Tag: Mao’s Last Dancer

Posted on

Is Ballet A Dying Art?

 

I must confess I haven’t yet read Jennifer Homans’ acclaimed but controversial history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels. I’m working hard on my second novel and have been knee deep in prison and cop memoirs and haven’t had time for much outside reading. I hope to read it soon though.

In the meantime, I have read some of the reviews, including Laura Jacobs’ in the WSJ and Toni Bentley’s in the NY Times. The two reviews focus on very different aspects of the book so it’s interesting to read both of them. Bentley says Homans is best on Balanchine (both Bentley and Homans danced with him). But Jacobs find the earlier sections enlightening as well.

The controversial aspects of the book seem to be toward the end when Homans argues that, for various reason (but according to Bentley many of them being that Balanchine has passed and his legacy is not being kept alive), ballet is a dying art.

I don’t want to go on too much since I haven’t yet read the book, but I will say that ballet seems to be alive and well in many European and Latin American countries. I do notice a real influx of visitors to my blog whenever the big European stars perform with ABT. I don’t think Roberto Bolle, Alina Cojocaru and Natalia Osipova fans think ballet is dying and certainly not because Balanchine is no longer with us. Ballet may be less popular in this country since the Baryshnikov era passed though, and it remains to be seen whether movies like Mao’s Last Dancer and Black Swan can do anything to revive it. I’m doubtful but want to be hopeful. I think it’s more likely that Natalie Portman marrying Benjamin Millepied will draw audiences to ballet than the actual movie will.

But then I recently ran across this interview with Homans over at the Ballet Bag, a London blog. At the beginning of the post, the writers say audiences there have been dwindling a bit and they’re worried about the future of the art form as well. Which scares me.

Anyway, has anyone read the book?

Another thing I wanted to call attention to is the book cover. The top one is the British cover, the second the American. Which do you guys like better, and think will sell more books? Just about every single time I see a European cover beside an American cover, I like the European better. But maybe it’s just me.

Posted on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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