The New York Times-20080128-Majesty of Bach- With a Wild West Trip- -Review-

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Majesty of Bach, With a Wild West Trip; [Review]

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There was no dancing at one of the best performances of Jerome Robbins's Goldberg Variations that I have attended. I was late for the matinee. And as the score welled out into the First Ring lobby of the New York State Theater, I sat in the early afternoon sunshine and simply listened to the music in the company of the lobby's giant Nadelman ladies. It was unexpected magic and perhaps forgivable considering George Balanchine's famous observation that if you didn't like the ballet you could just close your eyes and hear the music.

The clarity and richness of Cameron Grant's playing of this Bach score brought back memories of that afternoon on Friday night at the New York State Theater, when the New York City Ballet presented Goldberg Variations as part of its Spirit of Discovery program. (Oh, those titles, and whatever happened to Programs A, B and C?) But the ballet itself still feels problematic.

Robbins said he took on the score as a challenge, and Goldberg looks like an exercise at times. It is certainly monumental, a thing of stage-filling, unceasingly changing ranks and patterns accented with cannily timed and placed entrances, exits and sudden unnoticeable shifts of dancers.

Its ambition is dazzling as it works its way through Bach's escalating variations on the theme. And yet there are a few too many fairly naked quotations from Robbins's Dances at a Gathering, choreographed in 1969, two years before Goldberg. The costume changes become monotonous, and the ballet suffers in general from a somewhat dogged, beat-for-beat quality.

There are pockets of exquisite choreography tucked into the layers of artifice, most notably a series of pas de deux danced here by Rachel Rutherford and Jared Angle, Maria Kowroski and Philip Neal, and Wendy Whelan and Benjamin Millepied. The Rutherford-Angle duet was a beauty, its strange supported doublings over and openings out performed with dreaming voluptuousness by Ms. Rutherford. Here Robbins works against the music's demanding beat, and the effect is exhilarating.

Ms. Whelan brought a distinctively easy authority to her pas de deux, her feet never quite seeming to touch the floor as Mr. Millepied lowered her from lifts. And Mr. Neal's odd, slightly teasing solo, in which Robbins seems almost to be caricaturing the ballet at moments, was a special pleasure, in part because it offered the chance to watch this fine performer undistracted.

The performances by Ms. Rutherford, Mr. Angle, Ms. Whelan and Mr. Millepied were all role debuts. There was also a debut by Abi Stafford, unflatteringly costumed but also generally undistinguished in Part 1, performed with Tyler Angle, Adam Hendrickson, Megan Fairchild, Stephen Hanna and Andrew Veyette. And Kaitlyn Gilliland captured the lyrical possibilities of the ballet's period manners in the Theme section, danced with Jason Fowler.

Ashley Bouder and Gonzalo Garcia, both new in Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, tended to look smaller than the music but sailed through the ballet's technical demands with enchanting humor and daring, in Ms. Bouder's case, and with a velvety finish in Mr. Garcia's turns and buttery stops.

Faycal Karoui, the evening's conductor, inspired the orchestra to newly teasing heights in parts of Hershy Kay's down-home score for Balanchine's Western Symphony. Ms. Stafford, in yet another new role, was too much of a soubrette in the opening Allegro section, in which she was partnered by Nilas Martins as an amusingly laid-back cowpoke. The lead cast also included Sterling Hyltin and Albert Evans leading the Adagio and Teresa Reichlen and Damian Woetzel the Rondo. The witty Ms. Hyltin and the dazzling and delicious Mr. Woetzel stole the show.

New York City Ballet performs through Feb. 24 at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, Manhattan, (212) 870-5570 or nycballet.com.

[Illustration]PHOTO: Abi Stafford and Nilas Martins perform Balanchine's Western Symphony as part of City Ballet's Spirit of Discovery. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL KOLNIK)