Most of us have today off from work. As we return from ski trips or take advantage of holiday sales or just veg out, let’s just not forget why.
Casellula (and Andrew Nemr’s "Cats Paying Dues" Tap Ensemble!)
Last night Alyssa and I went to a tap dance performance at the Julia Miles Theater in west midtown. I’m writing a formal review of it for Explore Dance, which I will link to when it’s up, but, since the show’s only on for two more days, I just want to say now, I loved it. Andrew Nemr trained with Gregory Hines, and it shows in his expressiveness and style. “Cats Paying Dues” is a very young troupe of up-and-comers (my favorite was 17-year-old Orlando Hernandez — wow!), and the performance was charmingly low-key, no frills, no fluff, no pretentiousness (praise the lord), just very good, immensely musical dancing, and excellent jazz band. If you’re in NY, for $39, I think it’s a great value. Go to telecharge (or 212-239-6200) for tix.
I saw a new friend there (a very nice guy whom I met from Apollinaire), Brian Seibert, who writes for the New Yorker — only famous people like Goddess Joan have bylines there, but Brian is a very good writer; here is his brief but well-written piece on Nemr and CPD (you have to scroll down a bit).
Afterward, Alyssa introduced me to this new(ish — it opened last May) lovely little wine and cheese bar around the corner, called Casellula. (They also have a blog, “Spread the Curd”.) Their wine list is amazing and delightfully inexpensive (compared to other nice wine bars), and they have an absolutely enormous list of cheeses, many locally produced, and a fromager to help with your selection. We shared the most scrumptious — and original — duck confit salad I’ve ever had — the finely shredded combo of meat, celeriac, gruyere cheese and apple gave it this deceptively simple “hash”-looking quality — and it was topped with dulcet pomegranite seeds, and baked duck-skin croutons to die for – and I mean die for! Alyssa and I were wondering where we could get more and how unhealthy it would be to eat a whole plate?… Shared desserts were flourless chocolate cake textured with finely ground chocolate chunks and soaked in a light cream that effectively countered the cake’s richness, and coconut crepes oozing with lemon filling and topped with a mound of fluffy, coconut-textured whipped cream. Serendipitously, pastry chef Allen Stafford, who’s in the picture with us, is a former stage designer with the Atlanta Ballet and a big Paul Taylor fan. Funny because when we first walked in, I could have sworn I recognized him; still not completely sure from where but likely some Paul Taylor or other dance performance. He also made the artwork in back of us. It looks like a painting from afar, but when you approach, you realize it’s made all of aluminum wine bottle closures. Very cool! The restaurant is just around the corner from the Alvin Ailey studios as well, so if I can ever get my lazy butt back in gear and start up with classes again, will make the perfect after-workout lounge.
Danny Tidwell and David Hallberg (and CounterCritic) in the Same Room(!): Cedar Lake Ballet Blogger Shindig
Fun fun night! Big understatement! I didn’t even need to get drunk 🙂
Please excuse the Gawkerish, 15-year-old voice of this post. I waited until this morning to blog in hopes that the euphoria would dissipate and Kristin Sloan might post the group photo her boyfriend, Doug Jaeger, took, but as of yet neither has happened.
I must begin by calling myself a big fat hypocrit. I’ve laughed and rolled my eyes at Philip whenever he’s nearly fainted in front of the New York City Ballet stage door upon receiving a smile and hello from Jock Soto or Albert Evans or Wendy Whelan. Last night Danny Tidwell smiled and said hi to me and I promptly choked on my wine. Of course he doesn’t know me; I was just standing there staring gape-mouthed at him when he walked by with … oh crap I’m so bad, I think it was Jamie??… He was there with a girl from SYTYCD, but I’m not exactly sure who. Since the pre-show party was for bloggers, I was half-expecting his boyfriend to come (whom I was very much hoping to meet!) but Benaym was a no-show. I didn’t expect Danny though!!! Oh he’s so cute, and his smile is so warm and charming and sweet, it really just melted me. I can easily see why he is such a star. I got there earlier than everyone else and was nearly alone inside when the earth-shattering hello happened; each time one of my friends walked in, they greeted me only to get in return, “Omigod, omigod, Danny Tidwell said hi to me, Danny Tidwell said hi to me!!!” He’s so much smaller than he looks on TV or onstage. I couldn’t believe it. He’s always appeared to me the size of Carlos Acosta, but he’s well under six feet. It’s just the proverbial larger than life stage and screen presence I guess… And I’m very very very sorry for any SYTYCD fan who’s reading, but I just couldn’t bring myself to snap pics of him. In New York there’s an ironclad rule against “starf***ing.” Everyone does it, but everyone pretends they don’t and to break the pretense is practically illegal, a violation of the NYC social contract. Taylor and Evan and Ariel all agreed with me that I would definitely be immediately kicked out and may even be executed if I so much as tried surreptitiously to get a cell phone pic. So sorry!!! But Mr. Jaeger had a humongoid camera and was shooting up the place, so I’ll keep checking his site and see if he got any.
When Caleb Custer from Cedar Lake sent out the email announcing the blogger party, I had no idea who all was going to show. I was still swooning over Danny when who should breeze up his hair billowing in the wind but the beautiful one himself! When I spotted him pass by the large garage window (Cedar Lake’s studio is actually housed in a big garage, according to Philip, once used by photographer Annie Liebowitz), I couldn’t help myself. I screamed uncontrollably, “Look, there’s David Hallberg!” Doug (Fox), Philip, Ariel and probably about 75 other people in the lobby followed my point. David looked in at us, horrified. He promptly pretended to get a call on his cell phone and spent the next 20 minutes outside pacing up and down the street affecting a phone conversation, every so often peeking in the window to see if all the commotion at his arrival had died down. Meanwhile Danny remained huddled in a back corner with Jamie. Dancers are weird the way they sometimes crave and are other times embarrassed by attention.
Finally David braved the storm and ventured in. He is soft-friggin-spoken to make a massive understatement! He extended his hand to me and said something I couldn’t hear, I said simply, “hi, I’m Tonya,” feeling like a total ass, and he again said something I couldn’t make out. Soft-spoken or not, he clearly either had no idea who I was or was terrified of me. Ariel thinks it’s the latter, because of things like this and this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the former though; he and Marcelo have got to be two of the only dancers on the face of the earth who never Google themselves. Anyway, the awkwardness was soon quelled by his sighting of Philip, who is apparently a friend of his through Craig Salstein. Philip was standing beside me. David doesn’t need to act at all; his natural reactions to things are so sweetly touching. You could see his recognition of Philip visibly register as his face brightened and he went bouncing toward Philip like a dog when it sees a regular playmate, practically rubbing his pelvis up against him when embracing. He then saw Ariel, standing beside Philip, whom he met when he was guesting once in Mobile, Alabama, and hugged her as well. I was feeling like the consummate dog crap, being the only one who didn’t receive a hug. But I guess that’s what I get for posting naked pictures and yelling at him for not blogging often enough on the Winger 🙂
Another highlight for me was meeting CounterCritic, whose original blog (critiquing the critics) I love. He’s such a fantastic writer whether he’s wickedly taunting critics or writing performance reviews himself, which are always spot-on (almost always anyway!) And he’s the only dance blogger who’s on Alex Ross’s blogroll. Oh jealously uncontained… Anyway, he’s so nice in person; all that blog pissiness is a total cover! I can’t really rib David for his puppyish behavior toward Philip because I followed CC around all night like a little dog, sitting next to him even during the show.
Speaking of which, could I talk a bit about the actual performance? Artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer, who by the way is really good-looking and personable and used to dance with my beloved Alvin Ailey, held a little Q&A with the bloggers afterward. He said he loves blogs: existing in a sphere so apart from traditional media, they bring something fresh and original to the dance world; they bring balance and new voices, and, though you never know what take you’re going to get from each one, it’s always interesting to see… I’m sure he never thought he’d be getting a blog post all about the pre-show hysteria of meeting Danny Tidwell and David Hallberg.
I want to look more at the (extensive!) press materials and the DVD they included (always an immense plus from dance companies), but for now I want to say how much I love dancer Jon Bond. Everything he does is so full-out, his lines are so sharp and even intense if that makes sense. Just little things like flexing a hand or foot, when he does it, it’s so pronounced that it looks all the more edgy in its awkwardness.
We saw three ballets: “Symptoms of Development,” by choreographer Jacopo Godani, a harsh, unsettling piece which dealt with technology and how it works against human interaction (Evan remarked to me afterward that it was an interesting inclusion in the rep they showed us, since we’re bloggers); “Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue,” by Crystal Pite, my favorite duet being one in which Bond struggled to reach the female dancer in front of him, palm open and fingers extended to the max, running in place to catch up with her, but in vain, as she, running in place as well, was always too far ahead; and “Rite” by Stijn Celis, another take on a dance to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” nearly all of which — of the ones I’ve seen anyway — evoke in different ways the chaos bordering on horror of the rite of passage of boys and girls into men and women. If you’re interested, here’s a YouTube clip of Pina Bausch’s take on the theme, and here’s Maurice Bejart’s, which I’m partial to. Celis’s “Rite” was different in that all characters were androgynous, so there was no real distinction between male and female. All dancers — about four men and four women — were dressed in Asian-looking strapless mini-dresses and wore heavy, almost operatic facial makeup. It actually reminded me of Nacho Duato’s Castrati, which I wrote about here, except both sexes were included, though not both genders (that I saw anyway; others may have different interpretations). The dancers darted, leaped over, and ran atop these three long log-looking sets, covered with green material and meant, I think, to evoke a primitive landscape. The dancers almost looked like nymphs as they interacted: regarding each other quizzically, examining the powder and sweat left on the ‘log landscape’ by each other in a somewhat grotesquely sexual way; performing dangerous run-and-jump catches with each other; it was kind of “Afternoon of a Faun“ish (original Nijinsky version) as well. All pieces were abstract, and all unsettling, but I think this was my favorite because it seemed to have the most going on that I could latch onto and make something of, and, because of the other “Rite’s” I’d seen, I had something to compare it to.
This is a new company, only four years old, and this is the third time I’ve seen them. They tend to take on edgy, visually striking and thought-provoking work and their dancers are very unafraid and do everything full force. For more info on their season, go here. Thank you so much to Cedar Lake for organizing this most fun, and thus far original, event. I’ll post pictures taken by the pro photographers if Caleb sends any my way…
For now, here’s a picture of Ariel taken in The Half King around the corner, where we afterward went to discuss the performance. Okay, where we went to discuss David and Danny 🙂
My Best of 2007 in Dance
It’s already the second day of 2008 (Happy New Year everyone!) and I’m just now getting my best of last year up; sorry so late! I was tagged by Jen & Jolene, so I’ll formulate my “best of” as a response to their survey:
1) Best Performance of the Year: I had many favorites, but I guess overall I’ll have to say Alessandra Ferri’s farewell performance with ABT in Romeo & Juliet at the Met. She was my favorite ballerina for many years and I’m still missing her. Plus, I was introduced to La Scala’s Roberto Bolle, who guest performed 😀
2) Best Male Performer of the Year: Definitely Clifton Brown of Alvin Ailey!
3) Best Female Performer of the Year: I thought a lot about this, and I know I’m mixing dance genres, but I’m going to say Yulia Zagoruychenko. She had a damn good year. She, with Max Kozhevnikov, made the Latin finals at Blackpool this year, being the only US couple to do so, then, later in the year, went on to displace the several-year-long U.S. National champs to win that title. At the end of the year, she survived a partner change and went on to win her first competition with him, Riccardo Cocchi. She is adored by many both nationally and internationally and she is very deserving of her hard-won success. Go Yulia and Riccardo!
4) Best New Discovery of the Year: This is too hard because there were so many dancers and choreographers whom I was introduced to this year who aren’t necessarily new to the scene, but just to me! List includes: choreographers Camille A. Brown, Luca Veggetti, Luciana Achugar, Kyle Abraham, and Robert Battle; composer Nico Muhly; dancers Kirven Boyd, Antonio Douthit and Yannick LeBrun (all of Alvin Ailey — the last I forgot to mention in my last post on AA; fortunately Susan reminded me in her comment!), and Roberto Bolle (who was new to me this year); Brazilian troupe Mimulus; Nora Chipaumire of Urban Bush Women (pictured above this number) at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival itself (it’s been around for aeons, but I had my first experience there this year). That’s all I can think of for now, but I’m sure I’ll think of bizillions of people I forgot later…
5) Best Regional / Local Performance of the Year: I think this is more of a theater question since there’s usually a big distinction between regional theater and a Broadway show, or a company who tours, but, since physically it was “local,” I’ll say NYCB’s spring season opening night. It was just too much fun watching all those celebrities walk down that red carpet and overhearing goofy crowd comments, and then writing about it all (although my mother was aghast at me for my using the word “whores” in my blog title!)
6) Best Performance in a Non-Traditional Venue: This is a toss-up between the wonderful “Accounting For Customs” performed on the steps of the US Customs House, and the super fun and impossible-to-tear-yourself-away-from Lincoln Center ‘drive-in,’ David Michalek’s “Slow Dancing” films.
7) Favorite Televised Theater Event: I didn’t really have a favorite in this category (since the only thing I saw fitting it was Mark Morris’s “Mozart Dances” on PBS which I didn’t care for), so I’ll just state my favorite dance TV show, which was SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE. Duh.
8) Biggest Dance Obsession: Alvin Ailey, Alvin Ailey, Alvin Ailey. Again, if you’ve read my blog over the past several weeks, Duh 😀
9) Most Likely To Be The Next Big Thing: Eee. Hard! So hard to predict. But I’m going to name a few: ABT’s Blaine Hoven and Vitali Krauchenka,
Kirven Boyd and Antonio Douthit at Alvin Ailey,
Craig Hall at NYCB,
choreographer Camille A. Brown…
Again, I’m sure I’m leaving people out…
10) Most Anticipated Performance Of 2008: Eee, another tough one. There are so many things I’m looking forward to this year. I guess the biggest is going to be Blackpool. Since the current decade-long Latin champs retired last year, there will be a new Latin winner, which is really exciting to me since it’s my favorite event there. I’m hoping for Slavik Kryklyvyy and Elena Khvorova,
I’m also looking forward to Twyla Tharp’s new ballet that ABT will premiere in the Spring at the Met,
And I’m looking forward to Nikolaj Hubbe’s farewell performance with NYCB (he is returning to Denmark). Not that I’m looking forward to bidding him farewell, but to the show NYCB will put on in his honor.
Okay my brain is tired now. If anyone else wants to add their “best ofs” in a comment here or on their own blog, please do so!
Alvin Ailey Season Wrap-Up
“One of the promises of my company is that its repertoire will include pieces that ordinary people can understand. I still dream that my folks down on the farm in Texas can come to an Ailey concert and know and appreciate what’s happening onstage. That’s my perception of what dance should be — a popular form, wrenched from the hands of the elite.” From REVELATIONS, The Autobiography of Alvin Ailey, pg. 101.
That must be why I love this company so. Everything they do is sublime, humanistic, evocative, easily relatable, and immensely meaningful; it speaks to your soul, and it speaks to everyone. It’s the antithesis of elitist. I was so upset their New York season is over (well, not competely; they still have a big shindig tomorrow night in celebration of New Year’s Eve), that I spent all weekend reading Ailey’s Autobiography, which I picked up at a rare bookstore I’m fond of in Durham, while visiting Mom. I highly recommend it.
Anyway, highlights for me of the past several weeks were:
1) “Revelations” (top picture, by Paul Kolnick, from AAADT website). But, I mean, duh, that it’s a season highlight. You’d be inhuman if you didn’t respond to this one 😀 I wrote about it previously, here.
Oh, another thing I discovered whilst confined to my apartment by my recent (ridiculously debilitating) sinus infection + migraine episode / end-of-AA-season depression: the Alvin Ailey organization has a bunch of videos posted on YouTube!!! The quality’s not tremendously high (hopefully they’ll improve on that soon :)), but for those unfortunate souls who have never experienced this brilliant company, I can link to just about everything so you can get a taste!
2) This season I fell in love with “Love Stories,” a dance in three parts and three styles, all of them set to Stevie Wonder music. I love how the three parts are so fundamentally different from each other while somehow still managing to sequeway well into one another: the first one is beautiful modern / balletic (above top pic, danced by Clifton Brown), composed of a solo followed by a group of duets that include some very acrobatic partnering; the second part is raucous mad fun hip hop that makes you want to get up and dance yourself; and the third is what I’d call African / modern blend. That third part has honestly never done much for me until this season when it somehow become my favorite. For one thing, in one of my viewings this season, Kirven Boyd, a favorite whom I blogged about before, danced the beginning of that section, and watching him made me all the more intrigued. Weird how that happens: you have a favorite dancer and you end up liking anything they’re in — they make something totally beguiling when you’d never really even noticed it before.
So, the crazy fast hip hop number of the previous section ends, a voice calls out, “I want to hold a mirror up to society so that everyone can see how beautiful they are.” And, at that point a man emerges from the right wing wearing this earthy-toned, roomy outfit resembling to me a kind of religious, Hare Krishna-ish garb. He’s bent over and he takes a few slow hesitant steps forward, then several runs back. He gains the courage to inch forward again, then more steps back. The movement is African. Eventually, an ensemble of dancers emerges and they all dance together, making various formations, resembling possibly a kind of chain gang, or perhaps a multitude overtaken by a kind of religious spirit. At one humorous point, they bounce around in a circle, stick their arms out awkwardly at their sides, and look up to the ceiling making huge ‘Stevie Wonder’ smiles. When I saw the piece at one point with Apollinaire, she said she thought the first man out looked like a prisoner. I guess he could have been, although, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Maybe he’s a man who’s imprisoned by blindness or some other kind of handicap … racial prejudice even… At the end, the group happily bounces together going toward the back of the stage, when the back curtain lifts to reveal a multitude of bright lights. It’s really a sight. I’m really not sure what to make of it, but I’m intrigued. Robert Battle choreographed this section, and I was so taken with a small enchanting piece of his the company premiered, “Unfold,” which I wrote about here. This season was my first experience with this choreographer and I’m very interested to see more.
3) Several of the male dancers, including Clifton Brown (really the star of the company, to the extent this company has such things), Kirven, and Antonio Douthit (pictured above as the Firebird in a photo by Eduardo Patino). Like ABT, this is a company strong in men. Antonio is a tall, slim man with long, sinewy ballet muscles and he makes these gorgeous leg extensions. At one point in “Flowers,” Ailey’s fun but ultimately heart-rending ballet in tribute to Janis Joplin, there are several men dressed as her ‘boy toys’ in these hilarious shiny booty shorts (just what went on in the 70s?!) carrying her all over the stage in worship. At one point, they’re all simultaneously doing these rotating arabesques (turning on one foot with one leg lifted up to the back), and I suddenly noticed Antonio’s foot was practically to the ceiling! It was stunning! He makes beautiful shapes, and he’s very expressive with both his face and body. If anything, he probably needs to work a little more on his jumps, as well as on that intangible something that makes one a real artist. I say this only because he took over the role Clifton had in “The Road of the Phoebe Snow” — that of the young, innocent dreamy boy who falls in love with the girl who is killed, and he just didn’t make me want to cry for him the way Clifton did. Plus, I remember these crazy scissor split leaps that just completely blew me away when Clifton did them. They were impressive when Antonio did as well, but not quite as much — which isn’t bad and it’s probably completely unfair to compare anyone to Clifton The Miraculous (by the way, I wrote more about Clifton here). Basically, I think Antonio is a Clifton in the making but he’s not there yet; he just needs to work on it a bit more — he’s young, so he has time! Here’s an excerpt from “Flowers.”
I also liked Glenn Allen Sims, a favorite of mine from other seasons as well. He was just beautiful in this small little five minute jazz ballet of Ailey’s that the company just revived, “Reflections in D.” And the night I saw him dance that piece, he followed it by dancing the similarly sweet balletic solo in the opening of “Love Stories.” I was in love 🙂 In contrast, he also perfectly performed the bad-ass scary band manager / boyfriend in “Flowers,” tormenting poor Janis and signaling her downfall, as well as the hardened lover in “Phoebe Snow.”
Of the women, I LOVED Linda Celeste Sims (above in “Flowers”). She absolutely shined in everything she did. She brought me completely into her world: I wanted to cry for her raped, beaten innocent girl in “Phoebe Snow,” I felt angry at the men who mistreated her in Ulysses Dove’s darkly sexual “Episodes” (pictured below), and her beautiful ethereal creature with that impossible-looking back arch in Battle’s “Unfold” took my breath away. She is like my Veronika Part!
I also liked Briana Reed, for giving everything she did such sass and conviction and major attitude!
Alicia Graf is another one with a very beautiful balletic body.
I know a lot of people love her for that reason — with her balletic form and training, they think she brings something new and special to Ailey. I agree, but only somewhat. I didn’t love her in everything I saw her in, and while I certainly don’t think she’s superior to anyone else because of that background, I do think she really excels in the more balletic parts. I thought she was beautiful in the “Fix Me Jesus” section of “Revelations” (pictured here, but with Linda dancing the female part). She has gorgeous pointed toes, reminiscient to me of (again) Veronika Part. I also loved her in the balletic parts of “The River,” which was originally a ballet on pointe created for ABT. I’m not sure why the company doesn’t put that on pointe; it’s not like Alicia (or the other women — “Flowers” is partly on pointe) couldn’t do it. It seems like it would be so much more magical… Anyway, it was other roles where I felt like she didn’t bring as much as some of the other dancers. For example, she danced the jilted lover in “Phoebe Snow” very differently from Briana; Alicia’s character seemed more fragile, more innocent and more hurt by her jerky boyfriend, making her, in my opinion, too similar to the other female character in that ballet, the fragile innocent who ends up killing herself. And, I was underwhelmed by her jazz divas in “Night Creature” and “Pas De Duke” (the latter created by Ailey for the legendary Judith Jamison)
But really, one thing I love about this company, and why it’s rather ‘star-less’ I think, is that I think every one of the dancers brings something unique. I only talked about some, but I really like them all. I’m only leaving out the others because I’m dead tired and I need to go to sleep! I’m one of those unfortunate souls who has to work tomorrow….
Oh but quickly, I also really liked Camille A. Brown’s Groove to Nobody’s Business. I thought it was cute and completely relatable and fun and I hope that she does more for the company in the future, but really takes it up a notch in terms of depth. I saw a smaller piece by her earlier this year at the Fall For Dance Festival called “The Evolution of a Secured Feminine.” It was a smart, witty solo, by turns funny, by turns more reflective, which she performed herself. I hope in the future she will create more, fuller-length work like that for a larger group, on a larger scale.
Anyway, happy New Year’s everyone! And please look at some of Ailey’s YouTube videos, especially if you’ve never seen this company before. And please do go see them live if they come to your neck of the woods! They combine everything — modern ballet, African, jazz, hip hop, Latin — everything! They are the future I do believe. I can practically promise that you won’t be disappointed 🙂
Happy (Late) Christmas, Everyone!
Sorry I’ve been so out of it! I can’t believe I couldn’t even wish everyone a Merry Christmas yesterday because I was so drugged up (on major decongestants, pain relievers, and Maxalt, because every little tiny cold of mine seems to lead to an all-out sinus infection, which in turn leads to a several-day-long “migraine episode” as my neurologist calls them…) Anyway, Merry late Christmas 🙂
I’m starting to feel better (though I still have hopefully the last of the “migraine clusters” lingering), and I promise to blog soon about all the wonderful Alvin Ailey I saw before I got so sick (and, well, some of it during my illness — if anyone sitting on the left side of the back orchestra at City Center on Saturday came down with anything, sorry; I love this company far far too much to miss a single performance just because I can’t hear or breathe or swallow!!), and of course Pasha’s “Rhythm of Love.”
In the meantime, here’s a write-up by someone who saw Danny Tidwell’s and Rasta Thomas’s ‘Nutz’ (thanks to Rebecca for the link), and here’s a little excerpt of Danny performing Le Corsaire on Selly’s blog. Hope everyone had a happy holiday!
Nominated For Another "Rodney"!
Public Defender Stuff has nominated me for another “Rodney” blog award (you know, because we PD’s get no respect!) in the category “best PD blog that has nothing to do with the job.” I won in a similar category last year (best title of a blog that has absolutely nothing to do with the job). Last year, my main competition was a knitter; this year there are poets and novelists, and just a bunch of interesting types. I love how they do this; it’s very flattering to be thought of and included, especially since I’ve hardly ever blogged about anything to do with my job. See, PDs are nice lawyers! And arty! And what I do blog about of course gets left out of everything else… Speaking of which, Bloggies noms are coming up soon. Philip and I petitioned them last year to include a dance category this year, but I’m sure that suggestion went right down the toilet… Dance bloggers (and dance writers) get no respect either, man…
So, I thought Karina Smirnoff and Jonathan Roberts were cute tonight with their waltz / quickstep / samba / jive / swing on the ‘Holiday at the Ford’s Theater’ thing. Definitely the highlight of the show. Although, her costume was a bit skimpy — for that kind of special I mean, not for Karina; she is known as the bikini queen for her usual competition attire. I love how they ended with the Charleston. I haven’t had Lindy Hop in a really long time now and I miss that dance. What a dead crowd though! Every time they focused on a spectator he or she looked completely dumbfounded at what was going on onstage. Such the antithesis of an Ailey audience, where everyone’s bouncing up and down in their seats and cheering throughout. Matthew Rushing said when they were on tour in London, people were actually dancing in the aisles! Methinks the Alvin Ailey fans are taking over where the ballet audiences left off after Baryshnikov and the other greats left the stage a couple decades ago…
There, Now You Look Like A Real Night Creature
I don’t have much time to write today, but look at these videos Doug found, of Ellen DeGeneres screwing around with the Ailey dancers. So fun! Don’t you wanna dance just like them?!
Very excited: tonight is a celebration for co-artistic director Masazumi Chaya, and Mr. Ailey’s dance, “Flowers,” a tribute to Janis Joplin, which I haven’t yet seen but have been dying to. And “Episodes,” and “Revelations!” But am also getting kind of sad because their NY season is more than half way over now…
Okay, off to my happy fun office holiday party in which a bunch of lawyers get together and try really really hard not to talk about law. We usually give up after about 20 minutes, often less. Wish me luck…
Season Crush
On Kirven Boyd! I usually end up with a horrible mad crush on one dancer per season and this year it’s him.
Of late I’ve seen him dance with beautiful precision the third man in the quick-paced balletic “Solo” (top photo; I wrote about the piece here); the body-shaking “flag man” possessed by both spirit and rhythm in “Wade in the Water” from “Revelations;” the soft jazzy / modern solo at the opening of “Love Stories;” and the other night he was perfectly frightening while somehow managing to be charming as well, as the leader of the thugs in “The Road of the Phoebe Snow” (which I wrote about here). (Another thing I noticed, that I love about “Phoebe”: the ‘bad guys’ are wearing white and pink.)
“Love Stories” by the way is a dance in several parts with styles ranging from jazz / modern to hip hop, co-choreographed by AAADT director Judith Jamison, modern choreographer Robert Battle, and hip hop guru Rennie Harris. Music is by Stevie Wonder, and I think the title refers, basically to one’s love affair with dance. My favorite part is the beginning solo. Go here (scroll down to Love Stories) to see some excerpts. Clifton Brown is dancing the solo in this video. He’s been my crushee in years past, but I feel like now that he is so famous and every critic in the country and beyond is drooling all over him, it’s a little boring to have him as your favorite! That said, I thought Clifton was absolute magic a couple of years ago and I noticed this season he’s improved even further which I wouldn’t have thought possible. I do think he’s developed into one of the greatest dancers in the country now and it goes without saying you must see him dance if you ever have the chance!
On Thursday night, the company also premiered “Unfold” by Robert Battle, danced by Clifton with Linda Celeste Sims, this season’s royalty, as they seem to be dancing in just about every premiere. It was a very short pas de deux (only five minutes long), but beautiful. Danced to an aria brilliantly sung by Leontyne Price, it’s about, Battle says, the first meeting between a man and a woman. To me, it seemed to tell the story of a man’s discovering and becoming impassioned by this magical, ethereal creature. The curtain opens on Sims doing this breathtaking, and impossible-looking back arch, with no support, just on her own two feet. The position of her body and the way the fabric of her gown drapes in back, it had a spiritual, mystical feel. She looked otherworldly. Clifton sees her in the distance, becomes taken, approaches, pulls her to him, “unfolds” her, perhaps. They make various shapes together, her body alternating between convex and concave. At one point she’s on the floor, her torso and legs in the air, balancing only on the small of her back. He lunges over her and pulls her up; it’s beautiful. But too short! I do want to see more by this choreographer; his rep sounds very interesting. And Kirven danced with his company previously!
Perhaps another reason I like K: he participated in one of the company’s little Saturday post-show matinee talks I saw.
Sorry so dark; I didn’t want to use the flash. He’s in the white shirt. He was so cute talking about his training in Boston and with Ailey II (their studio company), giving little kids advice and signing autographs, etc. I think dancers should participate in more things like this so the public can get a chance to know them. That’s why Danny Tidwell, and Pasha, and Maks and all the DWTS dancers became so popular — of course they’re very skilled and charismatic dancers (people wouldn’t be so into them if they weren’t), but the public also got the chance to know them a bit outside of their dance lives by watching them chat about themselves and interact with others on TV shows. Not everyone can or will want to go on TV, but with the internet, everyone can blog a bit. I know, dancers hate blogging. There are still so few. The Ailey company has two blogs — written by dancer Matthew Rushing and choreographer Camille Brown, but they’re not proper blogs since there’s no comments section, so you can’t interact with them, and they’re very seldomly updated anyway. And you need to join Ailey’s e-club even to access them, which is very easy to do and free, but it prohibits bloggers like me from linking or anything.
Anyway, more on this later, I’m late for a ballroom competition!
My New Favorite Dance Photographer: Andrew Eccles
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.
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.
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.