BALLET THE New York City Ballet, under the direction of
its chief choreo- grapher, M. George Balanchine, made its European debut at Covent Garden on Monday night. Its season will last for several weeks, and most of the ballets staged will be new to London audiences. And as the company exemplifies the American approach to the art of the dance, and will perform none of the classics which constitute so popular a part of our own repertoire, much of its language will inevitably have an unfamiliar accent. The choice of programme for the opening night was not particu- larly happy. Balanchine's Serenade and Robbins' Age of Anxiety were followed by Symphony in C, and together the trio proved so indigestible that I, for one, came away feeling utterly exhausted instead of exhilarated. Certainly the English temperament has an inherent love of quiet and repose, and may have found difficulty in adjusting itself thus suddenly to such a quickened pace. But everything and everyone working unremittingly at full pressure, giving us " all the works " all the time, is wasteful artistically.
Of the two Balanchine ballets—both of which are abstract—I infinitely prefer Serenade created in 1934 to Symphony in C of 1947. The former, against a plain backcloth and in the simplest of figure-revealing costumes, is rich in beautiful grouping and phrasing. It is grave in mood, completely integrated with Tchaikovsky's music and notable—as was Ballet Imperial—for its lovely moving patterns. Balanchine generally seems happiest and most satisfactorily inventive in allegro movements.– In adagio he often appears to be searching for the exact idiom, and possibly the speed of American life has confused instead of clarified this problem. Certainly Symphony in C, has lost much of the sensitive artistry of the earlier work without making up for it in sharp brilliance. The ballet leaves an uncomfortable impression of a race against time coupled with an anxiety lest the difficult and often ungainly acrobatic enchainements should cause grief to the dancers.
Jerome Robbins, associate artistic director as well as premier danseur to the company, will be remembered for his brilliant Fancy Free presented by Ballet Theatre in 1944. Like Fancy Free, the Age of Anxiety—also set to music by Leonard Bernstein—is a ballet in the modern idiom. But unlike the former it is far removed from gaiety, being based on a poem by W. H. Auden, whose theme is a fundamental human problem. The ballet may not prove popular in this country because, like any work of value, it will have to be studied carefully, and English audieaces are generally notoriously lazy. Apart from certain obscurities which will doubt- less be elucidated after further visits, and apart from a too lengthy masque episode, I found the ballet deeply satisfying and moving.
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