Tag: Alexei Ratmansky

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Exhausted!

I know I will be bored out of my mind come August, but right now with ABT and NYCB in season, the Judson Movement Research Festival underway, Alvin Ailey’s decision to have a week at Brooklyn Academy of Music in celebration of their 50th anniversary year, and the start of So You Think You Can Dance, I’m throughly exhausted! Why does everything have to happen at once?

After the fiasco of Tuesday afternoon, I spent a wonderful night at NYCBallet — one of the best I’ve had. The program was “Here and Now” and centered on the newest works on the company’s rep, a kind of celebration of the 21st Century in ballet thus far. My main reason for going was the premier of a new ballet by Alexei Ratmansky, but the whole evening was magical, likely in part because I sat up front, very close to the stage, my favorite little perch 🙂

I really liked the new Ratmansky, titled “Concerto DSCH,” and set to music by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose scores Ratmansky often uses. To be honest, I wish I could see a new work, especially an abstract one, a few times before writing about it, because, as I realized upon re-viewing “Oltremare” here and “Unfold” at Alvin Ailey, you miss so much the first time around just trying to take it all in. You need repeated viewings to get things right and to get a fuller sense of the work. That’s why film critics see the films they review three, four, and five times. But that’s not possible with dance because each performance is so expensive to produce. Anyway, as I feel like I should always say upon seeing a new piece, these are my first impressions but they may well change completely or become more nuanced on repeated viewings.

The musical score Ratmansky used here was very upbeat and lively and, made in 1957 for Shostakovich’s young son, Maxim, “displays the composer’s optimist energy after the repressions of the Stalinist era,” as the program notes say. The optimism and lightness was very evident, as there didn’t seem to be a downbeat turn the whole way through — either in the dance or the music. The dancers are all dressed in what appear to be 19th Century-style bathing suits, and they kind of frolic with each other on what I imagine to be a beach. There’s a corps who kind of chooses a main dancer to follow, cutely mimicking his or her every move. One threesome — danced by the always brimming over with virtuosity Ashley Bouder, one of my NYCB favorites Joaquin De Luz (one of the few who manages to combine spectacular athleticism with artistry), and the charismatic Gonzalo Garcia — is particularly playful as the dancers literally bounce off of each other, each lifting and tossing one another — including Ashley who did quite well getting the much larger and muscly Garcia off the ground. Soon, a slightly softer, slower section ensues, including a sweet duet by the in-love Wendy Whelan and Benjamin Millepied. The threesome return, each trying to outdo the other in a competition-like series of bravura, jump- and turn-heavy solos. And, after another couple of duets by the lovers, the whole thing, all characters included, comes to a happy climax, ending with this crazy, hilarious, almost statue-like lift by the threesome at the front of the stage, Joaquin on top of the other two, holding a finger up in the air, as if to say either “wait a minute” or, as Philip interpreted, “I’m number one.” In all, the ballet’s not tremendously profound but it is great fun and brings home how exciting sheer kinetic energy and virtuosity can be. It kind of reminded me of Jorma Elo’s “Slice to Sharp” made on the company earlier, but with more of a story-line. I definitely want to see it again.

Also on the program was Peter Martins’s “River of Light,” 10 years old and the oldest of these ballets, which I’d never seen before. I found it fantastically weird, with three pairs of dancers, each pair comprised of one male one female, all in simple solid-colored unitards, one couple in red, one in white, and one in black. The dancers made various geometric-looking shapes with each other, performing very difficult-looking lifts (one of the dancers fell at one point, but didn’t seem to be hurt). The dancers put so much energy into the piece, regardless of the geometric focus, there was a kind of passionate abandon to it as well. The score was composed by Charles Wuorinen (who was the youngest composer to have won the Pulitzer), and Martins choreographed the ballet for him 10 years ago as a 60th birthday present. Wuorinen returned this year, now his 70th birthday, to conduct the piece, which was really cool. Sweet tribute.

 

I realized throughout the night I am really beginning to like Sterling Hyltin. She was in the Martins as well as Wheeldon’s “Rococo Variations,” which I’d seen before and wrote about earlier, here. Sitting so up close you can really focus on the dancers, and I realized how perfect her form always is. Even if her back leg isn’t up as high in an arabesque as the other dancer who often shared the stage with her Tuesday night (Sara Mearns), her lines are perfectly clear, and she has so much energy combined with fluidity. Her arms are so graceful. It’s not always about who can lift their leg the highest. And her feet are really beautiful — I forgot what it’s called (but know it has a name; one of my teachers told me), but she has turned-out ankles that give her legs so much gorgeous shaping. What is that called?…

Anyway, I also appreciated this time around the intricate patterned footwork in “Rococo Variations,” which I think I’d overlooked the first time I saw it. It’s a sweet ballet for two couples but it has a lot of variation in the steps that is, as the woman sitting next to me remarked, dizzyingly engrossing.

Finally, Oltremare, which premiered last season and which I wrote about here grew on me. This modern-style ballet contains some of the most difficult lifts I think I’ve ever seen, and the dancers perform them brilliantly. And talk about raw emotion and angst. The dancers perfectly convey the experience of leaving one’s country and becoming an immigrant in another. It makes me think of the beginning of Middlesex, when all the main characters are boarding the ship to flee the burning of Smyrna and come to the new world, with all of the horror of what they’d just experienced, sadness and anger at being displaced, and fear and trepidation for what the future will bring. I still think Oltremare is a tiny bit too one-note, and the mid-section still stood out to me as awkward and somewhat cartoonish where they’re all folk dancing, but so fast and furiously that it looks like they’re on Speed. But I also realized on this viewing that Bigonzetti may have wanted it this way; that he was trying to convey that they’re all trying so very hard to keep their pasts, their culture, that they’re trying so hard to be happy about this new life, that they’re on overdrive. I liked Maria Kowroski much better this time. I love the way she used her legs like tentacles to keep her partner at bay. Those legs never end — she’s like a spider!

 

And last night I went to see Alvin Ailey at BAM. They’re not normally in season — and it was really odd seeing them in the midst of all the ballets! — but they’re having a special week in Brooklyn in honor of their 50th Anniversary celebrations going on all throughout the year.

 

I’d seen all the works on the program before: Twyla Tharp’s very 80’s hugely energetic, crazy lift-heavy “Golden Section”; Robert Battle’s beautifully haunting, otherworldly “Unfold” which, as I said, really grew on me even more (here’s a short video excerpt); Camille A. Brown’s cute, humorous “The Groove to Nobody’s Business” which makes me giggle (and whose first part reminds me of Fat Albert) more each time I see it; and of course the classic “Revelations” which I can’t count how many times I’ve seen but seem to see something new every time.

 

I also love listening to the audience react, and, as I said in a comment on my previous post about audience interactions, the audience here was vocal throughout the entire thing. They clapped and shouted “yeah!” not only during moments when dancers performed an amazing feat — like the jetes in Sinner Man and Alicia Graf’s beautiful turning develope in Fix Me Jesus — but just at the start of a section with which they were familiar, when the dancers at times hadn’t even appeared on stage yet. They were just cheering because they knew what was coming and had seen it before and been moved. The audience overall seemed so into the dancing. They cheered and hooted wildly after every piece and gave a standing ovation at the end. The company is only in NY through the end of the week, so if you’re here and want to see this or the other program — which includes a revival of “Masekela Language,” Mr. Ailey’s work about apartheid, go here for tickets. Or, for more info about the dances, call 212-514-0010 and press the appropriate buttons.

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More on Nina Ananiashvili and The State Ballet of Georgia

My crazy life of late has made me late in posting this, but last weekend I went to BAM to see Nina Ananiashvili, a principal ballerina with both the Bolshoi and American Ballet Theater, dance with her newish company, The State Ballet of Georgia, whose artistic directorship she took over in 2004.

The program I saw consisted of four ballets: Balanchine’s “Duo Concertante,” Yuri Possokhov’s “Sagalobeli,” and two by talk-of-the-town Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky — “Bizet Variations” and “Dreams About Japan.”

I loved the company’s rendition of “Duo Concertante.” The dancers (in above photo by Jack Vartoogian), were Nino Ogua and Lasha Khozashvili and they danced it with more clarity of intent than I think I’ve seen before. Though it’s a non-story ballet, as are many of Balanchine’s, that doesn’t mean there was no room for interpretation, emotion, drama, and conflict. The dancers interacted with each other — by turns playful, romantic, aggressive, even somewhat violent, and loving, as Ogua would glide Khozashvili across the stage, she’d smile at him flirtatiously, she’d turn and run from him and he’d catch her and sweep her up, she’d place her head sweetly on his shoulder. After they finished a section, they would walk to the musicians — an onstage pianist and violinist, look at them quizzically, and as soon as the music gave them the cue, they would walk back to centerstage, regard each other, and begin dancing again. It was very “dramatic,” in the sense that the dancers were not merely performing steps without expression, like I’ve seen Balachine choreography performed, but they interacted with one another, with the musicians, and with the audience, drawing you in and making you a part of it.

Next was Ratmansky’s “Bizet Variations.” I wasn’t really in love with this one. It was sweet, with the women fluttering around in beautiful blue dresses, Nina as the lead in a purplish hue, and the men romancing them. I thought it was pretty but nothing really substantial.

My favorites were Possokhov’s “Sagalobeli” a beautiful combination of ballet with Georgian folk dance set to bewitching Georgian folk music, and Ratmansky’s “Dreams About Japan,” a stunning melding of classical ballet with Japanese dance, set to mesmerizing, at times frightening, Japanese percussion. Bands in both were, splendidly, live.

In “Sagalobeli,” the women all wore lovely, flowing beige dresses with snaky patterns on the bodice, and the men kind of Gladiator-style vests with tights and boots. Possokhov, a Russian choreographer who works mainly with San Francisco Ballet, brilliantly combined classical ballet with intriguing folk movement that at times resembled Flamenco, with couples energetically tapping the floor in a kind of conversation with each other, and at times, when women danced alone, a kind of belly dancing. The men-only parts consisted of Russian-looking deep-knee-bent folk dance kicks combined with the male bravura elements of classical ballet — whipping foette turns and giant soaring leaps. It was lovely and the music, a Tbilisi urban folklore performed by the Sagalobeli Ensemble, was just a dream. I didn’t want it to end.

 

And the Ratmansky — ah, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen by him. I actually liked it. I actually see what critics are going on about now! Though I have a feeling just from what I overheard in the theater that this is the critics’ least favorite of his… Anyway, structured like traditional Kabuki Theater (in which only the most popular dance fragments from various classical plays are presented), Ratmansky used percussion music performed by the Tbilisi Theater of Opera and Ballet and a combination of Japanese traditional dance with ballet to tell four short stories: “Sagi Musume,” in which a young girl mourns her lost love; “Futa Omote,” where the souls of lovers who’ve committed suicide reunite in one evil spirit; “Musume Dojoji,” in which a young monk fails to return the love of a maiden, who tranforms herself into a Fire Snake and avenges him; and “Kagami Jishi,” where a lion’s mask forces anyone who comes into contact with it to dance to exhaustion. Not only are classical ballet steps performed with a Japanese flair — turned out palms, flexed feet, expressive wrists, etc., but somehow because of the beating of the drums, because of the props, but also because of the way in which they are performed — with speed, with sharpness and a rhythm corresponding to the drums rather than the fluidity and mellifluousness of Western classical music — barrel turns, fouettes, pirouettes — traditional ballet language somehow became brilliantly transformed. It was neither ballet nor traditional Japanese dance, but somehow both; and both were enriched by the combination, rather than being oversimplified and belittled, like Asian dance often is when interpreted by a Westerner. It was really stunning, and I hope this is not the last we’ll see of this ballet.

Anyway, for more on Ananiashvili and the company, go here.

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Nina Ballerina

 

I haven’t had the chance to blog about this yet since I’ve been so busy with other writing projects, but I went to see ballet legend Nina Ananiashvili and her State Ballet of Georgia (as in the Republic) last weekend at Brooklyn Academy of Music. I loved it — especially a lovely piece combining ballet with traditional Georgian folk dance by Yuri Possokhov and Alexei Ratmansky’s “Dreams About Japan,” brilliantly combining traditional Japanese dance and Kabuki theater with classical ballet. This is the best Ratmansky I’ve ever seen.

I’m super busy, but plan to write more about it this weekend — and post more pictures!

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Diana Vishneva's "Beauty in Motion" at City Center

I’m writing a review of this for Explore Dance, so will make this short; I wanted to post something quickly since it’s only showing tonight and tomorrow (Sunday) matinee.

It’s funny to me that dance-makers and fans always complain that critics are destroying dance with their negative reviews. I think they often do the opposite, creating loads of hype, sometimes deserved, sometimes not. And you don’t know which it is until you’ve seen the program. In this case, I’d say the program is worth seeing, but not for the reasons the critics say. The highlight to me was the brilliant brilliant Desmond Richardson of Complexions Contemporary Ballet, in the third ballet of the night, “Three Point Turn,” Dwight Rhoden’s exciting piece about the turbulence of male / female relationships. Richardson had two breathtaking solos that brought the crowd, rightly, to its feet. For a ballet-trained dancer he excels at the sharp, angular, staccato movements that are the hallmark of modern. He’s really a marvel.

I also enjoyed in that last piece Kirov danseur Mikhail Lobukhin. He’s a muscular man with a longish blonde mane and highly arched feet that, when he points, enable him to make beautiful lines. He has kind of an androgynous appeal, which works well for this piece in which masculine violent passion and feminine romantic love are often evoked simultaneously.

In the first ballet of the evening, Alexei Ratmansky’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” which aims to put to dance a set of Fifteenth-Century European poems about a clown’s descent into madness and back again, and in which the clown is depicted alternately by four dancers (all from the Kirov), Alexander Sergeev was my favorite. He interpreted his clown’s changing happiness, sadness, sexual fervor, and madness with the most pathos, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

The show is meant to celebrate Diana Vishneva, the Russian ballerina who is currently a principal with American Ballet Theater as well as the Kirov Ballet, or Mariinsky Theater, in St. Petersburg. The middle piece, by Moses Pendleton, the modern, not ballet, choreographer who founded theatrical dance companies, Pilobolus and MOMIX, is the one that most celebrates Vishneva, because it allows her to have the stage entirely to herself. I don’t think she works tremendously well with others (which I’ve noted before), and I have yet to see what all the critics are so orgasmic about with her, but Pendleton gave her some brilliant props to work with — particularly a large mirror upon which she lay in various positions, she and her reflection together evoking a series of imaginative shapes, and a beaded headdress which she wore and spun around repeatedly in, making interesting forms with the material — and the result seemed to be the crowd-pleaser of the night (other than Richardson).

At the end of the last piece, the curtain went down, then rose again. All dancers besides Vishneva were onstage. The dancers linked hands and came forward for a group bow. Then, each came forward one at a time — five in all — then another group bow. The dancers began looking at each other, a bit concerned. The conductor — shaggy-haired and good-looking I might add! — came onstage and took a bow. The dancers took another group bow. The singer came onstage and took a bow. The audience applauded on and on, for a good ten minutes. The dancers looked at each other, more worried. Audience members began to shrug their shoulders. “Is she coming out?” someone whispered. A few began to leave. One dancer, I think it was innocent-faced Sergeev, gave a nod and the dancers walked forward, arms linked, for yet another bow. Vishneva has refused to take bows before: at ABT’s opening night Met gala last year, she wouldn’t come out for her Sleeping Beauty curtain call. Ballet Talk talkers surmised she was upset about her performance. I didn’t see anything lacking in her performance and wondered whether it was just that she had to share the stage with two other dancers who played Sleeping Beauty (at the gala, they had three women dance the part for variety). I turned around to peek at Kevin McKenzie (ABT’s artistic director, who happened to be sitting behind me); he didn’t seem to have a clue as to what might be up either. I turned around and put on my coat. Some other orchestra members came out for some bows. Then another dancer group bow. The lady beside me excused herself and walked past me. I was just about to grab my bag and go when, finally, in what must have been a good fifteen minutes after the end of the last ballet, she emerged from the wings, bedecked in a velvety black, floor length gown with a several-foot-long train. But she didn’t just walk out onstage to the middle of the lined-up dancers; she walked around clear to the back of the stage, proceeded all the way around the row of dancers, went nearly into the opposite wings, and came around in front, prancing to the front of the stage and taking several very long, drawn-out bows. I think by that time all of our standing ovations and applause had long been spent on Richardson, and I heard several harrumphs of annoyance. I know it may be a Russian thing for the prima ballerinas to act like drama queens in taking their bows, and some may see it as a point of amusement for American audiences, but I think people were more confused and annoyed than entertained.

Anyway, the show’s worth seeing for the interesting choreography, the excellent guest dancers from the Kirov, and for Richardson. Go here for tix. Here are a couple of other write-ups from my fellow bloggers, Jolene and Art in California, who have different points of view regarding Vishneva, from me.

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Apollinaire and Diana!

My friend Apollinaire Scherr has an excellent article on the bewitching ballerina Diana Vishneva in this week’s New York Magazine! Apollinaire makes me so jealous the way the writes about dance 🙂 And check out the spellbinding photograph by Armen Danilian.

Vishneva will be performing next week at City Center with Desmond Richardson from Complexions Contemporary Ballet. The two will dance choreography by the man everyone in NY is talking about these days, Alexei Ratmansky. Go here for tix and info.