Starring… some ABT dancers.
And here are some photos of the fashion shoot.

Via ABT’s Twitter feed.

Hehe, here’s a new book I just saw up on Amazon. It’s by Colin M. Jarman and is a collection of humorous quotes from TV dance shows — mainly Dancing With the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance. Apparently I’m quoted somewhere inside (from my Huffington Post column). There’s a little quiz you can take to win a copy of the book on the book’s website.

The esteemed Guardian critic Judith Mackrell tackles the British version of SYTYCD. And damn, their show looks so much better than ours!:

“Who knew we’d be seeing choreography by Henri Oguike, Rafael Bonachela and Mark Baldwin on prime-time Saturday TV, or hearing serious discussion of brisés volés? So You Think You Can Dance may have some of the naffest production values on the box, but it’s actually done the job of getting dance – other than ballroom – into the mainstream. And so far, I’m hooked.”

Above photo by Zak Hussein, taken from Mackrell’s Guardian review.

Annie Liebovitz’s latest Louis Vuitton ad features the photog herself along with her longtime friend, Mikhail Baryshnikov. I love how his pants legs are rolled up and his well-worked feet are visible — I love how he’s not really making a dancerly pose, yet you can still tell. And I love how young he looks!

Visit the NYTimes blog to see an early video of their working together (a fuller one will apparently be available February 11th).

Nevada Ballet Theater, which recently held its annual gala in Las Vegas, honored former Dancing With The Stars contestant Marie Osmond as its “Woman of the Year.” Osmond credited her DWTS friend Wayne Newton with convincing her to start her own show in Vegas, and joked that though Donny did better than she on DWTS, he’d never be “woman of the year.” Also at the gala was ABT’s regal Cynthia Gregory, who, apparently recently moved there.

Apparently the New York Post’s Page Six people have found out about Benjamin Millepied’s prior relationship with ABT’s Isabella Boylston (and are finding it newsworthy) because they’re now depicting Natalie Portman as a “homewrecker” who tore the two apart. (Doesn’t that term usually apply to someone who splits a family apart?) They’re saying Millepied and Boylston were together for three years, lived together before Portman moved in on him, and were thinking of marriage. Really? Wasn’t he dating Saskia Beskow until pretty recently? And isn’t Boylston rather young — were they really together for that long? And marriage??? Celeb bloggers are picking the story up as well.

Isn’t it so surreal though that Page Six is interested in this at all? I guess I’ve repeatedly bemoaned that we haven’t had a famous dancer since Baryshnikov — and I think Millepied may be the first since him to date a celebrity. I wonder if more people will actually turn up at NYCB when he’s dancing, or at ABT to see Boylston?

I’d never ventured into one of these stores before yesterday (aside from the bookstore in SoHo) but I found they have lots of little treasures.

Here are some photos of the Dancers Responding to AIDS benefit performances, held at Cedar Lake studios on January 11th and 12th. I was unable to go, but heard Danny Tidwell ended up not dancing. But Jamar Roberts (above) of Alvin Ailey, and our Marcelo Gomes of ABT did, and both were reportedly charmingly wonderfully superb — as always!

Marcelo on left, Sarita Allen in middle, and Rubinald Pronk (in excellent jacket) on right.

Go here for the rest of the photos.

Haha! So the gossip papers are reporting that Ben Millepied and Natalie Portman had gone to see Gyor National Ballet of Hungary on January 9th. But that’s wrong! Pacific Northwest Ballet was performing at the Joyce Theater (outside of which the above photos were taken) on that date. Gyor IS coming to the Joyce though — on January 26th, and I can’t wait. I’m very intrigued…

Here are some photos of Burn the Floor’s final New York performance, held January 10th. Derek Hough took over for Maks Chmerkovskiy and danced with Kym Johnson; other participating DWTS / SYTYCD alum included Mary Murphy and Karen Hauer.

Thank you to reader Jonathan for sending me the link!

I’ve been hearing rumors about this for a while now, but now that the celeb gossip mags are starting to pick it up, I feel authorized to post about it. Millepied is doing the choreography for the upcoming film Black Swan, which Portman is starring in.

Ever since the World Series, I’d been secretly hoping for a Derek Jeter / Ashley Bouder romance (don’t know why; just thought they’d look so cute together — she seems to be his type and he needs an athletic woman to kind of play-rival him and to show him how to really jump — and how fun would it be to see him at Lincoln Center all the time!) but, okay this will certainly do as well…

Photos above from The Hollywood Gossip.

For the Ballroomers, here’s a nice, rather long interview with Yulia Zagoruychenko and Riccardo Cocchi, current world Latin champs. They talk about dance versus sport (Riccardo was going to be a footballer on the Roma team — who knew?), art versus sport, their personal lives, how they started dancing, the politics of dancesport, what dance means to them, how they found each other after long prior partnerships, why children should learn dance, etc. Good interview.

Aw, Bruce Springsteen took his two kids to see New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker last week. He applauded “at all the right moments” and seemed “enthralled” according to the Post.

I love it — crossover between my passion and favorite pastime! Derek Jeter was just named New Yorker of the year by the New York Daily News, who said:

“Throughout Jeter has conducted himself with grace, balletic grace in movement, a gentleman’s grace in life.”

And I recently found this on ebay.

(Derek Jeter photo taken from here.)

Photo of our Danny Tidwell (in back middle, obviously) recording the Memphis soundtrack, with the Broadway cast. Photo by Jenny Anderson, from Broadway.com.

There’s an interview with 11-year-old Maria Gorokhov, who dances the part of young Marie in NYCB’s Nutcracker, in the W Magazine blog.

Via Opera Chic.

(photo taken from W blog)

If you’re in NY and are free tonight, this looks pretty worthwhile.

New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker season opened on Friday night. Review coming soon, but first I just have to complain about what I assume is a new custom in the Koch Theater, at least during Nutcracker season — the selling of Twizzlers, gummy bears, M&Ms and other bags of candy, along with bottled water, in the concession area, which is situated so close to the auditorium, audiences are assuming they’re for consumption inside the theater.

My friend Mika and I were seated comfortably in our orchestra seats (my first time in the new Koch house orchestra — wonderful wonderful improvement from the old: each row of plush velvety seats is staggered considerably higher from the prior row so that you can easily see above the head in front of you! Yay!), the lights dimmed, Faycal came out and took his cute little bow, the orchestra began — this is some of my favorite music in all of ballet — and suddenly, the row behind me began this all-out candy fest. Multiple bags were torn into, water bottles opened. “Here, honey, have a licorice,” said the mother. I turned around and shot the mother a look but she completely ignored me — or perhaps didn’t even register that I was looking at her for a reason. This continued — the passing of the crinkly bags, the water bottle’s cap being removed and replaced, the noise the plastic bottle made as the water was drunk and it filled with air, the “here, have the rest of this cookie,” etc. continued throughout the entire first act. I don’t think anything has ever disturbed me so much in the theater. I felt like I was at a movie — and a noisy movie at that. I almost felt like crying during the mouse / soldier fight scene — I love those tantalizing flutes! And I could hardly hear them.

When the curtain went down on the first act, I turned around, but the family of four kept right on gorging, staring right back at me, like they had no idea what I was looking at, and not even trying to hide their food. I felt like lecturing them on manners, on music appreciation, on ballet-going not only being a visual experience. I looked down the row to see if anyone else was annoyed and then noticed several others were doing the same exact thing.

I decided this wasn’t a regular ballet crowd and some random audience member lecturing everyone would be ridiculous. So, I spent most of intermission walking up and down the aisles searching for an usher — did they get rid of half the staff or something? Finally, a woman dressed in black asked me if I needed something, and I asked her if she worked here. She said yes, and I told her about the picnic-ers, and led her to them, where she told them eating wasn’t allowed in the theater. They all looked rather astonished.

Then Mika and I walked out front and I saw the concession stands overflowing with that same candy. Then I felt bad. I realized they didn’t just go to the Duane Reade and buy out the candy counter in preparation for the night; they bought it inside the theater, thinking, like at the circus or something, it was perfectly okay to chow down during performance. They’d dressed up their little girls in bright satin-y dresses, they’d obviously splurged on orchestra seats, and they didn’t look that wealthy. I felt like an obnoxious snob! On our way back in, I saw several others carrying bags of candy in with them. The family in back of me clearly weren’t the only offenders. (see the comments too)

I mean, it is about manners, but it’s not just about etiquette. It’s about art appreciation. Most mainstream movies don’t rise to the level of art; they cater to people’s preconceived notions and their plots don’t require many brain cells to understand. So it makes sense that people can take considerable time from looking up at the screen to focus on getting at their candy and passing it all around. But of course not every form of entertainment is so simple. In order to appreciate the artists’ abilities to subtly structure sound and movement to tell a story, you can’t be so focused on your food.

Anyway, happily, they obeyed the usher and didn’t eat at all during the second act (which I was able to enjoy much more). But I think, to avoid that kind of embarrassment and audience annoyance, if they’re going to sell circus-like candy at the concession stands during the Nutcracker, then there should be signs posted nicely but clearly instructing people to consume the food and beverages in the lobby, not the theater.

I am extremely behind on reviews but here are a couple of pictures (by Erin Baiano) of the cast of Christopher Wheeldon’s Rhapsody Fantasie, which the choreographer premiered with his company, Morphoses, in October. I can’t write a full review but I guess it’s interesting to see what lingers in the mind. I remember a variety of movement — from neo-classical ballet to more contemporary with some ballroom thrown in — I remember some swing-y moves and even some salsa basics! I remember interesting ensemble work — with dancers at times breaking into pairs for partner dancing, at times the men dancing together, performing various complicated lifts, which I found rather mesmerizing. And I remember Wheeldon’s signature modern ballet pas de deux with the complicated “pretzel shape” lifts (as in the top photo, of NYCB’s Wendy Whelan and Australian dancer Andrew Crawford). Besides Whelan and Crawford I found Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk to be the most compelling pair, dancing their series of twisted shape after twisted shape with passion and psychological intention.

Opening Morphoses program 2 was Continuum, a Wheeldon ballet from several years ago (photo above, also by Erin Baiano). This was a very abstract work set to sharp, at times tense Ligetti music with brilliant lighting that made the dancers appear ghostly, as if their shadows, silhouetted on the back wall, were doing the dancing.

I love Christopher Wheeldon, who’s always trying to give audiences insight into the dance-making process. At the beginning of this program, he spoke a bit about the dances, and, regarding Continuum, he told us all to look out for a part where, as he was making that dance, he became mesmerized by a neighbor’s cat and dog. It was only all too obvious which pas de deux this was, and everyone laughed as the two dancers kind of crouched around each other getting ready for a playful (or maybe not so playful) attack. I don’t think the audience would have thought anything of it if he hadn’t pointed that out. Now if he can give us insight on how the whole thing comes together!…

There’s an excellent interview with young, newish ABT virtuoso (and very intelligent-sounding) Daniil Simkin at the Ballet Bag. Simkin talks about his experiences thus far with American Ballet Theater, dancing with major stars at the World Ballet Festival over the summer in Japan, and a gala he’s organizing next month in Athens. He also talks about how dance professionals can use social media to connect with fans and what he thinks ballet companies need to do to keep ballet alive. Excellent interview, superb questions, “bag ladies”!

And it gives me the opportunity to post, for people who don’t have the opportunity to regularly see ABT, some of his more astounding YouTube clips. Enjoy:

And The Flames of Paris, the first thing I ever saw him do (but with Sara Lane, at ABT). Look for the barrel turns around the 5:55 mark:

For more clips, go here.
Above photo, by Gene Schiavone, taken from Simkin’s blog.

Haha, I kept my TV on (for once) after SYTYCD ended and I just overheard some story on Fox News about an ABT dancer who also models. I turned around to face the screen and there was our Cory Stearns, lifting Stella Abrera in Benjamin Millepied’s Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once during ABT’s recent season at Avery Fisher Hall! I didn’t hear the first part of the story because I wasn’t really paying attention, but apparently Cory was standing in line at a deli and was discovered by some modeling agent. He’s now a model, as well as of course, an up and coming ABT danseur. Then they showed an excerpt of a music video he did with Kylie Minogue, which he apparently made when he was 17 — so a few years ago. Wow — I’d never seen it: he made her look like a real dancer.

Then they had a little interview with him. They asked him if he had a girlfriend and he laughed and said no, he’s currently available, but added that he prefers dancers. Funny how male ballet dancers (well, the straight ones) always do that. Female dancers seem more willing to “date outside the box” so to speak. Hmmm…

Anyway, since I didn’t get the first part of the story I have no idea what the point was — is he in a new modeling spread in some magazine this month? Did anyone else see it?

I just got an interesting comment (scroll down to last comment) on my post on Batsheva’s MAX, from someone who recently saw that performance in Bruges (one of my favorite places in the world, btw). I just point to it because I often find myself trying very very hard to appreciate a dance performance that bills itself as avant garde. And I often have a hard time not ending up with the same thoughts as that commenter…

Carlos Acosta is interviewed in the London Telegraph Travel section.

His worst traveling experience?:

“One of the worst was arriving in London to dance at just 18 and not being able to speak the language. I rented a room but didn’t know what anybody was talking about. I felt lost because I just couldn’t communicate. I wanted to see a movie, but everything was in English. When I went to a store to buy something I didn’t know what to say. I bought books and taught myself English, but it was six months before I was ready.”

Via tweet by the Ballet Bag.

Photo by Julian Andrews.

Here’s a Sarah Crompton interview with Christopher Wheedon in the London Telegraph. Morphoses is about to open their fall season there, debuting a new ballet by Wheeldon and one by Australian choreographer Tim Harbour. At the end of the month, New York audiences will get to see those premieres.

In the article, Wheeldon talks about trying to increase ballet’s appeal to new audiences. He surmises it may be certain ballet aesthetics, such as the toe shoes, that are a turn-off, that may make ballet inaccessible. I strongly disagree though. I think people are generally awed by the toe shoes and by the beauty and immense athleticism of the art form. They’re all the more awe-inspiring when you see them up close, a thought I had recently in the Guggenheim’s tiny theater watching ABT, their studio company, and the students at ABT’s Kennedy-Onassis School of Ballet perform in a Works & Process event there.

I really think people in general are drawn to stories. That’s what I hear anyway from other dance-goers, or would-be dance-goers (who patronize theater and opera but shy away from dance). I think abstract ballets can definitely be intriguing but I think if your repertoire consists of only the kind of story-less ballets Balanchine made it’s going to suffer. I’ll be very excited to see the Alice in Wonderland that Wheeldon’s doing for the Royal.

ABT principal ballerina Gillian Murphy (who I was just going on about needing a ballet choreographed especially for her) will receive a Princess Grace Statue Award , at the upcoming award gala, held at Cipriani on October 21, along with theater / film actor Mandy Patinkin (who is a multiple award-winning Broadway actor but whom I think most still know as Inigo Montoya). Ticket prices look pretty steep, but congrats to them!

Photo by Matt Albani from ExploreDance.

NYCB principal ballerina Wendy Whelan and her husband, photographer and filmmaker David Michalek, are featured in the “Apartment” section of this week’s Time Out New York. Look at that adorable kitty in the first pic :)

Via Oberon.

Above picture (I know, isn’t it amazing!) taken from Dance.net.

until ABT takes over Avery Fisher Hall!

Speaking of Baz Luhrmann, Roberto Bolle, who has said recently that he’d like to work with the director, was spotted at opening ceremonies for Milan’s Fashion week, which kicked off yesterday. Via Treehugger. For more Fashion Week photos and vids, go here.

I was browsing around in the bookstore yesterday and spotted this. Apparently in the summer of 1518, in Strasbourg, one woman began dancing and couldn’t stop. This “hysteria” spread until a great number of people had literally danced themselves to death. It’s referred to as the dancing plague, which I’d never heard of before. The book is written by medical historian John Waller, and has received pretty good reviews. I’m definitely going to read it.

Of course it reminded me of the wilis of Giselle and made me think, though we moderns love to roll our eyes at some of these “silly” ballet characters — girls being turned into swans, maiden ghosts forcing the men who snubbed them in life to dance to their deaths — it’s interesting to explore their bases in history, myth and literature. The ideas usually came from somewhere.

Here’s a nice video of clips from the Dancers Responding to AIDS performances, which took place during the Fire Island Dance Festival in July. Watch for Danny around the 1.43 and 3.24 marks. You can also spot Keigwin + Company (in the towels) and members of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (around the 1.38 and 3.11 marks), as well as others whom I didn’t recognize. Anyone recognize the classical ballet dancers? They’re good! What a gorgeous setting.

Video via SYTYCDism.

Speaking of Larry Keigwin: I’d really really really wanted to see this at the Guggenheim — his new piece set to Steve Reich’s Pulitzer-prize-winning score from 2007, Double Sextet. Unfortunately I was horribly sick with a cold-turned sinus infection-turned several days-long TAC attack and just couldn’t make it. Anyway, Keigwin and ballet choreographer Peter Quanz each created dances to the same piece of music. Their creations, which were performed by members of their dance companies, varied greatly, showing the different interpretations and approaches dance artists can take to one piece of music. In addition to the Macaulay review in the NYTimes (which I linked to above), here is fellow blogger Evan’s take (with lots of pictures).