Tag: American Ballet Theater

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Is Pasha a Nureyev or a Baryshnikov: What's In a Dancer's Sexuality Anyway?

Okay, I’m probably going to get attacked right and left for this post, but I’ve been receiving a lot of emails asking me if my former dance instructor, the extremely personable and talented (not to mention sexy 🙂 ) Pasha Kovalev, who is now a serious contestant on SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE, is gay or straight. My first thought was, argh, why does it even matter! But then I thought about it and realized, homophobia is totally passe and no one is asking because they want to judge anyone and, although of course it is completely irrelevant to the actual dancing, it does inform your crush on the guy (if you’re a straight female dance fan, which a good number of us are). I mean, you have a different kind of crush depending on whether he’s straight or gay, right?! (mine are usually far worse on the gay ones, but go figure…)

When I first fell big time for this one, my favorite dancer in the world (besides Pasha of course!), I did what everyone living in the 21st Century would do, an internet search of course. And how did my heart drop when I saw this, his cover story in The Advocate! NOOOOOOOO, I must have let out the most horrid cry. We’re never getting married now! (Because of course otherwise we were, since he’s not a big huge famous ballet dancer or anything…) But I have to say, it was far worse finding out this one, my second favorite, was married, and that this one is engaged to be married. After all, I’m never going to have to be jealous of any of Marcelo’s partners (you can’t envy a man; it just doesn’t make any sense).

And reading the Marcelo article of course made me fall in love with him all the more, and realize why he is, as Dance Magazine called him, the guy all the girls want to dance with. He is a big strong warm Brazilian guy, a kind of teddy bear, albeit a gorgeous one — in whose arms could you feel safer or more comfortable and secure?! Of course the actual story of the dance performance that unfolds onstage or TV is not real anyway, but dramatic narrative aside, to me Marcelo and Julie Kent, his frequent partner, are the greatest partnership around today, and that’s precisely because of the way you can tell they feel about each other: it’s obvious they truly love each other as friends and partners, and that’s everything in making a performance come to life!

I’ve never had the opportunity to dance with Marcelo of course 🙁 but in my own experiences, gay men are crazy fun as partners. Straight men are too, but, I dunno, there’s just something about gay men, that IMO, takes some pressure off and just lets you be you. If something gets touched, you know it was an accident, or if something stupid happens like this, or this, it’s not THAT embarrassing! And back to Marcelo briefly (I know, I can never stop talking about him; it’s an illness really…), big warm swoony stage door kisses like this could never happen if the dancer was straight, right — I mean, that might be looked on … just… a little perverted or something.

But, I also think that a dancer’s sexuality, as with all aspects of his or her personal life, though completely irrelevant to the dancing, do, rightly or wrongly, come into play in constructing the dancer’s persona or mystique, should he or she ever become really famous. Joan Acocella, in reading from her latest book at Barnes & Noble recently, said that she thought part of Baryshnikov‘s fame stemmed from his reputation for being a skirt-chaser. The press, she said, just went on a field day with a straight male dancer. I personally think it was more the political situation at the time (he defected from a country we were obsessed with hating after all), because, how does that explain the fame of Nureyev? To me personally, it is Nureyev who is the more intriguing: in addition to dealing with the shock of fame and wealth after having grown up in abject poverty, the horribly difficult decision to defect and leave his family forever behind (his mother was very ill), he also had to deal with societal and political oppression based on his sexuality. And the attacks that he had to endure, of leading a life of “debauchery” in the West while those left behind in his homeland starved, were criticisms I’m sure Baryshnikov never got. And, as for partnerships, please — that between Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn was the stuff legends are made of. For a very good, rather poetic book on this most fascinating of all dancers (IMO) please go here.

Anyway, back to Pasha, and THE QUESTION! Sorry for the long-windedness, I just wanted to make everyone read about all my favorite dancers 🙂 Okay, well, I don’t want to be gossipy, but I feel there is nothing wrong with pointing you all toward something he said on TV on either the first or second episode of the show! Remember! Remember what he said about why he wanted to become a ballroom dancer, what led him to dance in the first place! That’s a pretty good indication 🙂 If you can’t find it anywhere on the show’s website, I’ll give you a hint — it’s the same thing said by this other dance hearthrob on what drew him to ballet in the very fun documentary, “Born to Be Wild,” which if you haven’t seen, you can read his words on that issue here.

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Pasha and Danny and … Mark: Everyone's a Star!

I just received my copy of Time Out NY in the mail and was flipping through while watching my favorite TV show (actually, the only one I watch, SYTYCD) and, in glancing at the “Dating Section” noticed a blurb recommending as the ideal date the weekly Friday night dance lesson and party hosted by my first studio, DanceSport. They included a photo of said party, which, on close inspection, I realized included my old Swing team partner, Mark!

He’s the guy in black all the way in the back left corner of the picture. Hi Mark!!

For corny old times’ sake, here we are swingin’ in Atlanta two years ago at the National Swing Championships — we’re the couple nearest the back screen. Hi again, Mark!

Benji Schwimmer (last year’s SYTYCD champ) was probably at that event. Don’t remember him though; that was before it all…

Anyway, I was excited to watch the show tonight, after inadvertently missing it last week. Fun fun!

Pasha 🙂 I know I shouldn’t say anything because I’m UNOBJECTIVE but I’m just so proud — he was so out of his element tonight and he really nailed that jazz routine. I worried about him — as I do all ballroom dancers trying to do other dance styles — but, clearly, I had no need 🙂 Of course Pasha and Anya had loads of dance training back in Russia so that’s coming to their aid now.

I had to laugh though at Sara‘s hair comment. He DOES take forever with the damn hair! But it’s a Latin ballroom thing, I swear. They all wear their hair greased down, slicked back, blown-dry and hair sprayed firmly, stiffly into place, not a stray strand or else. It’s basically a rule of competition. It looks a bit kooky to me, to be honest, but no one challenges them rules… I’m thrilled they’re encouraging change with the hair thing here, but after all this time, it’s probably just one of those things that’s part of life for him. And the women’s makeup is another thing — so much of it at the comps, and just caked on! I’ve never seen so little makeup on Anya as here, and she looks gorgeous.

My second favorite: Danny, about which I guess I’m semi-unobjective (in that he’s dancing with Pasha’s partner, and of course he hails from the greatest dance company in the world). Okay, arguably, whatever 🙂 I missed his 10,000 pirouettes last week. Were they brilliant?! I got a quick glimpse of them tonight, but it was far too brief. And that grand jete with fully extended air splits across the entire floor at the beginning of his and Anya’s Foxtrot!!! And he was a natural ‘Foxtrotter’ too. Which, Standard is sometimes hard for ballet dancers because your feet have to be perfectly parallel, no turnout, and sometimes you can get a little knock-kneed, and it feels very weird. But he not only nailed it but gave it that little something undefinably special as well.

But personality-wise: I think he’s just shy, right? Don’t you think he’s shy? Or perhaps… maybe he is someone who’s taken some hard knocks in life and is just a bit too used to getting beaten down? He just seems a bit sad to me. In any event, I have NO idea how anyone could call him arrogant? Unless I’m missing something, he seems the antithesis of pompous ass. If anyone had that interpretation earlier, it might have been because sometimes people feel compelled to erect a protective facade and it came across as haughty… Who knows. Anyway I find him sympathetic and spectaular and stunning and all that and I really want him to make it to the finals please please!

Til tomorrow night…

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David Michalek's "Slow Dancing": A Good Idea But Poorly Executed (*Update in Bold)

Hehe, my friend, Ariel Davis, a young journalist currently in NYC for an internship with a big magazine, emailed me bright and early yesterday morning to tell me that we were quoted in the NYTimes! Of course I immediately scoured the article. Well, we weren’t actually quoted, in that our names weren’t listed, but we were the ones exclaiming, “he looks like a god,” the top quote in Claudia LaRocco’s write-up of the opening night of the Slow Dancing films I’ve been mobile-blogging about for about the past fifty posts now. (I promise to stop soon with the cell phone blogging; it’s just so exciting, in its own way). Anyway, the “god” Ariel and I were speaking of was Herman Cornejo of course 🙂

Anyway, I’m going to see it several more times before it leaves NY, but so far my thoughts are that the project is a great idea that has some real kinks to work out.

For starters, Lincoln Center is really annoying me and if I was Michalek I would be pissed. Slow Dancing starts at 9 p.m and continues until 1:00 in the morning; Midsummer Night Swing ends at 10:00 p.m. But after the MNS band stops playing, Lincoln Center really shuts down: the alcohol and snack bars all close shop, making it impossible to enjoy a drink with friends while watching the films, and, more seriously, a very noisy cleanup begins. The Aquafina guy noisily dismembers his metal booth then hauls it all, bit by bit, to a huge garbage-like truck waiting, motor running, in the nearby taxi cab lane; the bar guys clinkily clear bottles and glasses from their shelves; garbage collectors noisily bag trash and load it onto little trucks, which they drive dangerously through the crowd darting in and out and around groups of people, sometimes even honking if you don’t see them coming — how’s the audience supposed to focus on the film with all this crap going on? You feel like Lincoln Center’s telling you it’s time to go home now, show’s over, you’re out past your bedtime. Until July 29th, when this exhibit ends, could they possible re-arrange clean-up schedules? It’s hugely disrespectful to the artist and his audience.

As for the project itself, I think it’s a great idea and it seemed to work well when I saw it indoors at the earlier Works & Process event at the Guggenheim Museum, but for some reason, it’s not as exciting outdoors on the huge Plaza. I think part of my being so captivated at Guggenheim stemmed from the fact that I know and love all three dancers who were showcased that night: Wendy Whelan (ballerina of New York City Ballet), Herman Cornejo (American Ballet Theater), and Desmond Richardson (Complexions). But the vast majority of the dancers participating in the whole project I don’t know, or at least don’t recognize.

As LaRocco alludes to in her article, not a lot of the people on the Plaza for Midsummer Night Swing paid much attention to the films, unfortunately. Several heads did turn when the screens first lit up, and people watched for the first couple of minutes, but when they couldn’t see very much happening, they returned to their own fun. LaRocco bemoans that these social dancers, themselves participating in Dance, are ignorant of those on the screens, many of them the greats of ballet and modern dance.

Well, why should those dancers, having such a blast learning to dance themselves, stop what they’re doing in order to worship these people on the screens, whom they don’t know? Might someone, perhaps, tell them who they are?

From what I’ve seen so far, here are my critiques of the project:

1) No one knows who the dancers are and no one is bothering to tell them. If they’re not going to have easily available pamplets listing the names and credentials of the dancers, with pictures, could they run the names and a brief word about who they are somewhere prominent on the screen, at least at the start of each performance? Names humanize people. I’ve noticed this watching people watching filmed ballroom dance competitions — people who aren’t really seriously into the art of ballroom just kind of glance at the screen and look away after all of a minute — there are far too many people out there on the floor at once, it’s too much to take in, it’s confusing and nonsensical.

But once names are placed over the dancers (briefly, not for the entire time the camera’s focused on them of course), people pay much more attention, even if they’ve never heard the name before (which is highly likely). You think, ‘oh that couple’s obviously from Russia with huge names like that,’ ‘oh a Japanese couple,’ ‘wow, another Russian; a lot of Russians in ballroom, who knew…’ ‘oh wow, those are the national champions, yeah, they are really good,’ etc. etc. Names humanize. A little bit of info goes a long way.

Update: I went again tonight (Sunday), with Oberon, and found that there are little Lincoln Center playbills near the entrance to the State Theater, along with a poster, both giving the names and a brief background of each dancer next to his or her picture. I still like the idea of printing the names somewhere on the screens though! Also, I met Wendy Whelan tonight — she’s a very sweet person! Here is a picture of her and Oberon. Awww 🙂

2) There are either too many of the same types of dancers or there’s not enough variety and spontaneity in the rotations. At several points, there are two to three dancers shown all at once who are all doing modern. This is boring and reductive. Also, can everyone not be dressed exactly the same? Wendy Whelan and Janie Taylor are ballerinas but they’re both dressed in the same silky flowing gowny things as about ninety percent of all the women. To someone who doesn’t know dance, it could be confused with yet more modern. Couldn’t at least one be in a tutu and on pointe. And, could someone do a fouette or multiple pirouettes? The movement is too much the same. It would be much more interesting if there was, say, in the middle a classical ballerina on pointe in a tutu doing fouettes, then say the African dancer guy on one end, and maybe William Forsythe doing his modern on the other end; then shift in the next sequence to the bellydancer, adjacent to the head-spinning break dancer, and sandwiched in between, the drag queen; then next sequence, say the guy on the crutches, the pregnant woman, another ballerina; or have a ballerina surrounded by a strong ballet guy and one of the modern women. Just make sure there’s variety in every sequence of three. That makes it interesting and it’s more of a celebration of Dance, in its rich variety.

3) I realize the point of the project is to show movement in extreme slow motion, but I feel that it is too slow. At points you can’t even see the dancers moving at all. This actually may be a glitch in the film, because at some points I think the films have actually stopped for a while — sometimes even for as much as a full minute. This is confusing to the audience, who is already perplexed enough trying to figure out, as LaRocco illustrated with one couple’s conversation, if there actually is movement. Possible technical problems aside, though, the movement is generally still too slow. Instead of people admiring every detail of the body in motion, every ripple of a muscle, the audience just gets bored, especially if the dancer isn’t “flashy” enough. These past couple days I’ve become most fascinated with Glem Rumsey, who dances here as his flamboyant drag persona “Shasta Cola.” I find myself waiting for him to come on because I know I’m going to be most entertained. In contrast, one of the dancers I was most excited to watch was Janie Taylor. Yet, I find myself getting unexpectedly bored when she’s on here. She does nothing really over-the-top; no spectacular balletic feats. Even that crazy hair flip that generated a lot of press talk pre-show opening — it’s nothing; I almost missed it. There’s no appreciation for subtlety when the movement is this weighted down. The guy on crutches is initially intriguing because you’re wondering what he’s going to do, but you get bored and stop watching when he takes so long to get going. All of a sudden you look back and him and he’s in the air. You think, ‘oh wow,’ but it still doesn’t hold your attention for long because it takes a number of minutes for the guy to do one rotation. You lose interest. Same thing with the Whirling Dervish. Slow-mo can have a very dramatic effect, but not when it’s this slow.

My own personal favorites are Herman Cornejo, Desmond Richardson, William Forsythe, and the aforementioned Rumsey, all of whom, excepting Rumsey, I’m pretty sure I like simply because they’re already so familiar to me. I’m bringing a bunch of friends to the show over the next couple weeks, many non-dance-goers, so will be interested to hear what they think, who their favorites, if any, are. Will most definitely report back!

In the meantime, I’ve started an album on the photo page; I expect to add more pictures, but here are the first few.

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Ugh!

Oh! Look at what I am missing! Right up my alley 🙂 Am so so SO jealous of anyone going to Jacob’s Pillow this year!

Update: thanks to my wonderful, spontaneous friend (who has not lived in NYC for so long now that she has forgotten how to operate a motor vehicle :)), we are going up after all! Will be seeing Bad Boys as well as Mimulus, a Brazilian company that fuses tango, samba, ballroom, theater, and contemporary dance — right up my alley as well! This is my first time at the Pillow. Can’t wait!

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Dance Is For Everyone: David Michalek's Ginormous Public Video Art and Those Midsummer Night Swingers

I’m not a huge social dancer (I mainly take ballroom lessons in order to compete and perform), but I do like going to Midsummer Night Swing to watch the crowd having itself a blast. Midsummer Night Swing is held on the Plaza at Lincoln Center from mid June through July. Each night a different band performs on the bandstand, alternating between several types of danceable music: big band Swing, country western, Salsa (by far the most popular), Disco, and at one point this year there is even to be Samba! At the start of each evening, instructors from various ballroom dance studios in the city give a little lesson in the dance style of that night.

Above are the ever amusing Melanie Lapatin and Tony Meredith, owners of my old studio and 1995 U.S. National Latin Champions, on July 4th, giving the salsa lecture.

Which was followed by this very crowd-wowing demo by a young couple associated with Dance Times Square, Sascha and Oksana.

Always fun to see how people take to the action: some bemusedly learning to dance for the very first time, and others, like this guy above, showing his homeland pride and helping the band out a bit from the sidelines with his maracas.

It was raining off and on on the 4th, so the crowd was unusually small, but it’s normally so packed out there you can hardly move. I just love how they have this immensely popular social dance event located smack in the center of THE institutions of “high art” dance: The State Theater, to the left in the top pic, houses the New York City Ballet, and the Metropolitan Opera House, in the back, the American Ballet Theater, which just ended its Spring Season. For the first couple weeks of Midsummer Night Swing, ABT performances were still happening, though, and I often wondered if any of the social dancers, for example, this cheery Puerto Rican group, noticed any of the several large posters in front of the Met showing scenes from the ballet, and were at all inspired to try a ballet performance. Something tells me likely not.

But tonight, that may well change. It’s the official opening of photographer / filmmaker David Michalek‘s new public art dance exhibit, “Slow Dancing,” also at Lincoln Center Plaza.

Michalek filmed twelve dancers from various styles (including several from ballet), doing a very brief five-second movement, which he then slowed way the heck down, so that each segment plays on film for a whopping 10 minutes. Three giant screens are to be erected on the front of the State Theater, one dancer on each. I’d gone to see him speak about the work at the Guggenheim a few months ago, and blogged about its potential iconic effect on the dancers shown, here.

This public art project is part of the Lincoln Center Festival and will continue through the end of July, when it will travel to other outdoor venues throughout the country.

I love that this project is available for all (there’s no fee to access the Plaza), and I’m really excited to see this unique intersection of ballet and social dance, or, I guess “high” and “pop” art, if you believe in dichotomies. From the sound of it, the screens will be so large that I feel people will be compelled to look. Hopefully, of course, they will be captivated by the movement as well. We shall see!

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Two New Champions Crowned In American; Same Ole Same Ole for International: Manhattan DanceSport Championships 2007

Very exciting (but very tiring) weekend, nearly all of which was spent at this, the biggest and best of all local (ie: Mid-Atlantic region) competitions! Thanks to the retirements of the two top couples in American Smooth and American Rhythm, we now have two new champions in those divisions. Above are the new champs of Smooth, Eulia Baranovsky and Steven Doughtery. Below are the newly crowned King and Queen of Rhythm, Joanna Zacharewicz and Jose DeCamps.

So often with Ballroom competitions, the same people win over and over and over again, making the dancing itself always spectacular but the results a complete bore if not outright annoyance (if your favorite happens not to be the one who ad nauseam places first). So this year’s dual retirements (Ben and Shalene Ermis in Smooth, and now permanent DANCING WITH THE STARS fixtures Tony Dovolani and Elena Grinenko in Rhythm), made for a couple of very nail-bitingly intense nights all the way up to the 1:00 a.m. trophy presentations.

Above is, awww, my personal faves for Rhythm, second-place couple Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine and his new partner, Julia Gorchakova. Actually, Rhythm this year was a particularly loony soap opera. Ever since I first began coming to this competition, three years ago now, I’ve noticed the Rhythm championship is by far the most raucous of all four categories. Especially during the last of the Rhythm dances, Mambo, when the crowd is just going wild screaming and cheering on their favorite couples so loudly, you can hardly hear the music.

(If you know nothing of Ballroom, and actually care to know :), let me just briefly lay out the blueprint of an American competition: There are four main categories (each of which includes separate competitions for professionals, amateurs, and pro/ams, where students compete with their teachers — the kind I used to do when I still had a bank account 🙂 ):

1) American Smooth (couples compete in 4 dances: Waltz, Foxtrot, Tango, and Viennese Waltz);

2) American Rhythm (5 dances: Cha Cha, Rumba, Swing, Bolero, and Mambo);

3) International Standard (5 dances: Waltz, Slowfox, Viennese Waltz, Tango, and Quickstep); and

4) International Latin 🙂 (5 dances: Cha Cha, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble, and Jive).

So, back to the Rhythm drama. The crowd favorite has been, for a long time, this couple (pictured below in last year’s National competition: Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine and Joanna Zacharewicz):


For whatever reason, and I don’t want to get into gossip over who initiated and why, they broke up. And with that break-up, fan loyalties were torn asunder, oh no! Emmanuel teamed up with former, longtime Rhythm champion Julia Gorchakova, who, with her former partner, retired a couple of years ago but apparently came out of retirement just for him. And Joanna managed to snag the very cute and rather celebrity-esque, Jose DeCamps, who formerly danced with probably the most famous of the DWTS pro dancers, Cheryl Burke. I haven’t seen Jose before and I’m thinking he retired after Cheryl began her TV stint, and likewise emerged from retirement for Joanna, but I’m not completely sure; he may just have been partnerless.

Well, my heart was with Emmanuel, for reasons I’ll get to in a second, but I just have to say I can completely see why Jose has the fan base he does. He just exudes safe, strong, warm Latin guy, kinda like a certain favorite ballet dancer 🙂

But my loyalties must remain with Emmanuel! Before he left my old studio, I took a few lessons with him, and he was one of the best, most technique-focused teachers I’ve ever had. I wrote about this before (but it was before anyone ever read my blog 🙂 ), but he used to do this thing where he’d start us out with a completely boring salsa basic. I guess just having seen so much ballet, I’m always trying to “fly” as he calls it; I have no connection with the floor basically. It looks like ballet dancers are connecting with the air, not the ground, especially the ballerinas, so that was my aim of course. “Woman! The only reason you’re still upright is because you’re so light!” he’d cry out in his Haitian accent when I’d try a double spin and nearly fall. “All dancers know where the floor is at all times; even ballet dancers,” he’d rant on. Then, he’d close his eyes take me into a closed hold (guy’s right hand on girl’s back shoulder blade, girl’s left hand on top of his shoulder and free hands clasped together) and tell me to visualize myself connecting with the floor. And the freaky thing is, he’d have this uncanny way of being able to tell how well I was mentally connecting to the floor just by feeling my frame. He could honestly tell, with his eyes closed, whether my mind as wandering (thinking, for ex., ‘can’t we do something beyond a stupid salsa basic’), or whether I was concentrating on the floor beneath my feet. And he was always right on the mark about where my mind was. Weird. Anyway, in addition to being an excellent teacher, he’s a genuinely nice guy. He always goes out of his way to say hello to me at all the big competitions, even though he is really a kind of “star” in the ballroom world, and he’d always tell me I did well in a showcase (though I knew it wasn’t true!) Oh, and he’s also an amazingly awesome dancer! Focused on technique though he is in his own lessons, he really puts on a show like no one else. His choreography is so mad fun, his style so wild, he and Joanna were often called upon to perform showdances, for example, on last year’s America’s Ballroom Challenge, and last season’s DWTS.

And what a riotious show-down it was Sunday night! Both Jose and Joanna and Emmanuel and Julia really danced their hearts out. As my friend pointed out to me, the judges’ faces kept seesawing between the two, stopping to focus on absolutely no one else on the floor. “How are they going to decide who comes in third, fourth, and fifth?” she said.

The fun / intensity / melodrama — however you prefer to see it — of this competition is that it’s the biggest in the area, and one in which all of the top couples compete. Many see it as a forecast of what’s going to happen — who’s going to take tops — at Nationals in Florida, coming up in September.

No surprises in International-Style.

Andrei Gavriline and Elena Kruychkova won in International Latin.

And the always glorious Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova in Standard. My favorite Standard couple has long been Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed, below.


But, actually, the more I see of Jonathan and Katusha, the more I hear Jonathan lecture on the art of Ballroom dance at Blackpool and the way his love of the sport / art really shines through, and the more I really watch them closely and realize their technical brilliance, the more he really is growing on me. I think sometimes, Englishmen can seem distant and aloof at first. But he really does seem to appreciate his fans and the applause they get, weaker than that received by Victor and Anna. And his dimpled Ralph Fiennes smile is starting to be a familiar staple of my whole ballroom experience, an essential part of that world that just whisks me away whenever I go to these big competitions. And the more I see them dance, I do see why, though Victor and Anna are the king and queen of charm, the more I understand why Jonathan and Katusha are number one in the country for several years in a row now and practically number one in the world. Some of the things they do, while not so flashy, are very difficult. I love it when he takes her out to the center of the floor during Waltz and they’ll do reverse turns for over a minute. Those are not only absolutely beautiful, but so hard to sustain that momentum and maintain that precise footwork for so long — far longer than the other couples — without getting dizzy, especially for the woman since you really have no way of spotting, and you’re just turning and turning and turning.

Okay, Latin, the other melodrama, this one never-ending:

Above is the eternally second-place couple, Max Kozhnevnikov and the absolutely divine Yulia Zagorouychenko, by far the crowd favorite, which, believe me, becomes all too obvious with the loud, rather nasty boos of disappointment when Max and Yulia are called runners-up. I always feel sorry for Andrei and Elena when that happens, because the crowd is booing, by extension, their winning. Funny thing is: while the U.S. judges continuously mark Andrei and Elena number one, the World judges repeatedly place Max and Yulia well above Andrei and Elena. In fact, Max and Yulia made finals at Blackpool this year. The U.S. judges insist Andrei and Elena’s technique is perfect and will say no more. But the World judges insist otherwise, showing, excuse me, but how full of absolute dog crap ballroom judges can be.

Anyway, for me, my ideal partership (of the American couples anyway) would actually be Andrei with Yulia. I’ve honestly never seen anyone (of the Americans anyway) move the way Andrei does. He is a tall thin man who just flies across that floor seemingly at lightening speed, light as a feather, and his hips, legs, and feet just a blur. He used to give privates at my studio, and before I knew who he was, I saw him show a student a backwards three Cha chas– a very rudimentary, first-level step. I’d never seen anyone do a basic step like that. My heart dropped. I realized then good dancing is not about fancy steps, but about the way the basics are executed. I remember thinking, wow, this guy should compete. Stupid. Then, I saw him on the cover of Dancesport mag and realized, dur, he’s the national champion. My problem with his partnership with Elena (his wife) is that, a former gynmast, she’s so teeny tiny; he must be nearly a foot taller. Not only do they look a bit odd together, but sometimes it throws them off. Last year at the Ohio Star Ball (aka: “America’s Ballroom Challenge” in its televised incarnation), they lost a normally easily-maintained connection, likely because his arm was just too high to hold her properly.

And Yulia! Yulia Zagorouychenko is probably my favorite of all female Latin dancers, excepting Karina Smirnoff who (also now a mainstay on DWTS), hasn’t competed in a while. Not to sound silly, but to me, Yulia is like the Alessandra Ferri of Latin — she’s a true artist. She moves in wholly unique ways, creating shapes with her body that are completely her own. She’ll go nearly on pointe in those open-toed sandals in Rumba, thrusting her hips foreward and rounding her shoulder blades so that she looks, cooly, like a cobra or something. I worry that she’s going to get serious bone spurs on her toes by the time she’s in her thirties with that on pointe on a hard-wood floor in open-toed shoes, but right now it looks absolutely gorgeous. I feel that sometimes Max, as much of a little cutie as he is, and as creative as he is with their choreography, just doesn’t really share her artistic brilliance.

So, it’s funny because, well, at one point on Saturday night, the two couples were dancing very closely to one another. I think the dance was Rhumba. I was focused on the couple right in front of me, another favorite, the breathtaking Delyan Terziev and Boriana Deltcheva, when all of a sudden the crowd began going wild. I looked further out onto the floor to see that Andrei and Max had exchanged partners– particularly cute, and demonstrating very good sportsmanship given the rivalry. Max went to dip Elena and she jumped up and wrapped both legs around his back. Lifts are strictly forbidden in non-showcase competition, but of course it was a moment of goofiness, and therefore, forgiven. Silly as she was trying to be, I was amazed at how good they actually looked together; their small bodies were a perfect match for each other. And then I looked at Andrei and Yulia — he was doing this crazy dip with her and it looked so amazingly stunning. Then she stood up and placed her arms around his neck. She’s a lot taller than Elena and they looked absolutely gorgeous together. Powerhouse couple that would be!

Anyway, here are some more highlights:


Delyan and Boriana, as I mentioned above, one of my favorites artistically. They’re a tall, thin, long-limbed couple and their Rhumba looks almost Balletic. She looks like an inky black spider!

They’re at the same level as my dear beloved Pasha and Anya (who didn’t compete, as they are a little busy with something else at the moment!!!), the two usually duke it out for fourth or fifth place — way too low for both couples. Strange how I always seem to champion the underdogs…

A Smooth couple I like, J.T. Damalas and Tomasz Mielnicki. They always dance with a lot of pizazz, and always do a very sexy foxtrot. I think they placed third. She makes her own dresses, and she usually comes up with something just bedazzling. How gorgeous is that color!!! (Sorry for all the zombie-looking eyes, by the way. I need a new camera!)

Matt and Karen Hauer, a sweet, newlywed Rhythm couple. They started off their Mambo routine very cutely: he took one look at her and broke into a series of small jumps, as if to say how wowed he was at her. She watched in amusement, then he grabbed her hand and they took off.

Another shot of Jose DeCamps and Joanna Zacharewicz in Rhythm. Jose really is a charmer.

Katusha’s little sister, Anna Demidova and her partner, Igor Mikushov, who placed first in Amateur Standard. They competed in Blackpool as well, and placed very high there too. Promising future those two.

The always lovely (and very photogenic) Anna Trebunskaya (if name sounds familiar, she too has danced with stars; that sports star Jerry Rice, to be exact). She has a new partner, Pasha Barsuk (oh no, another “Pasha and Anna”!!) and they did very well for a new partnership, placing 5th in Latin. Good for her 🙂

One last thing: the throng of spectators was absolutely huge, as you can kind of see here with onlookers anxiously awaiting Victor and Anna’s slowfox. Latin was about ten times worse than Standard though; you really could hardly move on Saturday night, and I’m sure the crowd standing, of necessity since there was nowhere else to go, around the exit, was a borderline fire hazzard. Blackpool was crazy packed this year too. Attendees at ballroom competitions used to consist mainly of friends and family (and the few students) of the competitors, a crowd that could easily fit at the several tables encircling the dance floor. But the more popular dancesport is becoming, the more of a spectator sport it really is. I think they’re going to need to find a new venue for some of those more popular competitions and put up some serious risers. At least for Latin…

Anyway, here are more photos in the album. It’s not finished yet, as I have yet to match some names with faces, and some names are horrifically misspelled, so please bear with me until the weekend when I have more time for fix-ups.

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Don’t Listen to Alastair Macaulay! Or, Rather, Do Listen to Him, But Listen To Everyone Else As Well!!!

I got so upset and angry when I read his review of Cinderella in the Times yesterday, which is rather funny for me since not too long ago, I screamed at everyone at Oberon’s Grove (a very New York City Ballet fan-centric blog) for not letting a critic be critical and obsessing over those who harp on NYCB’s artistic director, Peter Martins 🙂 And now that Macaulay’s ripping on my beloved American Ballet Theater, I know how they feel! Seriously though, obviously I stick to my guns that in a democratic system a critic can and should be critical, should never be silenced, and should offer opinions based in knowledge, education, insight, and love and passion for his/her chosen field. So, I value Macaulay’s opinions, and I respectfully disagree with him. The problem with dance criticism I feel, and the reason why fans get so upset, is that (unlike, say, film criticism or theater criticism), there aren’t enough critical voices out there offering different perspectives, leaving one person’s opinion to have HUGE repercussions, especially when that one person writes for the New York Times.

Anyway, I’ll return to my thoughts on dance criticism in a minute, but first I just want to say how much I LOVE the version of Cinderella that ABT is doing right now. (That’s dreamy David Hallberg, as Prince Charming, and fabulous Gillian Murphy, as Cinderella in that pic above, by the way). This version, a recent one by Canadian choreographer James Kudelka, sets the action in the Roaring Twenties, the women donning wavy bobs, the men suits (that means no tights, for straight men who freak out over such things — more on that subject in a later post…), replete with Art Deco sets and very fun, colorful costumes. The dance style is not classical, but rather modernist, ballet, and, set in the Jazz Age, the movements have a swingy, jazzy, hip-jutting, flirty component that’s rather fun and sexy if you ask me. In the Ball scenes, the women slink around on point, walking like they’re on a catwalk. It looks ten times cooler than it would in high heels, and makes me wanna go out and buy a pair of toe shoes, just to walk like that! No, it’s not “classical” ballet, but it’s a lot of mad crazy fun — can ballet please be fun for once? Is there a rule that says it always has to be serious and that everything ABT does has to be “classical”?? Almost everything ABT does during its Met season is classical. I’m so happy they gave us Kudelka’s Cinderella, and Lar Lubovitch’s Othello for a change. Classical ballet is sublime and it must be preserved and its beauty shown to younger audiences, but there must also be a good amount of the new for ballet to maintain a fresh focus and have a future. ABT is “America’s National Ballet Company” and it should have something for everyone, younger and older. We don’t need more (classical) Frederick Ashton, as Macaulay wants; we need more James Kudelka for the younger generation!!! Okay, enough of that rampage, back to Cinderella.

Everyone knows the basic Cinderella story, so I don’t need to repeat it, but here, Kudelka has gone all out on the humor and kept the wickedness to a minimum. Cindy’s stepmom is a nutty, silly drunk; her stepsisters consist of a bespectacled dork who nevertheless seems to smack into everything in (her poor) sight and confuse the prince with his assistants, and a would-be vixen who’s far too much of a sweetly geeky screwball to actually be seductive. Since this is a ballet, the stepmom hires a dance instructor (danced gorgeously by my wonderful — and tall — Vitali!) to teach the stepdaughters and their equally looney paid escorts to the Ball, how to dance. Of course the sisters hilariously fall all over each other and their paid men. Macaulay finds these characters all unfunny. I couldn’t disagree more. The audience was laughing hysterically and the ballerinas who danced the sisters, who took curtain call bows in character, all got tremendous rounds of applause, so I think the audience was largely with me on this.

I love the way the pointe shoes are used: in contrast to the sisters who don the shoes throughout, in the beginning Cinderella dances barefoot, echoing her life of poverty. Part of her Ball costume, as bestowed by the Fairy Godmother, consists of the beautiful toe slippers, one of which comes off during the mad midnight rush to get her back to her stepmom via her theatrical Pumpkin-mobile. (By the way, regarding all these fun props, etc., Apollinaire Scherr in her Newsday review likens Kudelka to film director Tim Burton. I LOVE that comparison! Please, Mr. McKenzie, spice things up more often at ABT; more ‘Tim Burton’!!!) Anyway, once Cindy gets home, she dances, one foot on pointe, the other flat — one foot in the land of fairy-tale, the other in that of her drab sad life. To me, it’s a perfect poetic illustration of the power of ballet to transport you to another world.

Okay, as for the dancers: Marcelo as P. Charming 🙂 🙂 🙂 Marcelo’s like a movie star who somehow ended up on a ballet stage. He’s such a great actor, and he just has this face that says it all without even trying. When the dorky myopic stepsister puts on her glasses to see she has just been flirting with the wrong man and turns around to lay all her “charms” on Marcelo’s poor Prince, all he has to do is shift his facial muscles ever so slightly to widen his eyes and it’s the perfect understated reaction. You just can’t stop laughing. He’s like a Rupert Everett or a Hugh Grant or something; he doesn’t need to do much onstage; he’s a natural. I love the fact that he dances in NY, where I can see him up close several weeks per year, and would never ever want him to leave, but I do wonder if he could make that Baryshnikovian transition from stage to screen… And Julie Kent was beautiful. She dances so well with him; they’re such a perfect match. The pas de deux, which Apollinaire’s more advanced dance vocabulary can far better describe than I, were so sweet I wanted to cry.

 

 

David, on the other hand, is the quintessential ballet dancer. Just one look at him and you can tell he was born to dance ballet. He’s like a throwback to the great ballet men of yore. Marcelo is the consummate ‘leading man’; David the ‘danseur noble.’

And Gillian is such a spectacular ballerina, and, with her warmth and glow, so perfect as the fairy-tale heroine. Julie is a perfect partner — when I think of her I think of a beautiful, dreamy pas de deux; when I think of Gillian I think of crazy fast fouettes and pirouettes — she definitely brings to life the solo bravura parts of any choreography. People say Gillian is shy in real life — I can’t believe that! She seems so outgoing onstage!

The others: Carmen Corella!

I absolutely LOVE her would-be-a sexpot-if-she-wasn’t-such-a-klutz stepsister. (She danced in the first, Marcelo / Julie cast.) I know a lot of people long to play the principal roles, but the ‘sidekick’ parts are crucial, the main roles in contrast can often be a bore. She really brings those parts to life and often makes the ballet with her crafty, unique, often hilarious interpretations of them. Kristi Boone, who played that character in the second cast, was good, but I just really think Carmen owns that role — she should dance it every night. Marian Butler was expectedly cute as the bespectacled dork sister, but Maria Riccetto surprised me with her raucous rendition as well. (I still miss Erica Cornejo, who owned that role last year before she left ABT for Boston!).

Craig Salstein!

 

He did this absolutely scream-out-loud pelvic gyration while Carmen’s stepsister was trying to fit her fat foot into the tiny toe shoe. It went along perfectly with the beats of the music and it was so funny I’m sorry to say I giggled all throughout the beautiful (and very serious) ending pas de deux between Cindy and the Prince, just remembering Craig.

Adrienne Schulte made my night Tuesday as the hilariously drunken stepmom. She completely commanded my attention everytime she was onstage. She is a Carmen-to-be 🙂

 

I left out a bunch of fun stuff, like the wildly bouncing pumpkin men, the ever-amusing Twenties-style world-wide search for the girl who fits the shoe, including the bumpy “car ride,” the independent-woman Amelia Earhart who could give a crap about some prince and his toe shoe, and the photographer with his blindingly flashy camera and the vanity of the new media with all its ‘poseurs.’ It’s so much fun, and is playing now through Saturday night. Don’t listen to Macaulay! Go!

Okay, if you’re not a dance-industry person or just some crazy person like me who really really really cares about dance, please stop reading now (because this next section will bore the pants off of you). Just get a ticket and go see Cinderella. Hurry, you only have a couple of days left. Go here for tix.

Now for a few stray thoughts on dance criticism: Apollinaire Scherr has a very interesting post today about her thoughts on Alastair Macaulay’s reign as the New York Times chief dance critic thus far (he replaced outgoing chief John Rockwell earlier this year; go here for Apollinaire’s earlier (and very controversial!) writings on that). As the chief dance critic of the New York Times, she believes he has the most important role of all press people in the dance world. I both agree and disagree with that. I think the Times speaks to the audience that is most likely to go to a ballet performance, and so, I think whoever has an article in that newspaper is going to have a lot of power. I think it’s we people in the dance world – the writers, the dance-makers, the administrators, the dancers, the fans — who pay attention to bylines; I think the average newspaper or magazine reader has no idea who wrote what article; they just remember the writing and opinion expressed within as “the Times article,” as in “The Times said, this,” or “The Times thought that,” about a performance.

That said, while I often disagree, yet sometimes agree, with Macaulay’s interpretation of or opinion on something, I appreciate that it’s there. BUT, I think it’s ESSENTIAL that other voices abound and are heard. Apollinaire (I’m sorry, I tend to call dancers and writers who I “know” –either personally or through their stage presence — by their first names! — it’s a sign of familiarity not disrespect, but I’ll try to remember to call people by last names!!) — anyway, Ms. Scherr made a reference to Macaulay not being that much of an “old fart” like some of his predecessors (ie: Rockwell, who I thought had some good ideas toward the end of his tenure which I’ll get to in a minute). I kind of disagree with her on that. I think some of the views he’s expressed have been that of an older generation, and, in particular, an older male generation, such as his piece on the retiring ballerinas, in which he made some kind of reference (sorry the permalink to the article has expired or I’d link to it) to ballerinas as being the most important part of ballet. As a younger woman, I, like several younger women I know, go to see the men, so that does not ring true with us. For example, it was lamented recently by one such younger woman that ABT’s 2007 calendar contained ballerinas. And, a look at some of the posts on the Winger message board, for example, replete with pics of Hallberg posing for a catalog in a dance belt, and you can see who is going to the ballet and for what reason. Anyway, I felt completely alienated from that review of Macaulay. BUT, I am also glad to have read a review with an alternate opinion from my own and, now I know why ballet is so important to an older generation, and particularly a male one. And I can use it to fight with my straight male friends who insist that no straight men ever go to the ballet unless they have homosexual tendencies (but more about that later…) Also, this Cinderella review, I felt, came from an older perspective — one that wanted all the classics back and was not open to the new.

I’m relatively new to dance, but I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of real anger and animosity and even rather crazy intense hatred in the dance world between writers / media and fans and media and administrators and dancers, sometimes even between media people. There seems to be more fighting in the dance world even than amongst lawyers 🙂

I don’t know if this is normal in the arts, but I recently attended two panel discussions that really floored me. The first was The Nothing Festival, which I blogged about earlier, and which was organized by choreographer Tere O’Connor and was supposed to deal with the creative process and the process of grant application writing. Instead, it very quickly devolved into a discussion, all choreographers both on the panel and in the audience in agreement, of how much the press basically sucks — how horrible the writers are, how they don’t know what to look for in a dance performance, how dance is totally devalued in the Times and on TV, how there are no good dance critics like (film critic) Pauline Kael, how dance criticism is awful compared to other arts criticism, etc. etc. etc. It was really actually very interesting for me as a newcomer to the dance scene, and I’m very glad I attended, and, toward the end of the four hours, we were actually beginning to get somewhere productive, but then it ended.

I then attended a panel discussion at NYCB with the main R+J dancers (Hyltin, deLuz, and R. Fairchild) right after the opening of Martins’ Romeo + Juliet. One of the first questions the moderator posed to the dancers was, “how did you deal with all of that criticism?” Mumbles of annoyance abounded in the audience. “Oh, it’s very hard; I don’t look at reviews anymore until after the run is over,” Hyltin said, a very upset tone in her voice. “One very nasty review really affected my performance one time,” she said, dejected. DeLuz, older and more experienced, was more cynical: “I gave up paying attention,” he laughed with a shrug. “They’re gonna say what they’re gonna say — they know beforehand, before they even see it.” A woman audience member then raised her hand: “Oh I just got so mad at that one critic; I just wanted to wring her neck… I just … well … I should have written in,” said, shaking her fist in the air. “Yes, you should have,” the audience practically said in unison. And just on my blog and on Philip’s blog, some of the comments we get, there’s so much anger at the dance writers.

All of that anger upsets me because, after being forced to take a break from dancing myself and now turning to blog about these dance performances that I see, I can say, of all the things I’ve done: law school, heinous bar exam, writing a novel and actually getting an agent to represent me, learning to dance as an adult — writing meaningfully, forget beautifully just meaningfully (!) about dance, about something so visual and so amazingly beautiful and so compelling, is just about the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. So, it greatly bothers me that dance people have so little respect for the incredibly difficult (and often very underpaid) work that dance writers do.

But what really confused me was why, why all the anger. I regularly attend book readings (where authors read from their work), independent film festivals (where the filmmakers are on hand to discuss their film), art openings (ditto for the artist), and I’ve never heard anyone ask, “how on earth do you deal with all the criticism?” And it’s not like criticism doesn’t abound in those fields — particularly film and book reviews. I think it’s at least partly due to the fact that there are so few writers, so few voices, which make those few existing voices incredibly important to the success of the production, or the reputation of the dancer. Scherr also criticised Macaulay for his sometimes sarcastic tone, in particular with respect to Irina Dvorovenko, and how damaging it can be to a dancer. I agree. Sarcasm in reviews is nothing new though — Gia Kourlas and Robert Gottlieb have done the same, as have Pauline Kael and, one of my overall favorite critics, Anthony Lane, whose reviews I often find to be works of art in themselves. And sarcasm is oftentimes very funny and it works well to make a point. But, I think that kind of thing just operates differently in film criticism — there must be tens of thousands of film critics all over the country. If a dance critic does the same thing, it could have a profound effect, since that one voice is often the only one that’s heard on a certain production or dancer. Tuesday night in the ladies room I overheard one woman to another: “How are you liking it?”

“Oh, I really like it?! I do!”

“I know, so do I?!”

“I can’t believe it, it got bad reviews, but it’s really actually good!”

People take these reviews very seriously.

I honestly got so upset over Macaulay’s Cinderella review, I’m embarrassed to say I nearly cried! I always get weird though at the end of the season; after all I’m not going to be able to see my favorites again for several months, and then only for a tiny three-week run at City Center. I guess I just worry that audiences aren’t going to see Cinderella because “The Times” didn’t like it, and then Kevin McKenzie’s not going to put it on again, and I really really really think that if ballet audiences are going to grow there needs to be more contemporary work performed, a combination of the classical with the modern, like McKenzie kind of did this season. I personally want to see them do more of it: more Mark Morris, and some Matthew Bourne and William Forsythe and Neuemier’s “Death in Venice,” etc., etc., but I well know I’m not going to get all that! Just some, though, would be nice, and the Kudelka is a huge start 🙂

I’m glad Macaulay’s given Gia Kourlas some good assignments (she got to write the Othello review and the Alessandra Ferri farewell review), and she kind of represents a different, younger-generation voice, so that’s good. But there’s still only one review of each thing, and so little space is given… And of course there are other papers and magazines but they often get overlooked by the general public, and then their review space is so limited too. And half the time, the reviews come at the END of the run (what was that Joan Acocella article on the two Romeo and Juliets doing in last week’s New Yorker; it’s been like 10 years since Martins’ R+J premiered now??) Dance critics and writers are hugely important, as they bring dance to the public with their insight, their vast knowledge, their poetic descriptions, their expressions of passion for their art, they create excitement for dance, they create dancer personalities with interviews and profiles. There needs to be more!

I also think sometimes dance critics are SO knowledgeable that they get bogged down in their own ken and forget who their audience is. As Scherr pointed out, in his review of Sleeping Beauty, Macaulay went on and on about the differences between McKenzie’s version of the ballet and the others, for example, the one the Royal Ballet puts on. I know it’s hard not to do this when there’s a brand new version that’s being shown and you have all these prior productions that you feel are superior, but what is the average ballet-goer supposed to do with a review like that? So, he thinks the Royal’s version is better; the Royal’s not performing in New York right now, so what am I supposed to do, buy a plane ticket and head to London, petition McKenzie to change versions for next year? Should I go see ABT or not — that’s all I want to know as a Times reader. Maybe this is completely contraditory, but I did like, however, his first couple of reviews, of the beginning of NYCB’s season and their Balanchine programs, particularly of Kyra Nichols’s performance compared to the others’. I’d blogged about it here. I thought those early reviews hinted at (and only hinted unfortunately, presumably because of space limitations) what made Kyra so great, what made Balanchine great, what perhaps could be missing from NYCB, from the other dancers, in terms of presenting Balanchine. Not that such reviews told the average reader whether or not to go to NYCB, but I guess it gave me a small sense of what to look for in Kyra, what to look for in Balanchine, how to look more closely at a Balanchine ballet and what to appreciate about it. And it got some people, for a short while, talking. So I guess good dance writing should also make people think, or compel them to look more closely, or give them a sense of what to look for, or just get people talking. His Beauty review didn’t do this, unless I don’t know the Times audience at all and everyone really does want to know which version is the best. How do you know who your audience is anyway?

Oh, and the thing I was going to say about Rockwell: I thought, “fuddy duddy” though he may have been, that he made a great suggestion toward the end of his tenure, and that was to rotate the productions during ABT’s Met season, as the opera does. I know one reason why newspapers and mags don’t give a lot of space to dance is because the runs of a certain performance are so short and a paper gets the review out and readers have about five minutes to get a ticket before the thing closes. I think getting rid of the block programming would give the media a chance to create buzz about something (through either positive or negative reviews) well before it closes. I realize this does nothing for the smaller companies who can only afford to have very short runs… It’s like dance isn’t that popular because there’s so little press and there’s so little press because dance is not popular… Ugh. Sorry for all the random, haphazardly expressed thoughts. Apollinaire just got me thinking!

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I Finally Got My Dramatic Odette!: "Swan" Wrap-Up, Taye Diggs, and a Fun Reader-Participation Survey!

So, Saturday afternoon I saw my third, and probably overall favorite, Swan Lake at ABT. As I mentioned in my last post, I had gone hoping to see Veronika Part in the lead role but, sadly, she was unable to perform due to an injury. I MUST see her perform this role at some point! Next year…

The Trouble With Favorites

So, taking her place were Irina Dvorovenko, as the White Swan, Princess Odette / Black Swan, Odile, and her husband and frequent partner, Max Beloserkovksy, as the Prince. Seeing Irina, whose performances I used to go to much more often, made me realize what I miss by having my favorites and only going to see them. Not that it’s unimportant to have favorites — I think it’s a huge part of what draws you to a certain company and then, in turn, to ballet or dance, in general. And, my two are of course him and most definitely him 🙂 🙂 . The problem for me is, it means missing out on ballerinas like Irina, who, for some odd reason, doesn’t ever dance with these two guys. And I ended up getting everything from Irina that I had complained about not getting from the two previous ballerinas I’d seen!

Backtracking for a sec, I first saw Diana Vishneva and First Favorite Man 🙂 , and, as I had blogged earlier, wasn’t very moved by Diana, mainly because she seemed to have no connection with Marcelo’s Prince Siegfried; her Odette (White Swan / Princess), as I said, existed in a completely separate world from him.

Then, Friday night I had my second SWAN viewing, with Second Favorite Man 🙂 ) and Michele Wiles in the leads. To this one, I brought a friend, and one who has never, at least to her recollection, seen a live ballet performance. She’s familiar with classical music though, and with Tschiakovsky, and was interested in going because of that.

Classical, Story Ballets Involve Dramatic Action

It’s always fun to introduce a new person to ballet to see what they think, what their initial reaction is: whether they found the love of their life, were bored to tears, were completely stupefied, were completely mesmerized, or, by turns, were actually all of the above. I guess my friend was pretty much the last: in the end, she said she found Ballet intriguing enough to try another, but concluded that Swan Lake really was just not going to be her favorite. I’m a relative newcomer to the scene too, having been going for a couple years, and I pretty much shared her issues with this cast / production, which were the same as with the Diana / Marcelo one: a fun, flirtatious, overall good Black Swan who made the second half of the production a little more lively than the first, but a too ethereal White Swan who couldn’t garner audience sympathy, forcing the first half to be long and boring, and overall preventing the audience from connecting to the characters, story, and action. My friend said she thought the second ballerina (in the black) was better than the first: she didn’t know they were the same!

My feelings about Michele are a repeat of Diana: at the beginning, David’s Prince spots the Swan at the lake, prepares to shoot her with his crossbow, until he sees her transform into the beautiful girl Odette, then hides in the bushes and watches, transfixed by her beauty. Odette is supposed to spot him, and began fearfully to flutter away until he convinces her he means no harm. She then supposedly tells him her tragic story of being turned into a bird by the evil von Rothbart; mesmerized, he listens attentively, falls deeply in love. She falls for him too, and her plight is caught up in their love, as only his pure love can break the spell, allowing her to become a girl again.

Diana’s and Michele’s Odettes, however, are completely unmoved by, even unaware of, their princes. They danced beautifully as swans (Diana had more feathery, watery arms than Michele, though Michele blew me away at the tail end of the scene as her arms turned airy and liquidy and she nearly flew on pointe into the wings– don’t know why she couldn’t have done that throughout), their princes come out of hiding, toss their crossbows away, shake their heads to say, “no, I’m not going to hurt you,” and run to the girls. The girls are supposed to tell their princes the story of the spell, through that beautiful pas de deux. But Diana and Michele don’t even so much as look at the men throughout this entire scene. So, the men are basically having a conversation with themselves, an internal conflict over this creature, while she dances about in her own world. “Wait, when did she tell him the story?” my friend asked at intermission, frowning down at her Playbill. “I feel like I missed all of this,” she said pointing to the synopsis. She did; she missed everything because it didn’t happen.

Diana and Michele were better in the second half (where von Rothbart casts his daughter, Odile — the false Odette — in Odette’s likeness to trick and seduce the Prince), but still weren’t ideal. Their dancing was spectacular, all those crazy fast fouettes and pirouettes and jumps were thrilling, but, apart from the dancing, there was no drama: they still weren’t connecting to their princes, so the seduction and flirtation wasn’t there.

In other words, a drama happens when two or more people interact with each other. One character wants something from another and there is a conflict, leading to a dramatic situation. I realize that a ballet is not exactly the same as a play. A ballet involves, obviously, movement, part of which tells the story. But story-ballets (and, to me, even shorter, more abstract ones, as I’ll talk about later) are dramas and they need full, three-dimensional characters who bounce off of each other.

Irina understood this. Irina’s gorgeous Swan is dancing beautifully center stage, arms aflutter, in her own tragic world, just turning from swan to girl, when Max’s Prince, overtaken by her beauty, rushes toward her bow and arrow still in hand. Irina’s girl actually looks at him, realizes she’s in danger, holds her arms up to her face, shielding herself, and begins bourreing quickly backward. He tosses the bow and arrow aside and runs toward her, gesturing that he won’t hurt her. She then performs the beautiful pas de deux with him, perfectly conveying to him her sad story of the spell. Obviously, she can’t say anything in words (and the words are in the Playbill so it doesn’t matter), but, I mean, she tells him everything with her body and her facial expressions. She’s not in her own world; she’s “talking” to him. Even when her body is turned away from him, and she can’t look at him, she registers his presence with closed eyes, head tilted back ever so slightly, subtely, toward him. And his body language and facial expressions convey that he listens, hears, and understands. The whole story was perfectly, compellingly HERE. When von Rothbart enters from the back of the stage to claim her his Swan, taking her from the Prince, and the Prince retrieves his bow and arrow, Irina quickly bourres backward to von Roth., shielding his body entirely with hers, her head turned dramatically up, as if even to protect even his head from a blow. She even shakes her head “no” at the Prince. Irina’s Odette makes it all too clear that the Prince can’t kill v. Roth or she will die as well.

I know critics don’t often like Irina, and I’m not entirely certain as to why, but I’ve heard it’s partly because she “overacts.”And I seem to remember hearing specific complaints about those turned-up chins of hers. Well, all I can say is that I felt that she made more dramatic sense of this story than anyone else I’ve seen, and I wished my friend would have seen her Swan.

The Men, And What Makes Hallberg So Sexy?

As for the men: I’m not a huge fan of Max — he doesn’t seem to have the technical prowess or the stage personality of either of my favorite guys — his jumps are not as high and his legs don’t fully straighten out into splits when he does them, unlike with the other two, and doesn’t have Marcelo’s humanity and relatability or David’s brainy sensitivity or either man’s inherent sexiness of movement (can I just ask, for a minute, WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE WAY DAVID WALKS across stage? He has this way of settling into his hip socket, or maybe it’s that he lifts his pronounced, pointed foot entirely off the floor with each step, or maybe his weight is a slight bit more foreward, like in Rhumba walks — whatever it is, the way he moves about stage when he’s not leaping or pirouetting is so crazy sexy and so unlike anyone else’s movement. Since he’s practically the only American man in ABT, I wonder, is it an American thing — something in his training? Maybe it’s nothing more than that he simply has longer legs than most). And it’s definitely not something he does on purpose. Joan Acocella recently noted that he doesn’t seem to know he’s a star. He doesn’t seem to know how hot he is either 🙂 !!– I hope it stays that way. I don’t want him to become a pompous ass!

But back to Max: regardless of the above, I thought he did a very good job with this character. He showed the growth of the Prince, noble but immature at the start, into a man transformed by love. He was princely, yet human and real. And, as I said, he worked very well with Irina’s Odette, listening to her story, reacting to it, using his body and face.

Miming Doesn’t Work

I met up with Delirium Tremens afterward and we chatted a bit. She has a big ballet background, having studied ballet at School of American Ballet and Joffrey, and she gave me this brief lesson in mime in case I missed something. It was really interesting, but some of the miming gestures looked to me nothing like what they actually are. Like, making fists with both hands and crossing your arms at the wrist is supposed to symbolize “death.” I thought when I saw the various ballerinas doing that, it meant “no” or was somehow intended to convey some sort of angst. But I didn’t know it meant, “if you do this it will result in death.” I’d have to see them again, but it made me wonder if perhaps the first two ballerinas I saw relied very heavily on mime to convey their stories, and that’s why I couldn’t understand? I know Irina did a little, but she backed it up with generally understood facial expression and body movement. If the choreographers and stage directors are going to rely on mime to tell a story, which I don’t think is a good idea, they need to somehow make everyone aware of what everything means, so that not only people with dance background can enjoy the performance!

Dancers Are Smaller Than They Appear!

I ended up hanging around Lincoln Center for much of Saturday afternoon since I was to meet Apollinaire at the Library of the Performing Arts (adjacent to the Met Opera House) later in the day for an evening performance. I ran into several dancers on their way to work– Adrienne Schulte, Herman Cornejo, and Jared Matthews on his way away from work (he performed yesterday as the Prince’s sidekick, and he was excellent by the way! Sky-high jumps, very agile and quick-footed dancing with a lot of precision and clarity. His prince sidekick was almost as good as the athletically spectacular Sascha Radetsky‘s — not quite as clean but almost, almost. Jared is working super hard, as is Sascha. Anyway, it’s so amazing to me how much smaller they all are up close when you see them on the street!

Vitali Krauchenka’s Awesome Swampy von Rothbart

And, one more little note on SL: can I please please please see more of this guy:

 

His swamp-creature-y von Rothbart was compelling beyond words. The ballet ends with him, dying after Odette’s death has taken the life from him. I’m not a fan of pure evil; but rather prefer nuance and complexity, and, not to sound cheesy,but his performance honestly almost brought me to tears.

 

His von Rothbart loved Odette and is just in so much pain in that last scene after she’s committed suicide. He makes me feel so much sympathy for him, even though he’s supposed to be “the bad guy.” And with that intense, oh so familiar music building to a dramatic crescendo, he makes the tragic ending so moving. Please, Kevin, more Vitali!

Taye Diggs

Okay, Taye Diggs: Very briefly, since this post is now bordering on 100,000 words — Saturday night, Apollinaire invited me to go with her to see Taye Diggs’ newish modern dance company, Dre Dance, at the Joyce in SoHo. I know Diggs only for his role in the movie GO, but he was a star of the original Broadway show, Rent, and acted in the movie version as well. He has other Broadway credits, but who knew he was a modern dance choreographer!

 

It was a lot of fun. I sat next to Diggs himself during the first half, then his co-choreographer, Andrew Palermo, during the second. Diggs is a much smaller man in real life too! I guess that is kind of the rule in the performing arts: everyone looks larger than life on stage or screen… The dancing was very interesting, very dramatic. They gave us press packets including a DVD of rehearsal and I’m going to look over everything and perhaps write more later, but for now, my initial reaction was that I thought it was, just, really cool. Choreography was original and involved a lot of emotional intensity and was set to mostly contemporary, very rhythmic music with a strong, fun beat — kind of poppy but not recognizably so, except for a little Rufus Wainright. The program was a compilation of pieces they’ve choreographed over the past two years, with the exception of one new piece, so the performance as a whole didn’t have a single narrative or theme. But, storyless though the whole was, with each piece the dancers themselves, through interactions with each other, told a kind of mini story — angry and fighting one another at times, at points hungry for attention from each other, needily begging each other for compassion (one dancer tried to climb atop another, hugging her, the other pushing her away). Each dancer very intensely wanted something from another, from the others as a unit; it was full of drama, which is Diggs’ thing after all. During the last piece, a woman came out in a business suit, hair tied in a bun. In a moment of anger, she ripped off the suit jacket, ripped the knot out of her hair and shook and shook and shook, first body then hair. Then, she calmed herself, took a deep breath, and slowly put her suit jacket back on and hair up. I found this such a short, yet powerful statement about the necessity of composing yourself for work, for life, of taming the inner self in order to get along in society. All of the pieces were this way: small vignettes containing characters who desperately wanted something from each other, creating intriguing, compelling sitations that made you desperately want to know the fuller story. The complete antithesis of my first two SWANS.

Fun, Reader Survey!

One last thing: there’s a really fun discussion underway on the Foot in Mouth blog. Apollinaire Scherr and I were discussing the never-ending question of why ballet is not as highly revered right now as it once was, and I had posed the question of why opera and some other of the “high arts” are currently more popular. San Fransisco dance critic Paul Parish surmised that it’s because opera is better recorded and therefore more accessible to the public. As someone who became an avid balletomane initially through a video not a live performance, I disagreed, and responded here.

This is a really fun discussion, and please, all of you Ballet fans out there, do participate! What initially drew you to ballet? Was it a film / video or a live performance? Was it “Center Stage” or another ballet movie? What are your favorite videos? Is a live performance better than a video? Why or why not? And do you agree that ballet is not well-recorded and thus cannot reach as large an audience as opera? Why do you think other arts or other dance forms are more popular right now than ballet? And, what can be done to better promote ballet? To add your two cents to this debate, please go to Foot in Mouth and add your comment, either here or here.