"Like a Good Red Wine"

GONZALO GARCIA: My history with this ballet started many, many, many years ago, with the first time that I ever saw it with San Francisco Ballet, before I was a principal there. [Repertory Director] Jean-Pierre (JP) Frohlich, who has staged the ballet for many years and was there when it was created for Baryshnikov, came and staged it. I remember watching and falling in love with the idea of the solo, and the idea of being able to have a journey through the four different movements—a journey with the instrument and the musician.

Years later, I joined New York City Ballet, and I had seen different people perform it in different places; but for the Robbins festival in 2008, they brought Nicolas Le Riche to perform it. He was a beautiful dancer in the Paris Opera; it was really nice to have someone from outside—NYCB doesn't often do that—celebrating such a beautiful piece. Le Riche had had experience with it, but he was younger than when Misha [Baryshnikov] danced it originally. But he already had a lot of maturity in his dancing. So it was nice to see that you didn't have to be in your late 40s to be able to do this piece—that was revealed to me during that performance.

A few years later, they brought it back for the Jackson Hole [New York City Ballet] MOVES tour, and JP told me, “You're gonna do it.” So my first experience performing the role was very hard. We had to get it ready quickly. And it's not just the choreography—it requires lots of stamina, because you're onstage, you don't leave, and it’s quite demanding. It's very hard to breathe at the end, really. That was a big challenge, because it was my first time performing it—and the first time you are always questioning in the back of your mind whether you can do it; you use more energy than you should; and I was at a very high altitude. I was battling those things, but the excitement of getting to do the ballet surpassed everything.

And then they brought it back for a couple of seasons, and I got to dance it on our stage. It's a wonderful journey for a dancer to go through.

HANNAH HOLMAN: All six of the Bach Cello Suites are like a cellist’s Bible. I grew up in a cello family; my grandmother was my first cello teacher, my dad played cello, and I'm the oldest of four, and we all play cello. The Bach Cello Suites are like a bread-and-butter staple, so I was playing them from a very early age. But in terms of the ballet, I performed it once, at Vail in 2022, with Roman Mejia.

JOSEPH GORDON: It was something I remember seeing in the Robbins festival. Then, I was called to learn it a long time ago, in 2017. I remember doing, maybe, one rehearsal. I was really excited to be called to it—I think it's rare in the repertory of NYCB to have pieces that are just focused on a solo man. In that sense, it's a special piece. I remember really resonating with it. And when I found out I was going to do it this spring, I was excited.

I believe it was Baryshnikov’s return to doing ballet after a time, so it feels like these are easier shoes to fill than trying to do something like Don Quixote. There's a little bit more room for ease in it, and less “perfection,” like there's more freedom available. And there’ve been a lot of different dancers who I have admired in the role—Nikolaj Hübbe and Damian Woetzel, and Nicolas Le Riche; his performance was really beautiful. All very different. So, I think it's nice to be able to put my own unique stamp on it, and find myself in that.

GARCIA: I think there's room for different interpretations. And I think there is room for things to look right in a mature body, a body that doesn't have the same flexibility or doesn’t jump to the same height—some sort of maturity needs to be had for the role. It's not just the capability of doing the steps. It requires depth, artistry, and a lot of humanity. You have to bring a lot to the table. But you can be young and happy and also bring that to the table. And if you find that combination of maturity and physicality, then I think it’s really great for this ballet.

GORDON: I don't know if A Suite of Dances is necessarily about something—there's no story or narrative, necessarily. I get a nostalgic vibe, especially thinking about it being created for Baryshnikov so much later in his career as a ballet dancer; there's a pondering, a looking back, and a feeling of being in the studio. A lot of Jerome Robbins’ works are meditative and very internal. They always say in rehearsal, “Easy baby,” which is what Robbins used to say. It feels like you're kind of in your own world. You're marking this dance. Maybe you're remembering something. It's kind of like a sketch, and it pulls out these different notes, different textures. The word I keep coming back to is nostalgia, but not in an overly emotional sense. I think there's something that's so wonderful about Bach, too; I’ve really been meditating on the fact that there's such a perfection of form and rhythm and structure in the music. But the melodies are so evocative and moving.

GARCIA: It's sort of a partnership. You should feel like everything is being improvised in the moment, like the musician has decided to play this incredible music, and you happen to be listening in and going through the journey of what they are giving you.

GORDON: It’s as though you're coming up with these steps spontaneously, as a spontaneous reaction to the music. It's really about this connection between you, the musician, and the space that evokes different vignettes, and there are different moods to each solo.

HOLMAN: You can't go wrong with any of the movements—all 36 movements of the six suites are genius. As a cellist, I’m trying to put my head around how Robbins picked these four. The prelude to the first suite is probably the most popular movement; it's very warm and friendly, and I think starting with that is not an accident, because it helps everybody immediately feel, “Oh, we're on this friendly journey together.” The choreography of the dancer and cellist walking out together, acknowledging each other, feels very special.

Then he chooses the gigue from the first suite, and that's really a chance to develop that relationship. It feels more like, “Okay, here we are. We're in this jig.” And then the third movement is the allemande from the fifth suite. Bach wrote this scordatura, which means he wanted the cellist to tune down, so it has a kind of dark, brooding mood—it’s so haunting. It was used in the Bergman film Saraband. I think that really is the heart and the depth of the four movements. Then the prelude to the sixth suite that he ends with is a real barn burner, especially at the tempo that they originated the ballet with; it's quite quick, but it's a fun challenge.

Each of the Bach suites is progressively more complex. The first suite is very open and lies very easily on the cello, and the second suite is in a minor key, and on and on. By the fifth suite, he's having us tune down, and he experiments more with the form of the music. The sixth suite is the longest and most complex, and it was written for a five string cello, so we have to play much higher on the fingerboard than usual. This prelude to the sixth suite that Robbins chose is really fun, a celebration. And the ending is genius. I have a cello student in her 70s who said, “Wow, Bach is such a tease at the end.” You think it's going to end, and then it doesn't. Robbins does that too. I won't give it away, but just watch for the ending.

GARCIA: It’s important for the dancer to separate each solo. The last solo is very vibrant and youthful and a kind of surrender to everything that you have gone through. You realize the joy of dancing and how privileged you are just to be there, in that moment. But in order to get to that climax, you have to build in stages through the ballet, and not just give it all at the first solo. That's another layer to this work that you have to invest in—how to get to the final, final moment before you really fall flat onstage, because you do; you're exhausted, because you have given it all, because you have gone through the process. Everything is very real. I think when that happens, it’s very magical.

GORDON: I think the stamina requirement is going to be very challenging. It's just you for 20 minutes or so, so I think finding the pace will be a challenge. I think also finding the line between wanting to look good and have quote-unquote “perfect technique,” but also finding the space… You can't punch it for 20 minutes, and it wasn't even made that way. So I think finding that line might be a little bit of a challenge at first. There's always a sort of learning curve with a new ballet where you don't really know “you” in it yet; you’re just getting through it for a while, and then you start to make choices and figure out what you know, what looks good on you, or what you want to do with it. I think it'll be a journey.

GARCIA: If you have danced different Robbins ballets—Dances at a Gathering, In the Night—you know that he explores relationships and humans through classical movement and music. Everything has to have a meaning. And because the solos are sort of divided, they show different sides that you can explore. The human quality, with the physicality, is something that you must work on; it doesn't come right away. Everyone has to feel authentic. That's the hard part about the role: this balance, where you have to be an authentic person within yourself, and vulnerable, to put yourself out there and find out a little bit about who you are as an artist. If you're capable of doing that, then the piece starts having dimension and meaning. If you don't have that sort of authenticity as a human in this ballet, then it just becomes four solos. Because the ingredients of a beautiful dancer, with beautiful music, played by a musician in a beautiful theater, are great ingredients, but it can fall flat quite quickly if there is no more human thought and truth within every every step.

GORDON: I'm really excited to dance to that first piece. Long before I knew this was coming back or I was going to do it, I would just listen to the first piece in the morning, drinking coffee, meditating, journaling; it reminds me of that sacred time. I think it really evokes the sacred space of the studio, and the moments you have as a professional—the little things that I'm coming to realize are where a lot of magic lies. I think this ballet taps into that. I'm excited to experience that in the studio. I'm excited for the shows, but I feel like it's a ballet that's going to be much more about the studio time. A lot of Robbins’ ballets feel as though the audience isn't there, and conjure this very intimate world onstage. But this one feels particularly like that, in a sense, because it's just a guy in pajamas.

HOLMAN: I always talk with my students about how we have to make these Bach suites feel like a dance, so to actually get to play them with a dancer, it's everything we dream about. I think the hardest thing for me will be to play at the tempo that the dancers want and stay consistent, without being too free. I tend to be a little bit free. But that's the joy, too—pacing yourself, musically, physically, emotionally. The music is just so perfect, it's kind of beyond comprehension, and that's why I never get tired of coming back to it; I'm always discovering new things and trying to play it better.

GARCIA: I think it's a great vehicle for a dancer to grow within and find a different way of moving. This was created through the coalition of two artists—Robbins, who had identified the dancer and artist, Baryshnikov. Those collaborations happened in the past, and they left us with a wealth of masterpieces. I hope that people watch this solo again and in their own way, today’s choreographers can be inspired and build works that similarly identify individuals. That chemistry, when it happens, is so magical.

GORDON: I think it really needs a really grounded performer. It's a ballet that’s like a good red wine; it's not a cocktail. It's something that's aged and has deepened.

_{Performance photo of Gonzalo Garcia © Erin Baiano. Rehearsal photos of Joseph Gordon by Ella Spruill © New York City Ballet.}