Tag: Ballet

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Don’t Forget Fall For Dance

 

Just wanted to remind New Yorkers (and anyone traveling to NY in the near future) that Fall For Dance tickets go on sale this Sunday, 9/7, at 11 a.m. Tickets are $10 if you choose to stand in line at the City Center box office (which I don’t recommend), or $15 (with $5 surcharge) if you book online. Tickets sell out very quickly, usually within a day or two. Here’s the schedule and lineup of artists.

Also, this weekend is the Evening Stars series of free performances at Battery Park. Tonight is Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, tomorrow night Rasta Thomas’s Bad Boys of Dance, and Sunday night Los Vivancos flamenco group. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Go here for more info.

Outside of New York, this weekend is the United States National Dance Championships (most important Latin Ballroom event in the country) in Florida, which for the first time in a couple of years, I am not attending. Sad day. I will definitely keep my eyes peeled for results. I expect Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko to take tops in Latin, and Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova in Standard but am always happy for a surprise. If anyone is there, please let me know what’s going on, and who all’s there for the World events! If I miss Slavik or Sergey I am not going to be happy.

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Kenn Duncan Exhibit at NYPL

There’s a very good exhibit right now at the New York Public Library’s Performing Arts branch of photographer Kenn Duncan’s work. Duncan (1928-1986) was a dancer and champion roller skater in the fifties and became a photographer in the seventies. As a dance photographer, he worked for Dance Magazine and After Dark (a 70s NY weekly apparently covering theater and dance), and later photographed celebrities for various national mags including Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Time, and Life.

He published several collections in book form, many of nudes, mainly with male dancers as subjects. Many of those are included here, likely the reason for the big viewer discretion sign posted on the gallery door. Most of the dancers in that collection I didn’t know, except for Sir Anthony Dowell and Ivan Nagy, but there’s one of a man named Eivind Harum, who kept reminding me of David Hallberg (whom I had to banish from my thoughts for the time being); actor Sal Mineo (from Rebel Without a Cause) is also included in that section. There are some highly creative poses — some poking fun (I think) at beefcake, others very artful.

There are also sections on dancers, dance companies, and choreographers — including photos of a young Twyla Tharp (who I think looks her absolute best right now — I definitely wanna age like her), the Alvin Ailey company in its youth (which looked very different than today — lots of excellent afros, and mainly white female dancers, interestingly), the Houston Ballet, and of course all the greats — Carmen de Lavallade, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Gelsey Kirkland, Suzanne Farrell and Paul Mejia, Natalia Makarova, Peter Martins, Alexander Godunov, Cynthia Gregory, etc. etc. I also spotted a dance belted Lar Lubovitch jeteing artfully over a sash.

Included in the celebrity section are a young, doe-eyed Dianne Keaton, Bette Midler, Maxwell Caufield (remember him, from Grease II was it?), Morgan Fairchild and her then male-cohort in a series of rather hilarious (now anyway) sexed-up poses for some Tarzan and Jane-like TV series they must have been doing, Eartha Kitt, Angela Lansbury, and a very young and almost frightfully innocent-looking Christopher Walken.

Duncan also did some Broadway photos (Hair, The Wiz, Equus, etc.), and some of those are up, as well as several of his fashion ones — mainly a Gucci spread — one of the most fun parts of the exhibit, the 70s being what they were! The ambient music is most evocative (sometimes comically) as well.

It’s a great trip through recent history that ends up making you think about what it is that makes a piece of art either timeless, period, or dated.

The exhibit, at Lincoln Center’s Library For the Performing Arts, continues through October 25th and of course it’s free.

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It’s Cedar Lake Time Again

 

Next week, Wednesday through Saturday, August 20-23, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet will present its next work, The Copier, an installation piece by Jill Johnson. I have high hopes for this one, as Johnson is a protege of William Forsythe, one of contemporary dance’s most forward-looking, innovative, thought-provoking masters (imho of course), and former dancer with his company, Frankfurt Ballet.

The dance, the final of Cedar Lake’s installation projects, is intended, in Johnson’s words, to examine “the impact of our culture of repetition and routine and what happens when we break from it… Now that we can create perfect duplicates of photographs, music, even livestock,” she asks, “do we put a greater value on things that are organic and made by hand, or do we prefer the perfection of a seamless copy?”

Yesterday, the company invited bloggers to a rehearsal where I took these pictures.

 

Bottom one is of Johnson herself talking to the dancers; sorry so blurry — I didn’t want to disturb anyone with my flash.

Since it wasn’t a full dress rehearsal, but dancers practicing on their own and being coached by Johnson in groups one at a time, it was hard to get a sense of how it will look when performed, but we’ll see next week.

Evan (Dancing Perfectly Free) attended several practice sessions and blogged about them here, here, and here. There’s also an interesting back and forth between her and Doug Fox of Great Dance on the meaning and forms of audience participation in such an installation. Here’s Doug’s post, and here’s Evan’s response.

To receive a blog-reader discount to next week’s performances, visit Smartix and use code “BLOGCP”.

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The Olympics, Men's Versus Women's Gymnastics, Sexism, Age, Athleticism, Country Bias, Etc. Etc.

There’s a really good discussion going on over at Claudia La Rocco’s The Culturist about the Olympic coverage — people are even likening it to porn!

I couldn’t help get off on a tangent about male versus female gymnastics. During the last Olympics I remember going out to dinner with a group of my feminist friends and they were bemoaning how women’s sports are taken so unseriously by the public, giving as an example the prominence of the ‘silly’ ‘girl-child’ sport of female gymnastics over the more ‘real’ sports of women’s softball, etc. — the team sports. I thought the criticism was so unfair given how incredibly hard those gymnasts work, and I couldn’t understand how anyone couldn’t be in absolute awe of them as they did those impossible-looking tumbling passes and balance beam maneouvers and flying-through-the-air vaults. On the other hand, I’d played girls softball when I was young and felt there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do that the women players were doing without practice. So, why were they privileging team sports — so popular in men’s athletics — over individual sports, which women tend toward?

These friends were all lawyers and feminist legal scholars and I thought it was in large part my love of ballet and dance that made me at odds with them over this, so when I read Claudia (NYTimes dance critic, if you don’t know her) liken the female gymnasts to Jean Benet Ramsey, I thought, oh no!

After watching the women’s gymnastics last night in comparison to the men’s the night before, I did see a difference. The men do tend to be older (20-25), the women younger (16-20). And of course for anyone who watched last night, there seems to be a controversy over the actual ages of the Chinese female gymnasts. The cut-off age is 16 in the Olympic year (so you can be 15 now as long as you turn 16 by December 31, 2008), but no younger, and Bela Karolyi, among others, is questioning that some of those Chinese girls are that old. They did look quite young, but Asians are generally smaller-boned than Caucasians, and, as commenter Meg on Claudia’s blog pointed out, intense athletic training can delay the onset of puberty.

Of course the issue with the delayed onset of puberty caused by intense athletic training (which I hadn’t thought of) is an issue in itself. I’d think that’d be the case with any sport though, including Ballet. Maybe that’s one reason why ballerinas tend to be so thin, and not anorexia… And of course you don’t want to discourage female athleticism; wouldn’t that be sexist if you didn’t say the same for males? Does intense athleticism delay puberty for males though?…

And why favor female athletes so young anyway? Because they’re smaller and won’t go out of bounds on the tumbling passes? Because smaller bodies can tumble higher and get around those uneven bars at more astounding speeds, without fear of hitting the floor? Because as Karolyi said last night, youth doesn’t have as much fear of failure? Why isn’t all this the same for the men then?

The Chinese girls did seem to have more makeup on than the Americans, and they did seem to be jutting their hips and pelvises out and making poses on the floor that we might deem too sexy for their young-looking ages. But Jolene pointed out that that may be a cultural bias, and I agree. I went to an African dance performance with a Ballet friend the other night and she couldn’t stop laughing embarrasingly at the hip and pelvic movement; she’d never seen African before and didn’t know what to make of it, other than laugh at it and feel embarrassment for the dancers. Maybe their style just isn’t something we’re used to. Jolene also pointed out that the makeup seems to be an American thing, and I agree. I rarely see Asian women wearing that harsh bright aqua eyeshadow, yet that was a real fashion statement here in prior decades. They know they’re on TV, the Olympics are heavily dominated by the American press, and they’re trying to be like us. Ironically, it’s backfiring.

Finally, we’re also hearing all these stories about how awful the Chinese are to their children — forcing them into the sport, making them stay away from their families when the little girls really just want to come home, in comparison to the American stories, where the families always insist they’ve let their children decide how much dedication they wanted to give to their sport. Let’s just keep in mind that we’re hearing this all from the perspective of the American press. They assume we’ll feel better about ourselves, about our losing gold medals to the Chinese if we believe our society is so much more just. Not that I don’t believe in being critical at all of other governments; I didn’t have time to write about it, but I attended a reading organized by the PEN American Center of works by imprisoned Chinese dissident writers on the night before the Olympics began. But let’s just remember that our press exercises its own form of propaganda.

Okay, I’m done blabbering! Have a look at Claudia’s post and the responses.

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New York in the Summer Continued: Free August Outdoor Dance Events

I went to Dance Brazil and RumbaTap at Central Park’s Summer Stage last night and damn was it crowded. The most crowded I’ve ever seen Summer Stage. I ended up only staying for RumbaTap; left before Dance Brazil because I was just too claustrophobic (in my mind they let way too many people in; I was near the top in the bleachers, my knees jutting into the guy’s back in front of me, my own back being probed by the knees of the guy behind me, serried between the man next to me and the woman on my other side illegally sitting on a bleacher step because there was nowhere to stand. They really need to turn people away next time for safety purposes). I’d already seen Dance Brazil anyway (which I wrote about here) and they were performing the same program — Ritmo — so I figured I’d let someone else get squeezed all to bits.

(sorry so blurry; I’m one of the few who actually obeyed the “no flash photography” rule)

Anyway, Max Pollack’s RumbaTap was good (and I recognized one of the dancers, Matt‘s sister, Carson Murphy, right off the bat because of the big hair!). They danced to a variety of Latin rhythms — Salsa, Merengue, traditional Afro-Cuban, and even some Bulgarian (which is Mr. Pollack’s heritage). It was a bit hard, though, to see from so far away (one thing that annoys me greatly about Summer Stage is that no matter how early you get there, it’s hard to get a seat up front because they reserve practically all of them), and it was very hard not to be distracted by the hordes of people trying to find a seat, buying food, talking to each other and paying no attention to the dancing, etc. etc. etc. I think tap, like ballet, is probably too small, the movement too subtle and soft, to work well on a big, open-air stage like this where you don’t have crowd control. I’m thinking Dance Brazil’s Capoeira, with all the big, flashy acrobatics, probably captivated the crowd, especially in the back, much more successfully.

The crowd waiting for Dance Brazil…

Anyway, there’s one more Summer Stage dance event, next Friday, when Jennifer Muller and Erica Essners perform. Go here for info on Muller and Essners, and go here for the rest of the Summer Stage schedule (most of which consists of music events).

One of the great things about New York in August is the abundance of free outdoor events, most of which include dance: Lincoln Center Out of Doors, held in Damrosch Park, just behind the State Theater and facing Fordham Law School, is showcasing Armitage Gone! and Noche Flamenca, among other dance companies; the Lower Manhattan Culture Council’s Sitelines is a series of site-specific dance performances all taking place in lower Manhattan which are usually pretty good; the Downtown Dance Festival, sponsored by Battery Dance Company, takes place August 16-24 also at various Financial District-area locations; and, finally, my beloved Alvin Ailey continues celebrations of their 50th anniversary with several free performances and dance workshops throughout all five boroughs, including an all-day outdoor street festival on Saturday, August 9th in front of City Center in midtown Manhattan, with free performances inside that theater throughout the day.

Speaking of City Center, don’t forget Fall For Dance coming up September 17-27. Tickets for these $10 multi-company performances go on sale at 11:00 a.m. on September 7th and sell out in days if not hours. It doesn’t appear this year’s schedule is up yet (it’s on my mind because they were passing out flyers for it last night), but I’ll post it when it is. For those who don’t yet know about FFD, I don’t think there’s any greater value– you see a variety of top-notch dance companies for only $10 a ticket ($15 if you buy online, but STILL!)

Finally, as my art historian friend alerted me to, if you’re lucky enough to be in Paris in the near future, Sotheby’s is presenting what appears to be a magnificent collection of Ballet Russes material in celebration of that dance company’s 100th birthday. Looks fabulous.

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What Was Count Albrecht Thinking? and Other Thoughts On ABT’s GISELLE

 

Sorry about the lateness of this post. Again. I think in the future I may limit myself to one dance review per week, because, as much as I love ballet and as much as I love being in the theater every night, I just get so tired when the pressure’s on to write so much — especially when ballet season is segmented by two big ballroom competitions and there are weekly dance shows on TV… it just starts to cut back a bit on the enjoyment for me. Plus, I’m supposed to be spending the summer revising my novel and other fiction / creative nonfiction pursuits… We’ll see how I feel in six weeks when I’ll likely be bored out of my mind and starved for dance…

Anyway, I liked Giselle but can’t say I fell completely in love with it. For people new to this ballet, it’s the oldest classical ballet that is still being performed (was first performed in Paris in 1841), and the story is basically: Hilarion, village gameskeeper is in love with Giselle, a peasant girl; Count Albrecht, a nobleman, decides to pretend he is a peasant so that Giselle will fall for him; he passes; she falls; Hilarion, figuring out Albrecht’s disguise, reveals his true identity; and Giselle goes mad and dies of a broken heart. That’s the first Act; second Act is: Albrecht and Hilarion go to visit Giselle’s grave where each man in turn encounters the Wilis, a group of spirits who in life were maidens whose lovers failed to marry them before they died. They now roam the earth from dusk till dawn, their spirits restless with unrequited love. Any male who enters their kingdom risks being forced by them in their vengeance to dance to his death. Hilarion suffers this unfortunate fate, but Giselle protects Albrecht from her sister Wilis, and he lives.

 

 

 

I saw the cast with Julie Kent in the lead, the illustrious Ethan Stiefel (who I haven’t really seen dance since his double knee operations a couple of years ago now) as Count Albrecht, and Michele Wiles as the Wilis’ queen. I love Julie in this role and can’t really imagine anyone dancing it better except Veronika Part who wasn’t ever cast in the lead role (why, does anyone know?) Julie’s such a wonderful actress; she does the fullest mad scene I’ve seen, as she slowly realizes Hilarion is right about Albrecht’s identity, runs around stage nearly ripping her hair out, then falls to her knees holding her head in her hands trying to will it not so, then running around stage again, having a moment of seeming normalcy, then reverting to anger, then to tears, finally collapsing. You really believe she’s gone mad. And she plays the character with so much fragility throughout; you can see her delicacy and her constant emotional wavering between extremes even at the beginning when she’s counting the flowers of her daisy. When she ends with a “he loves me not” she throws down the bouquet and runs from him, looking terrified, but when he tricks her by surreptitiously discarding a petal behind her back, her mood instantaneously changes to extreme bliss. Julie hints at what is to come for this poor emotionally fraught girl.

At intermission I overheard in the bathroom line a young woman — must have been in her late teens or very early twenties — say to her friend, “I just don’t get it? What do you mean she dies of a broken heart???” The girl laughed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah,” the friend responded with a giggle and a shrug, indicating she liked the ballet but didn’t know how to defend it.

My biggest problem isn’t that it’s unbelievable that in this time period an emotionally unstable young woman may have gone mad — although I think it might make more sense to contemporary audiences to just have Giselle kill herself rather than literally die of her madness — but that I don’t understand Albrecht’s motives. The way Ethan played him, he didn’t seem to either. And the ballet starts in the middle of his story, where he’s already asking his friend if his disguise works, so he’s not really a fully developed character. So it’s not really entirely the dancer’s fault the character doesn’t make complete sense; but I still think he must figure it all out for himself beforehand and decide how he’s going to interpret it so it’s as clear to us as possible. Albrecht’s a nobleman and he’ll always be a nobleman, so did he just see this beautiful peasant girl one day while he was out and about and was so taken with her he wants to seduce her, or did he really fall in love with her and does he think there’s actually a future for them, class issues aside? Is he just a playboy who’s not thinking? Does he plan to marry her and somehow think he’s going to be able lead this double life forever? Is he a bit off, himself? Does he know how fragile she is and how serious is his deceit? I don’t know, but it’s important to me to have those answers or the ballet’s story doesn’t resonate. The way Ethan played the character, he seemed first intent on passing in his disguise, intent on flirting and getting her to like him, then annoyed at Hilarion for exposing him, then suddenly upset that she’s dead (which he doesn’t seem to have expected), then finally showing up at her grave in sorrow and dancing with her spirit. Because his character made more sense to me in the second Act — he now sees the error of his ways and is horribly sorry — I liked that part better than the first.

The other thing about this ballet that keeps it from being a favorite for me is that the story seems to be told primarily through the acting or miming rather than through specific choreography. Certain scenes, like where she goes mad for example, aren’t very movement-specific; her insanity and ensuing death aren’t depicted through actual twisted, tortuous steps, etc., but just by however the ballerina chooses to act it (falling to the floor and covering her face with her hands, etc.) Maybe the repeated one-footed bouncing bourrees would have been better suited for this scene than for the Wilis scene. Such a repetitive movement seems a little maddening… Anyway, a ballet should be told primarily through movement; otherwise it’s more like a play.

I loved both Sascha Radetsky as Hilarion (I really felt his pain on Giselle’s death and I understood all of his actions — of course he’s going to reveal the imposter who’s going to lead to his love’s demise) and Michele Wiles as Myrta, queen of the Wilis. Michele was so controlling and regal, yet forgiving and willing to “listen” to others. As Giselle’s ghost danced with Albrecht, instead of simply standing aside, Michele’s Myrta stood regally in front of her flock of potentially murderous maidens, maintaining the power to unleash them at any time on the poor Count. Michele continued to look all powerful, then turned, crooking her head over her shoulder regarding the two, as if to make sure Albrecht wasn’t taking advantage yet again of her new charge. The pas de deux almost became Michele’s, though she stood shock still, as you could read the subtly changing expressions on her face –Â the hatred of Albrecht, the realization that Giselle loved him, the decision to let him live. I didn’t used to like Michele so much, but I feel like she’s finding the layers, the vulnerability, making each character her own.

Anyway, one thing I won’t be missing for the second half of the summer is all that obnoxious Lincoln Center construction. It wasn’t fun trying to navigate your way through the multiple mazes to find the State Theater, the Met, the library. And of course crowd control was near impossible because of limited entrances. I don’t think ABT started before 8:15-8:20 p.m. a single night this season because of the length of time it took to get the audience through those doors. And where did my fountain go 🙁 Let’s pray it’s done by next year.

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Alvin Ailey on PBS This Sunday, and Giselle at ABT Tomorrow

 

Beyond the Steps, a documentary about Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater focusing on their recent world tours and move to their new, beautiful home in NYC, is scheduled to air on New York’s local PBS station, Channel 13, this Sunday at noon. Hopefully, it’ll show in other areas too; check your local listings.

 

Also, I saw ABT‘s production of Giselle earlier this week, and just haven’t had time to write about it yet. I saw the Julie Kent / Ethan Stiefel / Michele Wiles cast, which was fine. I loved Julie, liked Ethan, and am becoming increasingly impressed with Michele. More about that very soon! But in the meantime, tomorrow (Saturday, the 12th) is the last day for this very emotional, very dramatic, and at times very beautiful ballet. It also happens to be the last day of ABT’s Met season, horribly. Matinee cast is Irina Dvorovenko in the lead, Maxim Beloserkovsky as her would-be suitor, and the always astonishing Veronika Part as the queen of the Wilis, and evening cast is the same one I saw. I hate this day each year…

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Back For More Jose

I went back to ABT last night for another Merry Widow with Jose and Julie in the leads. Couldn’t resist! And I’m glad I did; I ended up meeting Roslyn Sulcas, writer from the New York Times, who is really nice and down to earth, and elegantly beautiful.

Anyway, I already wrote a bit about this ballet earlier, and have to get ready for a pre-competition dinner, but I quickly just want to mention a few other tidbits about Jose that make him so great, that I noticed last night. He keeps in character throughout, even when he’s not center stage. I mean, they all do, but Jose really keeps in character. As Julie’s rich widow was dancing with the Pontevedrian men, each man trying to curry her wealthy available favor, Jose was sitting off to the side flirting devilishly with Misty Copeland. And he was really flirting, not just chatting. At one point he raised his eyebrows at her in a way that made me nearly fall out of my seat.

And the way he struts around stage, like a cocky, spoiled, at times drunk, misbehaving boy … it’s not at all balletic, the way other dancers might do, but perfectly in character (and somehow on him, mischievous as it is, becomes so endearing).

I also noticed that when he spots as he’s doing a slow turn, carrying his ballerina in his arms, he looks at each spot on the floor with intent. During his pas de deux with Julie when he was remembering happy times with her in the past, he looked down at each point on the floor like he was lost, forlorn, wondering where they all went. With most dancers they look like they’re doing exactly what they’re doing — spotting so they don’t lose balance. He turns simple technique into art.

 

I also wanted to point out how fantastic Joseph Phillips was, as leader of the Pontevedrian men, with his spectacular bravura-embellished folk dancing, and Craig Salstein as he sweetly but sadly unsuccessfully vied for Julie’s hand. And Julie as the widow was sweetly flirtatious, her smiles and raised eyebrows infusing her prolonged flexes of the foot into quick, snappingly sharp points, with added sexual meaning.

 

Anyway, I’m very excited for Giselle next week!

 

Happy 4th of July, everyone!