Gemma Bond -

June 18, 2010September 16, 2022

ALL DAY AT ABT: ALL AMERICAN AND ALL ASHTON PROGRAMS

Last Saturday I had my first crazy ABT day where I spent the whole day at Lincoln Center, seeing both matinee and evening performances. I’ll do the same tomorrow with two Sleeping Beauties – can’t miss Alina Cojocaru (who I’ve never seen before) guesting from the Royal Ballet in the lead, and then in the evening the spectacular Natalia Osipova.

Anyway, last Saturday the matinee was their All-American program; the evening was the All-Ashton. The All-American opened with Twyla Tharp’s Brahms-Hayden Variations, which I’m sorry to say is the first Tharp that’s bored me. I just couldn’t connect to it. It had none of her trademark thrilling throws and lifts and clever partnering or dramatic, actable parts, and none of her enlightening contrasts between ballet and other forms of dance. Not that I saw anyway. I think the excerpt the company performed during the opening night gala was the only part I liked. There were good dancers – Marcelo Gomes, Stella Abrera, Herman Cornejo – but they didn’t seem to have that much to work with. It was just kind of lyrical gaiety. Like Mark Morris.

Then was Paul Taylor’s Company B, which is always fun – especially when Craig Salstein dances the hotly dorky guy in “Oh Johnny Oh” and Herman Cornejo the flashy “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” but somehow it lost some of its magic on the large Met stage. I don’t know – I think it plays better at City Center – you somehow miss the silhouettes in the back at the Met, or you don’t connect them to what’s happening center stage as well.

And last was my favorite of the day, Robbins’ Fancy Free, this time starring Sascha Radetsky (image above, from here) as the cocky, sexy Latin sailor, Carlos Lopez as the dreamier one, and Daniil Simkin as the little acrobatic one. The two main women were Maria Riccetto as the girl in yellow whom the guys originally approach, and then Isabella Boylston as the girl in pink who momentarily gets interested in hot cocky Latin guy. Well, Sascha Radetsky completely took my breath away here. Before he had his momentary hiatus in with Netherlands Ballet, I’d always thought he was cute and a very solid, precise dancer, but he couldn’t act. I think he must have taken acting lessons in the Netherlands because he’s just so much better now. I really believe him in each role I’ve seen him in. And he really inhabited this sailor. He was really so compelling to watch; I couldn’t even focus on Daniil and his crazy sky-high jumps with Radetsky on the same stage.

Hehe, but one thing that really stood out for me was Isabella Boylston’s back-leading! All throughout ballroom training we were yelled at ad nauseam — not just me but all the women — for constantly back-leading. And that’s because grown women generally pick up dance steps a lot faster than grown men (not necessarily true for girls versus boys but definitely true for men vs women for some reason). Anyway, it’s only now I really know why. It looks horrible. I know this is ballet with choreographed steps and not ballroom, but their characters are doing social dance so it really had to look like he was leading her in the steps, not like she was anticipating what he’d so and then turn herself or make the move before he led her to do it. It ended up looking like she was in control, and he’s supposed to be seducing her here. I’m sure they’ll get it with more practice, it just looked obviously wrong and out of character. But maybe that’s just my ballroom training talking because they definitely got the most applause.

The Ashton program opened with Birthday Offering (image above from Dance View Times), which ended up being my favorite piece of the night. Absolutely gorgeous costumes (by Andre Levasseur) and what lovely variations with fast, fancy, very original footwork for the women. Stella Abrera, Simone Messmer, and Gemma Bond in particular stood out to me. Hee Seo (my favorite Juliet) danced as well – not in love with the choreography for her variation as much but she has the most beautiful Alessandra Ferri feet. She and Veronika Part both!

Then came the Thais Pas de Deux, which was performed by Jared Matthews and Diana Vishneva. I can’t wait to see Hee Seo and Sascha Radetsky perform this at the end of the month. I saw them in rehearsal and they really took my breath away. They’re so sweet together, and they really bring out the beauty of the choreography in a way that Diana and Jared as a partnership just didn’t, in my mind. Diana and her melodramatic curtain calls really crack me up. At first they annoyed me but I’m beginning to accept that they’re part of the performance for her and they’re just her. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll find it endearing.

But as far as her dancing, she’s hit or miss with me. I haven’t gotten around to writing about it yet, but I absolutely loved her in Lady of the Camellias. She brought so much more to the role than Julie Kent had the day before and she really brought me into the drama of it all – she and Veronika Part both (who danced the Manon role). And her dancing was gorgeous. She and Marcelo were excellent in that. A performance to see again and again (if ABT would only make a DVD of it…)

Then was The Awakening Pas de Deux from Ashton’s Sleeping Beauty, danced by Veronika Part and David Hallberg. It’s funny but choreography can look so completely different on different bodies and it looked like a wholly different piece than when Paloma Herrera and Cory Stearns danced it on opening night.

Finally, was The Dream, Ashton’s version of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Honestly, I was getting really tired by this point and I’ll have to see it again. I did really like Cory Stearns as Oberon. He is another dancer who’s a hit or miss with me but I found his Oberon was endearing while still being rather demanding with Titania up front. He did a good job, and he dancing was beautiful. Alexei Agoudine was a lot of fun as Bottom (who’s on pointe here, unlike in the Balanchine version and has a lot more to do), and Daniil Simkin was Puck. I enjoyed his Puck but found myself unable to get Daniel Ulbrich’s Puck out of my mind. I’ve been told I have to see Herman Cornejo in this role. And so I hope to before the season ends.

In between performances I had ice cream in the park behind Lincoln Center cinemas, where I saw Blaine Hoven and Marcelo, and then I went and had a glass of wine in the outside patio area of the newish Alice Tully Hall cafe. It’s nice out there when it’s warm, which it was for part of the time. So far we seem to be having another chilly summer. Tomorrow I have two friends who, happily, are as crazy as I am, so I will have people to hang with instead of just my book 🙂

June 27, 2009

ROBERTO BOLLE AND VERONIKA PART AT THE MET STAGE DOOR FOLLOWING SWAN LAKE

Review of the performance coming soon, but in the meantime, here are some photos I took at the Opera House stage door last night. First time I’ve ever been there and I mainly wanted to go to see the hysteria I’ve been told happens there whenever Roberto Bolle performs 🙂

Here with Ariel.

Love these girls’ expressions 🙂 So many really beautiful people — mainly Italians — there!

Was told to take a picture of his jeans label. Can’t completely see it though — it’s the brand he models for, right? I love his turned-out feet 🙂

He was mobbed by both men and women. He seemed a bit shy but maybe he just didn’t speak English that well. I was told he was shy though, interestingly.

And a couple of Veronika Part. She was really sweet, and very outgoing!

These people were so cute. I think they come every single night, whether they actually attend the performance or not. They set up a veritable candy stand atop a garbage can at the end of the hall so dancers can have a candy on the way out. “Gemma, Simone (fill in dancer name), will you be enticed tonight?” they call out all night. Simone Messmer has the most athletic female body I’ve ever seen, by the way.

Conductor Ormsby Wilkins showing off his conducting skills to some fans. Just kidding – -he’s just a very demonstrative talker 🙂

That was fun! Made for a loooong evening though. We didn’t get out of there till well after midnight.

Oh and a young ballet dancer and her mother approached me and told me they read my blog! They know Irina Dvorovenko and Max Beloserkovsky, so Ariel and I were treated to some cute stories about the couple and their little girl, Emma! They also went to the Rizzoli book signing that Roberto gave last week. Said they knew about it from my blog 😀 I wasn’t able to go since I was giving my own reading, but they filled me in. Said there were lots of people there, expectedly — but lots of older people, not a lot of young women, weirdly. We surmised not enough people knew about it. They showed me some pictures of him – – he was very dapper, dressed in a black suit! He said he liked to dress up.

Fun evening! Review coming soon.

April 19, 2009September 22, 2022

DANCES PATRELLE DOES JUDY GARLAND AND EDGAR ALLAN POE

On Friday night I saw Dances Patrelle, who is celebrating its 20th anniversary, to see their Murder at the Masque: The Casebook of Edgar Allan Poe, a world premiere, and Come Rain / Come Shine, a revival from 1986, both choreographed by artistic director Francis Patrelle. Funny, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone besides Dance Times Square perform at the Danny Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, so, I was a slight bit confused throughout the evening because of that. I couldn’t figure out what Marcelo was doing on the stage instead of Pasha and what people were doing in pointe shoes instead of Latin stilettos… I guess it’s fitting I brought with me my ballroom friend, Mika.

And I’m so glad I did. She had a blast. Said it was some of the best ballet she’d ever seen. AS I KNEW IT WOULD BE!!! Said Marcelo was very Slavik (as in Kryklyvyy, as in man drama queen total show-off show-stealer, as in I’m totally predictable in my taste in male dancers whether it be ballet, ballroom, or whatever style. Oh well…)

Anyway, Murder, on first, was a dramatic ballet murder mystery that was interestingly told. The figure of Poe seemed to be writing the story as we were seeing it, from afront a scrim, and it seemed to me he was changing things throughout. I’m still not sure who committed the murder in the end (but that may well be because I was so excited about the second piece of the night). It had an air of Balanchine’s La Sonnambula about it — unsettling, foreshadowing tragedy, and set at a ball and in the same period — and Patrick Soluri’s music set that tone perfectly. Matthew Dibble, guest starring with the company (he’s danced with Twyla Tharp’s company), danced the lead very well, expectedly.

Second on was Come Rain / Come Shine, Patrelle’s longish but lovely set of dances for three couples set to a group of Judy Garland songs. Sorry I’ve posted that picture above about 10,000 times on this blog; it’s the only one I have of that dance 🙂 All six dancers in that ballet were guesting from ABT: Roman Zhurbin (ballet god) and Gemma Bond danced the first, youngish, romantic couple; Isaac Stappas and Kristi Boone (who BLEW ME AWAY) danced the second, more mature, argumentative couple; and Marcelo Gomes and Maria Riccetto danced the third couple, consisting of cocky, taunting, teasing, out-of-control man and the poor woman whom he’s got his eyes on. Of course Marcelo had to have the cocky part, and his role, which was very “That’s Life” from Tharp’s Sinatra Songs, consisted of him flying all about and around her, doing every trick in the book — ginormous jetes, Balanchinian continuous twisty jumps, turns and turns and jumps jumps jumps galore — which of course I love 🙂 Oh, and Maria’s tiny, so he did a bunch of the one-handed assisted pirouettes he often does with Julie Kent that drove the audience here WILD. The guy behind me was seriously orgasmic. Mika and I were giggling throughout, and finally, on the last assisted pirouette, I just burst out laughing.

What would the world be like with no Marcelos? Ballet would just not be fun. To say the least.

Roman was Roman — not doing a thing wrong, everything perfect, perfect form, perfect precision, perfect acting, just sheer perfection.

Gemma was likewise perfect and Isaac was strong and Maria sweet.

(But it was Kristi who really blew me away. Where did she come from?! I guess I’ve never really seen her up close before … well, I did notice her before — in Tudor’s Jardin des Lilacs, which ABT put on in their Tudor centennial celebration last season — she danced the role of the lover of the man betrothed to another and she danced with such longing for him and anger at the situation and beautiful composure in the face of despair. But time got away from me and I never had time to write about that performance… Well, she had a similar character here: a woman fighting with her man, seemingly not able to fully trust him, not wanting to give herself completely to him for that reason, but unable to stop loving him nonetheless. She and Isaac (who happen to be real-life husband and wife) are really the emotional centerpiece of this ballet and she acted it with such intense emotion. She made me feel everything her character was feeling, really took me to that place. And she made such amazing shapes with her body! Isaac kept throwing her into these overhead and waist-high fish positions and she’d raise her arms up and curve them over, turning her head to face the floor. At times it looked like she was letting him lift her but was also rejecting him, couldn’t bear to look at him. At other times, she kind of looked like a dove, and in a way she was trying to make peace, so the image made sense. So she didn’t just make original, remarkable shapes; she made shapes that had meaning, and were also original and cool.

And also, her feet and legs — such strength! Her feet were almost like Veronika Part’s her points were so pronounced! If I was a ballerina I’d want people to notice that — strong feet and legs. I wouldn’t want to look like I was floating through the air like a feather, I’d want to look more strong and toned and powerful, like my legs were carrying me through the world. Anyway, I am a new Kristi Boone fan, needless to say.

It was an intoxicatingly rich evening and I felt like I always feel when I leave the Kaye Playhouse after seeing divine dancing: deliriously high, and then kind of sad…

February 4, 2009September 22, 2022

Doesn’t Dance, Like All Art, Come From the Soul?

Sunday evening I attended another Works & Process event at the Guggenheim. These programs are so fantastic — they’re designed to kind of make the average person an insider, to give you a behind-the-scenes view of how art or cultural programming is created. Anyway, this one was on female choreographers and American Ballet Theater. Unbenownst to me (and most I think), ABT in conjunction with Altria has set up the Women’s Choreography Project, whose mission is to encourage more young women to venture into choreography — an excellent aim given that there are so startlingly and inscrutably few female choreographers, at least in ballet.

The women participants whose work we saw were: Gemma Bond, Misty Copeland, Nicole Graniero, Elizabeth Mertz, and Xiomara Reyes — all ABT ballerinas, and all, except Xiomara and Misty, members of the corps de ballet. (Xiomara is a principal and Misty a soloist.) It’s not a given or a demand of course that these ballerinas will necessarily become choreographers, but the program, led by Stephen Pier, exists for them to explore their talents, ultimately decide whether choreography is for them. It will be interesting to see, if programs like these proliferate, if it leads to more women dancemakers.

Anyway, it was really interesting watching Pier work with the women, but, to be honest, a bit confusing. At the beginning, Pier defined choreography for the audience as the movement of bodies through time and space. “That’s all,” he said. Then, he had Gemma Bond demonstrate a phrase she’d been working on. She walked to the middle of the stage, smiling bashfully, and did a short, abstract lyrical segment. Then, Pier told her to focus on the back wall, to look at the shape of three windows, the lights coming through them, their geometry, and some writing on the wall underneath them (which I think was something like a dedication to whoever funded the auditorium, in small letters).

Bond used her hand to shield her eyes from the stage lights, and squinted up toward the windows. We all turned around, followed her gaze to the back of the room. She then laughed, shrugged her shoulders, and gamely re-performed the phrase. “It’s the same thing,” said the woman next to me. But I didn’t think it was. I thought she used the stage a little more; the pattern was now more horizontal than vertical, which went along with the three, horizontally aligned windows. She did exactly what was asked of her, I thought. Then Pier asked her, “well, what are you going to do with that red light coming out from the middle window?” She looked back at the windows, focused for a moment on the middle one, then, seemingly concentrating hard, repeated the phrase again. This time it was the same horizontal pattern as before, but now she stepped forward in the middle, kind of punctuating the movement with a little dot, making both vertical and horizontal use of the stage. “Now, that’s different,” said the lady next to me. I agreed, but thought this difference was far more subtle than the last.

It was really interesting, but I think we were all intrigued because we knew exactly what was going on, what the choreographer was using to guide her. If we didn’t, I think it would just have been three slightly different patterns with no real meaning.

Pier then gave the women a pair of opposites to work with: fast and slow, light and dark, sharp and soft. All chose sharp and soft, except for renegade Misty, who chose freedom and constraint — which wasn’t one of Pier’s categories! (At one point, he asked each what they found hardest about the project and Misty said it was keeping within the rules. I love her!) Anyway, I looked deeply at the dances, trying hard to concentrate, to see the contrasts, but couldn’t always find them.

But as I was watching this, I was thinking of what I’d seen earlier in the day — the rehearsal footage of Alvin Ailey choreographing on his dancer Donna Wood Sanders, which I wrote about here. How he told her, you’re a prisoner, you can’t escape, you’re struggling, trying, let me see that. And this dance, Masekela Langage, about a group of people living under systematized racial oppression, was obviously very close to his heart.

I realize Pier was only giving these women exercises, that he wasn’t saying this was all there was to choreography. At least I hope that’s what he meant. He had said choreography was only about the movement of bodies through time and space. Is that all? I couldn’t help but get the feeling that Ailey’s world was so different from that of a lot of contemporary ballet, where it’s all about geometric patterns, interesting shapes, use of space, use of different rhythms, and not so much about creating something from the heart. I mean, literary writers and artists have to create because they have something to tell the world, something they find deeply meaningful. Although this was obviously only a glimpse into their process, I didn’t get the sense that these women were being encouraged to explore their visions of the world and learn to make movement that emanates from that place. It makes me wonder how most contemporary choreographers work — if they’re just thinking of light and shadow and abstract oppositions and geometry; if they’re not concerned with trying to tell us something.

Anyway, I have to say Xiomara (photo up top) completely blew me away with her work. She danced a lyrical balletic piece, but it had a kind of hippy-ness to it, a kind of swaying Gyspy-like, Latin feel. She danced with so much emotion. Her facial expressions almost reminded me of a flamenco dancer’s. I’ve never seen her dance like that before. I feel like perhaps she’s someone who’s better at dancing her own work than classical ballet. And perhaps she’d be good at creating work for other contemporary ballet dancers like her. Maybe she’ll be our next female ballet choreographer?

They also showed pieces by women who’ve choreographed for ABT: Lauri Stallings (whose Citizen I wrote about here) and Aszure Barton, whose work I’d never seen before and really loved. ABT II (the studio company, comprised of teenaged dancers) performed her Barbara, a sweet ballet that didn’t really have one single linear narrative, but had a lot of little subplots involving cutely intriguing characters.

On an endnote, Irlan Silva — whoa! Methinks he is going to be in the main company soon…