Balanchine's Jewels

Jewels is a ballet by the well-known choreographer George Balanchine. From the program:

"Balanchine's unique Jewels, made for New York City Ballet in 1967, is a three-act plotless ballet and the first of its kind."

Each "act", which in truth are more each like their own one-act piece, was created with a particular jewel in mind: Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds. While I can't remember exactly which one, I know we've seen at least one of these three acts on its own at some point over the past few years, as part of an evening of short pieces.

A little bit about Balanchine: Because both the current director Peter Boal (who was a student of Balanchine) and the previous long-time directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell(who both danced for Balanchine) are strongly associated with this choreographer, a large number of the ballets Chad and I have seen at the PNB have been Balanchine works. He has defined much of what is now known as modern American ballet, and we have never seen a Balanchine work we did not like. As far as we've been able to tell, his ballets stand out from those of other choreographers primarily due to their strong musicality. That probably sounds strange to anyone who's never seen ballet, but in truth, alot of ballet does not have movement which goes right along with the music in the way that you expect something called "dance" to do. The other primary defining style for me is his obvious innovative experimentation with the ballet form, while still staying within the confines of what most of us traditionally think of when we think the word "ballet".

We got a unique opportunity for Jewels that we've never experienced before: we were invited to watch the dress rehearsal. Not only was this interesting because we got to see the dancers warm up onstage for their pieces before performing them (amusing especially for the incongruous combination of fancy dress costumes with leg warmers, warm-up pants, and sweatshirts), but it let us see the performance twice in the same week, each with a different set of principal dancers. I think seeing it this way changed the experience by deepening it. I believe I was able to pay much more attention to all the small details that I might not otherwise notice had I only seen the piece once.

One of those details that was very prominent in Emeralds was the unique use of arm movements. In traditional ballet, the arm movements are usually very specific and mostly seem to be there to put a finishing touch on the featured movement of the legs and body. But in Emeralds, the arm movements were themselves an important expressive part of the dance, and often seemed to be even more featured than the leg movements. The effect overall was very beautiful.

My personal favorite of the evening was Rubies, which has a Stravinsky score and is described in the program as "the American heart of Jewels." While it maintained all the essential ballet tradition in general, it was fun and obviously influenced by jazz style in the same manner Stravinsky's score was. While all of the costumes for Jewels (designed by Karinska, see my note below) are great, those for Rubies are especially interesting and fun, in many vibrant shades of red and a sort of modified flapper meets All-American Revue that really helped to draw attention and enhance the jazzy movements.

I liked Diamonds too, but not as much as the other two. This one was much more rooted in traditional ballet, and had alot of what seemed like very difficult technical dancing. There was quite a bit of spontaneous applause during and after the execution of alot of the crazy complicated spins and leaps involved during this act.

Factoid: Some very interesting history I learned from the program was about the costume designer Karinska, who was a longtime collaborator with Balanchine and is known as "one of the great dance costumers of the twentieth century." She was responsible for creating 9,000 costumes for the New York City Ballet, and even costumed 11 movies in the 40s and 50s, including Ingrid Bergman's Joan of Arc costume. Besides being a major influence on many other performing arts costumes of her era, she was responsible for two of the major costume design changes that have become standards in ballet today. One was the "powder-puff" tutu, which instead of the weird sticks-out-in-the-air pancake style that older ballets used, drapes softly onto the hips and bounces nicely when the dancers move.The other standard she created was the very modern-looking knee-length chiffon ballet dress.