For a country with little history of balletomania, the U.S. has made amends in grand fashion since 1945. In the post war years, the U.S. has brought forth first-rate dance companies in breath-taking abundance—and the latest to appear belongs near the top of the list. Currently in its first Manhattan engagement after three years of barnstorming, the Harkness Ballet has generated among audiences a brand of excitement that brings back memories of the early days of the New York City Ballet.
Founded and sponsored by Oil Heiress Rebekah Harkness, a longtime ballet buff, the company offers ensemble work of high sheen, which is now expected on the American scene, along with dynamic soloistic virtuosity, which is not. Of the 18 works in its repertory only one (a restaging by Director Brian Macdonald of The Firebird) ranks as a classic standby. The other 17 range from abstract studies in pure motion to dance translations of contemporary headlines. In Stuart Hodes' Abyss, a pair of fragile lovers are attacked by three hoodlums; Rudi van Dantzig's Monument for a Dead Boy poignantly traces an adolescent's struggles against parental misunderstanding at home and the temptations of life outside, with an ambiguous outcome suggesting either death or maturity; in Sebastian, John Butler's sinuous, sensuous dance patterns turn a 17th century tale of black magic into palpable, modernistic horror; Macdonald's own abstract Time Out of Mind points in its brutal, angular movement to a parallel between the pace of modern life and the barbaric rituals of ancient times.
Up to the Demands. To Canadian Choreographer Macdonald, 39, who came to Harkness last February after two years as artistic director of the Royal Swedish Ballet, such subject matter is thoroughly proper to dance. "Ballet today is exciting not just because of the dancers," he says, "but because it isn't afraid to leap onstage with a statement on any subject." Bearing out his thesis, Macdonald is now at work on a ballet dealing with violence and ritual killing as an ingrained social phenomenon now and in the past.
Fortunately for its director, the youthful (average age: 22) Harkness troupe is fully up to such dramatic demands. Some of its brightest stars are Americans—Lawrence Rhodes of Detroit, who brings to Dead Boy and Time Out of Mind an overwhelming sense of racking passion under superb muscular control, and New Yorker Brunilda Ruiz, an agile, high-leaping prima ballerina. The company's foreign-born dancers, ranging in origin from Iceland to Japan, have been carefully selected for their adaptability to an "American" style. That style, explains Macdonald, is the best in the world for new ballet. "Americans are relatively weak in classical training," he says, "but they make up for it in other ways. They move closer to the floor, use it, bite into it. Europeans tend to hold themselves high and can't do the same movements."