7/14/04: Ashton Celebration/The Royal Ballet.

Alina Cojocaru may be my new fave. I slogged 12 blocks in a thunderstorm to Lincoln Center and my pants and shoes were, of course, soaked by the time I got there. Curtain rises on Scènes de Ballet and she’s in sunshine yellow and all of a sudden the opera house lights up and everybody’s shoes and pant legs are dry and she’s all life and joy. The ballet itself is beautiful: layers and layers of choreography, fun and wit and dancey-dancing all over the stage and every time I focused on one phrase, I noticed out of the corner of an eye another lovely little something that I almost missed. It’s the kind of ballet I want to see over and over again just to make sure I’ve taken it all in.

The middle of the program was a chocolate box of pas de deux; a sampling of dancers and dancing I’d probably otherwise never have the opportunity to see. (I was surprised at how many nationalities are represented among the Principals at the Royal—I thought ABT was the major ESL company). And Ashton’s choreography—I have enough trouble intellectualizing about dance: I always feel it my heart first—even when he’s telling a story like Marguerite and Armand, about anguish and death, I start to sway a bit and smile and think first, “Ah, this is dancing!

Which brings me to the legendary Sylvie Guilleme. For those of you who remember my opinion of her Giselle, this makes Strike Two—she gets one more try from me. She doesn’t do it for me. For all her onstage acting and emoting, she seems strangely uninvolved with the other people dancing on stage with her. No electricity. Massimo Murru’s Armand loved Marguerite passionately and desperately, willing to forsake family and honor for her. And Sylvie?… she… uhm… well, she had a real bad cough, of that much I’m sure. But had they not flashed Murro’s image on the backdrop of her deathbed scene, I’m not sure I would have known that she gave a flip about him. She was busy acting tubercular and consumptive all over the place.