‘Serenade’ Provides Stunning Debut for Boston Ballet

The ballet that began the reign of Romantic ballet, “La Sylphide,” also began the Boston Ballet’s 2007-2008 season at the Wang Theatre. Due to its brevity, the piece was paired with and preceded by Balanchine’s groundbreaking “Serenade.” With its simple elegance and timeless plot, “Serenade” was, of the two pieces, the true gem, outshining “La Sylphide” in its choreography (by Sorella Englund after August Bournonville) and performance.

Set in a timeless Scotland, “La Sylphide” tells the story of beautiful ideals and possible heartbreak. James (Carlos Molina) and Effie (Melissa Hough), Scottish peasants, are about to be married. But on the day of the wedding, a beautiful, silvery sprite (Erica Cornejo)—the titular “sylph”—appears. She has a strange power over James that brings out his yearning and love, but every time he tries to touch her, she vanishes. When the sylph appears as they are about to take their wedding vows, James follows her into the forest and abandons his bride just as the curtains fall on the first act.

In the forest, the witch Madge (Melanie Atkins)—who had taken offense when James had ousted her from the wedding festivities earlier—gives James a magical scarf that will help him capture the sylph. Unfortunately, the scarf is poisoned, causing the sylph to lose her wings, go blind, and slowly die. At the end of the show Effie and James’ friend Gurn (John Lam) are married. “La Sylphide,” with its heart-wrenching ending, showed not only the beauty of chasing after an ideal, but also the losses of such a chase.

With a ballet entirely driven by plot, most of the scenes harnessed an element of drama, which, though artfully rendered, often distracted from the dancing itself. As the character who drove the plot, Molina also had the strongest performance. His turns often lacked energy, but his leaps more than made up for it. Molina consistently out-danced Cornejo, despite her clear talent and clean technique.

Regardless of such imbalances, the company as a whole gave a very strong, clean performance of this canonical ballet. Most impressively, six young Boston Ballet School students performed alongside the corps in the wedding scene, maintaining unison in a fast-paced routine.

The integration of the plot into the scenery was perhaps the most successful aspect of “La Sylphide.” While this interaction with the set was consistent throughout the show, the most impressive example was also its best moment. As the sylph clutched her heart and died, it appeared as if that was the last moment of beauty in the ballet. But her depicted resurrection was a stunning aesthetic moment: Laying on the ground, covered in the translucent scarf that poisoned her, she was slowly elevated through the trees of the forest until she was out of sight. Meanwhile, the rest of the sylphs that inhabited the forest mourned for her in a funeral procession through the trees, under her floating corpse.

Although the evening focused on this beautiful story of love and heartbreak, Balanchine’s “Serenade” graced the stage first. Pairing this ballet—Balanchine’s first choreography in America—with “La Sylphide” seemed like an odd choice: “Serenade” is mostly plot-less, containing only the shadow of a heartbreak story that would link it to the themes of “La Sylphide.”

As a neo-Romantic ballet, this lack of plot is actually the greatest strength of “Serenade.” Balanchine’s choreography is spectacular because of its seamlessness. The 17 dancers are skillfully woven together in a technically challenging 40-minute ballet. And since there is little story to follow, the choreography requires particular attention to technique.

But the most impressive aspect of the choreography was its cohesion with Tchaikvosky’s score. Not only does “Serenade” follow the rhythm of the music, but it also embodies the music itself. With its hyper-awareness to the drama of sound (instead of the drama of a plot, as in “La Sylphide”), classical ballet positions are translated into exquisite poses that seamlessly flow from one to the next.

In the Boston Ballet’s performance of “La Sylphide” with “Serenade,” the first Romantic ballet and a notable neo-Romantic piece have been fit together in an odd fashion. Placing “Serenade” first showed what contemporary ballet owes to Balanchine; ending with “La Sylphide” showed the deeper root from which all branches of ballet developed.

—Reviewer Giselle Barcia can be reached at barcia@fas.harvard.edu.