Except one look at his website reveals that, like Fabrizio Ferri and Michael Sharkey, he is not really a dance photographer. Enter his website, then click on Dance to see more brilliant photos of the Ailey crew. Above photo, of the beautiful Amos J. Machanic, Jr., is from AAADT website.
SYTYCD 2008 Audition Dates Announced
So, for anyone who hasn’t heard the breaking news of the past half hour, audition dates for the next season of SYTYCD have been announced. Since I’m lazy, I’ll just link to Maria!
I know several people around here who are thinking of trying out; looks like the nearest audition venue for them will be DC since there are none in NY. Which is fine — DC’s not so far away. Come on, come on, someone else I know go be on the show and do really really well so I can say I know more famous people 🙂 Just kidding; I just got back from Alvin Ailey and, as is usually the case when I’ve just returned from an evening of watching my favorite dancers, I am all giggles. Oh I love them so! Anyway, excellent luck to everyone I know … and don’t know … who’s shooting for the stars!
My Favorite Pasha & Anya Pics!
I’m so excited. Look what the “Rhythm of Love” people sent me (Again, that performance is next Friday and Saturday nights in Stamford):
These are my favorite pictures of them. They were taken at Blackpool in 2005, the year they placed 2nd in the world in the Rising Star Latin division — their most prestigious placement ever! Look at how gorgeous she is. Look at that costume — oh how I wanted one just like it. She designs her own (remember Danny Tidwell saying how he was going to miss them when she was booted from SYTYCD?!) I always thought when she retired from competition she could become a professional designer. But now of course she is on to far bigger and better things! And how cute is Pasha?! 😀 I remember when I first saw these pictures I had just made my first appointment with him at Dance Times Square. I hadn’t yet met him and had only signed up on the advice of a fellow student at my former studio, DanceSport. I did a Google search before my lesson and found these pics and nearly died. My first thought: oh no, he’s gorgeous; I can’t take lessons from him! And her, hello! Of course I was only signing on for lessons, not to be his actual partner, or girlfriend for that matter, but still! Talk about nerves upon first meeting…
Oh, brings back memories. It all seems so far in the past now, although it really isn’t… Anyway, thanks “Rhythm of Love” people for sending them!
In other ballroom news:
it appears many in the Latin world are very hopeful that the new partnership of Yulia Zagoruychenko and Riccardo Cocchi could quite possibly bring America a first-place prize in the Worlds next year. Thank you to Dance Beat for sending this info my way. Apparently, the couple just finished their first competition, the medium-sized Holiday Classic in Las Vegas (which, because of its relatively small size, is an ideal comp for a new partnership to test its mettle). Spectators, including Dame of the Ballroom World, Shirley Ballas, were apparently blown away. (Ballas has formerly coached Yulia and her old partner Max, and I know she’s long been fond of Riccardo). Anyway, these videos are not the greatest quality, but here are some small clips of the two dancing in the finals in the Holiday Classic, and a short interview with Ballas.
I wasn’t in Vegas so haven’t yet seen them dance together, but I have long admired Yulia and have always thought her by far the most artistic Latin dancer in this country.
Here she is at Nationals last year with her former partner Max Kozhevnikov;
And here’s a picture I took of Riccardo and his old partner, Joanne Wilkinson, last year at Blackpool. He was a great showman, and wow could he move. The last American couple to place in the top three in Latin at Blackpool was in 2005 when Karina Smirnoff and Slavik Kryklyvyy took second. Last year we didn’t have a couple in the finals. This year, Max and Yulia snagged an emotional 7th place. Longtime first-place champs Bryan Watson and Carmen have retired, leaving the top position vacant. All I can say is, can’t wait till May!
My Annual NYCB Holiday ‘Cracker!
Everyone, ballet fan or not, has to see The Nutcracker at least once a holiday season, right! It’s a requirement. This ballet — particularly NYCB‘s Balanchine version (since that’s the only one I’ve seen in adulthood) — is always magic, especially after the party is over, Clara dozes off, and her little Nutcracker doll becomes a prince and whisks her off to the lands of live Snowflakes and dancing Sweets. I actually think the beginning, with all of the children and adults socializing, goes on for a bit too long; the ballet seems really to come alive after Clara’s dreams begin, the tree miraculously grows up through the ground and out through the roof, and the cute but threatening oversized mice fight with Nut’s army. And what fun those mice are when they squiggle out with their fat little bodies wreaking all kinds of mouse havoc. There was a very high-jumping one, which was very impressive to me, made me think, wow, that must be hard to do in that huge hoop of a costume! I have no idea who that high-jumper was, though, since there are a zillion names in the program and it wasn’t the Mouse King.
My Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier were legends Wendy Whelan and Damian Woetzel, both of them giving the perfect performance, as expected. Other favorite people and parts: Vincent Paradiso as the splendidly mechanical-limbed toy soldier come to life; Daniel Ulbricht as the high-jumping, fast-turning male part of the ‘Tea’ threesome; the always giggle-inducing Mother Ginger (ie: the fat lady with all the little ones hiding underneath her skirt), and oh my gosh, Kathryn Morgan as the ‘Marzipan Shepherdess’! I couldn’t figure out who she was at first. There was just this dulcet face shining out at me, commanding my attention. It wasn’t until I got home, looked in the program, and realized it belonged to her. Wow, she has Stage Presence! I saw her last year as Juliet, but I think because I wasn’t all that in love with that Romeo + Juliet production as a whole, I didn’t really notice what she was capable of then. I definitely will want to see her in more things this season. And why is it that Amar Ramasar (as king of the ‘hot chocolate’ people here) can dance smack in the middle of a vast group of people, all of them doing exactly the same steps, and I pick him out right away? Because he has charisma galore too, that’s why! I mean, there’s really no astounding athleticism or brilliant technique or difficult acting skills required for any of the roles in this ballet — it’s more of a children’s classic meant to charm and entertain — so you know if people jump out and grab you from hundreds of feet away, it’s because of something else. I predict that Amar and Kathryn will go far…
And of course the leads. Wendy was an expectedly charming S.Plum, and Damian, whom I am told doesn’t normally perform the role of her Cavalier, was sweet perfection. At one odd point, there was this crazy false fire alarm going off in the lobby and you could hear it a bit in the theater, and it kept going on and off. Well, we all thought it was finally off for good, but right as Damian began his solo, on it comes again. There were some huffs and puffs in the audience — mainly I think because we were all worried it was distracting the poor dancers — but the orchestra had started and it was time for him to dance and there was no turning back, so he just cutely shrugged his shoulders and smiled an “oh well” at us and began his variation. I love it when dancers can roll with the punches like that and even make a little joke out of them! Definitely the sign of experience. By the way, here’s a great video of Damian giving a lecture and demo about the history of ballet in the U.S. to an audience in Aspen, shortly before the Vail Festival, which he founded. If you have the time to watch — it’s a little over an hour long — it’s really informative. Be sure to watch the video clip of the Nicholas Brothers (occuring around the 7-minute mark) — whoa!
Anyway, back to the Nutcracker. My only quibble other than the too-long party scene is — and this may sound really idiotic — but does the Nutcracker / Prince have to be played by a little boy? I mean, when you’re small and you dream about your future knight in shining armor, it’s not the little kid next door, it’s the bigger badder teenage guy who seems so strong and manly and brilliant. I just think it would just be more interesting if an older guy, a very well-known dancer — say, Joaquin — could dance dramatically, stand up to that evil Mouse King for her, and sweep her off to her far away lands. Or does that sound perverted? In the movie he is played by Macaulay Culkin… My friend, Jonathan, thought Balanchine chose children to play all those parts because child viewers could better relate to their own. Maybe that’s true. I think adults can be pretty entertaining too though, regardless of audience age. Why did he use all children?
Speaking of bringing friends with you: there’s an interesting discussion on that subject on Apollinaire’s blog. This is the second time I’ve brought a non-dance friend with me to a classical ballet performance. All I have to say is thank the lord for Tchaikovsky! First time I brought a new-to-dance friend was to ABT‘s Swan Lake over the summer. I asked her what she thought. She thought for a while, then said very politely that Swan Lake probably wasn’t really the ballet that would make her a huge ballet fan, but she was definitely willing to try another. But she really enjoyed the evening, she quickly added, because of the brilliant music, which she said she knew well. Tonight, I asked Jonathan what he thought. It was cute, something sweet for kids, he said, we had great seats, it was a good holiday thing to do and he was always thankful for the opportunity to be exposed to something cultural. But what he really loved, he said several times (and this is someone who’s extremely quiet) was the music. He also really enjoyed a violin solo that I seem to have overlooked in the first section, so I know he wasn’t just humoring me. It does make sense that people attach to Tchaikovsky: he’s familiar, and in familiarity there’s comfort, which makes it easier to derive aesthetic pleasure.
Anyway, The Nutcracker is always a fun holiday classic. It’s showing at the State Theater through the end of the month. Go here for the schedule.
Lobenthal, Tobias and Gladwell
I don’t have much time to write today, so just want to point to a few good articles on the web.
1) Joel Lobenthal’s review of recent Alvin Ailey Dance premiere, “Groove to Nobody’s Business.” I loved this dance, as I wrote earlier, but Lobenthal makes me realize why with his discussion of how choreographer Camille A. Brown carefully worked out what I called the kind of spazzing out of anxious would-be subway riders to the rhythms of the music and orchestrated the dancers’ movements into a coherent whole, so that it only looks like a bunch of spastic frustrated jumping about when it’s really meticulously crafted. Also, he made me realize I’d forgotten to mention the fun centipede shape the dancers all make with their in-sync footwork while seated on the subway!
2) Tobi Tobias’s review of the other Ailey piece I just wrote about, “The Road of the Phoebe Snow.” Scroll down to the bottom of this post: I love how she talks about the advertisements for the railroad and how snow-white Phoebe was portrayed, and how choreographer Talley Beatty, who lived near those tracks and knew well the surrounding area, was showing what really went down along them. I wasn’t familiar with those advertisements and they shed light on Beatty’s work.
3) This has nothing to do with dance, but Malcolm Gladwell has an excellent article / book review in this week’s New Yorker showing how so-called IQ tests measure, basically, class. So all those claims that such tests show one race’s inherent intellectual superiority over another are all enormous mountains of racist idiocy.
Dinner and a Dance Performance While Blindfolded?
As all the restaurants in my neighborhood post their posh New Year’s Eve menus in their windows, I, currently planless, as I seem to be every year until just about the night before, am forced to wonder again, “uh, what am I gonna do this year?” Here’s something intriguing that I found on Gothamist. It’s a five-course dinner at West Village French bistro Camaje, with various performances scattered throughout the evening. Hook is that all guests are blindfolded the whole time. Waiters and aids of choreographer / performance artist, Dana Salisbury, who puts on the show, guide you to your fork, wine glass, and to the restroom if your raise your hand. I actually wouldn’t be all that scared of trying new food, but how would you cut it — I guess things come in bite-sized portions, or do the hosts decide how much each patron can fit into their mouths? Perhaps ridiculously, this is honestly a problem for me — I have an extremely small mouth and an ever so slight disorder that crops up from time to time, usually when least expected. Anyway, more quizzically (to me at least), how do you “see” the dance? Apparently you rely on your aural senses. In years past, the dancer has been a tapping man using his entire body as an instrument. Hmmm. Other aspects of this most audience participatory performance include artists blowing in your ear, running a feather down your neck, and the like. I don’t know if it’s for me but it sure sounds sensually stimulating!
On an unrelated note: for my fellow book lovers out there, The Millions has just published a most comprehensive best-of-the-year list compiled by its various well-reputed contributors. Click on each writer or blogger’s name and you’ll be directed to their recs, as they’re posted. I got the link from The Elegant Variation.
The Groove to Nobody’s Business and The Road of the Phoebe Snow
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater recently premiered two new pieces: a brand new work by young choreographer Camille A. Brown called “The Groove to Nobody’s Business,” and a re-staging of Talley Beatty’s 1959 “The Road of the Phoebe Snow.” I loved both of them.
My horrendous near half-hour wait for the blasted downtown A train on Saturday night en route to City Center unfortunately made me all too able to relate to the first piece on that evening’s program, Brown’s “Groove,” a shortish but cute exploration of subway riders’ interactions with each other whilst waiting for a train that takes its damn time.
The cast of characters is a colorful group of urbanites including a few people either coming from or going to work, a be-suited man with his face buried in a newspaper, a pair of young lovers at first trying to make out then getting into a quarrel, and several just everyday street people, at first waiting endlessly on a subway platform, then eventually on the bumpy train. The piece begins with a young man in dressed-down corporate attire (button-down shirt, tie, and dress pants) going a bit nutty over the wait (he’s been on the platform the longest). He does a little spastic dance, then with an angry huff plops down briefly on a bench, annoying another business man, this one the fully-suited man trying to read his newspaper. Several others walk cooly and slowly from the wings to the bench, their torsoes cartoonishly jutting way out in front of their legs in a way that reminded me of a cross between Fat Albert and The Triplets of Belleville. Eventually these others begin to mess about with each other, ‘waiting forever guy’ gets up to do another jig of annoyance, and ‘newspaper guy’ who can’t get no peace, jumps up and performs a series of rather beautiful turns then high jumps in bent-kneed attitude as if to say “could everyone please leave me alone!” At times, the whole group gets up to stand at the platform’s edge and peer down the tunnel searching for a nonexistant train. The ironic upshot is that when the train does finally arrive, poor ‘waiting forever guy’ is doing his spastic dance of frustration so frantically that he ends up missing it.
Music, by Ray Charles and new composer Brandon McCune, provides the perfect tempo. I should know. I was once on a West Coast Swing team. My coach decided that the ideal music to show off our lovely rhythmic versatility would be a combination of Charles’s slow, cool “Night And Day” and the insanely fast-paced “All Night Long,” the latter of which was used here. My coach overlooked the fact that we were a bunch of amateurs. When the music switched to the second tune, far from looking like sexy cool west coast swingers, we looked like gerbils on Speed. We didn’t place so well needless to say… Anyway, here that music gave the dancers the ideal tempo for their crazed fast ‘flipping out’ moves, and served as an excellent counterpoint to the long, slow wait. Overall, the dance was cute and comical and, to someone who used to live in Queens and was reliant on the evil N (Never) and R (Rarely) trains and who actually once calculated the time lost over the course of a year to standing on a subway platform — a number of days — it was very relatable.
“The Road of the Phoebe Snow,” is much more sobering, but brilliant. “The Phoebe Snow” refers to a train line on the Erie Lackawana Railroad and is, according to legend anyway, named after an uppity, wealthy female patron who used to frequent that line and would look down on the passing countryside with disdain. The piece has a very West Side Story feel to it, and is about the relationships between the young have-nots who lived near those tracks. It centers on two couples, one innocent and in love, the other more mature, their relationship more composed of seduction and sex turned into anger.
The choreography is just so superb, it made me realize what is missing in a lot of contemporary work. At the beginning, Clifton Brown (dancing the part of the youthful innocent lover) does a series of whipping fouette turns, but once every two or three turns, where a few multiples pirouettes would normally be thrown in, instead he kind of bounces around on one leg in a full circle. It looks very young and excited and full of the kind of cool bravado a youth from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks would display. Both couples perform a series of lifts, but the first pair’s are grand, sweeping, high-over-the-head ones as if to show their being in love, whereas the second couple’s are full of brutal sexuality, at times the woman lifting one leg into the splits and resting it on the man’s shoulder, he dragging her across the floor. Instead of lifts just thrown in haphazardly or for spectacular effect, here they have a specific point; all movements are used to illustrate the characters’ actions and they’re different depending on the characters’ personalities and relationships.
The fight scenes are well orchestrated too. Later, in one of the innocent-young-love duets, a former beau of the woman watches with jealously, seething. Eventually he fights her new lover, and she is prevented by the old boyfriend’s gang from helping her new love while he is beaten. Then, as she is attacked by her ex and his cohorts, others look on, avoiding getting involved. It’s sad but authentic, and the story is told thoroughly through the movement, so that minimal “acting” in the traditional sense is required, though the Ailey dancers are all excellent at both. All four leads here — Clifton Brown, Linda Celeste Sims, Glenn Allen Sims, and Briana Reed (who, of the women in particular, is blowing me away this season) gave poignant, moving performances. I love this piece; its subject matter, emotional depth, and compelling choreography is perfect for Ailey and I’m glad they’ve brought it back into the rep.
Voguish, Mysterious and Visually Enthralling: Shen Wei Dance Arts at the Guggenheim
Early last week I saw Shen Wei Dance Arts give a Works & Process presentation at the Guggenheim. This was my first time seeing this company, although I briefly saw Mr. Shen in David Michalek’s Slow Dancing Films. (I think “Mr. Shen” is right, by the way: first name follows the last in Chinese?…) I know this company has performed at many festivals around the world, and is a favorite of the Lincoln Center Festival, and after seeing their New York premiere of “Behind Resonance,” I know why.
The piece began with a group of dancers wearing unadorned but gorgeous floor-length, gray velvet garments (strapless dresses for the women, skirts for the men) walking majestically across the stage, finding a spot then standing perfectly still, and making a pose. After a few seconds, they would move, walk to another place on the stage, or sometimes in the audience, and do the same, stop in pose. In a sense it was like a fashion show, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. They weren’t making runway poses; rather they were making various shapes with the beautiful fabric. One female dancer leaned up against a side wall, her hands pressed hard against it, and her legs about two foot-lengths apart so that the fabric made a kind of triangular shape, like a large cone. Another would lean over a rail aligning the ramp leading from audience to stage and wrap one leg around it, the fabric stretching over and creating a kind of fan shape.
After several minutes, the dancers began taking various upside-down positions when they stopped. One man sat in the middle of the stage, then rolled back on his elbows and lifted his entire body up, where he held it, his legs spread apart so that the fabric now made an upside down triangle. A woman did a hand-stand against a back wall. It was interesting because, as the dancers walked the material trailed flowingly behind them, like a bridegown. I would have thought as they lifted their legs into the air, the gowns would have fallen straight down, but they didn’t; they stayed put at the dancers’ outspread ankles. The lights were dimmed into a kind of bluish haze and it was so visually mesmerizing.
After a few minutes of this, the dancers now began to pair, men lifting women, both making the triangular shapes now — the men upright with their legs spread about two foot-lengths apart, the women in the air. Not all lifts were the same of course, or that would be monotonous; one man would be holding a dancer in a horizontal overhead position, another would be held upside down, another upright in a back T position behind the man, etc. And not all dancers stopped in pose at once; they each had their own timing. So, as one was posed, another would be in the midst of a lift or finding a position.
Finally, after a few minutes of this, the lights dimmed more, and, as some dancers were still performing the lifts, the curtain widened to reveal two women, now wearing only flesh-toned shorts, rolling together very very slowly on the floor. As they rolled toward the audience, their bodies would become entangled with the other so much so that they began to resemble one, two-torsoed, contorted body. It began to look like a two-headed mermaid crawling on the ocean floor. Then the opposite curtain widened to reveal another female dancer on the other side of the stage, this one alone, rolling very slowly as well, but going backward instead of forward. Her body would slowly bend back, first from the hips, then the waist, then the collarbone, then the chin. When she rolled back at the collarbone, she looked completely headless for a time. Both the ‘two-torsoed creature’ on the opposite side of the stage and this woman looked simultaneously grotesque and beatific. The whole thing was simply enchanting. The music, which I hardly remember since I was so stunned by the visuals, was by David Lang, and was simple with an air of mystery, consisting of a bland background hum spiked with some bells every now and then. And these were only some excerpts from the piece; I’d so love to see the whole.
Though Shen Wei is from China, his troupe is multicultural, as it seems is their repertoire. At times in the beginning of this piece, the dancers would look almost like Tibetan monks, the way they walked in such a determined, straight-forward manner to their chosen destination for a pose, where, even when leaning their bodies in a pained-looking manner against a wall, their faces remained impassive, ascetic. At other times, they kind of resembled elegant Western models.
Mr. Shen recently traveled back to China and throughout Asia, to Tibet and Cambodia. He’s currently making a larger work called simply “Re” as in re-birth, re-newal, re-envision, re-visit, re-work — fill in the blank basically, about these travels. He showed us some slides of pictures he took there. I was most mesmerized by photos of trees in Western China. These enormous trees would somehow grow not from the ground, but atop a building. So, he had these pictures of a gigantic tree centered right on top of a mosque or a house, its roots snaking down the sides of the building. They were eerily breathtaking, just like “Behind Resonance.” I’ll be very interested to see what all Shen Wei does with these images, how he translates them into dance. The project is set to premiere in 2009. In the meantime, according to Danciti, the company will be performing Monday night at Cedar Lake, with many others, as part of the Dancers Responding to Aids benefit, if anyone is going to that. (I can’t afford to!)
Pasha & Anya in Ballroom Spectacular and Danny and Rasta Do Nutz
A little note on a couple of my favorite SYTYCD stars’ upcoming gigs: Pasha and Anya will be performing in “Rhythm of Love,” at The Palace Theater in downtown Stamford, Connecticut, on December 21st and 22nd. I will definitely be going to this. The show is billed as “Ballroom meets Broadway” and will include both Latin and Standard ballroom as well as theater dance, and is narrative-driven, telling the story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl because he can’t dance to save his life, boy learns to dance and gets girl of his dreams. Aw, sounds cute! “Boy” by the way is played not by Pasha but by another dancer I’m familiar with, Benito (Benny) Garcia, who most definitely CAN dance (particularly a bad -ass mambo). Lead girl is danced by newcomer Emilee Petersen. In addition to Pasha & Anya, the show includes top American ballroom pros J.T. Thomas & Tomasz Mielnicki (Smooth champs), and Jose DeCamps and Joanna Zacharewicz (#1 in Rhythm), as well as the couple who took first in showdance last Nationals, Garry & Rita Gekhman, and another favorite couple of mine, Felipe & Carolina Telona.
(above photo of Gekhmans, and photo atop that of Telonas, both from the press release; top photo of Pasha & Anya — of course! — by moi 🙂 ). Go here for more info. Thanks again to Laurel for alerting me to this!
Second, Danny Tidwell is scheduled to perform in a San Diego Nutcracker from December 21-23. Performing with him will be… eeeeeee, the wondrous Rasta Thomas! How jealous am I of you San Diegans!!! Sadly, I won’t be able to attend, as I live on the opposite coast, but anyone who does, please do let me know how it goes! Go here for info on that. Thank you to Rebecca for emailing me about this!
Little Piggy Am I!
A while ago I posted about a new bakeshop that recently opened on Wall Street. Well, I haven’t yet had a chance to make it over there (not so much because I’m lazy as that it’s been freezing and often rainy or sleety or slushy outside and it’s about 10 blocks away from my office, a lot farther than I’d hoped). So, to make up for my steadfast resistance these last couple of weeks, I dragged Alyssa with me to this lovely little event last night! (Author Rachel Kramer-Bussel is a MySpace friend of mine and she’d posted about it there; read the MediaBistro write-up here.)
It was splendid! Alyssa and I each had four cupcakes apiece. My favorite by far was this mini chocolate cake with chocolate frosting (being the chocolate lover I am), but most excitingly, surprisingly delicious was the middle. When you bit in, a creamy vanilla center just oozed out, flooding your mouth. I loved it! To me, the worst thing about cupcakes is all the cake — I like the frosting and will often half the cake height-wise and only eat the top. So, very happy was I to find a big mound of frosting smack in the middle of the bottom half! Alyssa’s favorites were the very popular red velvet, and a peanut butter-flavored mini. I didn’t get a chance to try that one apparently because I was busy placing my drink order when they were whizzed around.
It was a fun night. They had three raffles, giving away a stationary set bearing a cupcake design, a necklace with a cupcake pendant, and grand prize was an apron and oven mitten set featuring embroidered … guess whats! Apparently, the blog has a meet-up group which gets together every so often to try the City’s various new cupcakeries and learn cupcake design, etc. Hmmm…another group for me to join? Only if I promise myself to go to at least some of my Sambazina events.
The meet-up was held at the Beauty Bar on East 14th Street, which I’d never been to before. Walls were covered with vintage posters of women being coiffed, but what surprised me was that they actually have little manicurist booths where you can have your nails done whilst boozing it up with friends! Cool idea.
Afterward, after four cupcakes and a glass of red wine I was feeling my blood sugar soar a bit, so we headed to Veselka, the East Village’s 50-year-old Ukranian deli, and forced ourselves to eat things that are good for us (ie: borscht and stuffed cabbage). When I very first moved to New York I lived on 9th and Avenue A, the heart of the East Village and just around the corner from this homey little place, and I haven’t been back to the area much since, so it was kind of nostalgic.
Anyway, on the subway ride home I ran into an old acquaintance from my studio who accusingly asked me where I’d been. “Saving money,” I told her. Seriously, I’d meant to sign up for groups this month, but had other things going on on Monday nights, when my favorite instructor teaches. I really really really must sign up for January’s classes though. Especially now…
Dance Winners Top Reality Show Poll
I found this Entertainment site poll on favorite Reality TV show winners from Ted. When I last looked, the top three were all from the dance shows: Apolo from “Dancing With the Stars,” followed by Sabra from “So You Think You Can Dance,” then Helio from “DWTS” in third. Woo hoo, Dance takes the cake!
More Work From "Blood Memory" Please!
I love this dance company so much. And I love Alvin Ailey’s work in particular. AAADT artistic director Judith Jamison quotes Ailey as having said that his choreography is the result of his “blood memory” of his southern boyhood. He said the greatest works of art are the most personal, come from the deepest-rooted place. Nothing could be more true.
So, my own Alvin Ailey season began last Saturday afternoon with Mr. Ailey’s “Night Creature,” one of my favorites and a dance that I would call a combination of ballet, jazz and Afro-Latin / Samba centered on a sweetly spotlight-demanding jazz diva and her man servant, backed by a large ensemble of dancers, and set to Duke Ellington music. The movement was a combination of beautiful ballet — soft, slow, fully extended developped legs, arabesques and partnered lifts; cool jazz hands and rhythmic hip swaying side-together steps; and, yes, Samba! It is so very cool for me as someone who has only very basic ballet training but much more extensive ballroom experience to be able to recognize so many steps!
Near the beginning of the piece, the ensemble circles around the central dancers by doing what are basically Samba voltas (back foot takes a side step, front crosses over and pelvis rotates fully), or even a kind of Salsa Suzie-Q if you know what that is, later, dancers slither forward in sexy, snaky pelvis-undulating cruzado walks, then there are stationary samba walks (feet together, then one foot slides back while the corresponding hip cooly juts upward and outward), side sambas, whisks, everything. It’s so exciting; I just want to scream out, “I can do that!” But of course I can’t — at least I can’t do it anything like those miraculous dancers. If I could, if I could be a real “night creature,” how my dance dreams would be complete! Anyway, I love how this work splendidly blends European Ballet, Afro-Latin Samba, and American Jazz — it’s everything; it’s brilliant.
Second was “Solo,” a shortish piece by choreographer Hans van Manen from 1997, danced to classical Bach. In this piece three men each take turns performing a series of solos, charmingly vying with each other in a kind of ‘who can be the most fast-footed, nimble dancer’ contest, each performing his own staccato interpretation of the very quick-tempo-ed violins. Some solos used a more classical vocabulary and were more poetic, others more of a comical riff on the classical. At times, it would seem that at the beginning of his solo, a man would be playfully taunting the previous dancer by making fun of his routine. This reminded me of a B-Boy showdown, like that I saw in a Tribeca Film Festival film earlier this year. Very fun! At the end, all three men take the stage at the same time and try to outwit / outdance each other. It’s a charming piece, and the classical music and balletic vocabulary is a nice contrast to the jazzy sexiness of “Night Creature.”
The company also premiered “Saddle Up!,” a new comical story-dance by Frederick Earl Mosley, about several ranchhands and their romantic pursuits. The piece begins with a rather innocent-looking new sheriff riding into town on his stick horse, having no idea what awaits him. He “parks” his “horse” and the scene shifts to a wedding he officiates between two doe-eyed young lovers, attended by two sisters — one flirtatious and sultry and donning a bright orange feather boa, which she tries to lasso around various men, the other silently sad but the object of affection of the wedding photographer, who continuously snaps her picture, she smiling, but only briefly and only for his camera. There’s a suggestion of scandal to come when the tossed bouquet is caught by sultry feather boa woman.
After the wedding, the scene shifts to an innocent young woman who is apparently about to be corrupted by a flirtatious womanizing outlaw. New sheriff, however, saves the day after he is victorious in a hilariously acrobatic, laugh-out-loud showdown with said outlaw, which promptly causes the young innocent woman to fall madly in love with her knight in shining armor. She does a beautiful little lyrical dance with the sheriff’s hat, which he has accidentally left behind. When he returns to retrieve it, they skip off together into the sunset, holding hands. Aww 🙂
The rest of the scenes consist of a lyrical, tenderly-danced first lovers’ quarrel between the newlyweds, and an equally tender courting scene between the photographer and the sad woman. This is followed by a fast-paced, fun, light-hearted scene in which feather boa woman is pursued by a whole bevy of cowhands who try to wow her with their partnering abilities. Lovely lifts and swingy, waltzy dances ensue. It ends with a big square-dance hoedown. It’s a fun, lively piece and the dancers are marvelous comical actors.
Still, cute as “Saddle Up!” was, it didn’t hold a candle to the last dance on Saturday’s program, “Revelations.” But I guess it’s unfair to compare anything to Mr. Ailey’s masterpiece. If you haven’t ever seen this dance, if you haven’t ever seen Ailey, if you’ve seen “So You Think You Can Dance” and the other TV shows and are now thinking of going to see a concert dance performance, please please please start with this one! Seriously, it’s everything. It’s about spirituality, redemption, grace, freedom from oppression through religion, it’s a celebration of faith and of life itself. It speaks to everyone because everyone — at least in this country (and now Sir Alastair too 😀 ) is familiar with the black church, with its celebration of life and freedom, with its history and pride and roots in the civil rights movement. Not to sound cheesy and Oprah-ish, but it’s so uplifting. The first time I ever saw it was not long after 9/11 and I was bawling when it ended. For a work created over forty years earlier, to me that’s the definition of timelessness.
It’s funny but my favorite parts of this dance change every few times I see it. The first few times, my favorite was the very end, “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham,” a swingy, very upbeat number involving the whole ensemble dancing in a church setting to a hymnal. Makes you want to get up out of your chair and dance with them, and sometimes, when they do an encore, the audience does! Then my favorite became “Sinner Man” another quick-tempo-ed, but more sober number in which three men run about the stage, frightened, attempting vainly to escape the wrath of God, and in doing so, perform breathtaking jumps, leaps and turns. Then I began to love “Wade in the Water,” the Baptism scene (pictured at the top of this post) in which ladies in glorious white carrying sun umbrellas, men waving two long blue sheets across the stage, and one man flickering small flags about with his arms and rolling his torso as if it was fluid water, all make you feel like you’re at the beach being baptized along with the two young souls onstage. This time, I was blown away by “Fix Me, Jesus,” a slow, beautiful prayer of a pas de deux danced by a man and woman to a slavery spiritual.
The company dances “Revelations” with a great many of their performances; please do try to see it if you never have!
On Sunday, I saw the company premiere of “Firebird,” the version from 1970 by French choreographer Maurice Bejart. Bejart, who recently passed away, was known for taking classical ballets and re-working them using modern dance and just amazing athleticism. His ballets were often male-centered.
Here, the curtains rose to reveal an ensemble of dancers dressed in splotchy gray baggy pants and tops. The coloring of the costumes to me resembled Army fatigues, so, that along with the way the dancers would huddle together in fear, then fall to the ground crouching, crawling toward something they saw far in the distance — safety from an encroaching enemy perhaps — made me think this was a war scene. I later learned that Bejart had intended his “Firebird” to be a kind of salutation to Mao Tse Tung’s Red Army, so perhaps these corps dancers were supposed to be workers. The outfits almost resembled a painter’s garb, now that I think of it. Regardless, the ensemble dancers were downtrodden, the fearful, those in danger. Suddenly, one of them, a man, threw off his drab earthly costume to reveal a bright red body suit; he was their savior. This firebird was danced brilliantly by Clifton Brown (in the picture above), who soared around stage in a series of gorgeous leaps, taking time out here and there to perform more adagio poetic developpes and turns.
The choreography was really interesting to me. The firebird is traditionally female, and here, Bejart’s is male. But his bird is not only powerful, leading the corps to freedom, but is beautiful and delicate and lyrical as well. So the dancer must excel at both the more masculine feats — the grand jetes, the high jumps — and the more lyrical feminine adagio parts, the developpes and arabesques. Brown is such a tall, large-boned man, and it amazes me how soft and delicate and graceful he can be.
Soon, the firebird exhausts his power, dancing his heart out as he does, for the people, and he slowly and tragically dies. The corps is shattered but only momentarily, as, through the aid of another firebird, this one played by equally larger-than-life Jamar Roberts, in an enchanting two-male pas de deux filled with beautiful lifts, the original firebird rises again like a Phoenix.
It’s set to the original Stravinsky music. This was my first time seeing something by Bejart and overall I found it spectacular. There have been all of a bizillion and a half write-ups in NY about this company and, in particular, this piece. Go here for a pretty comprehensive list.
Last on for Sunday was Twyla Tharp’s fast, fun, glittering “Golden Section” from 1983 danced to pulsating David Byrne music, the dancers bedazzling in gold costumes. The movement varies from lyrical ballet to sexy 80s-style body rolls, pelvic-gyrations, partnered “death spirals” the likes of which I’ve seen in Disco / Hustle competitions, and absolute death-defying lifts (a man tossing a woman from afar into the arms of a group of men, a woman running and throwing herself at an unsuspecting man, hoping he’ll catch her). I would be so scared to perform this piece! Jamar Roberts took my breath away with a series of whipping fouette turns with multiple pirouettes thrown in. He blew everyone away actually; he received some major applause for that.
This is Tharp’s Modus Operendi: the combination of classical ballet with other kinds of contemporary dance – social, ballroom, jazz, swing, Latin, disco, whatever the popular dance of the day is. It allows her always to stay fresh, exciting, contemporary and accessible to new audiences.
What I love about this company in general is that they choose to perform choreography like this: pieces that combine different forms of dance that can speak to different generations, but also works that, like Ailey’s, are timeless because they touch your soul, speak fundamentally to the human condition. And the great thing about this company is that they TOUR, so you don’t have to live in NY to see them!!! Go here for their upcoming schedule.