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We're in the middle of the City Ballet and American Ballet Theater spring seasons, and although there's a lot going on of interest, not much of it is taking place at Lincoln Center, unless you count the School of American Ballet's annual workshop performance at Juilliard. As always, S.A.B. gave us a superb Balanchine staging by Suki Schorer, this year, Divertimento #15, whose central role was tossed off with amazing allegro technique and assurance by Megan Fairchild. I found 15-year-old Ashlee Knapp even more interesting; when she walked onstage to accept a pre-performance award, she looked like a typically awkward teenager, but when she danced, there was no awkwardness, only a potential artist.
The highlight of the workshop, though, was a new ballet by Melissa Barak, a 21-year-old member of City Ballet's corps. Choreographers are born, not made, and they're born all too rarely. On the basis of her first ballet before the public, Telemann Overture Suite in E Minor, we can see that this young woman commands the fundamentals: She responds to music appropriately but not slavishly, she has an easy flow of dance ideas, her dancers always seem to be in the right place without strain, she thinks spatially. The ballet uses an unusual combination of dancers: eight girls and four boys in the corps, and two girls as soloists (of course, the school has a preponderance of girls, but Ms. Barak has made a virtue of necessity). Being a baroque ballet in Balanchine's world, Telemann Overture necessarily evokes his Concerto Barocco and Square Dance, yet it doesn't imitate them, and though its vocabulary is restricted, it never seems constricted. In other words, this ballet is not just promising, it's accomplished. Happily, Peter Martins has commissioned a ballet from her for the company. If her promise is realized, and if Christopher Wheeldon continues to develop, the creative bleakness at City Ballet may actually be drawing to a close.
But the main ballet event of the season recently took place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.: a week of Britain's Royal Ballet in an all-Ashton repertoire; alas, the company is skipping New York entirely on this tour. Frederick Ashton, one of the greatest of all choreographers, has suffered neglect on both...