Tag: Dance Critics / Writers / Bloggers

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Why No Contemporary Nureyevs?

So, I thought the documentary last night on PBS was rather so-so; it was okay I guess as far as PBS documentaries go 🙂 First 40 minutes dragged, but second half was far better, mainly because it was about his defection. I remember reading an interview with Baryshnikov years ago — I now have no idea where or when it was — but he was asked why he decided to defect and he basically said, “mmm, dunno, seemed like the thing to do?” I was so disappointed. I’m sure he just couldn’t talk about it, but how could you not have some kind of answer for something like that? Even if you just say, “I really don’t want to talk about it.” So I’m very happy that here they focused on Nureyev’s defection, even using his French friend who witnessed it to re-enact the whole thing.

I love how the filmmakers dwelt on the aftermath too — the KGB’s plan to try to break poor Rudik’s legs, their attempts to destroy his first performance in the West by screaming and shouting and throwing dangerous objects at him onstage. Wow. And how he had to go into hiding. And how the government wholly erased his presence in Russia, preventing information about him leaking into the country through the newspapers, destroying the careers of his friends and family. How some friends missed him dearly — one said he was “the bright spot” in her life, such a thing coming only once a lifetime, and even that if one is lucky. How others felt he was hugely dishonorable (for leaving the country that made him, as if it was the country and not he himself), an abandoner of his family and friends. The film doesn’t make it obvious, but he had to live with all of that. Some journalists have argued that the documentary only shows Nureyev in maturity, on his good days, neglecting to show the occasional nastier side of him. If you were constantly made to feel like a horrible person for turning your back on your country, your ill mother, wreaking destruction on your friends and family, all for wanting to live an honest life, you’d probably have some anger inside of you too.

Anyway, the first part is too slow I think mainly because there are too many interviews. It’s confusing who all of the people are, and many are not that animated (unlike most of the funny characters in the very good documentary Les Ballets Russes). Perhaps they could have filmed in more meaningful places, like with the French guy in the airport? Just having them sit there yapping away was a bit boring. I found his school chum entertaining though — the white-haired guy who talked about all the times Rudik would make him practice, would make him do the parts of the ballerina so he could practice lifts 🙂 For those who somehow can’t tell from his dancing alone, such anecdotes reveal that this was someone who ate, breathed, and slept his art.

By far the best parts of the film are all the footage of the great one in action — both that amateurly taken in his youth by his German friend, the ever intriguing Teja Krempke (could we please hear how he died — I know it was “under mysterious circumstances,” but where was he found, etc.?), and formal footage taken of his later performances with his “soul mate” Margot Fonteyn. For people who missed the film (it’ll be shown again late Saturday night), it’s definitely worth getting through the boring interview segments to get to that footage.

But watching him dance, I can’t help but get upset that there’s no one even remotely like him today. He danced with such fierce, inflamed passion, with such glorious recklessness, with such hunger — forget those insanely fast chaine turns and crazy high barrel turns that don’t look humanly possible — just look at the intensity in his eyes that permeates his entire body, even in those small pieces from Pierrot Lunaire and Giselle. I feel that there’s no one today who comes even close, who has the courage to do something novel like dance on demi-pointe like he did (and now everyone does). I think you have to have starved to have that kind of hunger. And today’s young ballet dancers — I feel like many of them don’t know the meaning of those words. And, forget art, their greatest ambitions are to construct the perfect MySpace page so they can engage in childish chatter with each other.

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Remember Remember Remember!!!!

to watch tonight, Wenesday, PBS at 9 pm. DO NOT MISS IT! Under any circumstances! This is the greatest dancer EVER. Plain and simply. Unarguably. In the world. EVER.

If you wish to do some advance reading, everyone but everyone on the web is talking:

Apollinaire in Newsday

Apollinaire’s blog

James Wolcott from Vanity Fair (scroll down to last couple paragraphs; he also quotes extensively New York Sun’s Joel Lobenthal on some important things the production left out)

journalist and author Tobi Tobias

New York Times

the inscrutably angry LA Times’s Lewis Segal (what in the ballet world has made that man so mad? By the way, are people just ignorning him these days? Am I the only idiot letting him get to me?)

New Yorker’s Joan Acocella

My fellow blogger Art (through whom I found the blasted Segal article that nearly made me cry — thanks a lot, Art 😉 )

Ballet Talk talkers (focusing mostly on Nureyev’s gorgeous, cat-like demi-pointe that Segal has such issues with)

and I’m sure many many others who escaped my limited web-surfing attention span :S

Please please watch the program. No matter how deficient the documentary may be, this man’s life was so uber fascinating and his dancing so sublime you’re bound to be completely enthralled, there’s simply no way around it! This film covers his early years before he became hugely famous in the West — so, while he was in the Kirov Ballet up through his decision to defect. So basically, lots of footage of Russia 😀

C’mon, he was the original Pasha 🙂 I know, I know, I’ve offended everyone and their dog with that … I simply mean of course that for people who have fallen in love with dance through SYTYCD, there’s a whole lot more where that came from 🙂

Okay?! Wednesday night 9 p.m. PBS. Discussion to follow!

 

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Brief Snapshots From Downtown Dance Festival

I’m exhausted from spending the weekend down at the lower tip of the island watching other people dance (how does that happen?), so this is going to be short (word-wise at least). The Downtown Dance Festival took place during lunch hour each day last week at Chase Manhattan Plaza in the Financial District, then moved for the weekend to a nice little outdoor amphitheater in Battery Park. I wasn’t able to see all of the dance companies (nearly 20 in all), but here are some highlights from what I did see.

First, sorry, but I simply must bombard people with just a couple more photos of Quorum Ballet, who performed again Saturday in Battery Park. They were really so lovely… so, just, HOT for lack of a better word 🙂

 

I wrote in my last post on them that their lifts looked a bit “trick-happy” and on watching again I think that might be in part because the lead female dancer, Theresa da Silva, would often look out into the audience and choose someone to flirt with, which seemed to happen most often while she was airborne. Very interesting, and something I haven’t really seen in concert dance before, only in ballroom comps and some club acts. Anyway, their next performance in NY will be February 13th at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. I urge everyone in the city to check them out!

 

I also liked the Ashley Browne / Kinetic Project. Some very sweet duets with fun, pop music from Jill Scott, Mos Def, and Fiona Apple.

 

Ms. Bne is a choreographer I could really see working on SYTYCD. I really wish they would open the show up to other choreographers besides the same ole Mia Michaels and Wade Robeson. I mean, keep them, but instead of having them choreograph something practically every week, let the country see some of this other awesome talent!

 

Another favorite, Vissi Dance Theater. I loved them! Their mission statement reads, “Vissi is committed to art that explores moral and social issues… Vissi seeks to speak to the human condition, lift the spirit, ask questions, celebrate the joy of life and reflect the truths of human nature.” I felt they did that splendidly. This piece above, danced by four women, reminded me a bit of Alvin Ailey’s Cry with its upbeat celebration of womanhood, and was kind of a combo of modern dance with disco / hustle, to music by Macy Gray and Jocelyn Brown.

 

 

Their second piece, named “Melbabcd,” was a combo of all kinds of stuff — modern, hustle, hip hop, Latin, African, you name it. Great fun, as dance that makes you think and has social relevance can often be 🙂 This one kind of reminded me of Bill T. Jones with its very colorful cast of characters. I’d love to see more full-length work by this company.

The choreographer, Courtney Ffrench, by the way, is another whom I can really see peppering up SYTYCD with some romping group numbers. C’mon Nigel, expand those horizons!

Another highlight:

 

Gallim Dance Group. This piece is from “Snow” based on the novel by Orhan Pamuk and choreographed by Andrea Miller (yet another who could inject that aforesaid pop-fest with a blast of brain power). This was a haunting piece, like I imagine the book to be (okay, admitting I haven’t read it here!). The women bent their bodies every which way, inched forward, ran backward — the movement was beautiful but juxtaposed with musical lyrics like “question democracy…” became chilling. A Juilliard grad formerly with Ohad Naharin’s Batseva, which I’ve enthusiastically blogged about before, Miller’s mission is to “explore issues such as feminity, power, community and solitude.” Gallim will be performing at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea in September. See them there if you can.

On Sunday, we were treated to Darshana Jhaveri Manipuri Dance who came all the way from India, and who specialize in bringing the classical Indian dance, Manipuri, to contemporary audiences. So sweet, so lovely, and so educational.

This guy BLEW ME AWAY. He had this amazingly intense look of concentration the whole time. Sometimes when a performer has that look in his or her eyes, you’re almost mesmerized just by the face. He beat the hell out of this double sided drum, as well as another that required a stick, later on. Not only did he play those drums, he danced while playing. And not only did he dance, he did these continuous barrel turns at whiplash speed. The entire audience sat there open-mouthed.

 

And here he is barrelling all over stage with the other, larger drum. Between turns, he made beautifully intricate gestures with that drumstick. At one point, he put the drum down on the center of the stage and did repeated turns around it, beating it with the stick after each rotation, and managing somehow to hit the stick on the drum right in time with the lightening-fast music. Talk about the necessity of great speed and precision on those turns — if a turn was off, you wouldn’t just see it, you’d hear it. It was breathtaking, and I can’t tell you how much respect I now have for this classical Indian dance form.

Okay, I can’t write anymore. I do have a few more pictures of the whole festival, along with the Sitelines performance series, in my photoalbum, here.

Speaking of Sitelines, Apollinaire and Eva Yaa Asantewaa are having a very interesting discussion of the Macaulay NYTimes review of the Reggie Wilson / Andreya Ouamba work I wrote of earlier. Eva’s review of the piece puts me to shame — she saw all kinds of things I hadn’t thought of — do read it! I do have thoughts on the subject of socio-cultural meaning in dance and whether the choreographic duo’s mission statement should have been confined to grant application writing, as Macaulay argues, but am far too exhausted to formulate them now…

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NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

 

I’m so upset. Last night in the mail I received my New York City Ballet brochure announcing the company’s Winter / Spring season and noticed right off that the photo of Carousel featured not the usual Seth Orza (my favorite NYCB dancer!!!) and Kathryn Morgan (together below, in photo by Paul Kolnick, taken from Explore Dance.com), but instead Damian Woetzel and Tiler Peck. In fact there were no pictures anywhere of Seth! Unheard of! I frantically searched the roster and his name was nowhere to be found!@#&^%! Philip had told me earlier that word had it Seth was leaving NYCB for Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, but I told Philip to shut up and stop spreading base lies! Ohhh, now it appears he was right… I don’t get it. Seth was just promoted to soloist. And he was a favorite of all the critics — New Yorker’s Joan Acocella and even Alastair Macaulay from the Times who likes hardly anyone. You don’t leave New York under those circumstances! You just don’t! And he and Kathryn look so adorable together. Just look at them in the two pics below. (bottom one is taken from New Yorker, accompanying Acocella article). Who’s Kathryn going to dance with now? And who’s going to be Swan Lake Samba Girl’s favorite now?! Come on man! I was just starting to really love NYCB because of him. It’s not fair! Release him, Peter Boal!

 

In slightly less devastating news, Ms. Acocella writes in this week’s New Yorker that PBS will broadcast a bio-documentary on Rudolf Nureyev, to air in NY on August 29th. I should be excited, given that he’s my favorite dancer of all time. But it’s hard to work up sufficient enthusiasm when I’m just so sad sad sad I’ll never see my favorite NYCBer dance live again, at least on a regular basis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

The others: Carmen Corella!

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

Craig Salstein!

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, I really like it?! I do!”

“I know, so do I?!”

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

People take these reviews very seriously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trouble With Favorites

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

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

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

Classical, Story Ballets Involve Dramatic Action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Men, And What Makes Hallberg So Sexy?

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

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

Miming Doesn’t Work

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

Dancers Are Smaller Than They Appear!

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

Vitali Krauchenka’s Awesome Swampy von Rothbart

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

 

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

 

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

Taye Diggs

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

 

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

Fun, Reader Survey!

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

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

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Celebrity Sighting!

First, thank you, Mr. Wolcott!!

Second,

I saw this one

and this one

earlier tonight walking down a busy upper west-side street. Carmen is so beautiful, even without any makeup whatsoever! But I have no idea what I was on thinking I could fit into her costumes — she is tiny! Tall but tiny! Like a human barbie doll … And Herman is such a cutie — recognizable from a mile away! They were walking and talking to an older couple who apparently had recognized them. Sweet 🙂

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Diana’s Beautiful But Aloof Prima Russian Swan, and A Snubbed Marcelo!

So, last night I went to see ABT‘s Swan Lake, starring my favorite (Marcelo Gomes OF COURSE), and the Russian ballerina ALL the critics are talking about, Diana Vishneva, who divides her time between the Kirov Ballet, in St. Petersberg, and ABT. I was really looking forward to seeing these two together, and particularly to Ms. Vishneva, since I’ve seen so little of her.

I just WANT so badly to love her. She just didn’t really do it for me here. I do think she’s a great ballerina capable of really taking your breath away at points. In the third Act of the ballet (the famous black swan pas de deux), she whipped around those fouettes around like I’ve never seen anyone do before — I’m not a counter but I swear it seemed they numbered in the triple digits, and she was spinning so fast I felt my own head spin just watching her. She looked pleased with herself, for once (I think she’s very, very hard on herself). But artistically, and I almost feel badly criticizing her for this because I feel kind of like it’s a Russian thing, but I feel that she’s a great solo dancer, a great prima ballerina, but one who works magic on her own, not with a partner.

In fact, she wasn’t working with my Marcelo at all! Near the beginning, Marcelo’s Prince Siegfried has just been given a crossbow at his coming-of-age party and now is out in the woods dealing with the fact that he’s about to become king and must get over his childishness and pick a bride. He sees the beautiful swan and of course, like a dumb boy, starts to take aim, when she suddenly transforms into the beautiful girl, Odette, that she is (pre-spell cast by the evil von Rothbert). When she does so, he is stunned, immediately taken with her, and quietly watches her. She soon spots him and is afraid, and he makes clear he’s not going to harm her; to the contrary, he’s mesmerized. She then tells him her sorrowful story of the spell and what must be done to relieve it.

So, I feel like I only saw this story from Marcelo’s point of view. When he shows her he’s not going to harm her, his feelings are so clear; he acts it perfectly. But she hasn’t seemed fearful, so I’m totally confused. And I don’t see her transforming from swan to girl, back to swan — I see something lovely and ethereal, but that’s all, no story and no dual character. And then when they do the pas de deux (in which she’s supposed to tell him her sad story), I see a prima ballerina dancing gorgeously as a beautiful swan, but NOT a swan — a prima ballerina dancing as a swan. And, I don’t see her communicating in the least with him. It’s like the man is just a human elevator, just there to lift her ballerina / swan into the air so that she can shine up there, half way to the ceiling, gloriously. And I know there are those to whom this is what Ballet is: the man is not supposed to be seen; he’s just there to carry the ballerina all over the stage and keep her from falling during her turns and arabesques so that the illusion that she’s this ethereal being who can float in the air unsupported can be maintained.

But that’s not Ballet for me. The man is essential to me. He’s part of the story, and he’s an important character, and he’s not just a human transporter of ethereal ballerinas. He’s the man, he’s Marcelo, and he should be seen, dammit! 🙂

Okay, back to that third Act, the black swan pas de deux where she does the spectacular fouettes: Diana is now playing the evil von Rothbert’s daughter, Odile, whose mission is to seduce him so that he will not be able to save Odette from her swan fate. I felt this duet worked ever so slightly better since she’s now supposed to be kind of wickedly, meanly, seductively playing with his feelings, but it still wasn’t what it would have been if theirs was a true partnership. It was too much about her; she was still too aloof to be seductive.

Weird as this may sound, what I actually DO kind of like about her is what she brings culturally to ABT. She so Russian, the way she takes her mid-performance bows and then curtain calls in the end. It’s actually kind of fun to see that on an American stage — all of that slow, drawn-out melodrama and extreme seriousness. Russian ballet dancers take themselves and their art with all the seriousness in the world. And what I love so much about Marcelo is that he’s such a great partner, such a great guy, such a great overall human 🙂 that he just goes along with whatever his ballerina is doing. So, with her, he kind of became “Russian” too — standing in back of her and presenting her as if she’s absolute Royalty, all intense seriousness and melodrama right along with her.

My ballet universe just would not be the same without Marcelo 🙂 He tells the story for me and makes everything real and human and relatable. Even just the way he sits on his throne watching all the would-be brides, taking it all in, humored by some of them at points, then thinking he sees Odette, remembering her, realizing how devastated he is, the way he first sees the swan and boyishly wants to take aim, then is overtaken by her transformation, the way he “talks” to her… Like I said, he just tells the whole story with his face and his actions. And even outside of the world of the story, the way you can see the dancerly concentration on his face, making sure he’s being a perfect support for the ballerina, just taking care of her onstage — it’s so endearing; makes him seem like a real guy and not a “dancer” — I guess the complete antithesis to her.

One other thing about her: I saw this posted on Ballet Talk. It’s her website and she has a page where fans can interact with her. One fan recently told her they were excited about coming to see her perform here, said they were really looking forward to seeing marvelous dancing. Her response: “good luck.” Hehe. She obviously has a fun sense of humor, another thing that makes me want to like her… Not like personality is a substitute for knock-out dancing, but it’s definitely not unimportant either… I will definitely keep going to her performances; there is something very intriguing about her; she has a real mystique, even if she hasn’t blown me away yet 🙂

Anyway, intermissions were fun-filled as well. I saw Anna Kisselgoff, former New York Times chief dance critic, in the ladies room. Then, I ran into Apollinaire in the lobby! She took me to the press office to get press packets — there’s a lot of very interesting info in these little packets: in-depth history and synopsis of the ballet, info on the choreography, the scenery and costumes, the music and the score broken down to each tiny piece of the ballet, all kinds of cool details. And there’s a whole little universe over there on the lower left side of the house, orchestra level — all these little nooks and crannies, little rooms and offices! Who knew?!

AND, while we were lounging outside of the press office, in the hallway, who should come blazing through the back door but the illustrious Roberto! I tried to stay all calm and act nonchalant and pretend I had no idea who he was, but, as they rounded the corner, his friend caught me staring at him all doe-eyed from behind. Oh well…

One last thing: here is Vitali Krauchenka, a corps dancer who danced von Rothbert:

Philip and I saw him at the gift shop at New York City Ballet a few days ago (albeit looking not like the pic above but like this :)) during the final performance there. Very strong stage presence! I really like him.

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A Beautiful (and Emotional) Farewell to One of the Last of the Balanchine Ballerinas at NYCB

Last night marked the final performance of Kyra Nichols, the second-to-last still-performing ballerina to have worked directly with George Balanchine, and thus widely considered to be of the last of “the Balanchine ballerinas.” (The other Balanchine ballerina is Darci Kistler, also of NYCB). I’m relatively new to ballet and especially New York City Ballet, so I haven’t had many chances to see her dance, and I’m really feeling sad now, as I felt when I recently saw the legend Gelsey Kirkland perform (in a non-dance role) in American Ballet Theater‘s Sleeping Beauty, that I’ve missed out on an era. Ms. Nichols danced brilliantly last night; I was so overwhelmed and I wish so much I would have seen more of her over the years. Since I don’t know a huge amount about her, here’s an interview she gave recently to Gia Kourlas of Time Out NY, and here is Joel Lobenthal’s article in The Sun (I remember NYTimes’s Alastair Macaulay also wrote an article on the several retiring ballerinas but it’s impossible to link to because they only allow paying subscribers to access articles). Also, here is long-time NYCB fan Oberon’s review of last night.

Last night was breathtaking. Peter Martins (NYCB Director) put together a gorgeous program for her. First on was Serenade, what to me seems to be classic Balanchine — involving oodles of beautiful ballerinas in gorgeous flowing baby blue chiffon, and one or two men overwhelmed by them all! (which is largely, it seems, Balanchine’s take on ballet 🙂 ) It was mostly abstract but with a slight narrative in which Nichols poignantly danced the main character. (I will definitely be reading more on this splendid ballet in Terry Teachout’s book on Balanchine, but more about that in a minute…) Second was Balanchine’s “ballroomy” piece for four couples set to Robert Schumann’s “Davidsbundlertanze” (try saying that several times in a row!), which I’ve seen before and loved, and set to lovely onstage piano music. And, my favorite of the night (can’t help it, I’m a ballroom dancer!), “Der Rosenkavalier” from Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes, a shortish piece in which the stage is overtaken with waltzing couples — the men in elegant black long-tailed tuxes and the women in long lavish white gowns — one of the most exquisite sights I think I’ve ever seen on a stage, and one that rekindled the passion I felt for Standard Ballroom upon attending my first competition. Not that several couples waltzing their own routine on a ballroom floor could look anything like this (even if those couples are at the level of Mirko Gozzoli and Alessia Betti or Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova…) — it takes a genius choreographer, not just a few great dancers, to create such a sublime spectacle. And one thing I love about ballroom is how it seems to convert little boys into mature gentlemen — Robert Fairchild and Tyler Angle looked so dapper whisking their ladies all around the floor — so charming! It just takes you to another time and place, to a fairytale land…

Anyway, although it was the end of an era in the ballet world, for me it was a time of new beginnings, of meeting new people and making new friendships. I met up with critic and writer extraordinare Apollinaire Scherr, who introduced me to the illustrious critic and writer and author of several books, Terry Teachout, who gave me a copy of his biography of Balanchine!!

The three of us met up during intermissions, then all went out afterward and chatted all about the ballet world, and the dance critic world — so very interesting for newcomer me! Mr. Teachout is so brilliant. He’s a former jazz musician and has been writing for so long about the worlds of classical music, ballet, and now theater, he’s just like a walking encyclopedia of the New York arts scene. It’s so amazing. I can’t wait to start reading his book — which I’m going to begin this afternoon (in between trying to finish two briefs for work by the end of the month — I’m going to get it all done I swear…) Meeting him was so fun, and so educational, and I’m sure his book is going to open up a new world to me (and, he even said he liked my blog 🙂 :)) — thanks so much, Apollinaire!

There was so much going on last night, every ballet fan in the universe (or at least those lucky enough to have got tickets) must have been there — but somehow I was also able finally to meet Sarah, who frequently comments on The Winger as well as Philip‘s and my blogs, and Bob, who comments a lot on our blogs as well! That was fun, and I’m completely amazed that in that massive crowd people were actually able to recognize each other. I sat next to Susan, who also is a big blog and Ballet-Talk-commenter (and met her nice husband), and Philip and Wei (who I also met beforehand at the stage door and hung out with. Philip is great fun to lurk around the stage door with because he knows everyone and everything at NYCB … he should be a tour guide, if there was such a thing!) We all looked for Carbro at Ballet Talk, but couldn’t find her.

Anyway, it was a really amazing night, amazing experience. Oh, we also spotted Kristin Sloan onstage filming — so her video’s going to be a lot of fun to watch when she finishes it. I think it’s so magnificent that we now have this technology that enables us to preserve these monumental events in this way. First those excellent “Tragic Love” videos documenting Martins’s new Romeo + Juliet and now this — NYCB is just going to HAVE to expand it’s website’s broadband to make room for all these awesome videos Kristin’s making!

Okay, time for rest and relaxation (and brief-writing) until tonight … when a ballerina whose career I HAVE followed and whom I love, retires as well — there were many teary eyes in last night’s audience; tonight is going to be my night for being a hysterial wreck…

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I am a Crazy Czarist Russian, Who Knew?: Balanchine’s "Jewels" at NYCB

Whew, am so busy with work (law work, that is), writing stuff, and ballet-going, I’m badly behind on blogging… I’ve seen so many things over the past few days at New York City Ballet — after suddenly realizing that, between ABT‘s Met season and the Blackpool Dance Festival, NYCB’s spring season is practically over and I’ve seen hardly anything but Martins’s ROMEO AND JULIET, so am trying to make up for lost time… I plan to blog on everything I’ve seen as soon as I can catch up, but for now, I’ll start with JEWELS, the most breathtaking ballet I’ve seen in a while, and one that really drove home to me like nothing else George Balanchine’s magic. This was my first time seeing it and as a result I now want to devour everything written about that man, and plan, as soon as I get time, to run to the store for the biographies by Terry Teachout and Robert Gottlieb.

JEWELS is divided into three “acts,” or parts, each one representing a specific period and style of classical ballet. Of course the ballet’s not literally about precious stones; the jewels are a metaphor for each period, each of which, near and dear to Balanchine’s heart, is its own unique kind of gem. Premiering in 1967, the ballet was considered a radical departure from the long-dominant big story ballets and is recognized as the first full-length abstract (ie: narrative-less) ballet.

Part I, Emeralds, is Balanchine’s celebration of French classical dance, and is choreographed to Gabriel Faure’s concert suites from 1889, used in that year to accompany French adaptations of Shakespeare plays. This first piece is, to me, characterized by quietness (at least in contrast to the latter two!), fluidity, elegance, the beauty and charm of simplicity, and by subtle expressiveness. Rachel Rutherford captured my attention with her gorgeously expressive wrists. (She also captivated me yesterday in CONCERTO BAROCCO, but more on that in a later post…) With those beautiful wrists — ahhh, I wanna see HER do BAYADERE now! Also entrancing me was a certain R. Fairchild … Robert Fairchild aka “Romeo” Fairchild 🙂 Seriously, where did this kid come from? Was he seen onstage before Martins cast him earlier this season for the world premiere of his R&J? He’s spectacular — everything he does — turns, jumps, everything is marked with amazing precision. And he has that extra something that is undefinable that makes him stand far out in a crowd. (I saw him yesterday in BRANDENBERG and TRIBUTE looking very charmingly James Dean-esque … but more on that later… methinks he may be the Angel Corella of NYCB?…) Well, Peter Martins surely has a knack for uncovering talent, of that I am sure!

As Philip rightly noted, (and part of the charm and the fun of this ballet is, I think) everyone has their favorite part. Philip’s is this first part, and I can why with its soft, elegant beauty and quiet, subtle charm.

Going into the ballet and knowing as little as I did about it, I was sure the second part, Rubies, would be my favorite. This is Balanchine’s panegyric to America, his adopted country. Choreographed to lively, late 1920s piano music by Igor Stravinsky and using spicy red short-skirted costumes, this is Balanchine’s vision of what American dance, of what America, the New World, is — high-spirited, fast and energetic, jazzy with jutting hips, showy, full of zest and flavor, fun, cheery, endlessly upbeat, overflowing with youthful optimism. This part is the one most often performed when companies use it in mixed repertories, and you can see why — it is the most “Balanchine-esque” — this vision of America, this combination of classical ballet with what we already had here, with what was uniquely American, was the stylistic hallmark of his oeuvre, and, since he is the father of American ballet, it is in turn our national style…

Yvonne Borree, looking, to me, physically not like herself (has she perhaps dyed her hair darker?), was super fun to watch– she was cute, sassy, charming — she was PERFECT for the American part! As was Theresa Reichlen, who looked very Firebird-y. And is there any NYCB male dancer more perfectly suited for the all-American guy-role than Mr. AMERICAN IN PARIS, Damian Woetzel?!

I was so excited by Rubies, I thought the third section, Diamonds, would bore me in contrast. Boy was I wrong. It completely blew me away to such an extent I almost cried at the end, which I haven’t done since nearly a year ago when Jose Manuel Carreno‘s Romeo woke up thinking Alessandra Ferri‘s Juliet dead at the Met… Diamonds is Balanchine’s homage to his homeland, to the grand, sweeping, large-scaled classical tradition of the Russian Ballet. Returning to 1875 and using Tschiakovsky’s Symphony No. 3 in D Major — anyone who has ever been to the ballet more than once instantly recognizes Tschiakovsky music, even if they’ve never heard the exact score before, as THE quintessential classical ballet music. The choreography here, a tribute to the great Russian story ballets of the 19th Century, with its dramatic lifts accompanying the orchestra as the music builds to a climax, the many men dashingly courting their ballerinas around the stage at once narrowly missing sideswiping each other as their paths criss-cross, the large ensemble dancing in perfect unison, the gorgeous pas de deux and the solos for that most pristine and celebrated of creatures — the Russian ballerina, is equally instantly recognizable.

This is actually what confuses me about my own reaction to the ballet: I’m really not a Petipa-head — I don’t really go for those huge-scale, five-hour-long ballets like SWAN LAKE and SLEEPING BEAUTY just drenched with pomp and circumstance so overwrought you can’t enjoy the basic beauty of the actual dancing. But then, I had to remind myself that this is Balanchine’s version of Petipa, of the grand tradition of Russian ballet — scaled down and with all of the elements he didn’t care for so much taken out, with only what he truly loved left in. Oftentimes the tribute shines far brighter than the original. And this is a most endearing encomium, a diamond obviously being the most valuable of all stones and that enjoying never-ending life…

Ballerina Maria Kowroski (who danced the principal female role in Diamonds the night I went) wrote a little blurb in the Playbill about the ballet:

“Jewels is undoubtedly one of Balanchine’s greatest masterpieces, and, during my career, I’ve been lucky enough to dance in each of the ballet’s parts…

“The first of the ballets I danced was Emeralds. This ballet has a very specific quality, a real perfume, and it has a fluid and effortless style…

“When I saw Rubies for the first time, I knew right away I wanted to do the soloist part. It’s so daring and fast — its flashiness appealed to me…

“But Diamonds is my favorite. I don’t even know how to describe it, except to say that it’s heavenly. First of all, that costume, with the beautiful headpiece, makes you feel like a million bucks. Then the ballet starts off very slowly, with a beautiful pas de deux, and the music takes you to a different place, as if you’re just floating along. When I dance Diamonds, I feel like royalty, like I’m in a beautiful palace of music and movement. Near the end, there’s a thrilling moment when the music slows down almost to a stop, and then it starts up again for the big finish, with the stage filled with dancers all moving in unison — I always get chills, and sometimes, I come close to crying. It’s just so gorgeous.”

I can assure you, it feels the same exact way watching it! The season is, horribly, nearly over, but hopefully, hopefully please please NYCB will perform this gem again, many times — and not just the Rubies section, but the ballet in its entirety. I feel that each section informs the others and that each part reveals its true beauty and magic only in contrast to the others, so I strongly feel the ballet should be put on in whole and not split up. You have only a few more opportunitities to see this masterpiece next week — on Thursday, Saturday night and next Sunday’s matinee, when NYCB will end its season with it. Visit their website for tickets. Do not miss 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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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!!!