So, in weighing the next dance, the Miami City Ballet’s rendition of Alexei Ratmansky’s “Roses from the South: Three Waltzes for Toby,” I’ll follow Pony Cam’s lead and clarify my vantage point. I am by no means a Ratmansky completist, but I bring 21 years of viewership (I first saw his work when the Bolshoi Ballet brought “The Bright Stream” to the Met in 2005), as well as several years of watching him create in the studio and dancing in a few of his works for the New York City Ballet. In general, I am a fan who has frequently been moved to tears by his ballets, yet I have shrugged my shoulders at others while still admiring their craftsmanship. I take that all into consideration before disclosing that, of all the Ratmansky ballets I’ve seen, I liked “Roses” the least.  

However, in this unusual case, I am not the intended audience. “Roses” is a rare tribute ballet, made in honor of MCB founder Toby Lerner Ansin on his 85th birthday. I know nothing about Ansin, so I have no idea if the odd vignettes that were baffling to me were meaningful to him: as when one dancer shirked his partnering duties to meditate in a corner. Is Ansin an equestrian? Why else was there so much horseback riding mime spliced into the ballroom dancing? Ratmansky is famous for his mini characterizations within larger non-narrative works, but in “Roses,” these sketches seemed like inside jokes rather than relatable foibles.

I also do not know why Ratmansky selected some of Johan Strauss II’s schmaltziest waltzes for this piece, or if Moritz Junge’s one-shouldered, pastel, 80s prom gowns were meant to evoke Miami vibes earnestly or ironically. But I found everything to be overly tacky without enough winking acknowledgment. The main problem with “Roses,” however, was that its high degree of technical difficulty fought against its syrupiness. Ratmansky is known for challenging his dancers, but “Roses” may be his hardest dance to date. There were tandem à la seconde pirouette competitions between the sexes, group fouetté/arabesque turn combos with corner-changing spotting, and the craziest en dedans turn I’ve ever seen, in which fouettés relevé were strung together by hiccup hops through passé (kind of like a jumped Italian fouetté). These steps would be hard enough to pull off solo, but they were nearly impossible to sync up, especially because the large cast of sixteen was extremely varied in size and shape. (Taller people turn at much slower rates than shorter ones, and pointe shoes provide much less friction than ballet slippers.)

Even some of the solo passages were practically undanceable, like an attitude balance on pointe, head tilted down, held for a freakishly long time (it didn’t happen). A dancer would be lucky to hit that once in a lifetime, let alone in every performance. Maybe the contrast of the ballet’s imperfectability with its candied packaging was the joke? That is a funny idea, one that furthers Pony Cam’s investigation of technicality vs artistry. But it would’ve landed better if the dancers appeared to be having more fun. This is a troupe that attacks Balanchine, no holds barred, yet every time a clump of them planted in square fourth positions in “Roses” they looked slightly terrified, understandably. (Random bouts of panic were also among the acted vignettes.) Thus, the company looked more tense than usual, though they did a valiant job overall. Hannah Fischer and Stanislav Olshanskyi sold their tough stuff the best.