Tag: George Balanchine

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The Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker

 

Yesterday I was invited to a pre-screening of a filmed version of the Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker, which will be shown later this month at cinemas in New York and around the country by Emerging Pictures’ Ballet in Cinema series. Check their website for local schedules.

The Royal Ballet version was very good, albeit different from what I’m used to (which, as a New Yorker, is basically Balanchine’s). The Royal’s was directed and choreographed by Peter Wright (after Ivanov), the orchestra conducted by Koen Kessels, and was originally shown at the Royal Opera House in Convent Garden in December 2009.

The biggest difference between this and Balanchine’s is that Clara and the Nutcracker Prince dance all throughout the second half, the Land of the Sweets (here called the Sugar Garden). They participate in the Arabian dance, the Russian dance, the Chinese dance, and the flower dances. The dancer who dances Clara (unfortunately, I don’t have a full cast list and didn’t get her name from the quickly scrolling credits at the end of the film, so I don’t know her name) was older – not a child – and she was a really beautiful dancer. Very fluid, light, willowy, with an innocence in her movement. Very child-like (in a good way, because it was called for here). At first I didn’t like that they danced throughout because I thought at points it almost looked like they were making fun of the various styles of dance. But then I realized, no they weren’t doing that at all; they were playing and having fun, like children would, and like audiences composed heavily of children would want to see them do, and would want to do themselves. The Nutcracker Prince’s name I do have – Steven McRae, and he was very good.

The Sugar Plum Fairy and the Prince were danced brilliantly by Miyako Yoshida and McRae. The ending pas de deux was a traditional one and it was danced just about the best I’ve ever seen it. Yoshida in particular was really stunning. She’s a small dancer but has a lot of power – particularly in her developes –  her leg just seems to shoot up there! Her assisted pirouettes and her fouettes done in a diagonal line were also stunning. She’s a fast, spirited dancer with great clarity in her lines, which were never over-extended and which she always finished with zest. But even with all the demanding athletics of that pas, she didn’t turn into an Olympic performance; she remained sweet and princess-like. It was really magical. It’s a performance I could have watched over and over again.

Drosselmeyer, the magician, really blew me away too. He is a main character here – he doesn’t just appear at the beginning to present the toys and give Clara her nutcracker doll; he acts as a guide all throughout the second half, bringing Clara and her prince on a tour through the Sugar Garden, presenting the various national dances to them. He’s clearly in charge of Clara’s dream, although at the end, there’s a little twist on that. You’ll have to see the production to find out what it is 🙂 And Drosselmeyer was portrayed very well by Gary Avis. It’s not a dance role, but requires a big stage presence and Avis really came through on that. He received lots of applause at the end and took all the curtain calls with all the main dancers.

The only thing I have to say – and this is not at all bad – but did Macaulay ever review dance in the U.K.? He was a theater critic for most of his career there, right? Because if he ever reviewed the Royal, I’d think he would have had to remark on the weight of some of the dancers. Some of them made Jenifer Ringer look like a twig. Not that they danced badly because of it. I think for a while I’m always going to be thinking “hey, she’s bigger than Jenifer Ringer, she’s bigger, she’s way bigger”…

Anyway, if anyone reading this is in the U.K. and / or has seen this production, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Photo taken from the Ballet in Cinema website.

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Does a Ballerina’s Weight Affect the Quality of a Performance?

 

So, if you haven’t heard, the New York dance world is all up in arms over NY Times chief dance critic Alastair Macaulay’s review of New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker. The full review, which is here, I think is generally pretty good. But then he begins his concluding paragraph with this:

“This didn’t feel, however, like an opening night. Jenifer Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, looked as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many; and Jared Angle, as the Cavalier, seems to have been sampling half the Sweet realm. They’re among the few City Ballet principals that dance like adults, but without adult depth or complexity.” (Ringer and Angle are pictured above, in that production. Photo by Paul Kolnik.)

Angry reactions have abounded: here are a couple on Huffington Post. In the second piece, Jennifer Edwards, quoting critic Eva Yaa Asantewaa (a friend of mine), notes that Ringer has had an eating disorder in the past and argues that this sentence was disrespectful, reckless, and irrelevant. Edwards also quotes an earlier reflection of Macaulay’s on his role as dance critic:

“My job is to be a professional aesthete with serious criteria; and I share my perceptions and my values with the reader as best I can.”

Edwards concludes by posing two questions:

“1. Do you read the Times dance reviews? Has this changed over time?

2. Do you feel reviews of this nature are of use to venues, arts organizations, audience members, aspiring young dancers, and artists?”

I wrote a little comment on HuffPo but thought I’d elaborate a bit here because I think it’s an interesting, and complicated, issue.

I definitely don’t think a dancer’s weight affects the quality of a performance unless the dancer really can’t dance. I’ve seen Ringer dance pretty recently and she is a tiny thing with no weight problem whatsoever. I didn’t see this performance but I’ve always thought she was technically a very good dancer with a lot of charisma, particularly in roles like the one Melissa Barak recently gave her where she can act as well as dance. And I think Jared Angle is one of the best male partners – if not THE best – City Ballet has.  I think Macaulay just wanted to be snarky – that’s part of his critic’s voice. I think he thinks he’s being funny. Maybe snark and sarcasm in critical reviews are partly a British thing? I see a lot of it though in reviews these days.

I think Macaulay knows a lot about dance history and I get the most out of his reviews when he focuses on that – on the history of a production, how this compares to others’ or past productions, the history of the performers, the artists, etc. I generally like his Nutcracker review, most of which focuses on Balanchine’s unique take on Tchaikovsky. The serious parts of it are very illuminating and show why this production is important and thus why a reader of his review might want to go see it. So the snarky part about Ringer’s weight seems really out of place. I actually re-read the sentence and that directly following it a few times, thinking maybe he meant that Ringer and Angle were dizzy, dancing with childish abandon when they usually dance like adults. But, no, I think he has to mean that they were both plumper than usual – the same as everyone else’s interpretation.

In response to Edwards’s question 1 above: I do remember former chief critic John Rockwell making references to dancers’ bodies, albeit not with the same snarky voice. In particular I remember him likening Marcelo Gomes’s legs to “tree trunks,” which offended some dance-goers. But it also seemed that he really loved Gomes and he’d lauded his dancing in the same review. So then it didn’t seem like he was making a value judgment, just a description.

It is tricky, because it’s hard not to talk about bodies since they’re kind of inherent in this art form. I offended readers (mainly on Facebook) once in my review of Burn the Floor on Broadway by saying that the tiny Broadway stage looked way too crowded during the ensemble numbers with all of those dancers and the band sharing it. I said it looked particularly crowded when Maks Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff were the leads, as opposed to Pasha Kovalev and Anya Garnis, since the former two – Maks in particular – were so large. I didn’t at all mean it as a criticism of him, but of the staging (and I suggested they take the band off of the stage, like in Tharp’s Movin’ Out). And, everyone who’s read my blog for any length of time knows that I often prefer larger dancers (Veronika Part, Marcelo, Roberto Bolle, Vaidotas Skimelis – come on!) But I was still attacked and even told if I didn’t remove it, those people would never read my blog again.

Also, sometimes a partnership just doesn’t work right when one dancer is too large for the other. Sometimes certain movement, certain styles look better on one dancer because of that dancer’s physique. I think those are valid criteria for judging the quality of a performance. But it can still get out of control – as in So You Think You Can Dance when the judges just start talking about the dancers’ bodies. How many times did they have to remark on Josh Allen’s butt? I always felt embarrassed for the whole show whenever that happened but everyone else seemed to think it was funny. But of course New York Times is not a corny TV show.

What is the purpose of a newspaper review anyway? To let your audience know from your educated perspective what is good and bad about a performance, and whether or not they should spend their money and go see it. I don’t really like Edwards’s second question because I don’t think the purpose of a review is to be of use to venues, artists, aspiring dancers, and arts organizations. The critic’s duty is to his readership – a general audience of potential dance-goers trying to decide whether to spend their money on a certain show. The critic has to be honest about what she thinks did and didn’t work in the show and why. And I also think for the presumably well-educated NY Times audience it’s nice when the critic goes into the history of a production, of a dance, the way Macaulay often does. But the critic can’t be protecting the artist from hurt and also serving his readership of potential dance-goers. Otherwise, he’s going to end up lying to someone.

Which gets back to the issue of whether a dancer’s weight gain or loss is a serious criterion in judging the quality of a performance. I think it’s ridiculous that someone would think it is, but what do you guys think? Why are we, as a culture, so hung up on weight anyway? People are always criticizing certain dancers for being too thin as well…

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City Center’s Studio 5 Opens its Season Nov. 9 with Damian Woetzel, Violette Verdy, and NYCB

New York City Center’s Studio 5 will open its 2010-11 season on November 9th with a performance and discussion of three Balanchine ballets that are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year. Four New York City Ballet dancers (Tiler Peck, Joaquin De Luz, Jenifer Ringer and Jared Angle) will perform Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, Donizetti Variations, and Liebeslieder Walzer, and Damian Woetzel and Violette Verdy (who danced in the original productions) will discuss. Verdy will also coach the dancers.

Later performance/discussions this season will center on Paul Taylor Dance Company and Dance Theater of Harlem. Click on link below to read the full press release.

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Benjamin Millepied’s “Plainspoken”

Last Thursday was NYCB’s Fall gala, during which they presented the New York City premiere of Benjamin Millepied’s Plainspoken (photo at left, of Teresa Reichlen and Sebastien Marcovici, by Paul Kolnik; the ballet originally premiered in Wyoming this August), along with Robbins’ fabulous homage to Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, I’m Old Fashioned, and Balanchine’s Tarantella and Western Symphony.

The evening began with the orchestra pit rising and the always lively Faycal Karoui leading the orchestra in a rendition of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide Overture. I love that movable orchestra pit – best thing, in my opinion, about the recent renovations to the Koch Theater.

I was hoping there would be introductions and short speeches, including one by Sarah Jessica Parker, who served as honorary chair for the after-performance party. But no such luck – I guess because it wasn’t the beginning of the season, like galas usually are. I didn’t even get to see Parker come down the red carpet, there were so many paparazzi blocking my view. I certainly heard her though – or, rather, the paparazzi, as they screamed her name like she was the Messiah. I didn’t recognize anyone else. Lots of good-looking people perfectly coiffed and dressed in black tie but no one I recognized. I didn’t see Natalie Portman, though I heard she was there. I never recognize famous people, though. I’m really bad that way.

Anyway, I’m Old Fashioned was, as always, enjoyable, albeit too long. No dance-maker needed an editor more than Jerome Robbins in my opinion- and Tyler Angle stood out to me in his solos and duets with Maria Kowroski. But my favorite part of the evening was the second half of the post-intermission, when Ashley Bouder and Daniel Ulbrich just nailed Balanchine’s super fast-paced bravura-heavy duet, Tarantella (Ulbrich smacked the tambourine so hard one of the little metal things came flying off) and then Sara Mearns just astounded me in the last section of Western Symphony. How in the world does she stand on pointe, on her own unsupported by a male dancer, and lift her other leg in the air into a perfect split, into practically a six o’clock penchee? How how how? She and Charles Askegard really put on a show as tart-y saloon dancer and cowboy. She is really just unbelievable.

Okay, so onto Plainspoken. Well, sometimes I like Millepied, and sometimes the work just falls a bit flat to me. I didn’t much care for this one, though I’ve liked his last several ballets for ABT and NYCB. This was very abstract, no story that I could find, and I’m just not a fan of purely abstract ballets that I can’t find any story in whatsoever. It was a ballet for four couples: Sterling Hyltin and Tyler Angle, Teresa Reichlen and Amar Ramasar, Jennie Somogyi and Sebastien Marcovici, and Janie Taylor and Jared Angle (the last were generally my and my friend’s favorite pair – I think because Janie always brings something dark to her roles, there’s always something beneath the surface with her even if you can’t put your finger on what it is). The couples sometimes changed partners though, and there would be different-sized groupings.

The music was by Pulitzer prize-winning composer David Lang – it was a commissioned score – but to me the music here wasn’t nearly as rich as, for example, that used by Morphoses recently. This was mainly strings and piano and each section seemed emotionally the same. There didn’t seem to be a lot of contrast between the movements or a build-up toward the end. The sections were each differently lit – by a different color and a background curtain that would rise and lower to reveal more or less light than the section before. But the set was nothing very dramatic and the different colors didn’t, for me at least, evoke a different mood.

Movement-wise, there seemed to be a swimming theme. At various points the dancers would sit on the floor and make motions evocative of swimming – sweeping arms through the air, paddling legs – backward, then forward, then all dancers lying on their backs with their feet in the air like a synchronized swim team. At other points, the women would be carried somewhat Chaconne-like across the stage. I remember a slide characterizing Janie’s section, and she made it seem as if she was being taken by the men who slid her, against her will, across the floor.

I also have in my notes that the movement toward the beginning, in the first section, was a combination of robotic and more casual walks, kind of like the ensemble walking across the back of the stage in the second part of Robbins’s Glass Pieces. This kind of movement was interspersed with the swimming-like motions. In later sections, dancers seemed to run in place.

Oh, and during Janie’s section, there was a point where the men all picked her up and hoisted her high above them, like in MacMillan’s Manon or the Balanchine ballet where the woman is carried around the whole time by a group of men and the lone man on the floor keeps reaching up for her (sorry, can never remember the name of that ballet). My friend loved this part, and I did as well, but couldn’t really figure out how it played into the rest of that section.

In general, my first impressions of this ballet were: some interesting movement reminiscent of other ballets that didn’t seem to add up to much and didn’t really make me feel anything.

At the end, Millepied, Lang and the costume designer (Karen Young) and lighting designer (Penny Jacobus) took the stage for a bow. The applause seemed more polite than hearty (in contrast to the crazy applause Wheeldon always gets!), but that could just be me projecting my own thoughts onto everyone else.

What about you guys? I saw some mentions on Facebook of people liking it. Who else saw it and what did you think?

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NYCB Brings Back “The Magic Flute” and Ashley Bouder Astounds in “Serenade”

On Thursday evening, New York City Ballet performed for the first time since 1982 Peter Martins’s The Magic Flute (pictured below – both photos by Paul Kolnik). But first on was Balanchine’s Serenade, with Rebecca Krohn (in the photo at left, the ballerina the farthest left) debuting in the role of the “angel.” Jenifer Ringer (center) was the “lost girl,” and Ashley Bouder (on the right) the dancer who dominates the first section.

Every time I see this ballet I see something new and though she wasn’t debuting in the role, this was my first time seeing Ashley Bouder. She completely blew me away and brought to life a “character” I never really even noticed before. I use quotes because of course Balanchine insisted that this is a story-less ballet and he didn’t create any such characters, but over time viewers have come to create their own story and now, for example, everyone calls the ballerina whose actions seem to bless and save the woman who falls and seems distraught over a man, the “dark angel.” Anyway, I realized for the first time when I saw Ashley dance that her character is supposed to be the A-student, the one who can do all the astounding feats and just flies all over the stage in those jetes. I kept thinking of Natalia Osipova. Wow. That’s always been my least favorite part of the ballet – that “class section” at the beginning; I always long for the final, more poetic part when what can most be read as a story takes place, with the angel and a male figure representing to me blind justice save the tragic woman’s soul.

Anyway, for the first time I really didn’t want the first part to end. Ashley was just so spellbinding. It wasn’t just that her jetes were so stunning though; it was that she created a character who ate up the stage, but not out of competitiveness and need for attention, but simply because she was so good she couldn’t help it. That’s what her dancing conveyed to me anyway, and then I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Rebecca Krohn did very well in her debut as the angel. Only thing was that she was so much shorter than tall Ask la Cour (in photo above) that when followed him from behind with her hands wrapped around his eyes, she really had to stretch.

Jonathan Stafford also made his debut in this ballet, as the “distraught girl’s boyfriend,” if you want to call him that. I thought he danced very well, but I think I personally prefer Charles Askegard in this role because I see that man as tantalizing her, tormenting her, and responsible for her downfall, and there is just something innately cocky about Askegard. Jonathan Stafford is too sweet 🙂

Okay, so The Magic Flute. NYCB as I said hasn’t performed this in a while and it’s kind of obvious why: it just doesn’t seem to fit at all in their repertoire. It was a short story ballet filled with slapstick and cutesy characters. It was danced very well – and Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette are two of the company’s best actors and they did in my mind as much as could possibly be done it. Everyone did well, actually, and it seems the dancers enjoyed the opportunity to do something they never get a chance to.

The story bears no relation whatsoever to the Mozart opera. It’s the story of a farm girl (Megan) who likes a peasant boy (Andrew) but she is betrothed to this incredibly hilariously dorky older man, the town’s Marquis (played well by Adam Hendrickson).This is where most of the slaptick comes in – in trying to seduce them the Marquis falls all over the village women, goes to kiss Megan’s hand but ends up with Andrew’s, literally falls all over poor Megan, etc. etc. Eventually, a strange hooded character indicates to the peasant boy that everything will be all right, he will get the girl, but he must watch for something to fall from the sky. That something is a flute, which comes bearing a huge sign for all the audience to see: “If you play this flute, people will dance against their will.” Audience cracked up at this of course.

So, Andrew grabbed the flute and tried it out on his friends, realizing it works! I have to say Andrew’s flute playing was very believable. Of course the flutist is in the orchestra pit but damn did it look like Andrew was making that music!

So, now every time the Marquis tried to grab Andrew and toss him off Megan, Andrew would starting playing the flute and the Marquis would start hopping around like a madman. Angry at his lack of control, he pulls his men on peasant boy, eventually tries to get the court involved, and soon everyone is madly hopping about. There’s no choreography for the uncontrollable dancing – everyone just hops about punching the air at random. Eventually everything works itself out and Andrew and Megan end up happily together.

The costumes were cute and the sets were very well done (it was suggested at intermission that ABT might want to hire set designer David Mitchell for their productions), I’m just not sure this ballet really belongs at NYCB. But it’s nice for a change.

The program ended with Balanchine’s patriotic Stars and Stripes set to Sousa. Savannah Lowery had the lead in the second section – the “second campaign” – and she fell during her stage entrance. It looked like just a slip but then she didn’t dance her part full out at all – jetes were very low and she looked very concerned going on pointe. It soon became clear she’d really hurt herself when she didn’t return for her solo seconds later. The company didn’t have time to replace her with another ballerina right then, so the corps members just kind of looked on and sweetly smiled as they stood still during what should have been Lowery’s solo. It was kind of like that experimental Jerome Bel film where the camera focuses solely on the corps members while the Swan Lake music swells.

Anyway, by the end, after the fourth campaign when all campaigns return, she’d been replaced by trooper Gwyneth Muller, who my companion noticed seemed not to have much makeup on. There probably aren’t too many emergencies like this where a dancer who thinks she’s done for the night (she’s played Megan’s mother in The Magic Flute) but hasn’t yet left the building has to get in costume and run back out onstage for a main solo! Anyway, she did well. I hope Savannah’s okay though.

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Janie Taylor Debuts in Millepied’s “Why Am I Not Where You Are” Etc.

I’ve been remiss in my New York City Ballet posts! Last week I saw two programs: one featuring three dances to three different violin concertos – Peter Martins’s Barber Violin Concerto, Robbins’ Opus 19 / The Dreamer, and Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin Concerto. And the other program was another in the “See the Music” series but was also dedicated to Santiago Calatrava, who designed sets for all three of the ballets performed – Benjamin Millepied’s Why Am I Not Where You Are (pictured above, photo by Paul Kolnik), Christopher Wheeldon’s Estancia (pictured below, photo also by Kolnik), and Mauro Bigonzetti’s Luce Nascosta, all of which premiered last season and which I wrote about here, here, and here.

Calatrava was in the theater, and after encouragement by Peter Martins, he rose and took a bow.

Then, as with the first “See the Music” program, before the performance began, the orchestra pit rose and conductor Faycal Karoui gave a humorous little explanation of various parts of the Thierry Escaich score from Millepied’s Why, the first ballet performed.

These explanations are really interesting to me, I have to say. I only took one classical music class in college and now wish I’d taken more. Karoui talked about how there were four main parts to the score: a waltz, a tango, a disco, and a final climactic part, and he talked about the differences in tempo between them, and between them and a typical waltz, tango, etc.. He also talked about how the ballet has a central male character (danced very well by Sean Suozzi – in top picture, being carried by the group of men), and how you can hear that central character’s theme – or voice – throughout each section of the music. But the voice changes with each section: at first, he’s shy and mysterious (and his voice in the first section is portrayed by a violin solo), then as the orchestra grows sharper and stronger in the second, tango, section, so did the character, etc.

When we got to the “disco” section (it sounded nothing like disco to me but just slightly more mechanical and percussive than the preceding sections), Karoui really began rocking out as he led the orchestra. It was like he was actually dancing in a disco, and I nearly cracked up. I’m not sure if that’s what he normally does down in that pit – if he regularly starts to embody the music literally like that, or if he was just being a goof for the audience. He didn’t seem to be hamming it up at that point, though – oddly – so who knows. Anyway, he is very entertaining and I find his musical explanations very educational as well. What more can you ask than to be both entertained and educated, right?

Anyway, Janie Taylor debuted in the Millepied. She was supposed to have debuted when the ballet did last season but she was out with injury and so Kathryn Morgan had filled in. Character-wise I thought she played it the same as Morgan. Except with Morgan it seemed to have a West Side Story feel to it; with Janie it was darker and more La Valse-like. Both were tragic, but in a different way; Kathryn’s character seemed more innocent. Anyway, this was my second time seeing the ballet and it grew on me. It’s very dramatic, not a dull moment in the whole thing, and you’re really on the edge of your seat, both because of the intensity of the music – maintained throughout each section – and the dramatic story of the poor innocent guy who’s drawn into another world by his enchantment by this ethereal creature, only to get trapped and ultimately destroyed, along with her.

To me, Sara Mearns and Amar Ramasar, with their bravura roles, largely stole the show – I think I remember thinking the same last time. She with those crazy fast chaine turns all around stage that almost make you sickly dizzy, and he with his virtuosic leap sequence – they are kind of the sinister characters, seducing Suozzi but also the audience.

Then came Estancia, and it was my first time seeing Ana Sophia Scheller and Adrian Danchig-Waring (pictured above) in the leads. I’m not a huge fan of this ballet – well, I like the ensemble sections, particularly the dancing and taming of the “horses” – but I nearly fall asleep during the middle, romance part, where city boy wins country girl over. I think it’s just the choreography in that middle section (that I found relatively bland) that slows it down – along with the music – but I liked Scheller and Danchig-Waring just as much as the first pair of leads – Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle. In fact, they seemed to fit the roles a bit more. Scheller reminded me of the main character of Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo and there was something more sweetly, playfully tomboyish about her look than Peck’s. And Danchig-Waring perfectly suited the city boy trying to woo her. He acted his part very well. And his movement is always very sharp. Andrew Veyette and Georgina Pazcoquin as the horses who are eventually tamed, were fabulously entertaining.

And lastly was Bigonzetti’s Luce Nascosta (picture at left by Kolnik), which I’ve seen now three times and which I like but think is too long. I missed seeing Craig Hall in the middle section that seems to be softer and looser than the other sections, where the movement is more marked by those extreme shapes with the flexed hands, splayed fingers, and angular balances and slides on pointe. Hall seems to have the ability to move in a more undulating, kind of serpentine way than most of the others and it seems to me to suit that middle section well.

In the previous program, I loved Megan Fairchild again as the “modern” dancer in Barber Violin Concerto, and, as always, Gonzalo Garcia as “the dreamer” in Robbins’ Opus 19!

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New York City Ballet Fall Gala Upcoming October 7

 

To celebrate its first fall season, NYCB will have a fall gala on October 7th. It will feature the premiere of a new ballet by Benjamin Millepied set to a score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang. The program will also include Balanchine’s Tarantella and Western Symphony and Robbins’ I’m Old Fashioned (photographed above, by Paul Kolnik). Sarah Jessica Parker, newly elected to the NYCB Board of Directors, will serve as the event’s honorary chair.

Benefit tickets, which include a pre-performance cocktail reception and post-performance supper ball are available for $1500, $2500, and $5000 and tickets for the performance and cocktail reception are $250. The cocktail reception will begin at 5:30, the performance at 7, and the supper will follow. Click below to read the full press release.

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AN ERA ENDS: DARCI KISTLER GIVES HER LAST PERFORMANCE WITH NYCB

 

Yesterday afternoon marked the end of an era as Darci Kistler, the last dancer to be hired, trained, and made into a star by George Balanchine, gave her last performance with New York City Ballet, where she’s danced for the past 30 years. Kistler, originally from Riverside, California, began studying at Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in 1976, was hired to dance with the company in 1980, and was made into a principal in 1982, at 17 years of age. She remains the youngest principal ever at NYCB.

It was a huge event, needless to say — practically every critic and blogger was there, longtime donor patrons were greeting each other right and left (and there was a party for them afterward). The house was completely packed, and the plaza was filled with people asking if anyone had a ticket for sale.

The program consisted of Balanchine’s Monumentum Pro Gesualdo and Movements for Piano and Orchestra, the Titania / Bottom pas de deux from his Midsummer Night’s Dream, his Danses Concertantes, and the beautiful final act of Peter Martins’s Swan Lake (which almost made me cry, and I don’t think I’m the only one).

 

Monumentum Pro Gesualdo and Movements for Piano and Orchestra is an abstract leotard ballet in two parts that Balanchine set to Stravinsky. I always prefer the second part, which its flirtatiousness, its angular lines and sharp shapes, to the more lyrical first part. Darci danced that second part with Sebastien Marcovici, and the first part with Charles Askegard. I’d only ever seen Maria Kowroski in the female lead in this ballet and it was interesting seeing another body in the role. Kistler danced it more smoothly lyrical and her edges were more rounded, but she played it up really well, really “acted” it, like she was really responding to Marcovici’s movement and he to hers, as if they were in conversation.

That Titania / Bottom pas de deux is one of my favorite parts of Balanchine’s Midsummer Night and I’m glad she chose it. She was sweetly hilarious as she fell head over heels for Henry Seth’s ‘donkey persona’ after both had spells cast on them by the mischievous Puck.

Danses Concertantes was the only ballet she didn’t dance; it was danced well by Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette.

 

And the program ended with the last act of Martins’s version of Swan Lake. The Martins is one of the only versions of this ballet I know of that doesn’t have some kind of happy ending, and it was really fitting here, this being the most bittersweet of farewells. In Martins’s version, Odette and Prince Siegfried can’t be together because he has been unfaithful to her with Odile. So the ballet ends with her bourreing backward, away from his outstretched arms, into her flock of swans, who envelop her. Jared Angle’s Siegfried continues reaching out toward her, in sorrowful outstretched lunges, but he’s unable to reclaim her. She literally retreats into the wings, and metaphorically returns to her ethereal, otherworldly place. So poetic, and so fitting for a prima ballerina retirement. And so sad…

 

All photos by Paul Kolnik. (Bottom photo I scanned from an earlier program)

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MISSING ARIZONA

 

I haven’t been to Phoenix since early 2001 and I’ve been getting a bit homesick for the desert. Everything seems to be reminding me of the Southwest lately – even last night’s NYCB program with Melissa Barak’s new ballet, Call Me Ben, set in Vegas with its Santiago Calatrava-designed desert-themed backdrops, and then Balanchine’s Western Symphony with the cowboys, saloon girls and Old Tombstone-looking stage piece.

 

 

Albert Evans and cast in earlier NYCB Western Symphony production, taken from Explore Dance. Photo above that of the main street in Tombstone, AZ, taken from the city’s website.

I have to get out there soon.

In the meantime, just ordered this book, which looks like the perfect proverbial beach read.

The photo of the little guy at the top of the post, by the way, is taken from the Facebook page of my childhood friend who operates a kind of traveling zoo featuring reptiles native to Arizona, exposing children to and creating respect for their unique little charms.

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ALBERT EVANS FAREWELL

 

 

Photos by Paul Kolnik (top, of Albert Evans during final curtain call, bottom with Wendy Whelan in Herman Schmerman)

Sunday afternoon longtime beloved principal with NYCBallet, Albert Evans, gave his final performance. He danced two roles he is well-known for – the pas de deux from William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman, with Wendy Whelan, whom he’s often been partnered with, and Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments (he danced the third variation – “Phlegmatic”). It was perfect – -a humorous, playful pas de deux and a very serious, emotionally moving classic Balanchine ballet. He danced both fabulously. I haven’t seen Herman Schmerman much, and he made me want to see it again. And he danced “Phlegmatic” so well, with such precision and intensity (honestly, better than I remember seeing it danced previously) it made me take notice of a Balanchine ballet I honestly haven’t much liked before.

Also on the program was La Source, a pretty in pink ballet by Balanchine set to Delibes and danced very well by Joaquin de Luz and Megan Fairchild in the pas de deux and Lauren King as leader of the ensemble. I have in my notes “dive!!!” which means Megan must have dove into Joaquin’s arms with brilliant gusto!

And in the middle was The Lady with the Little Dog, a newish ballet by Alexey Miroshnichenko that premiered last season, danced again very well by Sterling Hyltin and Andrew Veyette. I think they re-staged and / or re-thought it a bit because it seemed so much better this time. I remember liking parts of it last time; I really loved it this time. The lifts are stunning and it’s very emotionally moving with lots of climactic build-up. I think it’s more focused on the couple this time and the “angels” are more functional and less involved in the choreography and I think that made a big difference. I always love Sterling’s little dog. This time he (or she?) wanted to be picked up a lot.

Anyway, Albert Evans is quite the character and his curtain call was probably the most celebratory I’ve seen at City Ballet. I said on Twitter that it was of Julio Bocca-esque proportions! Of course everyone – audience and the dancers – loves him, and many of the female dancers came out and did a little dance with him when giving him their bouquet. He did several little goofy dances himself, with lots of Rocky Horror Picture Show-style pelvic thrusts. He picked up one of his bouquets and flung it out to the audience. Then, he took off his shoes. Oh and he had a glass of champagne, brought out by a group of male principals. See, what I mean – Julio Bocca all over again! Crowd went wild, and didn’t want to leave the theater.

Since it was a nice day, after the performance I sat outside on the benches near the stage door with Oberon and we waited for Albert to emerge. He never did! Well, he probably did after several hours – Philip and I imagined he was getting plastered with Wendy Whelan and Maria Kowroski (neither of whom emerged either during the time we sat there) and his other regular female partners. A good hour after we’d been sitting out, a dancer came out and talked with Philip a bit and told him she just saw Albert inside yakking it up with everyone and he was still in his ballet clothes. So we decided we’d be waiting all night and we’d better leave. Did get to meet a lot of dancers though — all very charming and immensely polite and gentlemanly! Amar Ramasar, Robert Fairchild, Troy Schumacher (who made me want to dig back into Proust – have the tomes of his work but have never gotten around to cracking them open), Craig Hall, Tiler Peck, Abi Stafford… those are the ones I can remember. Fun day!

For more on Evans’s career, Oberon has a really good write-up with lots of photos.

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TWO MORE NYCB PREMIERES: "LUCE NASCOSTA" AND "CALL ME BEN"

 

It’s been a season of new ballets and principal dancer farewells at New York City Ballet, and, between that and all the goings-on at ABT, it’s hard to keep up! I realized when meeting a blog reader yesterday at Philip Neal’s farewell performance (so nice to meet you, Vanessa!) that I hadn’t yet written about the last two premieres and people were waiting. I was going to wait until I’d seen each once again, but at least with one of them I won’t get that chance since there was a programming change.

 

Anyway, Maura Bigonzetti’s Luce Nascosta (two photos above, cast in top, Teresa Reichlen and Adrian Danchig-Waring directly above. All photos by Paul Kolnik): I really don’t know what to think of it. The title is translated in the program notes as “Unseen Light”. The stage was very dark except for a Santiago Calatrava moon-like disc, which throughout the course of the ballet expanded into multiple discs. Everyone was in black (costumes by Marc Happel), the men in flare-legged pants and the women in tight black tops and big ruffled skirts that resembled trendy Latin ballroom costumes from a couple years back.

The dancing was at times in ensemble, at times in pairs, but the partnerships changed. It seemed that Tiler Peck and whoever she was partnered by were kind of the leaders, and Maria Kowroski and whoever was partnering her at the moment, kind of concluded the action, with everyone else in between.

The music was gorgeous – by Bruno Moretti, but I didn’t think it accompanied the choreography well at all. The music was like something you’d see in an action-packed movie, like Mission Impossible, at times dark and eerie, at times melodramatic with crescendos like you’d hear when the hero’s coming to save the day. Seriously, perfect for a big summer blockbuster. Here … dunno? And weird because they collaborated closely, the choreographer and the composer…

I thought there were some interesting moments and some original movement, but overall I didn’t feel it added up to much of a whole. My favorite part of the choreography was when all the men were dancing in ensemble. Craig Hall began this rather African-looking movement sequence, then Sean Suozzi joined him, making the movement look more balletically lyrical than African, which made it all the more interesting to me – how the same movement looked on different bodies. Then, other men began to join until it looked ritualistic and celebratory. The women had less interesting movement — one recurring theme was when the women went on pointe, their legs splayed intentionally awkwardly, and they’d hold the balance on pointe while the men kind of darted around them, like the women were frozen. In another recurring theme toward the end, the women went sliding across stage into the men’s arms. The several times Tiler Peck slid like this into Gonzalo Garcia it made a loud, slapping sound. But that didn’t happen with any of the others. I didn’t know if that was intentional or not. The whole thing had a kind of threatening vibe. At times it seemed the women were the threat to the men, at other times the opposite.

The whole thing made me think black widows in the moonlight…

I’m interested to know what others thought of this one. Any thoughts? Critics seem genuinely divided, which I find exciting – often they all hate or all love the same thing.

And the premiere before Luce was Melissa Barak’s Call Me Ben, a story ballet about Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, the gangster, and his founding of the Flamingo, the first Vegas nightclub.

 

Robert Fairchild played / danced the part of Bugsy or Ben – the ballet sought to humanize him, focusing on the person and his ideals rather than the gangster, and it did so simply by having endearingly sympathetic Fairchild play the lead! Jenifer Ringer, who looked like a true Hollywood leading lady throughout, played his girlfriend, the one who swindles him, making other gangsters think he’s taken the money himself and fled, eventually leading them to kill him.

I thought the duets were really beautiful. Robert and Jenifer looked really good together, like a leading romantic couple in a movie. And the ballroom-y period costumes (by J. Mendel) were absolutely gorgeous. I really liked the sets, again by Calatrava, as well. More than his sets for any of the premiere ballets I’ve seen thus far this season (well, with the exception of Wheeldon’s Estancia), these seemed particularly suited for this ballet, evoking warm starry nights, palm trees, the Vegas-y climate, basically.

 

I think where the ballet fell apart for me was with all the speaking. Barak has said in interviews that she didn’t think she could tell the story purely through dance so she used spoken word as well. But there was too much spoken word, and the dancers were often so out of breath from dancing it took them a while to begin their lines. And that didn’t look natural. Something like this would work in a movie, obviously, where there are separate takes of each scene, but onstage with seriously exhilarating dancing, it took away from the realism. Plus, besides Vincent Paradiso, none of the male dancers really evoked gangster. Tyler Angle and Daniel Ulbricht, great as they are as dancers, just did not convince me that they were hit men. And at the end, when Ulbricht came out for his bow, it was funny but it seemed like people began their usual hearty applause then let up when they realized they didn’t really see Daniel Ulbricht. He didn’t do Daniel Ulbricht things.

And that makes me think maybe she didn’t need to have any talking. Why couldn’t Ulbricht have done his usual pyrotechnics as his expression of his character’s murderous nature?

It seems from interviews Barak has given, that she was given a score (by Jay Greenberg) that she really didn’t know what to do with, and since the score had already been commissioned she had to come up with something in a short period of time. It’s interesting how these ballets are being commissioned because when I heard Benjamin Millepied speak about his new ballet at a Guggenheim Works & Process event recently, he mentioned that he and his composer, Thierry Escaich, worked together, talking about what the music evoked and how that would be visualized, but that Calatrava designed his set for that ballet independently. So, all throughout Why Am I Not Where You Are, I was wondering whether Millepied meant for his color-clad dancers to be hailing from another world, mainly because of that space-like object of Calatrava’s. But Millepied hadn’t meant for that at all — it was just the set he got, which had nothing really to do with his ballet.

Is this how collaborations used to work in Diaghlev’s day though? I just assumed Stravinsky and Balanchine and Chagall all worked together to create a work of performance art. I mean, how else could Firebird have been created?

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PHILIP NEAL’S FAREWELL PERFORMANCE

 

Yesterday afternoon, Philip Neal gave his farewell performance with New York City Ballet.  He’s been a principal with the company since 1993. He danced two of Balanchine’s most beautiful ballets — Serenade (photo above, with Jenifer Ringer), and Chaconne (below, with Wendy Whelan). In Serenade, he danced the part of the guy whom the fallen girl falls for, and he danced the main male lead in Chaconne. He and Wendy danced so beautifully in that. It was the absolutely perfect  ballet to end your career with.

Sandwiched in between those two ballets were excerpts from Balanchine’s Who Cares? with the main roles danced by  Sterling Hyltin as the snazzy girl in purple, Tiler Peck as the dreamy romantic girl, Ana Sophia Scheller as the quick-footed flirty girl, and Robert Fairchild as the poor guy who can’t choose between them. I can’t imagine anyone more perfect for that role than Robert Fairchild, though I’m told Neal danced the role himself earlier in his career and I can totally see him in that.

I remember him best as “Mr. Danger” who leads Janie Taylor to darkness in Balanchine’s La Valse, and of course as the happy hoofer smitten by Maria Kowroski’s stripper in Balanchine’s Slaughter on Tenth. And now I’ll think of him – with Wendy Whelan – in Chaconne as well.

I am told that he’s now moving to Palm Beach, FL with his partner. Lucky!

 

Photos by Paul Kolnik.