Dance

ROYAL BALLET (Metropolitan Opera House, New York). Sir Frederick Ashton’s new ballet, Varii Capricct, was not at all what New Yorkers had expected. Most people, seeing Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell cast in the ballet’s major roles, had envisioned something akin to the romance and pure classicism of The Dream, the work that made them stars nearly twenty years ago. But Ashton surprised us. In this work Dowell is no Oberon, but a sleazy gigolo in black sunglasses and Presley pompadour, and Titania a dippy matron in ’30s perm and pleated chemise. The two meet at a poolside party in Ischia where four other couples are cavorting about in Ossie Clark ctrtumes the color of boiled sweets. David Hockney’s bright tropical set has the inevitable blue swimming pool with whitecaps, as well as a villa and a huge palm tree under an orange sky.

With a self-conscious swagger Dowell crashes the party, “oozing charm from every pore,” and Sibley, reclining on her chaise longue, is for a brief moment his sweet pea. Then he is gone, and Sibley lies back on the chaise longue, languidly toying with his discarded sunglasses. But Dowell returns to claim them and slinks off.

Ashton choreographed this ballet to a jazzy score by his lifelong friend William Walton, who finished composing the music a few hours before he died. Indeed, the feeling is of old friends having a great deal of fun together. The dancing is exquisite.

The occasion for the premiere was the Royal Ballet’s brief week at the Met as part of the Britain Salutes New York festival. The program opened with one of Ashton’s great ballets, the 1968 Enigma Variations, a genteel and elegiac portrait of Victorian life in Worcestershire that is layered with psychological meaning, like a Chekhov play. In a series of character vignettes, Ashton sketches the composer Elgar, his wife, and his friends in intimate domestic detail. (Similarly, in A Month in the Country, choreographed in 1976, he uses classical ballet technique and pared-down gesture to depict human emotion.) Derek Rencherand Monica Mason gave eloquent performances as Elgar and his wife. The ballet contains two especially moving sequences: the Nimrod variations— “the record of a long summer evening talk, when my friend discoursed eloquently on the slow movements of Beethoven”— danced by Rencher and by Robert Jude as A. J. Jaeger; and the moment when a telegram arrives from the famous conductor Richter, who has agreed to conduct the first performance of Elgar’s new work.

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Also on the bill was a light pas de deux, Voices of Spring, prettily danced by Merle Park and Wayne Eagling. The only miss was Dances of Albion'. Dark Night Glad Day by Glen Tetley, with songs by Benjamin Britten. The ballet, choreographed by the yard and danced in shiny body tights, dragged on forever—a lot of Dark Night and very little Glad Day. -MOIRA HODGSON

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY (City Center, New York). Paul Taylor’s new work Sunset is danced in a bright green park painted by Alex Katz, dabs of green and blue on a diagonal flat with a metal railing along the bottom to suggest a lookout. Six men (Christopher Gillis, Elie Chaib, Daniel Ezralow, Thomas Evert, Kenneth Tosti and David Parsons) in red berets and fatigues are eyeing a quartet of women who are out for a promenade in their nice white Sunday-best dresses. The atmosphere is gay, a soldiers’ Fancy Free. The smallest woman, Lila York, is lifted and bounced around by the men; Elie Chaib is cradled by the four women. As couples group and regroup, Tosti is left out of the ritual; he lies on the floor and seems to spy on the action from afar. Then the music is interrupted by bird cries. Perhaps this is the key to the title (there is no suggested sunset here; the stage remains bathed in the light of midday). Tosti is the odd one out because he is dead. In fact, death and doom are the underpinnings of an otherwise idyllic scene. When the dancing is over, Tosti joins the group and the soldiers march off, leaving a red beret on the ground.

In this piece Taylor reminds one of Ashton, not merely because he uses Elgar (his “Elegy” and “Serenade for Strings”), but because in a few simple gestures he describes the mood and innermost thoughts of his characters. Whereas Ashton does this with classical ballet technique, Taylor uses everyday gestures— a man leaning against the railing as though at a bar, another with his hands in his lumpy pockets. It is a masterly work, understated and moving.

Snow White is a much slighter piece, a bright comic strip of a ballet, a shorthand version of the Grimms’ fairy tale with Elie Chaib as the prince and the queen. It is set in a miniature theater with filigreed pillars like those of City Center. Snow White is wittily danced by Ruth Andrien (who looks suspiciously like the Walt Disney character), and her galumphing dwarfs are enchanting when they parody the endless wedding-day variations of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake to celebrate her union with the prince.

On two fund-raising nights, stars were imported. Mikhail Baryshnikov tried to meld into Images, a ritualistic piece in which the dancers are gods and goddesses from Minoan frescoes, and he caught the Taylor style perfectly. But it was a misuse of his talent. In fact, he was a human sacrifice, offered up to the gala benefit audience’s lust for stars. Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins appeared in Musette, a charming but inconsequential duet choreographed for them by Taylor. The result was a balletic blend of Taylor and Balanchine. Nothing special.

One of the high points of the Taylor season was the best performance of Esplanade I’ve ever seen. There is not a “dance step” in it—it’s all running, walking and leaping, up to the climax, in which the dancers hurl themselves onto the floor in long slides. Every dancer in this company projects a strong individual sense of personality. Kate Johnson, who is a particularly remarkable Taylor dancer, gives every movement a real finish. This was the longest spring season ever for the Taylor company at City Center—one month. They should have stayed for two, or more.

M.H.