Tag: New York City Ballet

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Ballet Arizona’s SLEEPING BEAUTY, and Phoenix Society For the Arts Reads SWALLOW!

I feel so badly that I haven’t had time to write very much here lately. Writing doesn’t come close to paying the bills right now (will it ever??) so I do legal contract work, and I have a really time-consuming assignment right now. When I’m between assignments, I’ll try to write as much as I can, but otherwise it’s going to be slow going, sadly…

Anyway, I spent last weekend in Phoenix. I was a guest of the Phoenix Society for the Arts book club whose February read was Swallow! I was so honored, and it was such a wonderful experience. People asked all kinds of interesting questions, and they pointed to specific scenes and characters in the novel that they found particularly entertaining or related to well. One of my early writing instructors – the illustrious James Conrad 🙂  – once told me that you can tell if people are really into your book if they talk about specifics; if they just say general things – even nice things like “I really liked it,” or “I thought it was really good” – they are probably just b.s.ing. So it made me so happy that people were remarking on how horrible the sister and her nephews were or how wicked Alana was or how they couldn’t believe what Sophie did with the wedding dress or how the judges behaved in the courtroom.

They also asked me a lot of questions about how real everything was – how autobiographical the novel really was. I found that so hard to respond to because the inciting incident – Sophie’s globus hystericus – came from a very real experience, and yet I don’t think there’s a single scene in the book that actually happened, from start to finish. Most of the characters are combinations of so many people I’ve known and then added onto that they’re virtually made up. In order to make something dramatic and interesting that will keep readers’ attention, you really have to work with climax and character arcs and creating a twisting turning plot that will surprise and maybe even shock. You have to make stuff up, and a lot of it or the book just won’t compel readers to turn pages. And then at a certain point you get so carried away with your characters, they start to have a life of their own. And then that removes it further from “reality.” Yet everything is true with that proverbial capital T, you know. Anyway, I got very tongue twisted trying to explain that.

It was such a wonderful experience, though, and I’ll be forever thankful to the Phoenix Society for the Arts for having me, and for giving me such an engaged, inquisitive, alive audience of extremely thorough readers. It was one of the very best experiences I’ve had yet as a writer 🙂

That Saturday, my dad took me to downtown Phoenix to see Ballet Arizona’s production of Sleeping Beauty. (This was also with Phoenix Society for the Arts). I was so happily surprised by how excellent the company is! I really didn’t know what to expect, because once you see dancers like Alina Cojocaru and Veronika Part and David Hallberg and Marcelo Gomes in all the main roles, you really don’t know if you’re going to be able to have a favorable response to anyone else. I thought the company very much resembled New York City Ballet, which isn’t surprising since the director, Ib Andersen, was a Balanchine protege and a dancer with NYCB. He really has a wonderful little company of dancers. The principals stand out with their charisma, their very strong dance technique, and their good acting, but without being flashy and star-like – just like NYCB.

 

 

I especially loved Astrit Zejnati (above, click on photos for original source) as Prince Desire and Natalia Magnicaballi as the Lilac Fairy. And I thought Tzu-Chia Huang was a very sweet Aurora who acted each of the three acts very well. She and Zejnati got loads of applause in the third act, not surprisingly, for their gorgeous fish dives – and her legs were straight up in the air, like Cojocaru’s. Some of the best fish dives I’ve seen! Her Rose Adagio balances were good – not the best I’ve seen – but she held onto them long enough for the audience really to applaud her. Zejnati is small – he reminded me a bit of NYCB’s Joaquin De Luz – but with a very commanding presence. He was a true prince. And he had the ever so engaging expressiveness of Gonzalo Garcia, and everyone knows how I feel about him 😀 It’s so hard for me not to think of dancers back home when I write about dance now – sorry if that’s annoying!

 

 

Magnicaballi (above, second photo of Swan Lake, with Zejnati) was one of the most magical, larger than life Lilac Fairies I’ve seen. She reminds me a bit of San Francisco Ballet’s Maria Kochetkova. She was the perfect embodiment of the “fairy godmother” as she blessed baby Aurora with her beautifully eloquent port de bras, countered Carabosse (Nancy Crowley) with a swift but elegant flick of her arm, and she captivated the audience along with the Prince at the end of the Vision scene as she whisked him off to the real Sleeping Beauty.

Ib Andersen has a wonderful company. It’s too bad they don’t have a very long season – they seem only to perform for two or three days every two or three months. They do mainly classical ballet and Balanchine, with some Robbins, and some of Andersen’s own work, which I now really want to see. Fans of NYCB would definitely love this company.

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Brief Update & Review of Peter Martins / Paul McCartney Collab at NYCB

Hey everyone,

Just a brief update since this motel’s wifi is expensive and not secure: but I now have a car (a cute little Toyota Prius – used) as well as an apartment in LA that I love but that unfortunately won’t be ready for move in for two more weeks. Which means I’m back in Phoenix for the next two weeks, shuffling around between family who have space for me and who aren’t allergic to Rhea and pet-friendly motels. Once I’m settled in to my new place – which, again, I LOVE!!! – I will most definitely resume regular blogging.

In the meantime, I did see the much spoken about new Peter Martins / Paul McCartney collaboration – Ocean’s Kingdom – at New York City Ballet when it premiered a couple weeks back. NYCB has sent me some pictures but I don’t have time to post them now. I will soon! I liked but didn’t love the ballet. I thought the story-line was simplistic and not very compelling and didn’t love the choreography, although there were some good pas de deux between Sara Mearns and Robert Fairchild – the lovers. I very was impressed with Paul McCartney’s ability to create such a rich orchestral score – really lovely. I thought Mearns, Fairchild, Amar Ramasar, and Georgina Pazcoguin all danced very well. Ramasar, who as most of you know is non-white, danced the part of the bad guy… So sigh on that. But he danced very well. For the most part, I wasn’t in love with the costumes, designed by Stella McCartney, except Pazcoguin’s, which was lovely and worked well. I kept worrying Mearns’s was going to come off, an idea my male friend liked and wished would have come to fruition. It didn’t; at least not the night we saw it.

McCartney was in the audience and gave a big wave to the audience when Martins introduced him. He has big, big hair! He doesn’t look his age at all. Martins toasted him not with champagne but with a cup of tea. Alec Baldwin was sitting right behind him in the audience. I don’t recall seeing any other celebs there but I’m sure there were oodles.

Anyway, as I said, I promise to post pictures of that ballet as well as some others from the beginning of the season that City Ballet has sent to me as soon as I’m home and have a secure (and free) internet connection. This afternoon is Charles Askegard’s farewell performance, which I unfortunately won’t be able to see. I hope to see his new company tour LA though, soon soon soon!

Thank you so much for continuing to read my blog, everyone, when I’ve been too busy to post much lately! I very greatly appreciate everyone’s support through this rather huge transition in my life. Thank you again, and will talk soon!

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NYCB Spring Gala with SEVEN DEADLY SINS Premiere

Here are some photos, all by Paul Kolnik, of Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s play-ballet, The Seven Deadly Sins, which premiered last night at New York City Ballet’s Spring gala performance. Above is Patti LuPone, who guest-starred with the company (performing the singing role of course!) and Wendy Whelan, who danced the lead. The top photo is from the “Prologue” of the play-ballet (or ballet chante as the program calls it).

This is from the second part: “Pride”: Patti LuPone and cabaret dancer ensemble.

Also from “Pride.” Wendy Whelan is in the middle.

And this is from sixth part, “Lust,” probably my favorite over all. Craig Hall and Wendy Whelan are the dancers in the photo. Craig Hall and Sara Mearns (who danced the role of “Latina Diva” in the “Anger” section, and who I don’t have a picture of unfortunately), most stood out to me, as well as Vincent Paradiso as the Count in the “Greed” section. I think those dancers most stood out – at least Mearns and Paradiso – because they seem to have some kind of acting training. Maybe they don’t, maybe they’re just natural actor-types, but the more actor-ly you are, I think the easier this kind of role would be. Wendy Whelan said in an interview with Roslyn Sulcas in the New York Times that she was used to expressing herself with her body and her lines, that she was used to Balanchine’s dictum “don’t act, don’t think, just dance,” and that she found this kind of role challenging. As much of a NYCB star as she is, and as stunning as she is in Wheeldon and Balanchine’s more modern, angular-lined ballets, I just wonder if she was mis-cast for something like this.

Which isn’t to say that she didn’t dance very well last night. She danced a really beautiful pas de deux with Craig Hall, which is what made “Lust” my favorite section. And LuPone sang in a gorgeously powerful voice. The dancing was all superb. But something just didn’t work to me.

Balanchine choreographed the original Seven Deadly Sins, set to libretto and score by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, in 1933. The Balanchine version was revived in 1958. According to the Times article linked to above, both the original version and revivals received very good reviews. Since the Balanchine version appears to be largely lost now, and Peter Martins wanted to revive the ballet, he commissioned new choreography from Taylor-Corbett.

Maybe it was that the new choreography didn’t really express the story, which follows Anna, a woman whose various life experiences each represent one of the sins. It wasn’t really a full story, but one composed of scenes, each of which dramatized a sin (and LuPone and Whelan portray different aspects of Anna). But, I didn’t feel the scenes always worked well at doing that. For example, in my favorite section, “Lust,” I thought the Hall/Whelan bedroom scene was really beautiful, very romantic, but nothing said lust, as in sinful lust, to me. I almost felt like Whelan’s Anna had a loveless relationship with her husband, danced by Allen Peiffer, and she was really in love with Hall, and her leaving her husband and running into Hall’s arms was an urgently needed escape.

In my other favorite section, “Anger,” Sara Mearns is a kind of sexy, but rather humorously so, Copacabana dancer. She gets angry at Whelan’s Anna for something – I’m not quite sure what – maybe Anna stole her lover or took over Mearns’ role as head diva, drawing too much attention to herself…  Anyway, Mearns twists her face into a look of utter anger, then points at Whelan, who runs off crying and is then stripped down to her underwear by a group of men. But I thought it was done rather cartoonishly. So it was more funny and cute to me than a dramatic representation of the tragic consequences of anger.

In the “Greed” section, a count and a senator vie for something and end up in a duel, both of them getting killed. But it didn’t have any tragedy or pathos to me. Instead, it felt a bit like Balanchine’s Slaughter on Tenth, which made me want to giggle – probably the fact that it was Paradiso playing the role of the Count.

I don’t know. I guess I was expecting something with more tragedy and pathos and weight, and I felt like I saw a version of Slaughter on Tenth but without a through story-line. Maybe that was the intent. I’m going to see it again over the weekend, and maybe my opinion will change.

Did anyone else see it yet? I’m interested to hear what others think. Has anyone seen the Balanchine version?

After intermission,

— here’s my photo of the promenade – Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes was performed beautifully.

Photo by Paul Kolnik.

All of the dancers were very good, but I particularly liked Megan Fairchild and Joaquin DeLuz in the fast-footed, playful scene in the forest, “Fruhlingsstimmen,” and Maria Kowroski and Charles Askegard in the last, beautifully ballroom-y section, “Der Rosenkavalier.”

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NYCB Opens its Spring 2011 Season with “Balanchine: Black & White”

 

Photo from 2004 of Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto in Balanchine’s Agon, by Paul Kolnik.

Last night New York City Ballet opened its Spring season with three Balanchine “leotard” or “black and white” ballets (so-called because of the costumes). I have very little time to write because I’m off for a short trip to Phoenix later today. But I’ll just say, all the dancers looked very refreshed, in tiptop shape, and everyone danced very well and with lots of expression.

First on – and the highlight of the evening to me – was Square Dance, which I haven’t seen a huge number of times but which is really growing on me. The leads were Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley, who is really growing on me as well. He reminds me a bit of Alex Wong, except he’s more lyrical and it’s a little less about the stunning feats with him, though he is a very good dancer and I’m sure can do the stunning feats! His difficult-looking often flexed-footed solo was mesmerizing. He was even mesmerizing when he just stood off-center and watched Fairchild do her solo, the way he’d look at her, at times longingly, at times in awe. Megan danced with a lot of joy as well – all dancers were very emotionally compelling in this. And I’m not the only one who thought so – the audience really went crazy with applause after this dance.

 

Next on was Agon. The main couples were Wendy Whelan and Sebastien Marcovici, Teresa Reichlen and Andrew Veyette, Ashley Laracey and Amar Ramasar, and Amanda Hankes and Craig Hall. Andrew Veyette (above, photo by Paul Kolnik) really stood out to me in this. I think he is well-suited to all the angular lines so pronounced in these leotard ballets. Wendy Whelan and Sebastien Marcovici had a couple very minor flubs. During intermission, the little group of balletomanes I hang out with were reminiscing about how stunning she was when she used to dance this part with Jock Soto (which is why I posted the top picture). I really wish I could have seen that. It looks stunning from the picture.

The evening ended with Stravinsky Violin Concerto; leads were Maria Kowroski and Amar Ramasar, and Sterling Hyltin and Ask LaCour.  I always like this ballet and I always look for my favorite part – where, in the third section, Aria II, the man stands over the woman and turns her around and around, like a barrel. I think I’ve seen Robert Fairchild do it only once, but it was the first time I ever saw the ballet and now, to me, he owns that role and no one can do it like him. I thought of that when my intermission friends were reminiscing about their favorite dancers from the past and how differently they looked doing these black and white ballets – how much more precision there used to be – and it’s funny because Robert Fairchild is obviously not the first dancer to dance my favorite part but he’ll always define it to me. The first dancer, or the first set of dancers, that you see in a role or a dance will definitely leave an indelible impression. But someday I still very much would like to see the original Balanchine dancers in these ballets.

Anyway, this was opening night, but there was no red carpet since NYCB has their gala next week, on Wednesday – when the Patti LuPone collaboration will premiere!

Okay, I’m off to the land of lizards and gila monsters and sun and 99-degree temperatures! Assuming I’m able to finish packing…

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NYCB Swan Lake Casting Is Up & There’s an Added Performance!

 

New York City Ballet has decided to add an additional performance of Swan Lake to its SL run. The added performance will now take place Friday, February 11th, at 8 p.m. It will star Sara Mearns – yes!!!!!!! and will replace that evening’s scheduled performance of mixed repertoire. The company decided to reschedule for the additional performance because of overwhelming demand this year: all of the regularly scheduled performances are virtually sold out at this point. Mearns will also be dancing the first regularly scheduled performance, the Sunday February 13th matinee. During both performances, her Siegfried will be Jared Angle. Casting hasn’t yet been announced for the rest of the run but you know I will post it here the second it is! There will be nine SL performances total, continuing through February 26th.

Go here to buy tickets.

Above photo taken from here.

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Last Week at New York City Ballet

 

Last week I went to two performances of NYCB – opening night and Thursday night’s “See the Music” program – and to two of the free all-day Balanchine events on Saturday. First, I’ll talk about the last two since I found them so informative. The free studio talk on Saturday afternoon – Balanchine’s birthday – was moderated by Sean Lavery (former NYCB principal dancer, now ballet master), and included Sterling Hyltin (in Paul Kolnik photo above with Robert Fairchild), Chase Finlay, and Jenifer Ringer. Lavery asked the dancers to talk about their first Balanchine ballets, their favorites, and what drew them to NYCB. Hyltin named as her favorite Duo Concertant (pictured above) which I’d just seen her dance on opening night. She said she liked the syncopated movement, the he goes and I go kind of back and forth movement conversation with her partner, and with the musicians. I really liked it too. The violinist and pianist are onstage (the music is Stravinsky), and I like the interaction between the dancers and the musicians, and between the two dancers, and I like the sharp, angular movement. She seemed particularly animated when I saw it. I love Robert Fairchild and think he’s such a sharp, masculine mover with a presence that commands your attention without meaning to – he kind of reminds me of a less cocky Ethan Stiefel – but she seemed so happy to be dancing this piece that she stood out to me more. It was nice to hear her talk about it.

But what I really loved was the School of American Ballet class taught by Peter Martins. He interacted cutely with the students, particularly “Cyrus,” (at least I think that was his name…) a tall, long-limbed young man who I think will soon be in the company. Cyrus didn’t always do everything perfectly (at least in Martins’s eyes) but he had a charming presence and a great leading-man physique and you can tell he works hard.

Martins had the class demonstrate ballet basics – beginning with the five positions, and they showed us a perfect fifth position (with the toes of the front foot touching the heel of the other and vice versa). More interestingly, he had the class show us the difference between a Balanchine hand and a classical ballet hand. I’d always noticed there was a difference but couldn’t figure it out exactly. God gave us five fingers, Balanchine had said, so we shouldn’t hide two of them. The Balanchine hand shows all five fingers, the classical ballet one only three (with the ring finger and pinky held so that they are hidden from view behind the middle finger).

Martins also had the students show us how Balanchine’s fourth position differed from others’. In Balanchine’s the back leg is straight; in all others’ the back leg is bent. Martins didn’t go into any functional explanation for this – just said “here, we think it looks better.” But I thought about it and thought, wow, it must be hard to take off in a jump for example with the back leg straight. And then I realized that’s partly why Balanchine’s choreography always looks so fluid, like one step leading right into another, without a lot of stopping to build up to a big athletic feat – a big jump or series of turns. Other companies – like the Russians, like the Bolshoi – are all about preparing so that you can do something astounding. So they’re all about the building up.

This was mentioned in the studio talk as well. Lavery also talked about how fluid Balanchine’s movement was, and how, for example, in a lift, a guy would pick up a girl, then take two steps, and put her down rather than walk all over stage with her hoisted above his head. Balanchine wanted her to come up, then down right again, because that was more fluid, rather than have her head bobbing around up there while the guy was running all around with her.

Martins also demonstrated the bows. At City Ballet, he said, we just do them as such, and the girls did a little curtsy with the back leg slightly bent, without going down on one knee. Making fun of the dramatic Swan Lake bows, Martins went all the way down on one knee, exclaiming, “Yes, yes, I know I’m good!!!” while putting his head down, forehead nearly touching the floor, and raising his arms up in back of him like wings, fingers pointed toward the ceiling. It was hilarious.

Anyway, here are a couple more photos of opening night:

 

Above: Ashley Bouder in Valse-Fantaisie, and below, the cast, including Andrew Veyette, in the same (all photos by Paul Kolnik)

 

I liked Balanchine’s Valse-Fantaisie (Veyette replaced Joaquin DeLuz – but don’t know why because DeLuz danced Concerto DSCH two nights later) but I really loved the first of the evening, Walpurgisnacht Ballet. I’d never seen Walpurgisnacht before and it’s funny but I always seem to love the Balanchine ballets that are the least often performed. This was really beautiful. It’s from Gounod’s Faust, and features a group of women (and only one man – here Charles Askegard) in deep red dresses, their hair down in the second half as the music increases in tempo so that there’s almost kind of a hedonistic madness in the mood – and the footwork is so intensely complicated and fast fast fast. Wendy Whelan even made a tiny little flub, which I’ve never seen her do before. Crazy! And breathtaking!

And the evening ended with The Four Temperaments. I’ve said before and I’ll complain again that I still don’t understand why everyone goes on about how brilliant this one is. To me, there are supposed to be four temperaments, and the ballet is divided accordingly into four variations after the theme: melancholic, sanguinic, phlegmatic, and choleric. But they all seem to be the same to me. The dance seems one-note throughout so that after the first variation, I’m waiting for it to end. I’ll keep seeing it though, perhaps performed by a variety of companies if I have the chance, and will keep looking for the nuances…

“See the Music” night opened with Faycal Karoui’s discussion of Mozartiana, Tchaikovsky’s homage to / riff on Mozart, which made me appreciate Tchaikovsky even more. Then that piece was danced – by Maria Kowroski, Daniel Ulbricht, and Tyler Angle. Tyler stood out to me. As always, he dances with so much meaning, so much intention, and so much expansiveness. He’s a really beautiful dancer.

Then came Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH, danced by Wendy Whelan, Ashley Bouder, Joaquin DeLuz, Andrew Veyette (replacing this time Gonzalo Garcia), and Benjamin Millepied. Oh, Natalie Portman was there, albeit late – she came in with a friend after Karoui’s lecture and right before Mozartiana was performed. Then, she left right after Concerto DSCH, after Millepied was done performing, and before the last piece. I thought it was a shame she missed Sara Mearns in the last dance, but a Twitter friend said she had a movie premiere that night, so I guess she needed to leave early for that.

Anyway, as usual, Millepied did not stand out to me, and I couldn’t stop thinking of seeing Tyler Angle in that role before and the way he lunges romantically toward the main girl, making it clear how much he yearns for her. Millepied’s knees nearly touch the ground in his deep steps toward her and it just looks like a dance step, not like anything evoking a specific emotion. As always I loved Bouder and DeLuz in the fast, playfully firtatious three-some part. I missed Garcia – where is he? I hope not injured! – but thought Veyette did a fine job in his stead.

And the evening ended brilliantly with Sara Mearns and Charles Askegard dancing the ballet leads in Balanchine’s Cortege Hongrois, while Rebecca Krohn and Sean Suozzi just as brilliantly danced the folksy Hungarian leads. I really love that dance and it made me all the more eager to see Mearns in Swan Lake!

On both nights, I went with my friend, author Maria Mutsuki Mockett. She writes an author blog but has been attending the ballet much more frequently and is now blogging a lot about ballet as well. She’s an excellent writer, so please check out her blog!

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This Week at New York City Ballet

I hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend, and happy belated Martin Luther King Day!

Tonight begins the Winter season at NYCB. Highlights for the season will be a world premiere by Susan Stroman on January 28th, and Peter Martins’ Swan Lake in February. I highly recommend seeing Sara Mearns as Odette / Odile (White Swan / Black Swan), especially if you are a new dance-goer in search of a good Swan Lake after seeing the Black Swan film. The Martins production is very modern, and very accessible to contemporary audiences, and Mearns is a beautiful dancer who manages to excel at both roles. Her swan queen is very human, with great emotional depth. She has a way, like ABT’s Veronika Part, of making you feel like you’re inside her character’s world, going through everything right along with her. She’s not just a great ballerina, but a compelling actress, in other words. And her black swan is a thrill. Here’s what I wrote about her last year. I’m not sure yet which days she’ll dance, but casting should be announced very soon. All of the ballerinas will be good (and I’ll need to see Ashley Bouder’s this year!), but try hard not to miss Mearns.

My recommendations for this week are:

January 18 (tonight), opening night, early 7:30 curtain
It’s a mixed rep program including Walpurgisnacht Ballet, Duo Concertant, Valse-Fantaisie, and one of Balanchine’s most revered works, The Four Temperaments.

Thursday night, January 20th, 8 p.m.
Another night of mixed rep: Mozartiana, Concerto DSCH, and Cortege Hongrois. The special things about this evening are that it’s another in the excellent See the Music series, and Millepied is dancing Ratmansky’s DSCH (one of my favorites of Ratmansky’s). Plus, will be interesting to see if there’s any kind of crowd increase for Millepied now after all the fanfare. Also SLSG favorite Tyler Angle is debuting in Mozartiana.

Friday night, January 21st 8 p.m.
Sara Mearns will debut in Concerto DSCH. Also showing are Robbins’ well-loved Dances at a Gathering, and Walpurgisnacht again.

Saturday, January 22nd, all day.
It’s an all-day celebration of George Balanchine, in honor of his birthday. In addition to the regular matinee and evening performances (all Balanchine of course), there’s a movie at 10:30 a.m., a studio talk in the afternoon, and a performance by students at the School of American Ballet at 6 p.m. The movie, studio talk and performance by SAB students are all free but require tickets. Everything takes place in the Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. For more info on the Saturday events, click on the link below.

Continue reading “This Week at New York City Ballet”

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Imagine Edward Gorey in Fur Coat and Sneakers, Nightly, at NYCB

I met this writer, A.N. Devers, at a party last week, and when she enthused about a piece she wrote recently for the Paris Review about a favorite writer of hers, the late Edward Gorey (in photo above, from Squidoo) and his fur coat collection, I made a mental note to find it on the web. I’d forgotten, but just remembered to look for it this morning. It’s a sweet piece about her attending a recent auction of his furs where she was determined to hold her own amongst the seriously seasoned bidders and, despite her comparably meager bank account, get herself a coat.

She also mentions that Gorey (who was best known as an illustrator) often attended New York City Ballet – decked out in fur coat and Converse sneakers. This was during the 70s, when, according to some quick internet research I did, he was well known at the ballet, was quite the eccentric, and knew Balanchine. He even wrote and illustrated a book about NYCB, The Lavender Leotard.

(top image from the Winger, bottom two from StoryCulture)

Actually, he wrote a couple books about the ballet.

He also created a poster:

(image from Chisholm online gallery)

He supposedly so loved NYCB he was there every night. He must have been quite the figure in those full-length furs and tennis shoes. Kind of sounds like something out of a Jonathan Ames novel. But this was all in the 70s. Sometimes I really feel like I’m in NYC in the wrong era…

Anyway, just found all this interesting and thought I’d share. Is there anyone here who remembers him?

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SLSG’s Dance Highlights of 2010

Instead of trying to remember which were my favorite performances of the year, I’m just going back through my blog archives from January of this year and linking to the most memorable posts. More fun that way! A lot happened in a year…

January

Pacific Northwest Ballet made their debut at the Joyce; it was my first time seeing them live.

The Post‘s Page 6 announced that you know who and you know who are dating, and the ridiculous homewrecker attacks began.

Baryshnikov and Annie Liebovitz starred in a very cool Louis Vuitton ad.

February

I totally fell for New York City Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty.

…and Mark Sanchez 🙂

I found myself quoted in Colin Jarman’s book, Dancing With the Quotes.

I also fell for Sara Mearns’s Odette in Peter Martins’s Swan Lake.

On a personal note, my former judge, the esteemed Honorable Sylvia Pressler, passed away.

The Kings of Dance came to town.

Morphoses shocked the ballet world by announcing that Christopher Wheeldon was leaving the company.

March

My friend’s organization, Art for Change, held a benefit for Haiti after the earthquake.

Rasta Thomas’s Bad Boys of Dance announced that Danny Tidwell and SYTYCD’s Jacob Karr were joining the company.

Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon finally made their NYC debut!

I found myself actually getting press for liking Kate Gosselin – or for not hating Kate Gosselin rather – on Dancing With the Stars.

I fell for Keigwin + Company’s Runaway.

I was delighted to receive an email from NYCB ballerina Yvonne Borree’s aunt regarding of all things, my novel.

April

I had my first experience as a dance writer panelist! Thank you, Marc, from TenduTV!

Tiler Peck appeared on Dancing With the Stars in a Travis Wall routine, which everyone was so excited about. But it ended up amounting to not a whole lot…

Roberto Bolle danced a naked Giselle, in Italy of course.

May

New York City Ballet opened their spring season with premieres of Millepied’s Why Am I Not Where You Are and Ratmansky’s Namouna, both of which I liked, though Ratmansky’s had to grow a bit on me.

Baryshnikov returned to the stage.

I greatly enjoyed ABT’s new production, Lady of the Camellias, though most critics panned it.

June

ABT celebrated Alicia Alonso’s 90th birthday with three all-star Latin American casts (plus Natalia Osipova) dancing in Don Quixote.

Yvonne Borree gave her farewell performance at NYCB.

Bill T. Jones won a Tony for best choreographer for Fela!

Philip Neal gave his farewell performance at NYCB.

Natalia Osipova was mugged right outside of Lincoln Center.

Two of the greatest ballerinas in Europe – Osipova, and Alina Cojocaru – gave back to back Sleeping Beauty performances at ABT.

Albert Evans gave his farewell performance at NYCB.

Tap great Savion Glover made headlines by voicing his annoyance with Alastair Macaulay’s NY Times criticism of him – onstage, during a show.

Conductor Maurice Kaplow gave his farewell performance with NYCB.

Darci Kistler officially ended the era of the Balanchine-trained dancer with her farewell performance with NYCB.

July

Carlos Acosta announced his retirement from ballet and his foray into modern dance.

Alex Wong, probably the second greatest contestant ever on SYTYCD was injured and unable to finish the show.

My friend, Taylor Gordon, was profiled as a freelance ballet dancer in a New York Times article 🙂

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s beloved Denise Jefferson passed away.

Nilas Martins retired from NYCB oddly sans fanfare, sans criticism, sans a performance.

August

I interviewed tWitch about his role in the movie Step It Up. Fun fun interview!

I had a blast covering Ailey Camp.

I nearly fell over when Wendy Perron, esteemed E-I-C of Dance Magazine recommended Swallow on Twitter!

September

NYCB began their excellent “See the Music” series.

October

I loved Ashley Bouder’s Serenade.

Emerging Pictures’s awesomely exciting Ballet in Cinema series began with the Bolshoi’s Flames of Paris.

This cool new Lincoln Center-area street art sprouted up.

One of my favorite posts of the year, though it received no comments, was about Anne Fortier’s novel, Juliet. I jokingly daydreamed about it being made into a film, and which of my favorite ballet stars might take the lead.

November

ABT made an historic visit to Cuba and oh how I wished I could have gone with them.

I think I was the only person in the entire dance world to sympathize with Bristol Palin on Dancing With the Stars.

I had a blast covering New York So You Think You Can Dance auditions.

All of a sudden Black Swan was everywhere.

Nearly fell over again upon hearing Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko took the world Latin ballroom title – making them the first U.S. couple ever to do so.

December

My take on SugarPlumpGate.

Black Swan finally premiered which I didn’t love but was happy to have ballet brought back into the spotlight.

I was in awe of Alvin Ailey’s 50-dancer Revelations, staged in honor of the 50th anniversary of that dance. I also loved several other dances in their City Center season – Ailey’s Cry, Ronald K. Brown’s Dancing Spirit, and Geoffrey Holder’s The Prodigal Prince – just to name a few.

Robert Wilson / Roberto Bolle’s Perchance to Dream exhibit in Chelsea was a lot o’ frightening fun.

ABT’s new Nutcracker premiered, which I really enjoyed, almost as much as the Bolshoi’s.

Portman and Millepied revealed they are now engaged and expecting.

I had great fun, despite the crazy snowstorm, going down to Wall Street and covering Judith Jamison’s ringing of the closing bell at the NYSE.

Pretty busy year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

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Sugarplum Fairy’s Opening the Stock Exchange on December 23

This is cute. A sugarplum fairy from New York City Ballet, along with her cavalier, will ring the bell that opens the New York Stock Exchange on Monday morning, December 23rd. Click on the link below to read the full press release. I wonder if it will be Jenifer Ringer and Jared Angle?

The ceremony will begin at 9:30 a.m. and can be viewed beginning at 9:15 on nyse.com

Continue reading “Sugarplum Fairy’s Opening the Stock Exchange on December 23”

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Does a Ballerina’s Weight Affect the Quality of a Performance?

 

So, if you haven’t heard, the New York dance world is all up in arms over NY Times chief dance critic Alastair Macaulay’s review of New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker. The full review, which is here, I think is generally pretty good. But then he begins his concluding paragraph with this:

“This didn’t feel, however, like an opening night. Jenifer Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, looked as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many; and Jared Angle, as the Cavalier, seems to have been sampling half the Sweet realm. They’re among the few City Ballet principals that dance like adults, but without adult depth or complexity.” (Ringer and Angle are pictured above, in that production. Photo by Paul Kolnik.)

Angry reactions have abounded: here are a couple on Huffington Post. In the second piece, Jennifer Edwards, quoting critic Eva Yaa Asantewaa (a friend of mine), notes that Ringer has had an eating disorder in the past and argues that this sentence was disrespectful, reckless, and irrelevant. Edwards also quotes an earlier reflection of Macaulay’s on his role as dance critic:

“My job is to be a professional aesthete with serious criteria; and I share my perceptions and my values with the reader as best I can.”

Edwards concludes by posing two questions:

“1. Do you read the Times dance reviews? Has this changed over time?

2. Do you feel reviews of this nature are of use to venues, arts organizations, audience members, aspiring young dancers, and artists?”

I wrote a little comment on HuffPo but thought I’d elaborate a bit here because I think it’s an interesting, and complicated, issue.

I definitely don’t think a dancer’s weight affects the quality of a performance unless the dancer really can’t dance. I’ve seen Ringer dance pretty recently and she is a tiny thing with no weight problem whatsoever. I didn’t see this performance but I’ve always thought she was technically a very good dancer with a lot of charisma, particularly in roles like the one Melissa Barak recently gave her where she can act as well as dance. And I think Jared Angle is one of the best male partners – if not THE best – City Ballet has.  I think Macaulay just wanted to be snarky – that’s part of his critic’s voice. I think he thinks he’s being funny. Maybe snark and sarcasm in critical reviews are partly a British thing? I see a lot of it though in reviews these days.

I think Macaulay knows a lot about dance history and I get the most out of his reviews when he focuses on that – on the history of a production, how this compares to others’ or past productions, the history of the performers, the artists, etc. I generally like his Nutcracker review, most of which focuses on Balanchine’s unique take on Tchaikovsky. The serious parts of it are very illuminating and show why this production is important and thus why a reader of his review might want to go see it. So the snarky part about Ringer’s weight seems really out of place. I actually re-read the sentence and that directly following it a few times, thinking maybe he meant that Ringer and Angle were dizzy, dancing with childish abandon when they usually dance like adults. But, no, I think he has to mean that they were both plumper than usual – the same as everyone else’s interpretation.

In response to Edwards’s question 1 above: I do remember former chief critic John Rockwell making references to dancers’ bodies, albeit not with the same snarky voice. In particular I remember him likening Marcelo Gomes’s legs to “tree trunks,” which offended some dance-goers. But it also seemed that he really loved Gomes and he’d lauded his dancing in the same review. So then it didn’t seem like he was making a value judgment, just a description.

It is tricky, because it’s hard not to talk about bodies since they’re kind of inherent in this art form. I offended readers (mainly on Facebook) once in my review of Burn the Floor on Broadway by saying that the tiny Broadway stage looked way too crowded during the ensemble numbers with all of those dancers and the band sharing it. I said it looked particularly crowded when Maks Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff were the leads, as opposed to Pasha Kovalev and Anya Garnis, since the former two – Maks in particular – were so large. I didn’t at all mean it as a criticism of him, but of the staging (and I suggested they take the band off of the stage, like in Tharp’s Movin’ Out). And, everyone who’s read my blog for any length of time knows that I often prefer larger dancers (Veronika Part, Marcelo, Roberto Bolle, Vaidotas Skimelis – come on!) But I was still attacked and even told if I didn’t remove it, those people would never read my blog again.

Also, sometimes a partnership just doesn’t work right when one dancer is too large for the other. Sometimes certain movement, certain styles look better on one dancer because of that dancer’s physique. I think those are valid criteria for judging the quality of a performance. But it can still get out of control – as in So You Think You Can Dance when the judges just start talking about the dancers’ bodies. How many times did they have to remark on Josh Allen’s butt? I always felt embarrassed for the whole show whenever that happened but everyone else seemed to think it was funny. But of course New York Times is not a corny TV show.

What is the purpose of a newspaper review anyway? To let your audience know from your educated perspective what is good and bad about a performance, and whether or not they should spend their money and go see it. I don’t really like Edwards’s second question because I don’t think the purpose of a review is to be of use to venues, artists, aspiring dancers, and arts organizations. The critic’s duty is to his readership – a general audience of potential dance-goers trying to decide whether to spend their money on a certain show. The critic has to be honest about what she thinks did and didn’t work in the show and why. And I also think for the presumably well-educated NY Times audience it’s nice when the critic goes into the history of a production, of a dance, the way Macaulay often does. But the critic can’t be protecting the artist from hurt and also serving his readership of potential dance-goers. Otherwise, he’s going to end up lying to someone.

Which gets back to the issue of whether a dancer’s weight gain or loss is a serious criterion in judging the quality of a performance. I think it’s ridiculous that someone would think it is, but what do you guys think? Why are we, as a culture, so hung up on weight anyway? People are always criticizing certain dancers for being too thin as well…

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Paperback Dolls and Nutrackers

I have a guest post up today at the Paperback Dolls blog! They’re currently featuring New York authors and bloggers as part of their “Passport to New York” series. So, since I’m both, I talked about both my novel and the blog.

Regarding the blog, I gave their readers some recommendations on what to see in New York for the next couple of months dance-wise. I then realized I haven’t done that for my own readers yet, because I’ve been so blasted busy. But of course everyone who regularly reads my blog knows what I’ll recommend: Alvin Ailey, upcoming at City Center for the month of December (it’s Judith Jamison’s last season as artistic director so there will be lots of tributes to her); New York City Ballet’s Balanchinian Nutcracker which has already begun and continues on through the beginning of the year; and ABT’s new Nutcracker, which begins December 22nd and will be at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

I didn’t have a chance to write about it but I saw a small sneak preview of ABT’s new Nut at the Guggenheim’s Works & Process event a couple weeks ago, at which choreographer Alexei Ratmansky and conductor Ormsby Wilkins spoke. Several excerpts were performed including Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes dancing part of the final Clara and the Prince pas de deux, the Russian dance, and some of the snow scenes. Ratmansky and ABT representatives had said earlier during a press conference that it would be pretty much traditional, but from what I saw it looks very modern. The costumes and sets – which are gorgeous and are made by Richard Hudson, the Tony award-winning set designer of the Lion King – are period, but the movement looked very modern to me, not at all classical. The pas de deux looked like lyrical and more romantic (without a capital “r”) and less fairy tale-like than I’ve normally seen, and the Russian dance looked folksy and even a bit slapsticky rather than the classical bravura dancing we’re used to with “Trepak.” Anyway, Ratmansky had noted that the original choreography for this ballet is no longer extant so that’s why there are so many different versions. The only two versions I’m really that familiar with, I guess, are Balanchine’s and the San Francisco Ballet’s two-year-old version, the DVD of which I reviewed a while back.

Anyway, I think the new Ratmansky Nutcracker is going to be a departure from the ordinary, and it will be interesting to see the whole and see how audiences react!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!