The fluid structure and watercolor costuming (by Ben Benson) of “Ballade” evoke “Ballo della Regina,” the ballet Balanchine had made for Ashley just two years prior (and which was also designed Benson). Naturally, many critics have compared the two works. In Following Balanchine Robert Garis wrote: “When [Balanchine] made “Ballo della Regina” for [Ashley] in 1978 it was the coronation of a princess . . . In “Ballade” in 1980 she and Balanchine worked well to enrich and refine her lyrical dancing and they made a lovely piece, but in the end it failed to generate enough power in the theater—this time the choice of Fauré’s music was not as successful as it had been in “Emeralds.”’ 

I agree with Garis (and everyone else) that “Ballo” is a better ballet, though that does not make “Ballade” a bad one. Does the fault lie with the Fauré? Could be. “Ballo” is set to Verdi opera music, and Balanchine told biographer Bernard Taper: “[f]rom Verdi’s way of dealing with the chorus, I have learned how to handle the corps de ballet, the ensemble, the soloists, how to make the soloists stand out against the corps, and when to give them a rest.” Fauré’s “Ballade for piano and orchestra Op. 19” is a completely different animal. A shimmering piece of music, it was the inspiration for Proust’s fictional “Vinteuil Sonata” in Swann’s Way. The narrator of In Search of Lost Time describes it very well when he explains how the bourgeoise Charles Swann conflated one of its motifs with his passion for the courtesan Odette de Crécy: “since he sought in the little phrase for a meaning to which his intelligence could not descend, with what a strange frenzy of intoxication did he strip bare his innermost soul of the whole armour of reason and make it pass unattended through the dark filter of sound!” (trans. Moncrieff/Kilmartin).      

In contrast to Verdi’s bouncy, danceable melodies, Faure’s “Ballade” can best be summed up as inchoate rapture. The challenge Balanchine faced was how to sustain that for fourteen minutes straight, and this time he hardly built in any rest for his leads. Where “Ballo” is a structured dance with a clear build to the finish line, “Ballade” is a feverish mix of windswept longing and technical hurdles from start to finish. Nadon blew onto the stage with urgent bourrées, then ran and hurdled like a woodland nymph, making a few surprising backwards jumps. Peter Walker wafted in shortly after from the opposite side, and the pair found each other fatefully in the middle. They danced yearningly together and then yearningly apart, and I wondered how a large corps of women was going to be incorporated, as that threatened to break their intimate spell. The group’s entry midway through the piece was indeed somewhat odd, but the corps was necessary for amplitude, as the couple was already operating at the highest register of leaping and longing.