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Flash Review 2, 6-8: Onegin Reduced
Bloodless Graffin Turns a Masterpiece into a Farce
By Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2001 The Dance Insider
Ballet is a fragile thing. It depends
on committed dancers and musicians to make us believe it. I was reminded of just
how fragile it is Wednesday at the Metropolitan Opera House, when an American
Ballet Theatre cast with three weak leads reduced John Cranko's power-house story
ballet "Onegin" to a shallow, perplexing ballet that limped along until it teetered
so precariously that I wasn't able to stick around for the third act to see it
totally collapse. The corps did its valiant and energetic best, but was undermined
in its signature sections by the lackluster, taciturn conducting of Charles Barker.
To say nothing of the three lackluster
principals. Neither Guillaume Graffin, in the title role, nor Ethan Stiefel, as
his friend and rival Lensky, seemed fully present. Maria Riccetto evinced little
understanding of the weight of some of Cranko's most physically and thus emotionally
fraught passages. And Irina Dvorovenko, well -- can one really blame her for not
projecting love for this caddish Onegin, after being fortunate enough to dance
opposite the broodingly charismatic Guissepe Picone Tuesday
night?
Like many Russian protagonists --
Cranko's ballet is inspired by Pushkin's epic narrative poem, "Eugene Onegin"--
Onegin, black as he may be, compels with his darkness. He isn't just a cad for
the hell of it. Like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, there's an existential hole or
void in his soul. A reason he got this way. We don't need to know the reason,
but knowing that there is one gives his actions weight and makes them not just
capricious. Why else would he not fall for the nubile Tatiana, who spontaneously
gives her heart to him in a letter shortly after meeting him?
And oh, that letter, and oy, Graffin's
reaction to it. The moments where Onegin reads, and then deliberately shreds Tatiana's
letter, forcing her to watch by reaching both arms around her neck from behind
and tearing it in front of her face, should be so extreme that we instantly understand
Onegin's darkness, even if we don't like it. But Graffin reacted to the letter
as if it were no more than an annoying bill, and tore it up with the same disinterested
air. And Dvorovenko already had less of a distance to fall, since, unlike Picone,
Graffin hadn't lifted her to such lofty love fancies anyway. She was not so dreamily
affected as on Tuesday night, and I couldn't blame her.
The partnering between Stiefel and
Riccetto was also off. At more than one point, as my dancer companion pointed
out, leading up to lifting her, instead of spotting her with one hand and waiting
'til the actual lift to hold her with the other, he held her with both in the
preparation, telegraphing what was coming and thus depriving it of the element
of surprise. Later, turning her in front of him, he held her hand in his so close
-- above his head, instead of hers -- that when she turned to face away from him,
she didn't have much room in which to move. And Riccetto ruined one of the ballet's
most originally poignant moments, when Olga and Tatiana encircle Lensky in front
and behind in an intricate pas de trois that demonstrates their trying to restrain
him, by seeming to be more tackling a physical challenge than evoking an emotional
one.
When I took Russian lit. in college,
I remember long nights locking myself in a fluorescent lit, slightly chilly, empty
classroom, holing up with Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov." Afraid that I might
fall asleep, I had deliberately put myself in uncomfortable surroundings. I needn't
have worried. Brothers K -- like other works of Russian lit. such as Pushkin's
epic -- was a real page-turner, a stage with non-stop action, totally engaging.
When we go to see one of these great
Russian works enacted as a ballet, we don't have the words to so engage us. Only
the choreography, brought to life by the dancers, aided by the music. But to do
this the dancers need to engage the work and the characters they're playing. And
with the exception of Dvorovenko, handicapped by her wuss of a leading man, and
Brian Reeder's noble Prince Gremin, the only man on stage Wednesday with a commanding
presence, the principal players did not engage with this ballet. From the almost
zombie-like conducting of Barker, to the cliched, one-dimensional acting of Rosalie
O'Connor as Tatiana and Olga's mother (her character repertoire consisted of clucking),
to the hollow man playing the title role, they passive-active destroyed this great
ballet.
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