Sparring with the Ultimate

Published May 11, 2010 at 7:57 p.m.
Boston Ballet in The Four Temperaments, Apollo, and Theme and Variations
There’s never been a more brilliant exemplar of the ballet art than George Balanchine.

THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS Kathleen Breen Combes (kneeling) brought off Choleric’s fast and eccentric steps.

There’s never been a more brilliant exemplar of the ballet art than George Balanchine. In tackling three tremendous works by the 20th-century master, Boston Ballet is giving us a chance to savor these dances again on a living stage. Since Balanchine’s death, in 1983, his ballets are being offered less and less frequently, even by his home company, New York City Ballet. It’s become fashionable in some quarters to worry that his massive genius exerts too much influence on ballet æsthetics. If that’s so, perhaps it’s because no bigger genius has arisen to supplant him in the past 25 years. There’s a reason we still listen to Mozart and Beethoven, folks.

What’s on view at the Opera House through this weekend is dancing at its most demanding and imaginative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen The Four Temperaments (1946), Apollo (1928), and Theme and Variations (1947) together in one evening before. Singly, they pop up now and then, but seen in tandem, they deliver new discoveries about Balanchine and the dancers who embrace him.

Over his long, prolific career, Balanchine evoked many styles and moods. This program does show the neo-classicism of his Ballets Russes period (Apollo), an early example of his American modernism (Four T’s), and his wholehearted celebration of his roots in the Imperial Russian ballet (Theme and Variations). But, different as these three works are, seeing them together, you can recognize certain similarities — families of steps used and usages abandoned, touchstone compositional devices, attitudes to music, and ideas about how to present dancers, how to compose a ballet.

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