Oh well. We may have to organize a field trip to Europe next year. Maybe he’ll be dancing Mats Ek’s Giselle again?
In the meantime, here is this bottled water commercial. I think I posted it last year because it looks familiar but blog reader and Facebook friend Jonathan has sent it to me (and it is very good!) so I am posting it again. If I remember correctly, I think last year Haglund and I were trying to figure out where to buy the water in the U.S. I wonder if Haglund ever found it?…
And I will have to be satisfied with my IPPY man… Hehe, seriously, IPPY winners who attended the award ceremony two weeks ago were just sent their photos. They had an attractive female and male presenter to pose for your award photo with you — if you’re a female winner, they gave you the guy; if you’re male, they gave you the girl. I didn’t notice it at the time but doesn’t this guy kind of look like Roberto! Okay, I can dream!
Anyway, SLSG favorite Marcelo Gomes will be replacing him in Swan Lake — Odette / Odile is Veronika Part, so that will be a must-not-miss. And his Romeo replacements are Marcelo (whose Juliet will be Paloma Herrera) and Cory Stearns (dancing with Irina Dvorovenko). Check schedule here.
Where Roberto Bolle is appearing naked in Mats Ek’s Giselle. Seriously, from what I’ve read, Ek’s version of the ballet looks really interesting: it’s moved up to contemporary times and is set in a mental hospital.
Since seeing Frederick Wiseman’s excellent film La Danse a couple days ago — a documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet — I have not been able to get the fascinating etoile (star, highest level of dancer over there), Laetitia Pujol, out of my mind. The film is basically a series of rehearsals with some actual performance footage thrown in, and, unbelievably, it’s absolutely mesmerizing. If anyone’d described it that way to me beforehand — a bunch of rehearsal footage — I would’ve thought I’d be bored out of my mind, but it’s so incredibly interesting watching these dancers rehearse with top choreographers like Wayne McGregor and Angelin Preljocaj and Mats Ek. And the performances — omg – -that company does everything from the aforementioned contemporary choreographers, to Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater, to Petipa to Balanchine. Parisians are so damn lucky! We get either Petipa or Balanchine over here… not at all fair…
Anyway, Pujol blew me completely away. I’d never seen her dance before and somewhere in the middle of the film she’s rehearsing and she does the most mind-blowing series of turns all over the damn room. I’ve spent the past couple hours searching YouTube and, yay, finally found what she was doing! It’s Etudes, here:
For some reason, the spins looked a slight bit faster in the film, but you get the idea.
Here are a couple of others of Pujol:
The first, Le Baiser, which I love,
And Giselle, with Nicolas Le Riche:
One odd thing about the movie is that it’s a documentary, but there are no captions, so you have to try to guess who all the choreographers and dancers are. There are credits at the end, but you can’t possibly figure out who is who at that point, when there are all these names filling up the screen. At first I thought this was kind of a discredit to the artists not to list their names and titles or bios when they are shown in the film, but then I thought, well, it would kind of interrupt the flow of the action; this made it seem more like a narrative film, like one of those narrative films that’s shot with a handheld camera or the like to make you think you’re eavesdropping on someone’s actual life — which, it turns out, you are! Interesting filming device…
The real-life rehearsals do have their moments of (probably unintentional) humor, such as when one of the choreographers is describing to a young dancer learning the role of Medea that she’s portraying a god, a person whose intense, other-worldly powers make loving fraught with danger, and she says “Oh, like Edward Scissorhands.” At times, though, people laughed at seemingly odd things, like when a young dancer new to the company tells the director she longs to dance like Pujol and the director tells her, “Well, she has her own personal intelligence.” People in the audience seemed to think that was funny, but clearly, Pujol does have “her own personal intelligence”; dancing isn’t just about excellence of technique, it’s about using your brain. And these dancers are so fascinating because they’re so clever, they’re such powerful performers.
Mikhail Baryshnikov and Ana Laguna are in Santa Monica where they’re beginning a U.S. tour. Program includes choreography by Mats Ek (Laguna’s husband), Alexei Ratmansky, and Benjamin Millepied’s Years Later, which consists of a solo for Barysh juxtaposed with movie clips of his younger self dancing. Critics say it “should bring a new respect to middle-age dance performances.”
I’m excited to see the Millepied as well as the Ek piece. Here are some clips from another of Ek’s dances for the pair. Baryshnikov still looks like Baryshnikov — the way he moved in White Nights, the way he danced Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove…
Last night at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Square, Mikhail Baryshnikov talked briefly with New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella about his new book of photos of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Merce My Way. (I love the title, by the way).
The talk was brief (about half an hour) but pretty good. But, honestly, I had a very hard time getting over my anger at Barnes & Noble. I arrived early in order to get a good seat up front, knowing (hoping at least) it would be crowded. But on my way in, I was stopped by a B&N employee. She said they were giving “preference” to people who purchased his book, which cost $36. She pointed me to the cash register, set up, conveniently, right next to the entrance.
I was so mad. There was such a crowd already, it was pretty clear “preference” meant that unless you were buying a book, you weren’t getting in. And in this economy, $40 is a lot to spend when you’re not expecting it. Honestly, I found it a really sleazy, unfair corporate practice to take advantage of his fame like that to sell books. A lot of people must have come from a ways away to see him, and you’re not really going to walk away if you’ve traveled. People were standing around looking like they didn’t know what to do, hesitantly withdrawing their wallets and picking up a book. “We’re a couple, can we get in on one book?” I heard someone ask the people at the door.
I mean, this was advertised as a regular talk / author reading event, which are always free. Nothing in the adverts (at least the ones I saw) said anything about having to purchase a book. As Ron Hogan (of the pub / book blogs Galley Cat and Beatrice) tweeted me (and damn, was I a mad tweeter last night), “seriously. if bookstores want to pull that crap, let them charge $40 IN ADVANCE and include the book w/admission.”
Just as I was getting mad about missing Bill T. Jones (who was giving a talk downtown) for this b.s., I saw my friend Monica Wellington (who I met through Philip). They’d agreed to let her buy the Joan Acocella book instead, which was less expensive. She told them at the door we were together, so they let me in. Thank you thank you, Monica!!
Anyway, the talk was pretty good, albeit short (about half an hour). I’d never heard him speak before, other than giving a brief sound byte on a pre-recorded interview. He is, as expected, charming and smart, though he talks very slowly, thinks hard about his words as if he’s always too far ahead of himself, struggles with English, and digresses frequently. None of which were a big deal, and his digressions often led to entertaining little tidbits.
Thursday night, Cedar Lake Dance had their winter season opening. As usual, they had a big celebration, serving free champagne and wine and inviting all the bloggers, critics, and choreographers. Philip, Taylor and I enjoyed standing around during intermission sipping champagne and people-watching; it was kind of a who’s who in the dance world, the most famous of the ‘who’s’ probably being Baryshnikov, who was looking rather tiny, but snazzy in a beret.
I went a little early to take in some of the Chelsea arts scene, which was extremely happening. Practically every gallery from 24th through 26th streets, 10th-11th Avenues, was having an opening. Roslyn Sulcas from the New York Times apparently had the same idea as me! Anyway, I had more than a few glasses of (free) wine by the time I got to Cedar Lake, mid-way down 26th Street…
They had three dances, two of which were premieres. One, memory/measure, was by Italian choreographer Luca Veggetti. The stage was minimalist, consisting only of a white mat. Two male and two female dancers took turns walking around its perimeter as the others danced duets in the middle. The soundtrack consisted of industrial sounds (a helicopter, clanking, etc.) and a voice-over telling a story. Unfortunately because I was so taken with the movement — complicated, emotionally intense partnering; stunning, difficult-looking deep plies on pointe by Acacia Schacte, I kept forgetting to listen to the words, so I didn’t get any “story.” One thing that struck me was how the dancers each moved so differently around the perimeter of the stage. One would kind of creep around cat-like, one would have more of a bravado to his strut, one kind of tiptoed. I’m not sure if it was intentional or simply different dancers having their own style.
My favorite piece of the night was Dutch choreographer Didy Veldman’s “frame of view.”
