'Balanchine and the Classical Tradition in America' at SAB

On Monday evening we went to a well-attended event (over 200 contributors) at the School of American Ballet entitled 'Balanchine and the Classical Tradition in America'.  What we got was a 35 minute illustrated lecture by the historian and author Olivier Bernier followed by 20 minutes of excerpts from the Balanchine repertory danced by six advanced SAB students.  Let me speak for most of the attendees when I suggest that we wished the time allocated between lecture and dancing had been reversed.

Mr. Bernier accompanied by slides traced the classical influence in American architecture and culture back to the ancient Greeks and Romans (I kept wishing that his picture of the classical portico of Monticello had been photo-shopped to straighten it).  The depiction of movement in Greek vases: 

Panathenaic amphora, ca. 530 B.C.; Archaic, attributed to the Euphiletos Painter
Metropolitan Museum of Art

and Roman statuary:

'Artemis (Diana) and the Stag', bronze, Greek or Roman, late Hellenistic period,
Metropolitan Museum of Art

leads him forward through 17th and 18th century court dancing in France; on to the development of ballet in 19th century Paris:

'The Star (L'Etoile)' by Edgar Degas, pastel on paper, Art Institute of Chicago, 1879

and then to the Diaghilev company's performances in early 20th century Paris.

From Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Pavlova, Massine, and Fokine: 

Anna Pavlova, 1906

it is a short hop to George Balanchine telling Lincoln Kirstein 'but first a school' if they are to create an 'American' ballet.  Bernier ended with a gorgeous picture of Maria Kowroski en pointe in an extravagant arabesque from 'Liebeslieder Walzer' (which I can't find on the internet).

While Bernier's lecture was not uninteresting, it was the advanced students that we had all come to see.  After the clearing of the podium, slide projector and screen, Katrina Killian introduced the six advanced students (Rachel Hutsell, Samuel Akins, Joscelyn Dolson, Bailey Jones, Alston Macgill, and Dammiel Cruz) ages 16-to-18, who danced excerpts (snippets actually) from five Balanchine ballets:  'Raymonda Variations' (Variation I), 'Stars and Stripes' (El Capitan), 'The Nutcracker' (Sugarplum Fairy variation), Agon (Third Theme), and 'Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux' (Adagio). 

All of these students performed exceptionally well -- an affirmation of their wonderful training from SAB's top-notch faculty.  The main differences between them were in their degree of confidence and their ability to project their personalities onto the individual works -- basically inhibition vs. exhibition.  Since this wasn't a performance open to the public, I'm going to refrain from commenting on specific individuals in specific choreography except to say that I'm sure they look even better in the longer works from which these moments were cherry-picked.

The excerpts were chosen from the hour-long lecture/demonstration that Katrina Killian has organized with Kevin Dhaniram (of the Public Relations, Recruiting and Outreach group at SAB) for presentation in community auditoriums around the city during March and April.  Leo Shih is the capable accompanist for the group.  SAB used to offer donors at a certain level a chance to see the complete lecture/demonstration.  I'm sure that most of Monday night's audience would have preferred to forego Mr. Bernier's lecture in order to see more of this presentation -- given the high level of the student's dancing.