Tag: Ballet

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Worlds of Ballet and Ballroom Coming Together On SYTYCD!!!

How excited am I about the partnering of Anya Garnis with Danny Tidwell on TV show “So You Think You Can Dance“!! The worlds of ballet and ballroom — my two very favorite of course of course, are coming together!! And the judges are IN LOVE with them! As they are with my former teacher, Mr. Pasha Kovalev and his lovely partner, Jesse. Tony Meredith coached them on their waltz — I was dying! It’s so incredibly surreal to see people you know on TV… Seriously though, subjectivity aside ( 🙂 ) , Anya and Danny’s jive simply rocked, and, as that one judge said, Pasha and Jesse just raised a normally not tremendously interesting dance (at least on TV — I do think Standard ballroom comes alive when you see it LIVE) — waltz — to a completely new level! And Jesse is so sweet — such the underdog. Who CAN’T relate to her need to get out of a dead-end desk job and fulfill her life’s passion! I’m so excited — this is by far the best SYTYCD yet!

By the way, about a year ago, Dance Magazine took nominations for their annual, “sexiest dancer” issue. I wrote in nominating Pasha and Anna, knowing full-well how ballet-centered the magazine was (which is fine of course, but it is called “Dance” and not “Pointe”) and knowing they’d stand no chance, but still wanting just to get their names out there to the powers that be in the dance world. Of course they didn’t need me for that… and of course Dance Mag. gave them no mention in the issue (which I didn’t really expect them to; I know no one else who reads that magazine nominated or voted for ballroom dancers). But I do hope the editor, Hanna Rubin, at least did a quick internet search and just looked them up to see who they were since they must have been so out of the ordinary for that publication — I really do think they are amazing performers (as one judge — Mary Murphy I think — mentioned) and they would be seen someday… I just think in general, it never hurts to take your readers seriously… and not that she didn’t … I’m just saying…

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Julie + Marcelo = The Ultimate Romantic Partnership!

Last night I saw American Ballet Theater‘s “Manon,” the 18th Century story, originally an opera, about a French woman torn between her love of a poor young student, Des Grieux, and the monied gentleman, Monsieur G.M., to whom she has been promised by her brother, the greedy, callous Lescaut.

First, ABT’s casting has been weird lately. Originally, when I bought the ticket I’m pretty sure I was expecting to see Julie Kent perform the title role, with Marcelo Gomes as Des Grieux, and when I looked at ABT’s website recently to remind myself whom I was seeing, it indeed said Julie and Marcelo. Last night, I opened my Playbill to see an insert announcing that Diana Vishneva is ill and unable to perform, so the title role will be danced by … Julie Kent. Okay…? There were several casting changes: instead of Gennadi Saveliev dancing Lescaut, I had Sascha Radetsky; in place of Michele Wiles as Lescaut’s mistress was Carmen Corella (yay! 🙂 🙂 🙂 ), and the beggar chief was Arron Scott instead of Jared Matthews. Commenter Larry on Matt’s blog had mentioned numerous casting changes happened during last Saturday’s Sleeping Beauty as well. Is ABT like one of those cruise ships where everyone onboard comes down with flu before the tour is over?!

Anyway, I was perfectly happy to see Julie — whom I was expecting to see after all — dance with Marcelo because they are so my favorite ballet couple! They work so well together, and it’s completely obvious how comfortable they are with each other. Their size and age differences to me are part of what make them so compelling, so charming, romantically endearing — she is like a china doll in his big, protective arms, and she’s so easy for him to lift, he just scoops her up into those beautiful waist-high poses then hoists her up into an overhead lift with such ease and fluidity. In a way, the way he swung her about from low slides on pointe, to those ever-sweet “cradle”-looking lifts, into flowing arched-back spins, and poetic overhead lifts, looked a bit reckless, but their love IS reckless here so it works. And, I know he’s only 10 instead of 20 years younger than she, but there is still something somewhat Nureyev and Fonteyn about them — not compeletely, but somewhat — she radiates beautiful, wise maturity and sophistication and he is all young, strong, ingenuous boyish passion.

And Marcelo is just always so cute, I can’t even handle it sometimes! As I’ve said before, he’s so everyguy, guy-next-door, which isn’t to say he’s not fully into character in these long-ago period dramas, but more that he’s so down to earth, he brings an air of realness and relatability to it. At the beginning, it’s so sweetly human when his Des Grieux feigns accidentally bumping into Manon, just to meet her. I couldn’t help but giggle. And those were definitely real kisses in the bedroom scene; I could hear the final smack he planted on her lips right before dashing out to mail his letter!

Marcelo’s free-arm-floating-in-the-air-to-make-a-line thing didn’t look awkward like it did to me in Othello, maybe because of his white, blousy, flowing shirt or maybe just because the choreography was more fluid. Still think there’s still a bit of overacting on Marcelo’s part (shaking head, head in hands, etc. — emotions I’d rather see register just in the intensity in his eyes), but I guess he is trying to project all the way to the back of an enormous house, so maybe it’s unfair to want him to act like a film actor having an on-screen close-up.

So, the others: Carmen!!! I love her so! She wore this sweetly playful but maneuvering smile all throughout. And something about the way she wears her costumes makes me want to try all of them on! She made this deep greenish / golden corseted thing with black taffeta skirt look so brilliant… Seriously, I think I’m the same size … am probably dreaming though; likely am three times her size and wouldn’t be able to pull the underneath leotard over my butt…

Some say Sascha is too small and cute-ish to emanate evil adequately, but he scares the living crap out of me when he dances these “mean” parts. In Act I, my first thought was, oh no, it’s Iago all over again, but then, in Act II after he got drunk (after Lescaut got drunk that is), the more humorous, human side of his villain shone through. He ended up doing the very wobbly, drunk-off-his-butt Lescaut better than I think I’ve ever seen it done. And he is a superb dancer.

Ditto for Arron Scott as the beggar chief. That must be very hard to do — pretending to be falling all over yourself in intoxicated stupor while doing terribly hard jumps and turns. Your balance would be so off.

Best part of the ballet though is all of those beautiful pas de deux between Manon and Des Grieux. I fear there’s never going to be another choreographer again like Kenneth MacMillan, who can make pas de deux like that — embodying poetry and beauty and sublimeness and passion and love… Maybe Lar Lubovitch — he has an edge and a wryness of course on top of all that but I want to see more…But back to Manon: query — does she HAVE to die at the end? Why can’t they just end up in America, struggling and broken with no money but still in love and surviving? Is there some unspoken rule that ballets always have to end in this gut-wrenching melodrama?

Side note: I saw NYCB principal dancer Nikolaj Hubbe during intermission talking to this guy pictured with Marcelo in this post on Matt’s blog, apparently named “Clinton” and perhaps an ABT ballet-master? (going by Matt’s blog…) Nikolaj is absolutely GORGEOUS — oh my gosh, with his hair all mussed about and in jeans — whoa!!

Also during intermission, on my way to the ladies room I ran into this attractive Russian guy in the lobby, with whom I made eye contact. During the second Act, he came down and sat in the unoccupied seat next to me … with his wife 🙁 When I whipped out my notepad and pen though, he did a double-take at me, perhaps thinking I was “someone” hehe! I noticed as well a couple of other people around me noticing my pad and pen… Oh, and thanks to everyone who commented on my previous post with their note-taking methods and advice! That was fun! After going over my notes this time, which were much more legible than last, I realized I’d actually already remembered everything I wanted to say! So, I think what impresses you most stays in your mind — though it always must help to have it jotted down — AND, you look like “someone important” in the process! 🙂

“Yeah-baby!” guy from my Othello audience was there too. He actually came down to orchestra during the second Act, like he did last time, and sat a few rows in front of me. Methinks he has a thing for Julie… But then he left before curtain calls so had no chance to hoot at everyone?.. Curtain calls were actually very short, and I don’t remember Carmen taking a bow now that I think of it…

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"Writing (Or Scribbling Messily) in the Dark," "The Nightingale and the Rose," and My Sleeping Beauties

On Friday night I went to New York City Ballet to see the premiere of a new ballet, “The Nightingale and the Rose,” by current resident choreographer (though soon to leave NYCB and focus on his own new company) Christopher Wheeldon.

Above picture is of my crazy notes, hehe. After attending a marathon post-modern dance panel discussion, about which I previously blogged, and hearing a small consensus of choreographers name Arlene Croce a good (former) critic, I’ve been flipping through her book, “Writing in the Dark, Dancing in The New Yorker” (which is a lot of fun by the way — reads almost like a novel or memoir of going to the ballet practically nightly in New York for two and a half decades and makes the NYC dance scene look like THE place to be from the seventies through early nineties — which, with the likes of Barsyhnikov and Suzanne Farrell and Merce Cunningham and all, it WAS … but, hey, it still is, just with different people!) Anyway, she talks up front about her method of note-taking, by which she carries a pad and pen to the performance, then jots things down, or sometimes — more often actually — gets so carried away by the performance that she forgets to write anything down at all, then is forced to rely on memory, which didn’t always work for small details like colors of costumes, etc., which is not a good thing when on deadline. Still, she concludes minimal notetaking is best: “it is the afterimage of the dance rather than the dance itself which is the true subject of the review,” she says, and in order “[t]o let an afterimage form, one has to give the stage one’s full attention, without the distraction of notes” (pg. 6). When Apollinaire Scherr invited me to NYCB to see one of the “Romeo”‘s, I noticed she did the same thing — had a small notepad and pen. I don’t think she wrote anything down though — it’s hard – you don’t want to take your eyes off of that stage! Anyway, I often forget small details like costume colors and minor props and sometimes even the exact sequence of events, so, I figured I’d try to be like a ‘real writer’ and actually jot down deets. Well, suffice it to say, it didn’t go too well — I was writing while looking at the stage, my scribbling is so sloppy I can barely read a word, some sentences are completely atop others, and some run off the page and into the open Playbill, where they’re now superimposed over pictures of dancers rehearsing, etc. Oh well, I tried… Anyway, here are my “afterimages”:

I thought Wheeldon’s ballet was beautiful in the images he created and emotions produced by the sad story, a great idea that may not have been completely perfectly executed (but are they ever on very first try?) The ballet’s narrative derives from the Oscar Wilde short story of the same name, and the storyline is as follows: a nightingale is onstage singing of love when a professor’s daughter enters followed by an ardent student infatuated with her. The daughter, aloof and undesirous of his attention, refuses to entertain his affections unless he can bring her a red rose. He runs about the school gardens, searching for one, but can find only yellow and white. The nightingale, touched by his plight (and perhaps in love with the student herself?), agrees to help him. After searching long and hard, she finally finds a rosebush that produces red roses, but the winter has chilled its veins to the point that it cannot provide a vibrant red flower. In order to produce the desired object, the tree tells her, she must sing to it with her breast against its thorn giving the bush her life-blood, which she agrees to do. After the tree has produced the rose, the student hastily plucks it and presents it to the professor’s daughter, who, finding its aroma unappealing, refuses it and runs off. In his haste to continue pursuing her, futilely, the student steps on the discarded rose, crushing it and in the process nearly tripping over the now lifeless body of the nightingale.

It’s a sad but gripping story. Wendy Whelan danced the nightingale, Tyler Angle the student, Sara Mearns the professor’s daughter, and Seth Orza and Craig Hall led the ensemble who performed the part of the rosebush. I thought the tragic beauty of the piece really came alive in the scenes where the men forming the red rosebush surrounded the nightingale, raising her into a series of poetic lifts, enveloping her as she sings, then stabbing and ripping at her, a slicing arm here, a kicking leg there, eventually draining her of her life, before blossoming to produce the red rose. The costumes worked magnificently. The rosebush men wore brownish outer-clothing and must have been wearing red tights and tight undershirts underneath the brown, because, in order to show the nightingale’s blood-letting, reddening the bush’s stems, the dancers somehow discreetly rolled up their sleeves and outer tights to reveal the red under-clothes.

The parts that didn’t impress so well were the dancers who comprised the members of the white and yellow rosebush trees. They just kind of danced on their own, each seeming to do her own thing, and after Whelan passed them by holding up a hand to them, presumably to show that they had told her they had no red roses to give her, they continued dancing as before. I thought this could have been more powerful. The nightingale could have tried hard to wrest a red rose, climbing on them, reaching out to them, pawing at them, trying desperately to penetrate their core, while they could have pushed her away or huddled together, moving as a unit away from her, in rejection.

I also thought Sara Mearns, whose part was small, was too nice. She should have been more bitchy and spoiled in her rejection of Angle, who was perfect as the lovelorn male student, and her demand of the red rose. Another thing I don’t always understand and probably often lay the blame in the wrong place when something doesn’t work perfectly, is the music composition and the speed at which the conductor leads the orchestra, which in turn dictates the speed at which the dancers dance. Mearns took the rose from Angle, and in a split second, practically rammed it into her nose, tossed it down and fled, leaving no time for her character to take in the smell, determine it wasn’t good enough, and perhaps act at first as if she may accept it, playing meanly with Angle’s emotions. Her haste made the scene look very fake. But I don’t know whether it was Mearns’s acting or the orchestra playing way too quickly that was at fault.

Also, I love Wendy Whelan and think she is a wholly unique, very interesting dancer with a wiry, hyper-flexible body that well-suits the more contemporary pieces that NYCB does. I thought her angular body with its sharp lines made her nightingale very distinct and tragic in its own way — and that image at the end of her lifeless nightingale lying in a tangle on the floor is one only she is capable of making — but I would like to see another ballerina, known for her beautiful, swan-like evocations dance that part as well and see how it comes out. I know this nightingale is not a swan or a firebird, etc., but I’d still like to see someone else’s interpretation; I think it would make a very interesting contrast.

One final thing, that I can’t help but find endlessly amusing, but don’t know if anyone else will: at the beginning of the sound accompaniment, composed by resident composer Bright Sheng (this ballet marks the very first time he and Wheeldon have collaborated, which I didn’t know), the only sound is that of a lovely but very faintly chirping bird. Of course it’s beautiful and perfectly fitting. But, funny thing is, you can hear human voices speaking throughout the chirping, interrupting the bird. I thought this was intentional: I thought, oh that’s interesting, he’s trying to evoke the world of the humans — the professor’s daughter and the student who are offstage but presumably about to enter — encroaching as they do in ultimately tragic ways upon the sublimity of the natural world. And, I noticed this chatter resume whenever the orchestra stopped playing and the sound consisted only of the bird. I mentioned this to Philip, of Oberon’s Grove, at intermission, and he said it was the stage manager! He said he can often hear the talking whenever it gets very very quiet onstage! Haha, I had no idea — I honestly thought it was part of the composition! Anyway, the stage manager, as it turns out, added to my interpretation of the piece.

Yesterday, I went to my second, and my last, of two “Sleeping Beauties” at American Ballet Theater. This Beauty is a new creation by artistic director Kevin McKenzie, but ‘after Petipa,’ which, to be honest, I’m not completely sure what that means in terms of exactly how novel it is. This ballet in general is not my favorite, so I didn’t have many expectations nor much to compare it to, and I wasn’t that upset when I had to miss the original premiere, which happened while I was still in England. But I did see the original cast, performing a few days later. To be fair, one of the reasons the ballet is not my favorite is that I don’t really relate to the themes of the fairytale it is based on. Unlike others, such as Cinderella (who CAN’T relate to the hard-working slave who never gets any recognition from elites until, through friendship and compassion for those less fortunate, she gets her day in the sun?), the morals from Sleeping Beauty (don’t fail to invite someone to your party or they might wreak havoc??, etc.) don’t really speak to me. Anyway, those feelings aside, after viewing it twice, I actually ended up really liking it. I saw it on Monday night and again yesterday (Saturday, matinee), and I’m so glad I waited to blog about it until I’d seen it again because I was just way too tired to enjoy it fully on Monday night, just after I’d returned from my long trip.

So my first (Monday night) cast was Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes in the leads (Beauty and her Prince, of course), with legend Gelsey Kirkland as the evil fairy Carabosse, Stella Abrera as the ethereal day-saving / kingdom-saving Lilac Fairy, and Herman Cornejo and Xiomara Reyes as Bluebird and Ms. Bird (the latter of whom Playbill refers to as Princess Florine, but here she enters as a caged bird, released by Beauty in order to dance with Mr. Blue) who ham it up for the crowd-cheering bravura parts during the wedding dance scene. Veronika was a dreamily serene Beauty who danced with splendid perfection, Marcelo a very cute prince who jumped sky high during his solos, and, together they completely overtook the stage with their glorious Grand Pas De Deux, complete with those gorgeous fish dives I live for 🙂 Note: Veronika’s feet are like no other ballerina’s — her point is so pronounced and her arch so high, they nearly pop right out of those toe shoes! Herman and Xiomara were astounding as the high-flying ‘birds’ and I got all of my breathtaking overhead lifts I missed out on in their opening night “Romeo and Juliet” excerpt (thank you, Herman 🙂 🙂 🙂 )!

But, oh, the one who really took my breath away that night was Gelsey! The way she hunched her back, scrunched up her face, and hobbled around, she was pure perfect fairytale wickedness on that stage, and with her tiny little body, she commanded your attention like no one’s business! The way she captivated your gaze, it actually made me sad to think of what I must have missed out on by never having had the opportunity to see her dance in her heyday — so sad I missed that era in ballet… she must have been amazing with Baryshnikov.

As perfect as all the dancing was on Monday night, though, I don’t know what it was — perhaps I was just still tired from my trip or missing my Latin men and their beyond sexy hip-swaying, pelvic contractions or what have you, but I just couldn’t get that into the ballet at that point and was really rolling my eyes over the silly story. BUT all that changed with yesterday afternoon’s performance, which really brought home to me “Beauty’s” magic. Cast was Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg in the leads, with Carmen Corella as Carabosse, Craig Salstein as the King’s Chief Minister (who tries futilely to warn of the coming danger) and Sascha Radetsky and Hee Seo as the birds. Part of the magic for me of yesterday’s performance could have been the children who filled audience. No one dances to kids like Gillian. I know she runs the children’s program at Stiefel and Stars over the summer in Martha’s Vineyard and she must be so good at that; little ones just eat her fairy-princesses up. And, there’s no more ideal ballerina than she to both show little girls the splendor of ballet with her beatific, glowing face, and to prove what women dancers are capable of with her bedazzlingly athletic jumps and turns. If others like Veronika and Diana Vishneva perhaps excel at conveying more mature subject matter through their subtle acting and artistry, Gillian is the consummate fairytale heroine.

And there’s no more perfect a prince than David. He doesn’t come on until the second half, and when he did, this row of little girls behind me, sighed almost in unison. They were so young and it was so real and so completely adorable, the grown woman next to me (who I didn’t know) and I took one glance at each other started cracking up. Who cares if there’s no relatable moral when Prince David, running all over stage with furrowed brow searching and searching for his princess, ends up saving you and the whole kingdom with just one heavenly kiss!!! One thing I noticed about David though, sitting so close: he looked overly sweaty and a bit out of breath quite early on — a little too early on. I’m sure no one noticed sitting further back, and it didn’t show in his dancing AT ALL — which was nothing short of spectacular, but I did worry. I heard he didn’t dance last night, as he was billed for, so I hope he’s okay and is just taking a breather. He’s both an amazing dancer and a dependable, almost preternaturally responsible man, so I know he is counted upon to fill in for anyone and everyone who gets ill or injured (Vladimir Malakhov, unfortunately, is out this season with injury, so David’s been cast to replace him), and I’m sure it gets to be a bit too much, especially to be dancing two principal roles in one day — as much as I long to see him onstage, the last thing I want is him getting sick!

Sascha and Hee were brilliant as the birds — Herman is known for his sky-high jumps, so it’s a little expected that he is going to go soaring across stage, but I thought Sascha performed his with just as much knock-out height and speed.

Philip, whose review is here, didn’t like the casting of Craig Salstein, a young dancer after all, in the non-dancing role of the king’s advisor, face painted to make him appear older. True, as Philip says, there are many older, retired dancers in the company perfectly capable of such a part (and I had Wes Chapman on Monday in that role), but I rather liked Craig. He was hilarious in his defeat, especially when getting his hair plucked out by Carabosse. I actually think he looks pretty good with longish hair (albeit without the male-pattern baldness up top) and think he should consider growing his real hair out a bit… 🙂 Seriously, his acting was really pretty extraordinary and he put so much umph into that goofy little part that at points I couldn’t take my eyes off his reactions to Beauty’s dancing to look at Gillian!

Carmen Corella: ooh la la, big time! Okay, I have always had a bit of a thing for her, and her Carabosse, though completely different from Gelsey’s, just sent chills up and down my spine! Her devious fairy, instead of being pure evil, was more sexy sultry vixen, albeit totally hilarious, kind of in the manner of her would-be seductress “Cinderella” stepsister (which I CAN’T WAIT to see her perform again later this season — I so wish they’d bring Erica Cornejo back just for the role of her little dorky sidekick — they were miraculous together; they MADE that ballet, IMO). After she makes her first crackling entrance, complete with pyrotechnic display, the whole kingdom aghast, Carmen turns toward the King and Queen and, raising a pinky to the air, gives a little wave, all sweet smiles drenched with wicked sarcasm crossing her face. It was so funny, I wanted to burst out laughing. Anyway, Philip hated Carabosse’s costume … well, after seeing Carmen wear that thing, ooh how much do I want it! She made that thing so gorgeous — I’d so cut it short, clip off those fairy wings and make it into a mad hot Art Deco-ey ballroom outfit — totally serious! Carmen really excels in these kind of roles — she does so much with them — the deliciously mischievious fairy, the goofy sexpot evil stepsister, Lescault’s frighteningly charming mistress (who she dances with Marcelo 🙂 ) in Manon… I wish they’d give her a principal role to try; I just love her!

Sarah Lane was so sweet as the Fairy of Joy, in both of my casts. Everytime I see her onstage, I can’t help but remember her ever-sweet performance and curtain call with Angel in Sinatra Suites last season. So cute she was dancing, then receiving, all wide-eyed, her numerous bouquets and curtain calls, with him! Oh and, hehe, the Fairy of Joy is dressed in bright yellow (a detail I wouldn’t have remembered but for this: Philip said he didn’t like the costumes — I thought nothing of them, but now am remembering overhearing a little girl behind me say, “yellow, really mother! I mean really!” just like an adult and as if her mother was somehow responsible … hmmm, maybe she was?? Anyway, I guess Philip is not the only one who didn’t like the costume colors…) Misty Copeland is a powerhouse, as always, and I’m so sorry I missed her in Sinatra Suite. Vitali Krauchenka stood out to me as well in the various smallish roles he had — don’t know why exactly — he didn’t have any huge dancing parts, but he seemed very tall and upright the way he just stood about and took up space, and he was always in character… and, he kind of looks like a little Max… don’t know, could just have Russia on the mind, having come from a ballroom festival (which I can’t stop mentioning for some reason…)

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Dance of The Best Kind — Provocative, Evocative and Meaning-Laden: Ohad Naharin’s DecaDance

Wednesday night I went to contemporary ballet company Cedar Lake‘s performance space in west Chelsea to see “DecaDance,” a new work comprised of pieces from the past 20 years choreographed by Israeli dancemaker Ohad Naharin for his Tel Aviv-based company, Batsheva.

Still a bit disoriented from jet lag, a long drawn-out meds-laden TAC headache, and coming down from my ballroom high, I was worried I just wouldn’t be into a small, modern dance performance enough to appreciate it (I’d ordered the ticket a while ago). But, happily, I was very wrong! “DecaDance” was just what the doctor ordered to get me out of my Blackpool-withdrawal depression and back into the ever-alive NYC dance scene.

To me, this is the best kind of dance: movement creating images that, combined with provocative words and/or exhilarating, exotic, or evocative music, unsettle, evoke, just compel you stop, look, and think. I remember Joan Acocella reviewing in the New Yorker Telophaza, the work Batsheva performed nearly a year ago at last year’s Lincoln Center Festival. I remember her saying she wished with all the goings-on in the world at the time, Israel’s premier dance company would have put on a program infused with some kind of political meaning. I understood her sentiment, mainly because I like that kind of work as well and am always immensely interested in knowing what it’s like to be a citizen of another country, to exist in a world completely different from my own, but I thought it unfair to demand dance containing some kind of meaning about world politics from a troupe simply because of the geopolitical situation of its country. But the funny thing is that, watching Wednesday night, though none of the pieces made any kind of simplistic statement, I think my brain just naturally infused everything I saw with a socio-political undertone, perhaps because of that geopolitical situation.

The program began with a line of dancers, dressed in white leotards and black tights. The dancers shouted chants whose meaning I couldn’t understand, then one by one, each dancer took a couple of steps forward and danced, then stepped back into line while another dancer took a turn. Then, after each dancer had his or her piece, the line stepped backward together, fading into the background shadows. The way the light reflected only the bright white leotards had the effect of making their legs fade into the dark, so that they looked like limbless torsos. The chanting made me think of a military regime, and the legless bodies of the effect of war. I have no idea if that was what Naharin had in mind, but that’s what I got.

That scene led to a very brief pas de deux between two women (or was it a woman and a man … can’t remember) dressed in black corsets lifting, scratching at, bouncing off of each other, and that blended into a scene with several men engaging either in a monk-like ritual cleansing involving a bucket of dark, muddied water, or else splashing themselves with war paint. About three-quarters of the way through that scene a scantily-clad yet virile-looking woman wearing a feathery headdress and a face-full of garish make-up (perhaps another kind of war paint) walked sexily across stage on low stilts. After the men left, she returned with a free-standing microphone atop a giant pitchfork and, in the manner of a cabaret performer, lip-synced the words to an industrial techno-aria. Because of her raunchy garb, gawdy makeup and the manly yet sexy way she walked on the body-distorting stilts, she evoked for me a frightening vision from the late Weimar Republic or perhaps a contemporary Russian sex slave (thanks to Blackpool, I have Russia on the mind lately: anytime there’s a ballroom dance competition, the environs are tranformed into a “little Russia”) — either way, a grotesque reminder of the way a time of uninhibited freedom can turn into a reign of terror or how one person’s idea of fun is another’s hell.

My favorite piece involved several women who danced to a spoken word accompaniment. In all of the reviews I’ve read where this program or different versions of it have been performed elsewhere, none mention this piece, so I have no idea what it’s called and unfortunately can’t remember the words of the voice-over perfectly. One of the annoying things about this program is that the playbill doesn’t specify which piece is from which longer work, and which musical number accompanies which work, so I couldn’t figure out what each piece was called or research it very well. Naharin says, the playbill notes, that he enjoys “breaking down and reconstructing” his work, “enabl[ing him] to look at many elements in the works from a new angle,” so he obviously doesn’t want us to get bogged down in trying to figure out which piece is from which larger work, but wants us to see it as a new whole. The ‘problem’ or maybe I should say ‘challenge’ with this for me is, I’m unfamiliar with his work and so have no idea if I’m totally reading anything completely wrong. I may have a wholly different interpretation if I saw, for example, the Weimar / Russian slave woman in the context of the whole “Sabotage Baby.” It made me want to see his other works so I could compare, see if I “got it right” or see how my interpretation shifted depending on context.

Anyway, back to my favorite piece, about which I couldn’t research since I couldn’t figure out it’s title, longer whole, or sound accompaniment …: the male (if memory serves correctly) voice-over, issues forth various orders to the women dancers, and perhaps to the audience, providing, as I saw it, an ironic commentary on living female. The voice orders you / them to play the game enough to be able to own a house and car, resist working or thinking too hard so as to over-stress their fragile compositions, reject big ideas or philosophies, reject too much beauty so as not get carried away with art, and my favorite line — always wipe your ass really well because it’s uncouth to let others know you just shit. The piece – both the lyrics of the voice-over and the dance movements, was repetitive: the speaker repeated each line before adding a new one. And each woman had a certain movement corresponding with each word. Everytime the phrase repeated, so did each woman’s dance phrase. It was really interesting seeing the way the dance phrase corresponded to the written, and the way the movement added to the meaning of the words. For example, when the voice-over dictated, “reject Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust,” a phrase near the beginning of the piece and thus repeated many many times, it was interesting to see each dancer’s interpretation of “spider,” “Beethoven,” and “damnation of Faust.” Some movements were unique to each dancer; others universal. It definitely didn’t speak to the state of Israel or have any huge overarching meaning for world affairs in the way the Acocella article wished for, but sometimes I find those quietly ‘personal-is-political’ pieces to have the most profundity.

Then there are a couple of pieces that “break the fourth wall”– ie: involve audience participation. One female dancer tried to pull me onstage with her to participate in this group jumpy hip hop – turned tango-y number, but I had to refuse because I was still woozy from the meds and, perhaps, ridiculously, still jet lag. Anyway, I never feel comfortable doing such things. She was nice and let me go, found someone else to get up there with her!

There are some other compelling pieces that I left out. I’m really interested to hear what others think about this. I found it very evocative, thought-provoking, very open to interpretation, and just a lot of fun. It’s showing through July 1st at Cedar Lake. Go!

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Pasha and Anna on So You Think You Can Dance!!!!!!!!

I missed “So You Think You Can Dance” last week since I was in Blackpool, and now I’m just catching up and seeing that Pasha Kovalev and Anna Garnis were indeed on the show 🙂 Pasha’s sitting in the front row in the wait room 🙂 So exciting seeing my friends (and most excellent former teacher!!) on TV! Reminds me that I forgot to post pics of them in Blackpool. Sorry they’re so crappy — see what I mean about how crowded it was that I could not get a decent seat from which to take decent up-close pics?… Argh!

As you can see, she is wearing a wig in these pictures. Originally a blonde, she is now wearing her hair long and dark, but she often wears wigs for the comps.

I’m so psyched that they are on TV!!!!!

Did anyone see ballet dancer Danny Tidwell? Was he as pompous and arrogant as the judges are saying he was?

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I'm Off…

The Times review of Othello is now up — Gia Kourlas wrote it! (I just expected Macaulay would take all the biggies but he seems to be handing them around, which is nice 🙂 ). Anyway, she says a lot of what I was going nuts over at 1:30 a.m. the night / morning after, but in a much more civilized, reasoned manner 🙂 The thing is, now that her review is up and people are reading it and going to want to go see the ballet, they only have tonight to do so … which I think is all the more reason for ABT to CHANGE ITS BLOCK PROGRAMMING!…

Anyway, I’m almost off. I will try to blog from the festival, but Blackpool‘s a super small town — the owner of the B&B I’m staying at didn’t really know what email was so I don’t think they’re going to have an internet connection for me, and I’m not sure if there’ll be wireless access anywhere (and not sure if our computers are compatible to their wireless network anyway???) Anyway, I’ll try, and if I can’t, definitely expect loads of pictures of crazed ballroom dancers when I return 🙂

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Chunnels Chunnels Everywhere…

Ha ha, now that I’ve calmed down a bit, looking at my last post, I was pretty harsh! It’s fun to be angry though … the truth often comes out when you’ve just come from something that impassioned you and you’re writing at 1:30 in the morning all cranky because of all the work you have to get through the next day to go on your dance vacation the following day — under such circumstances you’re not bothering to edit yourself and you’re just more honest… Anyway, I was basically trying to ponder ways to make ballet more popular. I feel that some of the reasons young people are turned off is because of the melodramatic acting and the story-lines that they can’t relate to either because they are too silly and not relevant or because they’re too abstract and don’t make sense. Everyone knows Shakespeare, everyone can relate to Shakespeare, he is timeless… I feel that if you do Shakespeare you can’t go wrong, and, even though I would most definitely go see Lubovitch’s Othello again and again and again, because that’s just how I am, it was still far from perfect, and I don’t know that a non-obsessed ABT-o-mane would do the same…

Anyway, apropos of all this, I had asked Apollinaire Scherr why she thinks opera is so much more popular than dance, and she and some other critics and readers responded. Go here to see that discussion.

By the way, not a whole lot of people went to Othello. There’s hardly any chatting on BalletTalk, not many pro reviews. And where is Alastair Macaulay’s NY Times review? Shouldn’t it be online by now? The audience Tuesday night wasn’t very full — I’d say 1/2 to 2/3 seats filled, which upsets me, especially given that this was the NY debut… We have to make younger audiences understand how great ballet is, how relevant and exciting and profound and moving and beautiful and poetic…

Speaking of which … Apollinaire has great hopes for ABT’s Sleeping Beauty! (Yay!!) … the debut of which I’m unfortunately going to be missing because of my trip. But I’ll be back for one of the later performances… I will also, horribly, be missing “Essential Balanchine” at New York City Ballet …

why oh why oh why does Blackpool have to come at this time of year! Can’t someone re-schedule it to coincide with opera season for cry-eye????

And why oh why can’t I take some other form of transportation … I love travel, I love trains, I love cars, and I LOVE ships — can’t I take a ship across the Atlantic?… like in the Titanic? I mean, not the Titanic per se of course, but a big huge ship — so romantic to travel in 19th Century fashion! Or why can’t there be underwater Chunnels everywhere like that between London and Paris? That would be soooo cool to take a big long Chunnel train to England, or Australia or Thailand or Japan… chunnels everywhere… who decided to create air travel instead of underwater transit…

Anyway, packing is oh so much fun:

 

I’ve been packing all week little by little, as I always do so it’s not so overwhelming all at once… I tend to forget less this way. Everyone makes fun of me because I’m so anal, but who was the only American at the dance festival last year who could use her cell phone and palm pilot and re-charge her digital camera???? — because who was the only one who remembered to bring, not just all of her chargers, but U.K. / Hong Kong electrical converters as well! I was very popular last dance festival…

 

I always go through my money belts as well scrounging around for any pounds and pence I can find. England does still use English money, right; they didn’t switch to the Euro yet? Look at all this pre-Euro European money I have (on the right) — I hope it’s worth something someday!

And look at all this Russian cash. I have so much left over because when I was in St. Petersberg, I met up with friends who were going on to Moscow while I was (traveling alone) returning to Helsinki. Since I was planning on giving my leftover cash to them, I didn’t exchange or spend it, but then whilst trying to catch my train at Finlandia Station, I couldn’t find my proper track because I was spelling Helsinki with a Cyrillic first letter that looks like our “E” instead of the letter that looks like our “X” – (the Russian alphabet doesn’t contain our “H”). So, I almost missed my train and forgot to hand over my cash! What am I gonna do with it now?!…

Packing my Winger t, for dance-y comfort 🙂

Aw, a pic from packing last year. My dear little Najma passed away last October from congestive heart failure. I miss her so much. Packing is just not the same without her…

Anyway, on one last dance note:

hehehe, I was joking around earlier about a male Bayadere and Marcelo Gomes dancing the lead. Then I saw in this week’s Time Out New York Gay and Lesbian section that there actually are some gay bars with male bellydancers!!!

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Othello Cannot Survive Nonsensical Melodramatic First Two Acts and One-Dimensional Iago

Ugh. I’m so angry. Just got back from seeing the NY premier of ABT’s Othello and I should probably wait to blog until I’ve gathered my thoughts better, and I may well change my mind at some point in the future, but sometimes it’s more fun when you’re raging, flaming mad. Everyone who knows me and reads my blog knows how much I love ABT and have never ever trashed anything they’ve done. But my initial reaction toward this is repulsion. I love a good drama, but I feel like this was more melodrama and it left me feeling cheap, man-hating, and repelled.

I don’t know whom exactly to blame — whether it’s choreographer Lar Lubovitch’s fault for not fleshing things out better or explaining to his dancers what his ballet was all about, or whether it’s the fault of the dancers — mainly Sascha Radetsky. Radetsky danced the part of Iago, and he played him as complete, pure evil, no complexity whatsoever. Completely black and white. I’m sorry but Shakespeare’s character is so much more complicated, and Radetsky has nowhere near the level of artistry, sophistication and intellect to pull it off. And he is going to need Botox for that damn, deep-ass frown he insisted on wearing the whole way through. He’s got to have a permanent crevice in his forehead by now. I need to see David Hallberg in this part — he has everything that Radetsky does not, and he should not be playing Othello; he should be playing who is really the most important character in this play because if someone gives this one a dumb-ass one-dimensional intepretation, the whole thing is reduced to the level of a cartoon. And you DON’T reduce Shakespeare to a cartoon, you just DON’T.

I know Lubovitch keeps insisting he’s not going by the Shakepeare but is working from an earlier source, but guess what, Mr. Lubovitch, we all know Shakespeare, we don’t know the novella by Geraldo Cintio, most of us don’t know the opera by Verdi, everyone knows Shakespeare, so you’re getting compared to him.

Which is not at all to say Shakespeare can’t be taken in a different direction, and Lubovitch clearly gives the Iago / Othello interaction a homoerotic motif. I usually don’t do this, but I read some reviews of this ballet before I went tonight and one reviewer from Critical Dance noticed this theme. When I read her critique I rolled my eyes, thinking, oh sure, anytime there’s any kind of dancing between two men, it’s got to be considered “homoerotic.” But after seeing it — she’s totally right. And if she’s not, Lubovitch has some serious re-working to do. This makes me think that Lubovitch tried to give Iago some depth here and Radetsky just wasn’t getting it. NO MORE RADETSKY as Iago — use David, please Kevin, use an intellectually and artistically sophisticated dancer in this role — please! Jose Carreno could do it too… I know Ethan Stiefel and Max Beloserkovsky are supposed to dance him as well, but unfortunately I have to miss them. If anyone goes, please tell me how they stack up.

Anyway, besides my disgust with Radetsky in this role, my other problem is it really doesn’t pick up until the third Act, and that is way too damn late for a full-length ballet to get going. This is mainly because the first two acts don’t make a lot of sense; they just wiz by — I think the intermissions were longer than those acts.

The ballet opens with Othello dancing a solo, then the corps come out and do these puppet-like moves. Why puppet-like? I have no idea? It’s never explained. There are all kinds of odd, contorting, modernist, angular moves. They just don’t make sense. If they are there just to set the general tone that something is very awry, they’re way too obvious. Another ridiculously obvious thing: in the second Act, when Othello is on his throne having a nervous breakdown over what he wrongly perceives is Desdemona’s infidelity (and it is clear, contrary to Alessandra Ferri’s interpretation, as discussed below, it is wrong), the back of the throne is made of glass and it has a huge mar in it, as if a rock has been thrown at it. Has anyone heard of the concept of subtlety? Good lord, I mean really; you just want to laugh! In fact, there are creepily weird mirrors all over the place — why?

In the second Act, the frenzied tarantella (a dance that was popular at the time and considered by the Church to have satanic connections) is performed by the prostitute Bianca and other women and men standing around on the dock awaiting the return of Othello’s fleet (which has just defeated the Turks). So, Othello and the men of his command are still out to sea en route to home, but somehow Othello is running around stage carrying Desdemona over his head in one gigantic lift. Why? This is the scene where Desdemona, while dancing, will lose the handkerchief that Othello gave her at their wedding symbolizing her faithfulness to him, that Iago eventually gets his hands on and plants on Cassio — the other man — in order to convince Othello of Desdemona’s infidelity. So what is Othello doing running around stage with her? And while Adrienne Schulte is gorgeously tantalizing as Bianca (she makes all these intentionally broken lines — legs bent, etc., to illustrate the foreboding ugliness that will result from her actions), the rest of the dance is more repulsive than in any way sexy.

Oh, and going back a minute to the beginning, also making no sense is the choreography up front. In their wedding pas de deux when they’re in love, when Othello has no reasons to suspect Desdemona of anything, he still holds her head tightly, aggressively between his hands as if about to break her neck. In this scene it’s supposed to be a loving gesture and I guess also a foreshadowing of what’s to come, but it’s too obvious.

The best thing about the ballet was that Julie Kent (as Desdemona) and Marcelo danced gorgeously together –so much better than he danced with Alessandra in the excerpt on opening night. The problem with opening night, as I now realize Alastair Macaulay was getting at, is that, poetic as Alessandra is, she pulled that willing-victim schtick straight out of her butt. After now seeing the whole, I have NO IDEA what she was thinking — that is NOWHERE in the text, nowhere in the choreography, nowhere in the first two acts, and she completely made it up and Marcelo had no idea what in the world she was doing and couldn’t keep up with her. Julie’s Desdemona tried with all her heart to convince Othello of her innocence right up until the end; she loved him the whole time. No stupid childishly kinky crap that has no place. That’s why real partners work together and two people who may be great on their own just don’t. If Alessandra was going to do some crazy interpretation, she might have let her partner in on it beforehand. Alessandra’s admitted that she doesn’t practice with the rest of the company very much and it shows unfortunately…

The only other thing I have to say about Marcelo — not to be nitpicky, but why does he always need to raise his free arm in the air during a trick? Does he need to show that he can lift or hold Julie with one hand, or does he think it makes a good line? At one point, he didn’t even get his free arm all the way up, and it looked very odd. He held her in a lunge with one arm, the other shot up half-assed and failed to make a complete line. Then, he threw her into a lunge supporting her with the other arm, and the opposite hand shot up for five seconds making a likewise incomplete line. With his large bone structure, the free arm in the air doesn’t always look very beautiful. It’d look far more romantic if he left both arms wrapped around his ballerina. Who cares if he can hold the woman with his pinkie if it looks unnatural and off?…

One last note on the music. Very melodramatic, very loud, booming, frightening. Don’t sit near the orchestra pit. I was in the second row and I feel like I’ve just come from a rock concert my eardrums are so numb…

There was this gross older guy shouting, “yeah, baby” really horrendously pervertedly when Adrienne and Julie came out for their curtain calls. He really created a scene and several people looked his way. On the way out of the house he gave me the eye and I worried he was going to grope me from behind. If he would have done so I swear I would have found the super-human strength to push him to the ground, nail his crotch to the floor with my stiletto heel while calling the police on my cell phone. Something about this ballet made me feel dirty, disgusted, and repulsed at all men; I can’t help it — even Marcelo. I feel like between Lubovitch and Radetsky, they ruined Marcelo, ruined Shakespeare, ruined my night…

Okay, calming down: in general, the first two acts need to be fleshed out much much MUCH more, Iago’s motives and love for Othello need to be explored further, Iago needs to be better portrayed, the choreography needs to make sense, and the concept of subtlety needs to be realized. Then perhaps it won’t be flat, one-dimensional, cartoonishly melodramatic, and misogynistic…

Okay, Marcelo acted it really well and he gave the lead a lot of depth and was extremely conflicted and almost killed her by accident. But it’s after 1:00 in the morning and I’m tired and cranky and hating all men right now and that includes Marcelo so screw them all and him too!…

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Veronika's Beautiful Pathos, Diana's Passionate Abandon, Marcelo's "Every Guy" hero, and Ethan's need to join overactors anonymous: My Bayadere Roundup

Crappy picture of Marcelo Gomes and Veronika Part mid-bow after ABT‘s Friday night performance of Bayadere at the Met.

Uh, I meant to blog about this so much earlier but had to get a brief in today so my supervisor wouldn’t murder me.

Anyway, I finished my Bayadere viewings on Saturday night. I was toying with trying to go tonight to see the legendary Nina Ananiashvili perform the lead, but I just have too many things to do in preparation for my upcoming trip to Blackpool and just couldn’t swing it. So if anyone goes tonight, please let me know how it went!

So, the casts I saw were: 1) Paloma Herrera, David Hallberg, and Gillian Murphy as, respectively, the temple dancer (Bayadere), Solor the warrior, and the princess Gamzatti, which I blogged about in my earlier post (and if you’re not familiar with the ballet, please go there for my description of the characters and story); 2) Veronika Part, Marcelo Gomes, and Michele Wiles in those same parts; and 3) — probably the most chi chi “famous people cast”: the critically acclaimed Met Goddess Diana Vishneva, “Center Stage” heartthrob Ethan Stiefel, and Stella Abrera.

So, I have a couple of thoughts that kind of border on the sacriligious 🙂 The first is that, I thought long and hard about it, and … I actually preferred Veronika over Diana as the Bayadere!!! Diana was beautiful and she made gorgeous lines and had, as Susan had commented on my last post, more of the authentic, Indian-looking styling with the more beautifully expressive wrists and exotic, sinuous arm movements and flexible back arches than the others (though Veronika I think had all that as well, but not as pronounced). She is also known for, both literally and figuratively, throwing herself into her roles with such abandon that she sometimes makes too hasty of a stage exit that she trips and falls, or to show her character’s misery, she’ll throw herself down on the floor with so much passion that she’ll come up a bit bruised and bloodied. I can see why. She was so heavily in character, that when something upset her and her bayadere needed to flee the stage, she really did fly up those back stairs or into the wings, running at full speed. I found this made for very passionate dancing fully in-character, but to me this also made her bayadere seem a bit immature.

Veronika was the opposite — a very mature bayadere sadly accepting of her fate. She brought me so fully into her world, I nearly cried for her. She was not at all melodramatic, but held her deep sorrow inside, showing it subtilely through closed eyes — to me all the more powerful than running at full speed into the wings. And she is such a tall, beautifully statuesque ballerina with such exquisitely elongated lines, as Delirium said to me, she just “devours the stage.” Perhaps because of her larger bone structure, she may not have the ability to make the same intricate poses with her hands and wrists as Diana, which, ironically, is what I was complaining about in my former Bayadere post. But she was overall such a beautiful dancer who brought me so completely into her world anyway that that styling “authenticity” didn’t matter. I will most definitely be watching for more of her. And, I’ll be seeing several more of Diana’s performances as well; I’m sure I’ll see more of what makes people so enamored of her in the weeks to come.

Regarding Paloma’s performance in the role, I love her in general but didn’t think she really inhabited this part very well. But I think she rocks as the fun, flirty Kitri in Don Quixote! Former New York Times chief dance critic John Rockwell had suggested that ABT and the other big dance companies be more “star” driven, and, like the Met Opera, alternate ballets on a daily rather than weekly basis so that one or two dancers could “star” in a certain role without getting tired. I think this is a very worthy idea, especially since, with my upcoming trip, I’m only going to have the opportunity to see one Othello, a couple of Sleeping Beauties, and am going to have to miss entirely the Dream / Symphonie Concertante mixed rep, which disappoints me because David is debuting in that. That if a person goes away for a week they miss an entire program, combined with the fact that certain dancers excel in certain roles, I think Kevin McKenzie should take seriously Rockwell’s proposal…

Now, on to the MEN OF ABT, my very favorite people 🙂

Oh, and now I am going to have to recant what I said above because, the men of ABT are so great, I just want to see ALL of them in every role… As I said in my earlier post, David can virtually do no wrong in my eyes… it’s so interesting to me because he and Marcelo perform just about all of the same roles and there couldn’t be two more different dancers; you just get a completely different character depending on which one is performing that night. David’s Solor, as all of David’s characters are naturally more sensitive, more vulnerable, more cerebral, more pensive, whereas Marcelo’s characters are warm-hearted, down-to-earth, the every-guy. Marcelo’s the guy you want as your boyfriend: fun-loving, always happy, dependable, a big fuzzy teddybear in a way (I hope that’s not offensive 🙂 ) — I know, everyone says he’s a really good bad guy, and he is, but I think that’s because he’s never really THAT evil; deep down he’s just Marcelo 🙂 And David is the male friend who you just wanna talk to all night long 🙂 I love seeing them both — it’s just when David’s up there on the stage, you’re going to get the noble, poetic, sensitive warrior / Prince Charming / Romeo; with Marcelo it’ll be the everyman, old familiar high-school boyfriend, all-American boy (even though he’s not) version of the same. Funny, beginning tomorrow night, they are both alternating as Othello, and Art had mentioned in a comment on an earlier post that when he saw that ballet Othello tended to come across as a big brutish rather brainless hulk. There’s simply no way either of these two are going to play it that way, even if they tried!

So, I said I had two sacriligious thoughts about Bayadere. First is my preference for Veronika over Diana, and my second is that … I must confess, I just don’t get Ethan’s appeal! I just don’t — isn’t it horrible! Of course I haven’t yet seen “Center Stage.” I mean, yes, his jumps were spectacular, and I’ve never seen anyone beat his feet together as many times as he during his super-high assembles. You’d NEVER know he was just coming back from double knee surgery. As I mentioned in this post’s title, I thought he overacted, which Jennifer Dunning of the Times recognized as well, so I’m not alone on that! He does this thing where he widens his eyes when he’s freaking out over something. Well, I could see those bulging eyes from the Dress Circle (mid-priced seats about half-way up to the ceiling for people unfamiliar with the Met) sans binoculars. And the throwing the arms to the ceiling thing: can everyone stop, PLEASE!!!! Okay, Marcelo did it a bit too, but he is Marcelo and I’m so infatuated he could do cartwheels across the stage and I’d be all, “oh isn’t that the greatest!” Ethan’s jumps were truly breathtaking though, as I said. And I’m sure once I see “Center Stage” I’ll completely understand the madness 🙂

Other thoughts: I liked all three ballerinas who performed the role of Gamzatti (the princess betrothed to the bayadere’s love-interest). Stella was splendidly bitchy — she was plotting and evil and nasty and all the things that I guess a good Gamzatti should be. Michele Wiles seemed more like the snooty rich spoiled white girl, which worked as well. And Gillian was the most interesting princess to me because she has such a natural sweetness; just look at that headshot! How could this girl ever be wicked! She was like Glinda the Good Witch Gamzatti, which worked in its own way because her princess was more an unfortunate victim of circumstance than an evil, plotting shrew.

I LOVED Craig Salstein as the lead fakir (in the ballet, the fakirs are these weirdly cute loinclothed animal-like people who jump wildly back and forth over this makeshift campfire — really so much fun and one of the most entertaining parts of the first Act, IMO). Who better than Craig to do all that crazy wild jumping. Craig performed the part on Saturday night; on Friday night, equally bedazzled, I looked in my Playbill and was shocked to see it was Jared Matthews under all the wild-man hair and body paint… he’s so sweet-looking and seemingly well-behaved — who knew he was so capable 🙂 Expectedly, Herman Cornejo was an excellent Bronze Idol, another male bravura part (which, for some strange reason I keep wanting to call the Bronze God), but so were the others, such as Arron Scott (who also happens to be Matt’s new cohort in crime). I find myself always disappointed by the idol though because he’s only onstage so briefly; he leaves me wanting so much more…

One last thought: Susan’s comment in my last Bayadere post suggesting that Matthew Bourne or Mark Morris re-make an authentic Bayadere made me think … what about a male Bayadere ala Bourne’s Romeo Romeo? Not all male: a male Gamzatti would make for a completely alternate universe, but just a male bayadere would be realistically intriguingly different — I’m sure some Radjas had male temple dancers after all…

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Bellydancing Lessons For Paloma!: ABT’s Bayadere

So, last night was my first Bayadere of the season and I have mixed feelings. Everyone danced perfectly beautifully, I finally got my big huge sweeping overhead lifts that Herman and Xiomara left out of their “Romeo and Juliet” on Monday night, or just “Romeo,” rather 🙂 (thank you for those, David and Paloma and Gillian!), and all three aforementioned principals were just full of stunning virtuosity in their turns and leaps and partnering.

My main problem is with the, for lack of a better word, stylistics. This is a ballet set in historical Royal India and is the story of Nikiya, a bewitching temple dancer, (or bayadere) who is the object of infatuation of the High Brahmin but who falls hopelessly in love with Solor, a noble warrior whose war deeds have won him betrothal to the Radjah’s daughter. Paloma Herrera — the bayadere, as beautiful a ballerina as she is, completely lacked all of that gorgeous Indian or Middle-Eastern styling. Maybe it’s just that I’ve seen a lot of bellydancing lately, but I wanted so much for her to do something so much more with her wrists and arms, move her hips in a rounded, hula motion. I just wanted authenticity. At one point, I just wanted to get up and shout “wrists, wrists!” Indian and bellydancing is so amazingly beautiful, what those women do with their limbs and upper bodies, why couldn’t they have some of that here? Does ballet have to exist in this rarefied stratosphere where it can’t incorporate some of the sublime elements of other forms of dance? I mean, look at these gorgeous wrists here at Terpsichore Musings – and these are students!

 

This made me think of that now infamous article written by Lewis Segal for the LA Times. It was an overarching and pretty harsh criticism of Ballet in general, which I personally think was mainly a tongue-in-cheek effort to wake up the ballet world and get people thinking about why box office sales were dwindling, but I think one decent point he had was about the “Orientalist” ballets (click here for a definition of that term), of which Bayadere is one. I disagree with Segal that these ballets are too inherently goofily Orientalist to speak to young people today, who are much more worldly than previous audiences, because I think the themes they deal with — doomed love, class issues, fate and justice — are timeless, but I do think they need to be authenticated and updated. Dance being the essence of a ballet obviously (as opposed to a play), the ideal way to do that is to incorporate some of those beautiful Middle-Eastern movements. Perhaps the story-line needs to be made a little more sophisticated as well, and the costumes, such as those used in the ensemble “Kingdom of Shades” parts, pictured above (copyright Gene Schiavone) should be made more Indian-looking as well, but the movement is a start…

Jennifer Dunning reviewed the same female cast in the NY Times, here. Interestingly, she says, a bit critically, that these dancers exhibit what she calls a “21st Century” method of showing character more through movement than “acting.” Maybe that is what I was inadvertently reacting to when I saw the opposite at NYCB, which I characterized as overacting and melodramatic; perhaps I’m just a 21st Century dance-goer and am used to seeing more sublelty in the facial expressions and the drama located more in the movement than in traditional ballet “miming.” Dunning also said she liked Paloma’s back arches, but I’ve seen Latin dancers do far more pronounced ones.

 

The best part for me was David Hallberg as Solor. I just can’t say enough good things about him. He takes my breath away just with his walks alone, forget all of those amazing jumps (which he did plenty of); he can just walk all over the stage for an hour and I’ll sit there completely mesmerized. He’s so regal, so noble, such a beautiful man, and such a classic male ballet dancer. And he certainly doesn’t do any overacting. He also doesn’t make a big huge pompous stink when he comes onstage (and there’s NOTHING in my mind wrong with those who do, by the way 🙂 — they’re some of my favorites of course of course — like this one, and that one, and of course him 🙂 🙂 ); he’s “just” all about stellar, captivating dancing. I would go see anything he’s in just because he’s in it.

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Baryshnikov @ doug varone

Baryshnikov @ doug varone

Originally uploaded by swan lake samba girl via mobile.


Baryshnikov @ Doug Varone‘s Dense Terrain at Brooklyn Academy of Music. Ha ha, I know it’s only the back of his head, but I swear it’s him! Was sitting two rows down from me!! Interesting performance, not sure what to make of it… but it was very thought-provoking and full of meaning, interesting movement, dealt with difficulties of communication through language, was very dramatic, violent in parts, provocative music, somewhat political but not obviously so and message was not simplistic, used multimedia, reminded me a bit of Forsythe…