Carreño’s Smile

Carreño bids farewell. Photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

Retirement performances can feel like a death—no, please don’t go!—or, in some cases, like an anticlimax, the long overdue postlude to a once-great career. I’m not sure which is more depressing. I remember clearly what I felt the night Julio Bocca gave his final New York performance—a kind of stabbing sadness combined with the desire to keep him there, on that stage, forever.

Carreño with Natalia Osipova in "Don Quixote." Photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

What struck me most about José Manuel’s farewell from American Ballet Theatre on July 30—a performance of “Swan Lake” in which he danced with both Julie Kent and Gillian Murphy–was that the occasion did not feel the least bit funereal. It was more like a celebration, an anniversary party for a much-loved family member, than the end of a chapter. This great dancer, who so easily combined warmth, nobility, sensuality, and grace, took his leave from us with the same smiling poise which he has exuded in thousands of performances over the course of his career, which began in the nineteen eighties in Cuba (he joined ABT in 1995, at the age of 27). During that time we have been felled by his charm in ballets like Balanchine’s “Apollo”—where, I always felt, he really was a young god–and Robbins’ “Fancy Free,” not to mention the great classics of the repertoire like “Don Quixote,” “Swan Lake” and “Sleeping Beauty.” There is in him a kind of innate joy that radiates even in moments of high tragedy, as in “Swan Lake.” It is the pure, unadulterated joy of dancing, of being onstage, of being handsome and moving to music, and knowing how to complete the beautiful lines of a beautiful woman. Of loving the audience and being loved in return. He has never shown strain, either in partnering—overhead lifts, no problem!—or in his own powerhouse solos. His marvelous pirouettes, seemingly accelerating and slowing down at will, are legendary. This same sense of joy and ease shone through in his farewell, dispelling the inevitable pall of leaving behind this wonderful, memorable career. Because, one senses, someone like Carreño can only go on to other great things, in teaching, coaching young dancers (especially men, who have much to learn from his style), planning festivals, or, who knows, even dancing on Broadway (as he has stated he would like to do). He has already started a summer intensive course, The Carreño Dance Festival, in Sarasota, Florida.

In Jerome Robbins's "Fancy Free." PHoto by Marty Sohl.

As I’ve said before (in a review of “Sleeping Beauty”) Carreño manages, onstage, to be ideal man: generous, loving, happy, beautiful, and supremely confident. The role I most closely associate with him is that of the third sailor in “Fancy Free,” Robbins’ deceptively poignant caper about three boys on shore leave in New York City during the Second World War. Carreño was boastful and jovial with his two friends, swooningly romantic when he finally got to be alone with the girl, and playfully sexy when it came time to show his thing in the “Latin” dance at the bar. And how he danced it! No-one, not even Marcelo Gomes, will ever do it with quite the same combination of sauciness, good taste, and panache. Who could help but love him when he turned away from us to show off his sexy posterior, swiveling his hips with just the right amount of swing—and what timing!–light on his feet, and never tipping over into vulgarity? And that smile! A smile of pure pleasure, of harmony with the universe. A smile that embraced his partners and every other dancer on the stage, and all of the audience as well. How will we live without that smile?

With Julie Kent at his farewell performance. Photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

What makes Carreño’s smile so special was that it always seems genuine, and suffused with a kind of love. This love was very much in evidence in “Swan Lake.” Love for his friend, Joaquín de Luz, who made a guest appearance with the company in the role of Benno (once with ABT, he now dances with New York City Ballet, across the way). Love for the members of the company, with whom he constantly engaged in his frequent trips around the stage. Love for the audience; again and again, his gorgeous pirouettes, with their perfectly-calibrated spiral, ended with his arms spread wide, reaching toward the audience, as if embracing us all. Every step was a gift, to us.  And love for his partners. The double role of Odette and Odile was split (as was once common), and he danced with Julie Kent (who is celebrating her 25^th year with the company) in the lakeside scenes, and with Gillian Murphy in the ballroom scene in act three (the now infamous “black swan” pas de deux). With Kent, who interpreted the role of Odette with a marvelous simplicity and a lack of fussiness one almost never sees these days (and who makes an absolutely ravishing Swan Queen), he was gentle and loving, almost protective, repeatedly embracing her, pressing her body against his, enveloping her with his arms. He seemed to be hugging her for real, and she rested her head on his shoulder with great intimacy. They too, were saying their goodbyes, with their bodies. The lifts were, as usual, utterly flawless, and because of their ease, became an expression of the sweep of emotion growing between the characters, and of their long experience together as dancers.

With Gillian Murphy. Photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

This was in complete contrast with the “black swan” pas de deux, in which Carreño and Murphy were two like two naughty, impossibly glamorous children, pulling out all the stops. They pushed each other to ever-greater heights, until she exploded into a series of triumphant fouetté turns, mixed in with double, triple, and perhaps even a quadruple turn. Carreño, whose panther-like jumps have seen some diminishment in recent seasons (understandable, at 43), matched her with his turns “à la seconde,” with the free leg extended out to the side, to which he added a few doubles and at least one triple of his own. It was a circus, and it was beautiful—of course, the crowd went wild. David Hallberg added to the excitement with a completely over-the-top, sexy, delightfully manipulative rendition of the sorcerer Von Rothbart (which is split into two roles in this production, handsome and monstrous), who comes into the palace and seduces all the girls, including the queen. His extreme rubatos, followed by wild explosions of energy in split jumps, were combined with delicious unleashings of his famously tapered legs (and glorious feet) and flips of the hair (a reference to the solo’s origins as a “Russian” dance). Yes, it was just shy of caricature, but what panache! (It turns out he may have gone a bit too far, as it was announced on July 2 that he had a sprained ankle and would not be dancing with Polina Semionova in their much-anticipated performance on July 2. But it was worth it.)

The smile. Photo taken by me on July 30.

And then it was time to go. At the end of the truncated third act, which in this production contains almost no dancing, he took his final leap from the rock a the back of the stage, into eternity. It was quite a jump, upward, as if he were launching himself into another dimension. Afterwards came the endless curtain calls, the smiles, the flowers, and finally, the tears. It turns out that this will not be his final turn with ABT after all; that will come in Japan, on July 30, in a performance of “Don Quixote.” He will also dance in Ratmansky’s “Bright Stream” in Los Angeles, on July 16 (don’t miss it, Angelenos!). And, a last minute addition to his schedule: because of his injury, Hallberg will be replaced by Marcelo Gomes at the July 2 evening performance of “Swan Lake” with Polina Semionova, which means that Carreño will replace Gomes at the matinée alongside Julie Kent. A final parting gift.

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