It’s hard to digest New York City Ballet’s latest premiere without knowing the story behind it. In a roundabout way, it’s a story ballet, but not the kind where a princess falls asleep after being pricked by a needle. ‘Architects of Time’, a collaboration between choreographer Silas Farley and composer David K. Israel, is a ballet with background stories.
Its history goes back to 1946. It was Igor Stravinsky’s birthday, and George Balanchine wanted to give a gift to his dear friend. He composed a melody and set an acrostic on it, with the first letter of each line spelling out the name “Igor” in Russian. Stravinsky, pleased with Balanchine’s melody, harmonized the song.
The charming, idiosyncratic lyrics, translated into English, make it clear why Balanchine, both the man and the choreographer, is sorely missed: “Name day and birthday / guests, noise and animation / Let’s get drunk on Grand Marnier/Don’t forget a glass for me too.”
Now it’s grown into something bigger, but nowhere quite as charming or quirky: Farley’s ballet, created in honor of City Ballet’s current Stravinsky Festival. It was unveiled on Thursday at the spring gala, which seemed like the right place. It wasn’t meant to be a piece d’occasion, but the chances of survival seem slim.
The work originated with Israel, which found a photocopy of the song in the Harvard Theater Collection nearly 30 years ago. At the time, he was the musical advisor to dance critic Arlene Croce. For him, it was a gold mine—and even better, one that yielded a theme on which he could compose variations. His score for “Architects of Time” is well worth listening to: it mines and manipulates Stravinsky’s music – sometimes in lively, shimmering ways – to create a new-old dance sound.
But the ballet, which does the same with Balanchine’s repertoire, ends up as a more or less polite display case in which postures and postures, the angles of wrists and arms, do not so much produce new choreography as mix fragments from the past. What is the greater meaning? It seems less inspired by Balanchine ballets than by Pictures of Balanchine ballets.
“Architects” unfolds in eight variations and concludes with group sections featuring the full cast—eight men and eight women—as a moving organism that spreads across the stage in arrangements of streamlined, twisting jumps and jumps. Farley creates, here and elsewhere, pieces of space in which dancers stand out from the crowd. Quinn Starner exudes a special luxury, especially the way her crystalline épaulement shows the angles of her head and shoulders; Samuel Melnikov’s juicy jump has a way of hovering in the air, getting bigger and bigger through his long arms and flowing hands.
Ultimately, such snippets are more satisfying than the highlighted moments—a duet for Emma Von Enck and Lars Nelson in which collaboration begins and ends awkwardly, and solos for Jovani Furlan and Claire Kretzschmar that reference contemplative states but rarely go deeper. Furlan, with some weird, crumpled shapes reminiscent of Balanchine’s “Episodes,” is on a sort of moody journey, while Kretzschmar, rotating her arms through classic positions, drifts off pointe here and there with floor-skimming steps. At times, especially when her arms open as her face tilts upward, there is the echo of the opening prayer of Balanchine’s “Mozartiana.” But the timing isn’t right, and the effect is more pious than pensive.
It doesn’t help that the combination of Mark Stanley’s lighting and Cassia Farley’s costumes really darkens the stage. Are they going for something elegiac? Even when the dancers are in a happy mood – and thanks, Roman Mejia and Gilbert Bolden III, for turning the volume up – the setting is uninviting. Cassia Farley, the choreographer’s wife, has made short dresses for the women and unitards for the men; the bottom half of each is a deep maroon-red, and the top half fades to show the dancer’s skin tone. They look like hard-boiled eggs dipped in paint and glitter.
While it made sense to link Farley, a former company member who has always been fascinated by City Ballet’s rich history, with Israel’s score, the collaboration is too static to grow. “Architects of Time” refers to what Balanchine says in the documentary “In Balanchine’s Classroom”: “Composer is architect of time, and we have to dance to it.”
Those words are urgent. In the film, he also says, “Music is the foundation, or a floor on which we walk.” But here the floor is weighed down by too much legacy and too little fantasy. And on this gala program, there was too much to compare it to, including Balanchine’s all-female “Scherzo à la Russe,” a lively tribute to Russian folk dance featuring advanced students from the company’s School of American Ballet, as well as what is arguably the crown jewel of the 1972 festival, “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.”
With its folk motifs, two enchanting pas de deux and tantalizing group sections, “Violin Concerto” remains playful and soulful in surprising ways. With all his keen virtuosity and intense focus, Joseph Gordon, dancing with Ashley Laracey – looking alien at times, hesitant at others – seemed shot from a cannon. Unity Phelan used her glorious plasticity to vivid effect in a promising debut, but seeing her with another partner will tell a different story; here she danced with Amar Ramasar, whose prowess is still rooted more in faith than in physical truth.
The highlight of the evening came immediately with Jerome Robbins’ ‘Circus Polka’, set to music Stravinsky had composed for Balanchine, who in 1941 made a dance for the young elephants of the Ringling Brothers circus. In 1972 Robbins used the music to create a showpiece for the students of the School of American Ballet and to play the part of the Ringmaster; here the recently retired Maria Kowroski did the honour.
It was a first at City Ballet to have a woman in the role, but that didn’t make it so satisfying. Kowroski ruled over 48 children from the school and used her height to her advantage — making the little dancers look even smaller as they marched and pranced through Stravinsky’s score. Kowroski has a wonderful ability to be motherly as well as joke. It was good to have her back, if only for one night.