For some reason, this day always seems more fun to celebrate than our own 4th. Maybe just because it’s foreign, but also I think because the French Revolution signified much more historically and on larger scale than our own. Anyway, I seem to have been eating a lot of French food lately (Nice Matin, L’Express, French Roast) because I have a bagful of little postcards announcing tonight’s celebratory feasts at those restaurants. If you’re in NY and you’re so inclined, I recommend Nice Matin.
Sorry about the lateness of this post. Again. I think in the future I may limit myself to one dance review per week, because, as much as I love ballet and as much as I love being in the theater every night, I just get so tired when the pressure’s on to write so much — especially when ballet season is segmented by two big ballroom competitions and there are weekly dance shows on TV… it just starts to cut back a bit on the enjoyment for me. Plus, I’m supposed to be spending the summer revising my novel and other fiction / creative nonfiction pursuits… We’ll see how I feel in six weeks when I’ll likely be bored out of my mind and starved for dance…
Anyway, I liked Giselle but can’t say I fell completely in love with it. For people new to this ballet, it’s the oldest classical ballet that is still being performed (was first performed in Paris in 1841), and the story is basically: Hilarion, village gameskeeper is in love with Giselle, a peasant girl; Count Albrecht, a nobleman, decides to pretend he is a peasant so that Giselle will fall for him; he passes; she falls; Hilarion, figuring out Albrecht’s disguise, reveals his true identity; and Giselle goes mad and dies of a broken heart. That’s the first Act; second Act is: Albrecht and Hilarion go to visit Giselle’s grave where each man in turn encounters the Wilis, a group of spirits who in life were maidens whose lovers failed to marry them before they died. They now roam the earth from dusk till dawn, their spirits restless with unrequited love. Any male who enters their kingdom risks being forced by them in their vengeance to dance to his death. Hilarion suffers this unfortunate fate, but Giselle protects Albrecht from her sister Wilis, and he lives.
I saw the cast with Julie Kent in the lead, the illustrious Ethan Stiefel (who I haven’t really seen dance since his double knee operations a couple of years ago now) as Count Albrecht, and Michele Wiles as the Wilis’ queen. I love Julie in this role and can’t really imagine anyone dancing it better except Veronika Part who wasn’t ever cast in the lead role (why, does anyone know?) Julie’s such a wonderful actress; she does the fullest mad scene I’ve seen, as she slowly realizes Hilarion is right about Albrecht’s identity, runs around stage nearly ripping her hair out, then falls to her knees holding her head in her hands trying to will it not so, then running around stage again, having a moment of seeming normalcy, then reverting to anger, then to tears, finally collapsing. You really believe she’s gone mad. And she plays the character with so much fragility throughout; you can see her delicacy and her constant emotional wavering between extremes even at the beginning when she’s counting the flowers of her daisy. When she ends with a “he loves me not” she throws down the bouquet and runs from him, looking terrified, but when he tricks her by surreptitiously discarding a petal behind her back, her mood instantaneously changes to extreme bliss. Julie hints at what is to come for this poor emotionally fraught girl.
At intermission I overheard in the bathroom line a young woman — must have been in her late teens or very early twenties — say to her friend, “I just don’t get it? What do you mean she dies of a broken heart???” The girl laughed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah,” the friend responded with a giggle and a shrug, indicating she liked the ballet but didn’t know how to defend it.
My biggest problem isn’t that it’s unbelievable that in this time period an emotionally unstable young woman may have gone mad — although I think it might make more sense to contemporary audiences to just have Giselle kill herself rather than literally die of her madness — but that I don’t understand Albrecht’s motives. The way Ethan played him, he didn’t seem to either. And the ballet starts in the middle of his story, where he’s already asking his friend if his disguise works, so he’s not really a fully developed character. So it’s not really entirely the dancer’s fault the character doesn’t make complete sense; but I still think he must figure it all out for himself beforehand and decide how he’s going to interpret it so it’s as clear to us as possible. Albrecht’s a nobleman and he’ll always be a nobleman, so did he just see this beautiful peasant girl one day while he was out and about and was so taken with her he wants to seduce her, or did he really fall in love with her and does he think there’s actually a future for them, class issues aside? Is he just a playboy who’s not thinking? Does he plan to marry her and somehow think he’s going to be able lead this double life forever? Is he a bit off, himself? Does he know how fragile she is and how serious is his deceit? I don’t know, but it’s important to me to have those answers or the ballet’s story doesn’t resonate. The way Ethan played the character, he seemed first intent on passing in his disguise, intent on flirting and getting her to like him, then annoyed at Hilarion for exposing him, then suddenly upset that she’s dead (which he doesn’t seem to have expected), then finally showing up at her grave in sorrow and dancing with her spirit. Because his character made more sense to me in the second Act — he now sees the error of his ways and is horribly sorry — I liked that part better than the first.
The other thing about this ballet that keeps it from being a favorite for me is that the story seems to be told primarily through the acting or miming rather than through specific choreography. Certain scenes, like where she goes mad for example, aren’t very movement-specific; her insanity and ensuing death aren’t depicted through actual twisted, tortuous steps, etc., but just by however the ballerina chooses to act it (falling to the floor and covering her face with her hands, etc.) Maybe the repeated one-footed bouncing bourrees would have been better suited for this scene than for the Wilis scene. Such a repetitive movement seems a little maddening… Anyway, a ballet should be told primarily through movement; otherwise it’s more like a play.
I loved both Sascha Radetsky as Hilarion (I really felt his pain on Giselle’s death and I understood all of his actions — of course he’s going to reveal the imposter who’s going to lead to his love’s demise) and Michele Wiles as Myrta, queen of the Wilis. Michele was so controlling and regal, yet forgiving and willing to “listen” to others. As Giselle’s ghost danced with Albrecht, instead of simply standing aside, Michele’s Myrta stood regally in front of her flock of potentially murderous maidens, maintaining the power to unleash them at any time on the poor Count. Michele continued to look all powerful, then turned, crooking her head over her shoulder regarding the two, as if to make sure Albrecht wasn’t taking advantage yet again of her new charge. The pas de deux almost became Michele’s, though she stood shock still, as you could read the subtly changing expressions on her face –Â the hatred of Albrecht, the realization that Giselle loved him, the decision to let him live. I didn’t used to like Michele so much, but I feel like she’s finding the layers, the vulnerability, making each character her own.
Anyway, one thing I won’t be missing for the second half of the summer is all that obnoxious Lincoln Center construction. It wasn’t fun trying to navigate your way through the multiple mazes to find the State Theater, the Met, the library. And of course crowd control was near impossible because of limited entrances. I don’t think ABT started before 8:15-8:20 p.m. a single night this season because of the length of time it took to get the audience through those doors. And where did my fountain go 🙁 Let’s pray it’s done by next year.
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Subway is deserted, streets are deserted. I wish they would start these competitions earlier in the evening than 8 pm.
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On my way through Times Square subway station I noticed a Salsa competition video showing in the window of one of the shops. Organizer Billy Fajardo was then shown giving an interview, followed by more dancing. His Salsa competition in Miami several years ago was the first one I ever did, so it brought back nice memories. Also nice to see people stopping in the subway to watch dance.
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Failing to consult weather forecast means having to wait out thuderstorm with ridiculously overpriced meal at lincoln center cafe.
Update: Okay, don’t EVER go to the Lincoln Center Restaurant on the ground floor of Avery Fisher Hall (Panevino is it’s name, just to make clear it’s not the Grand Tier Restaurant in the Met I’m talking about). If it’s thunderstorming, just run across the street with your Playbill on top of your head to Fiorello’s or Josephine’s or, like Barbara did (in comments below), Starbucks. I had to run to Magnolia’s afterward to get the taste of desiccated Orta out of my mouth. (Menu said it — ‘it’ being a type of fish I can’t seem to find any mention of anywhere on the internet — was supposed to be pan seared but I know pan seared — not from cooking myself lord forbid but from dining out — and this was not it. It was dried straight through; pan seared is seared on the top and bottom leaving the moisture and flavor inside.) The ladies beside me (who’d just enjoyed ABT’s Don Quixote) were having equally desiccated chicken. They had never heard of orta either. And my fava bean puree was not a puree; it had the consistency of lumpy mashed potatoes, and was completely flavorless to boot. The Chianti was okay but I could have done without the dishwater soap-stained glass. When I finally got home (ended up getting wet anyway), I had a very upset stomach for the rest of the night. Always say no to Panevino, even in an emergency!
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Performance- rampage event in the Movement Research festival. We met at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea and were led through the streets down to the Village by two people on stilts, who stopped at various points to play wind instruments and show us site-specific dance performances by various dancers participating in the festival, my favorite of which was Luciana Achugar, who pretended to go spelunking in a white lacey thong, knee-high sweater tights and ski mask along the ramp railing at St. Vincent’s hospital. They had us chanting at points, “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going shopping!”
It was too funny watching passersby try to figure out what to make of us. At one point the leaders asked us to give ourselves a round of applause as we passed by a busy restaurant, patrons staring out the window open-mouthed. There must have been nearly 100 of us. The festival curators hadn’t expected such a large turnout and we held up a lot of traffic walking through the streets. We ended up at the Judson Memorial Church (where the original Judson movement began in the 60s, which many consider to mark the beginning of post-modern dance) and had a dance party.
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Have found a small group of people in a grassy area moving in unison!
Experimental dance angst part 2
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I have just about circled the entire park and can tell you there’s no such place as the labrynth. Is this part of the performance- thoroughly exhausting and confusing the would be goer?
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I’m supposed to review a dance performance at the labrynth in battery park and noone here has ever heard of the place!
I don’t mean to make him sound like fine wine or something, but it’s just unbelievable how he gets better and better each time I see him perform this role. I linked to this before, but here’s a YouTube of him doing the first of Ali’s solos. During the second intermission, after the solos, two older women in the cocktail line were saying he’s no different than Baryshnikov. “He’s every bit as good; it’s just like seeing him again,” one declared. Unfortunately, I missed the era of Baryshnikov here, but I can’t possibly imagine anyone better than Angel. I love all three of the solos, but I love the jetes and the fouette sequence of the second two most. I love hearing all the screams emanating from the balcony when he bends his knee and snakes his body up and down mid-pirouette. I only wish he would have done his flying leap of a curtain call. He only came out once, not giving people enough time to pelt him with bouquets! I guess it was Wednesday and the crowd wasn’t as wild as normal, or maybe he was feeling under the weather… you can never tell it from his dancing of course. Oh, and he looks exactly the same as before — same straight charming boyish hair, no longish, wavy Julio-esque perm like in his new headshot 🙂 Anyway, he made the night, obviously!
Along with Jose of course. Jose danced Lankendem, owner of the harem. For those who don’t know this ballet, Le Corsaire, originally choreographed by Joseph Mazilier for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1856 but shortly thereafter re-choregraphed by Petipa for the Kirov / Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg, is cutely corny. It’s about a pirate, Conrad, who falls in love with a slave girl, Medora, and his quest to help her escape and be with him. It’s a favorite among balletomanes because of all its bravura dancing from the two leads, Ali (Conrad’s slave), Gulnare (Medora’s friend), and Lankendem. Jose somehow manages to make his Lankendem so lovable. He’s a bad slave-driver who will stop at nothing to keep Medora in his clutches, and you just want to cry out “noooo,” when Conrad’s pirates surround him on the ground, spears in hand. Poor little Jose! He did brilliantly too with his bravura solo (which is actually my favorite because of the barrel turns 🙂 )
So, Marcelo and Paloma, who were supposed to dance Conrad and Medora, were replaced by Irina Dvorovenko and Cory Stearns, a member of the corps, who I think was dancing his first big part. I always love Irina, and I never see her much since she doesn’t often dance with Marcelo. I guess sometimes it’s good that Marcelo’s out (though I’m not sure why they were replaced last night), because it gives me a chance to see other dancers once in a while 🙂 Irina is probably the most dramatic, the best actress of all of ABT’s ballerinas and I love her for it — she projects to the entire audience, including people up in the nosebleeds, she makes it obvious through facial expressions what her character wants without relying too much on pantomime (with which many newcomers to ballet are unfamiliar), and she’s so expressive with her body, so clear in her intentions. If you’re bringing someone new who’s never seen that ballet before, you want her in the lead; she makes the most sense of everything and brings her character’s dramatic conflict most to life. Well Julie Kent does too, as does Veronika Part (who, horribly sadly, is leaving ABT at the end of this season), but people like to dump on Irina, and there’s no reason to, dammit!
So, Cory. He was good. His dancing was excellent — perfect, grand jetes, great height, great lines, very energetic (though I think he got a little tired by the end). He is a tall man with long legs, kind of David Hallberg-esque, though not as high-waisted. If this was his first time in a big role, I think he did a very good job. My only thing was that I felt his Conrad was a little too severe. He scared me at points, getting a little too aggressive in trying to get Medora away from Lankendem. At times he seemed more like a villain than a hero. But he’ll definitely grow artistically.
Oh and another thing that blew me away — one of the Odalisques was breathtaking. She did a crazy series of chaine turns and pirouettes and really blew me away (as well as my next-seat neighbor who clapped like nuts!) I’m not completely sure whether it was Simone Messmer or Renata Pavam, but one of them knocked me out.
Oh, I’m sad; this is my only Corsaire since I’m leaving tonight. It continues through the rest of the week, the Swan Lake is next week (breaks my heart that I’m going to have to miss Veronika Part‘s Swan; I’ll still be in England — someone tell me how it is!), and the following week is the new Twyla Tharp, which I’ll be back for and about which I’m very excited. If you’re in New York, go here for more info / tickets.
Okay, gotta go finish packing! I definitely plan to mobile-blog from Blackpool, and may computer-blog as well if I can find a secure wireless connection. I’ll post all the pictures when I return!
I don’t have a lot of time to write since I have a bizillion and a half things to do before Blackpool (which I leave for in two days!), so I’ll be brief. I thought DWTS’s season finale was the best ever. The remaining three are all really good, far better than prior contestants, and they have their own cute strengths.
Cristian has definitely improved the most, of these three and of any contestant ever, I think. He’s 1000% improved from the way he was dancing at the beginning of the season and that is what this show is about — a normal person / non-dancer learning to dance well. At the beginning of the show I remember his limbs looking like spaghetti, totally out of control, no shaping or definition to his upper body, and he was dancing Latin too far up on his toes, had no grounding, and it just didn’t look right. Now all that is nearly gone. His hips are now near perfect, he’s much more weighted, his arms are not flailing out of control, and he has much better definition throughout his body. He’s still not a pro male dancer, but he’s just about the closest thing to a pro without being one, especially for someone who started out so poorly. I’m just so proud of him 😀 I feel like HE won the opening number, not Kristi. And I don’t care if his freestyle lifts were not as fancy as Jason’s; not only did he do extremely well with them, but they were lovely and complemented the choreography and music. Why does he need to raise her above his head just for the sake of showing he can? An overhead lift wouldn’t have added anything to their routine; it would have been out of place in fact since the music was kind of fluid and fast. I just can’t stop smiling whenever Cristian is on the floor.
And, regarding his injury: I know, people say it’s wrong that he’s still dancing, but, honestly, right or wrong, I know many professionals who dance with an injury so they can finish out the season, then have their surgery. And many pro ballroom dancers will dance with an injury if they’ve made a commitment to their student, to do a competition or a student showcase. I’m not saying it’s right, but I feel like in a way his problem is pretty typical and shows what a lot of dancers go through and the risks they take.
I love Jason, but as much as I love his personality both on the dance floor and in the practice segments, he doesn’t do equally well at Standard and Latin the way Cristian does. That’s another huge plus for Cristian — it’s very hard to do well at both. I really liked his freestyle though. Edyta choreographed something perfect for him. Like Carrie Ann said, who knew Jason could be funky like that! It was like a downplayed hip hop and it looked perfect on him.
And, hehehe, he is a ballerino! Those breathtaking overhead lifts were something right out of Petipa! I love it! Soon he’ll be as obsessed with ballet as he is with ballroom! But I think, not being a man and never lifting someone over my head like that, the lifts he did were actually harder than ballet lifts where the danseur carries the ballerina across the floor, because Edyta had him turning in place repeatedly at the same time. That’s damn hard because not only are you lifting, you’re making yourself sickly dizzy by spinning. I know as the girl getting myself into a lift, maintaining a position in the air and then getting spun around like that, you just want to throw up when you land; they’re incredibly hard. So, major kudos to him.
I love Kristi and she was once my idol. I don’t know, I feel like I’m not as impressed with her as I was at the beginning of the show. She’s nearly flawless, but she is not without flaws, and now for some reason I just want to compare her to someone like Karina Smirnoff, and she comes up lacking. It’s well-known by now that she knows how to dance and I think I’m probably just being too hard on her because I want perfection. Her legs don’t come together perfectly in Cha Cha, her lines in her upside-down split lifts were not as perfect as Juliana’s, and she doesn’t have the polish and the perfect technique the pro dancers do and that seems to be all I can focus on. Maybe it’s that Mark is such a show-off and he’s outdancing her. When I heard him talking about trying to do a back flip during practice sessions, I thought, WHY, WHY do you have to go and do something like that! But when I saw it, it wasn’t so bad since he lifted her so many times and made her look great and she had a lot of tricks herself. So, it was even, not like it was all about him. She is the best; it’s just that I relate more to the other two because they’re normal people like me who learned throughout the show to dance ballroom wonderfully…
On a very related note, the Dance Times Square showcase last night was so much fun, I can’t even begin to describe. It’s like seeing a DWTS show live, except with far more student performers of all ages, of all shapes and sizes, of all levels of dance ability, all doing their best. And those are combined with all pro showcases of course. They’re the best studio for putting on these kinds of things for their students.
It was really packed this time. In addition to all the regulars, and the students’ friends and family, there were many many more — either who came to see Pasha & Anya or who were from media outlets. I know there were people from Entertainment Tonight there and Tony mentioned a couple of other news shows too that I can’t remember. There were also talent agents there.
And Sabra and Cameron from So You Think You Can Dance were there! They sat right behind me and Sabra laughed hysterically at Tony and Melanie’s opening jokes and then SCREAMED with applause throughout. She cracked me up. If you’re ever performing you WANT her in the audience!
I sat in the press section toward the front, next to one of the ET crew and he was remarking throughout how amazing he thought this was. And his remarks were genuine. I truly don’t think he’d ever seen anything like it before. You’re sitting down there, the press people are all serious and make you a bundle of nerves even if you are just writing about the event yourself and not performing in it, and then the people up in the balcony (the regulars and friends and family) are up there screaming, wildly cheering on the dancers, calling out their names, making the dancers even laugh at times. And the press people are aghast. “I can’t believe this! This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” ET guy said.
When a couple of senior amateurs danced a cute little Mambo (this is rare; it’s almost always one pro dancing with one amateur), and they were cute, but obviously didn’t do any spectuacular tricks or quick-footed dancing, the audience all started clapping along with the music and cheering for them. The audience made their own fun time, in other words, by really getting into it.
And Elaine. Whenever she was onstage, Elaine stole the show. I know her and can tell she was nervous at the beginning of her first routine. She stumbled a bit and nearly tripped Jacob, her partner, and someone shouted from the balcony, “Dont hurt him, Elaine!” She laughed and it really calmed her nerves. Completely cracked ET guy up. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said for the umpteenth time. Elaine’s so cute and she’s a really good dancer for not learning until well into adulthood and then having the limitations of age. Jacob did several lifts with her — ET guy went nuts — and in one routine she did a series of chaine turns (two-footed traveling turns done in a line) practically all the way across the floor. “Unbelievable, simply unbelievable!” ET guy shouted.
(Elaine is on the right, Claire on the left — I’ll talk about her in a minute. This is on our Dance Times Square outing to see the SYTYCD tour).
I don’t have time to go into all of the routines, but my favorites were Susan Washburn (a longtime student there) and Michael Choi’s hilarious “Sex Bomb” (all the routines by the way were medleys — the music consisted of one song but with different musical artists’ interpretations — one slower and more dramatic, one sped up, one hip-hop-y, etc. So, there would be several dance styles within one song — Cha Cha, disco-y Hustle, a slower Rumba or Bolero, etc. — It was really a clever idea for a showcase — Melanie’s of course. At the beginning, Melanie addressed the crowd, explained the theme of the evening, then said, “I know, this is a rather ingenious idea right? I mean, it’s usually me who comes up with the themes of the showcases, but this time I have to say it was … oh, hehe, it was me again,” she said with a faux blush. The crowd was hysterical). Anyway, of the student showcases, I also loved everything David Johnson was in — he’s an older man, and his schtick was to be so taken with his young female pro that he kind of followed her around aimlessly, trying hard to imitate her and be the perfect partner. It was cute and he acted it all so well, the audience was just screaming in applause. I liked a sultry sexy tango cha cha, etc. by Krysta Gonzales, who you can tell has dance background, and Nazarie Salcedo’s infectious smile makes everything she does a delight to watch. I liked so many though, I just don’t have time to go into them!
Claire Gaines (in the picture above) also performed with her teacher, Jacob Jason. She was also in “Gotta Dance” (she is the one with the mike in the second picture here) and she brought her team of NetSationals with her! They did a little swing / hip hop and the crowd ROARED!
Of course Pasha & Anya performed! They did three routines, which made me very happy — I thought they’d only do one at the very end, but they danced throughout. Their first was a gorgeous medley danced to “Indissoluble.” I don’t even know how to describe it. It was by turns sexy, romantic, bone-chillingly intense, passionate, heated. The dance style was based on Rumba and had some Samba (my favorite part was a series of Samba rolls, but with their faces cheek to cheek, so it looked far more sultry and passionate than normal Samba rolls) and even some Tango, but it really was not ballroom. It was more contemporary. It was just beautiful Dance. It was like something I’ve never seen from them and I was really proud of them for pushing themselves and trying something new, outside regular ballroom. It really could have been in a big dance gala, like when you see those tango companies perform in the 21st Century Stars of Ballet galas or something. It made me think ballroom can and will take new directions and become a real performance art.
They also did a gorgeous Paso that took my breath away. Pasha and his cape 😀 And they ended with a beautiful Rumba in which Anya wore her black Blackpool dress from the year they placed second in Rising Star. My favorite dress of hers, EVER… (middle and right pictures here)
Maybe it was just the lights, but she seems to be wearing her hair lighter now, which I like. Now, it’s a light brown. I think dirty blonde is her natural color (and my favorite for her); she’d dyed it for SYTYCD. She also seems to have got a light, wavy perm. Pasha looks the same 🙂
It’s always beyond wonderful to see them again, but I always get so sad, and I left the theater feeling like I was going to cry. I don’t know why.
Oh one more thing, Karen and Matt Hauer, another pro couple who compete in the American Rhythm section at national competitions, performed a few numbers. Karen completely blew me away. She has grown by leaps and bounds in the past couple of years since I first saw her dance. Her movement is so fierce, so fluid, so amazing. Her upper body isolations, which you can really see in the slower dances, the way she rounds her shoulders, contracts her rib cage, you can trace the muscular ripple from her shoulders all the way down to her hips centimeter by centimeter. And she’s dancing with such passion, such intensity. She honestly reminded me of Karina Smirnoff. I was just enthralled.
Here are a couple of pictures I took of them at earlier competitions:
Okay, I have talked too long. I’m never going to be ready for Blackpool!
Ballet season has officially begun in New York! So, I have spent the last two nights at NYCB.
Wednesday night’s program was called “Russian Roots” and last night’s “French Cuisine” — I’m loving these titles, which are named after the nationalities of the composers to whose music Jerome Robbins, the American choreographer they’re honoring this season, choreographed his works.
So, the Russians:
First on on Wednesday night was “Andantino,” a short duet, by turns cute and flirty, and soft and romantic, set to Tschaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, Second Movement.
It was danced by Joaquin De Luz, whom I’m very happy to see again — he’s been out for a while, I heard with an injury — and Megan Fairchild. No one dances with Megan like Joaquin, and I love how he can give a thrilling bravura performance that is still artistic. He can jump fast and leap high but you’re not just watching spectacular athletic feats; he makes everything part of the character of the dance.
Next was one of my favorites of the night, “Opus 19 / The Dreamer,” set to music by Sergei Prokofiev. I like Prokofiev so much I think because his music is full of dramatic tension, it can be very unsettling. It can go from dulcet and mellifluous to angst-filled and foreboding in just a few measures. In this piece a man, danced here by the very charismatic Gonzalo Garcia, looks rather lost but enchanted, trying to find his way to … somewhere … amidst a chorus of dancers, all in blue, who resembled to me at times, I guess because of the blue backdrop, Matisse’s painting “The Dance.”
Eventually Wendy Whelan emerges as their somewhat mischievous leader and he has some interesting pas de deux with her. She seems at times to help him, at times to taunt him. The end is, as Deborah Jowitt says in her program notes, “enigmatic,” as they fall in each other’s arms, but not necessarily in a romantic way. She could be holding him up, he’s so exhausted. I felt there was a lot to this piece and there’s no way you can thoroughly comprehend it on one viewing. It’s the kind of dance you need to see again and again and every time you’ll find something more than you saw before.
Oh, also, at the beginning of each evening, they’re showing a clip of Robbins working with a dancer or dancers on one of the pieces performed in that night’s program. Wednesday night they showed Robbins working with a dancer (who’s name I didn’t get — he looked like Baryshnikov but had a completely American accent) on Opus 19, and they repeated a section over and over again. When Garcia did that section you immediately recognized it and got so much more out of it. It was kind of funny trying to discern how well, Garcia, who’s far too young to have ever worked with Robbins, did as Robbins had instructed the other dancer. I personally think he did well with the traveling steps, but the lunges were not entirely there 🙂 But I wish there would be more of this in the ballet world in general — allowing audiences to witness process.
Next on was “Piano Pieces,” my other favorite of the evening, set again to Tschiakovsky. This work reminded me of one of Robbins’ masterpieces, “Dances at a Gathering.” It opens with an ensemble performing a cute Russian peasant-like polka dance, then the charming Antonio Carmena has an impish, quick-paced, high-jumping solo that looks near impossible to perform but of course he breezily pulls it off, followed by the first duet, “The Reverie” in which a man seems to try to comfort a day-dreaming woman. Next, Carmena returns for another frisky solo, followed by another couple, danced by some of my favorites Amar Ramasar and Abi Stafford, who do a flirty, Don Quixote-esque, Spanish-flavored pas de deux that I loved. Then there are some solos by each of the pas de deux dancers, some dreamy, some searching, some soft and forelorn, some high-spirited, and in the end, Carmena leads the whole cast in a final, fun, folkish polka.
All I can say is whenever Amar Ramasar, Abi Stafford, and Kathryn Morgan are onstage, I become completely emotionally involved in their worlds. Amar pulls you in in large part through his superb dramatic abilities — he’s a great actor. He’s a great dancer too, but often it’s his facial expressions combined with the way he moves that make me unable to take my eyes off him. The other two, I don’t know what they have (and I don’t always even recognize Abi right off the bat since from afar she looks like a lot of the other dancers, but I do once she gets into her solo!), but they just have a kind of expressiveness, everything they do has such thought and purpose behind it, it really pulls you in and compels you to stay with them. They’re both so young too; it’s amazing they have so much artistry this early on. I also feel this way about Andrew Veyette, but more in the Robbins ballets, which he strongly excels at, than Balanchine.
Anyway, last on was Les Noces, a dramatic ballet with a narrative storyline choreographed to Igor Stravinsky. This is a ballet I have a feeling many will roll their eyes at because there’s not a whole lot of pointe and traditional balletic movement, but I liked it. It was very very intense. It depicts the wedding of two young Russian peasants, a ceremony that seems to make marriage something more to be feared than enamored, like a very painful rite of passage. The aforementioned Kathryn Morgan is the poor young bride, Allen Peiffer her very teenage-looking groom. There is a chorus onstage, in back of the dancers, who sing beautifully. The piece begins when Kathryn’s assistants load bundles of wrapped-up cord atop her shoulders, and, at the banging start of the music, a soprano screams out, as Kathryn releases each bundle her mouth open imitating the soprano, in immense fear and agony. The whole thing proceeds this way, with this same emotional undercurrent. Much of the folk dancing by the men consists of flexed-footed, bent-kneed jumps up and down, their weight creating a thump as they land. It’s a perfect portrayal of masculine aggression and seems to forebode the wedding night.
Andrew Veyette danced the part of the groom’s father here, and, as I said above, I think he is such the quintessential Robbins dancer. While most others look a little uncomfortable with some of the non-balletic movement — like these loud, weighty, thumping Russian peasant jumps, or the modern jazzy moves from New York Export Opus Jazz and the bravado swaggering walks of West Side Story Suite — he looks perfectly at home.
I generally liked better Russian night, but briefly, “French Cuisine” consisted of “Mother Goose: A Fairy Tale For Dancers” set to Maurice Ravel music (who, embarrasingly, I actually thought was American because some of his musical flourishes can sound a bit Sousa-esque), Robbins’ very well-known “Afternoon of a Faun” to Claude Debussy, “Antique Epigraphs” set to the same composer, and “In G Major” again to Ravel.
In “Mother Goose” dancers in work-out clothes — leotards and tights — don different kinds of theatrical hats, as if they are play-acting a fairy-tale just for the fun of it. The story begins with a tutu-ed Sleeping Beauty being cursed to a life of sleep after pricking her finger while jumping rope. In her dreams, dancers enact three fairytales, Beauty and the Beast (Beauty was danced again by mesmerizing Kathryn Morgan), Hop o’ My Thumb, and “Empress of the Pagodas.” Eventually, Prince Charming wakes Sleeping Beauty and all is happy in the make-believe world the fooling-around dancers have constructed.
“Afternoon of a Faun” was originally choreographed by Nijinsky, but in his version, which takes place in a forest, a male faun is smitten by several wickedly enchanting nymphs. Robbins re-set the ballet in a dance studio. It begins with a male dancer fawning over his own reflection in the mirror, which looks out toward the audience (so the dancer is actually looking out at you, but seeing his own reflection, which he, amusingly, adores). A female dancer then enters, equally taken with her own reflection. Part of their self-interest lies of course in their being dancers, who are of necessity looking at themselves in the mirror to correct technique flaws, but I also see a lot of narcisissm. Jowitt says in her Playbill notes there is no self-absorption, but I see it. I think Robbins is perhaps saying a certain amount of self-obsession with one’s physicality is necessary to being a dancer? Anyway, I actually think this piece is quite funny, as you watch the dancers, so absorbed with their own reflections suddenly notice another person is present and manage throughout the course of the ballet to engage in a kind of contact with that other. This was danced by the bewitching Janie Taylor, whom I love but seem to hardly ever see, and Damian Woetzel, who will be retiring later this season.
“Antique Epigraphs” consisted of several women, all dressed in nude-colored body-stockings covered with brilliant-sheened, diaphanous, ankle-length tunics. The dancers usually danced as a unit, often in sync, but at times would break off into a solo or duet. It looked very Greek, hence the name, I guess. This shortish piece really resembled a painting, or a group of Greek statues come to life. It retained that air of pieces of artwork come to life.
Finally, last night ended with “In G Major” a work from 1975, whose main appeal to me was the jazzy movement combined with the costumes and set, designed by the artist Erte. The background set is simple but stunning in its sharp lines. It depicts a sun, clouds and ocean waves, so the dancers are clearly at the beach. Their Roaring 20s-style beach clothes are dress swimsuits with the cute little skirts, which bear sharp large horizontal lines, some red, some blue (except for the main female lead, which is solid white); the men’s costumes bear wavy lines, as you can see above. The dancing, often in pairs, is evocative of Twenties-style jazz and Swing, like a celebratory frolic on the beach.
In closing, I just have to say, hehehe, I think NYCB is becoming a bit like ABT — when star principal dancer Wendy Whelan, who danced the female lead here, made her entrance some people began clapping. But this is not customary at a non-star-driven company like NYCB, so others, confused, clapped, but then didn’t know if they were supposed to but felt like they should follow the others’ lead… It was hilariously confusing. People should just clap, IMO!
Anyway, much more ballet to come in the following weeks 🙂