A Ballade to Celebrate

By Martha Duffy

Balanchine returns to choreography

The merest suggestion that he has been away makes him bristle. "For eight hours only" is the retort, that being the length of his 1979 heart bypass surgery. But though he continued to supervise the New York City Ballet, for two years George Balanchine, now 76, was too weak to create new works. The operation restored his vigor, making 1980 a joyful spring for his company. There are two new Balanchine creations on the schedule. Ballade, to music by Gabriel Faure, received its premiere last Thursday; next month a dance to Schumann's Da-vidsbuendlertanze will be introduced.

Ballade is a short, lyrical work. The movement is fast and flowing, much of it simple steps done at shimmering speeds. At times Balanchine seems to be nodding to the Fokine of Les Sylphides, with its undulating, remote, yet sweet-natured, images. Ballade is a series of solos and pas de deux for a ballerina (Merrill Ashley) and her partner (Ib Andersen, taking over for the injured Sean Lavery) with a corps of ten girls (among the greenest and most endearing in the company). The couple move together, chastely, warmly, and then separate serenely.

For Andersen, 25, City Ballet's newest principal dancer, Ballade is a considerable prize. He has just arrived from the Royal Danish Ballet. He has the speed and technique necessary to work with Balanchine, and an impish, faun-like appeal that captured his audience at once.

But the ballet could really be called "Further Reflections on Merrill Ashley," for she is its center. Now 27, she has become an allegro dancer without peer. Balanchine explored her gifts in Ballo della Regina (1978), an intricate bravura piece that Ashley danced with ebullience and clarity. At the time, she was also struggling with the baffling stillnesses of Emeralds and the adagio style demanded in, say, Swan Lake. Neither came easily to her, but she kept working--on her head and arms, which tended to be stiff, and on amplitude of phrasing. She has learned: to be pliant, to be charming, even a little mysterious.

When Balanchine came back, he came back first to her. Candid to a fault, Ashley reports that he told her, " 'I think we make something beautiful for you!' Beautiful, I thought. What does he mean? But now I see that Ballade is an exercise to help me grow lyrically." Despite a slight case of nerves at the opening, Ash ley did the "beautiful" dancing that the world's greatest living choreographer imagined and made for her.

Balanchine of course had other aims in mind. The Faure attracted him because he saw "beautiful color and atmosphere. I think of perfume, of Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal, of Proust's A l'ombre de jeunes filles en fleurs." Ballade fulfills a practical objective too. While Balanchine was ill, Tricolore (the French section of his trilogy Entente Cordiale) was hastily tacked together by others to meet a fund raising deadline. The show flopped. Now Balanchine is redoing it, first with Ballade and later with a ballet to music by Chabrier. He will have used his costumes, made a gesture of gratitude to the donors of Tricolore and achieved a complete Entente Cordiale (the other parts are hits: Union Jack and Stars and Stripes).

He is working now on the Schumann, which is really 18 brief pieces. Says the choreographer: "I wanted to do Schumann long ago, but I waited. When you are young, you are not advanced mechanically. Then you get better. Finally, it takes time to understand that you are ready to I do it."

Besides choreography, Balanchine works on everything from posters to hairpieces. He must al ways compensate for emergencies and injuries; the company is hard-hit right now. On the night of the Ballade premiere, both men who dance The Steadfast Tin Soldier, also on the program, could not perform. The company got a little help from an old friend, Mikhail Baryshnikcv. Watching him cavort through the part, one could not help thinking that he, as much as any other dancer, suffered lost opportunities because of Balanchine's illness.

But no dancer is indispensable to the company, as its leader never tires of saying. He works with the artists he has, and he demonstrates exactly what he wants them to do. Says Karin von Aroldingen, for whom he has created many parts: "He shows every movement He cannot use a move unless he knows what it feels like.

It must go through his body before he can impart it to us." Or as Balanchine puts it, "I am the mother in this world of dance."

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