Last night I was in Brooklyn, and, passing through the Atlantic Avenue subway station, I saw a group near the entrance to the Long Island Railroad registering people to vote. They were pretty busy. This, along with Counter Critic’s post today, reminded me to remind you all to register, if you’re not already. Tomorrow’s the last day in New York to do so for the upcoming election. Go here for info on how to do that; go here for other states.
Here’s a little thing I wrote for HuffPo on this week’s DWTS. It’s not really what I wrote here though, a run-down of the show, but is more focused on how food and dance just don’t go together, sadly…
Here is my HuffPo post on Morphoses. Please feel free to comment away THERE, please please 😀
I don’t know why but I really don’t want him to get the boot! Probably because I’m a pig and want to see what tasty-looking concoctions he’ll come up with each week to feed (the uninterested; she’s a dancer after all) Karina.
Susan and Tony’s Jive: cute, but she looked very stiff up there. She tried hard to get the footwork right but she did miss some steps and had a hard time keeping up and it was obvious. Music was a bit too fast. She had a problem getting into the sailor shuffles for some reason — I don’t know if she forgot the step, and they were separated, so he wasn’t leading her at that point; she could only follow his example, or if she just had a hard time getting into the quick jumpy shuffling rhythm of it, but it was noticeable. Judges were WAY the heck too nice. She’s cute though and I sympathize with her difficulty learning, with her difficulty learning to “think” with your body not your brain.
Lance and Lacey’s Viennese Waltz: aw, sweet, well acted, nice, fluid movement, decent rise and fall but he really didn’t roll through the foot, so it looked a bit forced. Very traditional choreographically, though; Len can’t fault them on that this week. Sometimes his lines were awkward — he kind of threw his arms a bit over-far when they split and opened out to the audience, and toes were pointed oddly inward at points. But everyone does that — at least every man. Everyone needs a beginning ballet class!
Maurice and Cheryl’s Jive: so much fun. He is so rhythmic, great swivels, great jive kicks, perfect mood and musicality. And excellent tricks – -the jumping over her at the beginning, the back and forth through the legs. Cheryl can only get away with that with a real athlete.
Rocco and Karina’s Viennese Waltz: first of all, best practice trick so far: blindfolding him. He was so much better, so much more musical blindfolded. Took away his self-consciousness and his (completely normal) tendency to think with mind over body, to think the steps rather than feel them. The routine: adorable “Pussycat” song — who’d have ever thought of it but Karina? Great footwork on the basics — his basics — the one-two-three forward-side-close-backward-side-crosses were actually really splendid. Good reverse turn, as Len noted. Those aren’t easy. Lovely rise and fall action. And he’s a very strong partner, the way he swung her around on the floor sweep was masterly. In general, he wasn’t really polished and I can see Bruno’s “lump of mashed potatoes” remark, but he’s not a professional dancer for cry-eye! Give him a break. But but but, where was the food?…
Warren and Kym’s Viennese Waltz: ah, so romantic! And who knew the big guy could move so elegantly! I love how he grabbed her skirt at the beginning, pulled her toward him. And so smooth — he was beautiful in all of the partnering, all of the basics. When they split and he moved on his own, he sped it up a little, did a little skip, and overdid it a bit, but on the partnering, in closed position, it was just beautiful. And loved the little R&Bish arm wave at that one point.
Cody and Julianne’s Jive: well, not a whole lot of actual dancing. Mostly cute stylistics (playing the guitar on her leg, twice) and tricks (moving her around the floor in spins and slides, supporting her in cartwheel, etc.). But when he did dance, he was pretty good. He kept up speed-wise and got the footwork all right, though it wasn’t tremendously precise, but it was there. Cute western theme. And he did a lot better than I would have thought from that hilariously bad practice.
Toni and Alec’s Viennese Waltz: Ooh, costumes! Probably controversial, but I loved them. Wow, I didn’t want that to end. Loved the heavy metal-esque “Fur Elise.” No one could have pulled that off but her in that crazy gown, that music. And love his blousy shirt. He kind of looked Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. I was honestly looking at her though — and I always have a hard time focusing on the amateur. Her arms — that free arm on the steps in shadow position, was just like a feathery-tipped little quill pen, a flickering flame. Seriously, perfect line. And that spin was gorgeous. Perfect leg in attitude! Like a ballerina. She is such a pro — I’d never know she wasn’t an experienced dancer. And yet I really believe she isn’t. Thank you Carrie Ann — someone has a sense of humor on that judging panel. The V.W. was scandalous in its day, deliciously so!
Cloris and Corky’s Jive: Okay, so basically the youngest and the oldest contestants didn’t do much dancing. Although in Cloris’s case, it was understandable. I wondered how she was going to keep up to speed on Jive. So, a lot of running around the floor, and some basics, but in single Swing steps not triple, which is fine with Swing, and fine really, just not … Jive. But, you know… She’s cute. And they really had some fun and surprisingly well-executed tricks — when she managed to spin him around on one leg, and those ending crab-crawl things? Very good! I think I missed what happened with the wig though…
Brooke and Derek’s Viennese Waltz: Wow, bad fight in practice. I’ve so been there. Younger male dancer (male or female actually) who’s been dancing from age two and doesn’t understand how you can’t remember something he thinks simple so he basically calls you stupid. Not good, and I think I’ve lost some respect for Derek. I know he’s under pressure but that’s no excuse for saying she has a “lazy mind.” Anyway, very nice dance. She’s a natural in everything so far. She was so fluid, so lyrical. I love the close, almost Argentine-tango-like hand-hold at the beginning. I haven’t seen that with the Waltz. Splendid levity, rise and fall, she was really nearly perfect. At some points I think she rushed it a slight bit, with the openings out, and her lines didn’t have quite the clarity of Toni’s, but it was almost unnoticeable. She didn’t look as happy as before — there was something missing on her face, a spark was gone, likely from that nasty fight. But she held in there like a pro and was really just luminous.
Aw, poor Misty. She sounded like she was going to cry. Imagine being an Olympic gold-winning athlete, never seriously hurting yourself, only to shatter your achilles tendon doing the Lindy Hop. See, ballroom dancing is most definitely a serious sport!
So, overall, my favorite of the night: Toni and Alec’s VW.
Tina Brown’s new online magazine, The Daily Beast, launched today (via Maud, who’s an “insider”). I wonder if she can employ one of those newly out-of-work dance critics? It doesn’t look huge on the arts, but then again it just launched.
Last night I went to one of the best Works & Process events at the Guggenheim that I’ve been to in a long time. (By the way, I spent practically all weekend, despite a severe cold turned into sinusitis turned into a migraine episode, at City Center watching Morphoses, and despite said sickness had a pretty good time — promise to write all about that very soon!) Anyway, this Works & Process event, about American Ballet Theater’s upcoming City Center season honoring choreographer Antony Tudor, was so excellent because:
1) three of my favorite dancers (excepting Marcelo that is — he never does Guggenheim sadly) were onstage working their magic only feet away from me. This included Jose Carreno (headshot above), Julie Kent and Veronika Part, the first and third of whom I’ve never seen at Guggenheim. And it was the best dancing I’ve seen there. Usually, with the space being so intimate, the stage so close and the dancers in workout clothes rather than actual costumes, everything just seems scratchy, like you notice all the little foibles the distance of the stage at the Met or City Center prevents you from seeing. But with these three: looked just like it does in the big opera house, completely smooth and polished and dramatic and intense and perfectly in character and just miraculous movement altogether.
Veronika I must say almost made me cry with her Leaves are Fading character, and she and her partner, Alexandre Hammoudi, only performed a short excerpt from the 4th pas de deux of that ballet. She’s probably ABT’s most dramatic ballerina; her mission is always to make you feel exactly what her character is feeling, to bring you to that same place and make you a part of that world. To do so she puts everything she has into a role and the results are always so rich. There are other wonderful actress dancers in ABT, but there’s just no one on her exact level.
And the second reason I loved last night’s program was that I found it really informative. I didn’t know much about Tudor and I learned a great deal. Kevin McKenzie (ABT’s artistic director) spoke, and he talked about him not so much as a director trying to sell people on his company’s upcoming season but more as a former student reminiscing on how wonderful it was to be taught and coached by a genius.
Tudor created character-driven story ballets, and he gave his characters great psychological depth, as expressed, of course through movement. He’d develop a character through the walk, the way hands are held, through specific repeated gestures, spending hours and hours going over these things with his dancers, McKenzie said. Which is why I titled this post as I did. I’m just getting so tired of all these abstract story-less ballets with movement that doesn’t seem to have any meaning (at least not literal) or where the point is to make beautiful music visible. If I want to bask in the beauty of music, frankly, I’d rather go to a symphony and close my eyes and drink it all in. Movement should be more; it should be something beyond music. I like dances that are more like plays with movement substituting for words. I want characters with real lives and issues and emotions and depth, that I can latch onto and feel for. I want to get caught up in their stories, and cry for them; I want their predicaments to make me think about the state of things.
We saw some little film excerpts of Tudor speaking. “Dance must change to stay alive. Life is change,” he said. He wanted to modernize ballet, which is interesting because Christopher Wheeldon (Morphoses man who I’ll get to soon) says the same. But Tudor’s way of doing so (and most of his ballets were created from the 1930s through 70s; he died in 1987) was to make it more people-oriented, enable viewers to see the characters onstage as real people with genuine emotions, allow them to identify with those characters.
We saw excerpts of several of his ballets: his sweet Little Improvisations, a duet between a boy and girl; Judgment of Paris, a rather funny re-telling of three goddesses vying for the attention of one god but re-set in a bar with prostitute / ‘dancers’ subbing for the goddesses and a drunk patron for Paris; Pillar of Fire, a tragic portrait of three sisters, their relationships with each other, and their men; and The Leaves Are Fading, a sadly beautiful story of the life of one relationship.
Anyway, I’m now very excited for ABT’s Tudor season, upcoming at City Center at the end of October. Even if some of the ballets are a bit dated now (which we’ll have to determine when we see them), they’ll still be a welcome break from all the abstract shapes and movements that are supposed to evoke something … or not, and sometimes do, sometimes don’t, and sometimes do but I don’t care… I feel that the way to modernize ballet again today is to give us more, new, updated stories, but more on that later.
Sorry if this post is a bit loopy and rambling … I’m still suffering the after-effects of a week of Sudafed intake (and am kind of realizing the reason they put the drug behind the counter :S)
For some reason, The New Yorker didn’t much publicize this year’s festival, but thankfully I sat next to Brian Siebert, who writes about dance for that magazine, last night at Morphoses (more on that soon!) and he alerted me that the festival is this weekend, and that as part of it, Joan Acocella (the NYer’s main dance critic) is to interview the man of the moment, Alexei Ratmansky, tomorrow, Saturday, at 1 p.m. at Cedar Lake studios. It appears they are no longer selling tickets on their website, but you can apparently go to the headquarters at 18th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues or else purchase tix at the event venue itself one hour before.
It appears that some of their writers are also live blogging and /or videotaping at least some of the events, so if you can’t be there, you can perhaps see / read about them online.
Go here to see other festival events.
Dance Times Square (my former studio) is having their biannual professional / student showcase on October 25 at the Danny Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College. This one will feature and honor a group of breast cancer survivors from the Helen Sawaya Compassionate Care Fund. The show begins at 7:30, and from 6-7 in the Kaye theater lobby there will be a reception and pre-show silent auction to raise money for the Fund. Part of the ticket proceeds will also be donated to it.
Pro dancers this year will include Sabra Johnson and Neil Haskell, former SYTYCD winner and finalist respectively, along with Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova, a pair of excellent Latin dancers who usually place in the finals in the national competitions. Additionally, Aprile Millo, a star with the Met Opera, will perform (singing I suppose!). Hmmm, it’s usually only Latin / Ballroom dancers who’ve performed in the professional portion of the show, so this should be very exciting. As usual, there’s an after-party as well at the studio.
Tickets range from $25 to $75 and can be purchased here.
On October 17, at 7:30 p.m., legendary ballerina Cynthia Gregory will speak to Joel Lobenthal (dance critic of the now sadly defunct NY Sun) at the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center. She’ll be promoting a new DVD, Together, of her work with Fernando Bujones.
we don’t really need them to, like, communicate intelligently or anything…
(Steve, a ballroom friend of mine, showing me his favorite newspaper for arts coverage last October, during our studio’s “field trip” to see Pasha and Anya on the SYTYCD tour)
For those who haven’t already heard, that paper, The NY Sun, folded the other day (leaving Joel Lobenthal — one of the better dance critics imo — presumably out of a job) along with two other arts-heavy alternative weeklies, The Chicago Reader and the Washington City Paper (via Galley Cat).
Another unfolding drama in the literary arts world is that the Nobel prizes winners are scheduled to be announced soon, but the Swedish head of the literature committee has apparently told Americans we’re being left out of the running; we’re too insular, uninvolved in the world, we “don’t translate enough and don’t participate in the world’s great dialog of literature.” Of course this has angered many, including David Remnick, EIC of The New Yorker; here is Galley Cat’s snarling response.
I seem to buy a lot of translations so it would be nice if Mr. Engdahl was more specific on what is not being translated here, and I don’t know what he means by our failure to participate in the world’s great literary dialog, but I disagree with him that all of our writers are insular, though the ones who come to mind first who are not (Junot Diaz, Colson Whitehead, David Foster Wallace, etc.) are probably too young in their literary careers (tragically of course in Wallace’s case) to be considered for this “body of work” award. Still, this line of his resonates: “U.S. writers are ‘too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture,’ dragging down the quality of their work.” I’m not sure if it’s the writers or the publishers, but I do think we’re far too concerned here with how much money the work will make, which in large part depends on how “trendy” is its topic or author. I do think we’d be hard-pressed to argue with him that a work’s artistic merit is generally more important in Europe, its dollar ‘value’ more so here. And where has this fixation on money gotten us?…
Oh, I am so jealous of anyone who’s in London right now. I went to the bookstore yesterday in search of the new issue of Movmnt magazine. Couldn’t find it but found an article in Dance International magazine about a new performance at the National in London, a collaboration between my favorite actress and Akram Khan, an intriguing dancer and choreographer whom I’d seen here last year and who I wrote about here.
Here is critic Judith Mackrell’s review of the evening (she thought Khan brilliant and lauds Binoche for continual self-reinvention but found her dance range too limited to sustain an entire performance, which, as much as I love Binoche as an actor, is unsurprising to me given the difficulty of learning to dance in adulthood). I’d still love to see it though. Here are some photos, and here’s an interview with Binoche. If anyone is in London and sees this, please do let me know.
Okay, I almost just spit out my wine when Cody looked all innocently at the camera and said of the Rhumba, “This dance is about sensuality, sex, passion, and to be honest,” cute shrug and conscious laugh here, “I don’t have all that much life experience.” He’s too funny! He did really well — the attitude was there, he supported her very well in all of those rather complicated (for a beginner) tricks, and his hips while not completely correct were a good try. Cute cucharachas 😀
Haha –Maks did not look so happy about being in the middle… That was actually rather funny; wonder if he knew the camera was on him…
Other favorites this week: Warren. I’d like to see someone other than a footballer win it again, but I have to say, big guy though he is, he is really good. That Paso was right on. And Toni and Brooke are damn good. Brooke: whoa! Perfect lines, perfect shaping, gorgeous ronde, great arms, steps completely polished. Holy crap! At this point I’m rooting for Brooke because she’s kind of the underdog, is probably the least well known, yet she’s very, very, surprisingly good. I’d like to see the person who no one knows take the trophy, if she continues to deserve it that is…
My little foodie man didn’t do so hot this week 🙁 I did love his comparison of risotto with rhumba (both the basics of their respective disciplines, romantic and seductive, like “cashmere on the lips” — mmmm) and his whipping up that dish for Karina, who finally seemed to appreciate it. I do hope he’s given another chance to improve next week.
Poor Cloris. She behaves this week and the judges are all confused, tell her they miss the wackiness. What’s a girl to do?