Peter Martins' newest ballet, Les Gentilhommes, glows with the spirit of freedom. Ballet Master in Chief of the New York City Ballet along with Jerome Robbins, Martins has regularly been choreographing new works for the company's repertoire.
It is hard for a seasoned balletomane to respond to Martins as choreographer, for first one must relinquish memories of Martins as a spectacular dancer. When he danced with the New York City Ballet, Martins was very special. His energy and enthusiasm seemed boundless.
The most outstanding performance I remember was in George Balanchine's Chaccone, when he partnered Suzanne Farrell, who recently retired from the company. Martins himself retired as a performer December 6, 1983, having danced the Cavalier in The Nutcracker, the role in which he debuted December 25, 1967.
A native of Denmark, Martins was trained with the Royal Danish Ballet. He was a principal dancer with that company before performing as guest artist with the New York City Ballet, eventually joining that company. He became a ballet master in chief in 1981.
In 1977, Martins choreographed his first ballet, Calcium Night Light, an athletic work, to the music of the American composer Charles Ives. It is strikingly different in style from the Balanchine works.
Thirty Ballets
In all, Martins has completed more than thirty ballets and restaged and choreographed four musicals: Dream of the Twins performed in Copenhagen and for Broadway; On Your Toes, Song and Dance, and Carousel. He also has choreographed Tango-Tango, a dance on ice, for John Curry.
Those ballets most recently added to the NYCB repertory are Songs of the Auverg, Les Petits Riens, Ecstatic Orange, and Les Gentilhommes.
In 1977, Martins was recognized for his outstanding contributions to dance in the twentieth century by Dance Magazine, which honored him as one of three recipients that year for their annual award. Martins received another distinction: the Liberty Award given to eighty-seven immigrants in 1986 by New York City's Mayor, Ed Koch.
Martins' Calcium Night Light will be one of the works featured in the company's fortieth anniversary year, which will be celebrated by a three-week American Music Festival in April of 1988. The event will include nearly thirty ballets to the music of American composers, ten of which will be world premieres. Among them will be Robbins' Fancy Free and Balanchine's Stars and Stripes.
Martins has grown considerably as a choreographer since Calcium Night Light, though many of his ballets are not revived from season to season but give way to his newer creations. An exception to this is Suite From L'Histoire du Soldat to the music of Igor Stravinsky, a composer with whose music Martins seems as comfortable as was Balanchine.
Many of Martins' works, like Calcium Night Light and Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, seem like kaleidoscopes, containing pieces that
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