Tag: Marcelo Gomes

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Ballet, Ballroom and Dirty Dancing

Just two weeks now @#$$%^&*!!!!!

I’m so bad; I’m so obsessed with Marcelo and his people I haven’t been properly blogging about another huge ballet event happening tomorrow night: the New York City Ballet‘s opening night gala and the premiere of the much-anticipated new version of my personal favorite classical ballet, Romeo and Juliet. My favorite version is by Sir Kenneth MacMillan (which American Ballet Theater performs); this one is by NYCB artistic director Peter Martins — we’ll see how it stacks up! This also marks the culmination of a HUGE amount of hard work Winger creator and NYCB ballerina Kristin Sloan has put into making the company’s Tragic Love project, which provides fascinating behind-the-scenes footage of various aspects of the making of the ballet. Do check it out, and of course check out the ballet as well — it’s showing through May 13th.

As I had blogged about earlier, Dirty Dancing was shown on Thursday night at the Tribeca Drive-In, as part of the awesome Tribeca Film Festival. I couldn’t go, but my friend, Steve made it, and sent me his report (sorry about the weird spacing; I could not get WordPress to format it properly):

“I went to the Tribeca Film festival drive-in event featuring a free outdoor screening of Dirty Dancing at
the World Financial Center on Thursday night. The pre-screening entertainment included a dance show, a
live performance by singer Lumidee (whoever that is) and a Dirty Dancing Trivia contest. A chilly night and
the threat of rain did not keep movie and dance fans away from this fun event set alongside the marina at
the WFC. First a group of dancers including Anya Fuchs performed some Latin and tango numbers. Four
principal couples were on stage and about ten others fanned out into the audience and danced in the aisle
and on the sides. Eventually, they drew audience members up on stage with them to dance to various
songs from the movie. It was a good way to keep warm. I enjoyed myself even though Anna Garnis decided not
to be in the performance. I didn’t stay for the movie and headed back up town to the DTS practice party,
which was pretty good. Nobody puts [studio owner and 1995 U.S. National Latin Champion] Melanie [LaPatin] in the
corner.”

Thanks for the report, Steve, and thanks for being my first “correspondent” hehe 🙂 Dance Times Square puts on pretty good little ballroom dancing parties every third Thursday of each month. Visit their website for deets. Of course the showcase at Hunter College is upcoming as well, next week.

And finally, apparently in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Dirty Dancing, they are re-releasing the film in theaters for a very limited amount of time (the next two days basically), which is to contain never-seen-before footage. Go here for movie times and locations throughout the country.

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Really Cool Stuff From Korea, Japan, and Brazil!

Fun but busy weekend. I attended two very different kinds of dance competitions and saw some really amazing stuff. Last night, I went to the Tribeca Drive-In at the Tribeca Film Festival, to see a new film, Planet B-Boy, a documentary that follows the lives of the members of four teams of break-dancers culminating in a big worldwide competition, held yearly in Germany. I’m so glad I saw this — it exposed me to a whole culture I didn’t really know existed. I knew about break-dancing on a very basic level, but didn’t know it was such a huge thing world-wide now. Like soccer / international football, it’s not very big in the U.S., but in this case that’s rather ridiculous since we started the dance…

Anyway, these international team competitions involve some of the most incredible dancing. It’s so much more gymnastic than I ever knew — some of these dancers I’d swear had formal training in the sport. In addition to super athletic floor-work, they do these amazing acrobatic stunts — lifting each other, leap-frogging over a sea of bodies, building human pyramids from which they perform spectacular jumps, and dance with such character and, yes, beauty, and artistry. Each team is judged on its synchronization (about eight dancers doing same moves in complete unison), artistry and technique of individual dancers, and conceptual idea of team theme. Each team came up with a theme that illuminated an aspect of their culture — I thought the Korean and Japanese teams were by far the most original. The Koreans, who basically own this dance nowdays, were just incredible. They really have to be seen to be believed — so go see this movie when it hits the theaters!

Like in student ballroom-dancing documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, filmmaker Benson Lee goes beyond this particular competition to explore the larger meaning of dance — freedom of expression and individuality, keeping young people out of trouble by giving them a creative outlet, and, interesting to me since it’s mainly men who break dance, allowing the dancers to act out aggression in a safe way. Watching the movie – -and the pre-film break-dance demos shown in the photos above — I realized how breaking was like a dance version of the rapping jams seen in Eminem’s movie 8-Mile in the way that the dancers taunt and mock each other — jokingly and without touching each other — before each round of competition, the teasing actually becoming an art in itself. And, being a globally-set movie, cultural / political issues are explored. My favorite part, filmed in Korea at the border between North and South, was when the “guards,” gravely serious and bearing frighteningly large weapons, suddenly break into dance! And, like with Mad Hot Ballroom, you find yourself rooting so hard for one team, you almost become teary-eyed at the end. It’s really a lot of fun — go!

Today, I went with Dea, my friend from Brazil who I met on the Winger, to the Youth America Grand Prix ballet competition, founded by Gennadi Saveliev from American Ballet Theater. Dea’s former ballet studio in Sao Paulo was competing in the group ensemble competition and she wanted to go watch them.

Above is Dea, inside the competition, which was held in the auditorium of Martin Luther King High School. Below is a picture of goings-on outside in front of the school — some dancers warming up, applying makeup, and hanging out after their piece. We were strictly forbidden from taking pictures inside — the head judge even threatened people with camera confiscation! — so, as soon as Gennadi posts the pics on his website, I’ll see if there’s anything I can link to that I saw.

 

Well, I’ve been to about a bizillion ballroom competitions now, but this was my very first Ballet comp. It was so fun! We only saw the ensemble competitions — apparently the solos have been going on for the past three days — but I saw some really good dancing from some very young people, and some very interesting, novel choreography. This Japanese school, consisting of four girls, wheeled some backless, rolling stools out onto the stage, and the girls used the chairs in amazing ways — arching over them and spinning, standing atop them on one leg, kneeling on one hand and one knee and lifting the opposite arm and leg high in the air — talk about balance! Acting was involved too, as the girls laughed, cried, and screamed — very expressive and perhaps a bit over the top but dramatic and emotionally compelling in its own way.

And about a quarter of all the teams were from Brazil! Poor Dea kept getting up go to the bathroom, but when the next team — yet another Brazilian one — was announced, she’d have to sit back down to watch. The Brazilian teams were all so diverse. One did a spectacularly synchronized traditional Irish step dance with gorgeously decorative costumes — Dea said she didn’t even know Irish step dancing was taught in Brazil! One, which received massive applause, did a contemporary piece danced to techno music, one danced to traditional Bossa Nova — Dea and several people sitting around me sang along with the lyrics and I felt dumb not knowing them 🙂 , and one — my personal favorite — did this really cool combination flamenco / paso doble / belly dance / Martha Graham — it was a true original and I LOVED it, though others felt there was too much going on and it was just weird. Dea’s school did a contemporary ballet danced on pointe. I think her school had technically the best dancers and their choreography was original as well with some humorous moments, but I still loved the crazy fun everything-but-the-kitchen-sink number 🙂

It’ll be interesting to see who won. Hopefully Dea’s school! Tomorrow night at City Center the winners will perform along with professionals. I went to this show last year and it was really nice. Marcelo danced with Sofiane Sylve from New York City Ballet in the pro part, and David Hallberg danced in a pas de trois from Le Corsaire. I think David is dancing again this year, but Marcelo’s not on the list. Dea’s going but I still haven’t decided if I will. Going to all this stuff gets expensive!

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Balanchine Versus Muhammad Ali’s Daughter, Ballet’s Continuing Relevance, Alastair Macaulay, and Great Dance Writing From the Past

Yesterday, in the New York Times, our new chief dance critic there Alastair Macaulay wrote an article about New York City Ballet’s new season, which officially kicked off on Tuesday. Because this Monday marks the 24th Anniversary of George Balanchine’s death, it is only fitting, he noted, that NYCB open with a week’s worth of Balanchine ballets, created between 1928 and 1975. The first night’s rep included a ballet that is obviously a favorite of Macaulay’s, “The Four Temperaments,” created in 1946. He says of this ballet, “Balanchine’s pared-down conception of ballet became a brave-new-world breakthrough.” He goes on to talk specifically about the movement employed, wherein the transfer of body weight — from the standing leg to the lifted leg but before the lifted leg has reached the ground — was somewhat revolutionary, combining as it did a fundamentally jazzy American style with classical ballet, and thereby “offending the European sense of propriety.” He continues, suggesting that Balanchine’s power is lost on the company’s younger dancers, who can’t for some reason adequately convey the beauty and meaning of “the master.” He opens this thought with:

“When people who have come to Balanchine choreography in the last 20 years ask me what makes me miss New York City Ballet in his lifetime (though I caught only the tail end of that golden age), I find myself saying that the company’s dancing in those days blazed with a kind of energy that was positively disturbing: it shook you by the shoulders as if to say, “This matters.” “The Four Temperaments” is one of many Balanchine ballets so extraordinary in their architecture and its conception that many new dance-goers must surely feel that they still matter now; I can only say it mattered more.”

Though it’s not tremendously profound or long, the article has turned heads, especially in the ballet world, and for good reason: it takes a solid point of view and makes a serious statement about the art’s current “state” (Matt’s term!) that is not off the cuff but based in knowledge and passion, and perhaps unwittingly, opens debate.

I have to say, of all the times I’ve gone to NYCB, I’ve never been able to understand Balanchine’s genius. I go to NYCB to see the Jermone Robbins pieces, the Peter Martins, those by new choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, and the company’s Diamond Project series, in which they showcase new ballets by contemporary choreographers. I, as I think most of the public, know Balanchine as the man who starved his ballerinas into his ideal of feminine perfection, most notably Maria Tallchief, while insisting that he was exalting womanhood. “Ballet is woman,” he proclaimed. I’m sorry, but for a socially concious woman today, that behavior, and the resultant image as well, border on the repulsive: indeed, his ballets are filled mostly with emaciated-looking, very frail, very thin young women fluttering about the stage almost angelically, as if they’re not of this world, and very few men.

If you examine what today’s audiences watch, and want to see in dance, this image of woman doesn’t resonate. As I blogged about in my last post, all of the female contestants on Dancing With the Stars — and if you care about ballet’s future you must care about that show because like it or not that is the pulse of dance in this country right now — have been booted — all of the uber thin supermodels, beauty queens and TV celebrities, that is. Leaving as the sole woman Laila Ali, the boxer, and former heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali’s daughter. I believe a large part of the reason many go to see a dance performance is for the sensual experience, and I believe the concept of what is sexy and sensual in both men and women has changed drastically over the years, and this change is partly responsible for many young people today not “getting” ballet. Sexy today is — well, first of all, to at least half of dance-goers sexy is man, not woman 🙂 And regarding women, sexy is strong, unexpected (Ali lifts men after all!), grounded and earthly, and muscular, not frail, not ethereal, not succumbing to men’s standards and expectations.

When I attended The Nothing Festival last weekend and this week at Dance Theater Workshop (which I will definitely blog about later this weekend), post-modern choreographer Walter Dundervill bemoaned that there are no contemporary dance writers like Arlene Croce, the former critic for The New Yorker, sending me straight to the bookstore to check out her work. So far, I’ve just skimmed through, but I am overwhelmed at her uncanny ability to pinpoint a thought so clearly and thoroughly yet succinctly. Here is what she had to say about American Ballet Theater in a January 1975 review of their opening night gala:

“Back to the Forties

If the number of fine ballets that American Ballet Theater had to show for its thirty-five years of existence equaled the number of fine dancers it currently has under contract, its anniversary gala, on January 11, would have been a night to remember. But numerically and stylistically the equation is unbalanced. The handful of illustrious ballets that made the company’s name can’t support dancers like Baryshnikov and Kirkland and Makarova and Nagy and Gregory and Bujones, and even if it could, it’s patently impossible to build a gala retrospective around “Fancy Free” and “Pillar of Fire” and “Romeo and Juliet” and “Three Virgins and a Devil,” all but the last created between 1941 and 1944. The creativity of that first decade had no sequel in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies. When you are seeing Ballet Theater choreography at its best, you are almost always seeing a picture of the forties. The dancers of the seventies don’t fit into that picture. The ballets are still interesting and they’re a challenge to perform, but their aesthetic is dead. Often the sentiment is dead, too. Audiences can’t get excited about them in the old way because the life of the period that produced them has receded and they’re insulated from the way we think and move today. When they are presented as they were at the gala … it’s hard not to see their position in a contemporary repertory as an extended irrelevance…” (WRITING IN THE DARK, DANCING IN THE NEW YORKER, pgs 86-87).

First, I find it rather funny that these are exactly the same ballets that ABT is putting on today, thirty-two years after she wrote this. And it’s true that “Fancy Free,” while a cute and fun ballet for its time, is largely lost on contemporary audiences. I recently took friends to see ABT and this was on the rep. They mostly thought it was mildly cute and engaging, but mainly silly and somewhat sexist. I said, well yeah, it was created in the 40s, but I mean, what about Marcelo — isn’t he so great with his hip-swaying “Rhumba”, didn’t you love Craig‘s splitting jumps off of the bar!?” They laughed — they didn’t know the dancers like I did but thought it was cute that I attached to them so. I think Robbins, Balanchine and all of that great choreography of yore is lost on today’s audience, and not because today’s audiences are stupid philistines, but because, to use Croce’s words, these ballets’ “aesthetic is dead. Often the sentiment is dead too. Audiences can’t get excited about them in the old way because the life of the period that produced them has receded and they’re insulated from the way we think and move today.”

I think Macaulay’s pointing out the revolutionary quality of Balanchine’s work is tremendously important if younger audiences are going to understand and value his work. But that still doesn’t mean they’re going to be moved by him. American Jazz is a hundred years old now; seeing it combined with ballet doesn’t do much to the average dance goer; it certainly doesn’t, as Macaulay hopes, “make many new dance-goers … surely feel that [his ballets] still matter now.”

Hip hop, ballroom, and other social and ethnic forms of dance are the most living, breathing dance styles right now because they mean something to viewers. Hip hop emanates from ghetto life and much of the moves are a kind of recognizable street vocabulary of movement, ballroom is about two people working together and connecting with one another — which everyone can relate to (I don’t think Dancing With the Stars would be popular if it showcased solitary dancing), and a lot of social dance today in the U.S. comes out of Latin American and African countries — they’re fun and rhythmic and contain cultural lessons of strong interest in today’s global world. I feel that contemporary ballet choreographers need to merge these forms of dance with ballet to create something new, original, and beautiful whose meaning and movement resonates with contemporary audiences, the way that Balanchine and Robbins did nearly a century ago. I also think there need to be more writers like Macaulay to point out the historical import of the former greats, and he seems, at least thus far, like a positive return to the Croce style of writing. But, while everyone needs to read a classic once in a while as an historical lesson and an example of true literary genius, if there weren’t contemporary novelists pushing the art form further, the novel would have died long ago. Obviously, Balanchine and Robbins should be kept in the rep of the big companies, but they can’t be the main focus if this art form is to be kept alive as well.

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First Week Without Dance Class…

Sad night. Tonight marks the beginning of my hopefully brief hiatus from ballroom dancing lessons. I called the studio to tell them to cancel my standing appointments with Luis indefinitely and I almost felt like crying afterward… I guess the good thing is that I can now shamelessly promote the student showcase that I won’t be performing in:

 

Dance Times Square does put on a very fun student / teacher ballroom dancing showcase — the only of it’s kind really (the only one that I know of anyway that takes place in a theater and not a studio and that contains both amateur and professional showcases), and for those who enjoy watching ballroom dancing, it is a nice little event. Go here for tickets.

I really shouldn’t be all that sad, seeing as how I made my B&B reservations today for Blackpool! This year I’ll be staying right across the street from the Winter Gardens, instead of about fifteen blocks away, as I did last year — sweet people who ran the hotel, but it got a little seedy walking back at 2:00 in the morning after the comps ended. I’m really getting excited, as it’s only a month away now! Should be perfect time for me to re-assess my dance goals (and finances…)

 

And, regarding that other kind of dance that I so lurve:

three, three, three weeks 🙂 🙂 🙂

 

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Oops, I’m Weird…

 

I am the exact opposite of everyone else on the planet. I am so anal (usually anyway) about turning my cell phone to silent during a performance that I often actually forget to turn it back to ring when I leave. So, today, not feeling so well, I tried to take it easy all day to save my energy for my two-hour-long evening lesson. I managed to haul myself out the door, down the stairs, through the rain and on the crowded subway, to my studio, only to be told by the receptionist upon my arrival that my teacher had to cancel due to illness – -she’d left a message on my cell, she said, flustered and feeling badly. Of course she did, and of course I didn’t hear the blasted phone since it was on silent from when I saw ABT’s Works & Process at the Guggenheim last night…

It turned out okay since I felt on the verge of passing out when I walked into the studio anyway and wasn’t sure how I’d make it through two whole hours of working on a fast-paced routine. Problem is, I’m now about 99.99% sure that I cannot do the performance on May 7th. It’s just too close, and with Luis only being able to be in the studio on Monday nights, that means I only have two more lessons until then, and I’m still extremely shaky on the choreography, which has changed numerous times now.

It’s also very hard for me, because — and this is another way in which I’m weird — I’ve learned that foxtrot, and all of Standard ballroom, is very difficult for me because of my odd tendency to walk toward the balls of my feet, never ever using my heels. I don’t know whether it was taking ballet as a very small child or all the Latin I’ve had, which is always always ALWAYS toe heel, and never heel toe, but I just can’t seem to get the basic walk right. Not that technique has to be perfect for a showcase, but if you don’t walk heel toe going forward and then walk through the entire foot going backward, completely lifting your whole foot except your heel at the end of your step, your partner can very easily trip over you.

My first ballroom teacher, the very sweet Linda Gammon, actually figured out that I was “weird” in this respect. Frustrated with what seemed to be a lack of understanding in class one day, she had me walk backwards around the room, “like normal.” Turned out, my toes never left the floor, and my heels hardly ever touched it. So, I basically looked like I was jogging backward in slow-motion (how you’d keep to the balls of your feet to gain momentum if you were doing such a thing). Anyway, I remember her saying, in her cute, jocular way, that I’d have to learn how to walk like a normal person before learning Standard ballroom. Anyway, since I focused on Latin, I never bothered to learn how to be “normal.” 🙂

I don’t know how clear these pictures are but I’ve tried to illustrate what I mean with them: first is the heel toe Standard way; second is toe heel the Latin way:

 

I mean, the Latin photo doesn’t look completely right because I should be wearing open-toed shoes for Latin; can’t get much of a pointed toe out of these. But, I don’t have a pedicure and I’m not photographing my feet right now in open-toed shoes, so hopefully the picture is still understandable!

Anyway, this failure to ever “learn to be normal” is a problem for me now with this routine since it’s been changed into a basic foxtrot. Originally, I’d taken the DVD of Baryshnikov and ballerina Elaine Kudo performing Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite to my studio to ask teachers and coaches if I could do something similar for my student showcase.

By this I meant I wanted them to take one of the pieces in the suite (they’re all fundamentally ballet, but one of Tharp’s things is to combine popular dance with ballet and so she did that here by combining various standard ballroom dances with ballet, choreographing a tango-styled one, a waltz-styled one, and a foxtrot-styled one), and take out the most difficult things and maybe put in a few very basic standard ballroom steps (from waltz, foxtrot, etc.) and that would be my routine. We’d chosen the foxtrot because, to the original teacher, the music seemed the most fun, though he wanted to change the actual song, and to me, I liked the snazzy, sassy character of Tharp’s choreography (especially as acted by Marcelo 🙂 ). I knew, though, that that one was choreographically the hardest of all of the ‘suites,’ and expected a lot to be changed, but was still excited to work my hardest and really try.

Anyway, I’m not sure what happened, if it was all a misunderstanding or if, more likely, I was asking ballroom dancers to choreograph something for me that wasn’t at its heart ballroom and they just didn’t know how to do it, but I ended up with a very basic foxtrot routine with some fun steps and a couple of cool lifts, but that bears absolutely no similarity whatsoever to what I’d originally wanted. And I tell myself that that’s okay because I’m learning foxtrot, which I didn’t know before, and it is a cute routine, and somewhat Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire-esque (although when I tried to emulate her I was told I was doing it wrong because I was too light and feathery and not bending my knees and going far enough into the ground, as should be done in foxtrot).

Anyway, I hate to be overly practical and money-obsessed, but it’s very very VERY expensive to me to participate in these showcases. I understand why they have to charge so much because there are a lot of people to pay in order to make the show happen… but, I’m sorry for sounding ridiculous but it’s just too expensive for me to do a basic foxtrot routine. I need to be doing things I really really want to learn that are so hard that they push me beyond my natural limits.

I’m going on for far too long, and being very boring, but I guess I’m just having such a conflict because I’m so not a quitter. And I hate the idea of quitting this routine, but I think I have to… because I’m not in love with it, because all I can see is dollar signs, because I can’t get a simple heel toe walk right, and because there’s just no time… Ugh, I just HATE being a quitter!!!!! I HATE it!!!

I’ll still of course buy a ticket and go watch all of my friends perform, but I know I’ll be so sad to not be part of the action myself…

Anyway, on a totally different note: I almost forgot since I was so under the weather today, but:

 

four weeks, just four more weeks, just four weeks!!!!!!!!!

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Aye Yay Yay…

Last night I went to see a discussion and demonstration of ABT‘s SLEEPING BEAUTY at the Guggenheim as part of the museum’s Works & Process series (in which the producers talk about the making of a new ballet and have a few dancers demonstrate some of the choreography). I’d attended their talk on OTHELLO a couple months ago and learned a lot about the history of that ballet and choreographer Lar Lubovitch’s intentions, and got to see some amazing dancing (David Hallberg 🙂 ) from very close.

Well, I didn’t feel this one went quite as smoothly.

Kevin McKenzie, ABT artistic director and choreographer of this new production, was out sick, so Wes Chapman moderated a discussion between famed former ballerina Gelsey Kirkland who is helping to put this production together by coaching the dancers, and her husband Michael Chernov.

First, five ballerinas — Maria Riccetto, Kristi Boone, Yuriko Kajiya, Zhong-Jing Fang, and Adrienne Schulte — performed the Fairies Variations. After each danced, Kirkland would come onstage and ‘coach them’ right in front of us! I don’t know if it was intended to be this way — if they were trying to show what a hard life a dancer leads or trying to showcase Kirkland as a strict but brilliant former ballerina and current teacher or what, but I’m sorry, I thought it was just not a good idea. She came across as really quite mean to the dancers. She started with Riccetto, telling her she was supposed to, as she’d told her before, show the audience “the child” ie: Sleeping Beauty, which she was supposed to be carrying in her arms. She had Riccetto do it over a few times, and, at the end of the third, Kirkland turned to the audience and asked us if we “saw the child.” Of course everyone wanted to please Kirkland, and of course we couldn’t see any child because there were no props, as it was a work in progress hello, so everyone said “oh no.” Riccetto looked so embarrassed. I felt just horrible for her.

Then, poor Kristi Boone, who I really like, came out and performed her solo. It seemed like everyone was so scared of Kirkland, like they were trying very hard but were just so shaky. At the end of Boone’s variation, Kirkland told her her movement was so lacking in fluidity she kept looking like she was simply ‘reaching for a bowl of cereal’ when she stretched upward, then kind of scolded her, saying, “I told you how to do this yesterday, we talked about it yesterday. I know it’s hard, but do it again.” And she made her repeat it a couple of times for us.

After she finished with Boone, poor Kajiya, who has the sweetest most innocent-looking face, came out and did her solo looking like she was going to faint from the pressure the entire time. Kirkland was hard on her too, but I don’t even remember what she said; I just couldn’t listen; I couldn’t even look anymore. I just remember she told Kajiya to do something over, and Kajiya tried, but the pianist played the wrong part, so Kajiya performed the part he played, then was told by Kirkland she’d done the wrong part, which she seemed to know but was too sweet to correct the pianist. Nightmare!

After Kaijya fled to safety, Chapman asked the audience, “are you all finding this helpful?” And I couldn’t help it but I shouted out “No,” and shook my head dramatically. I’m sure they didn’t hear my soft voice in the sea of “yesses” and couldn’t see my head shaking, but somehow someone knew it had to be toned down because Kirkland was much better after that. Fang escaped without a single correction, and Schulte only had to do her “trouble spot” over once.

Then they talked a bit about the costumes and set designs. At a few points, Kirkland and Chernov disagreed over whether a particular costume was still in the works or whether they’d changed the design, and then whether they’d completely changed it or slightly altered it. And then there was a bit of disagreement on whether to call the cavaliers (the men) “knights” or “elves,” — Chapman, who seemed like he was trying very hard to keep things running smoothly, nicely asked for audience input, and we all shouted out, almost in unison, “Knights!” I have to say, it was Kirkland’s suggestion to change “elves” to “knights” so she was definitely on the pulse on that one.

After the discussion, Irina Dvorovenko, the only principal who danced this evening, came out and performed the beautiful Rose Adagio (in which Beauty is courted by four gorgeous guys, and which involves extremely difficult balances and partnering). Her suitors were Blaine Hoven (who looked like he had a bit of a cold), Jared Matthews, Patrick Ogle, and Isaac Stappas (who is, hello, really quite good-looking — did I know that???). Anyway, annoyingly, Kirkland was again hard on Dvorovenko, but let all the guys escape without a single word of criticism. I realize Kirkland is a former ballerina, and so is helping to coach the women, but it’s just a pet peeve of mine for someone to be hard on only one group of people.

Anyway, poor Irina, another favorite of mine… To her credit, Kirkland tried to be kind, telling the audience Irina was a great ballerina and it was a true pleasure to work with her, and that there were only a few minor things … then began ripping her. What she wanted Irina to keep doing over was basically an acting job. She said it was very hard for a dancer to keep from playing to the audience, and to maintain “a fourth wall,” then asked her several times to re-perform a look of “wonderment” upon seeing … something … presents maybe? That’s the thing: I don’t think the audience really understood what was even going on between Kirkland and the dancers, what exactly the dancers were supposed to be doing that they weren’t. But poor Irina: the Guggenheim is obviously ridiculously small compared to the Met Opera House, and here she’s standing in front of maybe a hundred people, the closest all of five feet away from her face, having to do this huge, over-the-top acting job of making a face of “wonderment” and pretending to project out into the Family Circle hundreds of feet away at the Met … it was so embarrassing for her. I really felt all of the dancers’ embarrassment.

Then, another discussion ensued, followed by, finally!, newly-promoted Craig Salstein dancing an all too short Bluebird Adagio with pretty (and, by this time, courageous) Riccetto.

I mean, all in all it was an interesting night. I think it drove home to audiences how hard dancers — at least the women — work when being coached by someone with Kirkland’s stature and personality, and how hard the life of a ballerina can be in that regard. At least that was made clear to me. And I have to say, to me at least, it was upetting. Like I said, if they did hear me shout out “No,” I didn’t mean to be rude, but I was just very bothered. Maybe others didn’t care. But, for me, and for many I think, the dancers ARE the company; we see them more than anyone else and we relate to them more than anyone or anything else in ABT, and we don’t like to see our favorites get picked on! (Plus, the gentleman next to me was snoozing, and my “no” did wake him up, at least momentarily, so I feel like my actions weren’t all bad :))

The night also made clear how difficult it must be to put something together when people are disagreeing about how things should be. It seems like a pretty ballet, and hopefully it’ll get there by the time it premieres. Chapman, in impressing the importance of this production to us, said, “ABT without a Sleeping Beauty: it’s like we’re not America’s National Ballet Company anymore…” I personally don’t know if that’s true — is it really that fundamental of a ballet? — but, in any event, it should be interesting to see how it all comes together. I’ll be excited to see Marcelo and all my other favorites perform it anyway 🙂

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Gender Trouble

I don’t want to violate anyone’s privacy so am talking in very general terms, but something that happened at work recently kind of made me go ugh. One of my colleagues is pregnant and, about two weeks ago, a bunch of us were having lunch together and someone asked her the sex of her unborn baby and she said she didn’t yet know but was hoping it would not be a girl. Another co-worker, somewhat shocked, cried out, “why?” Pregnant colleague said she already had a two-year-old girl and she and her sister didn’t get along so well and she didn’t want to repeat that.

Shocked co-worker (whom I’ll call Alison) then said, “ohhhh, I dunno, there are some … uh, issues … with having a younger boy and older girl…”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Well, because he’ll look up to her and want to be like her and imitate her and everything, and sometimes you just don’t know what to do…”

I must have looked really confused, so she gave an example. The other day, she said, she’d taken her kids (little girl is 7, boy is 5) shopping for beach attire for an upcoming trip to Florida. They were looking at shoes and the boy expressed a strong preference for a pair of turquoise crocs. “Turquoise!!!” she emphasized. She tried to explain to him that no, he just couldn’t have such a color, but he couldn’t understand why. So, she pointed out to him the lovely shit brown and puke green varieties and told him how much she’d LOVE to buy him one of those beauties! His eyes started to well with tears. “He only wants what his sister has,” she said. “What could I say? I mean, he only wants to be like her; it’s just a phase!”

I was wondering why it was such a big deal to just let him wear what he wanted since he was only five, when someone else said her mother-in-law told her she should start dressing her daughter in feminine clothes so the little girl would have more “self-respect.” Fortunately, to this everyone laughed.

“But but but, I can’t buy him the turquiose shoes,” Alison went on, “I mean, I just can’t; he’d be the laughingstock … he’ll start wanting stuff like that all the time and everyone will make fun of him at school.” To this, no one said anything.

So, as I said, that was about two weeks ago. Yesterday, the kids were on spring break so Alison brought them to the office. We have a little work station outside of my office, with a couch and a little lounge area, and she thought it would be a perfect place to park them (her office is just another door down the hall, so she’s close too). She brought them into my office to introduce me, since we’d be next-door neighbors for a couple of hours.

Hehehe. SO CUTE!!! “Say hello to Tonya, you guys,” Alison said. The girl, whom I’ll call Jennifer, walked in and shyly said hi. The boy, whom I’ll call … Marcelo … no, just kidding 🙂 Just kidding! I just imagine that he was a very fun little boy too 🙂 🙂 … — actually the little boy looked more like Angel, who had to be the coolest little kid as well 🙂 … Okay, okay I’ll call this little boy Michael.

So Michael shouts out, “Hi Tonya!!!” with an ear-to-ear grin. Alison and I giggled. “Okay, let’s go out here, guys,” she said taking them to the work station. Jennifer promptly took her pink backpack off, pulled out a Curious George book, sat on the couch, and began reading.

“Hey Tonya! I’m gonna make you some pictures, okay?” Michael yelled out, grabbing a pink highlighter and a packet of post-its.

“Shhhh, honey,” Alison said, “she’s working.”

“Oh, that’s okay, I like pictures,” I said.

A few seconds later, he was in my office posting little yellow squares bearing pink scribbly designs all over the place — on the sides and front of my desk, my computer stand, the bottom shelf of the bookcase — anywhere he could reach. “Oh, pretty,” I said, which made him scribble and post even faster.

“Oh honey!” Alison said entering my office. “No, this is, it’s a mess.”

“No no, it’s okay,” I laughed.

“Sorry,” she mouthed at me and took him back outside.

A few seconds later I heard the copy machine going crazy.

“Mommy!” Jennifer called out. I peeked outside just in time to practically collide with Michael.

“Hey Tonya! Here, I want you to have this,” he said handing me a piece of paper.

“What is that?” Alison said, running up.

“This is my dad’s office people,” he explained to me, pointing at a list of names. “Mom, I made 1,000 copies!”

“Honey, there’s personal information on there, including everyone’s passwords, we can’t just give those out to people,” she said exasperated, trying to figure out how to stop the copy machine.

“Mom, I really think that Tonya needs to have it,” he said. So cute!

I thanked him for thinking of me and walked back into my office to let her get things sorted out in the work station.

“I know, Mom, it’s just that I’m SO excited,” I overheard him say.

Minutes later:
“Hey Tonya!”

I peeked out my office door to see Michael now sitting at the work station computer.

“I’m working on this computer. My mom said I could!”

“Wow, that’s great!” I looked at the screen. He was playing paper dolls. There was a figure of a grown woman, not a little girl, wearing a black bra and underwear. So far, he’d given her a beautiful diaphonous light blue chiffon-looking scarf knotted around her neck. “Wow, that’s a very pretty scarf,” I said approaching him.

“She’s going to the store! She needs to put on her shoes!” he said using the cursor to drag a pair of black pumps over to her feet.

“She needs to put on more than that,” Alison said, flatly, now standing behind us. “It’s just a phase,” she whispered to me while gathering his things. “Come on, honey, let’s go back to Daddy’s office. He has a full-time secretary…”

And then he was off 🙁 My little buddy! True, I would not have got a single thing done yesterday, but oh he was just so cute. I want one!!! Where do I get one!!!

Today, Alison again made a point of telling me he was just going through a phase and that he was just into whatever his sister was, she’d found the paper dolls on the internet and dressed them all the time and he was just imitating her, etc. etc. When pregnant co-worker popped into my office to chat, Alison told her the whole story of yesterday, and they both said, almost in unison, “oh it’s just a phase.”

But why does this have to be a ‘phase’? Is Jennifer just going through a ‘phase’ too? Is Jennifer’s example forcing a false construct on him and is that construct somehow more true for her? I personally would much rather my son be into wearing turquoise shoes to the beach and decorating the room with pink and yellow designs and dressing paper women in chiffon scarves than pretending to blow off his friends’ heads with toy guns. But then he might be taunted by his lovely peers… which obviously no one wants. I don’t have any kids yet, but if and when I do, I’d like to think that I can teach them to think independently, experiment with identities, and stand up to peer pressure… but maybe it’s a lot harder than I think…

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Six Weeks!!!

 

Just six weeks til ABT‘s opening night at the Met!!!! Unfortunately that means, it’s only five weeks til my little thing…

 

so not ready. Just sitting here having lunch and trying to go over my choreography in my head and getting really frustrated because I keep forgetting stuff — especially the small stuff. It’s all the silly basics — the slow quick quick slows, the simple box steps, that I can’t remember, not the big things like lifts and fun tricks. I guess that’s normal — when you know something hard is coming you memorize everything around it because you know you have to be ready and psyched up for it, but it’s the little simple basics — which direction they start in, how many there are, which set is slow slow quick quick and which is slow quick quick slow, etc., that you forget. And we don’t even have all the choreography done. I keep telling myself if I’m not ready, it’s okay, I’ll just sit it out this time, enjoy watching my friends, keep this routine for next time, and give myself plenty of time to learn. But I know how mad at myself I’ll be if I wimp out!

I guess I will have to think of my prize for getting through this as the top picture 🙂 : just relaxing in my seat, having champagne and hanging out with ABT friends during intermission, watching my favorite dancers in the world 🙂

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W H O A

I am a little weirded out right now on a few different levels. Okay, for one thing, I loved Paulina and am very disappointed she’s off (Dancing With the Stars of course — I’ll get to the relevance of the above pic in a minute). I was too busy to blog last night but if I would have I would have said how much I enjoy watching her dance because, ridiculous as it sounds since she is (or was anyway) a huge supermodel, I totally identified with her. Latin is so unbelievably hard if you weren’t raised with it. It’s so hard to get the Cuban motion just right, and, in order to make up for initially being unable to connect your back muscles to your abdominals and those to your hips, you tend to just bounce about, in Paulina’s case, or wiggle your butt and shake your shoulders, in Heather’s. And cute as it is, it’s just that — cute, which Latin shouldn’t be! But it’s still a lot of fun! And cute is … cute! It’s also nice, as a student anyway, to be able to identify with someone else’s limitations and their struggle to overcome them. And now she won’t have a chance. And I’m not sure why she was booted since she definitely was far from the worst and her personality was so sweet. She was so warm and funny and entertaining, and even humorously self-deprecating, which, as Jolene I think it was, pointed out in her comment in my post from last week, is such an unexpected surprise in a supermodel! She certainly had a better personality than some of the others. Oh well, at least Heather’s still in. Some of my co-workers today were expressing their dislike of her. I heard the word “golddigger” a couple times. I have to confess I don’t keep up with the gossip mags, so I know she was once married to Paul McCartney but don’t know much else. Anyway, I like her personality as revealed on the show. I think my favorite overall right now is Laila. I also like Joey.

Anyway, reason number two that I’m disappointed is that, with six hours now under its belt, we can see where the show’s going to go this season. They pumped tonight as showcasing great professional talent, and, I’m sorry, but who was that? It was just all the pros already on the show. Where are Joanna Leunis and Michael Malitowski? Where are Bryan Watson and Carmen? Even bring Van Amstel back and let him dance with Smirnoff for cry eye, but don’t limit it to the pros on the show — they’re not top class (excepting the aforesaid Karina, but, since ballroom takes two, you can’t see what she’s made of unless you see her dance with a great pro partner). (How much do I LOVE, by the way, that there’s a Wikipedia entry on Louis?!) For Standard, we have a top world couple right here in the U.S. Is it that hard to fly Jonathan Wilkins and Katusha Demidova from NY to LA for one night? The pros on the show are fine for dancing with the celebs but if you’re going to tout the first results / all pro show as showcasing great professional talent, bring in the best.

But what really weirded me out the most about tonight was, after being upset that Paulina was voted off (the first time, I must confess, that I’ve ever been annoyed about anyone on the show getting the boot), I visited the DWTS message board to see if anyone perhaps had a chance to say anything yet. I figured I’d be WAY too early. Wow, was I ever wrong. I logged on at 10:02 — 2 minutes after the show ended and maybe 5 or 6 after Paulina was announced first off. In that time, there were nine threads. The top one, posted less than 60 seconds before I logged on, had already received 1,113 views. THAT’S 1,113 VIEWS IN LESS THAN 60 SECONDS. I’m sorry but when I post a message on the Winger message board I’m lucky if it gets 10 views in a whole day — and that’s the most popular website in existence on ballet. Doug Fox of Great Dance, an extremely popular dance website centered around using internet technology to promote concert dance, recently revealed his stats on his page views and I think he got that many in an entire day on the whole site. I feel like I’m beginning to understand where Terry Teachout’s annoyance is coming from. I had no idea there was this degree of difference between a popular TV show and ballet. I no longer think that the internet is the be-all and end-all right now, the best way to reach out to people and gain new audiences. If the internet is the future I don’t think it’s the present. The present is still the good old fashioned TV. Obviously the internet is a good aid for promoting dance, through the blogs and message boards, but there needs to be more ballet on TV. I don’t know how — commercials maybe? A full-length ballet once in a while like the Met Opera is doing. Except it needs to be on a basic network and during prime time. When I was watching Leeza and Tony do their foxtrot to “Strangers in the Night,” I of course thought of Marcelo 🙂 (okay, AND Baryshnikov!) Tharp’s ballets are so modern, so fun, and so relatable. Certainly the same audience who gets so into ballroom would be into her, right?! Or, Alvin Ailey’s The River or Pas de Duke, or Revelations even — they all contain some elements of Samba and Jive, etc. Anyone who takes any interest in DWTS would simply be blown away by those dancers and choreographies.

Also, reading the show’s message boards made me a bit nauseated. This was hardly Ballet Talk. People were talking on such a low level. Though many were, happily for me, disagreeing with Paulina’s being booted, most were saying things like ‘so and so sucks,’ ‘so and so is horrible,’ ‘no, that’s idiotic, it’s so and so who needs to be put out of his misery’… etc. etc. with nothing more, no specifics about their technique. But maybe viewing the greatest dancers in the world do Tharp’s version of “ballroom” would start to elevate the level of popular discussion of dance, and, hence, better promote it? I dunno, I’m tired and annoyed and just a bit disappointed in ‘my peeps’ right now!!!

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Kinda Worried…

EVIL PEOPLE FORCING PEOPLE TO SPEND moneyEnded up pending another $339, which, in addition to what I’ve already spent on my subscription plus Alessandra’s farewell performance, brings my total ABT spending this MET season to nearly $800. I said Met, by the way; ABT spending total was over $1,000 including City Center. Am I crazy? Are other ABT fans this insane?

Eh. In addition to my dwindling bank account due to ABT addiction, I am worried about this:

We only have a matter of weeks now until the performance and I only have half the choreography semi-memorized. I feel like I really should be tripling and quadrupling up on lessons from now until then, but at $95 per lesson, that’s several thousand dollars. Plus, I still owe hundreds more on the actual showcase cost. Not to mention the several-hundred-dollar costume. The hard thing about ballroom expenses are that you don’t really think about how much you’re spending until you look at your credit card statement and have a near nervous breakdown. It’s not like going to Woodbury Commons and spending several thousand dollars on clothes in a few hours. You’d realize how much you were racking up and would be incredibly reckless not to be able to control yourself. With ballroom, you have a definite and serious goal in mind, you have to be good, very good, performance-quality good by a certain date, and when it means you have to practice practice practice, which, since ballroom depends on two and one of you is your private lesson teacher, means spend spend spend. You don’t realize how much you’re spending because your focus is on your goal. And once you’ve already committed and put down a deposit, it’s too late, there’s no turning back.

Ugh. I guess from now on, I should set aside several thousand — seriously, probably no less than $6,000 — before committing to a showcase or competition. Or maybe committing to a competition far far far in the future and then just taking one lesson every other week. But, no, actually; I’ve done that before, and, just because of the student / female ‘I’ll never be good enough’ mentality, when it gets close to the show / comp you can’t take enough lessons. I blogged yesterday about ways to save on costumes, and now I’m thinking I may even go to Capezio and see what they have in stock that I can dress up myself. Mirella sometimes makes fancy leotards and I can buy some matching chiffon and go to the Garment District and find some rhinestones to glue on myself…? Maybe…

And then I have Blackpool coming up. I’ve already paid my fee for the festival, and fortunately B&Bs and food there are very cheap, but I still have the plane ticket…

What can I say? It’HARD having a dance addiction! No one understands… Is there a way to get paid for this???

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Return of the Teabagger!!!

I was informed tonight during my lesson that Luis, my former fab teacher, is returning to the studio!!! Because I’d worked with him for quite a while and did my prior showcase with him, we decided that I should try to do my Sinatra routine with him. So work with him on that will begin next week!! Hehehe, Luis got a bit freaked when I posted previously about our joke appellation for the problematic snake that continuously occurred during our Mambo, but EVERYONE thought it was hilarious, so the name of this post is in honor of his return 🙂 It’s my fault because of my long legs, ha ha ha! Anyway, Yay Luis!

In other ecstatic news,

Delirium pointed out to me ABT’s announcement that Marcelo, along with Veronika Part, will lead the cast in the world premiere of Kevin McKenzie’s Sleeping Beauty, on June 1st!!! Unfortunately, I’m going to be in Blackpool that evening watching the World Standard Ballroom competition, but will be back by Monday, the 4th, when those two dance again. So excited!!!

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Two Months Til Met Season!!!

Marcelo Gomes

Yay, opening night is in two months exactly! Oh but two months is soooo long…

And DH looks here like he is gaining just a bit of weight (in a good way!) (for non-obsessed ABT fanatics, he’s the guy in the grey sweater, then white shirt) I’m sorry! It’s just that he’s so mesmerizing; every square milimeter of him, in both movement and in pictures, is just fascinating 🙂 And Matt has a knack for bringing out the goof in everyone 🙂

Above pic is of Marcelo, of course of course!