Houston Ballet's great season-opening `Balanchine Celebration': an event definitely worth celebrating

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RATING: * * * * 1/2

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by Lisa Chang and Ahmad Hernandez

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La Valse , otherwise known as "Love Thwarted by Fate," is based on two compositions by Maurice Ravel: Valses Nobles et Sentimentale and La Valse . Both works, to which those who were fortunate enough to attend the Shepherd School's performance last year can attest, are moving pieces.

But the impact of La Valse is amplified tenfold by George Balanchine's innovative choreography. The movements seem to flow from the music and the music seems to flow out of the movements. This creates a beautiful, symbiotic relationship which, while incredibly demanding of the danseurs and ballerinas, is a divine experience for the audience.

The story of La Valse , in short, follows a series of waltzes which builds to a chaotic climax in which a chillingly elegant stranger dressed in black, embodying death, lures a beautiful young girl dressed in white. In composing such a piece, Ravel sought to achieve a kind of "apotheosis of the Viennese waltz," likened to "dancing on the edge of a volcano."

Balanchine creates a constant undercurrent of tension throughout the first eight waltzes, using various combinations of dancers and a variety of movements, polished, yet occasionally nervous . The ballet leaves the young girl -- lifeless -- in the arms of Death as the corps de ballet, in a swirling mass of chaos, swallows them both.

Balanchine, who is hailed as one of the greatest ballet choreographers of our age, began his career as a 16-year-old in St. Petersburg. During his 62-year career he would create 425 dances -- from operas to nightclub revues to Hollywood spectaculars.

Known for his tremendous resourcefulness, Balanchine found inspiration in actual dancers who happened to cross his path, rather than abstract dancers. He constantly pushed his dancers beyond what they had percieved as their limitations, exploiting his dancers' agility and constantly demanding more turns, higher jumps and faster speeds.

He was often quoted as saying, "God creates. I assemble." His primary concern was with the physical aspect of dance, as opposed to the decor, story-telling or acting.

Balanchine Celebration continues with the premiere of the Houston Ballet's performance of Agon . It is a plotless, abstract, neoclassical work presented with minimal costumes (actually, practice clothes). It is set to the taut, quirky music of Igor Stravinsky, who was, at the time, greatly influenced by Weber's atonal, 12-tone music.

The starkness of the sets and costumes serves to draw attention to the amazing physical feats of the dancers, as well as their immense grace and beauty. These dancers make the U.S. women's gymnastics team, whom we all know to be graceful and amazingly athletic, look unpracticed and clumsy ... not an easy feat.

Agon revolves around the number 12, four men and eight women. It is famous for its complex and peculiar steps, marked by an almost frantic energy. Remarkably enough though, the performance manages to maintain touches of humor coupled with its many other attributes.

For the dancers, this ballet embodies a great test of agility, timing and practice, for it has been described as "trying to run the four-minute mile while doing your calculus homework."

The Houston Ballet does an incredible job with this particular performance, the highlight of which is a duo whose intense passion for the dance transfixes the audience. Again, Balanchine's talent for making the dance an integral part of the music is extremely effective in creating this truly wonderful masterpiece.

In assembling this repertoire, the Houston Ballet seems to create a hook-and-bait effect. For classicists or for those whose prior experience with ballet consists of such lavish productions as The Nutcracker , La Valse is the ideal bridge between classical and neoclassical, incorporating comparatively lavish costumes and sets with unique and nearly impossible moves.

Once the beauty and poignancy of La Valse lures the audience, Balanchine's masterpiece Agon , neoclassic down to its very pointe , captivates even the die-hard classicist.

In an interesting decision, the Houston Ballet places Theme and Variations , which is based on the grand music of Peter Tchaikovsky, last in the program. This ballet served as reassurance, after experiencing the unknown and non-traditional.

Opulent in costume, rich in aesthetics, Theme and Variations is a tapestry celebrating the grand Russian classical ballet tradition with threads of trademark Balanchine woven intricately throughout.

The soloists handle the brunt of the technical difficulty of many of the moves with an incredible amount of facility and beauty.

Toward the end of the ballet, elements of Balanchine's newly discovered love -- the flair of the interactions between Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire -- find their way into the ensemble.

Balanchine, once commenting on the ephemeral quality of ballet, likened the art to butterflies: "A breath, a memory, then gone." And, in the humble opinions of these two reviewers, catch this butterfly before it vanishes into the mist and is gone forever.

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the September 13, 1996 issue.

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