Female Psyche

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