Boys and Girls, but Not Together

By Martha Duffy

Two fast new ballets by Balanchine

Through the years, George Balanchine has compared his role as choreographer to the job of a cook or a carpenter. Like a cook he must be able to turn out fare for "five or 100." Like a woodworker he must know his materials: "A ballet carpenter must find dominant quality of gesture, a strain or palette of consistent movement" in the music. Now 74, Balanchine keeps providing nourishment for his New York City Ballet and matching his inspiration to his dancers' strengths. There have been two premieres in two weeks: Ballo della Regina, to dance music from Verdi's Don Carlos, and Kammermusik No. 2, composed by Paul Hindemith in 1924. The works are not masterpieces, but they show a couple of sides of Balanchine's genius: Kammermusik is a sophisticated display of how motion can illustrate music. Ballo is a bravura piece for his newest virtuoso, Merrill Ashley.

Hindemith called his composition "a little potpourri," a description that can only be regarded as Teutonic irony. In the first and final movements particularly, the music is a swift series of sharp, irregular beats and accents, a current of almost uncontained energy. Balanchine has set it for two couples, Karin von Aroldingen and Sean Lavery, Colleen Neary and Adam Luders, and, for the first time in over a decade, a corps of eight male dancers. In the fast sections, Balanchine uses sprung rhythms. Karin may start a staccato move just a little ahead of Colleen, or lead by an entire intricate pattern. The effect is similar to watching a dance lit by not one but two sets of strobe lights.

The male corps looks occasionally as if it had wandered in from a Jerome Robbins ballet and started doing Balanchine's "London bridges" patterns. But when the tempos slow down, as they do occasionally, there are some rare images refreshed by the fact that the figures in the distance, those who give the work its continuity, are men. In one, as the two women dance downstage, three of the men glide behind them serenely, like swans in semidarkness.

Lavery and Luders are handsome young dancers. At times they look tense, as if trying too hard to make difficult new roles look easy. The women are, frankly, the largest in the company. As usual, Balanchine has managed to enhance their special attributes. In a few caressing gestures of Lavery's hand. Von Aroldingen shows an intimate, womanly quality; in a brief sequence when she looks like a participant in a walking race, Neary makes cheerful fun of herself.

Ballo della Regina is a less ambitious work than Kammermusik, but it is more fun. Balanchine, the author of the remark "Ballet is woman." is back with a particularly lovely group of 16 girls. Regina, of course, means queen in Italian, and Merrill Ashley reigns easily over this showpiece. It has her flash and her reserve. She has long had a reputation as a "dancer's dancer" because she may have the fastest, most accurate allegro technique in the world. At 27 she has matured, and knows how to shape her moves as well. Most girls with flying feet are short and light, like Gelsey Kirkland. By contrast, Ashley is tall and elegant. Ballo 's vertiginous shifts in direction, the hops on point, as smooth as if Ashley wore skate blades instead of toe shoes, the climactic jumps slammed down in arabesque -- these are executed with regal authority as well as grace. Ballo della Regina is not about Verdi's music but about a monarch named Merrill. --Martha Duffy

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Well, actually Queen Linda.

Her real name is Linda Merrill, but when she was invited to join the company in 1967, a girl named Linda Rosenthal was using Linda Merrill as a stage name. Linda II was not about to surrender Merrill entirely, so she took it as a first name. She thought of using her father's name, Harvie, as a surname, but it did not sound quite right. To her nothing does, including Ashley, a reluctant, printer's-deadline choice.

Despite her elegant style, she is not totally regal. She can burst onstage with the spontaneity of a child running out to play. After all, the steps at Lincoln Center have been her playground for 14 years. She be gan lessons in Rutland, Vt., at seven, came to the City Ballet school six years later, and has been there ever since.

Says she: "My teachers liked me. I was always optimistic. Promotions seemed to come at the right times." Like most Balanchine dancers, Merrill is completely dedicated to him and the City Ballet. She lives only two blocks away. The man in her life is a U.N. interpreter who watches almost every performance she gives. Balanchine's class starts her day like the first skip around the playground. "I adore that hour. He says so much, but you must pick up on things yourself and think, 'Hey, that's for me!' He doesn't allow you to collect energy. He loves quick things, so you must expend it."

Only once, about seven years ago, was Ashley ever stalled: "I got heavy and in a rut. I would book a rehearsal room and not know what to do when I got there." She gives credit to Jacques d'Amboise for helping her out of it, in part during recitals they gave together. She explains, "In some ways, Jacques is Mr. B."

Last fall, on the first day after summer layoff, the real Balanchine told her, "I would like to do something for you." It was Ballo. Her huge almond-shaped eyes glow as she remembers that morning. "He told me that a new ballet is like putting on a new coat. You have to move around in it awhile before it is comfortable." Not too long, however. Balanchine began with a structure for Ballo, but no steps. Says Ashley: "He wears these clunky shoes and does funny things with his feet. Then you move and he looks. My pas de deux took about an hour to work out, my variation a half-hour. Sometimes he would say, 'No one can do that step, so we will do it.' Well, sometimes we didn't do it!"

If Merrill can't do it, probably no one can. Peter Martins, City Ballet's top male dancer (and new choreographer, whose first work, Calcium Light Night, just opened), has worked with Balanchine for a decade. Says Martins: "He could not have done Ballo five years ago. It is all Merrill. She executes steps at speeds that seem impossible. And she never takes a short cut. She is completely honest."

Martins is referring to Ashley's scrupulousness in performance, but she is candid in other ways. She knows that her technique is famous. "From the waist down, I'm terrific," she observes. "My legs just know what to do. But my allegro dancing wasn't enough. I had a kind of breakthrough a year ago. But my arms can still be lifeless. My head is not always right." She has been teaching her role in Emeralds to Ghislaine Thesmar, a French ballerina who is as elegant in a Gallic way as Ashley is in her very American style. "Ghislaine's arms are romantic and fluid," muses Ashley. "I just don't have that quality yet." She is right. But the odds are that she will find her own equivalent--or know the reason why. Her goals are strong and they are focused. "The classics can wait. Right now the place to be is where Mr. Balanchine is. My ambition is to do every role in the repertory that I have not done so far."

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