![]() ![]() ![]() This now cool, now tense wrangle of a duet was performed on Wednesday by two people of color - Gabrielle Salvatto, coy yet queenly, and Fredrick Davis, cloaked in melancholic anxiety - but Johnson may be winking slyly at us by putting the “Black Swan” pas de deux on the program, and casting as Prince Siegfried Samuel Wilson, who is white, and as Odile Michaela DePrince, who is black. ![]() When “Agon” premiered in 1957, the central pas de deux was performed by Diana Adams and Dance Theatre of Harlem cofounder Arthur Mitchell, a pointedly “mixed-race” couple. First the clarity of the men’s ballon - oh! Those huge, bounding sissonnes! Then the entrance of the eight females, whose brightly lifted retirés etched a trail of afterimages about the stage. If that varied maturity resulted in an unevenness of stamina, both physically and artistically, the dancers nonetheless exuded an eagerness and sincerity that often blossomed into charming earnestness.Įven so, the four men in George Balanchine’s “Agon,” set to the great Igor Stravinsky score, had professionalism enough not only to survive a sound miscue at the very beginning but to proceed to dance with a quiet, exacting largesse. In recent interviews, Virginia Johnson, a longtime star of the company and now its artistic director, has been transparent about the need to fill the ranks with some less experienced performers. ![]()
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