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PHILIP NEAL’S FAREWELL PERFORMANCE

 

Yesterday afternoon, Philip Neal gave his farewell performance with New York City Ballet.  He’s been a principal with the company since 1993. He danced two of Balanchine’s most beautiful ballets — Serenade (photo above, with Jenifer Ringer), and Chaconne (below, with Wendy Whelan). In Serenade, he danced the part of the guy whom the fallen girl falls for, and he danced the main male lead in Chaconne. He and Wendy danced so beautifully in that. It was the absolutely perfect  ballet to end your career with.

Sandwiched in between those two ballets were excerpts from Balanchine’s Who Cares? with the main roles danced by  Sterling Hyltin as the snazzy girl in purple, Tiler Peck as the dreamy romantic girl, Ana Sophia Scheller as the quick-footed flirty girl, and Robert Fairchild as the poor guy who can’t choose between them. I can’t imagine anyone more perfect for that role than Robert Fairchild, though I’m told Neal danced the role himself earlier in his career and I can totally see him in that.

I remember him best as “Mr. Danger” who leads Janie Taylor to darkness in Balanchine’s La Valse, and of course as the happy hoofer smitten by Maria Kowroski’s stripper in Balanchine’s Slaughter on Tenth. And now I’ll think of him – with Wendy Whelan – in Chaconne as well.

I am told that he’s now moving to Palm Beach, FL with his partner. Lucky!

 

Photos by Paul Kolnik.

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DANNY TIDWELL AND "BAD BOYS" OPEN USA INTERNATIONAL BALLET COMP

Danny Tidwell, who’s currently performing with Rasta Thomas’s Bad Boys of Dance, carried the Olympic-like torch last night in the opening ceremonies of the USA International Ballet Competition, in Jackson Mississippi. Later in the evening, he performed there with Bad Boys (who are in the midst of an Australian tour). The prestigious competition – which I was invited to and really wanted to go – continues through June 27th.

Photo taken from Rickey.

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THE INFLUENCE OF SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE ON DANCE STUDIOS

 

Interesting article by Claudia La Rocco in the NY Times about the influence of SYTYCD on studios. (I missed SYTYCD this week; had really wanted to watch Thursday night but was at New York City Ballet all settled in my seat excitedly waiting for the premiere of Mauro Bigonzetti’s Luce Nascosta when I realized I’d forgotten to tape it).

Anyway, regarding this article: I have noticed in the last few Dance Times Square performance showcases that there have been several student / pro hip hop and lyrical routines (lyrical there meaning balletic modern, without shoes, like a contemporary routine on SYTYCD), which is odd given that it’s a ballroom / Latin studio. And the students are dancing with their same teachers, which means that ballroom / Latin specialists are teaching performance-level hip hop and modern dance. Perhaps in the future ballroom instructors will have to show fluency in more styles to get their jobs.

Broadway Dance Center (mentioned in the article), where I’ve taken ballet and jazz is an excellent studio by the way, if you’re in NY. So is Alvin Ailey extension, where I’ve taken Samba (Brazilian social / Carnival, not ballroom samba). They have everything at AA now, including Salsa and other ballroom dances, though I think they’re more geared toward social than competitive. But I think the attraction to Dance Times Square (aside from the fact the studio owners are now celebrities thanks to SYTYCD) is that they put on performances in real NY theaters, which gives students the chance to dance on a real stage. Alvin Ailey extension does too now; the students are performing in the theater inside AA studios, and Broadway Dance Center has its student showcases in the Martin Luther King Jr. High School auditorium, but it just feels different when it’s on a Broadway stage.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. But I do think dance styles are merging. You see more ballroom routines both in studios’ student showcases and on Dancing with the Stars that are looking lyrical these days, and more Latin routines that are looking very hip hop. And, as is mentioned in the article, some dance styles – like tap – are not visible on SYTYCD at all and are losing popularity in studios as well. I guess no one wants to bother learning an “unpopular” dance style… Nigel Lythgoe told La Rocco he didn’t think tap worked for the show because it’s so specific – it’s too hard to train general dancers in tap at such a level as to get performance-quality work out of them. Obviously it’s the same with ballet. It takes years, decades, to learn proper ballet technique, to even try going on pointe.

I really hope though that Lythgoe will continue trying to introduce general audiences to those styles not in competition on the show. Savion Glover and Jason Samuels Smith will sufficiently wow audiences (one of them has been on before, can’t remember which one), and all he has to do to make the masses swoon over ballet is to have Natalia Osipova on the show. I think the fun of ballroom and hip hop is in large part to learn them yourself, but the excitement of ballet is just watching.

Photo above of Mandy Moore and students by Stanley Kranitz, taken from the Times.

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HAPPY WORLD CUP EVERYONE!

Holy crap, I cannot believe these photos were taken four years ago, right after I’d just started this blog, actually.

 

Like a proper newly obsessed samba fanatic, I’d dragged my friends to a Sushi Samba restaurant in the Flatiron District to watch the final game, between Brazil and … I don’t even remember 🙂 I think we had a lot of caipirinhas… But we also tasted for the first time Feijoada, Brazil’s national dish. It was like comfort food to me, having grown up on Mexican, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

 

 

Alyssa and Kathy were very excited about the farofa, which we sprinkled over it. It looked like parmesan cheese but tasted like very buttery, finely-ground cous-cous. Delicious.

 

These shoes were, and probably ridiculously, remain, the only item of clothing I own that is either green or yellow (Brazil’s colors). I seem to wear all black and red… and it’s funny how in some ways you don’t change.

Anyway … how does four years go so fast?… That was really a blast though. This year, I think I’m going to try to get friends together and do the same — whoever wins, celebrate that country with … what else – food!

Will be hard to take a break from watching my Yankees, but that’s the way it’s going to have to be unless I want to watch them on my home TV which really just doesn’t appeal…

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WEEKEND VIEWING: NATALIA OSIPOVA IN DON Q

So, if you missed THE performance of the season last week at ABT (that’s Natalia Osipova’s American debut as Kitri in Don Quixote, with legendary Jose Carreno as her partner), here are some vids I found of her dancing the role at the Bolshoi.

There are actually a couple of videos posted on YouTube that are of the exact performance I’m talking about at ABT, but I know ABT didn’t approve them so I feel weird embedding them here. Click on this link (but fast forward to around the 2:57 mark, when it really starts) and this one to view them – and hurry up before someone orders them taken down! I really hope ABT makes a film of this ballet sometime – with this same cast, but with Marcelo Gomes as Espada and Veronika Part as Mercedes. Although, I have to say … Jared Matthews (who I didn’t like in the role when I saw him live) looks pretty good in those videos. I think I just got spoiled by seeing Marcelo first.

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WEEKEND READING: BALANCHINE, DIAGHLEV AND WHAT'S WRONG WITH BALLET TODAY

I know it’s not the weekend yet – and I still have another post or two I need to get up before it happens – but I haven’t had time really to devour this article like I’ve wanted to and so wanted to link to it so you all can read it without waiting for me to become unbusy with never-ending book stuff. It’s from the New Criterion and is by Laura Jacobs. It’s about Diaghlev and all the excellent collaborations he engendered at his Ballets Russes – between Balanchine and all the brilliant artists who worked with BR – and it examines what might be different about today’s collaborations. I think it’s particularly compelling in light of all the new ballets being premiered this season at New York City Ballet, many of which just don’t seem to have the same substance as those Balanchine ballets despite the fact that there are some really brilliant visual artists and composers working with the choreographers. And I don’t think I’m the only one with those feelings.

Anyway, read the article and let me know what you think. I’m still trying to articulate my thoughts on the new Melissa Barak ballet that premiered last week. And, tonight is the second to last of the premieres – this one by Mauro Bigonzetti. We’ll see how that one fares…

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YVONNE BORREE’S FAREWELL PERFORMANCE

 

On Sunday afternoon, principal ballerina Yvonne Borree gave her farewell performance at New York City Ballet. I always find farewell performances so sad, especially for the ballerinas, for some reason. And Yvonne just doesn’t seem old enough to retire! At all.

Anyway, it was a really lovely program and she looked beautiful. She danced the third, “Andante,”  movement in Balanchine’s Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet. She was partnered by Benjamin Millepied, a very good partner for her, as she looks very comfortable dancing with him, and when they first took the stage, the audience really went wild with applause — and really wouldn’t let up! That’s uncommon for NYCB fans – even with a farewell performance; they usually save their applause until the very end. And the applause wasn’t just clapping; people were really whooting and screaming and calling out “Yvonne, Yvonne!” I think I am not the only one who will miss her. At the end of each section, she got more applause and at the end of Brahms, she and Millepied got three curtain calls. She deserved it. And he did too — I think Natalie Portman is giving him some acting lessons because he’s really doing much better, not just dancing (he’s always been a good dancer) but really projecting as well.

Then came Wheeldon’s new Estancia, which grew on me. I think the dancers found the humor in it — or maybe they did before and I was paying too much attention to the choreography to notice, but it seemed they really vamped it up, with Tyler Angle failing hilariously miserably at taming Andrew Veyette’s “horse,” letting Veyette get away after Tiler Peck roped him all up nicely, then Tyler being felled and rolling around the floor, nearly sweeping Tiler off her feet (in a bad way). It was really cute. And the dancing is really marvelous.

Then, the performance ended with Yvonne doing a pas de deux with Jared Angle — another good partner for her (for everyone really) – Balanchine’s Duo Concertant, which I love.

 

I love how the couple interacts with the onstage violinist and pianist, with the music, and with each other, and yet it is at times a very abstract ballet with lots of angular shapes. And the end is gorgeous but bittersweet, as the stage darkens and the spotlight begins to highlight only her, her head, then various parts of her body, ending with her arm, in the air, reaching upward and outward. It almost made me cry.

And of course the applause went on and on, and all of her partners (besides Nikolaj Hubbe unfortunately) came out onstage to give her a bouquet. Damian Woetzel and Peter Boal got the most whoots.

I’ve only been coming to New York City Ballet regularly for about the past three or four years and I feel I didn’t get to see enough of her. My favorite performances of hers are the delicate, ethereal sleepwalker in Balanchine’s La Sonnambula, which I think she danced with Sebastien Marcovici, and in that ballroom-esque ballet with the art deco mirror of Peter Martins that I love but no one shares my feelings about … 🙁 Can’t think of what it’s called right now but she was always Nilas Martins’s partner. I loved it. And now, my other favorite of hers is Duo Concertant, which I’d never seen her dance before.

Apparently, she’ll still be around. According to Oberon, she’ll stay at NYCB’s School of American Ballet and teach.

Photos by Paul Kolnik.

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OH NO ROBERTO!!!

For those who haven’t heard, Roberto Bolle is injured and will be out the rest of the ABT summer season. That means there will be no stalking expedition guided tour of the bowels of the Met at the end of Romeo this year.

Oh well. We may have to organize a field trip to Europe next year. Maybe he’ll be dancing Mats Ek’s Giselle again?

In the meantime, here is this bottled water commercial. I think I posted it last year because it looks familiar but blog reader and Facebook friend Jonathan has sent it to me (and it is very good!) so I am posting it again. If I remember correctly, I think last year Haglund and I were trying to figure out where to buy the water in the U.S. I wonder if Haglund ever found it?…

And I will have to be satisfied with my IPPY man… Hehe, seriously, IPPY winners who attended the award ceremony two weeks ago were just sent their photos. They had an attractive female and male presenter to pose for your award photo with you — if you’re a female winner, they gave you the guy; if you’re male, they gave you the girl. I didn’t notice it at the time but doesn’t this guy kind of look like Roberto! Okay, I can dream!

Anyway, SLSG favorite Marcelo Gomes will be replacing him in Swan Lake — Odette / Odile is Veronika Part, so that will be a must-not-miss. And his Romeo replacements are Marcelo (whose Juliet will be Paloma Herrera) and Cory Stearns (dancing with Irina Dvorovenko). Check schedule here.

Get well soon Roberto.

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BLACKPOOL 2010 OVER ALREADY

 

Wow, this year’s Blackpool Dance Festival has already come and gone. Funny how priorities change; I used to look so forward to this every year. But this year I was so caught up in book stuff, and BookExpo America, that it didn’t even register the competition was underway until I received my registration packet for next year’s in the mail (the organizer always sends them out so that your packet is waiting for you when you get home – which is nice; it makes it not so sad that your vacation is over with the reminder that next year is just around the corner…)

Anyway, according to Dance Beat, it seems the big news is that the U.S. has Standard champs for the first time ever — in the form of Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova (pictured above, photo from Dance Beat).

Poland’s Michael Malitowski and Joanna Leunis won the Latin championship again, but our Yulia Zagoruychenko and Riccardo Cocchi placed first in one dance – Jive.

The U.S. won again, for the second year in a row, in the team competition. And after that event, our second Latin couple – Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova, of whom I’ve long been a big fan, announced their retirement from competition. Sad, but I’m sure they’ll still be around to perform for years to come. I wonder who will take their place in next year’s team comp for the U.S. I’m so ridiculously out of it I don’t even know who our second best Latin couple is now…

Photo of Eugene and Maria, by moi, from this post.