Tribute to Jerome Robbins Blu-ray Review
Ballet reinvented.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 8, 2012
Jerome Robbins is one of the few choreographers whose name is recognized by large swaths of general public, largely
due
to his iconic work on the Broadway and film versions of the legendary musical
West Side Story. Robbins had a
long
and successful career on The Great White Way, with a number of hugely successful musicals to his credit, including
The
Pajama Game, The King and I, On the Town, Gypsy and
Fiddler on the Roof. Robbins came into his own at
about the same time that many new ballet masters, American and international, were beginning to explore and expand
the boundaries of what had traditionally been considered the boundaries of the Art. Robbins was especially interested
in the then new symbiotic relationship between the worlds of theater (chiefly the Broadway musical) and classical
dance, perhaps best personified by Agnes de Mille, who was reinventing the world of Broadway dancing by introducing
quasi-balletic
elements in such pieces as
Oklahoma!. That helped inspire Robbins to both explore the same sorts of ideas in
his Broadway musicals, but also conversely to introduce a more theatrical element to his ballets, as in his first
collaboration
with Leonard Bernstein,
Fancy Free, a piece which inspired, presaged and paved the way for their huge hit
On the
Town later that same year. Robbins may have been in the public eye (at least the public eye outside of New York)
more in his guise as a Broadway choreographer and director, but the fact is he managed to create and stage at least
one more classically oriented dance piece for virtually every year he toiled away on the stages of The Great White Way.
This Paris Opera Ballet
Tribute to Jerome Robbins presents three disparate pieces by Robbins himself along with
a world premiere by a choreographer who considers Robbins to be one of his chief mentors.
En Sol premiered in May 1975 at the New York City Ballet. The piece is set to Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in
G Major and stars Marie-Agnès Gillot and Florian Magnenet.
En Sol was part of a Ravel Festival that celebrated
the hundredth anniversary of the composer's birth and which premiered some twenty new pieces by a variety of iconic
choreographers including George Balanchine. Robbins' conception is, well, fancy free, a romp at the beach, with a
towering yet agile
pas de deux at its core. Set before a huge cobalt blue representation of the sea, the
dancers clad in swimsuit-like wear romp and frolic in a variety of athletic poses that perfectly capture Robbins' innate
ability to meld classic ballet tropes to the world of modern dance and, yes, even Broadway.
The one non-Robbins piece on this Blu-ray is
Triade, a world premiere choreographed by Robbins protégé
Benjamin Millepied, set to music by Nico Muhly, and starring Marie-Agnès Gillot, Laëtitia Pujol, Audric Bezard and Marc
Moreau. Millepied rightly point to John Adams and (especially) Steve Reich as inspirations for Muhly's minimalist,
percussively oriented score, and Millepied himself mentions
Fancy Free as a major inspiration for his ballet which
features four people trading off into separate groupings as if attempting to find the perfect partner. Millepied obviously
wants to achieve a dramatic subtext here and is largely successful in an invigorating but somewhat detached manner.
In the Night is probably the most traditional ballet of the four offered here. It premiered in January 1970 at the
New York City Ballet, set to Nocturnes Op. 27 No. 1, Op. 55 Nos. 1 and 2 and Op. 9 No. 2 by Frederic Chopin. This set of
three duets features Clairemarie Osta with Benjamin Pech, Agnès Letestu with Stéphane Bullion, and Delphine Moussin
with Nicolas Le Riche. Graceful and elegant, this was Robbins'
own homage to the music of Chopin, which he is
on record as stating haunted him from childhood, when he heard it at both his sister's as well as his own dance classes.
Robbins sought to portray three different stages of love and life itself, and the result, while perhaps more restrained
and reserved than many of Robbins' more famous pieces, is a beautiful example of how easily Robbins worked within a
classic and traditional frame of reference.
The Concert ou Les Malheurs de Chacun is the comedy relief of the evening, and for anyone who feels ballet
can't be funny (intentionally, that is),
The Concert is proof positive of just how hilarious it can indeed be. The
piece premiered in 1956 at the New York City Ballet, and is once again set to the music of Chopin, this time so several of
the master's piano pieces. The stars of this laugh out loud funny enterprise are Dorothée Gilbert, Alessio Carbone,
Stéphane Phavorin and Emmanuel Thibault. The ballet takes place at a piano recital as several rather rude audience
members enter, go about their business and enter into a series of daydreams. Beautifully physical and almost
cartoonish at times,
The Concert is undoubtedly one of Robbins' masterpieces, comedic though it may be, and
it's a perfect example of how seamlessly he wedded theatrical approaches to the more rarified world of ballet.
Tribute to Jerome Robbins Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Paris Opera Ballet Tribute to Jerome Robbins is a wonderful compendium of three Robbins pieces and one very
interesting world premiere. The sheer scope of Robbins' approaches is beautifully on display here, from reserved classicism
to free wheeling acrobatics to outright goofy comedy. Robbins almost magically mixed classical ballet tropes with more
modern dance techniques and even popular dance moves, and all of those techniques, which might seem like an unsavory
stew from a lesser maestro, are perfectly blended and aligned here. If you're only familiar with Robbins' name from his
justifiably famous work on
West Side Story, you may be in for something of a surprise as you watch this
Tribute. But Robbins, as expert and virtuosic as he undoubtedly was, also had the "common man"'s touch, and his
pieces always speak to the masses and to the heart. Even those who normally don't care one whit for ballet may find
themselves unexpectedly entertained by this Blu-ray. With good looking video and very good sound audio, despite the
dearth of supplements,
Paris Opera Ballet Tribute to Jerome Robbins comes
Recommended.
