Tag: Andrea Mohin

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MORE BEAUTIES

 

So, toward the end of last week I saw two more casts of Sleeping Beauty in New York City Ballet’s production. Above are the beautiful Kathryn Morgan as Aurora and Tyler Angle as her Prince Desire (Paul Kolnik is the photographer). Below are some photos of the other couple I saw, Tiler Peck (both she and Kathryn were making their Aurora debuts), with Gonzalo Garcia, albeit not from this ballet.

 

(in Four Bagatelles, photo by Paul Kolnik)

 

(and in the Christopher Wheeldon / Martha Wainwright collaboration over the summer, photo from NYTimes by Andrea Mohin; I like this photo because I think it shows each of their personalities well).

And then last week, I saw Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette.

I’ve been thinking about who I thought was best in what role but it’s actually really hard to do that. I honestly ended up liking everyone, though there were definite differences.

I do have a lot to say about Gonzalo Garcia though. I LOVED him as Prince Desire — he really melted me, he really completely stole the show that night and I feel like I’m not ever going to like anyone quite as well in that role now. I mean, you just have to see him in a classical ballet, as the romantic lead, and you realize why San Francisco audiences were so upset when he left SFB for NYCB a couple years ago. Some of those SFBallet fans were really devastated when he left. And I think it’s been such a puzzle to those fans that New Yorkers haven’t really fallen for him the same way. And I think it’s because he hasn’t had the chance to shine because NYCB is so Balanchine-heavy. He needs roles where he can act and become a character. He’s such the quintessential romantic prince.

You can really tell how differently he’s trained than the other NYCB dancers, who’ve nearly all come from SAB and been trained on Balanchine’s non-actable abstract ballets. I felt like with Gonzalo I was seeing someone from ABT — mainly Angel Corella (in terms of the body type, dramatic style and boyishly handsome face). The way he’d hold onto the music, draw it out while it crescendos, by for example in the vision scene holding out a finger to the princess and then leaning back, then looking out to the audience — not AT the audience but in the audience’s direction — to show how enthralled he is, how much he wants to catch her, all before then turning and running toward her. The other two — Tyler and Andrew — they didn’t do all that. They just kind of looked toward her standing more and more toward the tips of the toes, ready to run toward her when the music told them to. Gonzalo’s way was so much more Petipa and Tchaikovsky and Bolshoi and Romantic Russian and all that, and it might all seem overly melodramatic to audiences who aren’t used to that. But that’s what I’m used to with ABT — and that kind of stuff makes me swoon!– so that’s why I think I loved him so much. But I’m wondering what others who saw this cast thought?

And Gonzalo just knows what’s expected of him, as the prince. Later, when he went to do that crazy series of jetes, he was rested up and ready and he nailed them like I’ve never seen him nail anything. I’ve never seen his legs straighter, in perfect splits, and the whole way around the perimeter of the stage, without tiring. And it’s like he knew that was a very important part, and he had to do them perfectly because that’s just what the romantic hero does — that’s the way he shows his love for the princess, and that he’s worthy of her. The other two obviously took them seriously (because they’re crazy hard, you have to take them seriously), but it just was more of a difficult feat, instead of having the same meaning. You know what I mean? Like he looked out all across the stage wistfully, and then he just took off flying around it. It gave it a different meaning than just flying around.

It makes me wonder though if contemporary audiences understand that, or appreciate it. Or whether they prefer for the emotion to look more “natural”? I’m not saying Gonzalo was better than the other two, just different.

I wonder what Joaquin De Luz was like, since he’s not SAB trained either. Did anyone see him?

As far as partnerships, Kathryn and Tyler were my favorites. Tyler had a few flubs on some of his solo variations (but I still love him!), but he was always the perfect partner, he was always solid when supporting her. And the series of fish dives in the wedding pas de deux were some of the most breathtaking I’ve ever seen. Her legs were pointing completely up toward the ceiling! Magnificent! And the final hands-free fish dive was picture perfect.

I liked all of the Aurora interpretations, but they were different too. Kathryn was the most princess-like, the most regal, though that may just be the way she looks. She just kind of looks like royalty! Ashley and Tiler seemed more “real girlish”  – all smiles and sweetness and awe at the world and their cute suitors.

The rose adagios were all near perfect. (ABT’s Sarah Lane is still the queen of the balances to me — it seems like she could hold them for hours.) Kathryn had the most absolutely gorgeous extensions. Do I have to giggle every time Robert Fairchild comes out leading the cavalcade of suitors? I loved Craig Hall as the “African prince,” – I don’t know what exactly stood out about him but something did. And even though it wasn’t a dancing role, I loved Henry Seth as the King; he acted it really well. Chase Finlay was lovely as Gold in the wedding scene – -he’s a really beautiful dancer with exquisite lines. Everyone’s talking about him being the next romantic lead. I loved tiny Erica Pereira as the fairy of eloquence and Ana Sophia Scheller as the fairy of courage, thought Faye Arthurs and Adrian Danchig-Waring were brilliant as The White Cat and Puss in Boots, and Daniel Ulbricht is the quintessential gymnastic court jester.

And there’s NEVER been a better Carabosse than Georgina Pazcoguin! Nor has there ever been (or, perhaps, could there be) a better Lilac Fairy than Sara Mearns. I love how she arches her back so luxuriously and opens up her chest. And the rich, full-out port de bras. Such beautiful expansiveness, that, with her beatific face, makes her perfect for this angelic role. She reminds me of Veronika Part.

Okay, that’s all I can think of, for now!

This week begins the Swan Lakes. I’ve never seen Peter Martins’ version, so I’m really excited. In particular, I’ve heard wonderful things about Maria Kowroski as Odette and I’m psyched for Stephen Hanna’s debut as Prince Siegfried!

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COMPUTER CRASH!

Just as I was about to send the final version of my novel off to the publisher my computer crashed. My wonderful friend Mika allowed me to use hers for the day. But since I don’t know how long my laptop is going to have to spend in the hospital, blogging might be intermittent for the next few days.

In the meantime, I’ll try to tweet via my cellphone.

 

As soon as I return, more on this year’s Fall For Dance Festival, as well as my thoughts on William Forsythe’s Decreation which I recently saw at BAM. I normally really like Forsythe, but I felt you had to have read the Anne Carson essay (of the same name) that the work is based on in order to understand it. Did anyone in NY see it? (photo by Andrea Mohin from NY Times review.)

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FALL FOR DANCE ’09 PROGRAM 1

 

 

I’m on a tight schedule with my book rewrites, but here are some of the highlights of the Fall For Dance Festival (Program 1) thus far.

It’s always a delight to see Paul Taylor’s hilarious Offenbach Overtures with the would-be ballet dancers tripping all over each other, the muscly men first dueling then making up and swinging their way offstage in each others’ arms, the female cabaret dancers comically warring for attention. I was happy to see SLSG favorite Michael Apuzzo in my cast (he’s not in the photo above unfortunately, as he wasn’t in the first night’s cast) — he’s always very dramatic, full of character, and I noticed he had the highest, most straight-legged jetes as he and the other guys went sailing offstage at one point.

I was at this performance with my friend, Michael, and we hung out for a while in the lounge afterward (where they have $2 wine and beer and $4-$5 plates of food). I’m very shy, but I always seem to have really outgoing friends, and Michael went up to a woman with a bouquet and asked her what it was for — something along those lines. It turned out she was in Paul Taylor, and once I knew that, I recognized her as the striking Parisa Khobdeh, Michael’s partner (Michael Apuzzo that is, and partner in Offenbach that is). I then realized a bunch of the Paul Taylor dancers were hanging out in the lounge (except for that Apuzzo!) — so the FFD brochures  are not lying about the “come mingle with the dancers” parts of the adverts for the post-performance parties in the lounge.

 

 

Anyway, the other highlight of Program 1 was B/olero performed by the highly respected Israeli company, Batsheva, choreographed by their artistic director, Ohad Naharin, and set to the familiar Maurice Ravel music. Except this was a remix — at times the music would be slowed so that it would sound somewhat warped. The music would also veer from speaker to speaker, so it was like the sound was traveling around the auditorium.

Well, there are many Boleros around and Naharin’s was a more minimalist one in terms of the action, but not the emotion. It was a duet for two women dressed in black dresses. At times their movement was basic, at times still, at times spastic and chaotic, at times sexual and almost kinky, and at many times hypnotic. A common motif was the swinging back and forth of the arms, mechanically, like the arms of a clock, the rest of the body still. I always feel with his work that I have to see it several times to get the full effect, and I wished I could have seen this one again.

 

 

 

In celebration of the centennial of Ballets Russes, every night at FFD one company performs a piece on honor of that legendary company. Program 1’s was the Boston Ballet’s rendition of Nijinksy’s original Afternoon of a Faun. This was a real treat for me, as I’d never seen the Nijinsky version live and in full before. I’d only ever seen it on tape or, if I remember correctly, only the faun version (without the nymphs) performed by Royal Ballet star Johan Kobborg with the Kings of Dance.

Anyway, Nijinsky’s version is from 1912 and you can really imagine how shocking it must have been in its day, with the faun so overtly sexual, so taken with the nymphs, he ends up masturbating with a cloth left by one, which he recovers, takes up to his little rock perch, places it on the ground and begins rubbing his groin into it. You still don’t see much of that today onstage (at least not in ballet), so I think it’s still somewhat risque. And yet the faun, at least as portrayed by Altankhuyag Dugaraa, is so sweet and so endearing, and you feel for him after those nymphs tease him and you’re happy for him when he retrieves that cloth. I would so love to see a clip of Nijinsky in this. I would also love to see his Rite of Spring some day; I don’t think it’s been performed for eons though, I think because the choreography hasn’t really been preserved, sadly.

 

 

And completing Program 1 was Savion Glover, which I wrote about briefly in my previous post.

See the rest of Andrea Mohin’s NY Times slide show of Program 1 here.

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WHEELDON IN WONDERLAND

 

So London is abuzz about the Royal’s official announcement that Christopher Wheeldon will make a full-length ballet based on Alice in Wonderland, set to premiere in 2011.

I’m excited, especially since some of my favorites of his have been his more dramatic ballets, like The Nightingale and the Rose. Thankfully, he doesn’t plan to make a children’s ballet: “A lot can be read into Alice in Wonderland. One could take the more Freudian route…” he says.

Critics expect Wheeldon to “bring a sophistication and an understanding of the darker sides of the text.”

Music will be by Joby Talbot, whose work he also used for the mysterious, poetic Fool’s Paradise, which makes me all the more intrigued.

 

 

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TULSA BALLET’S MOMENTOUS MANHATTAN DEBUT

 

 

Wow — exciting night Monday night when Tulsa Ballet, a small but well-regarded company founded by members of the legendary Ballet Russes and currently run by Naples-born Marcello Angelini, opened its Joyce season. The company, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, hasn’t performed in New York for 25 years and it was their first time in Manhattan. The governor and first lady of OK were there, along with the mayor of Tulsa, and other government officials. A Japanese TV station also covered the event (the troupe is very multi-national; many dancers are from Asian countries), and Oberon, our friend Susan, and I were interviewed by them outside during the first intermission. ABT dancer Arron Scott was interviewed outside as well, after the show. I desperately wanted to walk over there and listen in on what he was saying, but didn’t have the nerve…

Anyway, there were three dances on the program: Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations, Nacho Duato’s Por Vos Muero, and a newish dance from 2008 by Young Soon Hue called This is Your Life.

The dance that most captivated me was the first, MacMillan’s, which I guess isn’t surprising since he’s my favorite full-length story ballet choreographer. I hadn’t seen this shorter piece though. In terms of the movement, it’s typical MacMillan with the bravura leaps and turns and inventive partnering dominated by sweeping, crazy-hard-looking lifts. But I didn’t completely understand the character of the dance. It’s set to Scott Joplin and other American ragtime music but it’s performed by what appear to be commedia dell’arte characters, dressed in almost clownish costumes. See photo above.

See also this video, of an excerpt performed by the Royal Ballet, Darcey Bussell introducing it and then performing in one of the main duets. There wasn’t a band in the Tulsa version though — the music was recorded.

You get a sense from the video what the whole was like. The choreography is comical, complex and brilliant. And the Tulsa dancers did very well with it — particularly the acting. Definitely a very lively troupe. I got the sense that this would look very different performed by a company like ABT or the Royal on the large Met stage, but I thought the Tulsa dancers did a very good job with a very (despite the humor) difficult-looking ballet.

Next on was Duato’s Por Vos Muero 

 

 

I also really liked this piece. The movement was modern (no pointe shoes): grounded, sharp-lined and expansive. The music consisted of popular Catalonian tunes from the 15th and 16th centuries, with a poem read (in Spanish; Duato is Spanish and his company is based in Madrid) by Spanish music star Miguel Bose (at least he was a star,  in a heart-throbbish sort of way when I took Spanish in high school and college 🙂 )  The dance began on a contemporary note, with dancers dressed in simple nude leotards, then took on a historical flavor, the dancers now in dark costumes evocative of the era of the music. The themes (I think) were love and death; it was overall spiritual and mainly dark, with a few lighter moments interspersed throughout, like the one above, when two men playfully slide a woman between them, and she ends up near the edge of the stage and smiles out to the audience, resting her elbows casually on the floor, her chin in her hands. The two men lift their legs, bent at the knee, as if framing her like a picture.

The third piece, This is Your Life, is named after the American TV show (which I never saw). I have to agree generally with Gia Kourlas on this one. The characters first address the audience, telling you their stories of woe, but they’re mostly caricatures, like the flamboyant gay hairdresser dressed in a woman’s wig, and the businessman who wants to break free of his parents’ expectations and become an actor. The dancing parts are set mostly to Astor Piazzolla’s rich Tango music and much of them are Tango-based, portions of them on pointe. Normally I’d be into a ballroom / ballet mix, but the movement here, the combinations, were nothing I hadn’t seen before, and, honestly, I had a hard time getting over the stereotyped characters. This is a dance that may well get a different reception elsewhere though.

Tulsa Ballet performs at the Joyce through August 15th. Go here for more info. And go here and here for other, very different perspectives on the program.

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BEST OF AILEY AT BAM

 

With the insanity of ballet season (see this Macaulay article — at the beginning he very accurately describes what it’s like to be a balletomane in NY right now!), I unfortunately was not able to make it out to Brooklyn to see Alvin Ailey’s week-long wrap-up of its year-and-a-half-long 50th Anniversary celebration. I was very sorry to have missed it. So, in lieu of my own write-up, I’m linking to Gia Kourlas’s NYTimes review of opening night. She lauds two of my favorite dancers, Linda Celeste Sims (above, in photo by Andrea Mohin of the NYT) and Amos J. Machanic, and one of my favorite dances of all time Revelations. So very sorry I had to miss it all. Until December…

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PASCAL RIOULT DANCE THEATER REHEARSAL

 

Today I, along with several other bloggers, was invited to a studio rehearsal of Pascal Rioult’s The Great Mass, which will premiere at the Joyce Chelsea in two weeks. Set to Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, it looks like it will be really glorious. Today all the dancers were in workout clothes, and Rioult (who is from France, and a former Martha Graham dancer) gave them instructions, but I can’t wait to see the fully costumed final product onstage.

I really like these rehearsals and am so glad dance companies are inviting us to view the process. First to begin inviting (that I know of anyway) was Cedar Lake Contemporary Dance, then TAKE Dance, Elisa Monte Dance Co., now Rioult, and perhaps Dances Patrelle, upcoming in two weeks as well. The process of dance-making is, I feel, unlike the creation of any other art because of its collaborative nature, and I feel like being allowed into the process a bit allows me to understand the art form better. I wish choreographers would let us to watch even earlier on, when they’re very first conceiving a work! As long as my schedule is flexible, I love coming to these things. I feel like Edwin Denby watching Balanchine! 🙂

Anyway, more to come on Rioult as soon as their season begins in two weeks. In the meantime, visit their website for info and a video of his dance set to Maurice Ravel music.