Farewell to a season and two beloved dancers

Even the lineup — four ballets by three of the most renowned choreographers of the 20^th century — couldn’t take the spotlight away Friday night from two beloved dancers taking their final bows in The Sarasota Ballet’s concluding program of the 2017-18 season.

Principal Logan Learned, the diminutive dynamo and devoted darling of the unofficial fan club, Logan’s Ladies, and soloist Kristianne Kleine, whose powerful  presence brought a welcome balance to the company’s wispy, waifish distaff side, had previously announced their retirements, after 10 and eight years respectively. Learned will return to his native San Francisco, with aspirations of becoming a teacher; Kleine is already on course to become an actuary analyst. This was their final moment to bask in the hometown audience’s warm appreciation and neither took the opportunity for granted.

If director Iain Webb wanted a surefire standing ovation he might have put “Tarantella” — a wickedly fast duet by George Balanchine belatedly added to the program as a vehicle for Learned — at the end of the night rather than the beginning. While guest conductor Barry Wordsworth and the Sarasota Orchestra set a sizzling pace that pushed the dancer and his partner, Kate Honea to keep up, in truth, Learned could probably have twiddled his thumbs and received the same adoring reaction. The multiple curtain calls were a tribute as much to his abiding popularity as to this particular performance but the thank-you had been well-earned over a decade. (Honea, a hometown girl and the only hold-out from the pre-Webb era, now concluding her 17th season, hasn’t shown any inclination to follow in her colleague’s footsteps.)

Kleine finished her stage career, partnered by Jaime Carter (another steady presence, in his 11^th season) in the company’s debut of Antony Tudor’s “The Leaves are Falling,” an elegant and lyrical remembrance of young love and the bittersweet passage of time. Though it wasn’t the ideal vehicle for showing off her strength — which is her strength — she was, as always, technically precise, elastically flexible and powerfully charismatic. An unassisted arabesque at the end of her featured section was a last example of her exquisite control; it dissolved into an embrace that lingered long, and perhaps not only because the choreography called for it.

Neither Learned nor Kleine appeared in the other two ballets on the program — the company premiere of Balanchine’s Asian-inspired “Bugaku,” and a reprise of “Marguerite and Armand,” the highly dramatic work Ashton created for the revered May-December partnership of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. 

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In the former, inspired by New York City Ballet’s tour to Japan in 1958, Balanchine pairs the ritual traditions and courtliness of Japanese Imperial performances with a commissioned score by Toshiro Mayuzumi that lends Western instrumentation to Eastern atonality. The focus is a wedding ceremony and, in the edgy central pas de deux, the consummation of the marriage.

Surrounded by attendants in gauzy, white costuming with long trains (costumes by Karinska), Ryoko Sadoshima and Lucas Erni elegantly and expertly interpreted the mesh of extreme neoclassical aesthetic and the flexed hands and feet, tilted heads and bent knees of Asian influence. They, and a corps of eight, pulled off the distinctive movement and its challenges without a hitch and it was a treat to view this rarely performed work executed so well.

The Sarasota Ballet is the only American company with permission to perform “Marguerite and Armand” and it has expertly recreated the original sumptuous design by Cecil Beaton (lots of drapery and an off-set “fainting couch,”), adding enormous looming projections of Marguerite’s loved one and evocative lighting by Aaron Muhl. But even the impeccable dancing of Victoria Hulland as a courtesan dying of consumption, and Ricardo Graziano, as the true love who spurns her involvement with rich suitors yet returns for her (endless) dying scene, couldn’t salvage this one for me. The overwrought choreography, histrionic plot and period-perfect but laughable costuming of Marguerite’s suitors (those wigs look like something out of a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit) might have worked for Fonteyn and Nureyev, prima donnas both, but seem over the top with refined artists like Hulland and Graziano.

They did their best — and their best is excellent — to make it all seem convincing. But even the early part of the score, Franz Liszt’s B minor piano sonata, renders the impression of a melodramatic silent movie soundtrack. Fortunately New York City Ballet pianist Cameron Grant’s extraordinary performance made the whole venture worthwhile.

The long (three hours) evening concluded with a line of veteran dancers filing onstage to deliver a rose each to Kleine and Learned, and Webb and executive director Joe Volpe presenting them with oversized photographs captured in memorable past performances — Learned  as the “Blue Boy” in Ashton’s “Les Patineurs” and Kleine in Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes.” There were many bows and not a few constricted throats and unconstrained tears.

Both Learned and Kleine brought something to the company that would otherwise not have existed. Though his 5-foot-4-inch stature limited his versatility and typecast him in juvenile roles, few will forget Learned’s ever-revolving finale as the Blue Boy, or his captivating characterizations of the petulant young Colin, in Will Tuckett’s “The Secret Garden” or the doltish but endearing Alain in Ashton’s “La Fille mal gardée.” As for Kleine, her performances — among the most memorable, “Rubies” and “Stars and Stripes” — were never less than powerfully commanding, fiercely committed, and irresistibly compelling. She always drew my eye and my admiration.

Each will be missed, but not forgotten, as the company returns to New York for another run at The Joyce Theater in August and moves into its 28^th year, with new faces and discoveries to anticipate.

‘Great Masters of Dance’

Sarasota Ballet performs George Balanchine's “Bugaku” and “Tarantella,” Antony Tudor’s “The Leaves are Fading,” and Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Marguerite and Armand,” with live music by the Sarasota Orchestra. Reviewed Friday, Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. Through Saturday. 941-359-0099; sarasotaballet.org.