Tag: Giselle

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MARCELO GOMES, THE FAVORITE, ON YOUTUBE

I have been called a “bad Marcelo fan” for continuously chatting about Roberto Bolle, as I did, for ex., in the last post (I don’t think any current dancer promotes himself quite as much as Roberto, and he promotes ballet with himself, so you can’t help but love him for that reason alone).

Anyway, when I first started blogging there were practically no YouTubes of any of my favorite dancers, but that’s thankfully now changed. So, here are several of Marcelo, still SLSG’s favorite ballerino!, dancing with some of SLSG’s favorite ballerinas.

Here, with Alessandra Ferri in Lar Lubovitch’s gripping Othello pas de deux:

Here with Veronika Part in Swan Lake (video quality is not the best, but oooh, the music!)

Here, his Albrecht variation from Giselle, which is timely since ABT is currently in Ocean County, CA, performing that ballet:

Here, as the wickedly sexy Von Rothbart in Swan Lake:

Here, with Gillian Murphy at the beginning of SL (again as Von Rothbart):

The guy who’s dancing the swamp-creature persona of Von Roth, above, is Isaac Stappas, whose new headshot, coincidentally, I was just sent by the amazing Jade Young, who is practically becoming ABT’s portraitist in residence!

 

I’ve posted it previously, but here is Marcelo’s which he did a while back:

 

And one more, with Gillian Murphy again in Coppelia:

I know, the videos are nothing compared the live versions, but the first, of Othello, comes kind of close, no? And the last you can see pretty well, especially around the 4 minute mark when the great one begins his solo.

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THE WILIS ARE REAL: THE DANCING PLAGUE OF 1518

I was browsing around in the bookstore yesterday and spotted this. Apparently in the summer of 1518, in Strasbourg, one woman began dancing and couldn’t stop. This “hysteria” spread until a great number of people had literally danced themselves to death. It’s referred to as the dancing plague, which I’d never heard of before. The book is written by medical historian John Waller, and has received pretty good reviews. I’m definitely going to read it.

Of course it reminded me of the wilis of Giselle and made me think, though we moderns love to roll our eyes at some of these “silly” ballet characters — girls being turned into swans, maiden ghosts forcing the men who snubbed them in life to dance to their deaths — it’s interesting to explore their bases in history, myth and literature. The ideas usually came from somewhere.

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NATALIA OSIPOVA AND HERMAN CORNEJO’S LA SYLPHIDE

 

 

Monday night, I saw the Bolshoi’s Natalia Osipova guest-star with ABT in their production of La Sylphide. I wrote a little about her and more about Herman Cornejo, at the bottom of my prior post. Just to reiterate, if you ever want to see pure excellence, do see Herman Cornejo in something — anything. He is just pure, unmitigated, supreme, excellence!

 

 

August Bournonville’s La Sylphide is the story of a Scotsman, James (Cornejo), who is engaged to be married to a woman named Effie, but is seduced by a sylph (Osipova), who no one but he can see. Gurn, a young man in love with Effie, sees James talking and dancing to the air, and tries to warn everyone that he thinks James has gone mad. But people ignore him. An old witch-like lady, Madge (think MacBeth) prophesies that Gurn will marry Effie. Later, when the wedding party guests perform a fun Scottish folk dance, James continues to be taunted / haunted by the sylph who flies through the air. James chases her but she flies out the window. Later, James is on the verge of marrying Effie, even holding up to her the wedding ring, when the sylph plucks it right from his hand and flies out the window. He chases after her into the forest, her lair. Effie collapses into tears and Gurn leads the groomsmen in search of the missing groom.

The second Act takes place in the forest. The sylph seduces James with food, drink, and dance, but every time he tries to touch her she flies away. James wanders the forest, upset about the sylph’s elusiveness. He happens upon Madge and her mates who are concocting a poisonous brew in which they are soaking a scarf. He tells Madge of his troubles and she tells him the scarf is magic; if he wraps it around the sylph’s wings, he can have her. James takes it. When he next sees the sylph, he seduces her with the scarf’s beauty. She flies toward it, delighted and excited, as he waves it around. But once he wraps it around her wings, she slowly dies.

James, brokenhearted, falls into unconsciousness, as the wedding procession of Gurn and Effie is heard in the distance and the sister sylphs carry the sylphide to heaven.

Neither the story nor choreography are as grand and memorable as Giselle, and I’d written before that I was stunned by Osipova’s athletic prowess but not really moved by her Giselle. Here, I thought that, though I didn’t like the choreography as much, her playful, sky-high jumps made much more sense in this story. Here, she’s not human, she’s not of this world. She’s both a faery and a figure in a man’s dream. So, her unearthly high springing jumps went along with that; they were believable within the story. She is a really beautiful dancer and can certainly jump like no one’s business, but I wished she would have been a bit more tantalizing and playfully vexing, the way Janie Taylor was in Robbins’ The Dreamer. Not like a vixen or an evil spirit; I just mean more forcefully refusing to leave him alone, making him realize what a dull life he’s leading; how he longs for something more. Just like in Giselle, she seemed to be dancing on her own, not really working opposite a partner. It’s probably really hard, though, when there are language barriers, and I think both times either she or her partner (David Hallberg, and Herman) filled in for someone else last minute.

I thought Herman did an excellent job of showing how tormented he was by her, and how confused he was about what to do, how frustrated he was about his life. And his super-charged solo variation expressed that. No one jumps like him. No one. No one turns like Angel Corella and no one jumps like Herman Cornejo. He opened that variation with the best tour jete I’ve ever seen, and I knew — the whole audience knew judging by the gasps — we were in for something huge. Then onto all the high jumps with the fluttering beats of the feet. Everything he does is marked by sheer perfection — perfect sharpness, perfect precision, perfect control, perfect line, perfect clarity, perfect enunciation, beyond perfect height, beyond human height. He’s a god!

My problem with this choreography is that there’s not enough for him to do. And I got really frustrated. I didn’t want that variation to end. Nor did I want Daniil Simkin’s (as Gurn) solo variation to end. There wasn’t enough for him to shine in his either. He had a few kicking jumps, but I need for him to do so much more; Daniil’s too great of a dancer as well! Daniil was hilarious, though, when he imitated to the guests James’s bizarre actions, his weird dancing to the air. In addition to being a superb bravura dancer, he’s a very lively actor too.

On before La Sylphide was Paul Taylor’s light, lyrical Airs. I’m going to write about this more after I’ve seen it a couple more times this weekend, but I love watching ABT dancers do Paul Taylor! I hope no one takes offense and I love Paul Taylor’s dancers, but ABT just brings so much more to “modern dance” than a modern dance company. They bring poetry. Paul Taylor is American modern, and when his dancers dance him it looks celebratory, celebratory of humankind and of the dancing spirit, like something you’d like to get up on stage and do with them. It’s participatory, inviting. Of course you know if you’ve ever tried how hard, how impossible it actually is to dance like them without loads of training. But when you see ABT dancers dance that’s obvious from the get-go. It’s not celebratory and participatory, it’s elevated, awe-inducing dance, dance as an art. You know what I mean? All of the dancers were excellent — particularly Kristi Boone and Misty Copeland, but I loved Arron Scott the most because he so exemplified what I said above: outwardly he looked just like a Paul Taylor dancer, but he starts to move and he’s just so much more!

 

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ABT GUEST-STAR NATALIA OSIPOVA’S ATHLETICALLY ASTOUNDING GISELLE

 

 

 

The Bolshoi! Russian ballerinas! Insane extensions, insane jumps, insane speed!

Last night Bolshoi ballerina Natalia Osipova guest-performed with American Ballet Theater as Giselle. David Hallberg was her Albrecht, Jared Matthews Hilarion, and Veronika Part was Myrta. (Go here for a synopsis of that ballet).

It was all-around some of the best dancing I’ve ever seen, but I have to say, on a scale of 1-10, in terms of chemistry between Osipova and Hallberg, I’d give it a 1.5, and in terms of all-around acting (excluding Kristi Boone’s captivating turn as Bathilde and a rather amusing Vitali Krauchenka as her father), a 2. Regarding the chemistry, to be fair, Osipova was originally supposed to dance with Ethan Stiefel, but because of an injury, David danced in Ethan’s place. A Twitter friend DM’d me asking why she didn’t dance with Angel Corella and I think it’s a good question. He would have been a better fit size-wise and stylistically for her.

But as I said, the dancing was tremendous. During the second act, Osipova did a develope to her ear, she did those hops with her arms in the air as if she had springs in her toe shoes or had a trampoline beneath her, and she did that flat-footed jumping turn at the speed of damn light. Seriously, when she made her entrance during the Wilis act, I put my opera glasses to my face, watched her walk out, and suddenly she was gone from my frame of view. I searched around and around for her with the damn glasses attached to my face wondering where in the world she went. When everyone around me suddenly started screaming BRAAAVAAAA BRAAVAAA BRAAAVAAA, I nearly dropped the glasses. When I took them away, I saw her mid-jumping turn going around and around, in a blur.

Audience (largely Russian, at least in the back orchestra) went stark raving nuts for her. I nearly had my left eardrum blown out over the ear-high develope. And those hopping jumps — seriously, she was half-way to the ceiling. I mean, when Paloma did them (I really did like her Giselle the more I think about it) she raised her head, like those jumps were a prayer to return to life. But here Natalia was going boing boing boing, up to the sky, head straight forward probably so as not to take away from her springing height. I mean, I don’t know. I love to be moved by the image a step creates, as Paloma did, but I can’t deny the thrill of those insanely high jumps and that lightening-fast turn and that insanely high develope.

The high bravura jumps in the first, peasant act, though, worked with her characterization. Her Giselle was all frolicking gaity, a girl in love with dance, in love with life. Her mad scene was over-the-top histrionics. The critic next to me described it as traditional.

And then David. Well, at the beginning he did his Albrecht as a romantic not a carefree playboy. But his was a romantic who was pretty madly infatuated with her. I think David is trying hard to get rid of his nice guy image. He rapped on her door like her mother’d better let her out or else. And when his squire didn’t full-out approve of his peasant costume, I thought he was going to kill him. And after the mad scene, he had kind of a mad scene of his own: I thought he was going to throw poor Jared’s Hilarion straight into the orchestra pit.

But ditto for David on the virtuosic dancing. I think by the time the second act came around, he was following Natalia’s bravura lead, doing sky-high jetes. He only did a Marcelo throw back of the head on the first jump in the diagonal, and then did the ten bizillion entrechats, same as Roberto Bolle. But David’s Nureyev feet!  His feet are so heavenly — I think he has the best of any dancer around today, at least any dancer I’ve ever seen. Those entrechats were from God.

As Myrta, Veronika Part jeted around the stage like I’ve never seen her leap before. She really takes up the stage when she leaps and she appeared to just be flying. I don’t even think I noticed all those jumps before! Her Myrta was icy cold and remained so throughout. Of course it was hard to concentrate on her face with all the theatrics going on behind her, but I didn’t see her peeking over her shoulder like Michele Wiles did. After she directed Hilarion’s death, she turned from him, toward us, and gave a wickedly simple little “and that’s that” nod right to the beat of the music, right as he fell, a smug smirk crossing her lips. Splendidly frightful!

I loved Kristi Boone as Bathilde, Albrecht’s betrothed princess. This is a pure character role, no dancing, and she was radiant in that gorgeous red dress, initially all supremely bitchy and regal, then softening when Giselle started pressing her skirttails to her face, allowing the poor girl to have one thing in common with nobility — a love of clothing. Then, when she realized Albrecht’s betrayal, instead of stomping all over Giselle’s pride and insisting Albrecht kiss her gloved hand, she looked more wounded and discomfited.

Vitali Krauchenka was rather amusing as Bathilde’s father, the prince, probably unwittingly so. He seemed to have his eyes half-closed the whole time and the way he looked at her, following her all around as she decided where to sit, whom to talk to, etc., it looked like he was saying “yes, yes, miss priss, whatever you want.” It cracked me up. I think he might have been better opposite Maria Bystrova’s Bathilde though. Hers was more of an unrelenting snobby witch.

Hee Seo and Blaine Hoven were very good in the peasant pas de deux. It was one of the most entertaining peasant pdd’s I’ve seen, which I guess went along with the virtuosity of the whole night.

Only the Russians 🙂 I’ll be excited to see more of Osipova next week. She’s dancing La Sylphide with Herman Cornejo on Monday night and again with David Hallberg on Wednesday evening. Go here for the full schedule.

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NINA AND MARCELO’S HEARTBREAKING GISELLE

 

 

Last night began ABT’s Giselle week. Nina Ananiashvili and Marcelo Gomes debuted the leads, with Gennadi Saveliev as Hilarion, the village huntsman in love with Giselle, and Gillian Murphy as Mytra, the second Act’s Queen of the Wilis.

It’s not hard to see why Giselle is the oldest ballet that’s still performed today. It’s a quintessential ballet — dance being at the heart of the story — and there’s plenty of drama, with emotionally complex characters, lots of room for acting, and of course really beautiful dance.

Basic story is this: Giselle is a peasant girl with a weak heart (both literally and metaphorically) who nevertheless loves to dance. Count Albrecht is a nobleman who pretends to be a fellow peasant so that he can seduce her. She buys his disguise, falls for him, and then realizes, via Hilarion, that he is not who he claims to be, and is in fact, engaged to a princess. Her heart breaks, she goes mad, and dies.

 

 

Act two takes place in the land of the Wilis — women who died heartbroken, their love unrequited. During the nighttime, they rise from their graves and dance to death any man who enters their realm. Hilarion, visiting Giselle’s grave, meets just such a demise, but when Albrecht arrives at her grave, now heartbroken and deeply remorseful for what he’s done, Giselle is able to protect him from Myrta and the other Wilis. He is nearly danced to death, but she saves his life. If danced and acted well, it ends up being a beautiful, deeply human story of forgiveness.

Last year when I saw this ballet I was annoyed that Count Albrecht seemed to lack proper motivation, that he wasn’t a fully-drawn character. But I thought Marcelo did really well at fixing all the loose ends. At the beginning, he is kind of a jerk (to the extent that Marcelo can ever be 🙂 ), really there just because she’s a pretty peasant girl and she likes to dance and it’s fun to dance with her, and who cares about toying with her feelings? She’s just a peasant girl. Of course he doesn’t know how weak she is and how much he’s going to fall for her. And then when Hilarion exposes him and he’s presented with his fiance and has to kiss her hand and bow to her, and Giselle subsequently goes mad and falls dead, he realizes what he’s done. The impact hits hard.

I don’t think it works if Albrecht is all dreamy up front, when he first approaches Giselle. He could just be a romantic in love with two women, but then what is he doing out there in the peasant village in the first place? When did he first see Giselle and fall for her? And is he an idiot? What does he think is going to happen with his prior marriage commitment to the Prince’s daughter? I think it only works if Albrecht is a careless playboy up front, like Marcelo’s. And then that gives him a dynamic range, so he can change later on.

Then the second beautiful Act consists of his prayer for forgiveness, which I’m convinced no one is going to do as well as Marcelo! He was really heartbreaking. Marcelo does this thing (which a man in the audience also recognized and remarked to his friend on the way out) where he throws his head back after landing a jump. So, he’d do these long jumps across stage and on the landing arch his neck back and throw his chin up. It looks all the more Romantic and all the  more expansive and all the more prayerful and all the more heart-wrenching! I’ve never seen anyone else do that.

And he kept crashing to the ground during the dance-to-death scenes. I’ve never seen anyone do it quite like that. He really fell hard to the ground at points. But he did it in such a way that it looked not only like he was dancing to death, as commanded by Myrta, but like he actually was so heartbroken and angry at himself that he wanted to die. It was a far more intense interpretation than I’ve seen before. (It looked more dramatic last night — maybe just because it was live — but you can see some of what I’m talking about here.)

Nina was gorgeous, particularly in the Wilis Act. I think I still prefer Julie Kent’s mad scene to everyone else’s, maybe because she was the first person I saw in the role and she had such subtlety. She didn’t overdo it; you had to read it on her face, and that made it all the more real, made her collapse into death all the more tragic. But the way Nina stood over Marcelo and held her arms up behind him, like she was now his angel, like she would be for the rest of his life — made me want to cry. And the way she’d bourree across the stage so light like a spirit — perfectly ghostly, both angelic and haunting.

And Gillian was an excellent Myrta. Because she’s sinister up front, commanding Hilarion’s death, and then remains all-controlling throughout, when Albrecht appears and Giselle makes clear she need to protect him, it’s ultimately Gillian’s Myrta who allows that to happen. So Myrta ends up forgiving as well, making the story all the more full and moving. Gennadi was very good in the dance-to-death scene, but I didn’t like him so well in the first Act. I think he was too mean and controlling. I know Hilarion loves Giselle and wants to expose Albrecht, but I might have been a little afraid of his Hilarion if I were her. Too angry and impetuous. But he’s a very good bravura dancer and those insanely fast chaines where he whips himself into a chaotic frenzy were stunning.

Curtain calls again were crazed. I honestly don’t remember hearing so many “Bravaaaaaaas” ever before. People were screaming. Nina is obviously a very beloved ballerina. Her last Giselle is on Friday, when Jose Carreno will dance Albrecht. And her last performance with ABT will be later this season in Swan Lake.

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DANCING WITH THE STARS, WEEK WHATEVER: JIVE AND RUMBA — Update With Marcelo Photos

Sorry, I think I’m a little off on the weeks! Probably because of the double elimination week.

I’m late with my post tonight because I went to an event at Barnes & Noble. Francis Patrelle is a SWEETHEART! I can’t wait to see his company later this week now; such an endearing personality. Seriously, one of the most personable choreographers I’ve heard speak!

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(I wasn’t able to take any pictures because my camera battery went dead, but Scott Schlexer, Marcelo’s representative, who was also there, kindly sent me some of his!)

Marcelo was there, Maria Riccetto, Cynthia Gregory — looking very regal! — I love how she holds herself — and several Dances Patrelle dancers and people involved in the upcoming production at Danny Kaye Playhouse. Writers of books dances are based on, composers, and even the songwriter of the Judy Garland song that Come Rain / Come Shine is danced to. He even played piano and sang, and he was very good!

 

 

Marcelo didn’t talk much, but when he did I could hardly focus on what he was saying because … who told me he had no accent! Haha, he TOTALLY has an accent! And his voice is a bit higher-pitched than I expected. He actually kind of sounds like Pasha, except with a Latin, not Russian accent. Not an American accent! Anyway, I remember him saying he liked dancing with Maria — that she’s very light. Oh gawd, Francis Patrelle introduced Marcelo by saying he dances with all these huge ABT women! At first I thought he meant in stature, and then he made it clear he meant in size! I was dying, though no one else seemed to be. Patrelle is a total joker anyway — he says he loves to joke around in rehearsal, and it’s clear. So, he said, Marcelo’s used to dancing with all these large women, so I gave him tiny Maria, and he really throws her around that stage with ease — something to that effect. So then Marcelo nicely said something about how wonderful Maria was to dance with. Aw.

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(from right to left: Marcelo, Maria, Cynthia, and Francis Patrelle)

Marcelo also said his favorite ballet is Giselle. I know he really meant to say Romeo and Juliet though, and Swan Lake. Not Giselle! No, again Patrelle set him up for it by introducing him as just having guest danced in St. Petersburg with the Kirov, dancing Giselle with Diana Vishneva 🙂

Maria seemed rather soft-spoken. But very sweet. And definitely tinier than Veronika Part and Stella Abrera and Michele Wiles and most of the other larger-than-life ABT ballerinas. Funny she doesn’t look that tiny onstage though.

And Cynthia Gregory (retired ABT prima ballerina, who staged the piece Marcelo and Maria are performing with DP this weekend), sat in the middle of the group, exhibiting excellent ballerina posture and stately demeanor 🙂 I want to be Cynthia Gregory.

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(Marcelo saying something very important 🙂 )

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(Marcelo and Maria “waiting in the wings” while children dance and others have the stage. Thanks again to Scott for the photos!)

Okay, on to Dancing With the Stars. Anyway, this will be a bit out of order because I started watching during Derek and Lil Kim’s Jive. So:

Derek and Lil Kim Jive: Hmm. That song: Elvis’s Jailhouse Rock; when I first heard it, I thought, that’s the hardest song to Jive to — it’s way the hell fast for an amateur; is he nuts? But now I see why it worked: Len’s right — they didn’t dance a lot of Jive! A lot of posing and posturing, a lot of too grounded step kicks with no proper snap and jump — they hardly came off the floor! But that opening set of pivot spins was gorgeous. Those are hard and she deserves major kudos for doing those perfectly!

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