Tag: Fall For Dance Festival

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MORPHOSES OPENS ITS 2009 NEW YORK SEASON WITH ITS BEST PROGRAM THUS FAR

 

Performance photos coming soon; in the meantime please enjoy another BRILLIANT photo by Kyle Froman.

Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphoses opened its NY season last night at City Center and I felt it was the best program they’ve done in their three years of existence. (At least Program A was; tonight I’ll see Program B). It’s a varied program with work by four different choreographers: Wheeldon himself; Bolshoi A.D.-turned ABT resident choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, whom all the critics downright worship; Australian Tim Harbour; and the Dutch husband and wife team Lightfoot Leon.

I must talk first about the third piece on the program, that by Lightfoot Leon, Softly As I Leave You. This is one of the most riveting pas de deux I’ve ever seen and it’s performed by the absolutely mesmerizing Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk. Every single person who is not a professional critic was absolutely spellbound by it, could not stop talking about it. This happened at both the Fall For Dance Festival, where the work premiered (which I wrote about here), and last night. It’s simply about a couple, one partner’s decision to leave the other, and it’s a harrowing decision. After the lights went out on the final poignant image, the elderly woman on my left, whom I didn’t know, grabbed me and said, “Oh my God, that was so good!” And from my friend, who thinks the Arvo Part music used (Spiegel im Spiegel) is completely over-used and was expecting not to like it for that reason: “Oh my God, that music actually worked here!” she exclaimed, open-mouthed. She agreed it was one of the best duets she’d ever seen. And people were going on and on about it during intermission, both here and at FFD.

So why in the world do the critics hate it so much??? They ALL do. ALL OF THEM. It’s like in order to be a professional critic there are certain things you’re required to hate and this is one of them. And yet audiences are so overwhelmed by its power. Clement Crisp rants, “I can find not one iota of merit in its vulgar posturings.” Guardian critic Luke Jennings calls it “slick surfaced” and replete with “glib insincerity.” I can’t remember Alastair Macaulay’s exact words after its FFD premiere, but he hated it too. And a Ballet.co critic whom I spoke with at an ABT Guggenheim event (and who was the only non-Brit of the lot) complained how awful he thought it was as well.

This happened — I’m sorry, I’m getting off on a tangent — but this happened with practically every Fall For Dance piece, and with ABT’s recent season: EVERY SINGLE CRITIC hated every single one of the pieces the public adored (Barton, Millepied, Mark Dendy’s BRILLIANT Afternoon of the Fauns) and loved those they found least compelling (Ratmansky). I mean, more on this later, but what do you do if you’re an artistic director or choreographer? Do you cater to the critics — the “important people” or do you trust us, the commoners?

Anyway, mine and my friend’s second favorite piece of the night was Tim Harbour’s Leaving Songs. Guess what: all the critics hated it. I need to move to Europe… This dance had such emotional depth. It was about the cycle of life, death and rebirth — though I’m not sure you’d know that if the choreographer hadn’t said so in a little film clip shown before the program. But that doesn’t matter; you can come up with your own meaning anyway. The movement was kind of a combination of modern, classical and what looked to me to be African, and the music, by Australian composer Ross Edwards, is equally varied, at points sounding classical European, at points more percussive and African-sounding.

There were several striking moments, such as the point during a pas de deux where a man puts his hands around a woman’s neck and she falls before him. It kind of seems as if he’s strangling her out of anger, but then her arms flutter about beautifully, almost-bird like. It’s a combination of violence and grace. And there’s a moment where the group is dancing in ensemble and the movement is very wavy and undulating, very African, and everyone’s moving in unison and the music slows and the dancers slow, almost like they’re approaching death. Then the drums start pulsating and the dancers come to life and begin sidling cautiously but with intention toward the front of the stage. There are also several very sexually suggestive scenes with women’s legs splayed in the air. No tights are worn, and my friend and I couldn’t stop wondering how in the world they keep those leotards from shifting…

Anyway, I found the Harbour very compelling. And Rubinald Pronk really stood out here as well. He has so much fluidity and expansiveness in his body, and I don’t think anyone has more intense eyes.

 

(photo from Vail website)

Alexei Ratmansky’s Bolero was enjoyable too, largely because of the familiar Ravel music. For me, Ratmansky is one of those artists whose work doesn’t jump out at you and hit you over the head with its brilliance. Rather, I’ll need to see a dance of his several times before I get a sense of what it’s about, before I can fully appreciate it. Wheeldon’s work is the same. The critics seem to think this is the mark of a good choreographer — that it grows on you and you notice new things with each viewing, and I suppose it is. But for the average consumer, going to the ballet so often to see pieces over and over again to understand and appreciate them more fully can get prohibitively expensive. Dance art is not like a museum or art gallery where you can stand there for as long as you like.

Anyway, in Bolero, there are four pairs of women and men, each person wearing a number on his or her top. The women wear white tops and little skirts, almost like cheerleaders and the men wear black. If the women were cheerleaders, the men didn’t seem to be any kind of sports players though. They danced in groups divided between male and female, almost as if they were competing with each other, or as if their movement was some kind of back and forth dialog. And then toward the end, they began to partner each other more, the crescendo of the music complemented by various lifts that I found at points to be a little humorous, though it may have just been me. For example, when those trombones (I think that’s what they are anyway; maybe they’re tubas), are blaring kind of off-key at the end, the men lift the women over their heads, upside-down and the women do these upside-down developes, their legs splaying along with the warped trombones. I thought it was funny but I might be the only one.

 

And then the first piece on the program was Wheeldon’s Commedia (photo above by Erin Baiano), which was made in homage to Ballets Russes and was premiered last year. I wrote a bit about it here and here.

Here’s an excerpt from the company performing Commedia at the Vail International Dance Festival:

Also, this season marks the company’s collaboration with the young orchestra (most players are under 30, Wheeldon said), Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, founded and directed by the very entertaining, energetic Alondra de la Parra — yes, a female conductor OMG! The evening opened with Wheeldon giving a little address and then the orchestra playing on Overture to Estancia: Malambo by Alberto Ginastera. At the same time the orchestra played the Overture (this was their first time playing in a pit for dance, and not centerstage, by the way), a screen was dropped over the stage and a delightfully humorous film was shown of the dramatic conductor directing her crew, the violinists all swaying dramatically in unison at points. It was a lot of fun. Whole night was very good.

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ABT OPENING NIGHT GALA FALL 2009: THREE PREMIERES IN BLACK AND WHITE, AND WOOD

 

Photo of Veronika Part in The Dying Swan, taken from Vogue; photos of the three premieres coming as soon as I receive them.

After ABT‘s fall season opening night gala performance last night, the really wonderful James Wolcott and Laura Jacobs took friend Siobhan and me out for dinner at Shun Lee (I’d never been there — but wow, excellent excellent food!) and when Laura asked me if I was going to write about the performance, I kind of rolled my eyes and said, “I’ll try!” We all agreed that dance is absolutely the hardest art form to review, especially on seeing a dance for the first time. Let alone THREE dances seen for the first time. With visual art you can stand there all day and examine at it, with music you have recordings and scores, film critics generally see a movie several times before writing a review. With dance you have one chance — often one split mili-second — to remember a half an hour or so of movement, images, patterns, structure, costumes, music, lighting — everything. It’s impossible. Since starting this blog I have so much more respect for dance critics.

Anyway, there were three premieres last night: Seven Sonatas by Alexei Ratmansky, One of Three by Aszure Barton, and Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once by Benjamin Millepied. Also on the bill was a performance by Veronika Part of Fokine’s The Dying Swan. ABT performed, for the first time, in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, a concert hall not accustomed to housing dance performances. (ABT usually holds its fall season in City Center, but changed venues because of City Center’s renovation plans.)

I’m going to be seeing each premiere a couple more times this season and prefer to write after I’ve seen each more than once. But since the season is so short (it ends October 10, this Saturday), I’ll write something up front. These are only first impressions though, and I’ve found I see so many more things with repeated viewings.

Honestly, everything kind of blended together for me. Part of this was because of the sparseness of the Avery Fisher stage — there were no sets, no wings, no curtains — so dancers warmed up onstage before us, giving each piece a kind of Cabaret-like feel; and part of it was because costumes for each piece were all black and white. I remember lots of black, lots of white and the hardwood of that stage.

1) Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas was performed to Domenico Scarlatti music by three male-female couples: David Hallberg and Julie Kent, Herman Cornejo and Xiomara Reyes, and Gennadi Saveliev and Stella Abrera. Costumes were all white — flowing dresses for the women, classical tights and 18th-Century tops for the men. The movement was a combination of classical and modern and, though the ballet was generally story-less, each couple seemed to have a little narrative: Cornejo and Reyes were the young, playful couple, Herman full of high jumps with many beats of the feet that really wowed the crowd and Xiomara dizzying rapid multiple turns. At one point Herman did this crazy turn in the air, landed on his back, and caught her. Crowd went wild.

Abrera and Saveliev seemed to be a more mature couple, perhaps in mourning. It seemed Abrera was a woman, possibly a mother, who’d lost a child or something — Saveliev seemed to be trying to console her and keep her from self-destructing. It seemed like she kept trying to break free of him and reach out to some invisible thing.

I’m not sure what Hallberg and Kent were meant to represent except maybe a modern couple — they seemed to have the most modern movement. David appeared to be trapped in a box and he kept pushing out; he had a lot of quick movement with fast stops in different directions and a lot of it in parallel — not turned-out — position. Julie had a lot of sharp, staccato movement. They could’ve also been a courting couple: at one point, David was on one knee and he invited Julie to run at him and jump on him. When she did, he took her into this lovely lift. It’s sweet and many in the audience lightly laughed.

The ballet was broken into duets and solos and bookended by two ensemble movements, the first pretty and lyrical, the latter more chaotic as they all perform their very different movement motifs at once, some trying on others’ movement styles — everyone does the staccato arm patterns for a while, etc. At the end, the women lay on the floor and the men wrapped their bodies over them.

One other thing: our David Hallberg is sporting longish hair these days 🙂 I think it looks good, and fun for a change! Funny thing is, he’s so beautiful and glamorous, I tend to get jealous if him, even though he’s a man… which I guess should be kind of odd…

2) Barton’s One of Three was set to Maurice Ravel’s Violin Sonata in G and danced by a whole slew of tuxedoed men, and three women — Gillian Murphy, Misty Copeland, and Paloma Herrera. Why is it that women choreographers tend to use men so much more! (And female dance-writers tend to focus on male dancers 🙂 — is this feminist?)

Anyway, the piece begins with Cory Stearns walking out dressed in a tux and black jazz shoes. He does a little solo and his movements are all modern, angular, which contrasted in an intriguing way with the tux. I don’t know if it was his being a bit weirded out by the curtainless stage (which forced him to walk out in the dark with all of us watching) or whether it was part of the character, but he seemed to have this loopy smile in the beginning, that was really rather endearing. I chatted with a friend during intermission and she felt just the same.

Anyway, soon Cory was joined by more tuxedoed men, and then by Gillian, who came prancing out in a long white cocktail gown with her radiant red hair tied back into a sleek twist. The men would kind of veer toward her, sideways, their bodies leading their heads in, to me, a rather amusing way. Gillian’s character was very haughty, very glam and posh and she acted like she was ordering the men around with her little finger. The men often seemed led by their bodies, moving first with the back, or at times one leg would take a step, the rest of the body reluctant to follow (I noticed that most with Jared Matthews, who I thought was dancing at his best last night). I found this a very interesting movement motif.

Misty Copeland was the lead character in the second movement. She wore a short black and white dress, her costume and character more flirty and wild. But same thing — she seemed to kind of taunt her tuxedoed men.

And third movement was led by Paloma, wearing a black lacey top and black pants. She smiled a lot more than Misty and Gillian, but she seemed to move in a slinky, sexually-empowered way, like a tanguera.

Now that I think about it, though there were many more men here, the women seemed to have all the power. Fun!

3) Next on was Part’s Dying Swan, which was really poignant, as I knew it would be. It’s a very short piece, but it’s funny how the ballerina can really do it however she wants to; I just saw Diana Vishneva perform this in the Fall For Dance Festival and her Dying Swan was very different. Whereas Diana spent most of the time on her toes, bourreeing, Veronika spent more time on the floor, one leg stretched out before her (like in above picture), then rising again to her toes for one more breath. Diana’s swan seemed to flutter about more, like she was fighting death, she lay down only at the very end. Veronika kept holding her arms up in front of her, her wrists bent and her hands cupped over, as if to foreshadow what would happen to her body. In general, Veronika’s swan accepted and approached death more gracefully or willingly, but Diana’s, with that broad wingspan, at times really looked strikingly birdlike. I don’t know if I can say I liked one interpretation better than the other — both were breathtaking and both very poignant.

Did anyone else see both swans?

4) And the program ended with Millepied’s Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once, set to David Lang music that was at times mellifluous and at times cacophonous or eerie. He used a large group of dancers but Marcelo Gomes, Isabella Boylston and Daniil Simkin had the main parts and so stood out the most (and Kristi Boone shone in a smaller role).

There was a lot going on here — both in the music and in the dance, and I felt that, unlike with Millepied’s earlier piece for ABT — From Here on Out — composed to music by Nico Muhly (who was in the audience) — in this one the movement kept up, didn’t let the music outshine it. The stage is set up to resemble — at least to me — a pool. Dancers would gather around it and watch the people dancing in the lit-up center. At the beginning there seemed to be a swimming motif, with large, rounded arm movements resembling breaststrokes. Movement is also evocative of birds as well though, and some of the same lifts were present as in Millepied’s recent work for NYCB, where the women are perched on the men’s shoulders, their arms outstretched sideways.

In the middle part, Marcelo and Isabella have a rather haunting solo. The ballet is generally story-less but as far as I could make out any narrative, it appeared she was sort of struggling against him. He seemed very careful and gentle with her (in sharp contrast to a later, more hostile duet he has with the super-strong Kristi Boone, who seemed to be either Isabella’s competitor or her double), but she — Isabella — nevertheless kept trying to push away from Marcelo as he held her. The duet ends with them walking toward the back of the stage holding hands, connected, but her body is lunging as far as possible away from his. A rather warped relationship.

Then there’s a rather amusing section where bravura dancer Daniil Simkin is struggling with a bunch of women. He tries to break free of them but then he keeps throwing himself into their arms, making them catch him in these rather breathtaking group lifts — one of them ending in a perfect split in the air. And he has a bunch of crazy multiple pirouettes that had the audience audibly gasping. It all went with his character though, who seemed rather crazed, like he may have just escaped from an asylum or something. I kept wondering who else was ever going to be able to perform that role…

I didn’t go to the gala party but in addition to Muhly, I saw Alessandra Ferri in the audience, one of the Billy Elliots, and apparently Natalie Portman was there.

Anyway, I’ll write more at the end of the season, when I’ve seen these new dances a few more times. Here is Haglund’s review.

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JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVER

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Sorry posting has been kind of lame over the past week. I’m working really hard on finishing the final read-throughs of my novel and, as always, it’s more involved than I expected. I have several exciting Fall For Dance programs still to write about — a puppet-performed Petrushka, Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Biches, the fabulous Trocks, Dance Brazil’s unique capoeira / samba / modern blend, Tiler and Gonzalo 😀 , the best Afternoon of a Faun (involving two fauns actually) I’ve ever seen — this is by far the best FFD Festival I can remember — and I plan to write about it all at the end of the weekend or early next week; after, hopefully, I’ve finished my rewrites.

In the meantime, above is my final cover. Took me forever to okay something I was happy with. At first I was going to go with this one:

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But then I had dinner with a gay male friend, who said of this bottom one, “Okay. This looks like it’s about a girl who goes around New York giving blow jobs.”

Which my novel is NOT about! I sought others’ opinions — nearly drove all of my friends crazy — and most people agreed that, since it’s about a young woman with a disorder, the cover should indicate that. It’s just that the disorder she develops is due in part to her moving into the city — a city she feels largely alienated by — and so it’s partly about her ability to make her own home here. Which is why I thought an arty cityscape would work.

But apparently not with this title!

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I’d gotten the idea for the arty cityscape cover from my favorite Breakfast at Tiffany’s edition.

I also love this cover, for Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend:

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This is as large as I could blow it up, but it’s one of my very favorite covers. I’d asked my design team to come up with something similar (with a woman looking into the abyss), and they couldn’t. I showed a friend and she kind of burst out laughing and told me I’d need to hire an artist to make me something wholly original if I wanted something approaching it. I have that Lost Weekend edition (which I found at a rare bookstore in Durham, NC) and the cover is an actual piece art — it’s actually painted onto the cover, which is made of a sturdier material than regular covers — the result being that once the years go by and the cover ages, you literally can’t open the book without breaking it. So, the irony is that that book is unreadable; it must simply sit on my bookshelf facing out, to showcase the piece of visual art that it’s now solely become.  In any event, even if I did want a book that could only be enjoyed for its cover, I don’t have the money to hire my own artist.

But I think my design team came up with something that works anyway.

My biggest problem with having a photo of a woman on the cover is that I was afraid it’d be taken for Chick-lit, a moniker I think every female writer has some kind of issue with, or at least thinks about. I thought an illustration would make it look like it’s about art — which it partly is: one of the protagonist’s friends is an artist and he’s an important character. And I thought a photo of a woman would alienate male readers. But then a friend who works as an artistic director of a magazine said illustrations don’t sell; you gotta have a photo, which she insisted was pertinent to books as well as magazines (and she has two published books of her own out). She’s one of four or five people (as I said, I drove all of my friends stark raving nuts) who helped me come up with the idea for my final cover.

…which I’m happy with — I think it hints at what the book is about and is dramatic and somewhat provocative without being over the top. I just hope it doesn’t alienate potential male readers. But then, as practically everyone I know (of both sexes) have told me ad nauseam, men don’t read anyway — especially fiction; women read and Chick-lit sells. So just embrace it.

Anyway, there are many other issues involved in the whole Chick-lit quandary, and in book cover art, but I’ve blabbered for too long. Have to get back to my rewrites… And I need to go out for my Friday cupcake.

Have a good weekend everyone!

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NO WAY

 

I came home from my first night at the Fall For Dance Festival and turned on Jimmy Kimmel before I had a chance to watch my tape of Dancing With the Stars. I honestly thought he was kidding when he announced who was kicked off.

Even though I liked him, I can see Ashley, but Macy? I thought she had a good attitude toward the competition but maybe people interpreted it more as haughtiness? She definitely wasn’t the worst woman Tuesday night, and that’s not what the show’s about anyway. Why vote for the best person on the first night; why not vote for someone you can watch improve? Sucks that she never got to do Latin because I think she would have been a lot better at that than Standard.

I don’t get it at all.

She didn’t end up going on Jimmy Kimmel because, as Jonathan Roberts said, she was too upset, thinking she let her fans down.

Anyway, at least my whole evening didn’t suck:

 

 

Fall For Dance last night consisted of four companies, four dances (more about them all later), but my highlight was definitely Savion Glover. I know he’s been on one of the TV shows before — either Dancing With the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance — can’t remember which one. But this was my first time seeing him live and ooooh! You have to see him dance live; there’s nothing like it. This is one of the best dance performances — one of the best performances period — I’ve ever seen. And he’s such a cutie in person and he dances with so much genuine happiness, so much joy. And he’s small — smaller than I thought! Ah, I came out of City Center feeling like I often feel after seeing Alvin Ailey — I just wanted to dance all the way home.