Listen to Alex C. Ewing, the son of Lucia Chase, founder of American Ballet Theater, discuss his mother’s legacy with Kevin McKenzie and Leonard Lopate on WNYC here. Ewing’s enlightening biography of his mother came out late last year and is part of ABT’s celebration of its 70th anniversary this year.
They were announced yesterday and Bill T. Jones’s Fela! received many! And rightly so. If you haven’t seen this brilliant musical, definitely do go. I wrote about it here. Also, Bill T. Jones is to receive the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award at this summer’s festival; he’ll be there in person to collect it at their opening night gala in June.
Memphis (the musical Danny Tidwell danced in) also received a few noms. I wrote about that show here and here.
The Tonys air on on June 13.
Photo of Fela! cast by Monique Carboni.
Maks Chmerkovskiy has been nominated for a Fred Astaire award for his dancing in Burn the Floor. Other nominees of note are Holley Farmer for Tharp’s Come Fly Away in the female dancer category and Tharp herself and Bill T. Jones in the choreographer category for Come Fly and Fela! respectively. Also nominated are the female ensemble of Fela! and the male ensemble of Memphis, as well as that show’s choreographer Sergio Trujillo, and Frederick Wiseman is nominated in the film category for his documentary on the Paris Opera Ballet, La Danse. Awards ceremony takes place June 7th at the theater in John Jay College. See the rest of the noms here.
Above photo of Chmerkovskiy from NY Daily News.
All photos by Paul Kolnik. Top two are of Benjamin Millepied’s new Why am I not where you are, and bottom two are from Alexei Ratmansky’s new Namouna: A Grand Divertissement.
Sorry I’m late with this post — I had serious internet problems over the weekend and they’d better not continue today or I may kill someone from Time Warner. Anyway, Thursday night was the opening night of New York City Ballet’s Spring / Summer season, and there were two world premieres: first Millepied’s Why am I not where you are, followed by Ratmansky’s Namouna, A Grand Divertissement. I thought both were good and entertaining, if nothing earth shattering. And maybe it’s just that I’m getting to the point where I’ve seen so much ballet but it seems that everything is a combination of several other things, which isn’t bad. Millepied’s kept me more engrossed, only because Ratmansky’s was just too long.
Millepied’s reminded me by turns of Balanchine’s La Valse (which everyone seems to have thought), Robbins’s West Side Story, and even Balanchine’s version of Swan Lake, particularly where Siegfried frantically tries to find Odette through the swarm of swans who run around her in circles, frighteningly, creating a kind of hurricane. It seemed there were also parts of the White Swan pas de deux between Sara Mearns (who danced gorgeously, as always), and her “love interest” Amar Ramasar. There even seemed thematically to be elements of Angelin Preljocaj.
The main character is Sean Suozzi who, wearing all white, seems to be a lost in time, or a human searching for other earthlings and who runs into this lot of ethereal creatures all dressed in colorful Romantic tutus. But instead of being beautifully beguilingly ethereal, they are more frightening, like aliens. There’s a very modern set by architect Santiago Calatrava (who collaborated with many of the choreographers who are premiering ballets this season and to whom the season is devoted — he was toasted by Peter Martins at the beginning of the evening), that to me gave the sense that someone — either Suozzi or the others — were from another place. Music, by Thierry Escaich, is unsettling as well. Suozzi falls for Kathryn Morgan, but in their initial pas de deux Morgan can’t see him. She seems to be blind to him. But he tries. The group of men do a kind of intense West Side Story dance, and eventually, Suozzi manages successfully to fit in, to become one of them, as is made clear by Ramasar’s giving him several articles of colorful clothing (a la La Valse) to don. Afterward, he dances again with Morgan but now it is he who cannot see her. Soon, the others swarm around her, violently plucking pieces of her tutu off. Eventually she’s the one wearing nothing but white undergarments, and she’s left devastated, alone and alienated. It was intense and enthralling and I definitely want to see it again, perhaps with Janie Taylor in the female lead (she withdrew due to injury).
Ratmansky’s reminded me of a cross between Branislava Nijinksa’s Les Biches and his own Concerto DSCH with elements of Balanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream thrown in. It’s harder to describe than the Millepied because there wasn’t much of a through story, just abstract portions combined with smaller stories that didn’t seem to merge into a larger whole. It’s set to really lovely music by Eduoard Lalo, which in places sounded like Glass’s In the Upper Room. I can’t remember the whole thing but Robert Fairchild is this guy dressed in white sailor garb. At one point, he happens upon some women dressed in 1930s beachy-seeming clothes and wearing hair caps and kind of taunting him with their humorously sexy cigarette smoking. Jenifer Ringer did a fabulous job of playing the main cigarette-bearing “taunter.” She’d puff in his face and he’d look enraptured but confused. Later, a group of people run toward him, carrying a passed-out Ringer and one man bows at Fairchild, as if for forgiveness. The other women haughtily puff on at the front of the stage. Everyone laughed. This cigarette girl part was my favorite. Then, there were some bravura parts for Daniel Ulbricht, dressed in kind of Puck-ish Midsummer Night‘s garb and doing the same high jumping, running through the air leaps as Puck. If I can remember correctly he was accompanied by some cutely impish female elfs, in the form of Abi Stafford and Megan Fairchild. There are sections where a lot of women in long yellow dresses do various port de bras and rather humorous (to me anyway) jumps in place a la Concerto DSCH, and toward the end Wendy Whelan emerges and is this kind of bride for Fairchild. They do a pas de deux filled with lots of classical ballet lifts and then they get married and supposedly live happily ever after.
I liked the Ratmansky and would be happy to see it again if it weren’t so blasted long! It felt like it went on for about an hour and a half! Before seeing it, I recommend taking a walk at intermission to stretch your legs, and go to the bathroom!
And expect Natalie Portman to be at the gala. Well, of course she would be: her boyfriend’s new ballet will premiere tonight, along with a Ratmansky premiere. And, by the way, Kathryn Morgan is to replace Janie Taylor in Millepied’s. I hope Janie’s not injured again…
Above photo taken from Celebrity Mound.
Over the weekend I went to see my friend Taylor Gordon (dear Lord, I almost typed @taylorgordon — my writing brain is becoming Twitterfied) dance with the Rebecca Kelly Ballet in the Alvin Ailey theater. I’d never seen the Rebecca Kelly Ballet before — it’s been around since the late 70s — and I was very pleasantly surprised. Sometimes with very small ballet companies (modern companies too) you see dancers of varying ability, but here, all of the dancers were very skilled. Ms. Kelly’s movement language was original — a combination of ballet and modern with movement by turns lyrical and balletic and more angular and staccato.
There were three pieces on the program: Trouve Moi (making its NY premiere), The Travelers (from 2001), and Desire (NY premiere). Trouve Moi was a short sweet pas de deux performed by Raul Peinado and the very engaging and dramatic Therese Miyoshi Wendler (probably my favorite dancer in the troupe — besides Taylor of course!). The Travelers (pictured above), which has understandably received good reviews over the years and was probably my favorite on the program, was abstract but intense and suspenseful with dancers traveling around the stage in pairs, alone, and in ensemble, at times seemingly fleeing a crisis, sometimes coming together, forming various liaisons. I also liked Desire, evoking the many faces of desire, at times conveying emotional turbulence, at times becoming more mellow. Kelly uses not only classical music but contemporary as well, which goes along with her balletic / contemporary mix of movement. Her dances always seem intense and laden with meaning even if abstract — I mean when do you see barrel turns used to signify emotional turbulence rather than used simply as a stunning trick?!
Where Roberto Bolle is appearing naked in Mats Ek’s Giselle. Seriously, from what I’ve read, Ek’s version of the ballet looks really interesting: it’s moved up to contemporary times and is set in a mental hospital.
Photo taken from OperaChic.
On Saturday May 8th from 7-10 p.m. I’ll be having a little book launch party at the Bowery Wine Company. I guess it’s not really a launch party though, since the book has been out for a few months now. But I hate cold weather and wanted to wait for warmth, especially since BWC has a nice little outdoor area. So, a book publishing party then.
I can sign books if you have a physical copy (someone asked me how authors will sign digital books if all books are digital in the future, and it’s a good question that I don’t have the answer to…) and I’ll have a few for sale (cash only though). But just come and hang out and say hi and have a drink. BWC has a good wine list and a full bar and they have good little snacky things too like thin crust pizza. We’ll be in the lounge area.
BWC by the way is in the East Village, on First Street between Bowery and Second Avenue. Here’s a map.
Hope to see you all there! And if you’re going away for Mother’s Day, I’ll probably have another party a little later, especially if the book wins more awards 🙂
Photo above by Jeff Gurwin, from Time Out NY.
My friend and I went to DUMBO yesterday for an open artists’ studios tour (some of the buildings that house groups of artists’ studios have a day once a month when they allow visitors inside to peruse and talk to the artists about their work). We stayed for a while afterward to explore the area a bit. We found these in a grocery store there, which I found interesting. Never had fiddleheads before. And $25.99 per pound?!!!
I’m sure I’ll have much more to say on this over time, so I labeled the post Part One.
Here are a couple of write-ups from The Dance Enthusiast on the panel discussion on dance criticism two weeks ago that I took part in.
I was going to wait for the video to go up online so I could embed that or link to it but it hasn’t gone up yet. I usually take notes at such things, but since I was on the panel didn’t — and I feel lost doing a write-up without my notes.
Anyway, these two write-ups are good. We talked about how there are virtually no paying jobs for dance writers now, in the internet age, how there’s only one full-time dance critic in the country (no one was allowed to speak his name — but it’s Alastair Macaulay of the NY Times of course), and the situation is only getting more dire as newspapers let go more and more of their arts critics and close down entire arts sections.
Robert Johnson, esteemed longtime dance critic, currently at the New Jersey Star Ledger but he’s written and / or edited for practically every dance publication in existence (Dance Magazine, Pointe, etc.) was on the panel as well, and he was probably the person most knowledgeable about dance history and the history of writing about dance of anyone in the room. He’s a very nice man as well and I was glad to finally meet him. As Jowers points out in her write-up, when Marc Kirshner of TenduTV (the moderator) asked how newspapers got into this situation, Johnson pointed to an intriguing-looking book by Dolores Hayden and said it likely has a great deal to do with the suburbanization of American culture. Newspapers are local and most of them serve their urban communities, and with people leaving those urban centers and spreading out, there’s just not as much interest in what goes on in the cities anymore — like dance and classical music performances, art openings, etc.
That definitely resonated with me since many of my readers here found my blog through my writing on the dance TV shows and aren’t located anywhere near New York. I’ve tried to write about the local dance performances I see in a way that makes those people interested in seeing a performance,
So You Think You Can Dance has announced its 10 returning star dancers, who’ll partner this coming season’s 10 contestants. They are: Twitch (big smile), Kathryn McCormick, Mark Kanemura (yay), Pasha and Anya (obviously yay), Allison Holker, Lauren Gottlieb, Neil Haskell, Dominic Sandoval, Ade Obayomi, Courtney Galliano, and Comfort Medoke. So obviously no Danny Tidwell. Interesting, there are no final winners, right? And there are several returning star dancers who didn’t make it to the finals.
I recently came across this author, Maria Murnane, and her book, Perfect on Paper: the (Mis)Adventures of Waverly Bryson, when I was researching indie-published book award contests (Murnane won a load of them, before being picked up by Amazon Encore, Amazon’s new publishing house).
It’s a really lovely book, sweet and funny with a cast of characters who are definitely very relatable — the annoying guy who just seems to be everywhere you are, the bitchy competitive co-worker who seems intent on stealing your job, the hot guy in whose presence you just can’t seem not to make an ass of yourself, etc. After being jilted at the altar by her fiance, Waverly sets out on a series of hilariously bad dates in an attempt to overcome her heartbreak and find that ever-elusive Mr. Right. But in the process, she finds herself instead.
Of course there are lots of bad date / overcoming evil ex novels, but what’s original here is Waverly’s knack for coming up with clever little sayings, sometimes darkly comical, that speak well to the single urban career girl, such as, “Ever had to work with a total nightmare? Honey, just wait until the company holiday party. We’ll see who’s all alone in the corner.” And, “Not everyone can have a cookie-cutter family, right? Honey, I’d cut your losses and settle for the cookies.” Waverly eventually creates a line of greeting cards bearing said clever sayings, and voila, her real calling emerges. Also, Waverly works in sports PR (as did Murnane — I like it when authors put their job details into their books; you can learn a lot about other walks of life that way) so there are some interesting, amusing scenes about the sports world — making this a book not only for women, but for men as well.
Basically, a great summer beach / plane / park / outdoor cafe — wherever you read when it’s warm out — read. (Above, my copy at Tatiana’s on Brighton Beach, where I always celebrate the first warm day of the year with red caviar and champagne.) And you get a lot of double-takes with this book in your hands, I’ve found. People are like, “What’s that?” Kind of fun reading something only available on Amazon!
Now, Murnane has her own line of the “Honey Notes” out, available in her Honey Shop, along with t-shirts and tote bags. C’est unique!
