‘Sublime’ Combines Classic Ballet With Modern Energy

Sublimity was in the air Thursday evening at the opening of Boston Ballet's Simply Sublime at the Boston Opera House. The three-act show displayed a vast, vivacious array of musical genres and dance styles, composed of everything from Ballet Russes-era creation Les Sylphides to the contemporary Hollywood-inspired athleticism of George Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements.

With Valentine's Day approaching, this ballet presents a ripe opportunity for Bostonians to connect with variations on the vibrant, romantic side of ballet.

Recently, Boston Ballet has employed a more synthesized format, which arranges snippets of iconic, classical works alongside more modern, experimental choreography. This pastiche approach runs the risk of lacking a unified sense of story, a pitfall that Sublime was guilty of by including Les Sylphides as Act One. Sylphides was originally conceived as a glossy, romantic ballet whose plot was as ethereally spectral as the corps de ballet's white tulle skirts. The ballet features one man (performed by Nelson Madrigal) dancing through an enchanted forest of 19 sylphs, or spirits of the air.

Although Sylphides felt incongruous with the show's more modern movement and pared-down leotard costumes, it was exquisitely performed. The lead sylphs' (Lorna Feijoo, Erica Cornejo, and Whitney Jensen) attitude turns were chiseled bent knees and pointed feet perfection, and their languidly rippling arm movements and gravity-defying penches embodied the flexibility of warm, melting taffy. The lead women made standing with their leg raised vertically over their heads appear frighteningly simple.

The 16 women in the corps appeared pristinely well-timed and fluid throughout the 30-minute act, with not a single pointe shoe tendue-ing off tempo. Each dancer absorbed Chopin's score as the unifying, metronomic pulse for the dance, and Erica Cornejo in particular ensured that she filled every count of music with expansive leg-lifts and extraordinary leaps.

Act Two's "Polyphonia," choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon and first performed in 2001 by the New York City Ballet, leapt a few centuries forward in time. The virtuosic, dissonant score of Gyorgy Ligeti, performed by pianist Freda Locker, accompanied the entirety of the act. Four sets of two couples dancing pas de deux commanded the stage, the women in deep plum leotards, the men in deep plum unitards. The backdrop of the stage was a stark off-white. The four couples began in a horizontal line across the stage, doing variations of the same choreography in tandem. The men formed a portrait of unbridled strength, often lifting their partners effortlessly, so that they were perpendicular to their outstretched arms. The women, meanwhile, extended their legs into striking developpes overhead. "Polyphonia," diverging from the proper extensions and carriage of the arms of "Les Sylphides," had a more flexed and grounded quality to the movement. Sabi Varga, for instance, carried his partner Lia Cirio upside down with bent knees offstage, as Cirio scissored her legs slowly over his head.

Wheeldon's choreography ventured into ballroom territory, with the four dancers holding an immaculate upper body frame as their feet took a decidedly quirkier contemporary route. The most fascinating portion of "Polyphonia" occurred when Cirio and Varga performed a pas de deux within a stark spotlight. Cirio and Varga executed a stupefying maneuver, where Varga, on his back, held up a horizontal Cirio who moved into a split midair and then was folded in half and positioned neatly back on her feet. "Polyphonia" was an effective blend of classical movement with a quirky, modern infusion.

Simply Sublime finished with a work by Russian-American choreographer George Balanchine, danced to the musical score by Igor Stravinsky. The choreography included a staggering 32 total dancers, a majority of who were engaged in a flurry of diagonal lines, athletic petit and grand allegro combinations and cyclone turns. It was a miracle that only one slight collision between a corps dancer and soloist occurred among the interweaving diagonals and formations. The low-key costumes kept with the tradition of Balanchine, who believed that dancers could be at their most exquisite in just a leotard and tights. The exuberant leaps in attitude, full splits, or simple pas de chats, executed by both men and women, were the ultimate highlight of the Balanchine excerpt.