AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
Even in 1948, however, Denby was pointing out that the “shock value” of Tudor’s dances didn’t last. And certainly today the seduction in Pillar of Fire (and by a boy from the wrong side of the tracks!) and the mistress and lover of Jardin aux Lilas in themselves no longer shock. The surprise is the intensity of feeling Tudor’s choreography still conveys, and his brilliant use of what we might consider small and ordinary means.
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ABT’s Tudor evening comprised three works spanning nearly four decades. Jardin aux Lilas (“Lilac Garden”), choreographed in 1936 and first danced by Ballet Theatre in 1940, is a narrative ballet centered on Caroline, a woman about to be married. The setting is a garden party, and present there are her husband-to-be, his former mistress, and Caroline’s lover. Pillar of Fire, to Schoenberg’s music, tells the story of Hagar, who gives herself to a man she doesn’t love when her younger sister seems to be winning the affections of the man she does. The Leaves Are Fading (1975) is a far more abstract ballet, cast in the form of a woman’s memory of romantic pairings. These dances are quite different–Jardin aux Lilas has a fin de siecle decadence, Pillar of Fire the dark, hewn look of American Gothic, and The Leaves Are Fading a (somewhat misleading) air of 19th-century romanticism. But the devices Tudor used in each are strikingly similar.
Tudor plays with variations on Hagar’s stillness throughout Pillar of Fire. The constant motion of Hagar’s little sister, for example, implies a facility that sets one’s teeth on edge. The prudish older sister’s occasional stillness–at one point she’s the eye of a storm of dancers–suggests her kinship with Hagar, and hints at what Hagar could become. But most of all, it’s the disappearance of Hagar’s stillness in the second half of the ballet that’s so moving–and disappointing. In 1942, Denby wrote about the puzzling “sense of exhaustion and retrospection” in the “happy” ending. I think it’s traceable to the fact that Hagar is now dancing with others–mostly the Friend, who wants to marry her despite her “fall.” She gives in to the need for communication, a development we ought to look on gladly but instead see as a tragic dilution of her character. She’ll walk offstage and do dishes like the rest of us. No more mute, still embodiment of fortressed passion.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Martha Swope.
