sarma

I went up to the New York State Theater to see Balanchine’s Harlequinade because he’s been tinkering with it again and I thought I should be up-to-date. I also thought it would be fun, and it was.

Rouben Ter-Arutunian’s first-act set is a large-scale version of those little painted paper theatres you can buy and then fold and tab together. It looks like a giant toy, and pretty soon I begin to think of the characters in this commedia dell’arte tale of romance and chicanery as being little cardboard doll who slide on and off stage in grooves. The way Balanchine has organized the ballet heightens this illusion. Action is always happening elsewhere. The puppet-dancers dash offstage to accomplish chases and searches, to hide from chases and searches. Some, like the three Sbires, hired by Columbine’s father, Cassandre, to capture Harlequin, seem to be in perpetual, sneaky transit. Groups of dancers replace each other as if one were being pulled off as the other rolled on. A large group of gaudily dressed merrymakers with paper lanterns appears from nowhere to perform a pretty, if cramped tarantella. They disappear in a body into the night (unfortunately leaving a small debris of lanterns behind), and the Scaramouches, four courting couples elegantly dressed black silk, suddenly occupy the stage.

The tale itself has traces of coarse humor, of eroticism, of violence. The sequence in which Harlequin’s dismembered body (a dummy) fails from a second story window, is collected and bidden under a brown cloak, and later restored to life by La Bonne Fée certainly has roots in Saturnalia and earlier fertility rituals. But, just as the characters replace each other meticulously on stage, as if a certain equilibrium had to be maintained or the stage would fall in, so the fights and the violence and the chases seem almost orderly, nicely balanced, resolved even as they happen.

The dancing, however, is another thing altogether, very rich and round. The Scaramouches’ wooing, which in terms of composition forms a background to Harlequin’s dancing and mandolin-plucking serenade to Columbine, is like a quietly passionate underscoring of his unheard words. The drunken patrol of guards lurches about marvelously, all the funnier because of the men’s determination to maintain - or at last return to - a vertical military stance. La Bonne Fée, coolly voluptuous, shows by her carefully assumed balances and steady footwork that she’s a powerful goddess, no tulle-and-wings fairy. There are two marvelous pas de deux for Harlequin and Columbine. The one in the first act bridles a lot of impetuous dancing with decorous end poses. Innocent friendly bursts of kisses happen in chaste, even coy stances, after big, abandoned-looking lifts. The second-act duet dispenses with all that should-we-or-shouldn’t-we stuff, and Harlequin and Columbine no longer look in the least like brightly-dressed dolls, but only like ardent, happy young lovers.

As with Nutcracker, most of the plot of Harlequinade is resolved in the first act. The angry father, the rich suitor are not quite placated or sent packing, but we know it’s only a matter of time. Otherwise why would the second act be one big party? The second act takes place in an enchanted forest and begins with an immense promenade by all the good guys of the first act, plus (this is new) hordes of children, ranging from very small to teenagers. These are dressed as Harlequins, as Pierrots and Pierrettes, as Scaramouches, as Polichinelles. There’s a wonderful moment when these miniatures, dressed almost exactly like their adult counterparts, begin to join the march. You think for a second that you’re seeing things, or that they must be adults - just farther away than you realized. Each group of children has a short variation in which a few attitudes or gestures characteristic of their adult counterparts become new choreographic material. The baby Harlequins pointing and tapping their magic wands, prancing with a mischievous wag of the head; the little Pierrots approaching their perky Pierrettes with despondent slouches and dragging sleeves—all serve to restate character traits in simpler language. You feel somewhat as you do when reading a story in a retold-for-children edition. It’s a charming and curious device.

One of the strange things about this rather strange ballet is the lark motif. Harlequin sets his baby manifestations twirling a dazzling mirrored object, like a large top, to attract a flock of women dancers. He doesn’t catch them; he just wants them around. And they flit - all straight quick legs and quivering arms - in and out through the grand pas de deux and between its sections as if to bestow a benison on the lovers. The effect is vivid and exciting, as if their fluttering represented the beating of hearts.

Edward Villella and Patricia McBride are wonderful as Harlequin and Columbine. His robust dancing style and mischievous, but deprecating carriage are splendid, and she is a marvel at showing a delicacy that never becomes brittle, but maintains a softly shifting flow of energy.