The New York City ballet dancer tricoted on stage with mismatched sweatshirts, down vests, practice tutus and leg warmers at the start of Alexei Ratmanski's “Pakita.” They disappeared and then reappeared in sophisticated leotards and tights, crossing the stage with mazurka-like music. Soon the whole thing was fused together with large diagonal corners, led by a haughty ballerina and her cavalier, extending backstage. The quirky New Yorker discovered the majesty of the Empire St. Petersburg.
Debuting on February 6th, “Pakita” offers a kind of echo chamber that allows 19th century Russian classic ballet to coexist with today's city ballet dancers.
Ratmanski combined two pieces from Marius Petipa's 1881 ballet classic “Pakita.” George Balanchine's relocation of First Act Pass de Trois in 1951 is followed by the relocation of Ratmansky's own grand final act (the Grand Pass Classic). So: Pechipa passes through the Balancine lens, then Pechipa passes through the Ratmanski lens. Both were further refracted through these young dancers and the way they lived on stairs.
“It's like a corridor where the forces on the other side gather,” said Ratmanski, 57, in an interview. He provided another minor phor. Working on Petipa, he said: “I've begun to understand this Japanese cake. Crepes on top of the crepes, this texture of ballet.” All layers collide with a new flavour.
Both Ratmansky and Balanchine, the founded choreographers of the New York City ballet, grew up in the legacy of Petipa, a Franco-Russian genius who worked at the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg from 1847 to 1903. , for Ratmansky, it was Soviet. Both were absorbed by the absorbent versions of Petipa Classic (“Sleeping Beauty”, “Lake Swan”, “Raymonda”). And both left the Russian realm as choreographers for young dancers, and then made their art more relevant and even revelatory for new eras and new places.
However, Ratmansky, born in 1968, is two generations farther from Pechipa than Balanchine, born in 1904. . Even in the midst of a prominent career as a contemporary ballet choreographer, Ratmansky feels forced to return to Petipa in a more literal way.
“For me, the notation of Sergeev is a base,” Ratmansky said. The notation of ballet movements, gestures and formations written down in complex symbols and music staff was brought out of Russia in 1919 by Nikolais Serageev, the chief rehearsal director of Imperial Ballet, and after a complicated journey, he was brought to the Horton Library. It ended after the trip. At Harvard.
“If you're an archaeologist and you're delving into the history of ballet,” Ratmansky said of the notation. And Ratmansky made a lot of different companies, old ballets like their original form, and did it for ten years, ten years. Some of these, including the gorgeous “Sleeping Beauty,” were for the American Ballet Theatre, an artist he has been resident for 13 years.
However, since 2023 he has been an Artist in Residence at New York City Ballet. After creating “Solitude” (2023), a meditation on sadness about Russian war in Ukraine, he wrote to these dancers that Petipa's legacy through Balancin can be masked by the rigour of Balancin's modernist severity I chose to rearrange (or part of one) – Style Dance.
Why is this ballet now? “I've always enjoyed something different to what I've done before at City Ballet,” he said. The past 20 years. And the Grand Pass, as Ratmansky called it, introduces philosophy, shared by ballerina-centered Petipa and Balanchine. “He doesn't just praise her,” Ratmansky said. He could have meant Balanchine.
It's not just the ballerina front and center in Pakita. There are four other featured women with significant complex solo variations, Petipa claimed to be danced by the principal dancer. “The ballerinas are placed next to them,” Ratmansky said. “She has to light them up.”
Another inspiration for Ratmansky is the freeform treatment of Balanchine's “Pakita” Pas de Trova. “It's like a modern composer taking an old theme and changing it,” Ratmansky said. And his own experience of deepening with Petipa, he was able to play faster and more loosely this time with notation. You can see it in the incredibly interactive tone of the “Pakita” rehearsal.
“How's your mood?” Ratmansky asked Mira Nadon and Joseph Gordon that they had resolved their partner moments during studio rehearsals. “Maybe I'm moving forward too much,” Gordon admitted.
“What is it?” Ratmansky asked Unity Phelan. In her variation, she asked if she prefers a particular Passé (a leg stretched towards the other knee) or a lower one. She chose High.
In many cases, Ratmansky abandons the words to show the procedure. Suddenly, this modest middle-aged man was working to coordinate the points of encounter between the past and present, as if he was merging his classic virtuosity with the virtuosity of a young dancer. , skimming the floor on an air cushion.
“Don't be stylized or polite,” he told the dancers. “Find you!”
And dancers? What do they think about putting their bodies in old molds: finding ways to incorporate these petchipa gestures and shapes into modern movements?
The Salamiens, one of the three ballerinas cast in the lead, inked the rehearsal as they exaggerated the backbend, one of the most formal compositions of the ground pass. It was as if she had secured the right to be a little wild.
Phelan said, “I always film myself as a jazzy, funky dancer.” Still, working on “Pakita,” she said, “I fell in love with classic style, like I did when I was five.”
why? “Because of purity. When you do something right, it looks easy.”
“I love stepping into that world,” she added. “In my variation, I love softness, but it requires more strength than anyone would think.”
She also plays with dynamics, making steps “a little different each time.” Her gentle elasticity variation ends with a long phrase that is repeated three times. Phelan tries to grow the sequence through iteration. And when she bumped into the last huge arabesque, she said she added “sparks – another texture.” Again, the young women today will focus.
Even ballet legions play a major role in reflecting and enhancing the musicality of the soloists. “I was worried that they would think, 'There's nothing to do here!”,” Ratmanski said. Still, you can work on a lot. “Shoulder, how to use epilepsy. You need to measure your attack. We discover all this. We all know where we are going.”
Even when showing off the Petipa stairs, the dancers still retain a certain brio from the company. “We're still dancing outside the box in 'Pakita',” Phelan said. I sat on the floor and put my toe shoes back in after a variation of runthrough. “There are more boxes.”
She looked up at her smile. “I'm a sudden classical dancer. I'm breathing fresh air from the past.”
