Author: Tonya

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AUF DEN TISCH / AT THE TABLE: MEG STUART’S CURATORIAL MAYHEM

 

Reviewed by Christopher Atamian

I caught Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods for the first time on November 8th at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Auf Den Tisch is more a collaborative piece than Stuart’s choreography per se: a huge room is filled with tables lined up against each other with the audience sitting around it-critics, fellow artists, the general public and an occasional straggler or two judging from their reactions.  The performers: Trajal Harrell, Keith Hennessey, Janez Jansa, Jean-Paul Lespagnard, Jan Maertens, Yvonne Meier, Anja Müller, Vania Rovisco, Hahn Rowe, George Emilio Sanchez, Stuart and David Thomson are a diverse, talented lot. It would be impossible to describe the action, as these twelve artists performed just about every possible type of improvisation imaginable in a nod to Grand Union and other experimental groups from the past.  Jansa stood on a balcony looking out at the audience complaining in a Croatian accent that no one was risqué enough today to get naked in public as Richard Schechner did in the 60’s-then he proceeded to get naked and climb down among the hoi polloi: my older French colleague was unimpressed, noting with distaste that he had dirty feet. I thought he looked fine naked. The immer intellectual, immer thinking Harrell was alternately baffling as he read Rancière aloud (who could process the French philosopher at such break-neck speed?), fascinating as he fielded questions about forgiveness and charming as he zipped around the table in a bumble bee outfit.  By now, you must get an idea of what the performance was like…Parts of Auf den Tisch were also terribly slow.  Stuart officially “curated” this project-with a bit of nipping and tucking, it could have been much shorter and more enjoyable-not that pleasure was at the top of anyone’s agenda…Oh yes, as usual Yvonne Meier was her dry, hilarious self.

Photo taken from the Performa 2009 website.

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MIRO MAGLOIRE’S NEW CHAMBER BALLET AT CITY CENTER

 

Reviewed by Christopher Atamian

Miro Magloire’s ballets are like exquisite little jeweled music boxes-each one opens up simple, precious and lovingly crafted.   Some are prettier than others and a few seem perhaps a touch unfinished, but each one is charming in its own way. Magloire’s company-New Chamber Ballet-presents its work at the intimate City Center Studios: it’s not the most elegant setting and Magloire must occasionally compete with some heavy-footed colleague stomping on his head on the floor above, but overall the setting works.  It’s also an intelligent model to adopt in this depressed economy, a great way to keep low overhead and still present four or fives times a year. Magloire, a former musician, is also an exponent of live music: it’s a delightful two-in-one presentation and his usual muse on piano, the lovely Melody Fader, is a gifted, nimble artist and a wonderfully quirky personality. On Sunday November 8, Magloire presented two solos: Sonatine, set to music by the same name by the late Karlheinz Stockhausen (a mentor of sorts to the choreographer) danced by Madeline Deavenport and brilliantly played by Fader and Erik Carlson-a veritable prodigy on violin.  Moments was danced with equal bravura by Lauren O’Toole to Salvatore Sciarrino’s Caprices No. 2 and 6 for violin.  Pas de…is an interesting experiment, a riff on the traditional pas de trois, with Madeline Deavenport, Emery LeCrone and Victoria North taking turns dancing alone and in twos and threes.  What a treat it was to finally hear a piece set to Magloire’s own music-Two Pieces for Piano-a spare, modernist composition.  But it was Silk, set to Giuseppe Tartini’s simply gorgeous Sonata No. 7 per Violino Solo that stole the evening-enchanting, vigorous music that LeCrone, Vanessa Woods and Lauren Toole easily matched in terms of bravura and execution.  Kudos as well to Candice Thompson for her simple, sexy, elegant costumes.

 

 

Photos by Kristen Lodoen Linder: above of Madeline Deavenport; below of Erik Carlson and Lauren Toole in Moments.

 

 

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THE RED SHOES, AT FILM FORUM

 

 

If you’re in New York, try not to miss the newly restored version of The Red Shoes (from 1948) currently showing at Film Forum (but only for a couple more days). Based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the girl who dons red shoes then can’t stop dancing til death does her in, it’s the story of a ballerina who stars in the ballet of the same name, and suffers the same tragic fate. It’s a bit dated in its story-line (the protagonist has to choose between a husband and a ballet career) and in its melodramatic ending, but the cinematography is stunning, the costumes and sets are glorious (I so want the turquoise dress she wears in the scene where the owner of the ballet company — a Balanchine-type — tells her he’s casting her in the lead!), and Moira Shearer’s lightning-footed dancing is just about the best I think I’ve ever seen onscreen. There’s also a little cameo by Ballets Russes choreo Leonid Massine.

It’s been called by some critics the greatest ballet film ever made, and Martin Scorcese (who helped in the restoration) calls it one of his earliest cinematographic influences.

Above photos of Shearer taken from here and here.

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RADIO CITY CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR

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Last week, my friend — the illustrious Taylor Gordon! — invited me to watch her dance in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. (Taylor, trained in classical ballet, is not a Rockette but a seasonal dancer in the show.) As last year, the show is a lot of fun, very Christmassy, very geared toward the tourist crowd and to children, with a somewhat corny story-line (younger boy strives to and eventually convinces older, more skeptical boy of Santa’s existence). But the dancing and the costumes and the sets are tremendous and are the reason you really go (if you’re an adult, that is 🙂 ).

The Rockettes in particular are wondrous. Talk about astoundingly perfect synchronicity…

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The soldier scene is my favorite. They march, they step, they turn in formation in almost mind-boggling unison, and then they fall, one by one, s-l-o-w-l-y, ever so slowly, one after and onto the other, in, again, mind-bogglingly perfect timing.

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And now a few pictures of Taylor! She’s in the middle, in the coolly colorful tights.

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Pink scarf, green bag, cool tights. So proud of her … again!

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As a Santa — I’ve no idea which one.

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And as a tutu-clad bear.

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And a few more of the Rockettes.

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Kick line!

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Finale.

Taylor’s also a writer. Visit her blog for her accounts of what it’s like to be in the show.

And here is our friend Michael’s write-up of the evening.

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ANNA MIKHED AND VICTOR FUNG HAVE SPLIT

 

According to Dance Beat magazine, US and World Standard finalists Anna Mikhed and Victor Fung have broken up. Though not technically the best in the world, I’ve often found this couple just oozing with charm and charisma, as have others — they’re kind of America’s Sweethearts. They placed third in the world this year and they’ve long been second in the US Nationals. I don’t get it — first Mirko Gozzoli and Alessia Betti — well, and before them, Karina Smirnoff and Slavik Kryklyvyy– these couples break up when they’re on top.

Anna tells DB she’s “thoroughly enjoyed these last 6 years of dancing with Victor,” saying they’ve grown individually and as a partnership. “There was no incident that took place, just a recognition, perhaps mostly by myself, that our paths in partnership and in dancing were going in different directions.”

She tells fans to watch for each individually, and DB says Victor has begun looking for a new partner. Still, I’ll miss seeing them together.

Here they are Viennese Waltzing in Hong Kong earlier this year:

(photo from PBS.org)

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PARIS OPERA BALLET STARS TO DANCE IN NYCBALLET OPENING NIGHT

 

How funny — I was just going on in my last post about how I fell in love with the Paris Opera Ballet through Frederick Wiseman’s currently-showing film La Danse, and now I receive news that two etoiles with that company — Aurelie Dupont (in photo above, taken from Bailarinas) and Mathias Heymann — will be performing with New York City Ballet in their opening night gala, on November 24th. In exchange, NYCB’s Ashley Bouder and Gonzalo Garcia (both SLSG faves) will perform with Paris Opera Ballet, on November 12th. Both couples will dance the “Rubies” section of Balanchine’s Jewels.

Additionally, NYCB’s opening night performance will include Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH (my personal favorite of his) and a premiere by Peter Martins set to John Adams music and starring all of the company’s principal dancers.

 

Photo of DSCH by Paul Kolnik, from NYTimes.

NYCB’s Nutcracker season begins the Friday following opening night, November 27th. Visit the website for tix and info.

Most exciting though about the dancer exchange. I’ve never seen Heymann perform live and I’ve only seen Dupont dance Trisha Brown, not full-out ballet.

Here are a couple videos of Heymann I found on YouTube: first as Bluebird in Sleeping Beauty and second in a contemporary solo:

And here is Dupont as Kitri in Don Q:

Sorry, you guys, I’m just so into videos these days!

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SINCE SEEING WISEMAN’S "LA DANSE" I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO GET LAETITIA PUJOL OUT OF MY MIND

 

(photo taken from here)

Since seeing Frederick Wiseman’s excellent film La Danse a couple days ago — a documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet — I have not been able to get the fascinating etoile (star, highest level of dancer over there), Laetitia Pujol, out of my mind. The film is basically a series of rehearsals with some actual performance footage thrown in, and, unbelievably, it’s absolutely mesmerizing. If anyone’d described it that way to me beforehand — a bunch of rehearsal footage — I would’ve thought I’d be bored out of my mind, but it’s so incredibly interesting watching these dancers rehearse with top choreographers like Wayne McGregor and Angelin Preljocaj and Mats Ek. And the performances — omg – -that company does everything from the aforementioned contemporary choreographers, to Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater, to Petipa to Balanchine. Parisians are so damn lucky! We get either Petipa or Balanchine over here… not at all fair…

Anyway, Pujol blew me completely away. I’d never seen her dance before and somewhere in the middle of the film she’s rehearsing and she does the most mind-blowing series of turns all over the damn room. I’ve spent the past couple hours searching YouTube and, yay, finally found what she was doing! It’s Etudes, here:

For some reason, the spins looked a slight bit faster in the film, but you get the idea.
Here are a couple of others of Pujol:
The first, Le Baiser, which I love,

And Giselle, with Nicolas Le Riche:

One odd thing about the movie is that it’s a documentary, but there are no captions, so you have to try to guess who all the choreographers and dancers are. There are credits at the end, but you can’t possibly figure out who is who at that point, when there are all these names filling up the screen. At first I thought this was kind of a discredit to the artists not to list their names and titles or bios when they are shown in the film, but then I thought, well, it would kind of interrupt the flow of the action; this made it seem more like a narrative film, like one of those narrative films that’s shot with a handheld camera or the like to make you think you’re eavesdropping on someone’s actual life — which, it turns out, you are! Interesting filming device…

The real-life rehearsals do have their moments of (probably unintentional) humor, such as when one of the choreographers is describing to a young dancer learning the role of Medea that she’s portraying a god, a person whose intense, other-worldly powers make loving fraught with danger, and she says “Oh, like Edward Scissorhands.” At times, though, people laughed at seemingly odd things, like when a young dancer new to the company tells the director she longs to dance like Pujol and the director tells her, “Well, she has her own personal intelligence.” People in the audience seemed to think that was funny, but clearly, Pujol does have “her own personal intelligence”; dancing isn’t just about excellence of technique, it’s about using your brain. And these dancers are so fascinating because they’re so clever, they’re such powerful performers.

Go see this movie if you at all can. In NY, it’s at Film Forum.

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ALVIN AILEY ON SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE TONIGHT!

 

Tonight three dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will be on SYTYCD! My favorite modern dance company 😀  Linda Celeste Sims, Clifton Brown, and Constance Stamatiou (above, left to right, in photos by Andrew Eccles) will perform excerpts from Ulysses Dove’s Episodes, which, if I remember correctly, I found very intense and rather haunting.

 

(Linda Celeste Sims and Matthew Rushing in Episodes, photo by Paul Kolnik)

If you’re in New York, it’s almost time for Alvin Ailey season here. They open at City Center December 2nd. The season lasts for a month and this year they’re celebrating Judith Jamison’s 20th anniversary as artistic director (last year they celebrated the company’s 50th anniversary).

I so love it when great dancers are on TV!

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SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE: NO ONE CAN TOUCH JAKOB KARR, IMO

 

There’s some real talent on the show this season — mainly, imo, Jakob Karr (above) and Russell Ferguson (who I blogged about before). I also think Karen Hauer is a true performer who can do just about any kind of dance, and will thus go far.

I was sad to hear Karen announce tonight that she and Matt are getting divorced. They taught at my former studio and I always thought they were a sweet and very in-love couple.

I liked Karen and Kevin’s disco routine, but I again thought Karen sold it; I could hardly watch Kevin! It was a rather Latin-y disco, which shows how much Karen made it her own, and did so very well.

But my favorites of the night were Jakob and Ashleigh’s jazz and Russell and Noelle’s Afro-jazz. More Afro-jazz on this show please please! I thought both did amazingly with that latter routine, although they weren’t quite as good as those dancers in Fela! on Broadway (review coming soon!), who just really really floored me and made me so want to learn African. I have never ever seen people move like that before! But Russell and Noelle’s routine was African combined with jazz and so should have been a little jazzier, less pure African.

Still, though, to me, no one can really touch Jakob. I mean, he always has these stunning leaps in every routine, but it’s not only that, it’s just his whole form is such perfection. They way he’d round his shoulders and kind of hunch over that cane tonight was so creepy — but it was so creepy because it was so real because his whole form transmogrified when he made that shape, you know what I mean?

I agree with the judges that Mollee and Nathan’s salsa wasn’t all there. It looked clumsy at times; it looked like they struggled partnering each other, though I think she in particular would have done fine on her own.

I also agree with Nigel and Mary that Ryan and Ellenore’s hip hop wasn’t so swift. They tried too, but to me they just didn’t make the swagger believable, and they were really out of sync on the side-by-side work. They were also both lacking in precision I think.

I agree with the judges as well on Pauline and Peter’s Quickstep, though I loved the sailor smitten with Hula dancer story! Go J.T. and Tomas! So happy they’re choreographing for this show now. (I also know them — or at least J.T. — from my old studio.) I do think both dancers were good on their own, and sold it quite well, but the technique wasn’t there at all — the shaping in closed handhold was all wrong, the runs and running jetes were sloppy and not in sync. But still, it was fun and they acted it well and sold the story.

I disagree with the judges about Kathryn and Legacy’s Broadway though. Well, the judges liked him — and so did I — I thought he nailed it, especially for a b-boy. The choreographer did use his strengths with the handstands and back flips. I thought she was good too, though in terms of the movement — the way she circled her pelvis at him, trying to get his attention. I thought she acted it fine — she was cute as opposed to angry and demanding, but I think she made it her own thing. She is rather sweet-faced and that’s what she used to try to grab his attention.

I agree though with the judges about Victor and Channing’s contemporary, and I can’t even put my finger on why it didn’t blow me away emotionally like I feel it should have. It was a story about a couple arguing, struggling, and ultimately breaking away from each other. They danced it well, they danced it with passion and intensity, and yet it didn’t make me feel all that much. Maybe it is just because they’re a new partnership this week. I have to say, I think Victor is an excellent dancer. I can tell that from his solos. His solos touch me the way Jakob’s dancing does. But for some reason he doesn’t seem to be able to take that with him to the duets …  though it looks like he’s trying hard to.

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WINONA RYDER & NATALIE PORTMAN IN MOVIE BASED ON NYCB DANCER

 

 

Oh cool — apparently, Winona Ryder, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are to star in a film called Black Swan, a thriller that follows the story of a fictitious NYCBallet dancer who may or may not be having delusions about a rival. All actresses play dancers with the company, and supposedly, there is some kind of “extreme” sex scene between Portman and Kunis. Hmmm… Can any of them dance, or will they have doubles to do the dancing, I wonder. Or will there actually be much dancing?

Directing is Darren Aronofsky, who last directed The Wrestler, and filming is expected to begin in New York next month, with a release date sometime in 2010.

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WAS THAT THE MOST BORING DANCING WITH THE STARS QUARTERFINAL OR WHAT?

Sorry I’ve been so out of it again with blogging, you guys — I can’t believe how many little errors there are in my book to correct… So stressful!

Anyway, I managed to watch DWTS last night. Thing is, I’m really so not into it; even if I wasn’t busy with my book, I’m so not into blogging about the show this season. I think Mya is overall the best contestant on the show right now, and so she probably deserves to win. But she just doesn’t do that much for me. I liked both her Quickstep and 70s Samba last night — I thought her Quickstep was actually pretty basic and technique-focused so I’m not sure why Len didn’t like it, and the Samba was fun — a lot of people dance Samba to disco music since it’s so hard to find good authentic Samba music around here.

I think overall I like Aaron the most though, even though he’s not as good as Mya. Still, he’s getting less and less fun, for some reason, as the season goes on. His over-the-top-ness is not enough to compel me to watch the show anymore. I liked but didn’t love his 90s Latin routine last night — wait, was it  Jive? I don’t even remember? But I was annoyed with Karina that she didn’t let him do his fun boy-band moves. Why did she cut him off like that — I think it would have been hilarious. And what is with everyone getting sick? (Both Karina and Aaron had the flu at various points this week apparently…)

I thought all the Standard routines were pretty bland last night. I thought Donny’s Viennese Waltz was the best, mainly because Kym was so beautifully fluid. But during the Latin round, his 80s Paso wasn’t all that interesting. The costumes and music (I used to love Spin Me ‘Round) were far more fun and flashy than the actual dancing.

And I feel the same way about Kelly as I do Aaron. I liked watching her learn and grow early on but now it seems she’s stagnating and it’s not that interesting anymore. I thought her 60s Jive was cute and I love that Louis, unlike Karina, let her put her own Monkees-esque moves in.

I feel like Joanna really dances like a paper doll. She has no grounding, no weight, no strength or firmness in her body. You need that for ballroom, even for the Standard dances. You need that for any kind of dance. You need that to do fouettes and pirouettes in ballet. Not that I don’t dance exactly like that — that was always my problem: I looked emaciated and completely substanceless. I used to think it was just about being thin, but it’s not. There are very thin dancers who are very rooted and have a great deal of strength in their bodies. She’s a really really pretty paper doll, but a paper doll nonetheless and I can’t for the life of me understand why the judges fawn over her so.

 

 

I know, as Katrina had commented earlier, that seasons may collide, but I still so want Yankees to be on the show.  Come on, A-Rod can dance with Smirnoff and Derek with … Lacey maybe. The World Series was the most exciting thing to happen since Roberto Bolle (look look, new pic from Weber book!) came to town. I’ve been a bit bored and depressed since it ended… 🙁

One more thing about the Yankees: they had a little dance segment at the City Hall celebration — did anyone watch it? The dancers were teenaged schoolgirls, apparently, from Staten Island, called the LA Dancers — something like that. They were okay, but you know… Why don’t they have a real dancer, like Ashley Bouder? I think she’d be perfect — she’s cute and extremely athletic and would be very attractive to the average baseball fan. And she’s a NYCBallet dancer… Come on! Next year…

 

Photo of Bouder by Gene Schiavone, taken from Bailarinas; photos of A-Rod and Jeter taken from here and here respectively.

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REVISITING BATSHEVA'S MAX

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