Carlos Acosta, famed principal with the Royal Ballet in London, performing with his company during their historic visit to Cuba, his native country.

Cubans watching the performance outside the Garcia Lorca Hall, which seems to have been broadcast live on the big screens.

The legendary Alicia Alonso, credited largely with bringing ballet to Latin America and Latin America to Ballet, 88 years old now, surrounded by Acosta and Tamara Rojo (also with the Royal). Joel Carreno (Jose’s little brother), of Ballet Nacional de Cuba is on the far left. All photos from Getty Images, taken from the Sacramento Bee online.

Wow, I’ve been so busy first with ABT / NYCB season here, and now with trying to put the finishing touches on my novel (hopefully will be out by the end of the week, fingers crossed!) that I totally missed this amazing story. The Royal Ballet is currently making their first ever visit to Cuba. Thank you thank you thank you to Haglund for pointing it out. He’s been covering it (via the papers and online networks). Visit his blog to get all the updates — start here with the most current entry.

Last Thursday Alexandra Ansanelli (above, photo by Enrique de la Osa, of Reuters) gave the final performance of her career, in Cuba’s Grand Teatro. Ansanelli surprised everyone by retiring early (she’s only 28; she’s an American ballerina, much beloved by many New Yorkers, as she was formerly with NYCB. She joined the Royal a few years ago so that she could take on more classical roles). Read an interview with her in the USDaily; link also via Haglund.

And go here for a news video, “A Diplomacy of Dance,” on MSNBC — there’s some good coverage of Acosta, who is interviewed. Again via the awesome Haglund. Do read the rest of his blog; he’s got lots of stuff that I didn’t link to. Oh dear, what would we do without blogs?…

Yesterday’s Romeo and Juliet was the most “dancerly” cast, by which I mean, it was full of ABT’s most quintessential dancers, as opposed to actors. Cast was: David Hallberg and Gillian Murphy as Romeo and Juliet, Jared Matthews as Mercutio, and Blaine Hoven as Benvolio. Photo above, of ABT’s poster of the ballet outside in front of the Met, showing David Hallberg with Paloma Herrera (and two adorable little girls posing in front)

David Hallberg has got to be the most beautiful male dancer now alive. I couldn’t find any photos of him and Gillian dancing this ballet together, but below are a couple of the two of them dancing Antony Tudor’s version, which the company did last fall at City Center.

Look at his gorgeous feet!!! (photo from Tobi Tobias’s ArtsJournal blog)

Photo by Andrea Mohin, from NYTimes.

Because he is such a tremendously beautiful dancer, I really prefer to see David in more pure movement roles, like Balanchine ballets or some of the newer ballets, like those created by Lauri Stallings and Jorma Elo and Stanton Welch.

He really came alive here when Juliet first sits down to play her lute at the Capulet ball and he dances for her. Those series of high jumps with the continuous turns high in the air landing on one foot almost made me cry. David is most at home when he’s just dancing, and any time he had a solo where he could kind of transcend the story, transcend everything around him and just dance, it really almost made me cry — I’m not kidding! For that reason, I will never ever tire of seeing him dance Romeo or anything else.

But this, to me, is the most dramatic of ballets. It’s Shakespeare, so it’s first and foremost theater, albeit using MacMillan’s poetry to advance the storyline instead of Shakespeare’s. During the first intermission, a girl behind me exclaimed to her friend, “I can’t even tell which one is Romeo!” And I’m sure she meant not that she didn’t see David, but that she didn’t know he was Romeo. And I kind of know what she meant.

For one thing, I think it was wrong to cast Grant DeLong as Paris. He’s too good-looking and charming and suave. Paris needs to be a bit of a dork, or there needs to be something off about him, or else you’re thinking, “Oooh Juliet, great catch!” Which is exactly what I thought when I saw DeLong.

And the other thing is David’s enormous dance skills being so far ahead of his acting. He didn’t really fully inhabit Romeo. But I still think he’s done far far better than before and I think he’s getting better. There were points where he really brought himself into that universe, into Romeo’s specific situations. He was very good with all of the sword-fighting, both at the beginning and in the second act, when he slays Tybalt. During those scenes, he really became a reckless kid not really thinking about the consequences of his actions. And my favorite acting part for him was before he killed Tybalt. When he picks up the sword that killed his friend, he looks at it, at first in disbelief, and then he traces its blade, wiping the imaginary blood, and what’s happened hits him and his rage against Tybalt takes off. I thought he did so well with that.

And then there are things I don’t think will ever look right on David, no matter how hard he tries — like his cavorting with the prostitutes. Roberto and Marcelo and Jose Carreno (wherever he’s been this season — he seemed to abscond after his turn in Giselle?…) are just so much more believable when they grab the harlots and play with them and toss them madly into the air. David’s just too much of a romantic It’s partly just the way he looks. But he kind of plays off that by having his Romeo internally reject them, and by playing it as if he’s trying hard to be a sport and take their taunts with amusement.

I also heard people in the audience say they thought there was no chemistry between David and Gillian. I was reminded of something Chimene said on seeing them dance in Chicago, something along the lines that they’re both too ethereal, and she needs someone who’s grounded. I think the problem with the two of them together is that they are both quintessential dancers. No one’s humanizing this drama. Everyone’s concentrating on the stylistics and the plastique and the bodily expression of things, on making the most of every shape they possibly can, and of course on dancing with technical perfection. Gillian is probably technically the greatest female dancer in the world — at least that I’ve seen. And I loved her in Swan Lake — she was all-around my favorite Odette  / Odile. But Swan Lake is more of a dancerly ballet. I’m probably not using the right terms, but you know what I mean? It’s all about making shapes with your arms and torso and legs that most evoke a swan, a swan-maiden. And in the Black Swan pas, it’s all about seducing Siegfried with your pyrotechnics — those crazy fouettes and lightening-speed turns all over the stage. So the story is all in the body; you don’t really need to express anything with your face (at least if you’re the female lead).

But, again, Romeo and Juliet is fundamentally theater. No one arches her back like Gillian and no one looks as gorgeous running around the stage with her back and head thrown back and her arms out while fleeing her bedroom and running off to Friar Lawrence. And her form was beautiful too when she woke up in the crypt and freaked out about being in the midst of the dead and then began running about trying to figure out how to get out of there, when she nearly trips over Romeo. Diana Vishneva did much the same thing in that final scene, and I prefer Irina Dvorovenko, who kind of collapsed into herself and covered her face when she saw Romeo lying on the ground. Irina’s reaction to Romeo might not have been as “dancerly” as the other two, but it was human and it was real and it moved me the most. I also thought I saw the most in Irina’s eyes during that scene where she’s simply sitting on the bed staring out at the audience trying to decide what to do after Romeo’s been banished and she’s told she has to marry Paris. It takes a real actress to have that kind of thought behind her eyes, to be able to express so much while sitting shock still.

So, I don’t know. Everything David and Gillian did, both separately and together in the pas de deux was absolutely perfect, and absolutely beautiful. David almost went on pointe reaching up to her at the end of the balcony scene, when she’d gone back up to her bedroom. It was so gorgeously stylized, it should have been full of passion. But somehow it wasn’t. I don’t want him to stop making stylized choices like that — the way he apparently stopped taking his breathtaking dive at the end of Swan Lake. He just needs to learn how to make the passion come from within as well. Same with Gillian — she makes beautiful shapes, but they didn’t fully embody the passion here.

Jared Matthews got a lot of applause as Mercutio, but he didn’t do that much for me. His dancing was often stellar – -he had an excellent sequence of pirouettes — but the acting wasn’t there, and the role of Mercutio more than any other I think requires a good actor with decent comical ability. Am I going to see Daniil Simkin at all in this role, ABT? Patrick Ogle didn’t stand out much as Tybalt. He had the stern look down but it didn’t come through in his dancing. He danced it way too cautiously. Blaine Hoven was very very good as Benvolio — those cat-like sideways jumps made me want to jump up and whoot right then (of course I didn’t; I would never!). He seriously deserves a promotion to soloist. But I think he’s going to have to learn how to make some sort of facial expression if he’s ever going to make it to principal. Simone Messmer, as one of the harlots, gave a particularly memorable performance when Tybalt died.

(Desir, photo by Cylla von Tiedemann, from ABT website)

On the Dnieper grew on me after seeing it the second time on Tuesday night, with the new cast, although I still generally preferred the first cast. If you missed my earlier post on Ratmansky’s new ballet, it’s here. Second cast was: Jose Carreno as Sergei the returning soldier; Hee Seo as Natalia, his betrothed; Diana Vishneva as Olga, the flirt who steals his heart; and Alexandre Hammoudi as Olga’s volatile fiance.

I absolutely loved Diana as Olga. She and Hee Seo, who was excellent as well, really drove home the ballet’s pathos and heartbreak. A BalletTalk poster said that with Diana, Olga became the central character and I think they’re right. Diana’s Olga was the most dynamic character in the whole thing; she really underwent a change in those mere 40 minutes. And it was believable. She starts out this carefree and careless flirtatious girl, frolicking around, teasing Sergei, teasing her boyfriend. And when her flirtatiousness with Sergei sets the whole disastrous string of events in motion — Sergei falls for her and she for him, her fiance has an emotional breakdown and beats Sergei, her parents are distraught, and she realizes what she and Sergei have done to poor Natalia — she really grows up, overnight, becomes a totally different person, takes responsibility for her actions. When she and Sergei bow to Natalia at the end in a prayer for forgiveness, before running off to their new life together, you feel equal heartbreak for both women.

Hee Seo and Veronika Part were equally compelling, although Seo seemed a little younger and more naive up front and I didn’t notice the holding out of the arms and the resting of the head on the shoulder like I did with Veronika. Jose, who’s generally ABT’s best actor I think (he never overdoes it; everything is authentic), was good as Sergei, but different from Marcelo. Jose seemed to be searching for something at the beginning, trying to rediscover his hometown with those short, staccato steps in each direction. His movements at the beginning were more modern than ballet, sharp and staccato at points, like he was unnerved that he didn’t recognize things or that things were different. (That kind of movement is more visible on a smaller body though.) Marcelo didn’t seem as sad or desperate up front. But then when torn between the two women, with Jose I  didn’t notice the back and forth of the jumps, this way and that, as I did with Marcelo. The jumps first to one woman, then the other, are my favorite Sergei movement trait, along with the throwing himself to the ground in anguish, almost like a half push-up.

Alexandre Hammoudi was a very different fiance from David Hallberg. Alexandre was quieter, especially up front, not seeming to realize the potential dangers of Olga’s flirtatiousness. He underwent a character change, like Diana’s Olga, then, becoming aggrieved and angry when he realized what had happened. David was more volatile up front, as if that was fundamentally part of the fiance’s character. Those extremely fast-paced steps during his anger scene were not as pronounced with Alexandre as with David. It looked more like he was kicking up leaves (which they had strewn on the ground); with David he was using those feet like daggers. David made such an impression with that character, and specifically that going nuts scene — I’m never going to forget it; I’m never going to forget that insane, almost terrifying, tap dance.

Okay, can I stop talking about this ballet now and focus on the other Prokofiev pieces?!

I generally wasn’t in love with Desir (photo at top of post) by James Kudelka, at least not as it was danced here. The movement is lovely and much of it original and the dancers are excellent but something was just lacking and I can’t figure out exactly what. It’s a ballet about several different couples, and I think my problem is that all the couples are basically the same, at least the way it’s being danced by ABT. With someone like Tharp or Robbins, different couples have different issues — there’s a romantic couple, a sexed-up couple, a fighting couple, etc. Here, the first two couples on first, dressed in fiery red — the women in long, flowing dresses that really whirl when they turn, the men in brown pants and long-sleeved colored tops –  both seem passionate and in love, all but Gillian Murphy from the first night’s cast, wearing bright smiles. But I don’t know if the happy smiles are supposed to be there. Some of the movement is rather chaotic. The woman seems to want to go one way and the man keeps turning her the other, mid-air. Gillian was the only one who made this dramatic, as if there was something not quite right going on between the characters. Apollinaire Scherr noticed that as well; read her very insightful comments on the whole program here (scroll down).

Then we move to a set of four couples, all dancing at once. My favorite part of the whole ballet is the men of these couples. At one point, men and women split and the men all dance together, followed by the women doing a group dance. When the men group dance in this way, each is doing his own thing — one jumping arms up toward the sky as if in ecstasy, another jeteing back and forth as if confused, another spinning himself into a whirlwind, etc. Then the women dance and they all do exactly the same thing — hold up their skirts and tip toe around, jump waving the skirts all about, all in unison, in sync. They’re all the same character — what does this say about men and women? Then, the couples pair up again, each man to a woman, and there’s one really funny part where the women stand still and the men do a bunch of high, twisty turning jumps,their limbs flying — as if to protest, “what’s up with that?,” “how can you say that to me?” It’s very funny, very evocative of real life relationships. The audience seemed to laugh louder on the first night though.

Still, in all, the couple who stood out to me the most is the more adagio one with all the beautiful lifts. The second night it was danced by Jared Matthews and Maria Riccetto, who were very good, but there was just something extra special about Cory Stearns and Isabella Boylston that really took my breath away the first night. Another performance I’m not going to forget.

And then Prodigal Son. This isn’t really my favorite ballet and I don’t honestly see how critics can trash Boris Eifman so and love this. What’s with all that fist-pounding on the thighs, the wide-mouthed screams at what, being asked to get water from the well with his sisters? How melodramatic is that? I know it’s a classic now, but I feel if it premiered today people would laugh and roll their eyes. Unless Balanchine meant for parts of it to be funny, like that up front melodrama, and the “sex” scenes. Anyway, read Apollinaire’s comments about Prodigal too, though; she made me appreciate it more, and talked about how certain dancers can play up the immaturity in those early thigh-pounding scenes so that it doesn’t look so full of melodrama.

Herman Cornejo as the son and Michele Wiles as the Siren danced the leads on opening night; Angel Corella and Kristi Boone the second night. Unfortunately I have to miss the third cast — the magnificent Daniil Simkin and the tantalizingly beautiful Irina Dvorovenko. If anyone sees them, please report! I’m dying to know how they do together!

Herman was excellent dance-wise. As expected, he nailed all those high-flying, angst-ridden jumps at the beginning. He danced a little more carefully than Angel, who had a minor slip at the beginning, then looked like he might fall on his way down that slide in the middle section. But I felt Angel delivered on the drama better; he took me through the emotions with him. The way he watched his Siren, he was like a little boy mesmerized. It made you mesmerized by her too. And then the way he danced with her — it was like an awkward, boy losing his virginity, sex scene. I’ve never seen it quite look like that before, though it’s probably supposed to! Then when he was robbed and left to die (Herman was really shockingly stunning  in this part too — he was a horrid sight, his body up there, leaning almost lifeless against the cross-like slide), and came crawling back home body all dirt-encrusted, then into his father’s arms, like a baby. It does end up being very emotionally compelling, silly as it is at the top. I’d like to see Herman in this later, after he’s had a few goes at it. I think if he could up the drama more, he’d be perfect.

Kristi so far has been my favorite Siren! This role I find a bit inherently awkward too — all that wrapping the long train of her costume around her legs, crouching to get it between her thighs. It almost always looks more weird than sexy, but somehow Kristi whipped the fabric around so fast, it was spellbinding, practically had a dominatrix feel. And then when she does those — what I call upside-down crab walks — where she’s on her hands and toe pointes, belly up and she walks past him develope-ing her legs up with each step, spider-like — most dancers kick straight up, but Kristi’s developes went all the way back, practically to her chest. It looked so much more tantalizing than I’ve seen that before. Kristi’s pointed toes are so pronounced, her feet practically look like ensnaring sickles — she probably has a better Siren body than anyone (except for maybe Veronika Part — I wonder if she’ll ever be cast?)

Okay, I’m done. Sorry I keep writing so much! If anyone sees the Daniil / Irina Prodigal cast, please let me know!

Yay, the season has offically begun! This picture was taken during intermission; that’s why it doesn’t look that crowded. I was sprinting in, nearly late, as usual, so didn’t have time to snap some pics before the performance but fortunately it was still light outside during intermission.

Anyway, Michelle Obama (who served as one of the gala’s honorary chairs) looked smashing in a sleek dark grey sleeveless, knee-length dress with tiny black ruffles lining the bottom. I’m sure there will be beaucoup des pictures seeing as how many blasted camera people there were; I’ll be sure to steal some when they’re posted on all the society websites (Oh, look, here it is in the NYTimes already)

(photo Timothy A. Clary)

It was just about the craziest thing I’ve seen on the Met Opera stage: after Veronika Part’s mouthwatering Mozartiana opened the show, artistic director Kevin McKenzie came out and thanked everyone who needed thanked — all the donors, designer Caroline Herrera who funds the gala, etc., and Senator Chuck Schumer came out and gave a little talk about the importance of funding for the arts, etc. Then, Schumer disappeared behind the curtain and moments went by. Everyone kind of looked around at each other like “what’s going to happen next?!”

Soon, the curtain was pulled back to allow some people to carry out a podium with a banner “American Ballet Theater” draped over its front. The doors to the lobby opened and a flock of people bearing weapon-sized cameras blasted in. Several men dressed in black promptly rose from their aisle seats and followed the flock of weapon-camera-bearers to the front of the aisle, near the stage. Caroline Kennedy was announced. She came out, everyone applauded, and she mentioned that the school of ballet associated with ABT, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, would be performing on the Met Opera stage for the first time ever tonight. Everyone ooohed and aaahed. Then, she announced First Lady Michelle Obama.

The curtain pulled back again and out she came. Of course everyone gave a standing ovation. She smiled radiantly, then, after a moment, directed us to be seated. Then she gave a short speech. It was a little hard to focus on what she was saying with everyone — both professional photographers and audience members with cell phone and digital cameras alike — flashing away as they were, but she talked about the necessity of the Arts for a culture to flourish, the importance of arts education, etc. Then she introduced the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School students.

As soon as she disappeared behind the curtain, the auditorium remained still pending the exit of the flock of pro camera wielders. It’s funny because there were all these non-dance writers in the press section. You could hear the sighs of relief, the sinking down into the chairs, and the putting away of pens and paper — and cell phones, which they’d used to light their writing paper during Mrs. Obama’s speech, which would have been extremely annoying had it not been for all the flashing bulbs anyway. But it made me wonder how they’d ever survive as performing arts critics! I mean, who needs light to see to write!

Anyway, the students were excellent. They performed Le Defile (The Procession) by Raymond Lukens. There were three large groups of them, in three levels — the very little ones, a medium-age / level group, and the older, very advanced ones. The choreography was basically a showcase of classical ballet steps, much like a very advanced ballet class — jumps, jumps with changing feet, jumps with changing feet that went on forever performed by a set of advanced boys (which drove the audience to wild applause), jetes, chaine turns, multiple pirouettes, fouttes, etc., and then a bit of partnering. It gave the students a chance to show what they could do — and the advanced ones could do a great deal! Extremely impressive, and great fun.

Then on were Xiomara Reyes and Herman Cornejo doing an excerpt from August Bournonville’s La Sylphide. This was the most dramatic I think I’ve ever seen Xiomara. I was sitting in the back of the orchestra and she really projected. She was really sweet. And Herman as always amazed with his virtuosity, his jumps, his razer-sharp precision, his astounding clarity of line.

The corps in both this, La Sylphide, and Swan Lake, later in the evening, were absolutely amazing, by the way. Not a head arched back more than the others, not a leg raised higher. They were all so on. When they work together like that, in perfect unity; it’s really visually breathtaking.

Then was Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux danced by Ethan Stiefel and Gillian Murphy. Ethan and his strutting around stage, taking his own good time after their duet and before beginning his solo, making the conductor wait for him! And his high jumps with all miraculously many beats of the feet. I wished my friend Alyssa could have come so she could see he’s not just Mr. Sexy; he’s a superb dancer. And Gillian was radiant, and a perfect foil with her speed-of-light chaine turns. They enjoyed a long, slow kiss during the curtain call. The audience went mad!

Then was the hunt scene from Sylvia danced by Michele Wiles followed by a piece d’occasion (the first of two of the night), by Alexei Ratmansky, for Nina Ananiashvili, called Waltz Masquerade. It was set to the Waltz from Aram Khachaturian’s Masquerade Suite and it was cute and comical. She was dressed in this long, red dramatic, Carmen-like dress with a sexy black lace overlay on the top. There were four tuxedoed men, each bearing a gold candlelabra, one at each corner of the stage. These men turned out to be: Jose Carreno at the front left corner; Marcelo Gomes, at back left; Angel Corella back right; and a blonde on the front right who I initially thought was David Hallberg (I was sitting FAR back from the stage!) until the fun began and he shook his head about like a sassy mop and I realized DH just does not have enough goofball in him to do such a thing, even if he tried. So, I decided it was either Ethan or Maxim Beloserkovky. Anyway, Nina’s character was supposed to be dancing about the stage in a melodramatic solo — but it was purposefully melodramatic, and so comical. Like a silly, cartoon version of an upcoming swan song, really, which, is of course, what’s coming up for her later in the season (and will be much more sobering when it does). At one point, she just passionately crashes to the ground and remains there, in a heap. Nothing happens. The men, obviously her servants, start looking at each other like, what now? They shrug, slowly walk over to her. Then, Marcelo starts imitating her melodramatic dance, but far more cartoonishly, and of course it’s hilarious. The others join in. Max (I think it was Max, not Ethan) does his thrashing hair thing. I couldn’t see facial expressions but I assume they were making fun of their master. Then she wakes up, catches them, and they’re sent back to their posts.

After intermission was the balcony pas de deux from MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, danced by Marcelo and Diana Vishneva. At first, Diana approaches her balcony with all the drama of a ballerina playing Juliet, rather than Juliet herself. I rolled my eyes. This is what I don’t like about her. She’s an excellent dancer but she’s all about the pomp and circumstance and not about the character. Maybe it’s a Russian thing, but I don’t see that in Veronika Part or Irina Dvorovenko. Anyway, she eventually lightened up, thankfully, and I felt like I was watching not a prima ballerina being a prima ballerina but Juliet herself, falling hopelessly in love. When she runs around him one foot solid on the ground, the other on pointe, it’s so girlish, so real yet so poetic. Those are the best — I don’t know what to call them — runs around kneeling Romeo — that I’ve ever seen — not even Alessandra Ferri’s were that sweet. Still, I felt some of the lifts lacked the beauty and magic of  those Marcelo and Julie Kent do together when they dance this scene. I don’t feel she dances that well with a partner; she’s more into herself. Marcelo’s leaps around the stage and big high passionate jumps were thrilling. He got some good bravos for those.

Then were Paloma Herrera and Max Beloserkovsky in the Act II pas de deux from Swan Lake. I was hoping it’d be the Black Swan pdd, but no. I guess the program was pretty bravura-heavy already. I don’t see him dance much, but Max is really quite good. He’s really a character and he’s the perfect Prince Siegfried, regal yet vulnerable and tragically in love. And he’s a good partner.

Then was the mad fun of Le Corsaire, with Irina Dvorovenko, David Hallberg as Conrad, and Angel Corella as Ali. Except something happened at the beginning and I hope David’s okay. The tallest guy in the entire opera house had to sit in front of me and I was trying to navigate my way around his enormous head just as a bunch of people up front went “Oooooooh!” When I was finally able to see the stage, Irina was standing in front of David, face toward the audience. She didn’t seem to have any particular expression on her face, but, then, I was light years away from her. Then David did an assisted pirouette with her and everyone applauded, so it must have been a lift that didn’t quite happen or something. Anyway, I hope he’s okay; I know his shoulder sometimes comes out of socket. Anyway, all seemed to be fine after that: all three were brilliant. Of course. Angel astounded, as always, and I started giggling during his first solo and couldn’t stop all the way through the second. I love Irina. She was radiant. She did those continuous turning kicks on pointe like they were nothing. She has the drama and the virtuosity when needed and the always beautiful, graceful lines. And David’s leaps all over the stage were magnificent. I could see this goofy ballet over and over and over again, as long as no one gets hurt Angel did not leap out from behind the curtain during curtain call, sadly.

Then there was another piece d’occasion. Herbie Hancock played piano, onstage, while first Jose Carreno, then Stella Abrera, danced to his music. This was cute and comical as well, and kind of reminiscent of Jerome Robbins’s Other Dances or Suite of Dances, where the dancer(s) connect mainly with the musician. At one point, Hancock went nuts with the keys, obviously way too fast to be danceable, and Jose stopped in his tracks, looked over at him, and lifted his hands, like what gives, dude? He sat down near the base of the piano and just rested. The same happened with Stella. She danced, then stopped and gave Hancock a look when he began another little virtuoso section. She finally sat down beside him on the piano bench, and eventually, he ended on a romantic note, she snuggling next to him softly, sweetly.

The evening ended with the finale of Balanchine’s Theme and Variations. The leads were danced by Sarah Lane and Daniil Simkin. It was a nice way to end the program, but with the likes of Simkin, I wondered why they only did that group finale, where he and Sarah are basically leading a processional, instead of some of the earlier bravura parts with all the corkscrew turns for the man. An opening night gala performance is meant at least in part to showcase the dancers doing what they do best, and he is best at the bravura stuff, not leading processionals.

Anyway, the whole night, as usual, was magic. Saw Sigourney Weaver and Kelly Ripa in the audience.

Oh, for my Dancing With the Stars readers, I taped the show, but for lord knows what reason it was somehow muted. I have no idea how on earth I managed to do such a thing, but it was pretty amusing watching the show in pure silence — no words, no music. Needless to say, I’ll have to watch online tomorrow.

But now, dead tired, must sleep. Goodnight.

I was in the bookstore the other day looking for literary magazines and somehow got caught up in the latest issue of Vogue Hommes International. I’ve been a fan of Keanu Reeves all the way back since River’s Edge (honestly) and I saw on the cover that there was an interview inside with Bret Easton Ellis (novelist, Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Glamorama, etc. etc.) Interview with BEE is pretty funny, actually, in a way it likely wasn’t intended to be. IE: interviewer: So, you were an icon in, like the 80’s. BEE: Yeah, it was hard being an icon. And confusing. Seriously. I’d get in a fight with my boyfriend and I’d be like, wait, you can’t criticize me; I’m an icon!” But my favorite BEE quote is here.

Anyway, I was flipping through and there are all these little mini interviews with and photos of writers (Stefan Merrill Block too!), architects, actors and filmmakers, of course designers and models.

(French actor / filmmaker Louis Garrel by Bruce Weber, images from here)

But not a single dancer anywhere. Why not? They’d make such good models

(photos of Sebastien Marcovici and Robert Fairchild by Paul Kolnik, from NYCB website)

(Jose Carreno and Roberto Bolle by Tommy Ng, from ExploreDance)

(David Hallberg and Herman Cornejo in Gene Schiavone pic, from here)

(Sergey Surkov, my photo; Slavik Kryklyvyy from here)

(Arunas Bizokas, my photo; Linas Koreiva, from here and here)

Vogue Hommes should so hire me to compile a dancer spread! Fabrizio Ferri can do the pictures. Maybe Bruce Weber, though he can get kind of cliched and corny… No, Fabrizio.

Then, yesterday, I saw Valentino: The Last Emperor, which was pretty good. The Dolce Vita-esque scenes were the best   And it reminded me of Fashion Week’s being moved from Bryant Square to Lincoln Center, and I thought how excellent (and fitting of course) it would be to have NYCB and ABT ballerinas as the models, an idea Kristin Sloan had proposed on the Winger a while back. Ballerinas generally have far better bodies than models. Come on!

(Stella Abrera, photo by Nancy Ellison, taken from here)

(Irina Dvorovenko, from ABT website)

(Janie Taylor, by Paul Kolnik, from ExploreDance)

How sweet would Janie look in this Valentino gown (middle, pink, image from here)

And Irina in this (image, here):

(photo of Ethan Stiefel by Richard Calmes, from NYTimes)

Last night the Guggenheim Museum’s Works and Process event centered on Ethan Stiefel’s new dean-ship of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (which is both a high school and now a university as well). Stiefel is of course a famous ABT principal, star of both Center Stage movies, and ran the summer program Stiefel and Students / Stiefel and Stars, out on Martha’s Vineyard, which my friend Alyssa and I went to a couple of years ago. It was hosted by blogger / dance writer and photographer (and former ABT dancer and NC School of the Arts alum) Matt Murphy, and also included choreographer Larry Keigwin (artistic director of Keigwin + Company), who was the recipient of the school’s first residency under Stiefel.

It was a fun evening. Discussion centered around Ethan’s decision to take on the position, in light of the fact that he’s still dancing (he’d had several surgeries on both knees, knew he wanted to do something like this at some point but stressed about when was proper time to do it), his new schedule (now waking at 6:30 — as opposed to 11 am when he use to wake as a dancer — to take class, then teach a couple of classes, then do all manner of administrative / financial / directorial things – -not easy tasks in light of current economic crisis, and still try to find time for his own rehearsals), and just generally his teaching and directorial aesthetics (he’d come up with eight “initiatives” to instill a culture and sense of identity in the school, the last of which Matt read — which was to encourage students to be inspired by both art and life.) Gia Kourlas has a good article in the Times that summarizes all of this as well.

Keigwin joined Matt and Ethan for the last quarter or so of the panel, and he spoke about his residency, how he’d choreographed a new work both on the students and his own company simultaneously, what it was like to work with students, and what it was like to be out of NY. I’d never heard him speak before and he’s very personable, fun, and chatty with a good sense of humor (which doesn’t surprise me — his work is largely humorous and accessible as well). He talked about the company being beyond thrilled with the washing machines and the cooking space (if you don’t get out of New York much, this kind of surprise happens!) and so enjoyed performing a lot of domestic activities. He was cute! And Ethan was his usual self — his completely understated, deadpan style of talking oozing with sexiness and manly charm. Before introducing one of his students’ performances — of the Four Cygnets in Swan Lake – he explained the girls wouldn’t have the swans’ usual hairpieces: “We got a lot going on and … we just didn’t get that done in time,” he said with a smile and a shrug. Somehow the way he said it just gave everyone the giggles, which, honestly, often happens when the man speaks.

Anyway, we saw Tangled Tango, a modern piece by Dianne Markham, a contemporary choreographer at the school, the pas de deux and coda from Le Corsaire, which Ethan staged, the Four Cygnets from Swan Lake staged by Nina Danilova, and August Bournonville’s The Jockey Dance, also staged by Ethan.

Finally, we ended with Keigwin’s Natural Selection (a modern piece), which totally blew me away. The Keigwin was based on Darwin, survival of the fittest and all that, and was so stunning, filled with very difficult partnering, lifts, students crawling around on the floor, clawing at the ground and each other, lashing out, really having at each other. (So, not quite his usual humorous piece) A guy crawled around with a girl wrapped around him, underneath him. At one point, it slowed, several dancers huddled around each other in a group, each kind of resting, momentarily, putting his / her ear to the back in front of them, perhaps comforting the other, perhaps trying to determine whether his / her heart was still beating, lungs still rising, to determine whether they’d “won”. Then a girl came rushing at them, climbed right over the huddle and jumped right onto the wall in back of them. Someone crawled after her and pushed her back to the ground. Keigwin’s signature move then ensued: a group of male dancers lifted her and she bent sideways, and ran alongside the back wall. The audience was wowed. But more importantly, I think, it was such a wonderful piece for students. I mean, what better way to teach them partnering, how to work with each other, how to be dramatic, how to make the meaning of a work come alive. I loved it!

(other dancers performing that move, photographer unknown, image taken from MySpace, here)

My other favorites were: the Four Cygnets — whoa, that was PERFECTLY done! Those girls — Tessa Blackman, Maya Joslow, Amy Saunder, and Lauren Sherwood — should be so proud of themselves; and Le Corsaire — but of course I’m a sucker for that kind of bravura dancing. I was really afraid, holding my breath the whole time with that one — I mean that stage is soooo small for all that leaping and those insanely high lifts. The two dancers — Claire Kretzschmar and Kristopher Nobles (who looked like a young Gillian Murphy and Jose Carreno respectively!) did splendidly on their own. I couldn’t help but giggle during Nobles’s huge, stage-encompassing leaps and Kretzschmar’s beautiful continuous fouettes and the gorgeously high lifts — all wonderfully executed — except because of said miniscule stage, her hand almost took a light out on one such spectacular lift. There was a tiny bit of fumbling on some of the partnering — the assisted pirouettes and the promenade, but I was actually glad for the audience to understand how insanely hard those things are. People think that’s the easy stuff — and the lifts are the hard parts — but the assisted pirouettes and promenades, when the girl is totally off her center of gravity and the guy has to help keep her centered, are some of the hardest aspects of partnering. Now maybe Met orchestra peeps will not be so confused when the young dance students in family circle go wild for Marcelo the great’s ten bizillion one-handed turns with Julie Kent

Here’s a video of the Four Cygnets, here’s some classic Corsaire (they didn’t do all of this insanity, but you get the idea), and here is The Jockey Dance (it was performed last night by two boys, Devin Sweet and Shane Urton).

The Jockey Dance was fun too — one of those dances that looks deceptively easy, but you can tell is really hard, with all the bouncing jumps, playful competitiveness– using a whip no less, and fast footwork.

Gillian Murphy (ABT prima ballerina, Ethan’s girlfriend, and NC School of the Arts alum) was there too. Poor thing had to sit in the critics’ section! Luckily Sir Alastair was not there… The program repeats tonight, but is sold out.

Last night I went with Dance Times Square on their holiday party outing to the Latin Quarter, a salsa nightclub in midtown on the east side, near Grand Central.

It was fun — I haven’t social danced in a really long time! Do think I might have hurt my knee though. How, I have no idea. I’ve damaged my meniscus coming out of a fish dive weirdly, trying to force turnout on an arabesque in attitude (back leg up, bent knee), trying to force turnout on rhumba walks, trying to force turnout in samba walks, trying to force turnout in ballet, yadda yadda, but I didn’t know you could really hurt yourself doing basic salsa steps?! Hopefully it’s just a bruise…

Anyway party started at the studio, where we had an hour-lesson in open Salsa taught by Tony and Melanie (who are back from Canada’s So You Think You Can Dance). Picture above, student Elaine (my friend) is in foreground dancing with Tony. After the class, we had food (lots of good munchy things like pate and cheese and meat slices and this enormous cheesecake, and bottles and bottles of wine ), then walked several blocks to the club.

The club was nice, but small dance floor … although I have nothing to compare it to since I don’t go out to a lot of social dance clubs. They had a few bars (although, I find it a bit hard to dance drunk) and little areas for sitting around and chatting. We took an area on the second floor, and, when it got too crowded on the main floor, just danced up there. I danced mostly with my friend Steve, but then this guy who was not in with our group kept asking me to dance, which was nice at first, until I realized he was kind of a pelvis-grinder. Just too close for comfort. So, I told him I was tired the next couple times he asked, which of course made it hard to dance with others then. Steve told me I was fun to dance with because I unwind (out of a turn) like no one else, thanks to my “sinuous” body!

Salsa band was fun, but it’s kind of funny; I’ve mainly been to parties at dance studios where they play a variety of music. So, I kept getting ready for a samba or rhumba or swing or something, and it never happened. Also, I really kind of wish people danced more in groups here, like they do in this video (when you get to the salsa club part, around 4:50). How fun would that be? And would seem to cut down on someone’s hogging another person all night. But I guess that kind of group dancing necessitates sharing a culture where you all know the same words and funny little moves, which doesn’t really happen these days … I guess except for the Electric Slide.

Anyway, very fun to see old friends again. I really should start taking a group class again at some point because it’s good for socialization, and, I realized after the night was over what a real workout it had been.

More formal review coming soon on ExploreDance.com.

(photo by Katsuyoshi Tanaka, of Marcelo Gomes with Lua)

Last night I went to my lawyer friend’s holiday party and met one of her co-workers, a Brazilian lawyer named Beatrice. Our conversation naturally led to a discussion of dance, which of course led to a discussion of Samba, and eventually even ballet. She revealed that as a child and teen, she danced with Laura Alonzo’s student company of Ballet Nacional de Cuba!

She remembered Marcelo! Said she never danced with him because he was so “little”; much smaller than she. I was like, “Little?! No, he’s huge, much larger than life!” She said, not then! What’s he like, what’s he like, I asked?! She said, well, when he was 10 he was really sweet! Said his parents always went to the studio with him and seemed so supportive, which was so cute, and so unusual for the parents of a boy dancer in Brazil back then. She said he used to always get partnered with this really bitchy girl who thought she was god’s gift and she was such a prima, always demanding and blaming him for anything that went wrong. But he was so nice, he was always a sport about it.

So, not much has changed for poor Marcelo then?

Beatrice also got to dance once with the great Jose. Said he was huge back then. She never talked to him, only danced one brief duet once. She still has the picture of him lifting her little body far above his head. How very lucky to have grown up in Latin America…

Here. Thank you so much, Almond Chocolate! Btw, that Hallberg is currently posting with splendid frequency from all over the globe

(Daniil Simkin, photographer unknown, taken from here)

(headshot from ABT)

Last night was the New York debut of ABT’s newest star soloist, Russian-born, Daniil Simkin. He danced the Tico-Tico section of Company B, which I wrote about here, and which is going to be a dance I can tell will grow on me each time I see it. Tico Tico is probably the solo with the most bravura theatrics, and it suited him well. He has a small, compact body and can go very high on those jumps, really sail around the floor on those barrel turns. But the solo is also jazzy, and he pulled off the softer, subtler elements as well. At the solo’s end he got huge applause from the crowd, and more whooting applause mid-dance (which rarely happens with dance crowds these days) in the very last ensemble section, when he went whizzing halfway up to the ceiling in a twisty turning jump. “That little one was sure something!” exclaimed a couple of women as we left the theater.

My only thing — and this goes for the whole cast, not just him — at the end of the male solos, each man falls to the floor. This is meant to show that they’ve died in war. It it only their spirits that are dancing; the duets are the memories of the women they’ve left behind; the solos are ghosts. So, the dance on its surface is fun and frivolity with jazzy music and pretty girls and the whole nine yards, but there’s underlying tragedy, which gives the dance its power.

(photo, Company B, Andrea Mohin, from NYTimes)

On the way out of the theater a woman was complaining to her friend that the ABT dancers “aren’t doing it right; it’s not clear they’ve fallen,” she said. And I agree. At the end of Daniil’s solo, he raised his arms and pushed back from the waist while disappearing into the wings as if he was hit in the stomach by a bullet. But he wore the same happy carefree smile as he had throughout the whole solo (likely because the audience could tell he was finishing, the cheers were beginning to sound and he’d just finished his NYC debut), so you’d never know he’d been shot. But it wasn’t just him — others in this cast did the same. I think the first cast, and especially Herman Cornejo, gave those moments more gravity and pathos. I still don’t know if it was enough though — something tells me people missed the war leitmotif altogether — but it was more. Don’t know how much is enough, really. I’ve never seen Paul Taylor’s company perform it so it’s hard to tell the choreographer’s original intent. You definitely don’t want to overdo it or it becomes preachy. It has to be subtle.

Anyway, I will look forward to seeing Simkin again next week in the Russian ballet, Flames of Paris (Ratmansky, woo hoo!) which I’m, obviously, immensely excited about. Simkin, by the way, keeps a blog; it looks like he updates his Twitter feed more often than the posts.

Also on were Antony Tudor’s Pillar of Fire and Jiri Kylian’s Overgrown Path. This was my first time seeing Pillar and I found it absolutely riveting.

(photo of Marcelo Gomes and Gillian Murphy in Pillar, taken from here).

The ballet’s from 1942 and the story’s dated — girl longs for good boy, good boy’s into her sister, girl doesn’t want to grow up to be spinster like older sis, so goes for bad boy who takes her virginity and “ruins” her, so that when good boy leaves brainless sis and comes around, she’s damaged goods. This results in tragedy; she can now only have good boy in her dreams, in the moonlight. At least that was my interpretation.

The great thing about Tudor, dated as this story is, is that he’s so dramatic, his drama comes from within, within the body. You can tell his dancers have to spend so much time working out the characters, and everything is made so clear not so much by facial expressions, but by body movement and posturing and gestures — which is dance, after all. David Hallberg as the good boy (I know, immensely annoying — good boy is shiny American blonde, bad boy is big dark Brazilian Marcelo; there are also “lovers of innocence” blonde and wearing white nightgowns and “lovers of experience” dark-haired and dressed in ’slutty’ gypsy-like attire, but we won’t go there for the time being) has this quick, rushed gait, so that he passes right by Gillian’s heroine, paying no attention whatsoever to her body, contorted and hunched-over from the waist, cramp-like, with pain. Marcelo definitely notices her, and throughout he keeps doing this thing, rubbing his hands with the flat of his palms on both sides of his groin. It’s so sexual and so sexy and so threatening. I kept bolting upright and leaning forward every time he did it, and had to keep reminding myself, this is City Center, you move a millimeter and you’re blocking every single head behind you.

Marcelo was Marcelo, perfectly in character as always, and Gillian blew me (and the audience, judging by the substantial applause) away with her inner development and tragic portrayal of heroine Hagar. Only thing lacking (apart from the stereotypical casting and costuming), and just a smidgen, was David, in the beginning. His walk was perfect (Tudor concentrated greatly on gaits as a revealer of character), but he was a bit too severe. I couldn’t really see how Gillian’s Hagar was so enthralled with him. He seemed like a jerk the way he ignored her. Then, when he comes around to her, he slows it down, but then he has his regular pointy-footed, slightly hip-swaying, rumba-esque walks. It’s quintessential sexy David, but I don’t know if it’s this character.

(photo of Overgrown Path by Andrea Mohin, from NYTimes)

The only piece that wasn’t to my liking was Kylian’s Path. They’re putting it on this season because Kylian made it in honor of Tudor, who considered the Czech choreographer his artistic grandson, and the season is devoted to Tudor. It just seemed too one-note, too dreary, without a serious drama you could latch onto. It’s meant to evoke sadness and pathos — is set to piano music by Leos Janacek, who composed the piece (On an Overgrown Path) not long after losing his son, then daughter, and you see a set of women who seem to be mourners, heads hung down, at times reaching out into the air as if in vain, and a young woman dances several duets with a man (Jose Carreno, who, weirdly, couldn’t even save the ballet for me), then disappears into the curtains. I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t in the mood, maybe it’ll grow on me, because I’ve certainly liked other things Kylian has done.

The company has a mini-website devoted to Tudor, where you can view videos and pictures here.

(Herman Cornejo above; all headshots from ABT)

So, last night was opening night of ABT’s fall Contemporary season (which will last for the next two weeks) at City Center. I love galas, for the most part: I love seeing all my favorite dancers in the best excerpts from my favorite ballets. Although the only piece that really fit that tonight was Jose Manuel Carreno dancing the bravura pas de deux in Don Quixote with Xiomara Reyes. I am such a child; I again got a bad case of the giggles the second he stepped onstage — both during the duet and then when he had his leaping, fouetteing, barrel-turning solo — this always happens with Jose — and really had to control myself; I was sitting only a few seats down from Kevin McKenzie (who is thin — most go the opposite way after they stop dancing — and as I mentioned before, behind Alessandra). Anyway, see a video here of Jose dancing DQ with Paloma Herrera.

(above: Jose Carreno)

First, because it’s most on my mind since it was the only piece (performed in its entirety) on the second half of the program: Company B, choreographed by Paul Taylor, which I LOVED. I’d never seen it before: it’s a jazzy modern piece (no toe shoes) set to several 40s era songs by The Andrews Sisters (like Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B). Both song and dance are cute and fun on their surfaces, but in the background from time to time a line of men march slowly, their bodies at the back of the stage, in shadowed silhouette. Some of them hold what appear to be guns. Some hold their arms up as in surrender. They are going off to war (timely then — during the era of the songs, timely now). But you almost don’t notice them. At points, a sweet romantic duet will be centerstage, and one of these men will join the dancers, flying happily about the stage, along with them, then suddenly slam to the ground, as if shot. Because of the marked contrast between fun and play and love, and being shot dead in the line of battle, the background war theme is all the more poignant.

Herman Cornejo stood out to me here. He was cutely carefree, leaping about (as usual, halfway to the ceiling, though the height seemed like pure coincidence, like he hadn’t meant to go that high at all, it was just natural for him), then is left sadly, starkly alone in the end, without the girl, without his carefree ways, and perhaps eventually without life (at times he is also one of the silhouettes in the background). Herman used to be all about huge jumps and leaps and turns to me, but he’s grown hugely as an artist, and now the jumps and leaps and turns are all done in the furtherance of character, though no less awe-inducing. He grows on me each time I see him perform. The Taylor piece was perfect for him. And, as I said, it’s timely and I’m thrilled ABT’s chosen to put it on this season. It’s showing several more times and I can’t wait to see it again and again.

The first half of the program consisted mainly of excerpts (except for Craig Salstein’s excellent Time, which I’ll get to in a sec); in addition to DQ, there was Balanchine’s Theme and Variations performed by my favorite, Marcelo Gomes, and Paloma Herrera. When, at the beginning of a solo, Marcelo walked out onstage and kind of looked out at us, it looked like he was looking right at me. How does he do that? How does a performer do that? It’s uncanny! When Kevin then came out and gave his little thank-you to all the gala sponsors, he did the same thing. Angel Corella does it too. Hmmm.

Anyway, Marcelo was excellent, of course. The far-too-shy crowd was ridiculously late in applauding his series of 15 or so continuous twisty multiple-turning-jumps. American audiences, argh! Marcelo is the quintessential romantic leading man, as I’ve said about 10,000 times throughout the course of this blog  — the way he lifted Paloma about every which way, all over his head; partnering is his forte. But, because of his size, you can tell when the choreography is really fast

(Marcelo Gomes)

(David Hallberg)

Second on was a scene from Romeo and Juliet (when Romeo leaves Verona), danced by David Hallberg and Gillian Murphy. But this R&J was not the one I’m used to, the one by MacMillan; it was choreographed by Antony Tudor (whom the company is honoring this season; it would have been his 100th birthday this year). Tudor’s R&J is much more dramatic than pashmina, without all the flourishes and breathtaking lifts, but instead with lots of yearning arabesques where the dancers lean toward each other, balancing on the tip of their toes, nearly falling forward, longing but seemingly unable to reach the other. It was passionate in its own sad way and makes me look forward to more Tudor.

(Craig Salstein)

And then there was Time, a new piece by well-liked soloist Craig Salstein, a short solo, danced by Michele Wiles. I think this piece marks his choreographic debut. It was originally made in December 2007 for Dancers Responding to AIDS. I loved it. It was soft and lyrical but had modern elements as well, such as short, staccato movements of the arms and legs, and a frontward leaning arch, with arms extending up and back, like a bird taking flight, reminiscent of Alvin Ailey or Martha Graham. Michele danced with a sorrowful passion; it was hauntingly beautiful. As its name and the group it was created for implied, it felt like a woman struggling hard to extend her time here on earth. She would reach upward toward the heavens, but in vain, and she kept brushing her right leg backward, as if trying to brush off a negative thought, a harsh reality. Later, she would dance with fluidity and grace, in acceptance. And the movements would repeat themselves, like they would psychologically in someone who is grieving: denial, anger, acceptance, denial, anger, acceptance. To me, this one little work showed that Craig has wonderful originality, understands how to build structure, understands different kinds of movement and what they do, and has a strong sense of how to convey what he is trying to convey to the audience and really move us. BRAVO CRAIG!!! And brava Michele!

There was a little more, but these were my favorites. Also, Gillian Murphy and Jared Matthews impressed me last night. I don’t know exactly why because she’s always technically brilliant, but Gillian just shined last night; everything she did brought my attention right to her, even when she was surrounded by many others; she just had an extra glow. And Jared I’ve always seen as kind of the skinny blonde guy who blends in with everyone else, but he is looking more and more polished, dancing with greater and greater sharpness and precision and standing out for those reasons — and he was looking even rather majestic last night.

is almost here!

(photo of Tudor’s Pillar of Fire from Artsjournal)

Last night I went to one of the best Works & Process events at the Guggenheim that I’ve been to in a long time. (By the way, I spent practically all weekend, despite a severe cold turned into sinusitis turned into a migraine episode, at City Center watching Morphoses, and despite said sickness had a pretty good time — promise to write all about that very soon!) Anyway, this Works & Process event, about American Ballet Theater’s upcoming City Center season honoring choreographer Antony Tudor, was so excellent because:

1) three of my favorite dancers (excepting Marcelo that is — he never does Guggenheim sadly) were onstage working their magic only feet away from me. This included Jose Carreno (headshot above), Julie Kent and Veronika Part, the first and third of whom I’ve never seen at Guggenheim. And it was the best dancing I’ve seen there. Usually, with the space being so intimate, the stage so close and the dancers in workout clothes rather than actual costumes, everything just seems scratchy, like you notice all the little foibles the distance of the stage at the Met or City Center prevents you from seeing. But with these three: looked just like it does in the big opera house, completely smooth and polished and dramatic and intense and perfectly in character and just miraculous movement altogether.

Veronika I must say almost made me cry with her Leaves are Fading character, and she and her partner, Alexandre Hammoudi, only performed a short excerpt from the 4th pas de deux of that ballet. She’s probably ABT’s most dramatic ballerina; her mission is always to make you feel exactly what her character is feeling, to bring you to that same place and make you a part of that world. To do so she puts everything she has into a role and the results are always so rich. There are other wonderful actress dancers in ABT, but there’s just no one on her exact level.

And the second reason I loved last night’s program was that I found it really informative. I didn’t know much about Tudor and I learned a great deal. Kevin McKenzie (ABT’s artistic director) spoke, and he talked about him not so much as a director trying to sell people on his company’s upcoming season but more as a former student reminiscing on how wonderful it was to be taught and coached by a genius.

(photo of Tudor by Kenn Duncan from ABT website)

Tudor created character-driven story ballets, and he gave his characters great psychological depth, as expressed, of course through movement. He’d develop a character through the walk, the way hands are held, through specific repeated gestures, spending hours and hours going over these things with his dancers, McKenzie said. Which is why I titled this post as I did. I’m just getting so tired of all these abstract story-less ballets with movement that doesn’t seem to have any meaning (at least not literal) or where the point is to make beautiful music visible. If I want to bask in the beauty of music, frankly, I’d rather go to a symphony and close my eyes and drink it all in. Movement should be more; it should be something beyond music. I like dances that are more like plays with movement substituting for words. I want characters with real lives and issues and emotions and depth, that I can latch onto and feel for. I want to get caught up in their stories, and cry for them; I want their predicaments to make me think about the state of things.

We saw some little film excerpts of Tudor speaking. “Dance must change to stay alive. Life is change,” he said. He wanted to modernize ballet, which is interesting because Christopher Wheeldon (Morphoses man who I’ll get to soon) says the same. But Tudor’s way of doing so (and most of his ballets were created from the 1930s through 70s; he died in 1987) was to make it more people-oriented, enable viewers to see the characters onstage as real people with genuine emotions, allow them to identify with those characters.

We saw excerpts of several of his ballets: his sweet Little Improvisations, a duet between a boy and girl; Judgment of Paris, a rather funny re-telling of three goddesses vying for the attention of one god but re-set in a bar with prostitute / ‘dancers’ subbing for the goddesses and a drunk patron for Paris; Pillar of Fire, a tragic portrait of three sisters, their relationships with each other, and their men; and The Leaves Are Fading, a sadly beautiful story of the life of one relationship.

(photo of Leaves are Fading by Rosalie O’Connor; Tudor profile by Cecil Beaton)

Anyway, I’m now very excited for ABT’s Tudor season, upcoming at City Center at the end of October. Even if some of the ballets are a bit dated now (which we’ll have to determine when we see them), they’ll still be a welcome break from all the abstract shapes and movements that are supposed to evoke something … or not, and sometimes do, sometimes don’t, and sometimes do but I don’t care… I feel that the way to modernize ballet again today is to give us more, new, updated stories, but more on that later.

Sorry if this post is a bit loopy and rambling … I’m still suffering the after-effects of a week of Sudafed intake (and am kind of realizing the reason they put the drug behind the counter :S)

I went back to ABT last night for another Merry Widow with Jose and Julie in the leads. Couldn’t resist! And I’m glad I did; I ended up meeting Roslyn Sulcas, writer from the New York Times, who is really nice and down to earth, and elegantly beautiful.

Anyway, I already wrote a bit about this ballet earlier, and have to get ready for a pre-competition dinner, but I quickly just want to mention a few other tidbits about Jose that make him so great, that I noticed last night. He keeps in character throughout, even when he’s not center stage. I mean, they all do, but Jose really keeps in character. As Julie’s rich widow was dancing with the Pontevedrian men, each man trying to curry her wealthy available favor, Jose was sitting off to the side flirting devilishly with Misty Copeland. And he was really flirting, not just chatting. At one point he raised his eyebrows at her in a way that made me nearly fall out of my seat.

And the way he struts around stage, like a cocky, spoiled, at times drunk, misbehaving boy … it’s not at all balletic, the way other dancers might do, but perfectly in character (and somehow on him, mischievous as it is, becomes so endearing).

I also noticed that when he spots as he’s doing a slow turn, carrying his ballerina in his arms, he looks at each spot on the floor with intent. During his pas de deux with Julie when he was remembering happy times with her in the past, he looked down at each point on the floor like he was lost, forlorn, wondering where they all went. With most dancers they look like they’re doing exactly what they’re doing — spotting so they don’t lose balance. He turns simple technique into art.

(The pair dancing together in “Apollo”, photo by Gene Schiavone; all photos from ABT website)

I also wanted to point out how fantastic Joseph Phillips was, as leader of the Pontevedrian men, with his spectacular bravura-embellished folk dancing, and Craig Salstein as he sweetly but sadly unsuccessfully vied for Julie’s hand. And Julie as the widow was sweetly flirtatious, her smiles and raised eyebrows infusing her prolonged flexes of the foot into quick, snappingly sharp points, with added sexual meaning.

The couple behind me were confused during first intermission because this photo of Irina and Max (by Fabrizio Ferri) was shown on the Playbill’s cover, and yet, they weren’t in the cast.

Anyway, I’m very excited for Giselle next week!

(photo of Julie Kent in “Giselle” by Roy Round)

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Jose carreno is dancing again!

Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.

T-Mobile

Although hopefully with all this drunken choreography he won’t reinjure himself.

Update: So, this week’s ballet at ABT is “The Merry Widow,” created in the 1970s and originally an opera. When I first read the synopsis I thought, this plot is so intricate, like an Oscar Wilde-ish comedy of manners, how are they ever going to pull it off without words. They didn’t really — and so you need to read that synopsis — but it’s still a lot of fun to watch the dancers try to mime everything.

(Jose headshot from ABT website)

I love Jose Carreno with all my heart. Every little emotion, no matter how subtle, registers thoroughly on his face, every perceived rejection, every memory. When he wrapped his hands around Julie Kent’s waist, finger by finger, before lifting her, when he traced his hand from her wrist to her shoulder, when he looked as if he was biting at her neck — just sends chills!

Julie was beautiful, Xiomara Reyes did a great acting job, the whole cast was excellent. I thought the very modern choreography had great humor and was a lot of fun, but I must warn you, this is this season’s Cinderella, so purists are likely not going to be too happy.

Oh and the sets and costumes on this one — extremely lavish. Don’t think I’ve ever seen such elaborate sets for an ABT production; they put a lot of money into this one.

Photo by Fabrizio Ferri, of Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky dancing “Merry Widow” leads, from ABT website.

Yesterday I finally had the chance to check out the new Twyla Tharp ballet at ABT. Overall, I thought there were exciting parts, and I recognized a lot of elements from her other work, but the sum of the parts didn’t really add up to a compelling whole. I also thought it was very well acted and danced by my favorite But more on that in a minute. First, let me talk a bit about “Etudes,” which I LOVED, and which was on first.

“Etudes,” by Harald Lander of the Royal Danish Ballet, made in 1948, was a radiant celebration of ballet. It started with very young dancers likely from the Jacqueline Kennedy School of Ballet associated with ABT, then curtains went down and rose again to reveal a set of older dancers warming up at the barre. There were three barres set up in a kind of half-pentagon that opened out toward the audience. The lighting was dark except for a white light shined on their legs. They simply did warm up tendus (points of the toe) to front, out to side, then rondes (circlings of the floor with the leg), then swinging kicks, etc. Basic warm-up vocabulary. But they were all in perfect unison and each set of several dancers pointed, swung, rondeed, etc. in a different direction, making for a mesmerizing effect. At times it looked like a Rockettes routine.

Later, tutued ballerinas, more advanced and ready to learn performance technique, came out and did their own warm-up, the lights making their black puffed-skirts looking almost like upside-down ladies’ wigs from afar. It made for a really cool visual effect. Soon, the barres were taken away and, like in a real class, the floor work began. One set of dancers performed a series of high jumps in place, then began flying across the stage in a diagonal line, doing grand jetes, the men eventually doing barrel turns around its perimeter (my favorite ).

(Irina headshot from ABT website)

A prima ballerina, in my version, Irina Dvorovenko — a role perfect for her- emerged in splendid white tutu accompanied by two men, one (Cory Stearns) her princely danseur noble, the other (Jared Matthews) a more bravura type (who performs high, thrilling jumps, fast turns, etc.) — all three the main ingredients of classical ballet. They danced a perfect pas de trois, and at times from my vantage point in the middle orchestra, Irina looked like a tiny china doll atop a child’s music box. She was sheer perfection and the quintessential classical prima ballerina. I like Cory and Jared but don’t think either has the star power, at least at this point (they are both still young) to be her equal.

At first I thought how much more thrilling the ballet would have been with someone like David Hallberg in the princely role and Angel Corella or Herman Cornejo as the virtouso. And then I realized they all would have completely stolen the show. The focus, in this man-centric company, should be on the ballerina for a change! And Irina is the perfect ballerina for that focus.

Anyway, who ever knew simple classical ballet vocabulary, a celebration of the dance from class to performance, could be so captivating? But it was. And the audience ate it up right along with me and went nuts with applause, so I know it wasn’t just me. A great introduction to the thrill and beauty of the art form for people new to ballet, IMO.

(top photo Marcelo, bottom Jose, both from ABT website)

Now, onto the new Tharp. First, I must say I am beyond overjoyed whenever I get to see either Marcelo Gomes or Jose Carreno onstage, and both had major parts in this ballet, so I was basically on ecstasy And of course they both danced marvelously, Marcelo, I think, to an extent saving the ballet with his dramatic skills.

Tharp named it “Rabbit and Rogue,” but it could have been named Everything Tharp But the Kitchen Sink. As in her “In the Upper Room,” at times the dancers appeared to emerge right out of the woodwork, the dark back lighting making the back seem wall-less. There was the pretend playful boxing from that ballet, the poor little fellow who humorously gets beat up by his girl from “Baker’s Dozen,” the balletic vocabulary fighting for space with social dance from “Deuce Coupe.” It’s like she just combined several of her ballets into one.

Anyway, from what I can make of the story-line, it’s something like this: Rogue (Marcelo) and Rabbit (Sascha Radetsky) play-fight with each other, over what I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s who has the better dance style. Rogue is more modern, moves with more angularity, virility, and solid form; Rabbit is more soft and wiggly, moves in more of a jazzy, not-a-care-in-the-world manner. Rogue as danced by Marcelo seemed more competitive (but in a cutely jocular way) with Rabbit than Rabbit did with Rogue; Rabbit seemed to care less about Rogue’s little jabs and taunts. But this could have been because Marcelo is more of an actor than Sascha…

Anyway, a pair called The Rag Couple (the excellent Kristi Boone, and Cory Stearns again — he must have been tired at the end of the day!) dressed in snazzy black, dance a sexy little number composed of swingy, jazzy elements and a little ballet. I guess they are supposed to represent sinners or denizens of the underworld. The corps emerge dressed in black. Marcelo returns (he and Sascha are also dressed in black unitards with a silver stripe down the side) and dances alone but seems to compete with the corps for attention. At one point, he shuffles off the stage into the wings shrugging and extending a hand outward toward the corps as if indicating he’s given up trying to compete with them and they can have our full attention. Of course the way Marcelo does this is hilarious.

There was a group of four women, probably aged between about 45 and 80 — perhaps a group of sisters taking their mother to the ballet– sitting behind me and the three younger women loved Etudes but the older woman complained it wasn’t her thing; she liked more of a story. When Marcelo made this action, she laughed and shouted I think a little louder than she meant to, “now, this is more my thing!” Her “daughters” giggled and shushed her.

Later, the corps disappear during one of Marcelo’s and Sasha’s alternating solos, only to emerge (again from the wall-less back, as if straight out of the air) now dressed in shiny silvery white. This entourage is led by Jose Carreno (:)) and Maria Riccetto, dancing a pair of characters the program notes call The Gamelan Couple, who dance beautifully together, their vocabularly all ballet. Except it’s not classical ballet. He keeps doing fish dives with her, but with his butt to the audience so you can only see her legs peeking out from behind him. So it’s backwards. (In a way, perhaps Etudes was an ideal ballet to show before this one, since one esteems the classical, the other questions it a bit). This couple represents to me a heavenly ideal, which reminded me again of “Deuce Coupe,” as if it’s the ballet couple who are pure and the social dancers who are cool and fun but a little wild and perhaps bastardize the form a bit. Maybe. Anyway, eventually a group of four — two women, two men — emerge and try to partner each other, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

(Craig photo from ABT)

Poor Craig Salstein, reprising his “Baker’s Dozen” role as the hapless little fellow, who tries to dance with his partner, the normally sweet Sarah Lane. He’d rather tango, but she’d rather ballet (if I can use that as a verb), and they fight and the poor little guy ends up getting beat up a bit by his lady. Eventually, he gives in and dances a very off pas de deux with her, throwing her up in the air like a rag doll. It’s hilarious the way Craig does it; only he can pull it off.

Later, Marcelo returns doing his competitive thing, Sascha comes back, does his dance, more ensemble work,, etc. At one point, Craig holds his hands up in the air looking toward the heavens and mimics, “why me, God, why me?” then shakes his head, helplessly. It’s now apparent he’s the angel sent down to earth to teach Marcelo and Sascha how to behave like proper dancers and stop the ridiculous bickering. Apparently part of their coming together is to learn to partner women because they’ve both been dancing alone throughout and suddenly Craig throws Misty Copeland at them, they throw her around a bit between each other, partnering her weirdly, but I guess not dropping her on her head or anything hugely untoward. Eventually, everyone is happy. They have proven they are good partners who can share the spotlight with a woman, like the perfect Jose can with Maria. (I am probably projecting all manner of my own crap into this, but I don’t know what else to make of this ballet, although I have to say, I’m liking it more the more I’m trying to interpret it). In the end, Marcelo and Sascha shake hands and wave to the audience and all is well; angel Craig has saved the day. The score, by Danny Elfman, was riveting; at times I kind of felt like I was in a Danny Elfman movie, the way the ballet created kind of an over-the-top alternative universe / fantasy world.

By the way, on my way to the store for ice cream afterward, I overheard a young woman talking on her cell phone pronounce Misty “kick ass,” which she was, as always.

(Andrea Mohin photo of Herman Cornejo, in black, dancing the part of Rabbit opening night, from New York Times).

(photo by Rosalie O’Connor, of Craig in white, Ethan Steifel on top and Herman on bottom, from ABT website)

Reviews have really been mixed. My “colleague” at HuffPost, Patricia Zohn, liked it, Sir Alastair did not, Philip found both good and bad in it. Anyone else?

(photo of Angel Corella taken from here)

So Angel quite nicely bookended my trip to Blackpool, which I’ll be writing more about — I’m doing a fuller report of the festival for Explore Dance and will definitely link to it when it’s up. This is ballet month in NY and I just don’t want to get behind on my ballet writing!

I haven’t seen much of Angel and I realize how much I’m missing. He danced Prince Siegfried in ABT’s Swan Lake last night opposite the legendary Nina Ananiashvili as Odette / Odile. I was really looking forward to Nina’s Swan — and she was very beautiful; had lovely liquid arms which looked like she was moving through water, and at one point when she did a series of turns, fluttering about all the while, she really looked like she was about to fly away. Her beautiful feathery expressiveness made for one of the best Odettes I’ve ever seen. She was also very dramatic and acted the role well. I could see her trying to tell the prince of her plight and I felt her misery.

But as usual with the men of ABT, they stole the show. First Angel, who was the perfect boyish prince at the start not wanting to choose a wife and grow up, then turning into the mature, tragic hero who falls in love with Odette but allows himself to be seduced by her evil counterpart. Angel is one of the most charismatic dancers; he has these enormous powers of projection, he’s able to reach everyone sitting everywhere in that massive opera house. I don’t know how but he does it. And his dancing was, as always, spectacular. He did a series of fouettes / pirouettes and went so fast he was a blur. I’ve never seen that before from anyone. Those turns elicited the only, I felt, genuine moment of applause from the audience, which I’ll get to in a moment…

(in above photo by Andrea Mohin from NYTimes, Blaine is on the left, Marcelo Gomes on right).

And then, OMG, BLAINE! Blaine blew me right away! He danced the prince’s friend, who initially gives him the bow and arrow to go swan-hunting, and who has a few solos and pas de trois with the town women. He had such height on his jumps, and his form was sheer perfection. I couldn’t believe it was him. I’ve seen him excel at the more modern work the company does in the fall season, but never really at classical. But last night made me think he’s ready for larger roles. His acting was decent, I still think he needs to work on it a bit more, but his dancing is nothing short of superb.

I sat next to a man who writes for that website Ballet Co. He was really nice, introduced me to the press room and its free beverage service! (Apollinare would never go in there!) Said they used to have wine but now only sodas. Anyway, we were talking about the best dancers in each role and he said he found Veronika Part to be the best Odette / Odile, which made me all the sadder I had to miss her because of Blackpool. Anyway, I mentioned that I was really sad she was leaving ABT and the writer told me knew about that interview she gave in which she said she was leaving but he was told by ABT people she’s still on, at least for the foreseeable future. I hope hope hope he’s right. Please let him be right, please Veronika, don’t leave!!

So, the dancing last night was excellent, but the production … hmm. I don’t have much to compare these productions to, to be honest. Most of the classical ballets I’ve been introduced to through ABT, so those are the only productions I know and have nothing to compare them to. They seem fine to me — I care much more about breathtaking dancing and moving portrayals than sets and costumes, etc., but I know critics think too many story elements are taken out, which I kind of agree with, but don’t know what needs to be put back in exactly. Sir Alastair in his review of David and Michelle’s Swan kind of mentioned in passing that, though the dancing was stunning, this production lacked the necessary pathos and tragedy. But he didn’t really go into detail as to why.

At Blackpool I was talking with my friend who’s a ballet fan as well, and who is half Viennese, half Japanese, and she said there’s just something lacking in the American ballet. She couldn’t really say what but just that in Europe the productions are so much more grandiose, so much more thrilling, and celebratory of dance. As I was sitting there last night I began to wonder if it’s not the audience interaction with the production — or lack thereof in the case of the US — that she’s reacting to. Sometimes it’s just the noises made by your neighbors that makes you sit up and take notice of something and I feel like oftentimes American audiences are just dead, like they’re just there to be “cultured” and aren’t really engaged. Last night, all throughout Blaine’s breathtaking jumps not one word, not one clap. When the solo or pdd was finished and the dancers stood and bowed before the audience, people politely clapped, but not during the dancing, with the exception of Angel’s vision-blurring turns. And I feel like Angel’s such a star, people clap because he’s Angel and they know whatever he does is deemed “great”; when it’s someone unexpected people are too sleepy to take notice.

I remember when I was in St. Petersburg 10 years ago now, I went to a Swan Lake at the Maryinsky. There wasn’t a moment of silence throughout the entire thing. People were cheering, clapping, literally screaming throughout — even when a dancer wasn’t doing anything particularly spectactular, people were going completely nuts. I remember being just as entertained by the crazed audience as the actual dancing. And in that Born to Be Wild video of Jose Carreno dancing in Cuba, it’s the same thing.

(By the way, happy belated birthday, Jose! — it was May 25th and it was a big one ; photo by Rosalie O’Connor)

What is it about these formerly Communist countries where people value art so highly? Is it because they’ve been so deprived? I know ticket prices are significantly, significantly cheaper, and there’s inexpensive sparkling wine in the lobby — the ballet is just more of a celebration there.

I don’t know — what do people think: half asleep audiences who don’t know how to appreciate art, or lacking productions, or both? I just know it’s not the dancing.

(photo by Nancy Ellison)

I don’t mean to make him sound like fine wine or something, but it’s just unbelievable how he gets better and better each time I see him perform this role. I linked to this before, but here’s a YouTube of him doing the first of Ali’s solos. During the second intermission, after the solos, two older women in the cocktail line were saying he’s no different than Baryshnikov. “He’s every bit as good; it’s just like seeing him again,” one declared. Unfortunately, I missed the era of Baryshnikov here, but I can’t possibly imagine anyone better than Angel. I love all three of the solos, but I love the jetes and the fouette sequence of the second two most. I love hearing all the screams emanating from the balcony when he bends his knee and snakes his body up and down mid-pirouette. I only wish he would have done his flying leap of a curtain call. He only came out once, not giving people enough time to pelt him with bouquets! I guess it was Wednesday and the crowd wasn’t as wild as normal, or maybe he was feeling under the weather… you can never tell it from his dancing of course. Oh, and he looks exactly the same as before — same straight charming boyish hair, no longish, wavy Julio-esque perm like in his new headshot Anyway, he made the night, obviously!

Along with Jose of course. Jose danced Lankendem, owner of the harem. For those who don’t know this ballet, Le Corsaire, originally choreographed by Joseph Mazilier for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1856 but shortly thereafter re-choregraphed by Petipa for the Kirov / Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg, is cutely corny. It’s about a pirate, Conrad, who falls in love with a slave girl, Medora, and his quest to help her escape and be with him. It’s a favorite among balletomanes because of all its bravura dancing from the two leads, Ali (Conrad’s slave), Gulnare (Medora’s friend), and Lankendem. Jose somehow manages to make his Lankendem so lovable. He’s a bad slave-driver who will stop at nothing to keep Medora in his clutches, and you just want to cry out “noooo,” when Conrad’s pirates surround him on the ground, spears in hand. Poor little Jose! He did brilliantly too with his bravura solo (which is actually my favorite because of the barrel turns )

So, Marcelo and Paloma, who were supposed to dance Conrad and Medora, were replaced by Irina Dvorovenko and Cory Stearns, a member of the corps, who I think was dancing his first big part. I always love Irina, and I never see her much since she doesn’t often dance with Marcelo. I guess sometimes it’s good that Marcelo’s out (though I’m not sure why they were replaced last night), because it gives me a chance to see other dancers once in a while Irina is probably the most dramatic, the best actress of all of ABT’s ballerinas and I love her for it — she projects to the entire audience, including people up in the nosebleeds, she makes it obvious through facial expressions what her character wants without relying too much on pantomime (with which many newcomers to ballet are unfamiliar), and she’s so expressive with her body, so clear in her intentions. If you’re bringing someone new who’s never seen that ballet before, you want her in the lead; she makes the most sense of everything and brings her character’s dramatic conflict most to life. Well Julie Kent does too, as does Veronika Part (who, horribly sadly, is leaving ABT at the end of this season), but people like to dump on Irina, and there’s no reason to, dammit!

So, Cory. He was good. His dancing was excellent — perfect, grand jetes, great height, great lines, very energetic (though I think he got a little tired by the end). He is a tall man with long legs, kind of David Hallberg-esque, though not as high-waisted. If this was his first time in a big role, I think he did a very good job. My only thing was that I felt his Conrad was a little too severe. He scared me at points, getting a little too aggressive in trying to get Medora away from Lankendem. At times he seemed more like a villain than a hero. But he’ll definitely grow artistically.

Oh and another thing that blew me away — one of the Odalisques was breathtaking. She did a crazy series of chaine turns and pirouettes and really blew me away (as well as my next-seat neighbor who clapped like nuts!) I’m not completely sure whether it was Simone Messmer or Renata Pavam, but one of them knocked me out.

Oh, I’m sad; this is my only Corsaire since I’m leaving tonight. It continues through the rest of the week, the Swan Lake is next week (breaks my heart that I’m going to have to miss Veronika Part’s Swan; I’ll still be in England — someone tell me how it is!), and the following week is the new Twyla Tharp, which I’ll be back for and about which I’m very excited. If you’re in New York, go here for more info / tickets.

Okay, gotta go finish packing! I definitely plan to mobile-blog from Blackpool, and may computer-blog as well if I can find a secure wireless connection. I’ll post all the pictures when I return!

I’m gonna be a little late in posting on “Dancing With the Stars” tonight since I will have to tape it and wait to watch until after I return from seeing …

perform (along with my fellow amateur friends!) at Dance Times Square’s biannual professional / student showcase. Always makes me sad I’m not up there with them, but it’s something I look forward to watching every six months anyway. At least it’s a lot less stressful in the audience…

Also, tonight is opening night for my favorite dancers on earth. I can’t be there, obviously, but will be later this week for a crazy Corsaire starring

and

(hmmm, new headshot for that one; all headshots from ABT website)

Too much going on! Too much!

Spent a lovely early evening at the New York City Ballet watching wonderful short film of Jock Soto’s life (more on that soon!), then came home to watch the art of dance be totally and completely demeaned worse than I’ve ever seen by the insulting new TV show, Dance War. I’ve never in my life seen more people with less dance training seeking to become “stars.” They sang their hearts out and wiggled their butts and seemed in all honesty to have no clue that ass wiggling did not constitute dance. Some actually tried to do jumps but didn’t understand the concept of line (amongst many many other things) and so looked like monkeys.

But I’m more horrified that judges Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba (from Dancing With the Stars) actually praised them. Carrie Ann said of one woman who did a single fouette then stumbled on the very second whip around, that she had “technique.” A man did a grand battement (really fast high kick — anyone can do one) and Bruno jumped around onstage orgiastically screaming “excellent extension, did everyone see that extension?!” I’m not even going to bother criticizing this assininity; suffice it to say the judges know the fraud they’re perpetrating on the public. They know.

On one hand, I seriously feel like boycotting “Dancing With the Stars” unless they resign. On the other, I guess what can you do when you have a TV show and these are the applicants? You’ve gotta pick someone or the show’s off the air. And you can’t call everyone a bad dancer. So you shrug your shoulders and say, as Carrie Ann did, “Well, it’s easier to teach someone who can sing to dance than someone who can dance to sing.” Could anything be more of a smack in the face to a person who deeply respects dance?

And yet I’m very conflicted. I just can’t understand why people would try out for a show that necessitated the ability to dance when it’s obvious they’ve never had a single dance lesson in their lives. But I also don’t want to sound like the horrendously elitist critics and ballet dancers and afficionados I abhor who insist that in order to be a “real” dancer, one must have “proper training,” which, to them, just happens to include a very expensive education affordable only by the very rich, who are, in our lovely society, usually the very white. A friend and I were talking the other day about how wealthy many of the New York City Ballet dancers are (NOT the aforesaid Jock Soto, by the way).

So, I say, the only way out of this dilemma is to “buy” Cuban! There dance is highly respected as an art form, it is taught by some of the world’s greatest, and it’s also completely free. And free doesn’t exactly produce shoddy. And, if you don’t believe me, take Danny Tidwell’s word More Jose’s, more, more!

Okay, it’s late and I’m tired and being a bit goofy all because I got so worked up I got over a stupid dance show… But, seriously, everyone please just watch this! Why oh why isn’t there more dance like it on TV?…

Just finishing my City Center-spectating season and am so sad. I hate this time of year. My favorite dance company is gone and I won’t be seeing them again until May. Oh well.

I went to the last three performances (Friday night, Saturday matinee, Saturday night); here are my highlights:

(photo of Herman Cornejo by Joe McNally from ABT website; all headshots from ABT)

I really loved all of the dancers who performed my favorite short ballroomy ballet — Tharp’s “Sinatra Suite” — but yesterday Herman and Misty Copeland (in headshot above) in particular took my breath away. Herman was the closest thing to Baryshnikov that I’ve seen, in terms of the actual movement (he has the smallest body of the three men who danced the role — other two were Jose and Marcelo — thus the closest in body type to Baryshnikov). The piece was choreographed on Baryshnikov and some of the movement, like the quick, jumpy weight shift in the first song, looked the cleanest on Herman; whereas Marcelo, for example, almost couldn’t move fast enough and missed a beat. But what Marcelo and Jose may lack a bit in that department, they more than make up for in the over-the-top personality they give to the role, particularly in the “That’s Life” song. In fact, everyone seemed to be able to do the “That’s Life” cocky shithead guy very (almost frighteningly) well; it’s the other three songs: “Strangers in the Night,” “All the Way,” and “My Way,” where they seem a little more bland, seeming to play the same guy three times. To me the first song (“Strangers”) is about two people just meeting and falling for each other, the second (“All the Way”) actually falling in love, the third (“Life”) having a problem moment, and the fourth (“My Way”) his saying he needs to go it alone, then the fifth, the male solo danced to “One for My Baby,” evokes his missing her. It seems like all the men danced to each of those songs besides “Life”, played each of those roles, the same way: all classy and romancy, giving only cocky “That’s Life” guy something unique.

Misty danced the female role better than I’ve ever seen it done, including by Elaine Kudo, who danced the original with Baryshnikov. That girl had personality galore and was not about to let the guy get away with anything. Go Misty! The others seemed to let the guy push them around too much. But again, I focus on “That’s Life.” She didn’t seem to do anything breathtaking in the other three duets. It’s funny, ballet dancers normally dance dreamy in-love princes and princesses, temple dancers and warriors, fairytale characters and their knights in shining armour — you think they’d be able to do a contemporary romantic routine?…

Anyway, Misty also floored me with her performance in Tharp’s “Baker’s Dozen,” which I ended up seeing a total of four times. In my final viewing of it yesterday, Misty danced the part of the flirty girl who keeps hopping on poor Craig’s unsuspecting back. She was so fun and playful, proved to have just as much charisma as Craig, and she just has a natural jazz body. If I was Twyla, I’d definitely choreograph everything new I did from here on out on Misty; she is THE female Tharp dancer.

Also, when I first saw this ballet I wrote that I felt the company wasn’t putting everything they had into it, but suspected that may be because it was a brand new one for them. After having seen it numerous times now, I know I was right. They’re doing so much better, they’re really nailing the teasing / sexy / cool / jazzy / clownish / playful / swingy nature of it all. What a fun ballet! Craig still stands out, but in a ballet like this that requires solid acting skill, it’s almost unfair to compare anyone else to him, he’s such a natural. If he wasn’t a ballet dancer, I’m positive he’d be enjoying a very successful Broadway career.

(do not ask why these photos are varying sizes; I’m simply copying them from ABT’s website and have no clue what kinds of codes they’ve written in or what kind of codes my blog software is somehow putting in! It just so happens that pictures of Marcelo come out the largest, I swear! Above are Marcelo and Julie in “Leaves”)

Yesterday, I had my first ever viewing of Antony Tudor’s 1975 ballet, “The Leaves Are Fading,” which the company has revived for this season. Wow, it was really beautiful, albeit in a bittersweet kind of way. It began with a woman coming out onstage wearing a long, green ballroom dress. She walked around as if deep in thought, reminiscing. She left and several male and female dancers entered all wearing pinky-peach costumes — the women in flowing summery dresses, the men in blousy tops with sweet gentlemanly little silk scarves. The group danced lyrically as an ensemble then broke into duets, each seeming to symbolize a different time in a relationship — young innocent love, then slightly older and more fraught with angst, then more mature; and Marcelo and Julie, my favorite partnership (have I said that before? ) danced the main, more mature couple. They dance so beautifully together, she just floats in his arms so effortlessly, so romantic, so poetic. The backdrop and wings were painted various shades of green, as if to evoke a field, and the pink costumes made the dancers almost look like flowers at points. At the end, green dress woman re-enters, her presence framing her memories, coming to terms with them, making clear they are about a past youthful love that no longer exists but will always remain part of her. Fittingly teary end to my own emotional farewell to ABT season! It was so lovely you just get caught up in the images, in the feelings they evoke. They didn’t have many performances of this ballet and I only got one chance to see it, so I hope they put it on again next year. I’d really like to see it again.

Finally, this year the company revived Agnes de Mille’s “Fall River Legend,” based on the true life story of Lizzie Borden, who killed her parents with an axe after their severe abuse of her. I saw this ballet on Friday night with Apollinaire, who loved it. Go here for a little write-up on that (read the “Note,” at the end of this post; also read the post for her review of Ballet du Grand Theater du Geneve, which I saw with her (and really liked!) but haven’t had a chance to review yet). Anyway, I personally didn’t care much for the de Mille. I feel that she only presented a partial story, leaving out the parental abuse that’s necessary to make sense of Lizzie’s actions. The ballet begins with Lizzie’s being sentenced to hang for her crime, then flashes back to her life. The flashback begins with her father being very loving toward Lizzy, then a sister dies and a stepmother enters the scene, who doesn’t much seem to like Lizzy, but doesn’t seem particularly horrible to her, and the father still seems to be loving albeit traumatized by the sister’s death. All of a sudden Lizzie is shown fighting the urge to hack up her dad and stepmom, then eventually succumbing to it. The rest of the ballet (the main part) is devoted to Lizzie being remorseful and haunted by what she has done, slowly accepting her fate. I agree with Apollinaire that Gillian Murphy was just amazing in this role — she perfectly captured the awkward outcast, making me both feel sorry for her Lizzie and fearing her. But, without the choreographer’s devoting any time to the family’s abuse of her, all of that great acting was unfortunately reduced to melodrama.

Lastly, I saw Benjamin Millepied’s “From Here on Out” again yesterday and it did grow slightly on me the second time around. I’m still far more in love with the Nico Muhly musical score though and can’t wait to get my hands on a recording of it. Again, I particularly liked the final third of the ballet, when the crescendo really starts to build. I feel like Millepied was really getting started just as he was ending. I really liked the second cast that I saw, led by Isabella Boylston and Cory Stearns. Isabella in particular was perfect at those angular abstract contemporary moves — I almost thought I was seeing NYCB (who does more abstract contemporary ballets) at points!; Isabella’s ideal for contemporary.

Well, I’ll be excited to hear what others, for example, in Berkeley, (for example, Jolene!!!), have to say about the new Millepied as well as the new Elo, “Close to Chuck.” Sad as I am about ABT leaving NY now, the good thing is they’re a touring company, so you don’t have to be in NY to see them. Go here to check their touring schedule. These are the greatest dancers in the world (Tidwell was once one of them, remember ); please do not pass up the opportunity to see them if they come near your neck of the woods!

No, I don’t mean at the Halloween parade, but onstage at City Center Well, last night was my first less than stellar night at ABT. But I’m not that bummed because I still had a good time.

First, the best.

(all photos from ABT website; this pic’s of Herman Cornejo, Sascha Radetsky and Jose Carreno)

Last night marked the debut of one of my favorites, David Hallberg, in Jerome Robbins’s “Fancy Free”, a short but sweet ballet about three loveably cocky sailors on shore leave vying for the attentions of only two ladies, and who, due to their silly preening competitiveness with each other, don’t fare so well.

This was an interesting role for David because he’s usually either the ethereal, lyrical type or the noble prince. He hasn’t been assigned a part with a real comical acting job before, that I know of anyway. He actually brought his dreamy, head-in-the-clouds romanticism with him to this role and it worked really well. And, I’ve never noticed the Fred Astaire-ish “tap dancing” steps so vividly. Oftentimes, the sailors all kind of blend into each other. Here, each had his own personality, which is the way it should be. David’s sailor was the romantic, sandwiched between Craig Salstein’s show-off, jumping-jack of a funny guy who tries to wow the girls by performing such feats as jumping off the bar into a splits, and Jose Carreno’s cool, hip-swaying, macho dude who fancies himself (wrongly of course) Mr. Seduction. (The way Jose grabs his dazed girl and forces her into a “romantic” tango is beyond funny; it’s like Pepe Le Peu tango.) David’s sailor initially tries to impress his girl with tall tales of military feats he hasn’t performed, but soon realizes, what the heck, he’d really rather just dance with her. Showing off is just not his thing, and he’s almost forced into performing his little solo by the other two, which, after finishing, he ends up at Gillian Murphy’s feet, lying on his stomach, head propped up in his hands, dreamily gazing into her eyes. Sweet!
Anyway, those three guys were a good end to a rather blah night.

More notably, the evening also marked the company debut of Twyla Tharp’s “Baker’s Dozen.” I sat in the Front Gallery, which is way up at the top of the City Center auditorium. They rarely open this area, especially for dance performances, but ABT was so sold out, they were forced to create some more space. Though I could see David and his marines okay, I don’t think it was generally a good place for viewing dance. Jorma Elo’s “Close to Chuck,” showed for the second time, and from all the way up there, the backdrop of Close’s gorgeous self-portraits was almost entirely obscured.

Anyway, back to Tharp: this was my first time seeing “Baker’s Dozen,” and I thought it was a fun jazzy little number. It involved an ensemble of 12, all dressed in egg-shell-colored jazz clothes (pictured above, with Isaac Stappas and Kristi Boone dancing). Nothing was on pointe, only jazz shoes were worn, and the piece — broken down into five parts all danced to Willie Smith music — varied between the playful and the lyrical. At times dancers would run up behind each other, tease with a shoulder-tap, leap-frog over each other. Craig Salstein (the poor man danced in three of the four ballets performed: I don’t know how he was still standing at the end of the evening), the best actor of the bunch, was constantly cajoled by a woman who repeatedly jumped on his back unexpectedly. He’d carry her off, she riding over his shoulders childishly flexed-footed, almost playfully piggy-back but upside-down, he with a sadly funny, hopelessly wearied frown. But then he’d return dashing across the stage with crazed high jumps, almost drunk on his freedom, however temporary.

The problem was, Craig was the only real actor of the bunch, and Tharp’s work methinks requires very good acting skills. Isaac Stappas and Sarawanee Tanatanit impressed as well, but they still didn’t have Craig’s level of comedy, and the rest of the company just kind of seemed to be going through the motions, not really giving the piece their all. Maybe that’s to be expected since it’s their first time with it, though. I have high hopes they’ll get more into it the more they perform it.

And then there was Marcelo’s Sinatra in Tharp’s lovely, ballroomy “Sinatra Suites.” I fell in love with this piece last year this time when I saw Marcelo dance it. For some reason, it didn’t have the same magic for me this time around. I’m not really sure why. Perhaps, this is where I really needed to be down lower in the theater. I couldn’t see his face very well at all, and, like I said, Tharp requires a real acting job. But maybe he just wasn’t that on, either, which is unusual for Marcelo. Or maybe my expectations were so high because of last year. Or maybe it was … Argh .. maybe it was

this damn DVD!!! I’d fallen so head over heels in love with the ballet last year that I: bought the DVD, in which Baryshnikov and Elaine Kudo dance the piece; insisted my ballroom teacher incorporate some of the lift sequences into a Foxtrot showcase I was working on; and, in preparation for said showcase, I then watched the blasted Baryshnikov DVD what must’ve been well over a hundred times, because I realized last night, I really have that thing memorized. Not good. I have to say, I do think when you know something too well, your spectating enjoyment is just diminished. All I could see were the things Baryshnikov and Kudo did that were not quite as smooth here, the tricks that weren’t quite as fancy, the difficult drags and pulls that went on for too short of a time, unlike B&K’s longer, extended ones, the little cheeky lifts where she is bent over butt up under him, between his legs, and he bends down and lifts her up toward his crotch, upside-down — it’s a very funny and contorted lift, but B&K did a few ups and downs, here there was only one. And, like, at the end of the third song, “That’s Life,” after he’s been a cocky, gum-chewing shithead treating her like crap throughout, and she angrily runs at him, throwing herself like a cannonball and he catches her in his arms but at the very last minute, surprising the both of them and the audience, and showing that she can really make him her slave if she wants: well, Baryshnikov was looking the other way when he caught her as she flew at him, so he surprised even himself. Marcelo looked back at her while she took her running leap, both making the trick not as extravagant (since he knew when she was going to jump because he was watching her) and dissipating his degree of cockiness since he was actually paying some attention to her. Which in a way is good really. Marcelo’s a nice guy; it’s hard for him to load on too much swagger His Sinatra is simply different than Misha’s. And what am I even saying? I mean, I’m faulting Marcelo for not dragging his woman across the floor like a sack of potatoes for long enough, not lifting her by the butt like a naughty child enough times, and paying her some attention … what’s wrong with me? Hmmm… I don’t know. Just don’t watch a DVD of someone else doing something a million times and then go see your favorite do it live. Others loved it: the audience downstairs went wild and I even heard some “Yeah!!!s” so it wasn’t just polite applause. Okay, no more DVDs. At least not when I have access to a live Marcelo. If you don’t have access, however, to a live Marcelo, or a live Jose, or an Angel, or a Herman, do buy the DVD of Misha — it’s gorgeous!

(above image from Galadestoiles)

Judith Mackrell from London’s Guardian newspaper blogs that, according to the BBC News, Hollywood is interested in making a movie based on the life of Cuban ballet dancer Carlos Acosta (who is now with the Royal Ballet in London and has formerly been with ABT and still sometimes guests with my favorite company; Danny Tidwell has listed him as one of his heroes, along with my love Jose who also happens to be Cuban).

Anyway, this project is so exciting to me. I remember when I was young and “White Nights” starring Baryshnikov came out. Everyone was talking. I remember seeing pictures in the newspapers of little Alexandra Baryshnikova (several years younger than me — wonder where she is now?…) being lifted out of a limousine by her father to accompany him down the red carpet for the film’s premiere. I remember all the talk about nude pictures Baryshnikov posed for with co-actor Isabella Rossellini to promote the film and his then-scandalous out-of-wedlock affair with Alexandra’s mother, Jessica Lange. I remember all the network news stories reporting that the little girl cried during the film when the KGB agents threatened her father and had to be comforted by him. I remember eventually seeing the film with my mom and thinking how fun was the tap dancer (Gregory Hines) and how beautiful and polished and smooth were Baryshnikov’s pirouettes (and how many he could do!), and I remember finding the KGB people thrillingly scary but their accents so attractive. I was too young really to appreciate the art of dance, other than Baryshnikov’s perfect, dizzying, never-ending turns, and I don’t even remember the film’s full plot, but to me ballet became this world filled with exotic beauty, intrigue, spies, scandalous taboo-breaking, glamour, Hollywood, the global political situation. Ballet was enchanting and beautiful in itself but it also heavily involved the world around us.

I think it’s time for another big ballet movie. I think perhaps Danny Tidwell has paved the way for mass audience appreciation of the dance, at least in this country. He may have called himself “contemporary” on SYTYCD, but that doesn’t matter; people recognize the form as ballet. And what better story than that of a boy born poor and minority in the slums of Havana who became one of the greatest dancers in the world?

The interesting issue is, as Mackrell points out, who is going to portray Acosta? He seems to want to play himself, but that seems odd to me: who has ever played himself in a narrative, non-documentary film? And talk about the potential for a struggle over artistic control between director and actors… “White Nights” was not the story of Baryshnikov’s life but rather very loosely based on what might happen if a plane he was on crash-landed in Soviet Russia, from which he had just defected. If the Acosta movie is going to be a direct re-telling of his life, I think it makes more sense for a professional actor to play him. But then of course who is going to be able to dance like that?!

I’m still in a state of sugar shock. Like when you’re having a little meal of chocolate truffles (as some of us are occasionally wont to do ); the first couple make your blood race in a good way and you’re hyper-aware and -active, but then you have one too many and hyper-activity turns to jitters and your brain starts racing ahead of you and you have no coherent thoughts whatsoever? Anyway, too much going on last night! It was the world premiere of two new ballets: “Close To Chuck,” a collaboration between choreographer Jorma Elo, composer Philip Glass and artist Chuck Close (whose self-portrait is pictured above) in tribute to Close’s body of work. It was also the not premiere but second performance of a new ballet by NYCBallet dancer Benjamin Millepied called “From Here On Out,” set to new music by 20-something composer Nico Muhly, whom I talked about here.

These premieres are so much fun to be a part of, they’re such an event extraordinare. Practically everyone in the ballet world turns out. I’m so thankful to Apollinaire for inviting me since they were nearly sold out. We sat in front of Tobi Tobias — so fun putting a face to writing. I was hoping we’d see some other familiar dance writer names, but they must have been sitting on the other side of the theater. On our side were also NYCB ballerina Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle, and some people who I recognized but couldn’t put names to, including a Paul Taylor dancer.

Okay, first things first: the evening began with another performance of choreographer Stanton Welch’s “Clear” again starring Jose Carreno, which I wrote about in my last post. Last time I saw him it was his debut in the role and I wrote that he concentrated more on the steps than the drama; this time I felt differently. I felt that he gave it much more emotion, was probably just getting the steps down the first time. I was also sitting on the right side of the theater instead of the left this time so I might have had a better view of his face. He danced it gorgeously, perfectly, emotionally, everything. I LOVE that ballet. The more I see it the more it evokes different things for me. Last night, it kind of reminded me of a more abstract version of Death in Venice, where the men, resplendent in pants that are skin-colored but have a bit of golden quality to their sheen, no shirts, have their arms and legs outstretched looking up to the heavens, as if they are both in worship and the objects of someone else’s worship (like the viewer’s). At other points, others of the men act silly and playful, covering their eyes with their hands, much like Tadzio (the older man’s muse and unrequited love interest in “Venice”), at times kind of bouncing around jovially zigzagging their heads. It goes from beautiful and poetic to cute and playful and back again, with the final pas de deux between the lead man and the ballerina ending in a beatific embrace, his head on her shoulder and her head pointed to the sky, her arm reaching upward. People have said they think the ballerina was superfluous, that Welch must have felt he needed to put her in because it was ballet. I thought about it and, though I think that ending scene is gorgeous, she was hardly in the ballet and she didn’t really seem to belong. Why not simply replace her with one of the other men, like one of the young sun-god, playfully flirty Tadzio-types, like the one danced by cute Jared Matthews? I know the ballerina on pointe has classically been the element bringing forth the poetic, but Welch’s whole point is that men in and of themelves can be so. Maybe he was afraid of it looking “gay,” or something, but, please, ballet audiences are more sophisticated than that.

Anyway, the fun thing about sitting on the right side of the theater is that it’s near the curtain, so when they pull it back and the dancers come out front for their curtain call, they’re right in front of you. Completely beyond surreal being that close to Jose. I love him so! You just want to reach out and touch… don’t worry I would never Oh, and then at the end of intermission, before the new “Close to Chuck” began, I spotted him in the back of the orchestra section, watching. I had to force myself to turn back to the front to see the ballet. Even standing there in a plain black t-shirt, the man just melts me.

(picture from Village Voice, of Angel Corella and Julie Kent in the leads, Herman Cornejo walking in background; I cc’d picture of Jose Carreno from ABT’s website in my last post, so won’t repeat it here).

Second on was the “Close to Chuck.” A disclaimer: I always get more out of a piece the more I go see it — I see all kinds of things I missed on first glance — so these are only my initial afterimages after viewing it only once. I have to say the costumes (by Ralph Rucci) and backdrop (various stages of a painting of Mr. Close’s Self Portrait pictured up top of this post) were so stunning, my focus was largely there. In future performances, I’ll pay more attention to the actual dancing The audience was abuzz. As the curtain lifted to reveal several people — Marcelo front and center, Herman to his left in back (this after Jose, both on stage and in audience is where my “truffles” were starting to go into overload…) — all covered neck to foot in shiny black, the bottom portion of the costume a long wide skirt for both men and women, the audience gasped in unison. As a curtain against the back wall lifted to reveal a sparsely filled-in black and white rudimentary etching of the portrait, a single person walked around stage, whipping off each dancer’s vest. The men were now shirtless, the women wearing black mesh leotards with a large black cross down the front and back. Everyone wore handless black gloves that started at the wrist, ended at the elbow. The costumes were very reminiscient to me of those used in Nacho Duato’s “Castrati” which I recently blogged about. They were very medieval, religious, but in a retro vogue way, not authentic like in the Duato. The long skirts for the men made Marcelo and Herman — two of the dance world’s most manly dancers– all the more striking, and ironically more rather than less virile, especially with the gloves which looked similar to the leather arm gear in Castrati.

Marcelo walked over to Julie Kent, dancing the lead ballerina here, examined various parts of her body — or perhaps measured her — his movements very rigid and staccato, almost unsettlingly so. After a short pas de deux, everyone left the stage, and the back curtain lowered back down over the painting. The dancers then re-emerged now without the skirts. The women wore simply the leotards, the men these biker-ish looking pants, all black but a darker more textured inky black lining the inner leg, a lighter, more diaphonous black lining the outer leg. A thick piece of elastic hugged the waist, and in front there was a long horizontal rectangular cut-out between the waist and pelvis which I found sexy and suggestive, albeit rather odd. The women were on pointe and then men wore either black ballet slippers or possibly jazz shoes — I couldn’t really tell, but it looked like there was a very small heel. The back curtain drew up again to reveal another black and white version of the portrait, but this one more filled-in than the previous. The work was being created.

Movement — both partnering and solo — was intentionally stiff, rigid, and awkward, but with hints of fluidity, very much like that I described in Elo’s just-premiered piece “Brake the Eyes.” In fact at one point, Marcelo performed the same exact movement pattern as the ballerina in “Brake” as his body was seemingly divided into two, the left half held stiff and bent, the right arm making flowing, wavy watery movements, as if half of his body was struggling to break free from the other. In “Brake,” I interpreted this to be half classical ballet, half puppet and thought of it as some kind of statement on the world of classical ballet. With Marcelo performing the same movement (and it looked very different on Marcelo’s huge body as compared to the petit ballerina’s), I thought of it more as the artist trying to break free of constraints or, in Close’s case, the limitations of his own body.

I don’t know a huge amount about Close, but I do know he was a promising youngish artist when struck with an aneurysm, which rendered his arms and legs nearly useless. He then developed a new kind of painting method, by which he would photograph his subject, then employ others to put various computerized graphs over the photo, over which he would, using an arm brace, paint in the little graphic squares, making a colorful complex portrait that was almost industrial-looking if viewed from up close, but poetic if viewed from afar. I felt like Marcelo symbolized the artist / subject (since Close was both) and both his personal struggles and his work process; a lot of the movement evoked the artistic struggle to create.

The dancers again left the stage, the curtain fell and rose again, this time revealing a colored, fully-painted portrait, very majestic.

Marcelo was the perfect body for Elo to create this piece on. With his large bone-structure, every awkward movement he made, a hip jutting out due to intentionally uneven weight distribution, a shoulder asymmetrically hung down, made the awkwardness of his body contortions all the more obvious. At one point, he almost looked like Billy Crudup’s Elephant Man that played on Broadway several years ago (Crudup, by the way, wore no makeup or prosthetics in that play; rather the way he moved his own normal body in such a distorted, awkward manner illustrted both the burden he bore from the disfigurement and how beautiful he was underneath it all). In the final segment of the ballet, the dancing becomes more mellifluous. The work is created, beauty triumphs. I’ll be seeing this ballet again at least one more time before the season ends, so I will likely, well definitely, get more out of it, and will report back when I do.

Oh, almost forgot: the curtain call was fantastic. Not only was Elo there (the choreographer usually takes a bow at the premiere), but Mr. Close came out onstage too! He was wheeled out in the most artful wheelchair. Instead of the regular four wheels on the floor, this one had its wheels stacked, two top two bottom, so it was like he was riding a permanent wheelie, making his height far above everyone else’s. Marcelo ran over and gave him a hug, as he’d done seconds earlier with Elo. Marcelo is happiness

The third ballet of the evening was the other new one, Millepied’s abstract “From Here On Out,” with original music by Nico Muhly. I’m sure that I’ll get more out of this ballet upon my second and possibly third viewing of it this season as well, but my initial thoughts are that the music far outshone the choreography. Muhly is a genius, make no doubt about it. After I’d seen Muhly speak about the project at the Guggenheim, I’d joked that I was excited to “hear” the ballet. Well, that’s exactly why you should go. I don’t know much about music but there were so many different kinds of instruments, I think a xylophone even, mixed with computerized sound to miraculous effect. And the way the percussion or horns would build into a crescendo then subside, then build again when you’re not expecting it, like a wonderful surprise. The music was enchanting, there was so much going on, it’s just a feast for the ears. I just felt that the genius of the choreography didn’t match that of the music. Which is not at all to say it wasn’t still interesting, it just didn’t take my breath away.

It may partly be that the choreography just didn’t start out strong enough. It opens with several dancers, all wearing purple unitards bearing various cut-outs — one on the side of the waist, another on the opposite hip, for the men over one breast — all standing in a huddle, simply shifting weight one foot to the other. There’s some partnering, then ensemble work, and eventually a pas de deux between a man and a woman takes place. For the most part this duet doesn’t do much for me save for a few longing stretches and holds. (Go here to see one of my favorite shapes from that duet performed by Marcelo and Paloma Herrera.) From there, the ballet builds up a bit then ends on a stronger note: several women get whisked up and carried off into the wings. It’s a rather lovely end. I just wish it had the same momentum throughout. But as I said, I’ll be seeing it some more this week, so will report back on what further viewings yield.

Until then, I just discovered that Muhly actually has a blog! Go here to read a cute post about his freaking out at the last minute over a note. Go here for a Times article about a couple of things ahead in the coming week for ABT (a revival of a piece by Antony Tudor and Tharp Tharp Tharp!), and go here for the rest of the season schedule and tix. Only one week left

Another happy night for me at American Ballet Theater [a.k.a Danny Tidwell's Old Company -- sorry, I'll only do that for this City Center season, I promise ] But that goes without saying; ABT is always a blast.

Tonight was the debut of a long-favorite dancer of mine, the legendary Jose Carreno, in “Clear,” Stanton Welch’s beautiful male-centered ballet which I’ve been chirping about incessantly here, here, and here. That first “here” links to my post chattering on about the excerpt of this ballet that I saw performed two nights ago with Herman Cornejo in the lead. Well, interestingly, Jose gave it a completely different tone here. Where Herman was more grounded and virile (‘man-god’ I called him), Jose was lighter and more ethereal, like Angel Corella, on whom the ballet was originally created. (Angel has skipped out on performing with ABT this season, I assume because he’s working on getting his own new company underway in Spain. Fun fun!). I know how much Jose admires Angel because, when I once sat in the front orchestra far to the side, I could see into the wings where Jose was watching Angel perform Sinatra Suite — so cute! — so I figure he’s watched Angel a lot and had his movement in mind. Also, abstract though the ballet is, Herman gave it a bit more of a story, with his more angsty interaction with his ballerina, at times seeming haughtily to refuse her, then taking notice of her, succumbing, and ultimately becoming, blissfully, one with her. Jose kind of kept it at the same level, being ‘nice’ to his ballerina throughout, and concentrating more on the watery fluidity of the movement. Jose excels at turns, and he was breathtaking in the ballet’s repeated sequence of continuous spins for the lead man, where he spots in one direction and fouettes himself around several times, then turns a quarter and spots in that direction and fouettes around, then the next quarter, and so on, into a full circle. Herman’s forte is his sky-high jumps. So, Herman’s “Clear” was more virtuostic, dramatic; Jose’s more poetic. Just fun to see how two genius interpretive artists, through their different strengths, make a ballet their own.

And can I just sound like a schoolgirl for a moment and get something out of my system: Jose is so damn gorgeous!!!!! The girls behind me were giggling all through the beginning movement. It was hard not to join them. But Sir Alastair was sitting right in front of me, so I had to behave like an adult…

And all the up & coming young dancers like Jared Matthews were so cute; I was sitting up close tonight so could see faces well. He and the others kind of had these looks like “oh my god, I can’t believe I am sharing the stage with this legend…” Adorable

Just one more thing regarding “Clear” and then I’ll shut up about it: Blaine Hoven!!!!! I made a trip to the ladies room during intermission and a woman in line whom I didn’t know turned around to me. “You know who I am really liking?” she blurted out to me as if we were the best of friends, as she looked down at her Playbill and scanned the cast list. Her finger stopped at Blaine’s name and just as she looked back up at me, I nodded and we simultaneously said “Blaine Hoven.” The man is starting conversations amongst complete strangers in the ladies room line! He needs to develop his artistry more, and perhaps hone his partnering skills, but as a soloist, his technique, his lines, and the ease with which he takes on the modern movement vocabulary: extraordinary.

(image of Julie and Marcelo taken from City Center website; top headshot of Jose from ABT site)

Second on tonight’s program was Lar Lubovitch’s beautiful, but somewhat eery, crepuscular dreamscape, “Meadow,” danced by my favorite partnership, Marcelo Gomes and Julie Kent. This is a ballet that makes me yearn to know more about dance and the way choreographers create meaning. The whole thing unfolds behind a scrim, so from the start it has that feeling about it that it’s not quite real; it takes place in the land of the imaginary. It begins with an ensemble of both women and men, the women wearing nude-colored tops, the men shirtless, and both in flowing, blue skirts (more like skorts for the men) bearing abstract, cloud-like shapes. They flitter around the stage almost like night-time fireflies, or night-nymphs, some throwing their arms up as they run, a couple at a time doing a lift and carry. The music is a melodic Franz Schubert. But intriguingly, at various points a sole instrument — an untuned violin here, a bass there — will strike out discordantly over the mellifluous music. It sounds like an orchestra warming up, one instrument at a time, but why in the midst of already-playing music? Then, the sound completely shuts off while the dancers are still in the midst of a sequence, before slowly scattering off into the wings. This musical disruption, to me, gives the piece a disconcerting, eery feel, like something is awry, but what?

After the ensemble disappears, Marcelo and Julie, standing in the background and in the midst of an impossible-looking overhead lift, slowly come to view under an increasingly bright light shining down from above. They wear skin-tight unitards, Julie’s completely skin-toned like the tops of the night-nymphs, Marcelo’s the same blue with cloud shapes as the skirts / skorts of the ensemble. They complete a series of slow, high, dangerous-looking lifts that have that same, slow-motion dreamy feel. The ensemble returns, another pas de deux happens, and eventually Julie and Marcelo interact with the night creatures, Julie getting lost among them, and lifted away by one of their men-folk, Marcelo reaching out in vain behind her. It’s rather sad. The piece ends with the ensemble gone again and a final pas de deux beginning in the same crazy-high overhead lift as in the first duet. This time, though, Julie is lifted (by stage wires apparently emanating from the ceiling), all the way up to the heavens, Marcelo standing on the ground, reaching up, looking very alone. The audience oooohed and aaaahed over the trick with the wires, but I was left feeling unsettled; it was beautiful but discomfitting. And I still am not sure about the soundscape at the beginning. The dancers didn’t react to it at all; their movement corresponded to the underlying mellifluous Schubert. Maybe it was supposed to evoke the consciousness trying to wake the subconscious before it goes too far and there’s no turning back?…

Last was Balanchine’s pretty, poetic, female-centric “Ballo Della Regina,” which I also just blogged about as being performed opening night. This one starred Michele Wiles and Maxim Beloserkovsky. As I mentioned earlier, I was nearly knocked out of my seat and catapulted up to the chandeliers by David’s opening-night performance. So I was expecting to be a bit let down tonight, which I most definitely was not. Max was great, perfect really, for what I imagine Balanchine to have wanted. David took over the stage, but Max blended in more; he was just a happy-as-can-be man amongst the butterflies. Of course that’s not to say there was anything wrong with David’s performance. Never! David is what makes you want to spend the money and go to the ballet in the first place. You just really don’t want to see anyone else onstage when he is around; you just want him.

Michele was the one who really blew me away tonight. She not only danced the female lead here perfectly, she gave it so much life, so much sparkle, she set the stage on fire tonight. Of course Kristi Boone and others in the ensemble helped. The women’s bright smiles brought a real humor to some of Balanchine’s more original, subversive-at-the-time steps: the high-leg-lifted marching on pointe, sometimes with bent knee resembling a playful tip-toe-ing across the stage, the cute little square-dancish jumps, the jazzy can-can-esque kicks. I noticed the ABT dancers wear wide grins while the NYCBallet dancers (who perform Balanchine much more frequently) are generally more subdued (excepting Ashley Bouder). I don’t know which is officially better, or if one even can be said to be, but to me the lively facial expressions bring out the charming fun of Balanchine.

(image above, of Lord Hallberg and Gillian Murphy, copied from NYTimes website; here is Sir Alastair’s review of opening night)

Anyway, off to bed for me now, I’m tired… Tomorrow night at ABT is the premiere of a new ballet by NYCB’s Benjamin Millipied, and Saturday night another, the new one, a Jorma Elo / Chuck Close / Philip Glass collab. And tonight’s program will repeat later in the week. Go here for info.

Yay, my favorites returned to City Center last night I feel like I should call them DOC (“Danny’s old company”); can’t figure out if that sounds funny or obnoxious: ABT/ DOC… Hmm, guess it depends…

Okay, well, I gave my sum-up of the evening in the title’s post, above, I have nothing more to say now… No, seriously, I felt like there wasn’t a whole lot to the gala program, it was a pretty short evening of excerpts, but nearly everything I saw was spectacular.

First, I just have to say, I found the perfect place to sit in City Center with its universally acknowledged evil sightlines: the very last row of the rear mezzanine. You sit all the way back there, you fold up your seat til it’s against the seat back, and then you sit on the top of the seatback. You’re not blocking anyone since you’re in the back. Of course I have a permanent indentation on the tops of my back thighs and I could hardly walk afterwards since my legs were numb from cut-off circulation, but I could see!!!

First on was David in Ballo Della Regina, a pretty, pastel, story-less Balanchine with about 10,000 women wearing simple light-colored leotards and flowing diaphanous skirts, and one man in a white blousy top and pastel tights. David was the man. Well, I just said that… I don’t know if I’m “supposed to” feel this way since Balanchine’s ballets are so female-centric, but David made the ballet for me. He was by far the most beautiful, poetic element in the whole thing. His high high HIGH demi-pointe (tip toes), the way he just flies about the stage with those ethereal jumps — forget Balanchine’s gender divisive, man is human, woman is soul universe. David is the consummate combination of both. In her 1996 New Criterion essay, “Figures in the Carpet,” (contained in her book “Landscape With Moving Figures”) Laura Jacobs wrote this, “When you first see this dancer set foot upon the stage, though blond and not overly muscled, you can’t help thinking of Nureyev. He has the deliberate walk and the stage-bound self-containment … Where Nureyev brings a dark force to his dancing, he brings lightness, restraint… He can break your heart with a tendu.” She was talking about Vladimir Malakhov; David was a child then. (I feel that unfortunately, being relatively new to ballet, I’ve all but missed the era of Malakhov.) But I feel like she could easily be talking about David here. He’s not so ferociously feline or animalistic like Nureyev and he’s certainly not dark; he’s sheer radiant perfection. And talk about “breaking your heart” with a simple point of the foot… By the time the ballet was over I had this pit in my stomach and I felt kind of sick, like when you see something truly sublime and someone so perfect. I don’t mean to be corny. Gillian Murphy was sweet and danced beautifully as his partner, as well. David just stole the show to me. I think he’s the greatest dancer in the world right now.

Next, they juxtaposed Balanchine’s beatific feminine universe with some excerpts from “Clear,” Stanton Welch’s glorious male-centric ballet. Herman Cornejo and Xiomara Reyes had the pas de deux leads here. The more I see of this ballet, the more I’m loving it, and I’m realizing that though it is abstract, there is a little story in it. And I really love its spirituality. Herman is really starting to come alive to me. When I first started watching him dance I thought he was technically spectacular, but didn’t show enough emotion and so kind of bored me. Now I feel that he is really putting a lot of thought and emotional strength into everything he does. He was really intense in “Clear,” the way he’d brush off Xiomara’s advances, then hesitantly succumb to her. And the way he raises his chest, the way he jetes and pirouettes, he’s like a demi-god. He’s the antithesis of David, not ethereal at all but totally somehow grounded even when airborne (and he flies high). He’s a virile beauty.

Then there was a very short excerpt duet from Antony Tudor’s “The Leaves are Fading.” It was danced nicely by Michele Wiles and Alexandre Hammoudi, but the pas de deux was so short, it didn’t leave much impact.

(photo above by Roy Round, copied from ABT’s website; all headshots from ABT website).

Then there was a fun, flirty, Latiny pas de deux from the classical Petipa ballet, Don Quixote, danced by the now legendary Jose Manuel Carreno (one of my longtime favorites, and, for SYTYCD fans, Danny Tidwell’s chief idol!) and Paloma Herrera. I love Jose so much and I miss not seeing him as often as I used to; he doesn’t seem to dance all that often anymore. This fun, sexy Latin role is so perfect for him; he owns it like no other.

(photo by Rosalie O’Connor; Angel Corella in the air, also from ABT website)

And last was Jerome Robbins’s 1944 ballet “Fancy Free” about three sailors on shore leave and the comical little troubles they get themselves into trying to pick up women in a bar. This one “starred” (because that’s just the word that most comes to mind when I think of him) Marcelo, along with Herman, and Sascha Radetsky as the sailors, and Julie Kent and Stella Abrera as the unsuspecting pick-up-ees. So fun. I always love this little romp, especially when ABT does it. The guy next to me and I giggled throughout the entire thing. Marcelo is the best dramatic dancer out there, no doubt about it. He just brings the stage to life; he brings the whole theater to life. If anyone wants to learn how to have absolute massive amounts of stage-presence, look no further than the master!

That was it; then the party began (which I am far too poor to attend). Their City Center season is only two short weeks this year; usually it’s three. Two world premieres happen later this week: the Millipied, which I blogged about here, and the Chuck Close / Philip Glass / Jorma Elo collaboration, which I blogged about here. Just too much excitement for one week… Visit CC for tix.

Last night was Alessandra Ferri’s last night performing with ABT; she is now retired. Horribly sad night. I don’t even know what to say other than that I am very sad right now.

(Here she is with her two little girls).

But I have to say, the blow was lessened by Roberto Bolle, who played her Romeo. When I first heard she was bringing in someone from La Scala (Italy’s national ballet company) to dance the male lead in her final performance, I was so upset. Why wouldn’t she dance with an ABT dancer — why not Jose Carreno, who partnered her frequently? Actually, I was secretly hoping they’d bring back Julio Bocca (who was known as her long-time ABT partner and who retired last year), but no such luck. Why someone from outside, I thought? She said it was her gift to him (Bolle) — to let the world see him. Now I can see what she was talking about!

Seeing someone new, and with such promise(!!!), made you focus on a beginning, not an ending. And, oooooh, he was so amazing last night as Romeo; words cannot even describe! He was overall the best Romeo I’ve seen at ABT (excluding the aforementioned Jose, who I think all ABT fans know in their heart of hearts is going to be going soon) — he acted the part perfectly, he danced it spectacularly. And he is oh so gorgeous — such a beautiful beautiful man. He needs to come to ABT permanently! WE NEED HIM AT ABT!!!!! What is La Scala anyway? New York’s where it’s all at, right!! We so need a tall, dark and handsome romantic male lead. Of course there’s Marcelo, my love, but he is not enough. And, well, he is just different anyway. He’s like the down-to-earth college football-player boyfriend. Roberto is tall, dark, and foreign. (I mean, Marcelo’s from Brazil, but he just looks so American, and he’s been here since he was 13 so he basically is American). Anyway, we need Roberto!!! Oh please please please please please, Kevin, make him an offer he can’t resist! Puleeeease!

(I am really sorry my pictures are so crappy — I was sad and my hand was shaking and people were bumping me right and left, so they’re blurry as hell, but, still, I have GOT to get a new camera!)

Of course there were 10,000 curtain calls. Here are a few more pics:

(Picking up her bizillions of bouquets, the conductor behind her)

The dancers came out one by one (just like with Julio’s farewell), to hug her. Of course I had to get a shot of Marcelo in the action!

Here comes Paloma in the flowing red skirt. David is behind Alessandra, diagonally and to her left. He was the first one out.

Aw, Kevin McKenzie (ABT Director) hugging her.

It’s raining confetti!

It goes without saying, the house was PACKED.

They had these enormous, blown-up photographs of her, taken by her husband, photographer Fabrizio Ferri, lining the walls of the lobbies.

There wasn’t as much curtain-call insanity as when Julio retired last year: no taking out a beer, letting it explode all over the stage, pouring it on yourself, then letting the crowd watch you slowly enjoy your beer, then letting David and Marcelo hoist you high over their heads and carry you all over stage, then coming out in your underwear at the end… but then again Julio is Julio…

About the two previous pics, taken with my cell phone: in the second one down, the poster is of Angel Corella and I think Diana Vishneva posing for Romeo and Juliet, not Roberto and Alessandra — it was just the only thing I could think of to take a picture of on the spot during intermission so I could gush on and on about how in love with Roberto I was!!!

And top pic below, I tried to take a picture of the Fabrizio Ferri photographs in the lobby with my cell phone, but, as you can see, it didn’t come out so well! I was very excited because I was sitting in orchestra, and this couple came down to the front and was looking for a pair of free seats (like there were going to be any on this night of all nights). I heard the guy behind me say, “Are you looking for seats? Well, the seat next to me will be free but only for the second act. My friend, who’s from the New York Times has gone over to NYCB to watch Jewels for this act, but he’s coming back over here for the final act.” Oh wow, I thought, I wonder who it is. The woman looking for a seat sat down. Then, a couple of minutes later, I hear, “Oh, sorry, the seat’s not available after all. Alastair is back.” Apparently the Jewels idea didn’t work out. Of course I whiplashed my head around. He didn’t look very old! Not that The Times is going to hire as their new chief dance critic an 80-year-old to replace the retiring 80-year-old, but still — he looked REALLY young. Of course I didn’t sit there and stare, but … he looked so normal! I just expected a chief critic to look like … the conductor in my picture above, or Gorbachev or something, big and hefty and aged and distinguished ha ha! And, also, he looked American — he was wearing a Polo-type t-shirt… (Macaulay is a Londoner). Maybe that guy was just goofing with everyone, trying to impress by pretending to know Alastair Macaulay and it wasn’t him at all, haha!

Anyway, ugh, it was obviously an unforgettable night and I am really really going to miss her. I think I included in this post practically all of the pictures I took, but in case I didn’t, here’s the album on my photo page.

Funny there was no red carpet, no big showy movie stars, no former President of the United States, no big huge to-do at American Ballet Theater’s opening night gala tonight, unlike at NYCB two weeks ago, but just walking into the Met Opera House amongst all of these hugely wealthy patrons wearing all manner of couture just made me feel so poor and ugly… like I NEVER felt last week or any time I’ve been in NYCB for that matter. ABT people can just be so intimidating…

Anyway, the program was excellent — at least the second half, though I have tons of miniscule criticisms to make, of course of course. First, Marcelo. Not because he was on first — he wasn’t on til the second half — but just because, he’s Marcelo!! He danced with Alessandra Ferri in the final scene of Othello. Ugh, they were both so good, I got depressed again — like I felt after watching Pasha and Anna last week… just a huge lump in my throat, just sad. Alessandra is so so so good, and it’s just so horrible she’s retiring — it really is tragic. I don’t mean to be melodramatic but I just feel like there’s never going to be another ballerina like her and it’s so terribly upsetting. She just has something no one else does. It’s just beyond words watching her. And Marcelo is such a big, huge, gorgeous man, such a star — he’s so perfect as her support. He is of course a great actor too, and that is so absolutely necessary for this scene. He was so frightening and powerful and uber-virile — as Marcelo always is, but so sadly broken as well. He could definitely have taken all of that a bit further, but he is just returning to the stage after a hiatus and you could see the concentration in his eyes. He’ll take it up a notch when he performs the whole ballet, I’m sure! That ballet is going to be THE BALLET to see this season — it’s gonna rock! Lar Lubovitch (the choreographer) is a genius … well Shakespeare was a genius so anything anyone does that’s based on his plays in my mind is superior to the other story ballets… But the choreography looks so engrossing — if anyone is kinda sorta an ABT fan and is thinking about maybe possibly going to see something this season, SEE THAT ONE!!!

So, the other stuff: Herman Cornejo and Xiomara Reyes did the balcony pas de deux from Romeo and Juliet, and to me, it ended up being an interestingly different take on that scene, but just not good enough. It was ALL ABOUT HERMAN — show-stealer that he is It really was a bunch of bravura dancing from him, while Xiomara just kind of looked on sweetly — which was interesting, really in its own way: it was like, “Hey, Juliet, look how hot I am for you! I’m just flying all over the stage doing all these crazy-ass tricks!” And she, “Oh Romeo, Romeo, you’re sooo great, you’ve definitely won my heart now…” Cute take, but they totally watered down the choreography — they took out all those beautiful crazy big huge run and jump lifts — you CAN’T take those out!!!!! It’s plain and simply NOT MacMillan’s pdd without them!!!! And they just eased up on the choreography in general – -the partnering just wasn’t there for me. And that’s what the pdd is, after all, not bravura dancing for the man.

The Swan Lake excerpt was danced beautifully by Nina Ananiashvili and Angel Corella. A crowd pleaser as well that Angel is of course of course — it looked like he did about 10 pirouettes in a row. She did 30 fouettes — this is the first time I’ve EVER counted them and only did so because I know it is the balletomane thing to do. I’ll never do it again; it’s boring and takes away from enjoying the beauty of the dance. People who count are, to me, just silly… I didn’t count Angel’s pirouettes — I said they looked like there were about 10 in a row; I’m sure they weren’t; he just has that Angel way of … just being Angel… And I’m happy I got to see Nina; she’s not dancing much this season and I don’t know if I’ll make it to anything she’s in.

And then there was a Manon excerpt, a pas de deux, with Julie and Jose — two of my favorite dancers. They did this pdd like the Romeo and Juliet should have been done. They are spectacular, they are beautiful and poetic, and I really think Jose is one of the very greatest dancers in the world right now. I’m so scared he is going to be retiring soon too… Julie is perfect; she’s flawless and she’s beautiful. But to me, artistically, she still doesn’t have that something undefinably extra that Alessandra has. But she still has time. There is something about her and Marcelo dancing together too — they just have something together that makes them both better than they are alone…

The gala ended with La Bayadere excerpts, performed by David, Paloma, Gillian, and the illustrious heartthrob (so say his bizillions of adoring female fans) Ethan Stiefel – returning after a very long hiatus due to double knee surgery. He got a lot of applause, understandably so, and performed breathtaking jumps — he was really awesome. So cute! David seemed to be the only principal who didn’t get applause when he entered the stage. I think it’s because people are angry about his lack of contributions lately to the Winger … Just kidding of course I think it’s because he entered kind of suddenly, albeit with a very loud manly clap and people were a bit surprised and didn’t recognize him at first. I heard several voices around me going, “oh oh oh, that’s that David Hallberg, that’s who that is…” Plus, he was wearing a bright white turban, which, when I first saw it, I thought he’d gone and dyed his hair platinum now… I couldn’t see all that well from balcony…

In the first half — I know, I’m going totally backward — first piece was a Bayadere excerpt with all corps members. I’m not one for ensemble work with lots of people onstage at once — I’m a pdd (& occasionally bravura guy) girl — but Misty Copeland stood out to me in this first piece. Then Sleeping Beauty (excerpts from classic Petipa version, no new McKenzie version revealed yet! — that’s for later in the month), with Michele Wiles, Veronika Part, who slipped a bit in the Rose Adagio but nothing serious, Diana Vishneva, favorite of all the critics, and Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky. Personally, I love Irina. I know she is not favored by the critics, but she is still one of my favorite ballerinas. I think her dancing is breathtaking, she has gorgeous lines and beautiful extensions, and I think she’s a very good actress — she puts her heart and soul into everything she does, and she really loves and respects the audience. I just love her, and wish she’d dance once in a while with Marcelo and David! Diana was stunning, but one thing she did that was weird was she didn’t stay around and take her curtain call with the others. She took her bow right after she finished her part, then left, without waiting until Irina and Max were finished with theirs to take bows along with them, Veronika and Michele. It was noticeable to the audience as well — VERY noticeable. I hope she had a good reason for leaving early; I don’t think it sits well with fans if you don’t do as everyone else does — might make one look a bit superior. Just going by whispers I heard happening around me…

And then right before the intermission was “Lady’s Choice” a contemporary, ballroomy piece choreographed by Brian Reeder set to Chopin and danced by Stella Abrera and Sascha Radetsky. I didn’t think they worked very well together. He’s too small for her, for one, and for another, neither was very expressive.

After the first piece, Kevin came out and spoke, along with Caroline Kennedy, but the microphones weren’t set up well and I could hear hardly anything, so can’t tell you much of what was said. I do remember he said they were showcasing their corps members as well as their stars this time around — just reminded me of that difference between ABT and NYCB – the idea of having “stars.” Kevin seems like such a sweet man — I may be totally wrong, but he just seems like a really nice guy.

Looking at this picture on my wall made me realize who was missing — Carmen! (pictured with Marcelo of course!)

All in all it was a really lovely night even though I felt poor and ugly and then depressed??? Marcelo and Alessandra were just so beautiful together… He’s gay and she’s married, and I’m totally jealous of how great they were together. How much sense does that make?! It’s just like great dancing goes beyond great dancing sometimes, you know?… Ugh, it’s a good thing I don’t have a crush on Ethan or some other straight guy with a gorgeous and perfect paramour I’m really sorry if I’m a bit slap happy here — it’s late and I’m tired!

Just one last thing, on a totally different note. I made it home just in time to see the end of “Dancing With the Stars” — think there was a humorous remark made by Kennedy about being grateful that some young people were pulling themselves away from the show to be at ABT tonight, but I’m not sure because, as I said, the acoustics were off — but I think I overheard the TV show’s hostess say that tomorrow night, they are having Joaquin Cortes on the show?!?! The brilliant, spectacular, not to mention HOT, flamenco dancer?! If I heard correctly that is simply awesome — a real high point for them — that, THAT is CLASS!!!

ABT’s fall City Center season ended yesterday, sadly. Above is the cast of Glow-Stop, with the ever-radiant David Hallberg in the middle, from this past Saturday’s matinee performance. I love the mixed repertoire that my favorite dance company performs during their fall season so much better than the full-length classical ballets they do at the Met in the summer. I generally like contemporary ballets better than classical because I find it fun and challenging to try to decipher the choreographer’s meaning, plus I get a little bored seeing the same classics over and over again, and who doesn’t like something new! And, I get to see a lot more of the corps dancers who are mainly relegated to the background in the classical ballets (most of which offer only a couple of large roles per ballet, given to principals and soloists). So, it’ll be another year til I see my favorites in my preferred season again, ho hum.

Anyway, highlights for me were:

1) Marcelo Gomes doing Sinatra in Tharp’s Sinatra Suites, Marcelo dancing the part of the cocky macho sailor in Robbins’s Fancy Free, and Marcelo and Julie Kent making that insane-looking never-ending lift in Lar Lubovitch’s Meadow look completely effortless. Marcelo has such a huge personality, larger-than-life stage presence, great acting ability, and sincere appreciation for American culture, that he brings so much more than the others to the Tharp and Robbins roles. If he was not a ballet dancer, I think he would be a very successful actor!

2) David Hallberg in everything I saw him dance — Clear, In The Upper Room, Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, Afternoon of a Faun … and he was definitely brilliant, expectedly, as Death in Kurt Jooss’ both timeless and timely, Post-WWI antiwar piece, The Green Table. He is such a beautiful man; his dancing is like watching poetry in motion. With his height and long limbs, he just fills up the entire stage whenever he is on it and makes spectacular lines. And his luminous, wispy blonde hair accentuates the fluidity of his movement. He is, I think, the quintessential lyrical dancer, and has definitely become, along with Marcelo and Jose Carreno, one of my favorites: David is the most sublime, Marcelo has the most endearing personality, and Jose is, quite simply, the greatest dancer in the world right now

(P.S.: David hasn’t been writing so much on The Winger this season, but, from what I’ve seen at City Center, that is likely because he’s been dancing every single night, so we’ll forgive him for momentarily neglecting us Wingers )

3) Other principals I enjoyed were: Jose (like always) was perfect in everything he did; Angel Corella was wondrous in Clear, Max Beloserkovsy was beautiful dancing alongside David in Clear, Irina Dvorovenko was dazzling dancing Tharp, as she always is (and, as I think I’ve said before, to me, is currently the quintessential Tharp ballerina); Julie and Gillian were powerhouses in Meadow maintaining those shapes in mid-air practically on their own, supported only by what, Marcelo’s pinkies???

4) And a lot of the corps members I haven’t seen much of before: Misty Copeland stood out (at the beginning of the season, before she was injured anyway); both women who performed the Sinatra Suites — Sarah Lane acted the part very well and was so sweet receiving her many bouquets during curtain call the night she danced it with Angel , and Luciana Paris had absolutely gorgeous extensions; Craig Salstein was a blast in Fancy Free and Rodeo; Jared Matthews is so damn cute you just want to pick him up and squeeze him!; Isaac Stappas did Death just as well as David I thought; Blaine Hoven seemed to be in just about everything and was very strong; Kristi Boone was remarkable in Glow-Stop; Marian Butler rocked in Rodeo, and Yuriko Kajiya was so sweet in Upper Room … and that’s just a few off the top of my head…

On a completely different note, one final thought about what we all had damn well better be doing at some point tomorrow, said much more compellingly and humorously by my very favorite political blogger. Please click here to read her raucous mad fun words of infinite wisdom.