Author: Tonya

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Halloween & Center Stage

Interesting decoration I saw on the street.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Also, don’t forget, the night after Halloween, (Saturday, November 1) Oxygen cable network is airing the premiere of the new movie Center Stage 2, or Center Stage: Turn It Up. According to the network’s website, it’s scheduled to show a couple of times that evening, as well as the following Sunday and Wednesday. So you have plenty of chances 🙂

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Slanted Tchaikovsky Bios

I’ve been doing some research on Tchaikovsky lately — mainly the period in the mid 1870s, which many of his biographers call the “crisis years,” when he was in his mid to late thirties composing Swan Lake among other masterpieces, marrying unsuccessfully, and having a subsequent nervous breakdown. Some biographers accuse others of trying to blacken his name and make him out to be “over-emotional” by “insinuating” that he was gay, which I find interesting that people consider such a suggestion an “insinuation” or an attempt to dirty a reputation, and assume that emotionalism and sexuality have anything to do with each other.

Anyway, here is a paragraph from a 1946 book on him and several other Russian composers by British writer Donald Brook that I find particularly amusing:

“There can be little doubt that if Tchaikovsky had married Desiree Artot (an opera singer who impassioned him), and if she had abandoned her travels and made him a good wife, he could have lived a normal sex-life, for there is every reason to believe that she did attract him physically. In the life of a homosexual there is often one woman who could bring the offender back to the paths of normality, though, alas! he is often unaware of the fact, or never ventures to make the experiment.”

Just shows you how unobjective nonfiction can be. Also, throughout the book, I don’t think I’ve seen so many exclamation points.

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I'm So Disgusted … But I'll Get Over It

with this show now. I wouldn’t be at all upset if what had happened last night hadn’t had happened, if Carrie Ann hadn’t said those words. I really think she should apologize, to Cloris and to the public in general, because she really was reprimanding the public for voting the way they did. Assuming the results aren’t rigged… a belief many have expressed. Who knows, maybe they are — it’s very odd that Cloris stays on all this time, then, after the judges decide she should be off, wham she is… especially when you’d expect all her fans to come out and show their support to the max after those nasty statements by the judges.

In any event, this show has really worn on my nerves this season.

I’m sure I’ll get over it though, and will be glued to the TV next week 🙂

Anyway, for ballet people, here is a very short HuffPo piece I did on ABT, trying to gear it a bit to the more ‘political’ crowd.

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"Financially," Tom Bergeron!

Argh, I love how they introduced Lord of the Flies guy, Lord of the Flames, whatever his name is… — Michael Flatley — by announcing he’s grossed over $200 million between Feet of Flames, Lord of the whatever and Celtic Tiger, and is therefore “the most successful dancer in history.” Period. Not “financially, the most successful dancer in history.” Why is this country is so fixated on money? Haven’t we learned anything over the past several months?

Anyway, I just got back from my “representing the mentally ill client” continuing legal education seminar and am just now watching my tape. All I’ve seen is the last hip hop, which was excellent! I think Cloris did better in her solo (or side-by-side duet with Corky) than she’s ever done on the ballroom floor? Seriously — she had a real bad-ass bounce in her step I’ve never seen before. And she had those punches down! And I love Cody — he’s so cute — I love his opening … whatever those noises he made with his mouth close over the mike are called – -mouth noises. Lance blew me away too. Everyone did so well; I can’t believe it. Just shows how hard ballroom is that everyone can rock out with loose hips and bumping and grinding pelvises and then be all unbalanced on a traveling Cha Cha lockstep or side-stepping Samba voltas. Still, hip hop is so flipping hard for me.

Okay, watching the rest now, and blogging as I go…

Oh my gosh, Maurice and Cheryl’s Viennese Waltz was so beautiful! So smooth and dapper and gentlemanly, and fluid and precise footwork, and gorgeous gorgeous posture, and that quick turn, followed by the way he reached out for her. Ooh, Maurice, I’m in love with you this week! What? I can’t believe the judges — are they collectively on drugs?

Aw, Lance’s Jive was cute. Great jive kicks, great speed, cute slide, good precision in the footwork, excellent character. He sold it very well. I wasn’t in love with Lacey’s loud pink shoe bows though.

Wow, Susan’s Mambo really impressed me! It was a very pretty Mambo — maybe not hot sexy mama Mambo, but a pretty one; as Lord guy said, she’s the epitome of “elegance, grace, and beauty.” And he’s right; that’s Susan — she made it her own. Her dress was lovely and the red fire-y skirt really waved and flickered about well. Tony gave her some very fast fancy footwork and she pulled it off wonderfully. Her swivels were lovely and she completely twisted her whole body, which is hard. And really nice ronde de jambe en l’air (or air rondes, as I call them). Good job, Susan!

Well, Brooke’s rumba was lovely, but rumba is just the cruelest dance! It’s so slow and every movement, every hip movement so drawn out, that you can just see every flaw so clearly. Hers was a very lyrical rumba (meaning, straight, ballet-like posture, not a lot of organic hip movement), which is fine. Those were my specialty 🙂 though I was nowhere good as she is! Her toes weren’t pointed enough though and didn’t trace the floor enough — your foot is never really supposed to leave the floor in a rumba – -and her knees were too bent. Her lines were a little off. I know she has a foot injury… Gorgeous dip though, and some lovely stretches. It wasn’t perfect but it was very nice to watch.

I know at least some of you guys are going to hate me for this, but I think Carrie Ann’s comment about Cloris was really unfair. I’m upset that Toni Braxton was kicked off last week too, as I think — and said many times — I thought she was one of the best on the show — but it’s unfair to criticize and basically blame Cloris for still being here when Toni’s off. As if it’s Cloris’s fault?… Cloris is sweet; her Cha Cha was cute — and I think she’s really starting to try now. She obviously has limitations, but at this point I don’t feel like she’s trying to screw up and be a goof; I feel like she’s really trying to do the best she can. And, I linked to that NYTimes article on her last week — I don’t think it’s any small thing that Corky Ballas was in the Times, picture, name and all. The fact that a ballroom legend is in one of the biggest newspapers around… Has ballroom ever been taken so seriously? I mean, this has been a subculture. I feel like Cloris, in her own way, perhaps inadvertently, has kind of done more than any other celebrity on this show to change that… She has to be credited for that at least?

Cody is just so cute. I’m starting to laugh throughout his entire routines now, in a good way! His Samba was nowhere near perfect, but it was really really really good. It wasn’t a typical Samba, but who needs typical all the time? It was a welcome change. He’s such a good partner, such a good support for her. You can tell she’s really comfortable with him, really trusts him the way she throws herself into his arms on those dips and takes him so fast on those pivots. Those pivots (fast turns with partner in close handhold) are hard; it’s very easy to trip all over your partner’s feet. His footwork wasn’t perfect and his hip and pelvic action wasn’t all there, but some of it certainly was. He needs more turnout with his feet. He tries so hard and has such energy, and he’s the biggest improvement on the show. I’m really rooting for him at this point. Poor Julianne; I hope she’s okay. Did she say endometriosis? That’s serious, and she’s young. I mean, not life-threateningly serious, but I’ve heard it’s very painful.

I loved Warren’s rumba too. (I seem to have loved everything this week) He is really very musical — he moved perfectly on the beat — and his footwork was quick and sharp. He did a sliding door, which is an advanced step that is really pretty hard, and his footwork was not only perfect, but really sharp. Amateurs are usually soft and tentative in all Latin dances — and it really shows in the rumba since it’s so slow — but with each step he put his foot down with such decisiveness. He had some checks (where one foot is directly in front of the other, the front leg is straight, the back one bent, and weight is equally distributed) — and they’re kind of hard for amateurs — you can lose your balance easily — and his were pretty smooth. And he was wonderfully in character — soulful, smooth, passionate, strong, virile. Who cares if the technique wasn’t all there? I love it!

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Dance Times Square Showcase, Etc.

 

I meant to write about this yesterday but took the day off from writing when I got a pleasantly unexpected invitation from Lucky Broadway Girl to see a play! Imagine that: words, actual words spoken on a stage! Hehe, I used to go to plays all the time but kind of stopped when I got so into dance — had no time. Anyway, we went to see Love Child, off-Broadway, at the 59East59 theater, which I’d never been to before.

 

Nice space, for lots of small theaters — kind of like some of those buildings on far west 42nd street. The play was good and the actors (Daniel Jenkins and Robert Stanton) excellent — these two men played several different characters and they had to change from one to another in a split nano-second. No time for line flubs! And there was a little choreographed movement — sometimes they had to do a little series of turns to show they were going from one character to another. So there was some dance after all 🙂 Anyway, so great to finally meet Lucky Bway Girl!

The Dance Times Square showcase I won’t say much about because I’m writing a review for Explore Dance which I’ll link to as soon as it’s up, but just briefly: wow, their best showcase yet, or at least one of their best. Sabra and Neil from SYTYCD were there, each danced two solos apiece. Excellent solos, obviously. Neil’s were both kind of Movin’ Out style, white t-shirt and jeans, the first more beautifully balletic with lots of whipping fouettes and multiple pirouettes and big leaping jetes. He has a really beautiful line. Somehow I’d kind of overlooked that on the show. His second solo was more gymnastic with a few fun tumbling passes, which I guess is what he’s known for (not only on the TV show but he was also in Tharp’s acrobatic Times Are A’ Changin’). I personally prefer the ballet, but the crowd went nuts when he went flying 🙂

And Sabra danced gorgeously. Her first was this kind of cutely sexy Bjork-esque number in a pink and white baby doll dress, and her second a more passionate contemporary of the style you’d see on the show, danced in a vibrant purple unitard. She moves so well, and she dances with such passion and emotion and her form is so perfect; she has perfect ballet turn-out. This was the most up-close I’ve seen her and she really is a miraculous dancer; I can clearly see how she won the crown.

Still, to me Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova stole the show with their three Latin combo routines. They are such a splendid partnership — they’re both very good dancers, both quick, sharp, and precise, and neither tries to outshine the other; they actually work as a team, which is unfortunately becoming increasingly rare in ballroom…

And Michael Choi (a DTS teacher) and his professional partner Becky Melton did a luxuriant ballroom combo to Andrea Bocelli’s rich, luscious Con Te Partiro, one of my favorite musical pieces period, but particularly for ballroom dance.

It was a tribute to the Helen Sawaya Fund — a group supporting breast cancer survivors, and they (the member survivors) did a little Broadway-esque / ballroom number, all dressed in dazzling bright red gowns, with the male pros at DTS, all in dapper black tuxes. Mercedes Ellington presented them, and opera star Aprile Millo sang. Gorgeous voice — and she sang without accompaniment. Philip told me some interesting stories about her — she has a cult following and there are even some exhibits in the Met opera house dedicated to her! No wonder it was so packed in the house — opera divas with cult followings, TV stars, stars of the Latin ballroom world… And this was the most diverse it’s ever been — a lot of the numbers were kind of Broadway dance or contemporary dance combined with Latin and ballroom. They weren’t one specific style. So, the studio is branching out!

All in all, it was a fabulous night. As always, the students are loads of fun to watch, and to cheer on — both advanced and beginner. Elaine (full disclosure: my friend), who often steals the student portion of the show, ended it (with teacher Michael Choi) with a disco tribute to Donna Summer, and had the crowd roaring to its feet. This biannual showcase is always such a blast. It’s not ABT, you know, but it’s just a huge blast!

Tonight and tomorrow night I have law events, so may be little late with my DWTS posts, but will definitely tape, watch, and blog! I’m excited — I think — to see the contestants dance with each other. That’s what they’re doing tonight, right?…

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Daniil’s Debut and a Riveting Pillar of Fire

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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Lorna Simpson II

Lorna simpson ii

Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.


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Film projection on back wall: on left side 2 fireworks displays -one from fifties, one from today are superimposed on each other; on right is Thomas Edison’s train wreck experiment (from his 1904 film) in slow motion. Frightening visual effects evocative of effects of war. I’ve noticed lots of war-related art works lately, both in visual and performing arts.