DIAMONDS turned up trumps again for New York City Ballet, with its latest Diamond Project – a biannual exploration into new choreography – proving to be the company’s best friend.
The world premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s smashing “Russian Seasons” Thursday night joins Christopher Wheeldon’s “Evenfall” and, to a lesser extent, Mauro Bigonzetti’s “In Vento” as a repertory ace.
The 37-year-old Ratmansky, the artistic director of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, is the most talented Russian choreographer to emerge since Yuri Grigorovich and Leonid Jacobson, and – who knows? – perhaps since George Balanchine. He has the golden touch.
The only work of his previously seen in New York was last year’s full-evening Shostakovich ballet comedy “The Bright Stream,” danced by his Bolshoi troupe, and it instantly marked out his distinctive promise.
But “Russian Seasons” – created on dancers he has in effect only just met – confirms that he is among that rarest of birds: a genuine, front-rank choreographer with all the imagination, invention and musicality that that implies.
The deliciously buoyant score, Ukrainian composer Leonid Desyatnikov’s “The Russian Season,” uses Russian folk songs featuring a mezzo-soprano (Susana Poretsky) and solo violin (Arturo Delmoni) in a pattern based on Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.”
It doesn’t, of course, sound at all like Vivaldi, but the very accessible music certainly has a touch of Stravinsky’s “Les Noces” about it, and it has led Ratmansky into a shining whirligig of classic ballet mixed with folkloric overtones that happily recalls Jerome Robbins in his “Dances at a Gathering” mode.
All 12 of his dancers – brightly clad in a rainbow of colors by Russian designer Galina Solovyeva – are pretty much equal and all are splendid, but Jenifer Ringer, Sofiane Sylve, Wendy Whelan and Albert Evans are a little more equal than the others.
Leaving the theater, I could have danced for joy, especially if I had been choreographed by Ratmansky.
A new choreographer has come to light – and the dance world is a better place.
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RUSSIAN SEASONS
New York City Ballet at New York State Theater, Lincoln Center; (212) 870-5570. Season runs through June 25.
