on Dance Channel TV. He talks with Los Angeles critic Lewis Segal about his injuries, his return to the stage, the meaning of classical dance, his role models, his work in Center Stage, and his future. Pretty good interview.
MORE SYLPHIDES: CORY STEARNS, OH MY!
I saw two more Sylphide casts last week at ABT: Cory Stearns and Veronika Part, and David Hallberg and Hee Seo, debuting in the lead role. I think Cory debuted as well?… will have to check. Anyway, the casts were different but each really drew me into the story. Cory Stearns in particular really blew me away with his ability to do that. I almost cried at the end when he killed his beloved sylph, and I’m not a crier. (For the ballet’s story, see my earlier post). He’s a young new soloist and really an excellent actor, as well as dancer. His James was young (almost too young to get married 🙂 ) and really easily swept away by Veronika’s sweet sylph. He was enchanted but is too much the gentleman and didn’t want to hurt his fiance. But then he couldn’t help himself either; he was just too captivated by her. Veronika was a sweet sylph — not at all tantalizing or tormenting the poor man in his dreams, but really just in love with him.
It turned to tragedy so fast. The whole way through it was like a love story, and you’re so happy when he’s finally with her in the forest, when they’re finally together. And the way Veronika got so excited about his scarf when he began waving it about; it was just heartbreaking when she died from it. Even though I knew what was coming it was so unexpected. I think these two were a very good pair. They’re both great actors who really bring the story to life, who really make you feel like you’re in the moment going through it with them.
And their dancing was excellent — Veronika’s leaps across the stage drawing him away from his Scottish wedding dance were breathtaking. I’d go after her too. And he was excellent — during his solo variations with the high jumps with the beating of the feet and the twisty turning jumps alternating directions, and during the Scottish-styled dancing. He’s tall and his jumps have such height and majesty. He sometimes gets a bit tired but he was really pumped in this, didn’t tire at all.
I’ve long loved Veronika and her ability to draw you deeply and emotionally into her character’s story, but I haven’t really seen much of Cory and he just really blew me away with his acting. I expected him to do all the jumps right, but I didn’t expect for him to take me away to this other world like he did and almost make me cry in the end. Read Gia Kourlas’s interview with him here — he’s quite chatty 🙂
The other cast was David Hallberg and Hee Seo, who I really enjoyed as well. Hee Seo was a physically much smaller, more delicate sylph and I loved the way she held her hands. She’d hold one arm out before her bent at the elbow and rest her other elbow on that hand, then hold her one hand to her face and her head cocked to the side. It was sweet but very otherworldly. Veronika’s sylph was very human, it was more like a love story than a man being haunted by an ethereal creature. But Hee Seo’s sylph was not of this world. She was a dream.
And finally, David Hallberg. Well, in my opinion he tends to overact just a bit. I think he tends toward Russian-style melodrama. But then I don’t know if it’s just me sitting in orchestra thinking that. He may be projecting well to the back of the house. I always forget how big that opera house is. I want to tell him to just calm down and be himself, be himself in the given situation — that’s what acting is (or at least that’s what I was taught). Especially with a ballet like this where he really is just a guy getting married, and having second thoughts in the form of this mysterious creature who starts playing with his mind.
In any event, overacting or not, it honestly doesn’t really matter to me. I’m so drawn to him somehow. Whenever he is onstage I can’t take my eyes off of him. I don’t know whether it’s because he wrote for The Winger and it was so easy to comment on his posts and kind of “talk to him” that way, making him more “real” and human and personable or what, but my eye is just drawn to him and won’t leave him for the entire time he’s onstage. And of course his movement is itself otherworldly. Those feet are ethereal, just like his sylph 🙂
Anyway, it will be wonderful to watch Hee Seo and Cory Stearns pair in Romeo and Juliet later this season. For now, onto the Swans!
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!