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The Ghosts of London

For a Jewish man, Jerome Robbins sure had a clear idea of heaven—in the ballet realm, anyway. In two elegiac dances made less than a year apart, “In Memory Of…” and “Quiet City,” he had dancers in white doing low arabesque flies in a shaft of light emanating from the back left corner of the stage. Though I danced in “In Memory Of…” plenty, I’d never seen “Quiet City,” its unfortunate postscript, which hasn’t run at the New York City Ballet since 1992. The works are connected by the tragic figure of Joseph Duell, who was one of the stars of “In Memory Of…”, Robbins’s 1985 memorial to George Balanchine. Though Duell’s career was promising, in early 1986 he committed suicide. Robbins revisited the same Elysium, this time to honor the too-short life of the 29-year-old NYCB principal.

Performance

London City Ballet: “Quiet City” by Jerome Robbins / Ashley Page’s “Mephisto Waltz” / “Ghost Light” by John Neumeier

Place

Words

Faye Arthurs

London City Ballet in “Quiet City” by Jerome Robbins. Photograph by Steven Pisano

Robert La Fosse, an original in “Quiet City” (alongside Peter Boal and Damian Woetzel), has lovingly staged the work for the London City Ballet, who brought the dance to the Joyce Theater last week. In La Fosse’s role (as the spirit of Duell), Joseph Taylor was heartbreaking. To Aaron Copland’s sad brass lines, he traced pure shapes with his angelic peers, Arthur Wille and Samuele Barzaghi. It was neat to see these men perform steps more associated with women in the NYCB oeuvre, like wafted chaîné turns pulled from the “Winter” section of Robbins’s “The Four Seasons,” or the collapse to the ground from Balanchine’s “Serenade.” They also held hands and danced in a daisy chain, a formation in which Robbins had them performing difficult partnering catered to this rare instance of a male trio—like a penché promenade on demi-pointe, arms wide.   

“Quiet City” was powerful, especially given its brevity (it was around 10 minutes long). I wondered if that was because Robbins was mining the same territory as “In Memory Of…,” so anyone familiar with that work could tap into its deep well of feeling. But though the continuity likely helped, I think Robbins’s clear framing makes “Quiet City” a potent standalone piece. The curtain rose on a ring of dancers contemplating the empty center of the stage; there was obviously a gaping hole in their community. When the angels entered along the bright white diagonal and proceeded to weave their tale, the corps settled into Robbins clusters around the stage and watched them. They were trying to understand this terrible event, but no amount of processing could change the harsh reality of a life curtailed. Copland’s horns abruptly beeped, and the men in white snapped alert and left off their danced reverie. They disappeared back up the glowing pathway as the stage darkened once again. It was a beautiful and effective short story; I’m surprised it has not run more often.    

Historical reconstructions like this one are a focus of the LCB—a troupe that was itself recently revived (and renamed, it was formerly the Sadler’s Wells resident company) by Artistic Director Christopher Marney in 2023. In addition to commissioning and touring new dances, the LCB’s mission is described in the program as: “resurrecting heritage works from the classical canon that may no longer be in the mainstream repertoire.” They are definitely making good on this unusual aim. On another program, they danced Glen Tetley’s rarely performed “Firebird,” made for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1981 (bringing the NYC “Firebird” count to five for the year). And last year, they presented Balanchine’s little-known “Haieff Concerto.”

London City Ballet in Jerome Robbins's “Quiet City.” Photograph by ASH

London City Ballet in Jerome Robbins's “Quiet City.” Photograph by ASH

Through these acquisitions, the LCB is building an impressive, if niche, repertoire. Their new commissions, however, were less compelling. Tasha Chu’s “Soon” checked the smoky, tweaky, droning, contemporary box. The best part of this dance was its final pas de deux, performed by Sahel Flora Pascual and Siméon Sarange-Félicité. Yet though these dancers had a nice rapport, the duet leaned too hard on its score for emotional heft. And this distinct, haunting pas de deux music, Gavin Byars’s “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” (featuring Tom Waits), has been better served by choreographers William Forsythe and James Kudelka.

The other US premiere, Ashley Page’s “Mephisto Waltz,” checked the saucy, black-tights box (every company has one of these—be they cancan dancers, saloon-girls, etc.). There was probably no way to make this light-weight ballroom ballet great, but it could’ve used tighter execution. The same cavil applies to the costuming: some of the women had dyed the outer soles of their black pointe shoes and some had not, which was distracting in the intimate Joyce space. (PSA for everyone on pointe: always dye your shanks to match the satin, even if you’re going to scrape the part under the balls of your feet afterwards!)

The company fared better when they returned to the spirit world for John Neumeier’s “Ghost Light” (in a new abridged version, after the full-length incarnation premiered by the Hamburg Ballet in 2020). This mysterious ballet didn’t check any boxes. It opened with a classic recurrent dancer nightmare. The famous ballerina Alina Cojocaru, a guest star, was dressed as Odette and attempting to do her first “Swan Lake” entrance. But there was no set, no music and her hair was loose. She was alone on the stage with a few overturned chairs and a ghost light (the overnight safety lamp placed on stages worldwide, which is also regarded as the soul of a theater). “Where’s the prince?” she fretted. And: “my hair! Where’s my crown? I have to dance! There is the show!”

This was a wonderful, arresting entrance, particularly because her voiced panic contrasted with the stealthy surety of her feet. Cojocaru has perhaps the world’s most pronounced bunions, they add more curve to her feet than her actual arches, and the way she articulated them in this sequence was incredible. Her mind may have been confused, but her toes sensed the floor like antennae and propelled her smoothly along. The reliability of bodily memory over mental memory was one of this ballet’s many interesting themes.                    

Cojocaru’s Swan Queen wasn’t the only story ballet ghost; another woman in full “Sylphide” garb crossed the stage a few times, tormenting some of the dancers in casual dress (Neumeier also did the set, costumes, and lighting). One man left his dance partner to pursue this sylph offstage. I loved Neumeier’s mixing of iconic narrative ballet characters with anonymous contemporary dancers. It was a brilliant way to demonstrate the relevancy of the old tales to modern relationships. After all, people still do betray each other, chase after the unattainable, and behave like bored, spoiled royals.  

Joseph Taylor & Alina Cojocaru in “Ghost Light” by John Neumeier. Photograph by ASH

Joseph Taylor & Alina Cojocaru in “Ghost Light” by John Neumeier. Photograph by ASH

Later, Cojocaru removed her feathered tutu and left it in a heap upstage before performing an intense duet in a plain gray unitard. She was definitely not a swan anymore as she hunched over her front leg while Taylor carried her around in a stiff split like she was a plank of wood. Cojocaru wasn’t the only shapeshifter either: dancers kept reappearing in slightly different outfits, some became creepy doppelgangers who hung out along the exposed back brick wall, and they all kept reconfiguring the spare furniture for no apparent reason. As Schubert piano pieces rolled on for about an hour, the 16 dancers in the cast came and went like they were in a bizarro ballet Backrooms.

I loved the idea of a stage being haunted by its myriad past dancers, in their myriad past roles—both onstage and off. But overall, “Ghost Light” was an endless jumble. At least these disjointed vignettes did contain some inventive steps and good dancing. I liked a peg-legged passé motif and a dramatic relevé fan kick layout into a catch lift. The late-in-the-day pas de deux between Jimin Kim and Arthur Henderson was a highlight. She displayed control and maturity, and I could not believe how easy he made all his deadweight lifting look after the many exhausting dances he’d already logged in the ballet.  

And every intrusion from Wille was welcome. His crazy fluidity was awesome; he brought dazzling energy and precision to unassuming steps like double ronds de jambe. He was in all four dances on the bill, and in each one he looked like he was writing in cursive while everyone else was using print. But in terms of costuming, vocabulary, and storytelling, everyone was doing their own thing in “Ghost Light,” which was much too long and meandering. I imagined Jerry Robbins looking down from his consistent, streamlined, balletic afterlife and shaking his head. 

Faye Arthurs

Faye Arthurs is a former ballet dancer with New York City Ballet. She chronicled her time as a professional dancer in her blog Thoughts from the Paint. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Fordham University. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their sons.

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