Tag: Midsummer Nights Dream

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AN ERA ENDS: DARCI KISTLER GIVES HER LAST PERFORMANCE WITH NYCB

 

Yesterday afternoon marked the end of an era as Darci Kistler, the last dancer to be hired, trained, and made into a star by George Balanchine, gave her last performance with New York City Ballet, where she’s danced for the past 30 years. Kistler, originally from Riverside, California, began studying at Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in 1976, was hired to dance with the company in 1980, and was made into a principal in 1982, at 17 years of age. She remains the youngest principal ever at NYCB.

It was a huge event, needless to say — practically every critic and blogger was there, longtime donor patrons were greeting each other right and left (and there was a party for them afterward). The house was completely packed, and the plaza was filled with people asking if anyone had a ticket for sale.

The program consisted of Balanchine’s Monumentum Pro Gesualdo and Movements for Piano and Orchestra, the Titania / Bottom pas de deux from his Midsummer Night’s Dream, his Danses Concertantes, and the beautiful final act of Peter Martins’s Swan Lake (which almost made me cry, and I don’t think I’m the only one).

 

Monumentum Pro Gesualdo and Movements for Piano and Orchestra is an abstract leotard ballet in two parts that Balanchine set to Stravinsky. I always prefer the second part, which its flirtatiousness, its angular lines and sharp shapes, to the more lyrical first part. Darci danced that second part with Sebastien Marcovici, and the first part with Charles Askegard. I’d only ever seen Maria Kowroski in the female lead in this ballet and it was interesting seeing another body in the role. Kistler danced it more smoothly lyrical and her edges were more rounded, but she played it up really well, really “acted” it, like she was really responding to Marcovici’s movement and he to hers, as if they were in conversation.

That Titania / Bottom pas de deux is one of my favorite parts of Balanchine’s Midsummer Night and I’m glad she chose it. She was sweetly hilarious as she fell head over heels for Henry Seth’s ‘donkey persona’ after both had spells cast on them by the mischievous Puck.

Danses Concertantes was the only ballet she didn’t dance; it was danced well by Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette.

 

And the program ended with the last act of Martins’s version of Swan Lake. The Martins is one of the only versions of this ballet I know of that doesn’t have some kind of happy ending, and it was really fitting here, this being the most bittersweet of farewells. In Martins’s version, Odette and Prince Siegfried can’t be together because he has been unfaithful to her with Odile. So the ballet ends with her bourreing backward, away from his outstretched arms, into her flock of swans, who envelop her. Jared Angle’s Siegfried continues reaching out toward her, in sorrowful outstretched lunges, but he’s unable to reclaim her. She literally retreats into the wings, and metaphorically returns to her ethereal, otherworldly place. So poetic, and so fitting for a prima ballerina retirement. And so sad…

 

All photos by Paul Kolnik. (Bottom photo I scanned from an earlier program)

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ALL DAY AT ABT: ALL AMERICAN AND ALL ASHTON PROGRAMS

Last Saturday I had my first crazy ABT day where I spent the whole day at Lincoln Center, seeing both matinee and evening performances. I’ll do the same tomorrow with two Sleeping Beauties – can’t miss Alina Cojocaru (who I’ve never seen before) guesting from the Royal Ballet in the lead, and then in the evening the spectacular Natalia Osipova.

Anyway, last Saturday the matinee was their All-American program; the evening was the All-Ashton. The All-American opened with Twyla Tharp’s Brahms-Hayden Variations, which I’m sorry to say is the first Tharp that’s bored me. I just couldn’t connect to it. It had none of her trademark thrilling throws and lifts and clever partnering or dramatic, actable parts, and none of her enlightening contrasts between ballet and other forms of dance. Not that I saw anyway. I think the excerpt the company performed during the opening night gala was the only part I liked. There were good dancers – Marcelo Gomes, Stella Abrera, Herman Cornejo – but they didn’t seem to have that much to work with. It was just kind of lyrical gaiety. Like Mark Morris.

 

Then was Paul Taylor’s Company B, which is always fun – especially when Craig Salstein dances the hotly dorky guy in “Oh Johnny Oh” and Herman Cornejo the flashy “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” but somehow it lost some of its magic on the large Met stage. I don’t know – I think it plays better at City Center – you somehow miss the silhouettes in the back at the Met, or you don’t connect them to what’s happening center stage as well.

 

And last was my favorite of the day, Robbins’ Fancy Free, this time starring Sascha Radetsky (image above, from here) as the cocky, sexy Latin sailor, Carlos Lopez as the dreamier one, and Daniil Simkin as the little acrobatic one. The two main women were Maria Riccetto as the girl in yellow whom the guys originally approach, and then Isabella Boylston as the girl in pink who momentarily gets interested in hot cocky Latin guy. Well, Sascha Radetsky completely took my breath away here. Before he had his momentary hiatus in with Netherlands Ballet, I’d always thought he was cute and a very solid, precise dancer, but he couldn’t act. I think he must have taken acting lessons in the Netherlands because he’s just so much better now. I really believe him in each role I’ve seen him in. And he really inhabited this sailor. He was really so compelling to watch; I couldn’t even focus on Daniil and his crazy sky-high jumps with Radetsky on the same stage.

Hehe, but one thing that really stood out for me was Isabella Boylston’s back-leading! All throughout ballroom training we were yelled at ad nauseam  — not just me but all the women — for constantly back-leading. And that’s because grown women generally pick up dance steps a lot faster than grown men (not necessarily true for girls versus boys but definitely true for men vs women for some reason). Anyway, it’s only now I really know why. It looks horrible. I know this is ballet with choreographed steps and not ballroom, but their characters are doing social dance so it really had to look like he was leading her in the steps, not like she was anticipating what he’d so and then turn herself or make the move before he led her to do it. It ended up looking like she was in control, and he’s supposed to be seducing her here. I’m sure they’ll get it with more practice, it just looked obviously wrong and out of character. But maybe that’s just my ballroom training talking because they definitely got the most applause.

 

The Ashton program opened with Birthday Offering (image above from Dance View Times), which ended up being my favorite piece of the night. Absolutely gorgeous costumes (by Andre Levasseur) and what lovely variations with fast, fancy, very original footwork for the women. Stella Abrera, Simone Messmer, and Gemma Bond in particular stood out to me. Hee Seo (my favorite Juliet) danced as well – not in love with the choreography for her variation as much but she has the most beautiful Alessandra Ferri feet. She and Veronika Part both!

Then came the Thais Pas de Deux, which was performed by Jared Matthews and Diana Vishneva. I can’t wait to see Hee Seo and Sascha Radetsky perform this at the end of the month. I saw them in rehearsal and they really took my breath away. They’re so sweet together, and they really bring out the beauty of the choreography in a way that Diana and Jared as a partnership just didn’t, in my mind. Diana and her melodramatic curtain calls really crack me up. At first they annoyed me but I’m beginning to accept that they’re part of the performance for her and they’re just her. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll find it endearing.

But as far as her dancing, she’s hit or miss with me. I haven’t gotten around to writing about it yet, but I absolutely loved her in Lady of the Camellias. She brought so much more to the role than Julie Kent had the day before and she really brought me into the drama of it all – she and Veronika Part both (who danced the Manon role). And her dancing was gorgeous. She and Marcelo were excellent in that. A performance to see again and again (if ABT would only make a DVD of it…)

Then was The Awakening Pas de Deux from Ashton’s Sleeping Beauty, danced by Veronika Part and David Hallberg. It’s funny but choreography can look so completely different on different bodies and it looked like a wholly different piece than when Paloma Herrera and Cory Stearns danced it on opening night.

Finally, was The Dream, Ashton’s version of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Honestly, I was getting really tired by this point and I’ll have to see it again. I did really like Cory Stearns as Oberon. He is another dancer who’s a hit or miss with me but I found his Oberon was endearing while still being rather demanding with Titania up front. He did a good job, and he dancing was beautiful. Alexei Agoudine was a lot of fun as Bottom (who’s on pointe here, unlike in the Balanchine version and has a lot more to do), and Daniil Simkin was Puck. I enjoyed his Puck but found myself unable to get Daniel Ulbrich’s Puck out of my mind. I’ve been told I have to see Herman Cornejo in this role. And so I hope to before the season ends.

In between performances I had ice cream in the park behind Lincoln Center cinemas, where I saw Blaine Hoven and Marcelo, and then I went and had a glass of wine in the outside patio area of the newish Alice Tully Hall cafe. It’s nice out there when it’s warm, which it was for part of the time. So far we seem to be having another chilly summer. Tomorrow I have two friends who, happily, are as crazy as I am, so I will have people to hang with instead of just my book 🙂

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NEW YORK CITY BALLET OPENING NIGHT GALA: NAMOUNA AND WHY AM I NOT WHERE YOU ARE

 

 

All photos by Paul Kolnik. Top two are of Benjamin Millepied’s new Why am I not where you are, and bottom two are from Alexei Ratmansky’s new Namouna: A Grand Divertissement.

 

 

Sorry I’m late with this post — I had serious internet problems over the weekend and they’d better not continue today or I may kill someone from Time Warner. Anyway, Thursday night was the opening night of New York City Ballet’s Spring / Summer season, and there were two world premieres: first Millepied’s Why am I not where you are, followed by Ratmansky’s Namouna, A Grand Divertissement.  I thought both were good and entertaining, if nothing earth shattering. And maybe it’s just that I’m getting to the point where I’ve seen so much ballet but it seems that everything is a combination of several other things, which isn’t bad. Millepied’s kept me more engrossed, only because Ratmansky’s was just too long.

Millepied’s reminded me by turns of Balanchine’s La Valse (which everyone seems to have thought), Robbins’s West Side Story, and even Balanchine’s version of Swan Lake, particularly where Siegfried frantically tries to find Odette through the swarm of swans who run around her in circles, frighteningly, creating a kind of hurricane.  It seemed there were also parts of the White Swan pas de deux between Sara Mearns (who danced gorgeously, as always), and her “love interest” Amar Ramasar. There even seemed thematically to be elements of Angelin Preljocaj.

The main character is Sean Suozzi who, wearing all white, seems to be a lost in time, or a human searching for other earthlings and who runs into this lot of ethereal creatures all dressed in colorful Romantic tutus. But instead of being beautifully beguilingly ethereal, they are more frightening, like aliens. There’s a very modern set by architect Santiago Calatrava (who collaborated with many of the choreographers who are premiering ballets this season and to whom the season is devoted — he was toasted by Peter Martins at the beginning of the evening), that to me gave the sense that someone — either Suozzi or the others — were from another place. Music, by Thierry Escaich, is unsettling as well. Suozzi falls for Kathryn Morgan, but in their initial pas de deux Morgan can’t see him. She seems to be blind to him. But he tries. The group of men do a kind of intense West Side Story dance, and eventually, Suozzi manages successfully to fit in, to become one of them, as is made clear by Ramasar’s giving him several articles of colorful clothing (a la La Valse) to don. Afterward, he dances again with Morgan but now it is he who cannot see her. Soon, the others swarm around her, violently plucking pieces of her tutu off. Eventually she’s the one wearing nothing but white undergarments, and she’s left devastated, alone and alienated. It was intense and enthralling and I definitely want to see it again, perhaps with Janie Taylor in the female lead (she withdrew due to injury).

Ratmansky’s reminded me of a cross between Branislava Nijinksa’s Les Biches and his own Concerto DSCH with elements of Balanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream thrown in. It’s harder to describe than the Millepied because there wasn’t much of a through story, just abstract portions combined with smaller stories that didn’t seem to merge into a larger whole. It’s set to really lovely music by Eduoard Lalo, which in places sounded like Glass’s In the Upper Room. I can’t remember the whole thing but Robert Fairchild is this guy dressed in white sailor garb. At one point, he happens upon some women dressed in 1930s beachy-seeming clothes and wearing hair caps and kind of taunting him with their humorously sexy cigarette smoking. Jenifer Ringer did a fabulous job of playing the main cigarette-bearing “taunter.” She’d puff in his face and he’d look enraptured but confused. Later, a group of people run toward him, carrying a passed-out Ringer and one man bows at Fairchild, as if for forgiveness. The other women haughtily puff on at the front of the stage. Everyone laughed. This cigarette girl part was my favorite. Then, there were some bravura parts for Daniel Ulbricht, dressed in kind of Puck-ish Midsummer Night‘s garb and doing the same high jumping, running through the air leaps as Puck. If I can remember correctly he was accompanied by some cutely impish female elfs, in the form of Abi Stafford and Megan Fairchild. There are sections where a lot of women in long yellow dresses do various port de bras and rather humorous (to me anyway) jumps in place a la Concerto DSCH, and toward the end Wendy Whelan emerges and is this kind of bride for Fairchild. They do a pas de deux filled with lots of classical ballet lifts and then they get married and supposedly live happily ever after.

I liked the Ratmansky and would be happy to see it again if it weren’t so blasted long! It felt like it went on for about an hour and a half! Before seeing it, I recommend taking a walk at intermission to stretch your legs, and go to the bathroom!

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NEW YORK CITY BALLET OPENS THEIR WINTER SEASON WITH MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM & GERSHWIN

New York City Ballet opened their Winter 2010 season last week with rotating performances of Balanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a two-ballet program of his Who Cares?, set to Gershwin music, and Peter Martins’ Naive and Sentimental Music.

I LOVED Who Cares?! (photos above — of Robert Fairchild and Sterling Hyltin, and of the whole cast — by Paul Kolnik.) I’d only ever seen the pas de deux before and didn’t even realize the whole was comprised of a whole slew of Gershwin songs, some danced by the ensemble, some by only the women, others by only the men, with solos and pas de deux mixed in. I particularly loved Tiler Peck’s duet with Robbie Fairchild in The Man I Love. She has such a clean, beautiful line and she’s so expressive and so engaging. She can make a story out of anything. And of course Fairchild is always the perfect romantic male lead 🙂 Crowd went wild over his and Ana Sophia Scheller’s duet to Embraceable You as well as Scheller’s My One and Only solo. Such a fun ballet — I’m going back for more this week.

Also shown in that program was Martins’s new Naive and Sentimental Music, set to John Adams’ score of the same name. I wrote about that ballet when it premiered here and posted pics of it here. Seeing it again evoked a bit of Balanchine’s Jewels, particularly the lovely lyrical white section (my favorite) and the sexy red.

One little thing I have to say: this ballet was created on and is danced only by principals but Adrian Danchig-Waring danced in last week’s production as well, and he is still a soloist (I think he may have been replacing Amar Ramasar, who must be injured because he was replaced a few times over the week…) Anyway, I realize NYCB is top heavy at the moment, but I think Danchig-Waring definitely needs to be next in line for a promotion!

And earlier in the week I saw the best EVER cast of  Midsummer Night’s Dream. I finally got to see my Gonzalo Garcia as Oberon 😀 (photo above by Paul Kolnik, of Garcia as Oberon and Darci Kistler as Titania). I’d missed him in this role at the end of last season. He did very well – -not only with the dancing — particularly that crazy fast scherzo — but also, and less expected for me, with the acting. I thought he’d be a sweet, glowingly endearing Oberon, but, no, he was a pissy, demanding fairy king — just as much as Andrew Veyette last season (cutely pissy and demanding though!) He wanted Titania’s servant boy and he wasn’t letting her say no to him. Only thing regarding the dancing — his legs don’t seem to be as flexible as they once were. It seems like he may have injured an adductor muscle, or else he’s built up so much thigh muscle or something — but his legs when he jumps are not making perfect splits. But his upper body is so fluid and graceful and he exudes such charm that he’s still the perfect lyrical male dancer nonetheless.

Titania was the beautiful Sara Mearns (headshot by Paul Kolnik — a new headshot for her, right?)– and she was the best Titania I’ve personally seen. Oh she’s such a beautiful dancer! She throws herself so fully into every move she makes. If Garcia is the ideal male lyrical dancer she is the ideal female – they were so perfect together.

And I’m so glad Stephen Hanna is back at NYCB (still annoyed with the Billy Elliot directors for not making good enough use of him on Broadway). He was Titania’s cavalier and his pas de deux with Mearns was the best Titania / Cavalier pdd I’ve ever seen. He’s so big and strong — which certainly amps up the romance factor — and his numerous tour jetes just have so much power. Honestly I often get bored during that pdd and just want Oberon to return, but not with Hanna’s cavalier!

And new to the cast of human characters who get their hearts messed with by a mischievous Puck (Troy Schumacher) was Janie Taylor, as Helena. She is another one who excels at story dances, always delving into a character and making clear to the audience what’s going on in her mind. She’s pathetically, endearingly funny from the time she enters the stage all forlorn over Demetrius, to her being completely bewildered by Lysander’s sudden attraction to her, to her searching the forest madly for Demetrius, to her cat-fights with Hermia, etc. She really brought out the humor.

In the section where I was sitting, there were at least three large groups of people you could tell had never seen the ballet before — nor likely the play; they didn’t seem familiar with the story. But they were laughing hysterically throughout the whole thing and were really awed by the dancing, and by some of the tricks (like Puck’s being pulled up to the ceiling via harness at the end). That’s when you can tell with a story ballet that the cast really brought it to life, when the newcomers are enthralled.

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TWO SYLVIAS: ROBERTO BOLLE & MICHELE WILES AND DIANA VISHNEVA & ETHAN STIEFEL

Yesterday I had one of those crazed balletomane days where I went to both matinee and evening performances of Sylvia at ABT. Cast for matinee was the esteemed Diana Vishneva as Sylvia, forever-a-heartthrob Ethan Stiefel as Aminta, the shepherd in love with her, Jared Matthews as Orion, the evil hunter, and Craig Salstein as Eros, or Cupid.

 

 

Second cast, which, with the exception of Vishneva was overall far better, was Michele Wiles in the lead, Roberto Bolle as Aminta, Cory Stearns as Orion, and Daniil Simkin as Eros. In the second cast, Kristi Boone also stood out as Diana, the goddess of the hunt and of chastity, and both goats Misty Copeland and Craig Salstein; Carlos Lopez in the first cast was a good goat (feel a bit funny saying that). Both Terpsichores I saw really magically devoured the stage quite well: Simone Messmer and Veronika Part.

 

 

Anyway, this is my first time seeing a full-length Frederick Ashton ballet and now I’m curious to see more. It reminded me a bit of Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the gods and nymphs and the love unrequited and then requited theme and the mystical, enchanting, dream-like quality of it all.

Here’s the story: scantily-clad Aminta the shepherd is in love with Sylvia, one of goddess Diana’s nymphs who, at the top of the ballet has just led a very successful hunt. She and her fellow huntresses celebrate their victorious hunt. Then, having renounced love, Sylvia taunts the god Eros, who, painted in silver and wearing a leaf fig over his private parts, spends the first act standing atop a pedestal. (This is a very fun ballet.) Evil Orion is also in love with Sylvia and seeks to possess her.

Continue reading “TWO SYLVIAS: ROBERTO BOLLE & MICHELE WILES AND DIANA VISHNEVA & ETHAN STIEFEL”

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MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAMS

 

 

Last week, I saw two Midsummer Night’s Dreams at New York City Ballet. This was my first time ever seeing Balanchine’s version of the ballet and it was really sweet. It follows the Shakespeare pretty closely: Theseus, Duke of Athens is to be wed to Amazonian queen Hippolyta and Hermia is to be wed to Demetrius. But Hermia doesn’t love Demetrius, she loves Lysander, but her father insists she obey him and marry Demetrius. She and Lysander elope and wander the forest. But first, Hermia informs her friend Helena of her plans. But Helena is in love with Demetrius, a love he doesn’t return. He is in fact quite rude to her. So she decides to try to win his favor by telling him of Hermia and Lysander’s plan of escape.

Meanwhile in the land of the fairies, King Oberon and Queen Titania are fighting because Titania refuses to give Oberon her boy servant, which Oberon badly wants. So Oberon arranges for his friend, the devious Puck, to apply a magical potion to Titania’s eyes while she’s asleep that will make her fall in love with the first person she sees on awaking. After turning a man from the wedding entertainment troupe into an ass, Puck applies the potion to Titania and arranges for her to fall in love with the man/donkey when she awakes, which she does.

 

 

Angry about Demetrius treating Helena badly, Oberon also instructs Puck to put the potion on Demetrius’s eyes so that he will fall in love with Helena. But Puck mixes up Demetrius with Lysander and Lysander falls in love with Helena, to Hermia’s obviously great dismay. The two women fight, and the two men fight over Helena. Puck eventually realizes his mistake, rights his wrong, and Demetrius ends up with Helena, Lysander with Hermia. Eventually, he changes the entertainer back into a human and Titania and Oberon make up, she giving him the servant.

The story’s told entirely in the first act, the second consists only of a celebratory divertissement of a three-way wedding between Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia, and Demetrius and Helena.

On my first night seeing this, Faye Arthurs and Abi Stafford most stood out to me as Helena and Hermia respectively. Abi in particular danced with more emotion that I’ve ever seen before from her. I really felt sorry for her when Lysander ran off with Helena and she ran through the forest, searching desperately for her lost love, and scared like a child. Sometimes she disappears to me in the story-less Balanchine or Robbins ballets, which makes me think maybe she needs more roles like this, where she can really delve into a character, because she really blew me away. I haven’t seen much of Faye Arthurs, but she was really hair-pullingly tormented by Demetrius. I really felt for her too. Give these two wonderful women more acting roles, Mr. Martins!

My first Oberon was Antonio Carmena, who danced the role very very well.

 

 

There’s a very difficult Scherzo (a humorous section of music with a typically very fast tempo) with lots of high jumps with the fluttering bird-like beats of the feet and multiple turns, and he pulled it off very well. He was a rather nice Oberon, seeming to ask Maria Kowroski’s spectacular Titania nicely for the boy-servant and for Puck to commit his mischief (rather than to demand those things of them).

Andrew Veyette was my Oberon the second night I saw the ballet and I loved his interpretation. Andrew’s a more virile dancer and he made all the demands Antonio’s Oberon did not. Overall, Veyette was probably my favorite dancer in the whole two nights.

 

 

Andrew’s Oberon was a deliciously pissed off fairy god, a real match for Teresa Reichlen’s stunning Titania and Daniel Ulbricht’s over-the-top Puck, directing the two of them all around this way and that. Daniel Ulbricht as Puck was of course an excellent jumper, as always — and he did these moves where it looked like he was running in the air. Others do more of a cute scampering hop, but he’s able to really run in the air because he attains such height on those jumps. He’s a true gymnast, you can tell from his body when he’s not in tights! But critics have noted that he tends to take over, make Puck the central figure of this ballet when he dances it. Not here. At least not in my mind. Andrew’s Oberon was most definitely the main character. He has too much virility and command to ever let anyone else take over, whatever he’s dancing.

One other thing about Ulbricht: audiences really seem to love him. I’m not a sucker for the high jumps and the pyrotechnics unless they’re necessary to character (though, looking back, I admit I was more of a sucker for that kind of thing when I first started watching ballet). I think audiences go completely wild for that though and I think they expect him to be cast as Puck and when he’s not, they feel cheated. When it was announced he’d be subbing for an injured Sean Suozzi the audience went wild with applause, making me feel sorry for Suozzi. If I was Peter Martins, I’d try to cast Ulbricht as Puck for every single performance, if possible, so as not to upset audiences. Seriously.

Robert Fairchild, making his Lysander debut Thursday night, was cute in the role, as always, as was Sterling Hyltin as Hermia. And Henry Seth was a cutely funny Bottom. He had the slurred-footed “donkey” moves a little more down pat than Adrian Danchig-Waring on the previous night, and you could practically see through his donkey head his hilarious inner conflict over whether to go for that grass or the beautiful Titania.

Savannah Lowery really stood out to me Thursday night as the huntress Amazonian queen Hippolyta. She did her multiple whipping fouette turns like no one’s business. She’s a very strong dancer. An excellent performance.

And Jared Angle did really well as the leading man in the divertissement adagio, which he danced Thursday night with Jenifer Ringer. He strikes me as a very good, very caring partner who will really take care of his lady. And he’s well cast in these noble roles, like his brother Tyler. I think Sebastien Marcovici is likewise a very good partner and he always makes sure he saves his woman before worrying about himself. He worked very hard Wednesday night in that divertissement adagio and big huge kudos to him. The ballerina he was partnering was having a real struggle with her nerves out there — it was visible, and I felt very sorry and nervous for her. It made me wonder whether there’s anything dancers can take for their nerves, to calm them down without making them so relaxed their dancing suffers? I don’t know, is there? Anyway, there are lots of very good, strong male partners in New York City Ballet.

Ariel and I thought we spotted actor Jeff Goldblum in the audience on Wednesday night.

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MICHAEL TO THE RESCUE!: TERESA REICHLEN, JANIE TAYLOR AND TYLER ANGLE STAND OUT IN FINAL MIDSUMMER CAST

 

 

Yesterday was stressful. Had to make a hard hard choice: whether to spend the matinee at New York City Ballet watching three of my favorite dancers — Gonzalo Garcia, Tyler Angle, and Janie Taylor — make their debuts in Midsummer Night’s Dream, or at American Ballet Theater seeing Hee Seo debut as the title character in La Sylphide, with one of my favorite ABT dancers, David Hallberg opposite her. (Review coming very soon, along with earlier Sylphide cast, and two Midsummer casts — yes, I’m behind behind behind!)

I’d actually contemplated running back and forth across the Plaza, like I know some have done in times past, but the running times for the first acts were totally different and there was no way I was going to be able to see Gonzalo’s Oberon in Midsummer and then make it to the Met in time for David and Hee in the first act of Sylphide. So, I chose my David, and the lovely debuting Hee. Ever so thankfully I talked my friend, author Michael Northrop, into covering the goings on across the Plaza.

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Afterwards, over drinks and food at the Alice Tully Hall Cafe (they have half-priced specialty drinks from 3-6 pm! And not watered-down at all! I nearly passed out after two sips of that mojito in front of me 🙂 ), he told me that Gonzalo did just fine with that crazy high-flying scherzo for Oberon in the first act (I knew he would!), and that he really liked Teresa Reichlin as Titania and Janie and Tyler in the second act divertissement, which received a lot of applause, which I can just imagine! He also agreed to write a little review, which I’ll post in a minute. (If you don’t know the story of Midsummer, read about it here — Balanchine pretty closely follows the Shakespeare).

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But first, it being Michael’s last day at NYCB this season, he browsed the gift shop, and ended up with a pair of Kathryn Morgan toe shoes. He told me (and, apparently the amused gift shop attendant) he figured she wasn’t going to be $5 for much longer 🙂 I guess their shoes cost a certain amount according to their status: principal ballerina shoes are $30, soloists are $15 and corps members $5. I didn’t know all this. I’ve never wandered over to the toe shoes section. I initially wondered why, then realized, oh, my favorite dancers don’t usually wear toe shoes. Sorry to be lewd, honestly, but I then couldn’t help but wonder — just because of that crazy strong mojito that nearly put me on the floor — why they don’t sell other kinds of used dancewear that my favorites *do* wear, alongside the toe shoes. Sorry! But can you imagine? Total alternate universe.

Anyway, here is Michael’s review:

At Dunkin’ Donuts, they sell munchkins 25 at a time. That’s about how many you get at New York City Ballet’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well. The squadron of young dancers from SAB added a nice dose of fun and energy to a matinee that already had plenty of both on Saturday.

Daniel Ulbricht didn’t dance the role of Puck, so instead of gravity-defying antics, we just got antics. Corps member Troy Schumacher was announced as a late sub for soloist Sean Suozzi in the role, and there were some disappointed Ohhs around me. The thought: We’re getting the third string. Schumacher did an excellent job, though. He moved with an appropriately sprightly energy and showed a nice touch with the comedic moments. When he realized his magical matchmaking mistake, you could almost hear the “D’oh!”

Teresa Reichlen was fantastic as Titania, displaying just the right balance of regal, playful, and otherworldly for a fairy queen. And Robert Fairchild, a very busy man this season, excelled in yet another role (albeit in a ridiculous Prince Valiant costume) as Lysander. His put-upon love interest was once again Sterling Hyltin. The leads from NYCB’s Romeo + Juliet both showed they can handle Shakespeare’s comedy as well as his tragedy. Hyltin, for example, dialed up a slightly manic quality to great effect.

And Balanchine’s choreography tells the entire story in Act I, leaving Act II free for the divertissement. A quick wedding march and then Janie Taylor and Tyler Angle were center stage. They brought down the house.

Angle is a strong presence, but he defers so gracefully and lifts so effortlessly that he never soaks up more than his share of the spotlight. I noticed that when he partnered Tiler Peck in Mercurial Manoeuvres, and again on Saturday. Janie Taylor was both a delicate vision and a physical wonder, sometimes in turns, sometimes simultaneously. It’s a complete oxymoron in print, but she pulled it off onstage. Amazing.

The final scene was especially poignant for me, because I knew this was the last performance I’d see this season. Fireflies flickered around Puck against the dark backdrop of, yes, a midsummer night. It was the kind of night you don’t want to end, and the kind of season.

And here is Oberon’s (I mean Philip’s) review of the same cast.

And this just in! Another review (I’m interested in what he says of Gonzalo Garcia) — the one (by a pro critic who doesn’t say things are good when they’re not, and with great detail and specificity) that I’ve been waiting for 🙂 I knew Gonzalo’d nail it! I knew he’d be brilliant! I knew it!