Tag: Denise Jefferson

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SLSG’s Dance Highlights of 2010

Instead of trying to remember which were my favorite performances of the year, I’m just going back through my blog archives from January of this year and linking to the most memorable posts. More fun that way! A lot happened in a year…

January

Pacific Northwest Ballet made their debut at the Joyce; it was my first time seeing them live.

The Post‘s Page 6 announced that you know who and you know who are dating, and the ridiculous homewrecker attacks began.

Baryshnikov and Annie Liebovitz starred in a very cool Louis Vuitton ad.

February

I totally fell for New York City Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty.

…and Mark Sanchez 🙂

I found myself quoted in Colin Jarman’s book, Dancing With the Quotes.

I also fell for Sara Mearns’s Odette in Peter Martins’s Swan Lake.

On a personal note, my former judge, the esteemed Honorable Sylvia Pressler, passed away.

The Kings of Dance came to town.

Morphoses shocked the ballet world by announcing that Christopher Wheeldon was leaving the company.

March

My friend’s organization, Art for Change, held a benefit for Haiti after the earthquake.

Rasta Thomas’s Bad Boys of Dance announced that Danny Tidwell and SYTYCD’s Jacob Karr were joining the company.

Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon finally made their NYC debut!

I found myself actually getting press for liking Kate Gosselin – or for not hating Kate Gosselin rather – on Dancing With the Stars.

I fell for Keigwin + Company’s Runaway.

I was delighted to receive an email from NYCB ballerina Yvonne Borree’s aunt regarding of all things, my novel.

April

I had my first experience as a dance writer panelist! Thank you, Marc, from TenduTV!

Tiler Peck appeared on Dancing With the Stars in a Travis Wall routine, which everyone was so excited about. But it ended up amounting to not a whole lot…

Roberto Bolle danced a naked Giselle, in Italy of course.

May

New York City Ballet opened their spring season with premieres of Millepied’s Why Am I Not Where You Are and Ratmansky’s Namouna, both of which I liked, though Ratmansky’s had to grow a bit on me.

Baryshnikov returned to the stage.

I greatly enjoyed ABT’s new production, Lady of the Camellias, though most critics panned it.

June

ABT celebrated Alicia Alonso’s 90th birthday with three all-star Latin American casts (plus Natalia Osipova) dancing in Don Quixote.

Yvonne Borree gave her farewell performance at NYCB.

Bill T. Jones won a Tony for best choreographer for Fela!

Philip Neal gave his farewell performance at NYCB.

Natalia Osipova was mugged right outside of Lincoln Center.

Two of the greatest ballerinas in Europe – Osipova, and Alina Cojocaru – gave back to back Sleeping Beauty performances at ABT.

Albert Evans gave his farewell performance at NYCB.

Tap great Savion Glover made headlines by voicing his annoyance with Alastair Macaulay’s NY Times criticism of him – onstage, during a show.

Conductor Maurice Kaplow gave his farewell performance with NYCB.

Darci Kistler officially ended the era of the Balanchine-trained dancer with her farewell performance with NYCB.

July

Carlos Acosta announced his retirement from ballet and his foray into modern dance.

Alex Wong, probably the second greatest contestant ever on SYTYCD was injured and unable to finish the show.

My friend, Taylor Gordon, was profiled as a freelance ballet dancer in a New York Times article 🙂

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s beloved Denise Jefferson passed away.

Nilas Martins retired from NYCB oddly sans fanfare, sans criticism, sans a performance.

August

I interviewed tWitch about his role in the movie Step It Up. Fun fun interview!

I had a blast covering Ailey Camp.

I nearly fell over when Wendy Perron, esteemed E-I-C of Dance Magazine recommended Swallow on Twitter!

September

NYCB began their excellent “See the Music” series.

October

I loved Ashley Bouder’s Serenade.

Emerging Pictures’s awesomely exciting Ballet in Cinema series began with the Bolshoi’s Flames of Paris.

This cool new Lincoln Center-area street art sprouted up.

One of my favorite posts of the year, though it received no comments, was about Anne Fortier’s novel, Juliet. I jokingly daydreamed about it being made into a film, and which of my favorite ballet stars might take the lead.

November

ABT made an historic visit to Cuba and oh how I wished I could have gone with them.

I think I was the only person in the entire dance world to sympathize with Bristol Palin on Dancing With the Stars.

I had a blast covering New York So You Think You Can Dance auditions.

All of a sudden Black Swan was everywhere.

Nearly fell over again upon hearing Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko took the world Latin ballroom title – making them the first U.S. couple ever to do so.

December

My take on SugarPlumpGate.

Black Swan finally premiered which I didn’t love but was happy to have ballet brought back into the spotlight.

I was in awe of Alvin Ailey’s 50-dancer Revelations, staged in honor of the 50th anniversary of that dance. I also loved several other dances in their City Center season – Ailey’s Cry, Ronald K. Brown’s Dancing Spirit, and Geoffrey Holder’s The Prodigal Prince – just to name a few.

Robert Wilson / Roberto Bolle’s Perchance to Dream exhibit in Chelsea was a lot o’ frightening fun.

ABT’s new Nutcracker premiered, which I really enjoyed, almost as much as the Bolshoi’s.

Portman and Millepied revealed they are now engaged and expecting.

I had great fun, despite the crazy snowstorm, going down to Wall Street and covering Judith Jamison’s ringing of the closing bell at the NYSE.

Pretty busy year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

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Alvin Ailey: New Dances and New Productions

Alvin Ailey season is upon us! I attended two performances over the weekend and, of course, they made my weekend. I’m always so happy when I come out of an Alvin Ailey performance. Particularly with their new, 50-dancer Revelations, which I think is only for this year because it marks the dance’s 50th year anniversary. I’ve always thought of this dance as the quintessential American dance, and it’s so stunning seeing the stage completely filled with dancers. For some of the solo sections like “I Wanna Be Ready,” they triple up the number of dancers, and they often use students from the Alvin Ailey School and from the Ailey II company for the larger sections like “Pilgrim of Sorrow” and the “Honor Processional” from “Take Me To the Water.” So, please, if you’re in New York, try to see one of the 50-dancer versions. They’re only showing that production of Revelations on certain dates, so make sure you check the City Center schedule. I hope they consider doing this a few times a season in the future, though, because (expensive as it probably is) it’s really so brilliant.

Also, my new second favorite dance is now Cry. I’ve seen it twice this season, and don’t really know now if I’ve ever seen the whole thing. Maybe I’ve only seen Judith Jamison dance it on video and I’ve seen the individual sections before onstage, never in whole. It was created by Mr. Ailey in 1970 but this is a new production. This year they have three different dancers dancing the three solos. The first solo is set to Alice Coltrane’s “Something About John Coltrane,” and was danced the nights I saw it by Linda Celeste Sims on the first night, and Rachel McLaren on the second. They were equally spellbinding. This section, to me, is very powerful, the movement is very modern, with lots of sharp staccato movements meant to convey strife and longing and fear and a whole host of emotions – along with clever, ironic uses of a towel-like sheet – and it requires very powerful dancers.

The second section, the adagio set to Laura Nyro’s “Been on a Train,” which often nearly brings me to tears, was danced both nights by Constance Stamatiou, who is really growing on me this season. She’s a really beautiful, very “womanly” dancer, and she is really growing to have a great stage presence.

The third section, the more rhythmic African section, set to the Voices of East Harlem’s “Right On, Be Free,” was danced both nights by Briana Reed, who’s always been one of my favorite dancers in the company. She was out of most last season and I’m so glad she’s back. Mr. Ailey dedicated this dance to “all Black women everywhere – especially our mothers.” I love how it begins with a powerful evocation of oppression and ends with a celebration of African roots. I hope they perform it every season.

The two new dances I’ve seen so far (there are many to come in the next few weeks), are Christopher Huggins’s Anoited (which is a world premiere this season), and incoming artistic director Robert Battle’s The Hunt (which is new for Alvin Ailey this season).

The Hunt is great fun! I loved it. I could see that one every night, just like Revelations. All six dancers are men and it depicts, as the name implies, the rituals involved in preparation for a hunt. It conveys how physically and mentally grueling the hunt will be as a test the men’s limits, and it also showcases the athletic power of Ailey’s male dancers. And the music is mad fun! It’s Les Tamours du Bronx, wildly percussive, so much fun! I joked on Twitter that I needed to get it for a workout tape. Seriously!

It’s certainly a male moment in dance! This dance received loads of applause and a full-audience standing ovation. In Revelations, which followed, “Sinner Man” then received huge whoops and hollers from the crowd. As they should have. But the women of Cry deserved a full-audience standing ovation too! Not fair!

Christopher Huggins’s Anoited is really beautiful. Huggins is a former member of Ailey and this dance is a tribute to the leaders of the company, both past and present. The first section is a really lovely duet by Jamar Roberts and Linda Celeste Sims, with the two meant to depict Alvin Ailey and Judith Jamison.

Over the music we hear Jamison’s words to Ailey, when he told her he was sick and asked her whether she would take over the company. “And I said, ‘Of course!'” she repeats many times. At the end of the duet, he lies down, and she sadly kneels over his body. These two dancers are perfect to represent Ailey and Jamison. If this company does have a “star” right now it’s Linda Celeste Sims, and Jamar Roberts, with his physicality and stage presence is larger than life.

In the second section, set to more percussive music by Sean Clements, Jamison is joined by four other women known for keeping Ailey’s legacy alive over time: Sylvia Waters (director of Ailey II), Denise Jefferson (director of the Ailey School, who recently passed away), Nasha Thomas Schmitt (director of Ailey’s arts in education program), and Ana Maria Forsythe (director of the Ailey / Fordham BFA program). The women are all dressed in celebratory purple and they dance a rhythmic, high-charged African / modern combo.

In the third and final section, entitled “52 and Counting,” the dancers all come together and are joined by others, all dressed in red. They dance to a fast-paced beat, sometimes in ensemble, and breaking into duets replete with thrilling lifts. It reminded me a bit of the second section of Love Stories, or of Tharp’s The Golden Section and it stood for me as a celebration of some of the more contemporary pieces the company is known for. Amidst all this, the figures of Alvin Ailey and Judith Jamison return, and perform another beautiful lift-heavy duet, this time with Roberts dressed in white.

I’ll write more as the season continues. As I said there are many more premieres to come (check out City Center’s website for the schedule). For now, I’m off to a Nutcracker by the Royal Ballet. I love the diversity of dance 🙂

All photos from AlvinAiley.org. Top photo by Christopher Duggan; all other photos by Paul Kolnik.

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Wendy Perron, Esteemed Editor-in-Chief of Dance Magazine, Recommends Swallow on Twitter!

How awesome is this!: “Tonya Plank’s SWALLOW is a real page turner, & she shows that lawyers get as intensely nervous as dancers.” From Wendy Perron, E-I-C of Dance Magazine, via Twitter. I’m so giddy 🙂 I’d run into Ms. Perron at an Alvin Ailey season preview Tuesday night and when she told me she was reading my book and enjoying learning about my other life, I almost fell off my chair! I can’t even express how honored I am that she even decided to pick the book up!

The Alvin Ailey season preview was excellent, by the way. Their NY City Center season doesn’t begin until December but I think it’s going to be really fantastic. We got to see a sneak preview of The Hunt, by Robert Battle (incoming Artistic Director), which is an African dance depicting how men prepare for an actual hunt but that also serves as a metaphor for how dancers train and prepare to execute a difficult dance. I can’t wait to see that one in full, as well as The Prodigal Prince, by Geoffrey Holder. That one originally premiered in 1968 and Holder was there to talk a bit about it. Really sweetly funny man! It’s about the Haitian artist, Hector Hyppolite, known as “the Haitian Picasso,” and it’s a narrative filled with lots of beautiful African dance. We also saw Camille A. Brown’s Evolution of a Secured Feminine, which I remember from a Fall For Dance program a couple of years ago. It’s a one-woman solo that I liked very much and will, for the first time this season, be performed by someone other than Brown herself.

I enjoyed seeing all my favorite Ailey dancers again – and on a small stage this time (it took place in the Citicorp theater in the basement of their studios instead of City Center), and I was particularly happy to see Briana Reed again. She is one of my favorite women in the company – strong and very dramatic and an intense mover – and I missed seeing her last season. I think she was out with an injury for most of it.

Also, Judith Jamison revealed that Ailey will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Revelations this season, which means the cast for some performances will be increased to 50 dancers! They’re also making a film about that dance, which will be shown at all of the performances, and there will be a lot of live music, some of which Jamison will herself be conducting. Sweet Honey and the Rock will also perform live. And, there will be nice tributes to Denise Jefferson, Joan Weill, and to Jamison, who will be serving her last season as Artistic Director.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking of moving out of New York for a while, but I’m now thinking I’m going to wait on that for at least a few months. There are too many exciting things happening this fall – from Ailey’s season, to New York City Ballet’s first ever fall season, to ABT’s first Nutcracker, to of course the regulars like Fall for Dance and the Guggenheim Works & Process series. I think I need to wait a bit. Plus, I’ve made so many wonderful friends here, and I’m so involved in the dance scene, and every time I think of leaving NYC it really saddens me. But of course with the internet, friendships can easily survive physical distance these days. And I’m sure there are dance scenes everywhere, maybe just not of the same intensity. Who knows, maybe I just need a top-floor apartment somewhere else in the city… Upstairs Godzilla has moved out but her furniture-throwing legacy — an extremely creaky ceiling that sounds like it’s going to fall every time the new upstairs neighbor so much as shifts his weight (and which the landlord won’t fix) — remains…

Oh, one more thing (I know this post is very rambling): Ms. Perron mentioned to me that she saw a preview of Mao’s Last Dancer, which she thought was very good, and that it opens this weekend. So, I know one thing I’ll be doing this weekend. So excited for good ballet movies!

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Ailey Camp!

A couple of weeks ago, the kind people at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater invited me to visit one of their Ailey camps. The one nearest me was in Washington Heights, so I spent a morning up there watching the kids and their classes. Then, late last week, they invited me to that camp’s final performance, which took place at Columbia University’s Miller Theater.

What a sweet night! So precious – the kids were so proud, the parents were so proud, the teachers were so proud. And the kids danced very very well. Some of them could seriously have professional dance careers if they wanted.

But that’s not really the point of the Ailey camps. They’re not pre-professional schools, like the Ailey school; they’re for underprivileged, inner-city kids from ages 11-14 to have a wonderful summer experience learning to dance – or, rather, learning discipline and and self-respect and acquiring an appreciation for the arts through self-expression. The camps are focused on dance, of course, but the children also take classes in other forms of self-expression, such as writing – where they compose poems about their lives, drumming (could anything be more fun than beating rhythmically on a conga drum?!) , and personal improvement kind of classes where they learn about the effects of drugs and alcohol, nutrition, etc., but in a fun way, by grouping into teams and having a kind of group Jeopardy tournament. The dance classes encompass many forms — ballet, tap, Horton-based modern, jazz, and African. And they go from class to class each day, each class lasting about 45 minutes. So, it’s like a school, but a really fun school! The camps receive corporate funding and grants, so the kids pay nothing to go; they don’t even pay for leotards and tights, etc.

The performance was really lovely. The various groups danced ballet, modern, tap, jazz, lots of African (that seemed to be the most fun, both for the kids and the spectators), read poems, and there was a drum section. There was a beautiful lyrical modern dance by an ensemble of girls that ended up being a wonderful tribute to Denise Jefferson, who passed away a few weeks ago. And they had a big tribute to Judith Jamison (Alvin Ailey’s muse and central dancer, who has run the company for the past two decades and who will retire at the end of this season). That tribute involved a life-sized puppet that the kids constructed, which they managed to make dance, which was really spectacular, and elicited loads of applause.

As I said, a really special night.

Here are a couple of videos I found on YouTube. The first is of the Miami camp (there are, I think, 13 altogether, in cities around the U.S.), and explains what the camp is all about, and the second is scenes from past NY camps.

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ALVIN AILEY'S DENISE JEFFERSON HAS PASSED AWAY

I received word yesterday that Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Denise Jefferson passed away over the weekend. She was one of the three women (along with Judith Jamison and Sylvia Waters) to whom Mr. Ailey had entrusted the future care of his dance company at the time he passed away. She was currently heading the Alvin Ailey School. She died of ovarian cancer. She was 66. How sad.

Click on the link below to read AAADT’s press release.

(Above photo by Andrew Eccles).

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