A Bumpy Night for ‘Raymonda'

Slips and spills plagued New York City Ballet's "Banquet of Dance" program Tuesday night. While it's not unusual for a dancer to fall, the evening's "Raymonda Variations" included four examples of slips, falls, and visible wobbles. Whether nerves, end-of-season fatigue, or unusually slick spots on the stage contributed to many dancers hitting the deck was unclear, but there were serious problems. Their mistakes, however, may also have been due to some contagious panic, as last Friday's opening performance of this program also saw some dancers fumbling. Adding to the fraught atmosphere Tuesday night was the fact that the conductor, Paul Mann, was filling in at the 11th hour for Maurice Kaplow, who was taken ill during Friday night's performance. I don't know how much rehearsal time Mr. Mann had, but there was some disconnect between pit and stage during Balanchine's work, the opening piece on the bill.

"Raymonda Variations" is Balanchine's response to a ballet to which he first became acquainted as a child in St. Petersburg, where Petipa's 1898, three-act "Raymonda" was frequently performed (and survives in its repertory today). As an émigré in New York during the 1940s, Balanchine had staged an edited production of the full ballet for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Finally, in 1961, he provided his by then characteristically plotless distillation: a narrative-free response to the music for a ballerina, her partner, and five female soloists. They perform to a suite of selections from Alexander Glazounov's score, one of the greatest ever written for ballet.

The two principal parts, danced Tuesday night by Megan Fairchild and Joaquin De Luz in their debuts in the roles, are fiendishly difficult. As if two taxing solos each weren't enough, Balanchine runs together codas from Acts I and II of the original ballet to create one long finale for his work. Here, Ms. Fairchild was too square and stiff, and was partnered by a rushed Mr. De Luz.

The five women dancing the soloist parts gave varying accounts of their variations but appreciated the challenges presented by them. As she had last week, Savannah Lowery gave a surprisingly steady rendition of the first solo at both performances. During the finale, however, Tiler Peck and Ana Sophia Scheller both fell off their fouétte turns, adding to the haphazard mood of this performance.

"Raymonda Variations" was followed by two dolorous Jerome Robbins works set to Debussy. In "Afternoon of a Faun," two dancers admire each other as well as their own mirrored reflections in a dance studio. Craig Hall and Janie Taylor made an alluring pair here.

Robbins's "Antique Epigraphs," is an intriguing companion to his "Dybbuk," which the company also revived this year. Both the men's solos in "Dybbuk" and the women's in "Antique Epigraphs" suggest occult rites. The four female soloists in "Antique Epigraphs" — on Tuesday night, Ellen Bar, Rebecca Krohn, Sara Mearns, and Teresa Reichlen — seem as though they might be bearing witness at a convocation of one of history's mysterious, same-sex cults. Robbins includes a certain amount of movement in profile, as this late work of his recapitulates 20th-century choreographers' attempts to adapt 3-D configurations from ancient friezes and vase paintings. In the final movement set to Debussy's "Syrinx," a haunting flute solo, the women are still, living artifacts, floating outside time the way Debussy's after-echoes permeate the silence between musical phrases.

The NYCB dancers, however, are so accustomed to doing pyrotechnic neoclassicism and razor's edge modernism that they can't quite adapt to Robbins's demand to surrender to Debussy's sonorities; they needed to be more sensual, less cautious, more reverberant.

The program closed with Christopher Wheeldon's "Evenfall," which Mr. Wheeldon made for the company last year to Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3. The women wear tutus designed by Holly Hynes, which thus to a large degree dictate a certain kind of decorum, while the music demands something more freewheeling. Bartók's score takes it on the lam, constantly shifting character and seeming to run circles around Mr. Wheeldon. His invention sometimes seems strained, making him function almost like a window dressing moving around mannequins. But it's not a bad work: It shows off the corps de ballet, and provides ample stage time for the two leads, roles filled on Tuesday by Miranda Weese and a stalwart Seth Orza.

This program repeats February 24 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).