One of my big Easter ballet treats was Balanchine's Tarantella in the New York City Ballet at the Coliseum, danced with spectacular bravura by Ashley Bouder and Daniel Ulbricht. Bouder flies like a bird, cutting through the air as the bells came flying off his tambourine. Ulbricht spins and fouettes prodigiously with delicious wit and style. Non-stop applause. It brought the house down.
       Ashley Boulder isn't the only virtuoso with a breathtaking jump. Justin Peck leads the last section of Balanchine's joyful Western Symphony. Set in the Wild West, but using mainly classical steps. It ought not to work, but it does. Kool dudes are after the gals from Eldorado saloon. The pirouettes, fouettes and jetes ought to look incongruous but Balanchine, the master, in Broadway mood pulls it off. In the final Rondo Peck gets his gal with a wham bam thank you ma'am swagger and a smile that would light up Times Square. In the central Adagio, Albert Evans doesn't get the gal (Sterling Hyltin), but their touching pas de deux was danced with bitter-sweet nuances before Hyltin departs as she arrived en pointe in a pas de bourree the length of the stage, Balanchine's tongue-in-cheek reference to the entrance of the Queen of the Wilis in Giselle.
       Broadway proper came with Jerome Robbins' West Side Story Suite. If you haven't seen the musical, you'd still get it. The action centres on the gang fight (the Jets and the Sharks) which leads to the fatal stabbings. This modern day Romeo and Juliet never seems to lose its impact in whatever guise it comes. Here Robbins tells it as it is just like Shakespeare. The superb cast led by Benjamin Millepied (Tony), Faye Arthurs (Maria) and the razor sharp Amar Ramasar (Riff) also sing, and quite sweetly, too, particularly in "Somewhere", a hymn to a better future. The diction is good - "There's a place for us" not "There ZA..." The song becomes an epilogue which brings a lump to the throat, danced by the full cast, bathed in redemptive light.
       I wish I could feel more redemptive about Peter Martin's Thou Swell, which opens this programme. The ballet is also set to songs (Rogers and Hart), but feebly sung by two singers holding mikes at the side of the stage. We are in a spectacular nightclub setting designed by Robin Wagner with ravishing 30's style costumes by Julius Lumsden. But all this visual splendour promises more than the ballet delivers. As the programme note says, Martins gives us four couples "dancing the night away". But whereas Balanchine manages to pass off classical steps as a hoe-down, Martins doesn't succeed in turning ballroom dancing into a ballet. I kept wishing the ladies would throw away their point shoes, put on high heels strictly come dancing style and go for it.
Max Farber