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From The Times November 27, 2007 Jewels |
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Debra Craine in Covent Garden
When George Balanchine gave the world Jewels in 1967 it wasn’t just another ballet from the master – it was a stroke of marketing genius. Here was a trio of plotless one-act creations sold as a full-length ballet and inspired, so it was said, by the window displays at Van Cleef & Arpels, the exclusive Fifth Avenue jewellers. The hook worked; Jewels became an instant success at New York City Ballet and there is no reason to think that Covent Garden audiences won’t be equally smitten, now that Jewels has finally arrived at the Royal Ballet.
Each gem represents a different period in ballet history: Emeralds, the French Romantic school; Rubies, American modernism; Diamonds, the academic rigour of Imperial Russia. It’s a chance to embrace every aspect of the classical language in a single night.
To make the production unique to the Royal, Jean-Marc Puissant has been brought in to provide stylish new sets, although Barbara Karinska’s original costumes now look hopelessly dated. Puissant’s themed designs – Art Nouveau for Emeralds, Art Deco for Rubies and Tsarist splendour for Diamonds – are handsome and accommodating.
Emeralds, with its delicate aroma and old-fashioned virtues, is the jewel most often overlooked. But, thanks to Tamara Rojo, Leanne Benjamin and Edward Watson, it was beautifully realised as a sophisticated and compassionate evocation of French Romanticism. The oldest style on show – early 19th century, the time of Giselle – it demands an attention to detail, as well as an appreciation of the idealised femininity it espouses. Rojo is the embodiment of refinement and grace, her rich dancing exquisitely attuned to the nuances of Fauré’s music (sympathetically conducted by Valeriy Ovsyanikov). Benjamin shapes the feathery phrasing with elegant finesse, Watson is the attentive cavalier par excellence.
Rubies (to Stravinsky) is the philosophical and stylistic polar opposite. We jump forward 100 years; this is Balanchine’s homage to the aesthetic he created in New York. The women are bold and brave, flashing legs like chorus girls and jutting out hips in jazzy invitation. It’s a new world of ballerina showgirls and cowboy princes, prancing insouciantly like circus ponies, selling themselves like Broadway hoofers. Zenaida Yanowsky, as the sexy Amazon in charge, eclipses the gleeful duo of Sarah Lamb and Carlos Acosta.
Diamonds, the final part, is Balanchine’s nod to Imperial St Petersburg, the tradition of his youth. With its white tutus, conventional corps de ballet and Tchaikovsky music, we are in Petipa territory. The central pas de deux is a grand display of lush ardour and glittering presentation. Here danced by Alina Cojocaru, the ballerina is both dream princess and poetic symbol – Aurora and Odette in one. Cojocaru moves with a sumptuous emotional connection to both dance and music; Rupert Pennefather’s job is to adore her, which he does admirably well. The final polka is an exhilarating display of dance for dance’s sake – and what better gem to find inside Balanchine’s jewel box than that?
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Jewels
By John Percival Published Mon 26 November 2007 at 15:20
George Balanchine’s Jewels, newly mounted for the Royal Ballet, always provoked dispute - is it a three-act ballet or a trio of one-acters? Covent Garden quotes both versions in its programme book. I reckon only the décor ever really held it together, and sadly Jean-Marc Puissant’s new designs look fussy although rather bare. A more vital point is that the choreography, created 40 years ago, is uneven and below Balanchine’s top form.
Also, on opening night it wasn’t well enough done. Blame first the conductor, Valeriy Ovsyanikov, whose treatment of Fauré and Stravinsky for the first two sections was decidedly stodgy. Despite this, Tamara Rojo, leading the opening Emeralds, provided the evening’s best dancing - smooth, elegant, perfectly shaped and timed, with Leanne Benjamin, another Emerald, not far behind. Too bad that their partners - Edward Watson and Ivan Putrov, with Steven McRae joining them - couldn’t manage the simple authority Balanchine expected from the men.
Rubies
fared even worse. Of course, Carlos Acosta’s fans cheered, but he looked wrong -
unflattering costume - and danced jerkily, far from his best. Here again there
were two leading women. Sarah Lamb proved negligible, whereas Zenaida Yanowsky
nearly carried off the secondary solos.
Surprisingly, the last part - Diamonds, with Tchaikovsky - which has sometimes looked the weakest, came off best. This is thanks to better ensemble dancing and a leading couple who really worked brightly and matched each other well - although tiny Alina Cojocaru made her substitute partner Rupert Pennefather look a giant by comparison. So early in the season, there are already too many dancers ill or injured.
Every role has two casts, so later shows may look very different, but it does not seem as if the Royal will match what we have seen in this work by companies from New York, Paris and St Petersburg.
Jewels: November 23 - Covent Garden
Financial Times
Gems retain a power to dazzle
By Clement Crisp
Published: November 26 2007 02:00 | Last updated: November 26 2007 02:00
"Jewels has been an unequivocal and rapturous 'success'." So wrote Lincoln Kirstein in 1967 as he surveyed the triumph of his and Balanchine's New York City Ballet in this knock-out example of what he called one of Balanchine's "applause-machines".
On Friday night, Jewels entered the Royal Ballet repertory and the machine still generated applause, rapturous and (mostly) deserved. We see three plotless works. Emeralds is set to theatre music by Gabriel Fauré, Rubies is Balanchine's realisation of Stravinsky's 1929 Capriccio for piano and orchestra ; Diamonds uses the last four movements of Tchaikovsky's third symphony.
It is easy to see that in Emeralds the choreographer uses the exquisite refinement of Fauré's music to draw a portrait of feminine grace, set in that shaded greenery that touched French poetry and music as the 19th century ended. There is a solo, all womanly nuance and wit, given to the leading ballerina and here taken with a sensuous charm by Tamara Rojo, who rivals the unerring musical sensibilities of Violette Verdy for whom it was first made. It is the finest thing in the evening. This section is, though, also the design tragedy of the evening. Costuming throughout is that originally made by Karinska in 1967, but Jean-Marc Puissant has been entrusted with settings. These contrive to be obtrusive, distracting. "Emeralds" boasts dull draperies, gauzy curtaining sequined at the hem; mysterious grey frames that might serve to hide hot-water pipes; and two pendant Art Nouveau gasoliers.
There follows the Stravinsky Capriccio , which the company has danced before. Against Puissant's obstreperous homage to a 1930s Odeon, the dance kicks and races, pelvises thrust forward, energy levels high, with Sarah Lamb giving a sharp-witted performance as the leading woman. It is a fine reading, matched by Zenaida Yanowsky as the second soloist, cutting big swathes of dance with uncompromising verve. Carlos Acosta inherits a role created on Edward Villella, that most vivid of danseurs. Acosta, big in effects, yet misses Villella's streetwise force, his James Cagney air.
Diamonds is a homage to the St Petersburg in which the forces of the Imperial Ballet moved with an aristocratic grandeur. Beneath Puissant's lop-sided chandeliers and swathes of curtaining, the forces of the Royal Ballet, led by a mis-cast Alina Cojocaru (too little scale; too little mystery) and Rupert Pennefather, tripped their ever-so-nice way. It is the hardest section of Jewels to bring off, demanding uncompromising authority, and some idea of how to dance a Polonaise. These qualities were little evident. But Jewels is a great work: with pruning of its decors, and a greater sense of Petersburg's presence in Diamonds , Balanchine's applause-machine can have its full and tremendous effect.
The Telegraph
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Jewels: Shimmering gems
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 26/11/2007
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Sarah Crompton reviews Jewels at the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden At this time of year, the shops and theatres are full of sparkling tinsel and paste - delights to please children. How clever then of the Royal Ballet to choose this season to provide Jewels, a true gem, cut by a master craftsman, as a treat for grown-up ballet lovers.
Supposedly inspired by a visit to jewellers Van Cleef and Arpels, George Balanchine made what was billed as the "first ever abstract three-act ballet" in 1967, to mark the move of his New York City Ballet to the Lincoln Centre. In need of a big, glamorous ballet to fill the stage, he came up with the idea of three works that together form a glittering necklace, linking not only aspects of his own career but also the history of dance itself. So the first, Emeralds, is set to Fauré, and romantically French; the second, Rubies, to Stravinsky's Capriccio is jazzily American; the third, Diamonds, to Tchaikovsky's Third Symphony, a tribute to the grand Russian style. Each showcased a different ballerina: the French Violette Verdy, the dynamic Patricia MacBride and Suzanne Farrell, Balanchine's muse. The whole thing shimmers with the choreographer's genius, his way of taking simple movements and burnishing them into variations of dazzling complexity. In the Royal Ballet's first performance of the whole work on Friday, it was Emeralds that gleamed most beautifully. Perhaps this is because the set designs work most satisfyingly here. (Limited to Barbara Karinska's original costume designs, Jean-Marc Puissant can only provide period lamps for each act and projected curtains at the back.) Perhaps it was because the orchestra under Valeriy Ovsyanikov sounds most comfortable in the Fauré. But mainly it is because the grave intelligence of Tamara Rojo fills the work with a kind of rapture. Her arms float as if in a trance; she spins with the perfection of a ballerina on a jewellery box; she dances with Edward Watson like a sprite in a dream, full of aching grace. She loses herself in the world Balanchine has made, understanding each step, and Watson, Leanne Benjamin and Ivan Putrov all help to sustain the mysterious mood. This loveliness contrasts sharply with the snazzy vim and vigour of Rubies, its hip-jutting pyrotechnics led by Carlos Acosta, jogging, jumping and spinning with joy, and Sarah Lamb, her sharp legs swinging. Its exuberance is infectious but there is more energy than finesse. In Diamonds, Alina Cojocaru conjures a world of swans and princesses with delicate precision. But the ecstatic wonder, the detail (her startled turn of the head when he kisses her hand) and delight she finds in the piece, is lacking elsewhere. Rupert Pennefather, replacing the injured Federico Bonelli, simply doesn't have the confidence for this kind of showcase; the soloists and the corps de ballet just miss the grand manner that Diamonds needs to glisten at its brightest. Nevertheless, this is a trilogy to return to again and again. It's a pleasure to have it in the Royal's repertory. |
Jewels
Royal
Opera House, London
Judith
Mackrell
Monday November 26, 2007
The Guardian
Two's company ... Sarah Lamb
and Carlos Acosta dance Rubies. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
I don't remember ever getting goosebumps at the theatre just from looking at a colour. But in Rubies, the centrepiece of the Royal Ballet's new production of Jewels, there is a point when the stage's burgundy backdrop darkens to a red so deep it is almost black. The effect is so sumptuous, and simultaneously wicked, that the shock is physical. The colour also puts into sharp, outrageous focus the couple who are dancing centre stage: showgirl princess Sarah Lamb and Carlos Acosta, her all-American jester. Together they blaze a path through their jazz-burnished choreography.
Balanchine's 1967 triptych has long been a cornerstone of the American repertory, but the triumph of this new production is to transfer a sense of ownership to the Royal Ballet. Courtesy of designers Jean-Marc Puissant and Jennifer Tipton, the three plotless ballets that make up Jewels have been given an added theatrical resonance, which suits this company's performing temperament. Emeralds is styled to look Parisian, lit by Lalique chandeliers; Rubies' geometric decor is pure 20th-century Manhattan; Diamonds is all tsarist marble and crystal. Within this staging, we can see clearly how each principal dancer has identified their own character and fantasy.
Tamara Rojo and Leanne Benjamin, the two ballerinas in Emeralds, are vividly distinct. Rojo is grave and romantically lush, while Benjamin brings something pagan and untouchable to her dancing. In Rubies, Acosta is a puckish jock; Lamb's joyfully brash athleticism is giddy with exotic sleaze; and Zenaida Yanowsky injects her pin-up girl choreography with a larky, ironic power. Most transforming of all is Alina Cojocaru, in Diamonds: she concentrates the dazzle of the choreography to extraordinary effect, cutting new facets in the role.
It may be too early to judge the staying power of this production until we have seen how the second cast measure up, and have assessed how nagging the ballet's few weaknesses will become. Radiant as Jewels looks, it has to be said that the opening of Diamonds is bland, and the sporty motifs in Rubies have a cheerleader perkiness. Audiences may also be divided between those who love the period gaudiness of the costumes and those who find them kitsch.
On the first night, however, it felt like sparkles all the way.
