In The Mood for Love

John Cranko’s “Onegin" is back at ABT—But is it really a good ballet?

Chloe Misseldine and Thomas Forster in Onegin. Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

The appeal of John Cranko’s “Onegin,” for audiences and dancers alike, is understandable. The music,* by Tchaikovsky, though not drawn from his 1879 opera, is beautiful. The story, a superficial gloss of Pushkin’s novel in verse, is suitably Romantic and, in the end, tragic. (Dancers love to suffer onstage, and people love to watch dancers suffer onstage.) The early nineteenth-century Russian setting is a costume designer’s delight. And John Cranko’s choreography tells the story simply and straightforwardly, while supplying pas de deux full of swooning lifts and arched backs and the kind of grappling that has come to signify passionate love in ballet.

But is it a good ballet, really? It’s a question I always ask myself when I see it. It’s not just that Cranko doesn’t really give an honest sense of the satirical quality of Pushkin’s poem, or of the character of Onegin himself. By turning this jaded dandy into a stormy Romantic character, Cranko changes the very nature of the story. But it would be difficult to capture the nuances of Pushkin’s poem in a ballet. Even so, I’m convinced that in the hands of a more skilled and nuanced dramatist, the characters and the story could have more color and texture. Instead, they are reduced to one note. Onegin is dark and stormy, Tatiana shy and passionate, Olga flighty. Worse yet are the secondary characters—the youths who frolic in the countryside, the old folks at the party—who have no individual characteristics at all. (Pushkin was wonderful at creating portraits of “types.”)

This one-dimensionality is reflected in the choreography, which is thin, repetitive, and not particularly musical, in the sense that it uses the music (orchestrated versions of piano pieces, combined with symphonic music) mostly as an appealing backdrop while failing to reveal anything about its inner workings. Choreographic ideas are presented one phrase at a time, with little continuity from one moment to the next. Then, they are repeated again and again. Each character has a certain repertory of steps that he or she returns to—Lensky’s stretched arabesque with one arm folded in front of him, Onegin’s sad, pining lunges in fourth position. But some steps, like a lift in which the women sit in the air, with their legs crossed in front of them, are assigned to different characters. The pining arabesque is performed by everyone at some point.

What one can say is that this “Onegin” is effective, taken on its own terms. The events in the story are clear. When one dancer is performing a monologue, everyone else onstage is doing something unobtrusive, so as not to create any distraction. In group numbers, like the Russian dances in the first act, or the mazurka in the second, or the polonaise in the final act, the complexity of the choreography is kept to a minimum. Simple steps, simple story, simple characters.

There is a kind of virtuosity in this simplicity. For the five main characters—Onegin, Tatiana, Olga, Lensky, and Prince Gremin (Tatiana’s future husband)—there is little to hide behind. An absolutely limpid technique is called for: beautiful lines, lovely relaxed balances, pitch-perfect partnering. The lack of complication in the choreography allows the dancers to perform the steps in a clean, unhurried way. They’re never rushed. Turns à la seconde become pirouettes with the foot to the knee, and then lunges. Arabesque balances resolve into beautiful fourth positions with the arms out (or vice versa).

Catherine Hurlin and Aran Bell in Onegin. Photo by Rosalie O’Connor

The pas de deux, particularly between Onegin and Tatiana, are more torrid, filled with sudden bursts in which she is swooped up into the air and then back down again, often to the floor. In their final, decisive encounter, when Onegin sees the error of his ways and returns to Tatiana, now married to someone else, their positions are reversed. He sinks to the floor, pulling her back, again and again, so that she swoons backward against his body; or he pulls her up, tosses her into the air, and catches her with his outstretched arms. When she finally rejects him, he runs off into the distance, waving his arms. The point is driven home emphatically.

The ballet is not only effective, but also a good showcase for dancers. Cranko created “Onegin” in 1965 for Marcia Haydée, a Brazilian ballerina who was then the star of Stuttgart Ballet. (Ray Barra was Onegin.) Haydée was not only a compelling dancer but a great interpreter and personality, and these qualities have remained embedded in the role. (Really, the ballet should be called “Tatiana.”) In the cast I saw at American Ballet Theater, which is performing “Onegin” after a hiatus of 7 years, all the dancers were new to their roles. Chloe Misseldine, a dancer of exquisite lines, with jet-black hair and the face of a Pre-Raphaelite maiden, danced with extraordinary delicacy and freshness, belying a wondrous technique: confident, relaxed turns, elegant balances, light jumps. Catherine Hurlin’s Olga was quick, mischievous, assured, and totally un-mannered. (Often the role is played too cute.) Aran Bell was an ardent, bold Lensky, the purity of whose dancing seemed to reflect the purity of the character’s soul. Jarod Curley imbued his interpretation of the normally stodgy Prince Gremin with dignity and a touch of tenderness. (His pas de deux with the adult Tatiana, now his wife, is one of my favorites in the ballet because it shows the trust and mutual respect of mature love. The two cradle each other’s faces, but give each other space; he assists her in a series of backward-moving lifts that project the idea that he will always be there to support her, with a light touch.)

The greatest struggle is that faced by the dancer performing the role of Onegin, in this case, Thomas Forster. The temptation is to make the character appear less cruel, less bored, and this is the trap Forster falls into. As he walks next to Tatiana in their first scene together, Forster’s Onegin comes across as almost a decent chap, which makes the following scene, in which he rips up her love letter and flirts with his best friend’s girl, all the more incomprehensible. Later, his efforts to appear detached and cruel look, instead, wooden. But one can forgive Forster because he is a lovely dancer, with long, attenuated lines and a gentle affect, particularly when, in that opening scene, he raises his hand to his brow, like a poet lost in sad thoughts. His is an appealing Onegin, trapped in an impossible situation.

Cranko’s ballet allows space for this interpretation too, softening the edges of Pushkin’s bitter tale of a rouée who finally sees the beauty of sincerity. In so doing, Cranko has created a gentle, stately work of dance theater that satisfies the audience’s hunger for sad love stories. It may not be a great work, but it gets the job done.

*The music for “Onegin” includes excerpts from The Seasons (piano pieces), The Caprices of Oxana [Vakula the Smith/Cherevichki] (opera), Romeo and Juliet (overture-fantasy), and Francesca da Rimini (symphonic poem).

Chloe Misseldine and Thomas Forster

Aran Bell and Catherine Hurlin