Books: Balanchiniana Dancing for Balanchine

All the recent books on the late George Balanchine contain magic. The authors, whether biographers or dancers who have worked for him, have a singular advantage: an indestructible central character. A choreographer of genius, Mr. B. had a marvelous, ample personality. He was riveting to watch, hilarious to listen to. Like a god, he never explained. Instead, he demonstrated, and a dancer had to have the technique as well as the intuition and sensitivity to interpret. His spoken comments were usually odd, elliptical little puns, analogies or fables, often involving animals or food. Thus the Balanchine you got was the Balanchine you were able to assimilate for yourself. In a narrative, such a person is foolproof, or rather, writer-proof.

Ballerina Merrill Ashley has considerably more than a character to offer in her painstaking book. Today she is one of the glories of the New York City Ballet, a sunny allegro virtuoso. In his introduction, British Critic Clement Crisp likens her style to bravura pianism or flawless coloratura. As Ashley documents it, however, her career was not a prestissimo ascent. It took a decade of intense, disciplined practice to perfect her astounding technique and years onstage to learn how to present herself effectively. In the early pages, the author-dancer shows just how lost a youngster can be, even in the country’s best ballet training ground. She had no idea of how to treat her often injured feet; she used heat when she should have been applying ice. When she began to get solo roles, she found it hard to get someone to teach her, or even to discover which part she was to learn.

But she kept on working with what Ballet Instructor Stanley Williams called a “keen concentration that is inborn.” And she prevailed. Her account, with its cool assessments of rivals and careful record of all-important praise, betrays the tough, self-absorbed core that a ballerina must have. But she attributes her success to her profound submission to the will of Balanchine. “All knowledge, all power was his,” she writes with total seriousness. “As I saw it, I had no choice but to place all my faith and trust in him.” A particularly valuable section recounts in detail what went on in Mr. B.’s voluntary Monday classes, given in the late ’60s on the company’s day off. Merrill never missed a session. By her own testimony she was literal- minded and scalded by self-criticism. She was puzzled that Suzanne Farrell broke all the rules and still remained Balanchine’s favorite. She fretted over exactly what he meant when he said Ashley’s dancing was “sweet.” “See the music, hear the dance,” he cried, setting another conundrum for her wary intelligence.

In the early ’70s, Ashley’s marvels attracted a cult following. To dance fans, her debut in Square Dance (1977) was one of the season’s hottest / tickets. At about the same time she met her future husband, United Nations Translator Kibbe Fitzpatrick, and he, brave fellow, undertook to give her dancing its final finish. Onstage, said her love, Ashley was “no fun”– pursed lips, stuck-out chin, blank stare or silly smile. Out went the mannerisms, and the ballerina began to show that she enjoyed her own performances. Ashley’s perfectionism shows in several picture sequences, photographed expertly by Jack Vartoogian, in which she demonstrates how to perform some basic moves of ballet. Her explanations are models of clarity. They take time to follow, but the material on the humble tendu (the leg stretch that Balanchine called the basis of a dancer’s technique) and the springy leap called the pas de chat will enhance watching the ballet ever after.

In 1977 Ashley reached the perihelion when Balanchine choreographed the first of two ballets for her, Ballo della Regina. She recalls that the steps were “like loose change in his pocket.” Robert Maiorano’s book, written with Valerie Brooks, is an attempt to organize and explain those fabulous coins. A former soloist at City Ballet, Maiorano watched Mozartiana (1981), the choreographer’s last substantial work, take shape in the rehearsal studio. As an effort to analyze creation, the book is not really successful. Maiorano cannot bring steps to life in words; nor are there photo sequences, such as the ones in Ashley’s book, that would illustrate a combination of steps. The value of his modest book lies in its intimate glimpses of the choreographer working with Farrell. Theirs had been a 20-year communion. She “appears to watch him think, and then stretches his steps with her own accent and verve.”

As he choreographs, Mr. B. must deal with Capezio salesmen, the costume shop, injured performers, the installation of a gigantic set, his own deepening weariness. But the old ebullience flares. He is outraged by the attempt on the Pope’s life, scornful of the play Amadeus, deciding that the playwright, Peter Shaffer “will be sorry in heaven” for his work. Heaven, in fact, must have been an easy transition for Mr. B. Confounded by his problems, he consoled himself by announcing that on opening night, “Tchaikovsky will probably be there with his entourage: Borodin, Moussorgsky, Cui, Balakirev, Rimsky- Korsakov.” From the evidence afforded by Maiorano and Ashley, there can be little doubt that in the celestial conservatory, Tchaikovsky regards Balanchine as his equal.