Last night i went to the ballet. Benjamin was kind enough to arrange tickets for me again. We saw two Robbins (Glass Pieces and West Side Story Suite) and one Balanchine (Ivesiana). I never saw Ivesiana before and it was marvelous--very weird and mysterious. A strange thing happens to me when i see these very familiar dancers dancing an older ballet that I've never seen before. There's some kind of disconnect between the dancers' performance and the choreography, a tension in my mind that makes it difficult for me to see either one clearly. That is the true blessing of repeated viewings of a work of art: clarity about all the various parts that make up the whole--the choreography, the lighting, the dancers, even the audience which changes from performance to performance. Anyway, in Ivesiana Janie Taylor danced an amazing dance where she never touches the floor. Four boys, all in black like puppeteers, move her around the stage. The lighting works to keep the audience's focus right on the girl, and for ten minutes she appears to fly, float, swim across the stage, defying gravity and god. The last section of the piece also uses light to create mystery--the dancers slowly wade out onto the stage, apparently in thigh-high murky water. Of course, the stage is not flooded, but the light is set up in such a way that the floor level of the stage appears as the surface of water, and the dancers, on their knees, appear to have sunk below the floor level. And that's all that happens in this section: the dancers slowly fill the stage. A brilliant trick of lighting and movement.

Benjamin, as Tony, was terrific in West Side Story Suite. His solo for Something's Coming was really beautifully danced. In fact, the whole cast was great. Those familiar dances are still amazingly powerful and exciting (especially Cool!)