Tag: David Hallberg

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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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The Bad and the Good

So, I was at ABT tonight (or, seeing as how it’s now 1:00 in the morning, last night) watching David Hallberg and Michele Wiles perform Swan Lake, and was told, as some seem to have heard already (like Susan), the bad news: that Veronika Part is unfortunately injured and will be unable to perform tomorrow’s matinee. So, she and Marcelo have been replaced.

The good news is that Max Beloserkovsky and Irina Dvorovenko will now be dancing. At first I was upset because I had so wanted to see Veronika, whose Swan Lake I’ve heard so much about (and whose Bayadere I was simply blown away by) and of course I’m always upset when my favorite man is suddenly replaced! But on re-thinking it, I’m actually really excited about seeing Irina and Max. I’ve never seen them perform this ballet before and Irina is so gorgeous, I’m sure it’s going to be really stunning. So, I will be there and will be blogging about it afterward! And will also blog about my thoughts on David and Michele then as well. In general, I liked but didn’t love D & M. LOVED David, but think all the women I’ve seen so far need seriously to work on their Odettes (ie: the beautiful, pure White Swans). The Odiles (ie: the cunningly, naughtily seductive Black Swans) are all magnetically beguiling, blow me away with those 10,000 fouettes, totally fantabulous. But the Odettes need MAJOR work. Odettes live on passion and romance and love and heart. Odile without Odette = one-sided, sexed-up but passionless, overall non-compelling Swan Lake. My friend, who’s never been to a ballet before thought exactly the same. But more later after I see Max and Irinia tomorrow… Also, I hope Veronika’s okay and this is only a temporary problem…

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Farewell To My Favorite Ballerina

Last night was Alessandra Ferri‘s last night performing with ABT; she is now retired. Horribly sad night. I don’t even know what to say other than that I am very sad right now.

(Here she is with her two little girls).

But I have to say, the blow was lessened by Roberto Bolle, who played her Romeo. When I first heard she was bringing in someone from La Scala (Italy’s national ballet company) to dance the male lead in her final performance, I was so upset. Why wouldn’t she dance with an ABT dancer — why not Jose Carreno, who partnered her frequently? Actually, I was secretly hoping they’d bring back Julio Bocca (who was known as her long-time ABT partner and who retired last year), but no such luck. Why someone from outside, I thought? She said it was her gift to him (Bolle) — to let the world see him. Now I can see what she was talking about!

Seeing someone new, and with such promise(!!!), made you focus on a beginning, not an ending. And, oooooh, he was so amazing last night as Romeo; words cannot even describe! He was overall the best Romeo I’ve seen at ABT (excluding the aforementioned Jose, who I think all ABT fans know in their heart of hearts is going to be going soon) — he acted the part perfectly, he danced it spectacularly. And he is oh so gorgeous — such a beautiful beautiful man. He needs to come to ABT permanently! WE NEED HIM AT ABT!!!!! What is La Scala anyway? New York’s where it’s all at, right!! We so need a tall, dark and handsome romantic male lead. Of course there’s Marcelo, my love, but he is not enough. And, well, he is just different anyway. He’s like the down-to-earth college football-player boyfriend. Roberto is tall, dark, and foreign. (I mean, Marcelo’s from Brazil, but he just looks so American, and he’s been here since he was 13 so he basically is American). Anyway, we need Roberto!!! Oh please please please please please, Kevin, make him an offer he can’t resist! Puleeeease!

(I am really sorry my pictures are so crappy — I was sad and my hand was shaking and people were bumping me right and left, so they’re blurry as hell, but, still, I have GOT to get a new camera!)

Of course there were 10,000 curtain calls. Here are a few more pics:

(Picking up her bizillions of bouquets, the conductor behind her)

The dancers came out one by one (just like with Julio’s farewell), to hug her. Of course I had to get a shot of Marcelo in the action!


Here comes Paloma in the flowing red skirt. David is behind Alessandra, diagonally and to her left. He was the first one out.

Aw, Kevin McKenzie (ABT Director) hugging her.

It’s raining confetti!


It goes without saying, the house was PACKED.

They had these enormous, blown-up photographs of her, taken by her husband, photographer Fabrizio Ferri, lining the walls of the lobbies.

There wasn’t as much curtain-call insanity as when Julio retired last year: no taking out a beer, letting it explode all over the stage, pouring it on yourself, then letting the crowd watch you slowly enjoy your beer, then letting David and Marcelo hoist you high over their heads and carry you all over stage, then coming out in your underwear at the end… but then again Julio is Julio… 🙂

About the two previous pics, taken with my cell phone: in the second one down, the poster is of Angel Corella and I think Diana Vishneva posing for Romeo and Juliet, not Roberto and Alessandra — it was just the only thing I could think of to take a picture of on the spot during intermission so I could gush on and on about how in love with Roberto I was!!!

And top pic below, I tried to take a picture of the Fabrizio Ferri photographs in the lobby with my cell phone, but, as you can see, it didn’t come out so well! I was very excited because I was sitting in orchestra, and this couple came down to the front and was looking for a pair of free seats (like there were going to be any on this night of all nights). I heard the guy behind me say, “Are you looking for seats? Well, the seat next to me will be free but only for the second act. My friend, who’s from the New York Times has gone over to NYCB to watch Jewels for this act, but he’s coming back over here for the final act.” Oh wow, I thought, I wonder who it is. The woman looking for a seat sat down. Then, a couple of minutes later, I hear, “Oh, sorry, the seat’s not available after all. Alastair is back.” Apparently the Jewels idea didn’t work out. Of course I whiplashed my head around. He didn’t look very old! Not that The Times is going to hire as their new chief dance critic an 80-year-old to replace the retiring 80-year-old, but still — he looked REALLY young. Of course I didn’t sit there and stare, but … he looked so normal! I just expected a chief critic to look like … the conductor in my picture above, or Gorbachev or something, big and hefty and aged and distinguished ha ha! And, also, he looked American — he was wearing a Polo-type t-shirt… (Macaulay is a Londoner). Maybe that guy was just goofing with everyone, trying to impress by pretending to know Alastair Macaulay and it wasn’t him at all, haha!

Anyway, ugh, it was obviously an unforgettable night and I am really really going to miss her. I think I included in this post practically all of the pictures I took, but in case I didn’t, here’s the album on my photo page.

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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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Depressed, Missing Slavik and Sergey, and Suffering TAC Headache…

Sorry no posting for the last couple of days. It took me forever to get home, first because of a several-hour-long plane delay, then over an hour-long cab wait at Port Authority (to which I took a bus from JFK). And I’m still so tired. I didn’t get much sleep the entire time I was there (in Blackpool), and it’s now really catching up with me. I’m just kind of depressed, missing Slavik Kryklyvyy and Sergey Surkov and all of my favorite Latin people…

Slavik is such a ham, as I realized for the first time this competition. The only other time I’ve seen him dance live was at U.S. Nationals in Florida last September when he competed in the open-to-the-world category, and there, he didn’t play so to the crowd since it really wasn’t his people. Here of course, everyone went completely nuts screaming and cheering the nanosecond he stepped onto the floor so he really hammed it up. How do I choose these guys? Marcelo, Jose, now this one… guess I’m just naturally attracted to a certain dancer-personality type …

Although Sergey seems more quiet, like a David Hallberg. No hamminess, no crazed fanfare, just great dancing, near flawless technique, and intense passion for his very pretty partner… It’s funny because, at one point during finals, Joanna Leunis and Michael Malitowski were dancing very close to Sergey and Melia and I could see from afar that the way Michael threw Joanna out to his right into a lunge, she was going to brush Sergey’s left side. She kind of reached out and playfully petted his left shoulder to let him know she was there, and he was so focused, as he always is, on Melia, I thought oh no, Joanna’s totally gonna disturb his concentration! He did seem a little surprised, but not too much so — obviously he’s used to dancing on a very crowded dance floor after all! After the round was over, still close to Michael and Joanna, he kind of tenderly patted her on the shoulder as well. It was cute. He seems kind of shy. Very attractive 🙂

Hehehe, do you think he’s mad at me for this pic?!?! I nearly dropped my camera when he shot me this look 🙂 Isn’t he cute — doesn’t he look kind of like Keanu Reeves?! He and Melia were meeting fans and autographing posters at the Chrisanne boutique in the shop pavilion, which I blogged about earlier, but here is a better picture. Sorry about the crappy cell phone pictures, by the way. It was the only way I could blog without worrying about an insecure wireless connection for my laptop. I’ll get a better cameraphone the next time!

Anyway, it was just so exciting to be there and I feel like none of my world favorites come to the U.S. competitions and so I don’t know now when I’ll see them again. I hate to think of having to wait another whole year… Now on top of being tired and depressed, or perhaps because of one or both of them, I have another one of these horrid headaches, which means, after the pain, days of being all woozy from the meds…

Anyway, I managed to get all of my pictures downloaded, although the captions are not all up and some names are spelled wrong and there are typos galore… all of which I plan to have fixed by this weekend, at the latest. Unfortunately the pictures this year are not as good as those last year, mainly because I couldn’t get a very good seat up close to the action, so everything is from afar, and pics of the finals in all competitions are from all the way up in the balcony, so you can hardly make out most of the dancers’ faces… It was insanely crowded, so it meant reaching up and over heads, snapping away haphazardly and hoping the picture came out okay… Another thing that kind of depressed me though I guess it shouldn’t. I should be happy that “Dancing With the Stars” and all of these shows have made ballroom dancing so popular that the number of amateur entries basically doubled and it was so crowded you could hardly move, but … I don’t know, it just meant I could hardly see any of the action.

I’m going to be talking about this likely for weeks to come, and posting things as I remember them, but here are a few more quick highlights:

bryan and carmen Bryan Watson and Carmen taking their final ballroom floor walk en route to the judges to receive their final first-place Latin champions trophy. So sad. So many retirements this year in dance in general…

Max Kozhevnikov and Yulia Zagoruychenko being called to the floor to receive one of their two finalist awards: they placed sixth in Rhumba I think fifth in Jive. Max was so cute when their number (198) was called as finalist! He ran out onto the floor and started jumping around pounding his fists into the air like a cute little kid. Yulia ran up behind him and grabbed him from behind. He then remembered her and turned around and hugged her.

Same EXACT actions from these two:

Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed

Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed who, for the first time, made finals in Standard Ballroom in three of the four dances (excluding waltz). He ran out in his tux and tails, jumped around pounding the air excitedly, then she ran out behind him in her ballgown, and had to tap him on the back before he turned around and remembered, oh yeah my partner, she helped too, really should include her in the euphoria… Ballroom men!!!!!

It was a great Blackpool for America this year. With Anna and Victor making finals in Standard and Max and Yulia in Latin, and Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova placed second overall in Standard.

jonathan and katusha

Okay, that is all for now… more later…

Also, I went to see ABT‘s Sleeping Beauty last night but will blog about it after I see it again, with another cast, later this week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Bellydancing Lessons For Paloma!: ABT’s Bayadere

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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No Red Carpet or Film Stars But Dancing So Breathtaking I Got All Depressed Again!

Funny there was no red carpet, no big showy movie stars, no former President of the United States, no big huge to-do at American Ballet Theater‘s opening night gala tonight, unlike at NYCB two weeks ago, but just walking into the Met Opera House amongst all of these hugely wealthy patrons wearing all manner of couture just made me feel so poor and ugly… like I NEVER felt last week or any time I’ve been in NYCB for that matter. ABT people can just be so intimidating…

Anyway, the program was excellent — at least the second half, though I have tons of miniscule criticisms to make, of course of course. First, Marcelo. Not because he was on first — he wasn’t on til the second half — but just because, he’s Marcelo!! He danced with Alessandra Ferri in the final scene of Othello. Ugh, they were both so good, I got depressed again — like I felt after watching Pasha and Anna last week… just a huge lump in my throat, just sad. Alessandra is so so so good, and it’s just so horrible she’s retiring — it really is tragic. I don’t mean to be melodramatic but I just feel like there’s never going to be another ballerina like her and it’s so terribly upsetting. She just has something no one else does. It’s just beyond words watching her. And Marcelo is such a big, huge, gorgeous man, such a star — he’s so perfect as her support. He is of course a great actor too, and that is so absolutely necessary for this scene. He was so frightening and powerful and uber-virile — as Marcelo always is, but so sadly broken as well. He could definitely have taken all of that a bit further, but he is just returning to the stage after a hiatus and you could see the concentration in his eyes. He’ll take it up a notch when he performs the whole ballet, I’m sure! That ballet is going to be THE BALLET to see this season — it’s gonna rock! Lar Lubovitch (the choreographer) is a genius … well Shakespeare was a genius so anything anyone does that’s based on his plays in my mind is superior to the other story ballets… But the choreography looks so engrossing — if anyone is kinda sorta an ABT fan and is thinking about maybe possibly going to see something this season, SEE THAT ONE!!!

So, the other stuff: Herman Cornejo and Xiomara Reyes did the balcony pas de deux from Romeo and Juliet, and to me, it ended up being an interestingly different take on that scene, but just not good enough. It was ALL ABOUT HERMAN — show-stealer that he is 🙂 It really was a bunch of bravura dancing from him, while Xiomara just kind of looked on sweetly — which was interesting, really in its own way: it was like, “Hey, Juliet, look how hot I am for you! I’m just flying all over the stage doing all these crazy-ass tricks!” And she, “Oh Romeo, Romeo, you’re sooo great, you’ve definitely won my heart now…” Cute take, but they totally watered down the choreography — they took out all those beautiful crazy big huge run and jump lifts — you CAN’T take those out!!!!! It’s plain and simply NOT MacMillan’s pdd without them!!!! And they just eased up on the choreography in general – -the partnering just wasn’t there for me. And that’s what the pdd is, after all, not bravura dancing for the man.

The Swan Lake excerpt was danced beautifully by Nina Ananiashvili and Angel Corella. A crowd pleaser as well that Angel is of course of course — it looked like he did about 10 pirouettes in a row. She did 30 fouettes — this is the first time I’ve EVER counted them and only did so because I know it is the balletomane thing to do. I’ll never do it again; it’s boring and takes away from enjoying the beauty of the dance. People who count are, to me, just silly… I didn’t count Angel’s pirouettes — I said they looked like there were about 10 in a row; I’m sure they weren’t; he just has that Angel way of … just being Angel… 🙂 And I’m happy I got to see Nina; she’s not dancing much this season and I don’t know if I’ll make it to anything she’s in.

And then there was a Manon excerpt, a pas de deux, with Julie and Jose — two of my favorite dancers. They did this pdd like the Romeo and Juliet should have been done. They are spectacular, they are beautiful and poetic, and I really think Jose is one of the very greatest dancers in the world right now. I’m so scared he is going to be retiring soon too… Julie is perfect; she’s flawless and she’s beautiful. But to me, artistically, she still doesn’t have that something undefinably extra that Alessandra has. But she still has time. There is something about her and Marcelo dancing together too — they just have something together that makes them both better than they are alone…

The gala ended with La Bayadere excerpts, performed by David, Paloma, Gillian, and the illustrious heartthrob (so say his bizillions of adoring female fans) Ethan Stiefel — returning after a very long hiatus due to double knee surgery. He got a lot of applause, understandably so, and performed breathtaking jumps — he was really awesome. So cute! David seemed to be the only principal who didn’t get applause when he entered the stage. I think it’s because people are angry about his lack of contributions lately to the Winger … Just kidding of course 🙂 I think it’s because he entered kind of suddenly, albeit with a very loud manly clap 🙂 and people were a bit surprised and didn’t recognize him at first. I heard several voices around me going, “oh oh oh, that’s that David Hallberg, that’s who that is…” Plus, he was wearing a bright white turban, which, when I first saw it, I thought he’d gone and dyed his hair platinum now… I couldn’t see all that well from balcony…

In the first half — I know, I’m going totally backward — first piece was a Bayadere excerpt with all corps members. I’m not one for ensemble work with lots of people onstage at once — I’m a pdd (& occasionally bravura guy) girl — but Misty Copeland stood out to me in this first piece. Then Sleeping Beauty (excerpts from classic Petipa version, no new McKenzie version revealed yet! — that’s for later in the month), with Michele Wiles, Veronika Part, who slipped a bit in the Rose Adagio but nothing serious, Diana Vishneva, favorite of all the critics, and Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky. Personally, I love Irina. I know she is not favored by the critics, but she is still one of my favorite ballerinas. I think her dancing is breathtaking, she has gorgeous lines and beautiful extensions, and I think she’s a very good actress — she puts her heart and soul into everything she does, and she really loves and respects the audience. I just love her, and wish she’d dance once in a while with Marcelo and David! Diana was stunning, but one thing she did that was weird was she didn’t stay around and take her curtain call with the others. She took her bow right after she finished her part, then left, without waiting until Irina and Max were finished with theirs to take bows along with them, Veronika and Michele. It was noticeable to the audience as well — VERY noticeable. I hope she had a good reason for leaving early; I don’t think it sits well with fans if you don’t do as everyone else does — might make one look a bit superior. Just going by whispers I heard happening around me…

And then right before the intermission was “Lady’s Choice” a contemporary, ballroomy piece choreographed by Brian Reeder set to Chopin and danced by Stella Abrera and Sascha Radetsky. I didn’t think they worked very well together. He’s too small for her, for one, and for another, neither was very expressive.

After the first piece, Kevin came out and spoke, along with Caroline Kennedy, but the microphones weren’t set up well and I could hear hardly anything, so can’t tell you much of what was said. I do remember he said they were showcasing their corps members as well as their stars this time around — just reminded me of that difference between ABT and NYCB – the idea of having “stars.” Kevin seems like such a sweet man — I may be totally wrong, but he just seems like a really nice guy.

Looking at this picture on my wall made me realize who was missing — Carmen! (pictured with Marcelo of course!)

All in all it was a really lovely night even though I felt poor and ugly and then depressed??? Marcelo and Alessandra were just so beautiful together… He’s gay and she’s married, and I’m totally jealous of how great they were together. How much sense does that make?! It’s just like great dancing goes beyond great dancing sometimes, you know?… Ugh, it’s a good thing I don’t have a crush on Ethan or some other straight guy with a gorgeous and perfect paramour 🙂 I’m really sorry if I’m a bit slap happy here — it’s late and I’m tired! 🙂

Just one last thing, on a totally different note. I made it home just in time to see the end of “Dancing With the Stars” — think there was a humorous remark made by Kennedy about being grateful that some young people were pulling themselves away from the show to be at ABT tonight, but I’m not sure because, as I said, the acoustics were off — but I think I overheard the TV show’s hostess say that tomorrow night, they are having Joaquin Cortes on the show?!?! The brilliant, spectacular, not to mention HOT, flamenco dancer?! If I heard correctly that is simply awesome — a real high point for them — that, THAT is CLASS!!!

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Bellydancing Birthday

Last night, my friend Alyssa and I went to see my friend, Parker, dance in her first student bellydance showcase at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Tribeca.

Parker is third from right.

So much fun, and TOTALLY made me want to take up bellydancing!!!

Here, Parker is in middle, in blue. She was soooo good!


Alyssa and me. For some reason I’m looking a bit drunk. I’m not, I swear — only had one glass of Greek wine!

Lafayette Bar & Grill, in addition to having a great dance space, had amazing food. Best moussaka either of us had ever had — and I’m a total Greek foodie!

It happened to be my birthday — well, later in the week, actually but who wants to celebrate on a weeknight! I am SO not a center-of-attention person, so it was PERFECT for me to celebrate at my friend’s dance showcase 🙂

Parker and me, after show!

Here are a few more pics: the rest I’ve put in a separate album on the photo page here.

“Heather” I think was her name. She was great — and beautiful costume!

This one rocked! She kept doing these amazing back arches…


Parker’s second number — a contemporary piece that Reyna Alcala, the group’s director, named “567,” for May 6, 2007, ha ha!

Another beautiful costume, and she did really lovely things with that gorgeous scarf.

One of the band members was going around the audience with his wind instrument (which resembled a flute), playing for people who would dance. This little girl was so adorable.


At the end, everyone took to the floor. Very fun night!

I’m seriously thinking of taking bellydancing lessons. It looked so fun and so beautiful and SO inexpensive, compared to ballroom. Partner dancing is lovely, but not when you have to pay $95 per hour for your teacher to dance with you… Plus, some of these costumes were gorgeous and loaded with stones, but some, like that used in Parker’s contemporary routine, consisted of jeans, a t-shirt, and a practice belt — a far cry from the $500 to $1500-ballroom costume…

In other news, as Ariel pointed out to me, he’s back 🙂 Right in time for my birthday 🙂 🙂 And his as well…

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Pissed at Hallberg

I am so mad at this one right now. It’s less than two weeks before ABT’s Met season and he hasn’t written a single post on the Winger in weeks. This time last year he was posting like nuts, keeping the bizillions of ABT fans abreast of all the excitement. He had such a huge fan base at the Winger and I feel he is neglecting us. Just like a typical young guy who gets a fun toy and tires of it in five seconds. I realize he is very busy learning new choreography, preparing for the upcoming six-week season and flying all over the world giving guest appearances, but this is EXACTLY what audiences want to hear about — the lives of the glamorous jet-setting dancers who are starring in the world’s greatest ballets in the world’s largest opera houses. The high point of the Winger was when he was posting from Japan. He didn’t post ONCE from Europe. If he’s so busy he should find someone else at his level to temporarily take his place. One of the “aesthetic” differences between NYCB and ABT is that the former is very “female” the latter very “male” which is what I and so many other female fans love so much about ABT. But I guess we forget that unfortunately women are so much more responsible!!!!!!!