Tag: NYCB

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Sara Mearns Was Gorgeous in Swan Lake, But Overall Production Was Lacking

 

Last week was Sara Mearns week for me (well, for many New York ballet fans, I suspect). On Tuesday night, she made her debut as the Siren in NYCB’s Prodigal Son. (I’m still awaiting photos and will post as soon as I receive them!) Sean Suozzi danced the lead role. He did very well, but she just always stands out to me whatever she is in – particularly the story ballets. She was the best, most tantalizing, sinister, seductive, all around captivating Siren I’ve ever seen. The way she whipped that cape in between her legs, wrapping it around each one, the way she’d bend her knees slowly into a second-position plie while on point, basically squatting over the son’s head in a suggestive but also sinister manner, the way she’d raise her hand behind her head with the wrist bent and the fingers splayed to indicate her triumph over the son’s will, even just the way she’d walk out onstage on pointe, tiptoeing all around him – everything, every movement was in service of the character and was an integral part of the character’s story. I often feel like I’m seeing steps with other dancers. Just steps. The pas de deux between the son and the siren contains some of Balanchine’s oddest-looking choreography- especially those lifts – ‘here, stand on my knees, wrap your legs around my neck and let me carry you around like that,’ etc. I imagine it would feel very odd and foreign doing some of that, which of course was the point. It’s supposed to look warped and off-kilter. Everyone has mastered those steps, but to me, Mearns makes it the most deliciously warped. I love her.

Then, on Friday night, the company premiered their Swan Lake (Peter Martins version), and she danced the lead. (Photo above by Paul Kolnik, from Playbill Arts.)

In sum, I loved her; I wasn’t in love with the production. I went with several friends, two of whom don’t regularly go to the ballet, and that seemed to be the consensus. Everyone was excited to see Mearns dance again, but not to see that production. She was wonderful for all the same reasons I’ve written about before – she’s like a Veronika Part to me; she does such a full job of developing character, she brings you so fully into her world, you feel all of her pain with her. But of course she’s also an excellent dancer. She has a way of arching her back so, of working her arms and hands so, of extending her leg so high in arabesque, of extending her line so beautifully and making such full shapes – it’s a cliche, but her adagio / White Swan is just breathtaking. It almost makes you want to cry, and one of my friends did!

But she excels in the Black Swan / allegro role as well – not so much because she can do athletic feats like Gillian Murphy or Natalia Osipova (there were “just” a bizillion fouettes during the pas de deux, not a bizillion fouettes divided by multiple pirouettes and wild swan-like port de bras thrown into it all) but because she can do that all perfectly fine while still making it all about the character. When she does a series of lifts with Jared Angle where she spreads her legs into a straddle split in the air above his head, it’s just so wicked! And even at the beginning of the Black Swan, when she makes her entrance and presents her hand to the queen – it’s clear she’s up to no good. But she also doesn’t overdo it. She’s conniving and sinister but with a sweet face.

But the rest of the production: Jared’s an excellent partner, that’s clear. Mearns was way off her center of gravity in much of the White Swan partnering, and he securely held her balance, freeing her up to make those gorgeous shapes, and to act it all out the way she so brilliantly does. But in his own dancing, he just, like practically all dancers these days, goes for the cliche. It all looks so fake. I don’t believe he’s in love with her, or that he’s ever longing for what he doesn’t have, and that he’s devastated when she leaves him in the end. It’s all her sorrow and longing alone. So the performance was so unbalanced. I wish so much I could see her dance this with Marcelo Gomes, who really brings Prince Siegfried’s internal conflicts to life like no one else.

The other major issue I have with this production is the costumes – the costumes and the sets. I always forget about them until I see the ballet again, and, especially when I go with friends. My friends Friday night really found it hard to look beyond those costumes. For some reason, I kept thinking of the Flinstones, my friend, Marie, called them Jackson Pollack on speed or something to that effect (I haven’t read her review yet but will after I finish this post), and the others we went with just couldn’t stop talking about the brash colors. I remember my friend in the fashion industry saying of the Romeo and Juliet costumes (Per Kirkeby designed sets and costumes for both Martins productions) that the colors needed to be muted; these brash, bright, almost neon colors made the characters look like cartoons. Same with the Swan Lake costumes. Cartoonish is NOT what you want to go for in serious ballets like this.

Also, the RACISM. This is another thing I hate to admit I often forget about until I see the ballet again with a friend, and the friend is horrified at the fact that a black man is playing the evil character. Must von Rothbart always be danced by Albert Evans or Henry Seth? Are we not living in the year 2011? I mean, this is a huge reason why young people are so turned off from the ballet. And none of the very educated critics ever seem to be calling Martins on this. What’s up with that? Seriously? I think once you go to the ballet a lot you begin to forget about these things, you become immune to them. Which is horrible. But really, asking your audience to associate black men with evil is a horrible insult to that – probably very educated – audience.

Another problem here: Faycal Karoui (the conductor) was seriously on speed. He was flying through the first half. The poor dancers couldn’t even express the story. They really had to rush falling in love. If I’d never have seen this ballet before (and there were probably some such people there due to the Natalie Portman film), I don’t know if I would have gotten much out of the White Swan pas de deux. And that’s kind of an important part of this ballet…

All other dancers did well – I particularly liked Ana Sophia Scheller and Anthony Huxley (filling in for Sean Suozzi as Benno) in the first act Pas de Trois, and, in the second act, Abi Stafford and Joaquin DeLuz in the Divertissement Pas de Quatre, and Antonio Carmena in the Neapolitan Dance – but everyone did very well (those were just the ones who stood out to me). Oh and I loved Daniel Ulbricht throughout as the Jester. With his immense skill at jumps and turns – and combo jumping turns – and his comical sensibilities, he is perfect for such a role, as he is for Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream – my favorite roles for him.

But I have to say, I was floored when none of the other dancers came out and took bows at the end of the production. Why? Whose idea was that? Only Mearns and Angle and Evans took bows. I realize the dancers are all very hard-working and probably needed to get home to get sleep for the next day’s matinee. But this severely cut Mearns’s bow and curtain calls short. It reduced the celebratory aspect of a production well done. Worse, it also really makes it look like none of the other dancers cared about Mearns, and about the production. It made it look like the company is not really a company of dancers who all work together and support each other. I’ve honestly never seen such a thing before. I’ve seen it where dancers who only dance during the first act will take their bows and curtain calls after the first act and not at the end of the whole, but the dancers who danced in the last act always come out for their bows at the end. Anyway, it really stood out to me. What did other people think?

Here is my friend Marie’s write-up.

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For the Love of Duke

 

 

On Friday night Susan Stroman’s For the Love of Duke premiered at NYCB. Photos above by Paul Kolnik. Top: Tiler Peck, Sara Mearns, and Amar Ramasar; bottom: Mearns and Ramasar. Stroman is primarily a Broadway choreographer (I think her most famous work is probably Contact), and it shows both in her ballets’ strengths and limitations.

For the Love of Duke is divided into two parts. In the first, entitled “Frankie and Johnny … and Rose,” Tiler Peck and Amar Ramasar are Johnny and Rose, a couple in love. They perform a lovely lyrical pas de deux. Then along struts Sara Mearns – Frankie – and Johnny’s attentions are completely lost on her, to the disappointment of Rose. Johnny and Rose are snuggling on a bench together, and when Frankie comes prancing along, Johnny pushes Rose right off the bench, behind it, as if to hide her. Then he does a snazzier dance with Mearns / Frankie, she disappears, and he’s back with Rose … until Frankie comes strutting along again. And so on. At one point, Rose becomes the seductress, and Johnny pushes Frankie off the back of the bench. It was cute, and everyone danced spectacularly, but it got a bit old to me after a while.

The second part – “Blossom Got Kissed” – Stroman had actually choreographed before, creating it for NYCB in 1999. I liked this one better. Both parts, by the way, are choreographed to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, which is where the title of the whole comes from. Anyway, “Blossom” begins with a bunch of girls all dressed in sassy, jazzy red sitting on a bench tapping their feet to Ellington’s rhythm. Along comes Savannah Lowery as Blossom, dressed in a frilly ballet tutu. She sits alongside them on the bench and tries to tap with them. But she has no rhythm and is horribly off. Then they stand and do a jazzy dance, and, again, she tries to join, but just can’t get the hang of it. She is simply too classical ballet. Lowery was hilarious though and it was funny to see her continually try to get the rhythm and technique of jazz dance right by taking a foot and pounding it down flat on the floor. Then, a group of tux-clad men come along and do some swing dancing with the red-clad women. Blossom again tries hard to fit in but just can’t. Finally, a musician in the band (which was onstage), in the person of Robert Fairchild, comes out from the back of the stage, orders the music changed, and does a sweet lyrical ballet pas de deux with her.

I feel like I’ve seen “Blossom” before because Lowery’s hilarious flat-footedness looked familiar. I liked it better than the first part because to me it was funnier, and the story went a little further.

I think Stroman is very good at creating a story through dance, and that’s what I like about her. You can tell she’s not really a ballet choreographer though. Compared to the first two pieces of the night – Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH and Wheeldon’s Polyphonia – the actual dance just wasn’t that rich. Still, I think she complemented the program well. It can never hurt to include in an evening of ballet a cute narrative dance with music that’s not usual ballet fare.

As always, I loved Concerto DSCH. Ratmansky was in the audience. I felt the music was played a bit too fast though (conductor was Ryan McAdams, Elaine Chelton the pianist). It looked like Ashley Bouder had a slight mishap, though I’m not sure because I was busy watching Joaquin DeLuz do a sequence of crazy fast steps into a somersault at the speed of light. Andrew Veyette again replaced Gonzalo Garcia, who I am really missing. I hope he’s okay. Veyette is doing a fine job as one of the two playful guys in blue, but there’s this repeating series of throws – where they each kind of propel the other into the air, and I love how Garcia always gets such height when he bounces off the other two.

Tyler Angle replaced Benjamin Millepied, and did wonderfully. I always notice things with Tyler that I haven’t noticed before – like how when he and the girl in green (Wendy Whelan) make their entrance, he’s spinning her around and around, and she looks like she’s hanging on to him for dear life. It kind of sets the tone of their relationship. I always notice the music much more when he dances as well.

Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia is definitely one of my favorites of his. I love the musicality of it, and the originality of the combinations. It’s set to ten piano pieces by Ligeti, who, the program notes, developed micropolyphony – a type of music involving sustained dissonant chords that shift slowly over time. You can really see that “micropolyphony” in the dancing, as the sets of dancers (eight all together, divided into four pairs) begin dancing together in a line but each pair doing something completely different. Then, they eventually come together and dance in unison, but then they drift apart again later. There’s some very clever, almost humorous partnering throughout, but particularly in the second movement, Arc-en-ciel, Etudes pour piano, danced by Maria Kowroski and Jared Angle. I haven’t seen this ballet as often as I would like to. I was going to say I wish he’d include this one more often in Morphoses programs, and then I remembered…

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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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Gillian Murphy Critical of “Black Swan”

 

Apparently, Gillian Murphy gave an interview to the L.A. Times in which she called Black Swan unrepresentative of the ballet world and said she was a little disturbed by its intentionally overdone darkness. She says in her experience the lecherousness of the artistic director is fake (thankfully!) as is the competitiveness within the company, though she admits it’s competitive to get into a big company in the first place. I would have thought it would be competitive within a company as well, but from the time I’ve spent around ABT and NYCB dancers (and from reading their blogs) it does seem that the dancers are very supportive of each other. And the support doesn’t seem false, like it’s forced whenever outsiders are around, but genuine. Look at how everyone came to the support of Jenifer Ringer over Macaulay’s snarky comment about her weight.

But apparently Dancing on My Grave presents another story. Maybe things have really changed since then.

Interestingly the article mistakenly calls Murphy British (as if they’re trying to present her as uppity toward Hollywood). She’s American though, and has never seemed the least bit snobbish, imo.

Above, Gillian with Ethan Stiefel in Swan Lake (as the white swan! 🙂 ); photo by Fabrizio Ferri, from here.

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Benjamin Millepied’s “Plainspoken”

Last Thursday was NYCB’s Fall gala, during which they presented the New York City premiere of Benjamin Millepied’s Plainspoken (photo at left, of Teresa Reichlen and Sebastien Marcovici, by Paul Kolnik; the ballet originally premiered in Wyoming this August), along with Robbins’ fabulous homage to Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, I’m Old Fashioned, and Balanchine’s Tarantella and Western Symphony.

The evening began with the orchestra pit rising and the always lively Faycal Karoui leading the orchestra in a rendition of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide Overture. I love that movable orchestra pit – best thing, in my opinion, about the recent renovations to the Koch Theater.

I was hoping there would be introductions and short speeches, including one by Sarah Jessica Parker, who served as honorary chair for the after-performance party. But no such luck – I guess because it wasn’t the beginning of the season, like galas usually are. I didn’t even get to see Parker come down the red carpet, there were so many paparazzi blocking my view. I certainly heard her though – or, rather, the paparazzi, as they screamed her name like she was the Messiah. I didn’t recognize anyone else. Lots of good-looking people perfectly coiffed and dressed in black tie but no one I recognized. I didn’t see Natalie Portman, though I heard she was there. I never recognize famous people, though. I’m really bad that way.

Anyway, I’m Old Fashioned was, as always, enjoyable, albeit too long. No dance-maker needed an editor more than Jerome Robbins in my opinion- and Tyler Angle stood out to me in his solos and duets with Maria Kowroski. But my favorite part of the evening was the second half of the post-intermission, when Ashley Bouder and Daniel Ulbrich just nailed Balanchine’s super fast-paced bravura-heavy duet, Tarantella (Ulbrich smacked the tambourine so hard one of the little metal things came flying off) and then Sara Mearns just astounded me in the last section of Western Symphony. How in the world does she stand on pointe, on her own unsupported by a male dancer, and lift her other leg in the air into a perfect split, into practically a six o’clock penchee? How how how? She and Charles Askegard really put on a show as tart-y saloon dancer and cowboy. She is really just unbelievable.

Okay, so onto Plainspoken. Well, sometimes I like Millepied, and sometimes the work just falls a bit flat to me. I didn’t much care for this one, though I’ve liked his last several ballets for ABT and NYCB. This was very abstract, no story that I could find, and I’m just not a fan of purely abstract ballets that I can’t find any story in whatsoever. It was a ballet for four couples: Sterling Hyltin and Tyler Angle, Teresa Reichlen and Amar Ramasar, Jennie Somogyi and Sebastien Marcovici, and Janie Taylor and Jared Angle (the last were generally my and my friend’s favorite pair – I think because Janie always brings something dark to her roles, there’s always something beneath the surface with her even if you can’t put your finger on what it is). The couples sometimes changed partners though, and there would be different-sized groupings.

The music was by Pulitzer prize-winning composer David Lang – it was a commissioned score – but to me the music here wasn’t nearly as rich as, for example, that used by Morphoses recently. This was mainly strings and piano and each section seemed emotionally the same. There didn’t seem to be a lot of contrast between the movements or a build-up toward the end. The sections were each differently lit – by a different color and a background curtain that would rise and lower to reveal more or less light than the section before. But the set was nothing very dramatic and the different colors didn’t, for me at least, evoke a different mood.

Movement-wise, there seemed to be a swimming theme. At various points the dancers would sit on the floor and make motions evocative of swimming – sweeping arms through the air, paddling legs – backward, then forward, then all dancers lying on their backs with their feet in the air like a synchronized swim team. At other points, the women would be carried somewhat Chaconne-like across the stage. I remember a slide characterizing Janie’s section, and she made it seem as if she was being taken by the men who slid her, against her will, across the floor.

I also have in my notes that the movement toward the beginning, in the first section, was a combination of robotic and more casual walks, kind of like the ensemble walking across the back of the stage in the second part of Robbins’s Glass Pieces. This kind of movement was interspersed with the swimming-like motions. In later sections, dancers seemed to run in place.

Oh, and during Janie’s section, there was a point where the men all picked her up and hoisted her high above them, like in MacMillan’s Manon or the Balanchine ballet where the woman is carried around the whole time by a group of men and the lone man on the floor keeps reaching up for her (sorry, can never remember the name of that ballet). My friend loved this part, and I did as well, but couldn’t really figure out how it played into the rest of that section.

In general, my first impressions of this ballet were: some interesting movement reminiscent of other ballets that didn’t seem to add up to much and didn’t really make me feel anything.

At the end, Millepied, Lang and the costume designer (Karen Young) and lighting designer (Penny Jacobus) took the stage for a bow. The applause seemed more polite than hearty (in contrast to the crazy applause Wheeldon always gets!), but that could just be me projecting my own thoughts onto everyone else.

What about you guys? I saw some mentions on Facebook of people liking it. Who else saw it and what did you think?

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NILAS MARTINS QUIETLY RETIRES FROM NYCB

 

According to the New York Times Arts Beat blog, Nilas Martins, longtime principal with New York City Ballet (and son of Artistic Dir. Peter Martins) has retired. Without a farewell performance, without flowers, without fanfare. The story is that he has a knee injury and suffered continuing problems with that, and ended up getting a job with the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at Kennedy Center and just didn’t feel up to coming back and giving a final performance. I can’t say I blame him. He’d received so much criticism the past couple years he probably just didn’t want to see the onslaught of newspaper articles. I want to write a larger post about this, but I received a recent comment on one of my prior posts on a NYCB retirement (that I now can’t seem to find) about how the critics were too negative with  the retirements, writing about the dancers’ faults toward the end instead of their entire career.

It’s a real issue.

I do believe, as Arlene Croce famously said, that a critic’s duty in a democracy is to be critical. But on the other hand, I feel like maybe different standards should apply for the retirement performances. The person is retiring, do their current weaknesses at the end of their long career and the fact that they’re not dancing as well as they did in their twenties and early thirties really need to be focused on? It’s probably easily assumed by the public that they’re not dancing as well as they once did.  And poor Yvonne Borree – the critic assigned to cover her farewell was the youngest on staff; too young to have seen Borree dance in her prime, so all she could say, apart from describing the performance, was that she as a viewer couldn’t ever connect with her. And she should have said what she felt without buttering it up; she’s a journalist not a publicist. But couldn’t they have found someone who’d followed Borree’s career and saw what had been so special about her cover her final performance?

Anyway, more thoughts on this later. For now, I wish Nilas a successful arts management career in DC.

Above photo from the Daily News.

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ABT TO MAKE HISTORIC CUBA VISIT

According to this online newspaper, ABT is to perform in the Havana Festival in October. And according to this blog post, some members of New York City Ballet will join them. I can’t remember if I’ve heard this news before, but it sounds familiar.  It doesn’t seem to be posted on ABT’s website though. Anyway, ABT hasn’t toured Cuba since 1960. It’s all part of the 90th birthday of Alicia Alonso celebrations. Wow. Lucky dancers – I’m so jealous! I’ve wanted to go to Cuba for a long, long time.

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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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MAURICE KAPLOW’S FAREWELL PERFORMANCE WITH NYCB

 

Thursday evening longtime New York City Ballet principal conductor Maurice Kaplow gave his final performance with the company. I had never been to a conductor’s farewell before, and, of course, part of what made this extra sensational was that the newishly mobile orchestra pit (photo above) was raised to stage level for part of the program.

There were four pieces in the program: Melissa Barak’s recently premiered Call Me Ben (the only piece Kaplow didn’t conduct), which was followed by Euryanthe, the Barber Violin Concerto, and ending with Western Symphony.

Euryanthe was only an orchestral piece – no dancing, by Carl Maria von Weber. When Kaplow first took the podium, everyone cheered, which grew into a standing ovation as the orchestra pit rose. One thing I didn’t realize (we’ve only seen the pit rise once before, during the first NYCB program following the Koch theater’s renovations last year) was that the conductor can’t stand at the podium while the pit is rising and falling; he must step down into the musicians’ area. When the pit was finally level with the stage and he climbed up to the podium, he looked out toward the applauding audience and took a grateful bow. Euryanthe was really beautiful, with a lovely, almost sentimental (given the occasion) violin section, followed by an exciting drum-heavy climax. It was nice to see the orchestra for once, and to be able to focus on the music.

Peter Martins’s Barber Violin Concerto really blew me away. I’d never seen it before, and I have to say it’s now one of my favorites of his.

 

Pictured from front to back: Megan Fairchild, Sara Mearns, Jared Angle, and Charles Askegard. There are two couples in this piece – one a classical ballet pair, the other a modern dance duo, and at first they dance each with their rightful partner, then the two members of the modern couple break apart and dance with the opposite sex ballet dancer. When I interviewed So You Think You Can Dance’s Billy Bell a while back, he’d laughingly said something to me I found funny, that as a hopeful choreographer he sought to “break” ballet dancers, meaning he wanted to get them to loosen up, not be so rigid and controlled with such straight, upright posture, and get them to really move. This piece reminded me of that. At first Sara Mearns’s classical ballerina in pretty satin pointe shoes wants nothing to do with this crazed barefoot Jared Angle, but eventually she realizes he’s not so bad and they do a quite nice pas de deux together.

Same with Megan Fairchild and Charles Askegard, except choreographically they were more fun, and Megan totally blew me away and made me think she is really a modern dancer. She was the most compelling person onstage and I couldn’t take my eyes off her, despite the fact that one of my big favorites, Sara Mearns, was up there with her. Megan looked like a real Paul Taylor dancer but even more stunning. Her character really taunted Charles Askegard’s classical danseur, jumping on his back, wrapping her flexed feet around his middle, darting in between his legs, really kind of climbing all over him. He looked tormented, then eventually relented and they danced a pas de deux together too. Interestingly, people giggled throughout this part – where Megan’s modern girl is taunting Charles’s classical man –  and the critic next to me who’d seen the ballet many times before said he’s never heard people laugh at that section, that he didn’t think it was supposed to be amusing but more raw. Maybe it was because of their size difference — Charles Askegard is the tallest dancer in the company (I think he’s 6’4) and Megan’s this tiny little thing who looks rather doll-like. I found it cute and flirtatious and now I don’t think I’d like it if I saw it done more raw, though I’d love to see other dancers do it. I’d love to see this ballet again.

Also, as the title of the piece would imply, there’s a really beautiful violin solo (played by Arturo Delmoni), where the violin almost sounds like a human voice.

Last on was Balanchine’s Western Symphony. Andrew Veyette danced the male “Rondo” role and after seeing Robert Fairchild in this role last week I thought I’d never be able to see another dancer do that part. But, whoa, Veyette completely floored me. He was on fire as he kicked his heels up high in the air, sexily do-se-doed toward Teresa Reichlen (who was stunning as well as the female lead in that section), then whipped her off into the wings where he pretend kissed her. She’ taller than he is and at first I thought they weren’t a good match, but they kind of played up their height differences. I loved it.

As usual during the curtain call, the maestro came out onstage and took a bow. But of course this time he didn’t merely motion down toward the orchestra, directing the applause at them, but took the stage alone, and, like the retiring dancers, was greeted by a row of dancers bearing bouquets. Eventually, the entire orchestra came up bearing flowers as well. Peter Martins came out onstage and hugged him. Very sweet. Then, Martins led the orchestra (joined by the audience) in singing “Happy Birthday,” so apparently it was Kaplow’s birthday as well. He’s been with the company for 20 years. I’ll miss seeing him in the house.

Photos by Paul Kolnik.

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MISSING ARIZONA

 

I haven’t been to Phoenix since early 2001 and I’ve been getting a bit homesick for the desert. Everything seems to be reminding me of the Southwest lately – even last night’s NYCB program with Melissa Barak’s new ballet, Call Me Ben, set in Vegas with its Santiago Calatrava-designed desert-themed backdrops, and then Balanchine’s Western Symphony with the cowboys, saloon girls and Old Tombstone-looking stage piece.

 

 

Albert Evans and cast in earlier NYCB Western Symphony production, taken from Explore Dance. Photo above that of the main street in Tombstone, AZ, taken from the city’s website.

I have to get out there soon.

In the meantime, just ordered this book, which looks like the perfect proverbial beach read.

The photo of the little guy at the top of the post, by the way, is taken from the Facebook page of my childhood friend who operates a kind of traveling zoo featuring reptiles native to Arizona, exposing children to and creating respect for their unique little charms.