Author: Tonya

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A Beautiful (and Emotional) Farewell to One of the Last of the Balanchine Ballerinas at NYCB

Last night marked the final performance of Kyra Nichols, the second-to-last still-performing ballerina to have worked directly with George Balanchine, and thus widely considered to be of the last of “the Balanchine ballerinas.” (The other Balanchine ballerina is Darci Kistler, also of NYCB). I’m relatively new to ballet and especially New York City Ballet, so I haven’t had many chances to see her dance, and I’m really feeling sad now, as I felt when I recently saw the legend Gelsey Kirkland perform (in a non-dance role) in American Ballet Theater‘s Sleeping Beauty, that I’ve missed out on an era. Ms. Nichols danced brilliantly last night; I was so overwhelmed and I wish so much I would have seen more of her over the years. Since I don’t know a huge amount about her, here’s an interview she gave recently to Gia Kourlas of Time Out NY, and here is Joel Lobenthal’s article in The Sun (I remember NYTimes’s Alastair Macaulay also wrote an article on the several retiring ballerinas but it’s impossible to link to because they only allow paying subscribers to access articles). Also, here is long-time NYCB fan Oberon’s review of last night.

Last night was breathtaking. Peter Martins (NYCB Director) put together a gorgeous program for her. First on was Serenade, what to me seems to be classic Balanchine — involving oodles of beautiful ballerinas in gorgeous flowing baby blue chiffon, and one or two men overwhelmed by them all! (which is largely, it seems, Balanchine’s take on ballet 🙂 ) It was mostly abstract but with a slight narrative in which Nichols poignantly danced the main character. (I will definitely be reading more on this splendid ballet in Terry Teachout’s book on Balanchine, but more about that in a minute…) Second was Balanchine’s “ballroomy” piece for four couples set to Robert Schumann’s “Davidsbundlertanze” (try saying that several times in a row!), which I’ve seen before and loved, and set to lovely onstage piano music. And, my favorite of the night (can’t help it, I’m a ballroom dancer!), “Der Rosenkavalier” from Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes, a shortish piece in which the stage is overtaken with waltzing couples — the men in elegant black long-tailed tuxes and the women in long lavish white gowns — one of the most exquisite sights I think I’ve ever seen on a stage, and one that rekindled the passion I felt for Standard Ballroom upon attending my first competition. Not that several couples waltzing their own routine on a ballroom floor could look anything like this (even if those couples are at the level of Mirko Gozzoli and Alessia Betti or Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova…) — it takes a genius choreographer, not just a few great dancers, to create such a sublime spectacle. And one thing I love about ballroom is how it seems to convert little boys into mature gentlemen — Robert Fairchild and Tyler Angle looked so dapper whisking their ladies all around the floor — so charming! It just takes you to another time and place, to a fairytale land…

Anyway, although it was the end of an era in the ballet world, for me it was a time of new beginnings, of meeting new people and making new friendships. I met up with critic and writer extraordinare Apollinaire Scherr, who introduced me to the illustrious critic and writer and author of several books, Terry Teachout, who gave me a copy of his biography of Balanchine!!

The three of us met up during intermissions, then all went out afterward and chatted all about the ballet world, and the dance critic world — so very interesting for newcomer me! Mr. Teachout is so brilliant. He’s a former jazz musician and has been writing for so long about the worlds of classical music, ballet, and now theater, he’s just like a walking encyclopedia of the New York arts scene. It’s so amazing. I can’t wait to start reading his book — which I’m going to begin this afternoon (in between trying to finish two briefs for work by the end of the month — I’m going to get it all done I swear…) Meeting him was so fun, and so educational, and I’m sure his book is going to open up a new world to me (and, he even said he liked my blog 🙂 :)) — thanks so much, Apollinaire!

There was so much going on last night, every ballet fan in the universe (or at least those lucky enough to have got tickets) must have been there — but somehow I was also able finally to meet Sarah, who frequently comments on The Winger as well as Philip‘s and my blogs, and Bob, who comments a lot on our blogs as well! That was fun, and I’m completely amazed that in that massive crowd people were actually able to recognize each other. I sat next to Susan, who also is a big blog and Ballet-Talk-commenter (and met her nice husband), and Philip and Wei (who I also met beforehand at the stage door and hung out with. Philip is great fun to lurk around the stage door with because he knows everyone and everything at NYCB … he should be a tour guide, if there was such a thing!) We all looked for Carbro at Ballet Talk, but couldn’t find her.

Anyway, it was a really amazing night, amazing experience. Oh, we also spotted Kristin Sloan onstage filming — so her video’s going to be a lot of fun to watch when she finishes it. I think it’s so magnificent that we now have this technology that enables us to preserve these monumental events in this way. First those excellent “Tragic Love” videos documenting Martins’s new Romeo + Juliet and now this — NYCB is just going to HAVE to expand it’s website’s broadband to make room for all these awesome videos Kristin’s making!

Okay, time for rest and relaxation (and brief-writing) until tonight … when a ballerina whose career I HAVE followed and whom I love, retires as well — there were many teary eyes in last night’s audience; tonight is going to be my night for being a hysterial wreck…

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First Ever Reading Survived!!!

Hahahahhaha — I look SO intense!

Tonight I had my first ever public reading of my novel at the Cornelia Street Cafe. I read as part of the Writers Room Member Reading series, which takes place there every third Tuesday of the month from September through June.

Hehe, so much fun. I was so nervous, but once I got started, I was fine… at least that’s what my wonderful friend, Evangelina, told me 🙂

Here I am with Evangelina, my good old trustworthy friend from my writing class days. She’s known (main character) Sophie and all of her nutty problems since her inception so it was PERFECT to have her in the audience! I would have invited more people, but I was really nervous going into it and didn’t know how well I’d do, so I wanted to minimize the number of people to see me screw up!

But as it turned out, it went fine, and now of course I can’t wait to do it again. When I do, I promise to invite everyone I know in the NYC area 🙂

Here’s playwright and Writer’s Room Reading Series host, the hilarious Stan Richardson, about to introduce me.

Hehehe, I’m such a goof. I actually wrote out my intro to my piece that I was reading. I always do such silly things — whenever I give an oral argument in court, I absolutely MUST write at the top of my outline the words, “May it please the court. I am Tonya Plank and I represent (client’s name)” … my friends like to make fun of me — because what, am I going to forget my name?? — but I’m always so nervous approaching a podium, I just must have those words on my paper in order for me to get myself actually talking.

All in all it went really well. Like I said, I was very nervous and shaky-voiced at the beginning — which I felt and Evangelina confirmed — but after I got into it, it got much better. After I read, Stan said my reading made him think and there were a lot of things that he really wanted to talk about but there was no time — how sweet! And then later, he made a couple of jokes about Freud and everything in this post-Freudian universe being sexual, which was a riff on my first couple of lines 🙂

Then, after all readings were over, a writer, Jim Story, approached me and told me he thought I did well and my work sounded interesting but that I read way too fast and needed to slow down. Evangelina agreed, but said I only read how I talk (which is way too fast!). She also said that I need to learn proper comic timing — when I have a funny line, I need to PAUSE afterward to give the audience time to get it and respond. I know, I know, I know, but eeek, I just feel so weird doing that; I feel like I am begging for laughs, basically telling the audience I want them to think this is funny and to laugh by pausing in certain places — no??? I guess maybe just reading slower in general would do the trick…

Hehehe, also Stan asks everyone a question or two when introducing them. For mine, he asked me what I liked best about my website. I was thinking he was going to ask something like when did you join the Writers Room and / or why, what publishing house would you like to publish your book (questions he’s asked others), but instead I got this one and I couldn’t think quickly. I said the first thing that came to mind which was the graphic! I do really like the graphic designer my web builder, Gregory Tomlinson, hired, and those couple of little outlines he did of me and Pasha dancing in my first showcase, one on the main blog, and one on the home page. And then I started vomiting on (when I’m nervous I just start blabbing incessantly; it’s really just BAD), about how I used to take ballroom and, oh can you believe the guy in my graphic, my former dance teacher, is now on “So You Think You Can Dance” and woo-hoo a famous person on my blog, who knew Pasha would make it so big, and how awesome, and blah blah blah… have no idea what else I said; it’s just a blur now! Well, Stan had no idea what I was talking about — he’s like, So You Think You Can Dance, is that American!? I’m such a goof, I have to remember not everyone is as obsessed with dance as I am … And, hello, what kind of writer says their favorite thing about their website is the graphic!!!!!!!

Anyway, it was all so much fun and such a great experience and I so want to do it again. I could totally get used to this writer life 🙂 Thanks to Stan for being his humorous self and easing my nerves, along with my two co-readers tonight Dan Klein and Lauren Yaffe, and Evangelina, friend extraordinaire for her never-ending support :), and to Cornelia Street Cafe and the Writers Room (the most awesome of all urban writers colonies!) — as well as the Jerome Foundation, NYC Department of Culture, and National Endowment of the Arts for underwriting the WR Reading Series — all for giving new writers such a wonderful opportunity to be heard and to engage in the writing life in this way. Happy night!

Front of Cornelia Street Cafe, where Evangelina and I had dinner and caught up with each other after the reading. And, across the street, we noticed this very happening restaurant, Petra or something like that? Hmmm, will have to check it out someday…

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I am a Crazy Czarist Russian, Who Knew?: Balanchine’s "Jewels" at NYCB

Whew, am so busy with work (law work, that is), writing stuff, and ballet-going, I’m badly behind on blogging… I’ve seen so many things over the past few days at New York City Ballet — after suddenly realizing that, between ABT‘s Met season and the Blackpool Dance Festival, NYCB’s spring season is practically over and I’ve seen hardly anything but Martins’s ROMEO AND JULIET, so am trying to make up for lost time… I plan to blog on everything I’ve seen as soon as I can catch up, but for now, I’ll start with JEWELS, the most breathtaking ballet I’ve seen in a while, and one that really drove home to me like nothing else George Balanchine’s magic. This was my first time seeing it and as a result I now want to devour everything written about that man, and plan, as soon as I get time, to run to the store for the biographies by Terry Teachout and Robert Gottlieb.

JEWELS is divided into three “acts,” or parts, each one representing a specific period and style of classical ballet. Of course the ballet’s not literally about precious stones; the jewels are a metaphor for each period, each of which, near and dear to Balanchine’s heart, is its own unique kind of gem. Premiering in 1967, the ballet was considered a radical departure from the long-dominant big story ballets and is recognized as the first full-length abstract (ie: narrative-less) ballet.

Part I, Emeralds, is Balanchine’s celebration of French classical dance, and is choreographed to Gabriel Faure’s concert suites from 1889, used in that year to accompany French adaptations of Shakespeare plays. This first piece is, to me, characterized by quietness (at least in contrast to the latter two!), fluidity, elegance, the beauty and charm of simplicity, and by subtle expressiveness. Rachel Rutherford captured my attention with her gorgeously expressive wrists. (She also captivated me yesterday in CONCERTO BAROCCO, but more on that in a later post…) With those beautiful wrists — ahhh, I wanna see HER do BAYADERE now! Also entrancing me was a certain R. Fairchild … Robert Fairchild aka “Romeo” Fairchild 🙂 Seriously, where did this kid come from? Was he seen onstage before Martins cast him earlier this season for the world premiere of his R&J? He’s spectacular — everything he does — turns, jumps, everything is marked with amazing precision. And he has that extra something that is undefinable that makes him stand far out in a crowd. (I saw him yesterday in BRANDENBERG and TRIBUTE looking very charmingly James Dean-esque … but more on that later… methinks he may be the Angel Corella of NYCB?…) Well, Peter Martins surely has a knack for uncovering talent, of that I am sure!

As Philip rightly noted, (and part of the charm and the fun of this ballet is, I think) everyone has their favorite part. Philip’s is this first part, and I can why with its soft, elegant beauty and quiet, subtle charm.

Going into the ballet and knowing as little as I did about it, I was sure the second part, Rubies, would be my favorite. This is Balanchine’s panegyric to America, his adopted country. Choreographed to lively, late 1920s piano music by Igor Stravinsky and using spicy red short-skirted costumes, this is Balanchine’s vision of what American dance, of what America, the New World, is — high-spirited, fast and energetic, jazzy with jutting hips, showy, full of zest and flavor, fun, cheery, endlessly upbeat, overflowing with youthful optimism. This part is the one most often performed when companies use it in mixed repertories, and you can see why — it is the most “Balanchine-esque” — this vision of America, this combination of classical ballet with what we already had here, with what was uniquely American, was the stylistic hallmark of his oeuvre, and, since he is the father of American ballet, it is in turn our national style…

Yvonne Borree, looking, to me, physically not like herself (has she perhaps dyed her hair darker?), was super fun to watch– she was cute, sassy, charming — she was PERFECT for the American part! As was Theresa Reichlen, who looked very Firebird-y. And is there any NYCB male dancer more perfectly suited for the all-American guy-role than Mr. AMERICAN IN PARIS, Damian Woetzel?!

I was so excited by Rubies, I thought the third section, Diamonds, would bore me in contrast. Boy was I wrong. It completely blew me away to such an extent I almost cried at the end, which I haven’t done since nearly a year ago when Jose Manuel Carreno‘s Romeo woke up thinking Alessandra Ferri‘s Juliet dead at the Met… Diamonds is Balanchine’s homage to his homeland, to the grand, sweeping, large-scaled classical tradition of the Russian Ballet. Returning to 1875 and using Tschiakovsky’s Symphony No. 3 in D Major — anyone who has ever been to the ballet more than once instantly recognizes Tschiakovsky music, even if they’ve never heard the exact score before, as THE quintessential classical ballet music. The choreography here, a tribute to the great Russian story ballets of the 19th Century, with its dramatic lifts accompanying the orchestra as the music builds to a climax, the many men dashingly courting their ballerinas around the stage at once narrowly missing sideswiping each other as their paths criss-cross, the large ensemble dancing in perfect unison, the gorgeous pas de deux and the solos for that most pristine and celebrated of creatures — the Russian ballerina, is equally instantly recognizable.

This is actually what confuses me about my own reaction to the ballet: I’m really not a Petipa-head — I don’t really go for those huge-scale, five-hour-long ballets like SWAN LAKE and SLEEPING BEAUTY just drenched with pomp and circumstance so overwrought you can’t enjoy the basic beauty of the actual dancing. But then, I had to remind myself that this is Balanchine’s version of Petipa, of the grand tradition of Russian ballet — scaled down and with all of the elements he didn’t care for so much taken out, with only what he truly loved left in. Oftentimes the tribute shines far brighter than the original. And this is a most endearing encomium, a diamond obviously being the most valuable of all stones and that enjoying never-ending life…

Ballerina Maria Kowroski (who danced the principal female role in Diamonds the night I went) wrote a little blurb in the Playbill about the ballet:

“Jewels is undoubtedly one of Balanchine’s greatest masterpieces, and, during my career, I’ve been lucky enough to dance in each of the ballet’s parts…

“The first of the ballets I danced was Emeralds. This ballet has a very specific quality, a real perfume, and it has a fluid and effortless style…

“When I saw Rubies for the first time, I knew right away I wanted to do the soloist part. It’s so daring and fast — its flashiness appealed to me…

“But Diamonds is my favorite. I don’t even know how to describe it, except to say that it’s heavenly. First of all, that costume, with the beautiful headpiece, makes you feel like a million bucks. Then the ballet starts off very slowly, with a beautiful pas de deux, and the music takes you to a different place, as if you’re just floating along. When I dance Diamonds, I feel like royalty, like I’m in a beautiful palace of music and movement. Near the end, there’s a thrilling moment when the music slows down almost to a stop, and then it starts up again for the big finish, with the stage filled with dancers all moving in unison — I always get chills, and sometimes, I come close to crying. It’s just so gorgeous.”

I can assure you, it feels the same exact way watching it! The season is, horribly, nearly over, but hopefully, hopefully please please NYCB will perform this gem again, many times — and not just the Rubies section, but the ballet in its entirety. I feel that each section informs the others and that each part reveals its true beauty and magic only in contrast to the others, so I strongly feel the ballet should be put on in whole and not split up. You have only a few more opportunitities to see this masterpiece next week — on Thursday, Saturday night and next Sunday’s matinee, when NYCB will end its season with it. Visit their website for tickets. Do not miss it!!!

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Carlos Who?

I’m such a goof. This evening I was at New York City Ballet and during intermission I saw a guy on his cell phone in the lobby all distressed, shouting, “Gomez is out? Gomez is out?!” I thought, oh NO, what’s wrong with Marcelo???? At the same time I thought it was kind of cool that someone was so upset about a dancer s/he called his/her spouse, friend, etc. via cellphone from just across the plaza with the news.

Then I got home and saw the sports news… I’m so out of it regarding sports!

I am going to blog about the NYCB repertory I’ve seen over the past couple of days, by the way, just need to get a free moment!

 

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I’m Pretty Sure That…

Angel lives in my neighborhood since this morning was my second sighting of him there during “off-hours.” This morning he did not look at me and smile as I passed by though 🙁 — which he usually does not because I’m special but because he does that to everyone 🙂 He appeared very serious and focused and had a somewhat concerned look in his eyes. I hope he’s not coming down with cruise-ship ABT flu … He was probably just perturbed at this pathetic excuse of a summer we’re having — it’s FREEZING outside!!

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Worlds of Ballet and Ballroom Coming Together On SYTYCD!!!

How excited am I about the partnering of Anya Garnis with Danny Tidwell on TV show “So You Think You Can Dance“!! The worlds of ballet and ballroom — my two very favorite of course of course, are coming together!! And the judges are IN LOVE with them! As they are with my former teacher, Mr. Pasha Kovalev and his lovely partner, Jesse. Tony Meredith coached them on their waltz — I was dying! It’s so incredibly surreal to see people you know on TV… Seriously though, subjectivity aside ( 🙂 ) , Anya and Danny’s jive simply rocked, and, as that one judge said, Pasha and Jesse just raised a normally not tremendously interesting dance (at least on TV — I do think Standard ballroom comes alive when you see it LIVE) — waltz — to a completely new level! And Jesse is so sweet — such the underdog. Who CAN’T relate to her need to get out of a dead-end desk job and fulfill her life’s passion! I’m so excited — this is by far the best SYTYCD yet!

By the way, about a year ago, Dance Magazine took nominations for their annual, “sexiest dancer” issue. I wrote in nominating Pasha and Anna, knowing full-well how ballet-centered the magazine was (which is fine of course, but it is called “Dance” and not “Pointe”) and knowing they’d stand no chance, but still wanting just to get their names out there to the powers that be in the dance world. Of course they didn’t need me for that… and of course Dance Mag. gave them no mention in the issue (which I didn’t really expect them to; I know no one else who reads that magazine nominated or voted for ballroom dancers). But I do hope the editor, Hanna Rubin, at least did a quick internet search and just looked them up to see who they were since they must have been so out of the ordinary for that publication — I really do think they are amazing performers (as one judge — Mary Murphy I think — mentioned) and they would be seen someday… I just think in general, it never hurts to take your readers seriously… and not that she didn’t … I’m just saying…