I am so mad at this one right now. It’s less than two weeks before ABT’s Met season and he hasn’t written a single post on the Winger in weeks. This time last year he was posting like nuts, keeping the bizillions of ABT fans abreast of all the excitement. He had such a huge fan base at the Winger and I feel he is neglecting us. Just like a typical young guy who gets a fun toy and tires of it in five seconds. I realize he is very busy learning new choreography, preparing for the upcoming six-week season and flying all over the world giving guest appearances, but this is EXACTLY what audiences want to hear about — the lives of the glamorous jet-setting dancers who are starring in the world’s greatest ballets in the world’s largest opera houses. The high point of the Winger was when he was posting from Japan. He didn’t post ONCE from Europe. If he’s so busy he should find someone else at his level to temporarily take his place. One of the “aesthetic” differences between NYCB and ABT is that the former is very “female” the latter very “male” which is what I and so many other female fans love so much about ABT. But I guess we forget that unfortunately women are so much more responsible!!!!!!!
We Are Celebrity Whores, We Are ABT Fans, and We Are Proud, Dammit!: Jock Soto, Joaquin de Luz, Bill Clinton (and Marcelo) at NYCB Opening Night Gala
I hope no one takes the above title the wrong way — I’m totally joking, and trying to make light of out that earlier tiff on this blog 🙂 I do actually think there are different styles, aesthetics, even theater etiquette as Kristin Sloan called it (which I’ll get to soon) between the fans of American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet, which had its opening night gala dinner tonight and the official premiere of NYCB artistic director Peter Martins’s new version of Romeo and Juliet.
Since it was a nice day out, I arrived a bit early so as to relax at the Lincoln Center fountain and perhaps take some pictures. Last year, I saw Angel Corella out front on this gala evening kind of smiling out at the crowds and looking all handsome, so I figured I might see “someone” again 🙂
Sure enough, red carpet was rolled, Peter Martins and ensemble arrived, paparazzi power cameras began flashing away, and anyone who happened to be anywhere on the plaza at that time promptly made a mad dash toward the State Theater entrance.
Here is Martins with a young girl, I assume his granddaughter? (Late edit: I now know this is his daughter, Talicia. Thanks to everyone who emailed me, posted a comment, and replied to my post on the Winger message board for correcting me 🙂 Sorry about that!)
Anyway, I, apparently being one of the biggest celebrity whores, managed to make my way to the front of the railed-off section. Passersby began crowding around, whipping out cell phones, asking excitedly, “who’s that, who’s that?”
“Peter Martins.” I said. The woman next to me looked quizzical. “The New York City Ballet artistic director whose Romeo and Juliet is premiering tonight,” I said.
“Oh, I’m an ABT fan; I’m going to the opera tonight. I saw all the commotion. Are there any famous people here?”
“I don’t know, I think it’s just the gala attendees and City Ballet people,” I said.
“Leonardo, has Leonardo come yet?!” a woman shrieked, running up from behind.
“Leonardo who, diCaprio?” the first woman screamed.
“My daughter said he’d be here. I’m an ABT fan; I’m going to the opera tonight, but my daughter told me Leonardo was going to be here and to be sure to get a picture. Oooh, if I missed him, she’ll kill me,” she said dismally.
“Leonardo diCaprio?!” a guy said running over. “I have to get to the opera, when does this thing start?”
“I dunno, I’m an ABT fan; I’m going to the opera,” said yet another voice.
“The ballet starts at 7:30,” I said.
“Oh good,” they all said in unison.
“Well then, all the famous people will have to get here by about 7:20 then,” the guy said assuredly.
Cameras began flashing.
“Oooh, ooh, who is it, who is it??”
“I don’t know. It’s not Leonardo, but it’s looks like someone famous.”
And for the next half hour, it continued like this. A paparazzi camera would flash, everyone would get their cell phones or digitals ready and ask who is it, who is it, oooh, that’s someone, I don’t know who, but they look famous, or I know them from some show just can’t remember which…
Good lord. Anyway, I can’t make too much fun of these people, seeing as how I was one of them and all :), so let the celebrity fest begin:
Actress Elizabeth Berkeley. Funny everyone knew her as “that girl from Saved By the Bell,” or “that girl from, oh what was it, that TV show about the high school kids?…” No one remembered that she was in Showgirls!!!
Artist Anh Duong.
Actress Anna Paquin, in the white dress.
Two young ladies no one knew, but everyone agreed “looked famous.” Does anyone know who they are?
By far the biggest, hugest, most important celebrity of all, Kristin Sloan!!! Here operating her enormous camera, likely for her latest project…
Kristin and her boyfriend, Doug Jaeger, who caught my eye, or my camera pointed directly at him rather(!), and had Kristin turn her camera on me… I have no idea what that one’s going to look like … yikes!
This girl in the red dress — gorgeous dress by the way — was apparently an actress from young adult films … someone mentioned “Ice Princess”??? If anyone would like to clue me in, I’d be grateful!
“Well, I have to get to the opera,” the Leonardo woman said around 7:20. “Yeah, me too,” another man said. “I guess he already went in,” she said sadly. “Well, it’s still good I came to see this; I need to know what to wear if I decide to go to ABT’s gala. They’re my favorite,” she blushed.
“Me too,” I said.
“Oh really? I wonder who all will be there!” she said, excitement returning.
Anyway, 7:25 rolled around and I figured I’d better go in and get my seat — I was sitting all the way up in the 4th Ring so it’d take me a while.
Before the show began, Martins took the stage and gave a little talk mentioning that this season marked the centennial of Lincoln Kirstein‘s birth. He then pointed out an audience celebrity, Bill Clinton! It took a while before I spotted him; he occupied a center seat in the first ring, the seat, Martins noted that had belonged to Lincoln Kirstein. Martins told Clinton whenever he wished to attend the ballet, he need only phone him and he’d reserve the Kirstein seat especially for him. Everyone applauded. Martins then declared May 1st “Lincoln Kirstein and New York City Ballet Day.”
But far far FAR more important than the former president, in the house was also
🙂 🙂 🙂
He sat in the very first row, sixth seat in from the right aisle — almost the exact same seat where I sit to see him perform 🙂
Anyway, the performance:
Well, I’m extremely tired and groggy and I’ll probably have more thoughts later, and I know people will feel differently and I’m not saying I’m right and anyone else is wrong, but my first reaction is: it was pretty and sweet and cute and overall a lovely little ballet. It didn’t take my breath away, it didn’t make me cry, it didn’t move me, it got long in parts, I got bored, with the exception of one scene I was nowhere near the edge of my seat, and with the exception of two dancers — one of whom had a non-dancing part my heart didn’t stutter. I don’t know why people in general go to the ballet — it likely varies for different ballets (full-length story or abstract one-act) and different companies — but the aforesaid reasons are the reasons why I go to see a full-length story ballet, and this didn’t do it for me. The balcony scene, which ended the first act (there were only two; one intermission), was very pretty. Juliet’s dress was lovely, much shorter and sweeter than the gown worn by ABT ballerinas — ABT should trim that gown; this one was far more beautiful! The choreography was sweet and lovely with several pretty lifts of the kind I’ve seem umpteenth times before — nothing out of the ordinary, nothing original, nothing striking. No MacMillan’s ‘let me run toward you at maximum speed, dear, and hurl myself at you whilst turning and you catch me and throw me up over your head feet first’ lifts that to me is what makes the balcony pas de deux so thrilling, so magnificent, so emotionally compelling, and by far my favorite pdd of all.
The only scene that had me on the edge of my seat was the beginning of the second act, the sword fight in which Tybalt slays Mercutio, then Romeo slays Tybalt and the reason for that is that the dancers were top quality. When I first sat down in my seat, I have to admit I pulled out my binoculars and began searching the floor for Marcelo since I’d just seen him in the lobby (sorry no pictures — I’m too shy to approach and didn’t want to be a bad fan and take pics of him unaware), and when I found him I began fixating 🙂 So, when the lights went down and the curtain up, I hadn’t yet looked at my program. When I first saw Tybalt I was mesmerized — I loved Daniel Ulbright‘s Mercutio too most definitely, but there was something about Tybalt that just blew me away. I couldn’t figure out who he was. Joaquin de Luz happens to be my favorite dancer in the company but he was wearing facial hair and his hair was shorter or gelled back and I didn’t recognize him, and didn’t know it was Joaquin until I later looked at the program. So, I WAS NOT sitting there thinking “where’s Joaquin, oh I can’t wait to see Joaquin;” he captivated me nonetheless.
I was also blown away by Jock Soto, one of the most illustrious NYCB dancers of the past who recently retired, who played the non-dancing part of Lord Capulet. I already knew he was going to play that part and when he and Darci Kistler, as Lady Capulet, emerged onstage, I went to clap then realized no one else was and if my hands met I’d make an enormous commotion. What’s wrong with people, I thought, do they not know who he is? I ran into Kristin during intermission and mentioned it to her, and she laughed and said, “No people don’t do that here, that’s ABT. It’s a different audience etiquette.” Even if I wouldn’t have known Jock was Jock, he had so much physical presence and power, he commanded your attention so, I just couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Anyway, I do think Kristin’s “different audience etiquette” was a great way of putting it. Generally, I do think there’s a totally different aesthetic between the two big NY ballet companies, which I guess are sort of rivals in that it seems not that people love one and hate the other (anyone who’s a real ballet fan is going to go to both) but that people really really love one and just like the other. For me this is why. Martins deliberately chose to cast the two main roles with young, relatively inexperienced dancers. He said he didn’t want the dancers to “act”; rather he wanted them to just be themselves — young. It takes artistry, though, and perhaps “star quality” — whatever exactly that is — to make the characters live and breath and move the audience to the edge of their seats, and you just can’t do that, no matter how hard you try if you’re too inexperienced. Robert Fairchild (who played Romeo) is really really cute and it was clear that he put his heart into it and tried with all his might, and I think he, and Sterling Hyltin (Juliet) both have bright futures ahead, but I really think it was a mistake to cast young, inexperienced people in these major roles. It’s as if Martins is saying Romeo and Juliet don’t really matter; it’s Tybalt and Mercutio and Lord Capulet who are the important characters here. They are important but certainly not more so than the leads. I feel like I’m saying the obvious and I can’t believe he hasn’t got more criticism for this…
Anyway, I hope I’m not offending anyone; I do think I have a certain thing I go to the ballet to see and part of it is acting and artistry that will blow me away and I didn’t get that here, although I did think the choreography was very pretty and the dancers were all very good-looking, and it was generally that — a good-looking ballet that, to me, lacked substance with the exception of Joaquin and Daniel and Jock — all of whom had relatively minor roles and couldn’t pull the whole no matter how much they wanted to. It would be interesting to see more experienced dancers dance the leads and perhaps I’ll see it again if they do, but only if they do.
Other thoughts: the sets are very minimalist, which is normally neither here nor there with me — I care more about the dancing, though here, perhaps it’s just that I’m used to the fuller stage apparatus of ABT because I just felt like there wasn’t enough for me to feel I was really “in” the world he was re-creating. He said he wanted “more dancing, less crowd action” — I felt like there was less of both though I guess he did cut down on those long, drawn-out sword-fight scenes and ball-dancing scenes at the beginning that I could do without in the MacMillan. I guess I just felt like most of the dancing wasn’t compelling enough to me, so it didn’t matter. I did like his balcony scene, pretty but plain though it was, better than the Lavery.
Anyway, I am falling asleep. Just wanted to get my thoughts down and I hope people aren’t angry! I’m sure everyone who sees this will have their own thoughts and feelings about it!
To end, here are a couple more pics, taken from inside:
Yum! Dinner for the gala guests, from above.
And, a side pic of the gala guests. Sorry so dark – -I need a new camera badly!
Tonight
Ugh, it’s only 1:58 p.m. When it is going to be tonight??? I just can’t wait!
Since I’ll be at the premiere of NYCB’s Romeo & Juliet tonight, and since I forgot to set my VCR before leaving this morning, I’ll have to miss Dancing With the Stars, which means when I get home, I’ll be forced to consult the dreaded message boards… I don’t have much to say about the show at this point other than that I hope Laila sticks around for a while! And, I wish they would use real Samba music for that dance once in a while! I know it’s difficult since they have a live band and all, and it’s definitely much easier for American singers to scratch their way through “Besame Mucho” than try their hand at Portuguese, but, it’s like a 10 bizillion-dollar show; you’d think they could have a real Brazilian band play for once… With all of those cool pulsating drums — it just makes me mad that Americans are so missing out!
Ballet, Ballroom and Dirty Dancing
Just two weeks now @#$$%^&*!!!!!
I’m so bad; I’m so obsessed with Marcelo and his people I haven’t been properly blogging about another huge ballet event happening tomorrow night: the New York City Ballet‘s opening night gala and the premiere of the much-anticipated new version of my personal favorite classical ballet, Romeo and Juliet. My favorite version is by Sir Kenneth MacMillan (which American Ballet Theater performs); this one is by NYCB artistic director Peter Martins — we’ll see how it stacks up! This also marks the culmination of a HUGE amount of hard work Winger creator and NYCB ballerina Kristin Sloan has put into making the company’s Tragic Love project, which provides fascinating behind-the-scenes footage of various aspects of the making of the ballet. Do check it out, and of course check out the ballet as well — it’s showing through May 13th.
As I had blogged about earlier, Dirty Dancing was shown on Thursday night at the Tribeca Drive-In, as part of the awesome Tribeca Film Festival. I couldn’t go, but my friend, Steve made it, and sent me his report (sorry about the weird spacing; I could not get WordPress to format it properly):
“I went to the Tribeca Film festival drive-in event featuring a free outdoor screening of Dirty Dancing at
the World Financial Center on Thursday night. The pre-screening entertainment included a dance show, a
live performance by singer Lumidee (whoever that is) and a Dirty Dancing Trivia contest. A chilly night and
the threat of rain did not keep movie and dance fans away from this fun event set alongside the marina at
the WFC. First a group of dancers including Anya Fuchs performed some Latin and tango numbers. Four
principal couples were on stage and about ten others fanned out into the audience and danced in the aisle
and on the sides. Eventually, they drew audience members up on stage with them to dance to various
songs from the movie. It was a good way to keep warm. I enjoyed myself even though Anna Garnis decided not
to be in the performance. I didn’t stay for the movie and headed back up town to the DTS practice party,
which was pretty good. Nobody puts [studio owner and 1995 U.S. National Latin Champion] Melanie [LaPatin] in the
corner.”
Thanks for the report, Steve, and thanks for being my first “correspondent” hehe 🙂 Dance Times Square puts on pretty good little ballroom dancing parties every third Thursday of each month. Visit their website for deets. Of course the showcase at Hunter College is upcoming as well, next week.
And finally, apparently in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Dirty Dancing, they are re-releasing the film in theaters for a very limited amount of time (the next two days basically), which is to contain never-seen-before footage. Go here for movie times and locations throughout the country.
Final Thoughts on The Nothing Festival With a Focus on Luciana Achugar
For the past two weeks, choreographer Tere O’Connor’s “The Nothing Festival” which took place at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea and just concluded this weekend has been the talk of the town. Basically, in an effort to explore how meaning is produced in dance, O’Connor asked eight modern / post-modern choreographers to choreograph a 30-minute piece starting from “nothing” — that is, with no preconceived concept. The first set of four choreographers — Douglas Dunn, HIJACK, Sam Kim, and Dean Moss — showed their work during the first week’s performances; the second set of four — Jon Kinzel, Luciana Achugar, Susan Rethorst, and Walter Dundervill — the second week; and sandwiched in between, on the afternoon of the 21st, was a four-hour-long panel discussion moderated by O’Connor and including all eight choreographers (which is pictured above). O’Connor also led shorter discussions following each weekday performance with the choreographers whose work was being shown on that night. Doug Fox from the Great Dance blog and I attended the April 21st discussion and the first set of performances that night, and I attended the second set on the 25th.
As I said, this festival has been the talk of the dance town, and so much has already been said, that I don’t have a tremendous amount to add. But since no one has talked at length about Achugar’s work, and since it was my personal favorite, I’m going to focus on that piece. First, though, for anyone who doesn’t know about the festival and wishes to explore the ideas and bit of controversy it engendered, I’ll be a good blogger and try to point to everything that’s already been said:
First, go here for TONY dance editor Gia Kourlas’s very useful interview with O’Connor; critic Roslyn Sulcas wrote an early and much debated critique of the idea behind the festival but that is unfortunately no longer available to non-NYTimes subscribers so linking is pointless; for Newsday critic Apollinaire Scherr’s initial write-up, go here; for a first set of responses to that, including O’Connor’s, go here; for Doug’s comments to Apollinaire, go here; for my own musings to Apollinaire on the April 21st discussion, go here; for critic Eva Yaa Asantewaa’s analysis, go here; for Doug Fox’s coverage on his own blog, go here and here; for Village Voice’s Deborah Jowitt’s very thorough review, go here; and finally, for Jennifer Dunning’s NYTimes review of the whole festival, go here. I think I got it all; if I didn’t, I apologize!
As a relative newcomer to the post-modern dance scene, my only expectation going into this festival was that I was going to learn something about the relation between dance and meaning. This festival definitely met my expectations on that front. Although I often felt during the April 21st discussion that I was kind of eavesdropping on a debate already well underway and some of the language used (while giving me a certain nostalgia for my grad school days 🙂 ) was a bit foreign to me, I still got the overall sense of great frustration dance-makers feel when trying to apply for grants to funders focused on the commercial value of the project and their need to know details of what the piece is about before it is even begun, as well as their deep annoyance at dance critics who, some choreographers feel, impose their own pre-conceived notions of what dance is and is not in determining, and recommending, whether something is worth seeing. I had some strong feelings about the discussion, which I posted as a comment on Scherr’s blog, and which she responded to (which I linked to above but will again), so am not going to repeat that here. In general, several critics were in attendance and it was really interesting to see them interact with the choreographers; at one point things got heated, but I appreciated that because I felt like serious frustrations were vented and deeper discussion came out of it. O’Connor had just embarked on a dialog with former Village Voice writer Elizabeth Zimmer on what is important in viewing a dance — is it just the beauty of the movement or is there more? — when time limitations forced an abrupt end. In the end, I love the discussion that the festival engendered, both on April 21st and in all of the newspapers and blogs, and I hope there can be more like it.
So, the performances: overall, my favorite piece — which is not at all to say it was “the best” but just that it spoke to me the most — was Luciana Achugar’s “Franny and Zooey” (not a direct relation to the book by Salinger, as the choreographer explained at the post-show discussion). I’m not sure exactly why it was my favorite — it just seemed to have the most going on in it that I could relate to. It began with spotlights jumping around, shining out on various places on the stage and in the audience. At points, while focused on the audience, it was rather blinding. The spotlight ended on a woman who ran out onstage and collapsed to the ground, where she lay, seemingly unconscious. The focus then changed to a video projected on the back wall showing a woman — Achugar — in a studio warming up, then trying to organize her movements into a dance. Unexpectedly, two cats, named Franny and Zooey, pets of the studio owner, entered, plopped down on the floor and began doing cat things — bathing, sleeping, curiously human-watching… Achugar tried to shoo them away, since, as she revealed post-show, she was allergic, but for the most part, the cats were oblivious. Slowly, the focus — both Achugar’s and the viewer’s, came to be on them. I noticed as they got up, shifted in space, and pranced around, how balletic and dancer-like the cats were balancing as they did toward the balls of their paws (if paws have balls that is!), looking all weightless and feathery, and the dramatic things they can do with those tails, waving them about in the air. I remember when my cat was still alive how much I wanted a tail 🙂 — such an instrument of expression! Anyway, Achugar seemed to share my thought, as soon she crouched down on all fours and began imitating the cats. Throughout this videotaped activity, female dancers — four in all besides Achugar — took the stage and danced. At one point, the video was turned off and the women approached the audience, the tops of their dresses unbuttoned provocatively. As they took to the aisles, walking very slowly, they looked directly at audience members in each row, making sure to make eye contact. It was slightly uncomfortable for me, and I thought of this activity along with the initial blinding spotlights shined out on the audience, as turning the spectator / looked at, viewer / viewed relationship on its head — now the gaze of the women, provocatively dressed and soon to be naked — was turned on us, making us complicit in their world, kind of in the manner of Manet’s Olympie… Achugar, on the video, soon disrobed as she crawled around, cat–like on the studio floor. In the end, the women lift up the real Achugar, lying on the stage floor, all engage in a playful romp in which clothes wind up being shed, then dance around the stage naked, jovially and “unashamed” to use Dunning’s word. While there may have been no fully fledged story, I felt like there were hints of body image issues overcome, exploration of range of human movement and notions of beauty through casting a watchful eye on another species, and, as I said, challenging the dichotomy of the (traditionally female) watched versus watcher.
Parts of other pieces caught my eye too (but I won’t go into as much detail or this post would be 100,000 words long): the contrast both literally and stylistically between Walter Dundervill’s movement (that man can really dance and he’s very sexy — I wish I could move like him!) and the constricting, corseted 18th Century costumes — it was a spectacle just to watch him dress his dancers; Susan Rethorst’s depiction of a large group of women humorously vying for space in the tiny apartment she is now forced to work from after losing her studio to skyrocketing rents, and her ability as a dancer to evoke profundity from such a simple, very human, everyday gesture as shoulder shrugging — Dunning remarked on this too; and, as I mentioned in my comment to Apollinaire, I was struck visually by Sam Kim’s piece in which two women, wearing lacey white dresses, inch-long darkly polished fingernails, and their hair long and unruly — sometimes prettily feminine, sometimes montrously out-of-control, by turns caress, madly fight, then placate each other nearly rendering each other catatonic at times, which was titled “Cult” and I surmised could have denoted a kind of cult of femininity and its potential destructiveness.
I knew I was going to see experimental pieces, none of which would be fully formed, and so I didn’t judge them on those grounds. I enjoyed the process of simply sitting in the audience watching, thinking about the movement, the interactions between the dancers, the visuals, the progression of the piece, and arriving at my own conclusions about the meaning of each work, or what I took from it.
Last, in her article Jowitt talks about the artwork on display in the lobby.
Doug and I found it fascinating as well. A video camera surreptitiously set up on the wall near the street records patrons’ images and projects them onto a screen on the opposite wall. Movement of outside passersby triggers this little skeletal figure to begin dancing on the screen. Very amusing to look up at the screen and see this little bouncing skeleton guy “dancing” with you 🙂
Really Cool Stuff From Korea, Japan, and Brazil!
Fun but busy weekend. I attended two very different kinds of dance competitions and saw some really amazing stuff. Last night, I went to the Tribeca Drive-In at the Tribeca Film Festival, to see a new film, Planet B-Boy, a documentary that follows the lives of the members of four teams of break-dancers culminating in a big worldwide competition, held yearly in Germany. I’m so glad I saw this — it exposed me to a whole culture I didn’t really know existed. I knew about break-dancing on a very basic level, but didn’t know it was such a huge thing world-wide now. Like soccer / international football, it’s not very big in the U.S., but in this case that’s rather ridiculous since we started the dance…
Anyway, these international team competitions involve some of the most incredible dancing. It’s so much more gymnastic than I ever knew — some of these dancers I’d swear had formal training in the sport. In addition to super athletic floor-work, they do these amazing acrobatic stunts — lifting each other, leap-frogging over a sea of bodies, building human pyramids from which they perform spectacular jumps, and dance with such character and, yes, beauty, and artistry. Each team is judged on its synchronization (about eight dancers doing same moves in complete unison), artistry and technique of individual dancers, and conceptual idea of team theme. Each team came up with a theme that illuminated an aspect of their culture — I thought the Korean and Japanese teams were by far the most original. The Koreans, who basically own this dance nowdays, were just incredible. They really have to be seen to be believed — so go see this movie when it hits the theaters!
Like in student ballroom-dancing documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, filmmaker Benson Lee goes beyond this particular competition to explore the larger meaning of dance — freedom of expression and individuality, keeping young people out of trouble by giving them a creative outlet, and, interesting to me since it’s mainly men who break dance, allowing the dancers to act out aggression in a safe way. Watching the movie – -and the pre-film break-dance demos shown in the photos above — I realized how breaking was like a dance version of the rapping jams seen in Eminem’s movie 8-Mile in the way that the dancers taunt and mock each other — jokingly and without touching each other — before each round of competition, the teasing actually becoming an art in itself. And, being a globally-set movie, cultural / political issues are explored. My favorite part, filmed in Korea at the border between North and South, was when the “guards,” gravely serious and bearing frighteningly large weapons, suddenly break into dance! And, like with Mad Hot Ballroom, you find yourself rooting so hard for one team, you almost become teary-eyed at the end. It’s really a lot of fun — go!
Today, I went with Dea, my friend from Brazil who I met on the Winger, to the Youth America Grand Prix ballet competition, founded by Gennadi Saveliev from American Ballet Theater. Dea’s former ballet studio in Sao Paulo was competing in the group ensemble competition and she wanted to go watch them.
Above is Dea, inside the competition, which was held in the auditorium of Martin Luther King High School. Below is a picture of goings-on outside in front of the school — some dancers warming up, applying makeup, and hanging out after their piece. We were strictly forbidden from taking pictures inside — the head judge even threatened people with camera confiscation! — so, as soon as Gennadi posts the pics on his website, I’ll see if there’s anything I can link to that I saw.
Well, I’ve been to about a bizillion ballroom competitions now, but this was my very first Ballet comp. It was so fun! We only saw the ensemble competitions — apparently the solos have been going on for the past three days — but I saw some really good dancing from some very young people, and some very interesting, novel choreography. This Japanese school, consisting of four girls, wheeled some backless, rolling stools out onto the stage, and the girls used the chairs in amazing ways — arching over them and spinning, standing atop them on one leg, kneeling on one hand and one knee and lifting the opposite arm and leg high in the air — talk about balance! Acting was involved too, as the girls laughed, cried, and screamed — very expressive and perhaps a bit over the top but dramatic and emotionally compelling in its own way.
And about a quarter of all the teams were from Brazil! Poor Dea kept getting up go to the bathroom, but when the next team — yet another Brazilian one — was announced, she’d have to sit back down to watch. The Brazilian teams were all so diverse. One did a spectacularly synchronized traditional Irish step dance with gorgeously decorative costumes — Dea said she didn’t even know Irish step dancing was taught in Brazil! One, which received massive applause, did a contemporary piece danced to techno music, one danced to traditional Bossa Nova — Dea and several people sitting around me sang along with the lyrics and I felt dumb not knowing them 🙂 , and one — my personal favorite — did this really cool combination flamenco / paso doble / belly dance / Martha Graham — it was a true original and I LOVED it, though others felt there was too much going on and it was just weird. Dea’s school did a contemporary ballet danced on pointe. I think her school had technically the best dancers and their choreography was original as well with some humorous moments, but I still loved the crazy fun everything-but-the-kitchen-sink number 🙂
It’ll be interesting to see who won. Hopefully Dea’s school! Tomorrow night at City Center the winners will perform along with professionals. I went to this show last year and it was really nice. Marcelo danced with Sofiane Sylve from New York City Ballet in the pro part, and David Hallberg danced in a pas de trois from Le Corsaire. I think David is dancing again this year, but Marcelo’s not on the list. Dea’s going but I still haven’t decided if I will. Going to all this stuff gets expensive!
Balanchine Versus Muhammad Ali’s Daughter, Ballet’s Continuing Relevance, Alastair Macaulay, and Great Dance Writing From the Past
Yesterday, in the New York Times, our new chief dance critic there Alastair Macaulay wrote an article about New York City Ballet’s new season, which officially kicked off on Tuesday. Because this Monday marks the 24th Anniversary of George Balanchine’s death, it is only fitting, he noted, that NYCB open with a week’s worth of Balanchine ballets, created between 1928 and 1975. The first night’s rep included a ballet that is obviously a favorite of Macaulay’s, “The Four Temperaments,” created in 1946. He says of this ballet, “Balanchine’s pared-down conception of ballet became a brave-new-world breakthrough.” He goes on to talk specifically about the movement employed, wherein the transfer of body weight — from the standing leg to the lifted leg but before the lifted leg has reached the ground — was somewhat revolutionary, combining as it did a fundamentally jazzy American style with classical ballet, and thereby “offending the European sense of propriety.” He continues, suggesting that Balanchine’s power is lost on the company’s younger dancers, who can’t for some reason adequately convey the beauty and meaning of “the master.” He opens this thought with:
“When people who have come to Balanchine choreography in the last 20 years ask me what makes me miss New York City Ballet in his lifetime (though I caught only the tail end of that golden age), I find myself saying that the company’s dancing in those days blazed with a kind of energy that was positively disturbing: it shook you by the shoulders as if to say, “This matters.” “The Four Temperaments” is one of many Balanchine ballets so extraordinary in their architecture and its conception that many new dance-goers must surely feel that they still matter now; I can only say it mattered more.”
Though it’s not tremendously profound or long, the article has turned heads, especially in the ballet world, and for good reason: it takes a solid point of view and makes a serious statement about the art’s current “state” (Matt’s term!) that is not off the cuff but based in knowledge and passion, and perhaps unwittingly, opens debate.
I have to say, of all the times I’ve gone to NYCB, I’ve never been able to understand Balanchine’s genius. I go to NYCB to see the Jermone Robbins pieces, the Peter Martins, those by new choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, and the company’s Diamond Project series, in which they showcase new ballets by contemporary choreographers. I, as I think most of the public, know Balanchine as the man who starved his ballerinas into his ideal of feminine perfection, most notably Maria Tallchief, while insisting that he was exalting womanhood. “Ballet is woman,” he proclaimed. I’m sorry, but for a socially concious woman today, that behavior, and the resultant image as well, border on the repulsive: indeed, his ballets are filled mostly with emaciated-looking, very frail, very thin young women fluttering about the stage almost angelically, as if they’re not of this world, and very few men.
If you examine what today’s audiences watch, and want to see in dance, this image of woman doesn’t resonate. As I blogged about in my last post, all of the female contestants on Dancing With the Stars — and if you care about ballet’s future you must care about that show because like it or not that is the pulse of dance in this country right now — have been booted — all of the uber thin supermodels, beauty queens and TV celebrities, that is. Leaving as the sole woman Laila Ali, the boxer, and former heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali’s daughter. I believe a large part of the reason many go to see a dance performance is for the sensual experience, and I believe the concept of what is sexy and sensual in both men and women has changed drastically over the years, and this change is partly responsible for many young people today not “getting” ballet. Sexy today is — well, first of all, to at least half of dance-goers sexy is man, not woman 🙂 And regarding women, sexy is strong, unexpected (Ali lifts men after all!), grounded and earthly, and muscular, not frail, not ethereal, not succumbing to men’s standards and expectations.
When I attended The Nothing Festival last weekend and this week at Dance Theater Workshop (which I will definitely blog about later this weekend), post-modern choreographer Walter Dundervill bemoaned that there are no contemporary dance writers like Arlene Croce, the former critic for The New Yorker, sending me straight to the bookstore to check out her work. So far, I’ve just skimmed through, but I am overwhelmed at her uncanny ability to pinpoint a thought so clearly and thoroughly yet succinctly. Here is what she had to say about American Ballet Theater in a January 1975 review of their opening night gala:
“Back to the Forties
If the number of fine ballets that American Ballet Theater had to show for its thirty-five years of existence equaled the number of fine dancers it currently has under contract, its anniversary gala, on January 11, would have been a night to remember. But numerically and stylistically the equation is unbalanced. The handful of illustrious ballets that made the company’s name can’t support dancers like Baryshnikov and Kirkland and Makarova and Nagy and Gregory and Bujones, and even if it could, it’s patently impossible to build a gala retrospective around “Fancy Free” and “Pillar of Fire” and “Romeo and Juliet” and “Three Virgins and a Devil,” all but the last created between 1941 and 1944. The creativity of that first decade had no sequel in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies. When you are seeing Ballet Theater choreography at its best, you are almost always seeing a picture of the forties. The dancers of the seventies don’t fit into that picture. The ballets are still interesting and they’re a challenge to perform, but their aesthetic is dead. Often the sentiment is dead, too. Audiences can’t get excited about them in the old way because the life of the period that produced them has receded and they’re insulated from the way we think and move today. When they are presented as they were at the gala … it’s hard not to see their position in a contemporary repertory as an extended irrelevance…” (WRITING IN THE DARK, DANCING IN THE NEW YORKER, pgs 86-87).
First, I find it rather funny that these are exactly the same ballets that ABT is putting on today, thirty-two years after she wrote this. And it’s true that “Fancy Free,” while a cute and fun ballet for its time, is largely lost on contemporary audiences. I recently took friends to see ABT and this was on the rep. They mostly thought it was mildly cute and engaging, but mainly silly and somewhat sexist. I said, well yeah, it was created in the 40s, but I mean, what about Marcelo — isn’t he so great with his hip-swaying “Rhumba”, didn’t you love Craig‘s splitting jumps off of the bar!?” They laughed — they didn’t know the dancers like I did but thought it was cute that I attached to them so. I think Robbins, Balanchine and all of that great choreography of yore is lost on today’s audience, and not because today’s audiences are stupid philistines, but because, to use Croce’s words, these ballets’ “aesthetic is dead. Often the sentiment is dead too. Audiences can’t get excited about them in the old way because the life of the period that produced them has receded and they’re insulated from the way we think and move today.”
I think Macaulay’s pointing out the revolutionary quality of Balanchine’s work is tremendously important if younger audiences are going to understand and value his work. But that still doesn’t mean they’re going to be moved by him. American Jazz is a hundred years old now; seeing it combined with ballet doesn’t do much to the average dance goer; it certainly doesn’t, as Macaulay hopes, “make many new dance-goers … surely feel that [his ballets] still matter now.”
Hip hop, ballroom, and other social and ethnic forms of dance are the most living, breathing dance styles right now because they mean something to viewers. Hip hop emanates from ghetto life and much of the moves are a kind of recognizable street vocabulary of movement, ballroom is about two people working together and connecting with one another — which everyone can relate to (I don’t think Dancing With the Stars would be popular if it showcased solitary dancing), and a lot of social dance today in the U.S. comes out of Latin American and African countries — they’re fun and rhythmic and contain cultural lessons of strong interest in today’s global world. I feel that contemporary ballet choreographers need to merge these forms of dance with ballet to create something new, original, and beautiful whose meaning and movement resonates with contemporary audiences, the way that Balanchine and Robbins did nearly a century ago. I also think there need to be more writers like Macaulay to point out the historical import of the former greats, and he seems, at least thus far, like a positive return to the Croce style of writing. But, while everyone needs to read a classic once in a while as an historical lesson and an example of true literary genius, if there weren’t contemporary novelists pushing the art form further, the novel would have died long ago. Obviously, Balanchine and Robbins should be kept in the rep of the big companies, but they can’t be the main focus if this art form is to be kept alive as well.
"Dirty Dancing" in Tribeca With Anna Garnis, and Nearly Woman-Less DWTS
In honor of the 20th anniversary of Dirty Dancing, the Tribeca Film Festival, which is now underway, is showing the film at the Tribeca Drive-In, located outside at the World Financial Center Plaza, for free, tomorrow night, Thursday, April 26th. I already knew, and blogged about it earlier, but what I didn’t know is that one of the teachers from my studio, the amazing Anna Garnis, is going to be one of the pro dancers doing a little pre-movie pro ballroom dance demo.
I’m so upset because I have tickets for something else and can’t make it! Figures! Anyway, Anna is one of the very best Latin ballroom dancers in this country; she and her partner, Pasha Kovalev (my former teacher 🙂 ), always place in the finals at the national competitions, and they really have the best show-quality of anyone, IMHO 🙂 She is most definitely worth seeing if you can make it down there tomorrow night. Here are deets on the show.
Anyway, DWTS: So, Heather got booted, leaving only one woman — the amazing Laila — who I don’t think is going anywhere for a while — and nearly all of the men who started. The former cultural history grad student in me just wants to look at this as an interesting cultural phenomenon. I wish they would do a demographics study on who is watching the show — well, I’m sure they have but haven’t revealed it to the public — but from reading the message boards anyway, it appears that it is mostly women watching and voting. So, it’s interesting to me, women really want to watch the non-pro men dance. Which makes sense — the men are rather fun; even if some of them aren’t that good, it’s just really kind of fun to see these guys who complain about looking “girly” and “sissified” (and all those annoying terms) doing the Latin hip-swaying thing, being forced to duke it out with each other on the dance floor. Adult men who did not take up dance as a profession and who’ve never taken lessons are often more reticent than women to learn or even to just get out there on the dance floor, so I really think there is some of the fun of watching that going on. I think Laila is different than “normal” women since she’s a boxer. And I LOVED her lifting little Apolo in that group swing! I do hope anyway that she stays a little while longer for more moves like that 🙂 I just think it’s interesting in general, from a larger cultural perspective, to ponder who likes dancing, who watches dancing, who follows dancing, what it is that turns those people on to dance, and whom they want to watch dance…
First Week Without Dance Class…
Sad night. Tonight marks the beginning of my hopefully brief hiatus from ballroom dancing lessons. I called the studio to tell them to cancel my standing appointments with Luis indefinitely and I almost felt like crying afterward… I guess the good thing is that I can now shamelessly promote the student showcase that I won’t be performing in:
Dance Times Square does put on a very fun student / teacher ballroom dancing showcase — the only of it’s kind really (the only one that I know of anyway that takes place in a theater and not a studio and that contains both amateur and professional showcases), and for those who enjoy watching ballroom dancing, it is a nice little event. Go here for tickets.
I really shouldn’t be all that sad, seeing as how I made my B&B reservations today for Blackpool! This year I’ll be staying right across the street from the Winter Gardens, instead of about fifteen blocks away, as I did last year — sweet people who ran the hotel, but it got a little seedy walking back at 2:00 in the morning after the comps ended. I’m really getting excited, as it’s only a month away now! Should be perfect time for me to re-assess my dance goals (and finances…)
And, regarding that other kind of dance that I so lurve:
three, three, three weeks 🙂 🙂 🙂
Creating New Dance Icons: David Michalek’s "Slow Dance"
Yesterday morning, I got up way too early (for me, on a weekend anyway), to run down to Lincoln Center and take some pictures of what I just knew would be a huge line. The New York City Ballet distributed free tickets to the April 29th dress rehearsal of their new production of Romeo & Juliet. Tickets were given out on a first-come, first-served basis, and distribution was to begin at 9:00. I got there at 8:50, and here was the line:
It wrapped all the way around the State Theater to Fordham Law School! There was no way I could take the time to wait in it, and, from what I heard later in the day, you really had to have got there around 7:30 or earlier to get a ticket. Although, apparently, from what we heard later, they gave people who waited in line but were unable to get a ticket, a free admission to a non-dress rehearsal, that normally only sponsors are invited to, which sounds really nice as well! Anyway, very happy to see so many people interested in ballet 🙂
Then, it was such a nice spring day — the first in New York! — so I walked through the park to what seems to be becoming a weekly event for me, the Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series. This one, “Slow Dancing,” was super cool. David Michalek, a film director and portrait photographer, as well as husband of New York City Ballet prima ballerina Wendy Whelan, is currently creating a public art film installation to be viewed during the Lincoln Center festival this summer. Basically, he took five seconds’ worth of footage of 45 different dancers from various dance styles — ranging from flamenco, Indian, break-dancing and krumping to of course Ballet — slowed it way way WAY down, using a highly specialized camera that has heretofore been used only by the military and NASA for weapons and rocket launch analyses respectively (!), and projected them onto a 50-foot high screen. During the festival, three such enormous screens will be hung on the outside the walls of the State Theater (pictured above in the top two pics) and, each night after dark, the images of the dancers — three at a time and moving in extreme slow motion, will be projected onto them.
So, we got to see how this was made last night. Three dance giants — Wendy Whelan (of course!), Herman Cornejo from ABT, and Desmond Richardson — each came out onstage and did a five-second solo. (Michalek joked that this was the only time we’d ever see dancers of this stature dance on a stage for a mere five seconds!) The camera recorded the movement, and after each dancer finished and exited the stage, we viewed what had been recorded in the slow timing.
It was so incredibly amazing it’s hard even to describe. With the image slowed to such a great extent and projected onto such a huge screen, you could just see so much that you never saw before, and it gave you so much more respect for the dancer to see how perfectly, how miraculously really, his or her body actually worked to make the huge jump, difficult turn, or beautiful line really happen. Richardson, exclaiming that as a dancer he was “ecstatic and inspired,” said that “to see the actual muscle fibers … really shows the work.” It’s so true: I noticed with Richardson, whose musculature is so pronounded, that, in contrast to a photo where you see the muscles but without seeing them actually work, viewing them contract, lengthen, expand, and flex during each part of a jump is so incredible that it makes the jump so much more astounding than just seeing it caught in a still picture. With Herman, I noticed that his feet practically make semi-circles when he points, and they remain pointed right until the very millisecond he lands. I noticed the gorgeous lines Wendy made with her arms, legs, feet, and hands, and her defined leg and arm muscles as well.
Of course as a dancer you’d have to have an ego of steel to allow yourself to be filmed in such a way! You see every detail, and every asymmetry, every flaw, if you could even call it that. Michalek said that Whelan, upon seeing herself onscreen for the first time, was really upset about her knees “buckling” when she jumped, and, during the panel discussion, when asked how she now felt, with sweetly self-deprecating humor, she just exhaled and said, “oh, I’ve come to embrace my imperfections…” Everyone laughed because, it’s like, what imperfections?!… I did notice she was pretty nervous when being video-taped though — you could really see her left hand tremble during the slowed film.
What impressed me most though was how it really had an iconic effect on the, literally, larger-than-life performer. Michalek said, seeing so many pictures of his beautiful wife and her colleagues made him dismayed at the limits of traditional dance photography to capture the monumental nature of the body in motion.
Allowing — almost forcing the viewer to examine closely what it is that makes each particular dancer so great — Richardson’s musculature and strength, Wendy’s beautiful lines, and Herman’s beyond perfect technique and the personality emanated through his eyes — has a kind of heroizing effect. Regarding those eyes: perhaps I am weird, but I seem to focus a lot on faces a lot when I attend a dance performance. I noticed that both Richardson and Whelan closed their eyes a lot, or looked down so that it looked as if they were. I wondered how they did that — if I closed my eyes I would lose all sense of place and direction; I would have no idea where the floor was. It was this, I felt, that gave their dancing a very ethereal feel and was part of their own particular artistry.
Herman was the exact opposite. His eyes never closed. At the beginning, when he first took the stage, they were focused straight out at the audience; I was sitting in the center of the fourth row and it was kind of freaky how it looked like he was looking right at me, in a proud, but almost confrontational way. Then, as he began his jump, his eyes remained wide open and directed firmly out at us; it was only when he went to land that they briefly glanced down at the floor so he could get his sense of place. Then, he immediately went into another jump, this time with a turn, and it was so incredible to see his eyes remain widely, alertly opened, and his gaze directed in the same place, until he had to rotate his head to complete the turn. His eyes, I felt gave him a very solid, very masculine “thereness” or presence, that I suppose is perhaps a Latin thing. I bet if Jose Carreno or Angel Corella were filmed, their eyes would be the same. I think that is what so draws me to ABT.
Anyway, the reception was a lot of fun as well. Doug Fox was in town, so I convinced him to meet me there, and he was very glad he did since the techie aspect of it was right up his alley. And, speaking of other brilliant techies (not to mention great dancers!), we ran into Kristin Sloan and her boyfriend, Doug Jaeger, as well 🙂
All of these dancer whom they chose to exhibit last night, though, were pretty similar in terms of body-type and obviously style of dance. It’ll be interesting to see the break and belly dancers. Definitely do not miss this spectacular celebration of dance. It’s showing outdoors at Lincoln Center from July 20th though 29th, from the hours of 9:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m.
Test Run: Max and Yulia's Awesome Samba
Okay Doug Fox came to NYC this weekend and, being the amazingly sweet guy he is, helped me figure out how to embed YouTube videos in my crazy blog. WordPress is officially a pain in the butt… Anyway, if this works, here are two of my favorite U.S. Latin dancers doing their Samba from last year’s Ohio Star Ball / America’s Ballroom Challenge.
Note: I had to end up deleting this post because it made my blog all crazy-looking. Methinks WordPress does not take kindly to YouTube…
Gender Bender Confusion!
Last night I went to see the last third of a three-part dance series on the theme “Gender Benders” at Symphony Space. This one was by Monica Bill Barnes & Company and Nicholasleichterdance. (Unfortunately, I missed the second part of the series, by Les Ballets Grandiva; the first was Keigwin Kabaret, which I blogged on earlier). Like the Keigwin, this was comprised of a series of short pieces, some mostly dance, others more like wordless skits, some containing both, and all presumably aiming to challenge our notions of gender.A couple of the pieces choreographed by Barnes and performed by her and Deborah Lohse that stuck in my mind were these cutely humorous Vaudeville-esque sketches featuring the two women in overdone makeup and platinum blonde wigs and wearing maid-like aprons over ruffly skirts, who were kind of simultaneously sexed-up — one kept bunching her skirt and wanting to lift it — and naively sweet and confused. It was very funny, very cute, and Lohse’s expressions were brilliant. She has a tall, thin, somewhat gangly frame, and she really seemed to know how to use that to maximum comical effect here. I recognized her name in the progam then her face as soon as I saw her onstage, and I realized where from when I read her bio: she has her own newly-started company, ad hoc Ballet, whose website I’d visited after the introduction of a new Winger contributor from that company. Anyway, I’d actually like to learn more about Vaudeville since I’ve seen a few modern companies use it now. Kind of ridiculous that I know so little since my boyfriend in grad school was writing his dissertation on its history, and I read Fred Astaire’s autobiography…
I really LOVED Nicholas Leichter though. My favorite pieces were his “Baby Doll,” a solo which he performed, and “Undertow,” a piece for four men wearing tight form-fitting skirts with sexy thigh-high back slits, leather jackets with nude mesh undershirts, and finger and toenail polish. That piece explored in a short time a rather large panoply of male interactions, as the men, flirted with, hugged and caressed, lifted, fought with, and threw each other about. The costumes, along with some of the snaky Samba-y hip swaying would have been very “sexy” on women — but how did they look on men, I felt Leichter asked.
In “Baby Doll,” Leichter came out onstage alone, dressed in a man’s pinstriped suit, then, pretending to have a conversation with someone else — initially maybe someone gazing at him, then coming onto him, then perhaps a lover who was jilting him — reacted against what that absent other was doing. Initially, he seemed embarrased about being looked at, then nervous and somewhat frightened, then burst into hysterical laughter, then hurt and crying, lashed out. At one point, he pulled his pants down and mooned the absent other, then waddled around the stage, too lazy or angry to pull them back up. It was funny but disconcerting to see a man do such a thing, do all these things. Also, I thought how “feminine” the emoting and the reactions were, which contrasted sharply with his muscular “masculine” physique.
The thing that threw me was, I hadn’t known who Leichter was before this, so I looked in the program and saw the name of the performer for this piece listed as “Clare Byrne.” I then looked at the insert, and saw that they had changed it to Leichter as the performer for tonight’s show. I thought, huh, “Clare” is a strange name for a man … then when I got home looked up the name on the web and found that she was not a man at all. (In fact, she’s the one who’s doing that Kneeling piece throughout next week at various NY locations, which I am definitely going to scope out!) But, unless the whole thing was just a misprint, I couldn’t believe he had choreographed this piece for a woman — it would have been so completely different for a woman to have performed it — gone would be everything I just said above. And that made me think that, of everything I saw in this “gender bender” series, it was really only the men’s performances that I found “gender-assumption” challenging. Not that I didn’t find the women’s dancing beautiful or remarkably athletic. But, I guess women can kind of look or act any ole way — we can wear short sexy skirts, pantssuits, men’s underwear, army camoflauge or ruffly skirts, and we can be ballerinas or pole dancers or breakers or sexy sambistas and it’s all just that; nothing looks out of the ordinary. But for a man to cry or emote at all, to don nail polish and a skirt with a high back-slit and move his hips in a sexy figure eight motion… it just makes you stop, look, and think. And, I mean, how many of the DWTS celebrity males have (beyond annoyingly) freaked over looking too feminine in the Latin dances — Ian and Billy Ray this time around, George Hamilton last time; and there were several guys in my old social dancing school who dropped out of the international Latin classes because they were “too girly”… It’s interesting though, because at the same time, I don’t think this greater gender flexibility amounts to women actually having more power…
Anyway, this was a short program, but it’s inexpensive and thought-provoking. Visit Symphony Space for tix; it’s on through the 21st.