The next ballet on the programme was “Duo Concertant,” a much-celebrated work created by Balanchine for New York City Ballet’s 1972 Stravinsky Festival and featuring music by the same composer. The ballet begins with a couple—here, Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley—standing motionless while an onstage solo pianist, Elaine Chelton, and solo violinist, Kurt Nikkanen, begin to play Stravinsky’s score. The dancers eventually spring into action, carrying out a series of solos and pas de deuxs, but it is this moment of quiet anticipation and reverie which is often the most charming. As they lean against the downstage right piano, Fairchild and Huxley smile at each other, at the floor, and at places beyond reach; casting their eyes downwards, they seem to be laughing at a joke registered somewhere deep within. 

When the dancing does begin, it is no less pleasing. Fairchild and Huxley are both principals at the peak of their craft, and Fairchild’s impish qualities are offset particularly well by Huxley’s calm centeredness. Even when performing steps not typically associated with allegro, Huxley exhibits a remarkable sense of ballon, the appearance of weightlessness and airiness desired by dancers to create the illusion of ease in the eye of the viewer. What is most interesting about Huxley, however, is that his lightness is never trivial; it never veers towards the superficial, nor towards the acrobatic, as can often happen with dancers of smaller statues. Rather, with each move across from the floor, he seems to be simply discarding what is no longer necessary—gravity being chief among that list of non-essentials.