Balanchine's Agon: Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell, Anxiety and Beauty

Agon (1957) is a ballet for twelve dancers, with music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by George Balanchine. Composition began in December 1953 but was interrupted the next year; work was resumed in 1956 and concluded on April 27, 1957; the music was first performed on June 17, 1957 in Los Angeles conducted by Robert Craft, while the first stage performance was given by theNew York City Ballet on December 1, 1957 at the City Center of Music and Drama, New York (White 1979, 490). The composition's long gestation period covers an interesting juncture in Stravinsky's composing career, in which he moved from a diatonic musical language to one based on twelve-tone technique; the music of the ballet thus demonstrates a unique symbiosis of musical idioms. The ballet has no story, but consists of a series of dance movements in which various groups of dancers interact in pairs, trios, quartets etc. A number of the movements are based on 17th-century French court dances – saraband, galliard and bransle. It was danced as part of City Ballet's 1982 Stravinsky Centennial Celebration.

Just what was needed for this day, these times:  A 27-minute ballet with 12 dancers, the creation of Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine.  Within that frame, a 1 minute 44 second concentration on Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell, who danced the début for the New York City Ballet in December 1957.  That short video elicited this comment on YouTube (Yes, a YT comment worth repeating!):

mproche571:Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell in Agon. It just doesn't get better. Later dancers brought more strength and athleticism, but no one demonstrates the anxiety and beauty of this most particular Balanchine ballet and Stravinsky score the way that they do.

With its emphasis on form, erotic play, and design, Agon has been called an "argument-free ballet." It was the last collaboration between Stravinsky and Balanchine, and I think that is what many people miss -- this only works, this music and that choreography, through collaboration.  Presented as a concert, Stravinsky's work is almost universally panned.  What I'd give to see the score outline, which apparently includes the contemporaneous description of the dance.  Collaboration.

Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine in rehearsal
while working on Agon in 1957. Photograph: Martha Swope

In 1934, as George Balanchine was working on what would become the first ballet he would choreograph in America, Serenade, Igor Stravinsky was asked by the press about whether he personally saw a future for ballet. Stravinsky replied, with characteristic frankness, "There is not a great deal of good ballet music. Either it is sunk in the dance or it is irrelevant to it as a rule. Music and dance should be a true marriage of separate arts, a partnership, not a dictatorship of the one over the other." 

Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell rehearsing Agon
From "Moments in Time: Tracing the history of diversity in ballet"
by Gus Solomons jr

December 1957: George Balanchine pairs Arthur Mitchell and Diana Adams in Agon’s erotically charged pas de deux. In a world still a decade away from the civil rights movement, this was casting as political act, and it shocked some members of the ballet community. Twelve years later, Mitchell founded Dance Theatre of Harlem, a haven for classical dancers of color.

Embedding has been disabled for "NYC Ballet's Megan LeCrone on George Balanchine's AGON," but please watch it... for Megan LeCrone is to Agon as Diana Adams was to Agon.  It's eerie.

The pas de deux is one of Agon’s most unique features. The music sounds disjointed, with few instruments being used at a time, but it is still possible to identify the basic components: an adagio, two variations and a coda with the key difference of a role reversal for the dancers, the woman seeming to lead the male into assorted extreme poses rather than the opposite. There are several famous images such as the one where the ballerina wraps around her partner with her leg in attitude, or her 180º arabesque whilst the male dancer is lying on the floor.

Uploaded to YouTube by NeryssaPaige -- 11 July 2012


Compare to this later video of a rehersal with Arthur Mitchell paired with Allegra Kent. I'd love to know the date, should any Dear Readers know it.  (Not to be missed, though to be read with a calming agent at hand, is Kent's autobiography, Once A Dancer.  Preface it by reading Joan Acocella's review... and give the book purchase a second thought.)


Uploaded to YouTube by Approximatesonata --  5 December 2012

Agon is the Greek word for contest; the movements of the ballet are named after French court dances. The score was commissioned by New York City Ballet with funds from the Rockefeller Foundation and dedicated to Lincoln Kirstein and Balanchine by the composer. Together, Balanchine and Stravinsky designed the structure of the ballet during the creation of the music. The outline for the score specifies in detail, with exact timings, the basic movements for twelve dancers clad in simple black and white costumes.

Agon, part of the repertoire of the Dance Theatre of Harlem --
 DTH Founder and Artistic Director Emeritus: Arthur Mitchell 

The "12-tone serialism" technique employed in Agon for the first time by Stravinsky is explained well, for those of us stupid in music, at the Ballet Bag, a website dedicated to "freshening" the art, and supplies helpful interpretive notes, too:

Even though Agon starts with a diatonic, non-serial structure, Stravinsky combined parts that had a tonal centre (think of the violin solo in the coda of the first pas de trois) with serialist parts (the flute, mandolins & harps in the Galliard). In order to concentrate on other works and further his experience with serialism Stravinsky shelved Agon for a couple of years and then returned to create the central – very serialist – part of the work (the first coda and the bransles, ie. the moves from side to side), following Schoenberg and Webern’s ideas. 

Besides the new composition techniques, Stravinsky also used specific instruments to identify the dancers in the ballet – brass for men and woodwind for women – as well as traditional French court dance references: the bransles (couples dancing in circle, side to side), galliards (an athletic dance with plenty of jumps),  sarabande and pas de deux/quatre.

Sadly, a satisfying video of the whole, I cannot find.  Below is an honorific, of sorts -- part of a gala on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Balanchine's death -- The Balanchine Celebration in 1993.



Peter Boal, Zippora Karz, Kathleen Tracey, Albert Evans, Arch Higgins, Wendy Whelan, Darcey Bussell, Lindsay Fischer,

And just to leave you laughing... and why not, with all this unexpected balletic divertissement... here is a charming interview with Arthur Mitchell who relates Balanchine's personal vision for "sixteen nubian dancers":

Me, and Damien Walters; Damien Walters and I!

parkour:  The art of moving through your environment as swiftly and effectively as possible using only the human body.

You should have seen me. You would have cheered.


It was the perfect storm of good things:  I slept an incredible four hours straight, enjoyed a balanced, rich cup of coffee in the predawn, then relaxed and laughed with the flitting, fighting chickadees.  


And, if I do say so myself, I was quite nattily dressed.


Yes, there were the normal oddities.  La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore was, inexplicably, curled up on the lower shelf of the kitchen block table, covered with an antique Point de Venise lace tablecloth.  Granted, she was sacked out in a kitchen that I don't normally use, as the replica of the Karaboudjan's galley is not my idea of the ideal place to prepare or consume food.  Still, for an early morning view of the cluster of spruce trees and the bud- and canker- worms so beloved by my beloved chickadees, nothing beats the view out of the galley's over-sized portholes.


Right. Well, anyway, things began well.  That's all I am saying.
I was feeling good; I was feeling lean and mean.


I had an early morning cardiology appointment and let's face it, early mornings are not exactly what we are known for around here.  Fred and I even retrained the circadian rhythms of all the livestock and domestic animals so that their days don't actually start until mid-afternoon.


Despite my penchant for equating left with west and north with straight ahead, we had an uneventful trip into Lone Alp. 

My MDVIP Go-To-Guy referred me to a new cardiologist this year.  It's not that the old one was in any way not a great doctor, he was.  Is.  No, it is more, for me, that I just cannot tolerate dealing with anyone or anything associated with the CrapAss Hospital that has so contributed to the demise of my earthly usefulness.  Not that I've given that much thought or anything!  


I remember, in fact, my Former Cardiologist with great affection, for he once told me that I would not die so long as he was taking care of me.  I loved that brash idiocy.


Unfortunately, ever since he actually had the chance to snatch me from the jaws of death, he has been caught up in the evil machinery of CrapAss Hospital.  Because of the great Shoulder Adventures of the last three years, I've only gone in to get an echo done, and only once, and did not deal with the doctor at all -- except to have one of his partners bless me out over the phone.  (When he was done blessing me out for having skipped a few echos, he told me not to worry about my aortic dilation blowing up, "because you will never see it coming...")


Oops!  Oh, well!


So we cruised into the Free Gimp Parking, gave Ruby the Honda CR-V a pat on the butt, and found the office with nary a wrong turn and not a bit of confusion.  [We don't do well in new office buildings.  Sometimes we duck into the first cozy looking waiting room and pretend we're in the right place.  It's usually the urologist's or the plastic surgeon's joint, though, and they catch on pretty quickly and toss us out.]


The New Cardiologist's place is incredibly well-organized.  I didn't realize how much I appreciated that until I was there, in the midst of streamlined forms and efficient people.  Everyone was so good at what they did, and they communicated!  Not just with me and Fred, but with each other.


Excuse my excitement.  Little things just send me!


Now... here is the part where it's all about me, and Damien Walters, Damien Walters and I!  That's this post's title, in case you've been distracted. 


I've long been a fan of parkour, then free running, free styling -- the martial arts, too.  As my body has crapped out and essentially imploded on itself, I've traveled beyond this body via the Internet and television, finally carving out for myself niches of the imagination.  


On one of my baseline days, I'll cue up the greatest of tennis matches, admire the most powerful and musical ballet dancers, and I let my body go.  It's enjoyment.  It's distraction.  For a few years, I could even pretend it was muscle memory!


On intolerable days, I might visit PopThatZit and replay Pete Popped a Pustulant Pimple ten times in a row... or I might not!  But I will *always* end up watching Damien Walters, usually his showreels, one right after the other.  I fly, jump, fall, push, pull, defy gravity and embrace gravity, all at the same time.  I feel no pain and my tendons never retract, my muscles never seize.  I'm lithe, light as air, fast as lightening.  Pliant, compliant, but steel, I am jiu-jitsu.


When I was escorted back to the echo room, this morning, the first thing that jumped out at me was the behemoth of an exam table.  It looked as tall as a freaking elephant.


The nurse asked me if I could change into the gown on my own.  "Sure!" I said.  She asked if I could walk to the exam table.  "You betcha!" I crowed, adding, "I brought my magic cane, even. But then you are out of luck, because there's no way I can get *on* it." 


"Not even with this stepladder?  How about if I hold you up?  How about if you hang onto me?"


Because of the instability, swelling, and pain in my ankles, knees, and hips, I cannot step up or down.  The last time I tried to use one of those stepladders was in a radiology department and the tech did not entirely believe my protests that I couldn't trust my legs.  I ended up on the floor that day, and pretty mad about it, too.  I have fallen quite enough in this lifetime, thankyouverymuch.


She picked up the phone to call for the nearest Big Guy, so that my own petard could be hoisted...


But something of the spirit of Damien Walters showed up in me, today, unexpectedly.  I told her that, no, we would not be needing assistance, and that, yes, I could do this if she wouldn't mind parking my wheelchair somewhere out of the way once I vaulted out of it, pirouetted in midair, onto the beastie table.


She looked a tad bit skeptical.  She was staring at my legs and wincing.


It might have been choreographed by Balanchine.  Danced by Edward Villella.  You'd easily imagine that I was inhabited by Martina, Chris, Monica, Hana, and Steffi, tour à tour.  


But it was in every way inspired by Damien Walters.


I planted one leg here, the other there, becoming my own source of symmetry.  I plumbed the potential energy of every surface.  Briefly, I was here, then there, now attracted, now repelled.  Once, twice, I was standing --sideways -- on a cabinet.  Thereafter, I was free of surfaces altogether.


I usually crane my neck and nervously watch the progress of the echo -- it's kind of neat to see your heart as it beats, to listen to the woosh-woosh.  The nurse, after verifying that I had survived my feats of athleticism with bones and internal organs intact, was all business.  She reminded me that talking, coughing, and such interfered with the test, so I stopped talking, never coughed, held my breath when instructed, but mostly just ran Damien Walters' videos in my head.


In a first, I managed to crack up both myself and the test operator, and did, I guess, disrupt things.  They record the sounds produced by various parts of the heart, concentrating, I think, on the valves.  I heard a series that were familiar from past tests... and then, out of the blue, came what can only be described as Island Music.  "They're having a party in there!" came out before I could stop myself from talking.  Seriously, we are talking ukuleles, tambours, maracas, and seven kinds of guitars.  


Go, mine heart, go!


There were a few abnormal results from the echo, but none of them were new, none of them were worse, and one of them was actually better.  I'm really happy with this new place.


The nurse was on the warpath as we left, threatening to quit if she wasn't given an adjustable table for her echocardiogram patients, going on and on about some "debilitated" people of her acquaintance.  Whoever they are, I hope they get better soon.


And I hope the cardiologists keep that massively tall, unwieldy table, maybe tucked away in some storage room for when I come back next year.  


I haven't had so much fun in I-don't-know-when.