by Leigh Witchel
Maria Kowroski had a tenure with New York City Ballet as long as her legs. She said goodbye on the last performance of the fall season in a Logan’s Run program; the performing-in-four-of-five-ballets program the company does for its most-loved principals that is either designed to ascend them into a pantheon or make them explode.
Her first entry was a quiet one, walking in off to the side at the back for the Dance of the Blessed spirits from “Chaconne.” No matter, there was thunderous applause. A little confusing if you had just come to see “Chaconne,” but this is how farewells go.
The opening duet showed Kowroski’s most enduring quality after more than two decades as a principal dancer: her extravagant line. The slim, endless legs, capped off by high-arched feet that arc beyond arcs to hooks. Hair down and flowing, she dabbed the floor with her toes as Russell Janzen gently set her down. Her seemingly jointless arabesque went out and up; she still was as Deborah Jowitt described her early in her career: “that river of a dancer.”
To give her a break, Gonzalo Garcia and Sterling Hyltin performed “Opus 19/The Dreamer” in a more extroverted interpretation than it got earlier in the season from Joseph Gordon. Garcia, who will be preparing for his own Carrousel in a few months, was showing the part more than living it.
Prokofiev provided plenty of bombast in the score and Robbins mirrored it. Hyltin and Garcia reacted to that; she made one pose, then another on the pangs in the violin concerto, while the corps huddled in back as if shivering. Garcia recovered from spinning forward not as if he stumbled out of the turns, but as if he was showing you what stumbling was like.
Still, they looked good together. Hyltin was less of an opposite and more of a match. They had a similar approach to the role, aimed more outwards than inwards, even as they heaved and collapsed together as they traveled backwards. Garcia pointed up how he impelled and directed her motion in the slow section; his dreams were the dreams of a creator. You could see the ballet more clearly; not just the steps but how Robbins built it.
An excerpt from “DGV” allowed Kowroski to dance something by Christopher Wheeldon, but the ballet was problematic to show in excerpt. You can only extract bleeding chunks as there aren’t any pauses in it, and the large set piece by Jean-Marc Puissant was not there.
Wheeldon’s presence in the rep has diminished so any appearance prompts a close look. You could see how important a mobile torso became to his style: not contracting forward but moving side to side on the spine almost like an Odissi curve. It was emphasized by the corps moving side to side in couples.
Kowroski entered aloft, with Tyler Angle carrying her in and slowly putting her down. Wheeldon reacted to the still moments in Michael Nyman’s churning score with a tote and carry duet. Even with the modern setting this was an extreme version of what we saw in “Chaconne” – Kowroski being carried around, dreaming as she showed off her legs. As it went on, though, the support seemed to become hauling: put her down, yank her up, do it again. At the end, Angle pressed her back up and out.
Even though AMARIA was the only ballet on the program made on Kowroski, a gift tailored to her and Amar Ramasar from choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti, it seemed to tell us less about her than the other ballets on the program. In soft shoes with plenty of partnering and walking, it went easy on Kowroski, but Bigonzetti’s tics and spasms didn’t illuminate her.
After intermission (what are those strange customs from the beforetimes?) Kowroski performed one of her quintessential roles: the Striptease Girl in “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.”
The role showed all the Kowroski trademarks once again: the sky-high extensions that went up past her shoulder over and over, the rapier legs that knew that if you die onstage, you always die in fifth position with your feet pointed. And the hair. So much hair.
She and Angle had a grand time together, beaming with the pleasure of the ballet, and the last go-round. The other dancers enjoyed themselves as well. Ask la Cour gave a coda to his retirement a week ago by playing the Big Boss. Daniel Applebaum as the jealous premier danseur Morrosine added his own humorous touches to the role, such as a final towel dab before disappearing, or the way he sent the gunman off like he was bored with him.
Aaron Sanz may have had the worst New York gangster accent ever, but made a very funny topical touch when he appeared in the audience, put on a mask, then sat down.
And then came time for the joyous curtain call. Kowroski was feted not just by the principals and company, but the senior artistic staff. Past partners and colleagues (Damian Woetzel, Philip Neal, Charles Askegard, Jenifer Ringer) also offered bouquets, enough so that each worshipper started to throw them on the pile as a joke. Mylar and streamers rained down, and Kowroski, besides a heartfelt, silent “thank you,” gave us a high kick as a farewell.
What we didn’t see in this program was agency: It felt like Kowroski as exquisite, long-legged cargo. Still, that could as easily have been the need for a 45-year-old ballerina, no matter how much like Dorian Gray she has aged (where’s her picture?) to be able to get through the program. She most likely chose what she did with an eye to that.
There’s another aspect of Kowroski that never fully got its due. It did get shown off in “Slaughter”: Her sweet but goofy sense of humor. She averted her eyes as the Big Boss was about to plug a guy, but not so long that she didn’t get a peek at the fake shooting. Or how she frantically waved the warning note to get Angle’s attention, and then laid back down again, dead.
One of the first choreographers to show us this side of her was Wheeldon, in his backstage fantasy from two decades ago, “Variations Sérieuses” – which was anything but. Kowroski played a daffy prima ballerina who accidentally hurled herself into the pit (shades of the legends about Robbins?)
Her sendoff was everything she merited and could have wanted. From this side of the footlights, if there are any regrets about Kowroski’s career, it was that she was often slotted to be this generation’s replacement for Suzanne Farrell instead of letting us discover Maria Kowroski. She was more than just great hair and endless legs.
copyright © 2021 by Leigh Witchel
Maria Kowroski Farewell
Opening and pas de deux from “Chaconne,” “Opus 19/The Dreamer,” “DGV,” “AMARIA,” “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” – New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York, NY
October 17, 2021
Cover: Maria Kowroski at her farewell bow. Photo credit © Erin Baiano.
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