BWW Reviews: NYC Ballet Stages a Richard Rodgers Showcase

What is an evening of Rodgers and Hammerstein like once you've removed Hammerstein from the equation? The New York City Ballet has come up with a pretty good answer with its Richard Rodgers showcase, now enjoying a run at Lincoln Center. While Hammerstein specialized in scripting and lyrics, Rodgers was responsible for musical scores. If you've seen a few high school musicals, you surely have a couple of those scores-The King and I, Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, Carousel-churning around in the back of your mind. Rodgers's style is almost a part of the American subconscious, and the NYCB seems set on reminding us why we got Rodgers into our heads in the first place. By presenting three dances that nicely harmonize with Rogers's musical movements (and that usually downplay or avoid involved narrative), the company gives us a freshened sense of Rodgers's compositional tics and talents: the swelling horns and violins; the odd flutes and xylophones; the reconstructions-either playful or dead serious or both at once-of music from China or Austria or the American West.

This showcase is a demonstration of what makes Rodgers distinctive-but it's also, in the end, a demonstration of why Rodgers needs a wordsmith like Hammerstein. The first piece of the night, Thou Swell, lifts a series of Rodgers's co-written songs away from story and situation, and haphazardly sets them down in a glitzy nightclub setting; the second, Carousel (A Dance) has some sublime sequences, but is little more than a magnificent shadow of the Rogers and Hammerstein play of the same name. Only with the final selection, the lowlife tragicomedy Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, has the NYCB found a piece that can effectively stand on its own. You might, as I did, spend this showcase marveling at the versatility of Rodgers's style. Or, as I also did, you might remember how precisely Rodgers's music can capture characters' thoughts and emotions, only to find yourself wishing that the NYCB had found more characters worth capturing.

Thou Swell is more or less Rodgers and Hart material with Cole Porter costuming. A few of the songs ("Manhattan" and "Isn't It Romantic?") fit the nightclub theme quite efficiently; a few are sadly out of place. (Did you ever imagine a breathy, after-hours version of "Getting to Know You"? No, neither did I.) The bigger problem, however, may be a simple matter of staging and blocking. With four primary pairs of dancers-and only one of these couples on the floor at a time-Thou Swell demands up-close treatment. The towering ceilings of the David H. Koch Theater don't make this possible. And although scenery designer Robin Wagner has added a huge art deco mirror to liven up the background, this is ultimately an unfortunate measure. Often, that mirror reflects dead space.

Despite these faults, Thou Swell brings out some of the most interesting and least-noticed aspects of Rodgers's compositions. Here, Peter Martins's choreography deserves a lot of credit. A Rodgers score will sometimes break into oddball staccato sequences, and Martins occasionally deploys a quartet of waitresses-whose angular, jittery motions nicely reflect this side of Rodgers. But why stop at four waitresses, when you have this much room? The Rodgers and Hart songs that dominate Thou Swell are simultaneously grand and intimate, but Thou Swell itself struggles to strike the same balance.

Carousel (A Dance) is a very different response to Rodgers's music. Choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, this mini-ballet is a kaleidoscopic display of sunset purples, oranges, and reds. The many-angled love story at the core of Carousel the musical has been reduced to a game of pursuit, with one male dancer (Andrew Veyette) and the waiflike object of his affections (Tiler Peck) racing through a large and impressively coordinated ensemble. Wheeldon has taken the innocence and ecstasy that begin the Rodgers and Hammerstein Carousel and sustained these qualities for an entire composition. It surely helps that Holly Hynes's simple costumes make the dancers look like overgrown children. There are gimmicky moments (like the giant carousel formation that is one of this ballet's climaxes), yet these moments are less likely to make you roll your eyes than to look back, if only for a fond second, on the carousels and carnivals of your own youth.

The last selection of the evening recalls the sheer energy and lavishness of Carousel (A Dance), though not much else. Choreographed by George Balanchine, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue passes by in a whirl of color, comedy, and violence. At first glance, it seems to treat racy material-strippers, gangsters, alcohol, and murder. But Slaughter on Tenth Avenue is actually a cleverly cartoonish piece of work. At the center of its very, very loosely assembled story are a talented lowlife dancer (Tyler Angle) and a willowy striptease girl (Maria Kowroski). Add to this a trio of leaping policemen, a gun-wielding underworld boss (Justin Peck), and a playful story-within-a-story setup, and you get an idea of just how experimental Rodgers (and his collaborator on this one, Lorenz Hart) could be.

Perhaps Slaughter on Tenth Avenue is the last place you would expect emotional nuance. Yet there are nuances, and they stay firm in your mind even as the dance itself barrels toward a quick, crazed conclusion. All of the leads in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue meet violent ends. A less talented team wouldn't make much of this-those characters are throwaway cartoons, aren't they?-but Balanchine's choreography fleetingly and intelligently invests those Rodgers and Hart characters with a sort of humanity. Near the finale, Angle's dancer holds Kowroski's striptease girl in his arms, her arms and legs stretched out in death. She looks like a toppled marionette; he never really stops moving. Pieces like Thou Swell and Carousel (A Dance) prove, if proof were needed, that Rodgers is a virtuoso. But Slaughter on Tenth Avenue-perhaps the most contrived piece on the program-proves something better: that Rodgers's music, with the right choreography, can set your emotions spinning.

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