The Wanderer Returns

When it premiered in 1975 as part of the company’s Ravel Festival, Tzigane, as it was then titled, was not the first ballet Suzanne Farrell had performed on the NYCB stage since returning from a hiatus. It was, however, the first ballet Balanchine had created for her in six years, and thus represented the true “return” of this singular dancer to her New York City Ballet home. As such, the piece has been decisively tied to Farrell, and when it was reconstrated in 2024 after a more than 30-year absence from the repertory, her presence in the rehearsal studio was invaluable.

“I had heard of it,” recalls Principal Dancer Mira Nadon, who performed Farrell’s role in 2024 and has been cast again this spring. “There's a recording on YouTube that I had seen, but I'd never seen it performed. Beyond that, it wasn't honestly on my radar. But when it was on the grid for the next year, I definitely had my eye on it, thinking, 'That looks so fun.' It definitely looked very different from any other ballets that we do in New York City Ballet. I didn’t know Suzanne well but had worked with her once before on M&M [Balanchine’s Movements for Orchestra and Monumentum pro Gesualdo]. I knew there was a possibility, but you just never know.”

In around ten minutes, the ballet is driven in movement and mood by the namesake Ravel score, which was initially performed as a work for violin and piano in 1924, and later the same year, premiered again in Ravel’s orchestration (with, notably, Samuel Dushkin on the violin—a frequent dedicatee of Stravinsky’s works, like the Violin Concerto played in NYCB’s repertory). “It's a one of a kind piece, both in terms of Ravel's output and in terms of the virtuoso pieces for violin of the late 19th through middle of the 20th century,” says Concertmaster Kurt Nikkanen, who performed the violin solo in 2024 and has played it many times in his career in other contexts. “This piece came into being because Ravel was contemplating a violin and piano piece, then heard this Hungarian violinist to whom the piece is dedicated, Jelly d'Arányi. She was classically trained, but she was well-versed in traditional Romani music; she had performed Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello, which is another really difficult piece.

“This was the first and only Romani-inspired work that he ever wrote, and it came about specifically because he was so impressed with Jelly d'Arányi as a musician," he continues. "She played traditional music for him, and he was blown away. He said, ‘I don't know what she's doing, but I like it.’ A lot of that style is not notated, so he tried to interpret it in terms of what a classical composer would put on the page, to the best of his ability. So, it's interesting to interpret a piece like that. How much Ravel do you give it and how much freedom do you give it? That's the balance you're trying to find. Apparently d'Arányi did her own thing when she played it and ignored a lot of Ravel's instructions, and he said she could get away with it—whatever she was doing, it worked, but not everybody can. It has to be well-conceived, though he gives you a certain amount of freedom.”

As Balanchine wrote in his Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, “The ballet we made for our Hommage à Ravel to this exciting music tried to catch its atmosphere and dynamism,” and essentially goes no further. Why this piece of music, for this moment in Balanchine and Farrell’s shared artistic careers, remains up to interpretation, but that there is intended to be a connection between the violin and the lead dancer is undeniable. The score opens with an approximately five-minute cadenza for the solo violin, to which the lead dances, alone. She is eventually joined onstage by a man, then by four additional couples, but this opening passage was clearly the ballet’s raison d'être, as noted by reviewers of the time, as thrilled to see a new original Farrell performance as a new Balanchine ballet. In a contemporaneous review, Arlene Croce wrote, “...there was and there can only be Farrell. The first half, for violin solo, becomes a five-minute dance solo that touches a new height in contemporary virtuoso performance. Farrell’s dancing is a seamless flow, [but] there were moments that stopped my breath.”

As the violin launches into this opening passage, the lead dancer walks onto the stage, a moment so simple as to be surprisingly challenging for the performer. “It’s not even a step. It’s just walking out, but it feels so revealing,” Corps de Ballet Member Dominika Afanasenkov recently told The New York Times. She will be debuting in the role this year and has been rehearsing with Farrell, Repertory Director Christine Redpath, and Nadon in preparation. “You’re the only one on the stage. And you’re just walking, and you already have to bring so much emotionally and character-wise to that simple walk. If you’re not confident in who you are at that moment, it’s so clear that you’re not and [Farrell] sees it, too. She just goes, ‘No.’”

For Nadon, that initial walk carried an additional weight in 2024. “It was a little intimidating knowing that this revival was kind of on my shoulders; I wanted to do the ballet justice and make sure that it had a good reception, and that I lived up to what the ballet can be,” she recalls. “But it was really exciting. Once I got all the steps in my body, it felt very natural and like something that was up my alley. I think it's almost harder because there aren't a whole lot of technical steps. There isn't really anything to hide behind. It's all about the character and the way you're holding yourself, and everything has to look so natural, which just takes a little bit of rehearsal to really let everything be absorbed by the body.

“It's so wonderful to work with Suzanne and to get all of her knowledge on this ballet and the other ballets that she’s coaching. And it's very exciting just to have her around, with her energy inspiring everyone.”

“I've never done a solo like that, where it's just you onstage and the violin,” she adds. "It feels very stripped down, but in a very empowering way, so that you really feel like everything is at your fingertips—like you're a powerful, confident woman, and it's almost as though you know the man is going to be there. It's both wild and contained. You really need to be very aware of your whole body and the way you use your head and your eyes. It's a little seductive, but not in an overt way. Even though there’s a bit of cat-and-mouse, it still feels like I'm in control the whole time. And that's been really fun to work on with Aarón [Sanz, a soloist who has partnered Mira in performances]. I always have a good time rehearsing with him, and I feel like we were able to build a good bond in this piece.”

Just as the character work of this opening solo for the dancer requires a thoughtful balance of controlled and “natural” movement, so the solo for the violin demands attentiveness to style and control in equal doses. “I think that's what's exciting about playing it while also interpreting it with dance, that the score gives you so much leeway in terms of interpretation, in terms of tempo,” says Nikkanen. “The dance version tends to be a bit more measured, because you have to fit complicated steps with it, whereas when you play it—especially when you play it with piano, tempos can be quite fast. It takes on a life of its own. When you have a dancer like Mira, who has such freedom, it's really interesting to explore all of these things in rehearsal and then try to make them come to life.”

When the ballet was reconstructed in 2024, in consultation with Farrell, The George Balanchine Trust, and NYCB, the name of the ballet was changed; in Ravel’s time, Tzigane did not strictly refer to the Roma people, but now it carries negative meanings. As the rightsholder, Farrell adopted Errante, or “wanderer,” a title Balanchine once used for an earlier work. The thematic significance of this choice can be read into the ballet’s history: Farrell had returned to the company after a period of “wandering,” and the beguiling combination of wildness and restraint, sincere play and ironic embrace of the inspiring music’s exoticism, were emblematic of one who wanders.

A short diversion on this lost work: Presented in 1933 by Les Ballets 1933, Balanchine’s original Errante, created in collaboration with the artist Pavel Tchelitchew, was described as a “Choreographic fantasy” set to Franz Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major, or “Wanderer.” Based on reviews and the recollections of the work’s performers, the outsized set design and provocative costumes were the main attractions. Per Nicholas Magallanes, the set was “as though huge white window shades came down and formed a sort of circle. Sometimes it looked pearl-like, sometimes colored.” Though initially presented without accompanying program notes, a description was added when the work was performed during a South American tour:

Inside a translucent column pass strange and giant images of the world, sometimes in shadow, sometimes in diffused light. A woman appears to flee from herself, from the angels, from the flag bearers, and from a moon in eclipse. In an agitated yet hieratic manner the figures move on. It is the disequilibrium of a dream.

Tamara Geva, who originally danced the lead role, recalled: “I think it was based on a poem: ‘Your home is there, where you are not.’” She wore a long train throughout the piece that frequently pulled her back, as though a memory or external force prevented her from reconnecting with a “lost love.” An unusual work, built more of hieroglyphic postures than classical ballet vocabulary, the imagery and symbolism speak provocatively to the passion and bravura of the opening solo in the 1975 work.

Between Nadon’s performances, Farrell’s coaching of this rarely-seen work, and Nikkanen’s musical interpretation, among other winning qualities, Errante makes its triumphant return this spring on the All Ravel program, celebrating 50 years since the company’s Ravel Festival. Balanchine had written that the music of Ravel “always meant a great deal” to him, and the ways in which the composer’s work inspired both his and Jerome Robbins’ choreography find expression in this program. “I think it’s a great showcase for that connection, because it includes the Concerto in G [the score for In G Major], which shows one aspect of Ravel’s character, while Errante shows a completely different aspect of it; and La Valse, for example, is more in the line of Ravel's major orchestral works,” says Nikkanen. “Ravel was, in comparison to his impressionist peers like Claude Debussy, more of a modernist, in a certain sense; and more practically speaking, his work related to dance better, because his music is very rhythmic. It has a strong, danceable pulse, and lends itself perfectly to choreography.

“I've been with the company for 20 years as of this past run of Nutcracker,” Nikkanen adds. “There is so much variety—so many revivals, so many surefire standbys, plus newly commissioned works, it's a great balance for us to be able to play such an incredible variety of music. And I think that's pretty much unique among not just all ballet companies, but all orchestral organizations. So, it's great to be a part of it.”