Dancers with zinc in their shins
By Dennis Chang
28 March 2008

Dancers Maria Kowroski and Albert Evans of the New York City Ballet perform Igor Stravinsky's Agon, with choreography by George Balanchine

Never mind the media hype and the exorbitant seat prices (£95 a pop in the stalls), this was always going to be the dance event of the spring. The New York City Ballet finally returned to London after a much missed 25-year absence.

Founded in 1948, the City Ballet was conceived as an instrument for performing the works of George Balanchine, which were in turn tailor-made for the athletic physicality of American dancers. Over Balanchine's long career his masterworks and muses created each other. Maria Tallchief, Edward Villella, Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins, who inherited the City Ballet from Balanchine, are just some of ballet's greats who didn't have to prove themselves as swans, princes, sleeping beauties and nutcrackers.

Balanchine died in 1983, the year the company last visited London. Losing Balanchine for the City Ballet was akin to losing its raison d'être. The company continued as usual with 90 dancers performing a repertory of 150 works mainly by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Peter Martins. There was no denying, however, that the company had transformed overnight from a hothouse creative factory into a museum, albeit a well-kept one.

What of the performances? There are die-hard old timers who believe the City Ballet no longer understands Balanchine. On this showing at the Coliseum the New Yorkers have certainly retained the trademark explosive quickness. No one better exemplified this dynamism than Ashley Bouder and Daniel Ulbricht - two dancers who are so confident of their technical prowess that they literally fling themselves into everything. Even the most accomplished ballerinas in Paris, Moscow, St Petersburg and London can't avoid telegraphing tricks with a pause for breath and knee-bend. Bouder steps up into a multiple pirouette like a cork popping out of a Champagne bottle. Her shins and feet seem to have zinc grafted into them for she appeared capable of somersaulting on pointe. Bouder and Ulbricht brought the house down with Balanchine's out-and-out Neapolitan showpiece Tarantella and the "Fall" section of Jerome Robbins's Four Seasons. It wasn't just the pyrotechnics: they've got attitude, sass, and that endearing American sense of "no big deal" that had the audience rooting for them from the start.

The City Ballet opened their two-week London residency with Serenade, Agon, and Symphony in C - three of Balanchine's greatest creations danced by every major ballet company in the world, the Royal Ballet not excepted. Was it a gesture to stamp authenticity and ownership on these classic works? In Serenade Bouder was the buoyant, otherworldly Russian Girl opposite Janie Taylor's serene, mortal Waltz Girl. Twenty girls in long skirts, Tchaikovsky's luscious score, and Balanchine's ingenious patterning - not to mention the haunting final image of the Waltz Girl being carried off stage - make Serenade a sure-fire success.

Presiding over the four movements of the glittery Symphony in C were four perfectly competent couples who knocked off the turns and jumps with élan and sparkle. Sara Mearns was demurely feminine in the nocturnal second movement, but the second movement is so much more than generically pretty - as the veteran Wendy Whelan proved when she took on the same role a couple of nights later. There we had it - a unique physicality wedded to a distinctive personality. Whelan's second movement is neither luxurious like Darcey Bussell's nor mysterious like Sofiane Sylve's, but, as an androgynous high priestess holding court in a ritual, she brought serenity to the choreography.

So why did this triple bill seem less than completely transcendental? I think it has something to do with a symptomatic lack of musical understanding, specifically of western classical music, which plagues not only the New York City Ballet but also every company across the world. Balanchine was a profoundly musical choreographer who was capable of analysing every piece of music he choreographed and playing it on the piano. When Balanchine is properly performed it offers an intense synaesthetic experience often described as "seeing the music". Never mind the dancers who listen only to pop music on their iPods - how many of those who teach Balanchine's choreography could actually delve into the heart of the music as Mr B could? A thorough musical education must be incorporated into a dancer's everyday life. How else could a dancer possibly understand Balanchine's glorious solution to Stravinsky's knotty, serialist Agon?

If the City Ballet is losing its grip on Balanchine, it still has a stranglehold on Jerome Robbins, the great American choreographer who started his life-long association with the City Ballet in 1949 as associate artistic director. Juxtaposed against Balanchine's Apollonian coolness, Robbins's language and subjects are rooted in earthly matters. The Concert is a farce that parodies the goings-on in the audience of a piano recital. Scampering about like a dizzy queen, Sterling Hyltin proved that the City Ballet does do comedy and acting. The abridged version of Robbins's choreography for West Side Story only whetted one's appetite for the whole thing. I doubt any other company in the world would look as good in T-shirts, jeans and trainers.