Petipa, Balanchine and Beyond
Boston Ballet's Larissa Ponomarenko and Roman Rykine on the Creative Challenges of Partnering
When you're sitting in the audience, a basic promenade seems like the simplest thing two dancers could accomplish. At a full-length "Sleeping Beauty," for example, you might see more than a hundred such promenades over the course of the evening. It's nothing special, right? But go into a studio, take the hand of a ballerina on pointe, and try to support her as you walk a single turn. Only then will you realize it's something that takes years of practice to perfect.
Before you decide a lousy promenade is all the fault of the cavalier, think again. "If your arm is too weak for your partner," says Boston Ballet principal dancer Larissa Ponomarenko, "he won't be able to manipulate you." And if you are the cavalier, remember that your success is often determined by your ability to go unnoticed. "You should make it look like nobody would pay attention to how you walk around her," says Boston Ballet principal dancer Roman Rykine, who has been partnering Ponomarenko for the last four years in a wide variety of classical and contemporary ballets. "There is also a tendency to take too many steps," he adds.
Pas de deux has always been one of the most important aspects of a good classical training, though these days most students (my own training was no exception) learn the intricacies of proper partnering only during repertory rehearsals, not in the classroom. One of the seminal texts on the matter, Nikolai Serebrennikov's Pas de Deux: A Textbook on Partnering (presently available in a soft cover second edition), reminds us that pas de deux is "one of the leading disciplines in the curriculum of the Vaganova Ballet Academy and deserves scrupulous attention."
Ponomarenko's early training in the Vaganova system included pas de deux, and though she was never exposed to other partnering curricula (in particular, Cecchetti and Royal Academy of Dance), she says the rules that govern a good partnership are universal. "Basically, it's physical rules," she says, "and action and reaction. If you lift your leg at a certain angle, that determines how you will land. Every good system applies the laws of physics."
In his early years as a ballet dancer in Ufa, Russia, Rykine was excused from partnering class since he had already become a member of a professional company. "I didn't get to study pas de deux very much," he says, "only for about a year, so I got to learn everything on my own, with my partners. I was kind of thrown into it, and I developed some back problems, because I didn't have the chance to develop the necessary strength in the beginning."
At Boston Ballet, both Rykine and Ponomarenko do have something that Serebrennikov considers essential, namely, a "creative connection to a theater that develops its activities in two directions: the preservation of masterpieces of classical ballet heritage and the creation of new works that are diverse in form and deep in content." In her 14 years at Boston Ballet, Ponomarenko has danced in everything from "Giselle" to "Swan Lake," from widely divergent ballets of Balanchine to Cranko's dramatic "Onegin." In recent years both she and Rykine have been working with the company's resident choreographer Jorma Elo, whose daunting, athletic pas de deux exceed anything either of them learned in the classroom. It was her strong classical training, Ponomarenko, which helped her approach Elo's speedy, detailed style.
"In something like Jorma's work," says Ponomarenko, "it is trickier and more innovative. You have to come up with things on the spot and then figure them out yourself. Today, everyone is driving choreography to come up with something new. The classical base gives you a really good structure and foundation for all these things that take you further and further in [terms of] time and choreography."
photo by Gene Schiavone
Many fans of Balanchine characterize his pas de deux, in particular, as being frequently "off-balance." But Ponomarenko says it's the tricky handwork that is most challenging in Balanchine, and that his style requires much less "off-balance" work than those choreographers who followed him.
"I wouldn't say that Balanchine's pas de deux are in that way," she added. "There is a lot of intricate handwork, one hand and then switching hands, always changing directions and rotations. In neoclassical ballets, particularly John Cranko and Kenneth MacMillan, is where you find much more off-balance things, such as drags and pirouettes, promenades both off and on balance, kind of rocking back and forth like that."
Having danced with a wide variety of partners, Ponomarenko says she felt comfortable with Rykine "very quickly." At the time of this interview, they were performing both the Snow pas de deux and Sugar Plum pas de deux in Boston Ballet's lavish "Nutcracker."
"Sometimes I get somebody else and then Roman and I come back to dance together again. There are only a few technical matters that partners have to be aware of, and again it's [related to] physical laws. I have hyperextended legs, so it is always challenging for a partner to find my balance. I need to be pushed a little bit forward. It's always deceptive for them, because they have to shift me just a little forward."
If she had to choose a favorite duet, Ponomarenko says it might be the ones in Cranko's "Onegin."
"I probably cannot name only one," she says. "I love Cranko's [pas de deux] because they are very organic, technically nice to do and dramatically beautiful. I also love working with my husband Viktor Plotnikov, who has created a number of pas de deux for us to dance together. It's somebody like Jiri Kylian creates fantastic pas de deux, which I haven't had a chance yet to dance it."
Rykine seemed less concerned with any particular repertory than with the opportunity to dance with Boston Ballet's most accomplished ballerina. "I enjoy very much dancing with her, so I can't distinguish just one," he said. "Every time I dance with her, it's a pleasure for many reasons. It's the process of working with her that I like, not any particular dance." He did add, however, that the pas de deux in James Kudelka's idiosyncratic "Cinderella" was particularly rewarding.
"Yes, that was the most challenging since I've danced with Larissa," he said. "You have to determine your own timing as a couple, and there are so many strange divisions. It did take a lot of time!"