Tag: PBS

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America’s Ballroom Challenge Tonight on PBS!

Don’t forget, tonight is the beginning of America’s Ballroom Challenge on PBS! It’s the first of a three-part series. The initial episode features the American Smooth and Rhythm competitions. In Rhythm, I’ll be rooting for my looooongtime favorites, Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine and Liana Churilova, pictured at left. Photo from here.

I have to admit I’m so out of it, I’m not very familiar with any of the current Smooth contestants. But from their photos and bio, I can’t wait to see this couple – Travis and Jaimee Tuft!

 

 

 

 

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WATCH NY EXPORT OPUS JAZZ WEDNESDAY NIGHT ON PBS!

 

Tomorrow night, Wednesday, March 24th, at 8:00, the new film made by New York City Ballet dancers Ellen Bar and  Sean Suozzi, along with directors Henry Joost and Jody Lee Lipes, will air nationally on PBS.

I was sent a preview tape but I’d rather wait until everyone has a chance to see it to discuss. It’s about an hour long. The first 45 minutes is a movie of current New York City Ballet dancers dancing the original choreography of Jerome Robbins’s 1958 dance New York Export: Opus Jazz. The dance is really like an abstract version of Robbins’ more popular West Side Story suite — same jazzy rhythms, same jazzy movement, but without a clear linear narrative. The dance made its first televised appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show to popular acclaim. But it’s since kind of fallen out of the repertoire, with Robbins’ other ballets being more often performed. Critics have said this piece doesn’t really have the timelessness or genius of his other work, like West Side Story.

Anyway, the NYCB dancers have done something very cool: instead of just filming the dance in a studio, as it originally appeared on Ed Sullivan, they’ve filmed the same dance sequences at various locations around New York City – and not touristy ones, but “real” locales. It’s fun!

I’m interested to know what people think not just of the filming (which I find very clever) but of the choreography itself and the extent to which it’s dated. I think it’s interesting how you can kind of see the origins of hip hop. And I love the music, by Robert Prince. My favorite scene is still the balletic pas de deux between Craig Hall and Rachel Rutherford on the pre-redeveloped Highline. But yours may be different.

The second part of the program is a series of interviews with some of the people involved in this production as well as those who knew Robbins, and there are some clips of the original Ed Sullivan Show performance. Definitely worth watching. Go here for more info on the movie, and go here for your local schedule.

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FILM OF NEW YORK EXPORT OPUS JAZZ COMING TO PBS

 

Remember the film version of Jerome Robbins’s New York Export: Opus Jazz that NYCBallet dancers Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi had planned — and begun — to make in 2007? If not, I wrote about it here and here when a completed scene (pictured above) that was filmed in Manhattan’s High Line starring Rachel Rutherford and Craig Hall had been shown at NYCB and the Guggenheim.

Well, as of August 24, 2009, filming has resumed thanks to WNET (New York’s PBS station), who has acquired the film for its excellent Great Performances: Dance in America series.

The team — which consists of Bar, Suozzi, and filmmakers Henry Joost, Jody Lee Lipes, Matt Wolf and Anna Farrell — is currently scouting locations to shoot the remaining four movements of the 28-minute ballet (the film will consist of the ballet, interspersed with documentary coverage and narratives of the dance’s characters and their background stories). Each danced movement is to be filmed in a different part of the city (to capture NY’s different moods) and will be danced by NYCB dancers.

WNET plans on a broadcast sometime in the Spring of 2010. I’m really hoping it shows on other local PBS stations outside of New York as well, please please PBS — so everyone else can see it! This is the first Robbins ballet to be filmed since West Side Story. I will keep you updated on times and stations, and you can check the project’s Website and Facebook page as well.

In the meantime, here’s a trailer:

 

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SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE WEEK FIVE: GO JANETTE!

Fun seeing Pasha and Anya again, huh!

Janette is really becoming my favorite dancer. I love her because I don’t think there’s really anything she can’t do (except maybe a ballet routine on pointe, assuming she’s never had training in that, and I don’t think she has). She doesn’t seem to have any real training — she’s just Cuban, just born with dance in her blood and is working her butt off and excelling at every blasted thing that gets tossed in her way. I always like rooting for the underdog 🙂 And we haven’t had a female ballroom winner on the show yet, right? It’s time, it’s time!

Okay, so I obviously loved both of Janette and Brandon’s routines — that kickass Argentine Tango (were those lightening fast, razor sharp kicks and flicks and hooks and gauchos not to die for? Not to mention her gorgeous lines in all the lifts and poses and just the power and passion of it all); and that killer Wade Robson Jazz dance (I love how both were very loose and rubbery but still had very solid form; it was very Rich Man’s Frug and now I see what we missed last week with Evan and Randi’s performance).

My other favorite couple is Melissa and Ade. That disco! Can Ade move or what?

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SEBASTIEN’S FOUR TEMPERAMENTS, ROBERTO’S DIVERTIMENTO, LA STRAVAGANZA ET AL

 

 

 

I have hardly any time to write — I don’t know how I always do this to myself, but I leave in just a few hours for a long train ride down south to visit Mom for Mother’s Day, and I haven’t really begun packing yet… — so I have to make this very short. But quickly, highlights of my NYCB week:

Sebastien Marcovici in Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments. This ballet, set to Paul Hindemith music, consists of a theme with four variations, each variation representing one of four physical /psychological types: Melancholic, Sanguinic, Phlegmatic, and Choleric. Sebastien danced that first variation with so much emotion and drama and all-out expression that Melancholy almost became a human character itself. I could have sat there and watched him do that variation over and over again. Also, I have to take back something I said last season, that he’d developed such muscle that his lines are a bit off. His lines were perfect this week, huge leg muscles or not! Funny, my friend even recognized how much larger he was than every other guy out there. But we both agreed his size makes him move a certain way, quite unlike anyone else. He’s a large, dark, exotic-looking guy and when he takes a role emotionally and expressively as far as he can, he is really spellbinding.

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America’s Ballroom Challenge

 

 

So, what did you guys think about the show?

I was worried I’d be mad about the new format but I really ended up thinking this one worked better, at least for TV, even if it is fake. For people who’ve never been to a regular ballroom dance competition before, the competition is really the first parts, the group dances (as shown in the picture above) — that they severly truncated here, showing only a small part of one dance for each of the four categories. But I do think the showdances work so much better for TV. On TV the excitement of the group dances is really lost. But it’s so stunning to see, to feel, all these couples whizzing by you, spinning, shaking their hips at lightening speed, to hear the crowds cheer, scream really, while all the couples try to look so glamorous and graceful, the raucous audience making it seem more like a boxing match. I encourage everyone who hasn’t been to go to a real competition.

Anyway, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko won — they’re second in the world in Latin, and I’m wondering, after watching them in November (which is when this show was taped), if they could overtake the current champs, Poland’s Michael Malitowski and Joanna Leunis, at some point. I loved their Cha Cha tonight (with her in the sizzling red and him in the open tux jacket), their Samba, and their combo routine to the pure percussion (which I love — I love that they’re not afraid to use that kind of music). I love how they vary the rhythms in an often unpredictable way, I love his speed and how she makes original shapes with her body, especially when she tucks in her stomach, rolls her shoulders, and curls her pelvis, looking almost like a cobra. Or is it a python? The snake that lifts its front part and expands its head, ghost-like, before attacking?… (I don’t really want to do a google image search) Anyway, I really really love them– Yulia and Riccardo.

Since the two top Standard couples — Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova and Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed — were at another competition (I think in the U.K.) at the same time as the Ohio Star Ball and didn’t compete, it was really a toss up who would win. I thought Linas Koreiva and Liene Apale would win — I thought they danced the best — though I loved the balletic look to Mikhail Avdeev and Anastasia’s beautiful waltz. I love how in all their routines

— oooh, Oscar Hijuelos (one of my favorite writers, author of Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love) is on Larry King, PBS! He is WAY the hell younger than I thought… —

sorry,  just had to say that. 🙂 Anyway, I love how Mikhail and Anastasia’s dances were all basic, yet so well done, so beautifully executed. Shows how dance is more about excellent technique and lush, expansive movement than tricks. And I love that they used classical music instead of going for the modern and poppy.

Totally predictable of course that Joanna Zacharewicz and Jose DeCamps would win Rhythm — and how much do I love that there are Joses in the world — how hot was that mambo! And that John Travolta! He is truly one of the most charismatic dancers in all of ballroom.

And Jonathan Roberts and Valentina were lovely. I do believe she is the powerhouse of that partnership. She really shines and her form is so splendid. His is less so (and I caught him pigeon-toed a few times), though he is a solid support for her, which is mainly what the man is supposed to be. I liked J.T. Thomas and Tomasz Mielnicki’s snazzy Foxtrot, though I’ve seen both couples in competition before and can see how Jonathan and Valentina took the whole without winning the showdance portion.

Oh, before I forget, what did you guys think of that Swan Lake dance at the beginning of the program, by Mikhail Zharinov and Galina Detkina in the American Smooth division? It was one of the very first ones, if you can remember. If you didn’t notice — and the announcers didn’t point it out — she was wearing a long white glove on her right arm, with a swan’s face and beak painted on the thumb and fingers. So, the way she was holding that arm up and bending her wrist like she did, when you see it up close (as I did at Champions of the Dance recently here in NY at Town Hall), her whole body really does look like a swan, with her hand the head, her arm the neck, and her skirt — when pulled out and held to the back (either by him or by her) — the body. I couldn’t figure out how I felt about it when I saw it live — whether I thought it was cheesy or pretty, and, after seeing it from further afar, on TV, I choose the latter.

Other things: I love my Vaidotas Skimelis 🙂 Dressed as Mozart! Or was it Louis the XVI and Jurga Pupelyte Marie Antoinette? What a big fun charming goof. But an excellent dancer. Their dance was rather humorous but they still had very nice form and some creative choreography and he had some jumps and stylized runs that showed he really could be a balletic, graceful dancer, large as he is.

And why do I have no problem envisioning Boriana Deltcheva as a cat! She’s so feline already; I love the way she climbed on Delyan’s back and wrapped her legs around his waist. She’s such a tall, thin thing, she looked just like a sleek black catwoman. She has the ideal body. She put a note up on Facebook a while ago advertising that she was selling some of her costumes and I had to laugh — like everyone the planet over wishes they could fit into them 🙂

Another highlight: Gherman Mustuc and Iveta Lukosiute’s Carmen tango in the Standard. They always come up with such creative showdance ideas. Such great music, and her red dress was gorgeous.

Pavlo Barsuk and Anna Trebunskaya: how insanely intense was that Paso! I love intense Pasos! And he is the ultimate in the intensity department, believe me – -if you even see him dance live, he does this thing where his eyes grow really wide; he looks like he could devour you for lunch — or his competition anyway. Such a funny contrast to her sweet face and toothy chipmunk smile.

And of course Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova — sorry, I’m really into the Latins, obviously. They recently danced at the Dance Times Square showcase and I totally fell for them. He is so damn fast and slick and precise. And they ended one of their dances at the DTS show with that ending trick they did tonight in the Cha Cha, if you remember it — where he flips and drops her, catching her right before she’s about to hit the floor, face down. DTS audience went WILD.

Anyway, enough from me. What did you guys think?

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Don’t Miss the Jerome Robbins Doc on PBS Wednesday

 

Don’t miss — don’t fail to record so you have it forever — the Jerome Robbins documentary on PBS this Wednesday evening, February 18th at 9pm EST. It’s long — 2hours — and very extensive; includes discussion and excerpts of nearly all of his ballets and Broadway shows. There are interviews with many many people — Baryshnikov, Chita Rivera, Rita Moreno, Peter Martins, Violette Verdy (a former ballerina), Suzanne Farrell, Stephen Sondheim (who is not at all what I expected!), Jacques D’Amboise (who is quite the character!) writers Deborah Jowitt and Robert Gottlieb (the only two critics whose faces I’d never seen), and more — can’t even think of everyone who spoke. And there’s footage of interviews with Robbins himself both recently and further in the past.

He and others talk about his inspiration for and meaning of much of his work — The Cage, Fancy Free (one of my favorites, which was based on a Paul Cadmus painting, which I hadn’t known), Interplay, Dances at a Gathering, Glass Pieces, NY Export Opus Jazz, Afternoon of a Faun, West Side Story, Gyspy, the wonderful Fiddler on the Roof (Broadway) and Les Noces (a rather haunting ballet about a Russian wedding based on Fiddler, which I guess is kind of obvious, now that I know), Goldberg Variations, Watermill (lots of interviewees defending this pretty controversial work!), Suite of Dances, etc. etc. etc.

There’s brilliant footage of Tanaquil Le Clercq and Jacques D’Amboise dancing Afternoon of a Faun (and please tell me if you’ve ever seen anyone better than those two in those roles!), of Robbins himself dancing Fancy Free, of Barysh also dancing FF, Dances at a Gathering, and Other Dances (with Natalia Makarova), of Robbins and Balanchine dancing in a piece Robbins choreographed for the Stravinsky Festival, etc. etc. — there’s so much, I can’t remember it all, but I think they’ve got excepts of just about everything.

There’s also coverage of major events in his life — so upsetting when his ex-fiance talks about discovering one evening that he was in love with Montgomery Clift and was gay and trying hard to marry and be “normal”; his excruciatingly difficult decision that would forever haunt him to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee; his visits to Eastern Europe that resulted in the making of one of his masterpieces — Fiddler; the quite nasty things he did to a Gypsy actress who couldn’t remember some important actions in the play…

And dancers and actors talk about how Robbins rehearsed them, which I found extremely interesting. An actor from West Side Story says he always made people do their own character sketches, which they’d have to present to him — which I love! He was a hardass to put it mildly, but only in a certain respect. He worked the dancers hard mentally (similar to one of his tutors, Antony Tudor), but when it came to the physicalities of the dance, he’d ease up considerably, ask dancers why they were working so hard — the opposite of Balanchine. At then end, Peter Martins remarks that it was mentally challenging to work with Robbins but physically relatively easy; it was the complete opposite with Balanchine.

This is honestly one of the best PBS specials on dance that I’ve ever seen. It does get slow in some points — especially early on when there are all these people talking and you can’t read the subtitles quickly enough to figure out who everyone is — and Robbins was so prolific that the film moves quite quickly and sometimes you can’t figure out which dance the interviewee is even talking about. So, I’d highly recommend taping it so you can watch it again and again. Believe me, you’ll want to. Go here to check local listings. (Type in “Jerome  Robbins: Something to Dance About”).

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Champions of the Dance

 

I am really excited about this! It’s for one night only, Friday, January 23 at 8 pm, at Town Hall in midtown, and it’s starring a couple of my favorite pairs: Delyan Terziev and Boriana Deltcheva (in the above pic, far left) and Iveta Lukosiute and Gherman Mustuc (far right). Delyan & Boriana are a tall, thin, dramatic Latin couple I really like (she has these really gorgeous spidery limbs); they usually place in the finals in national competitions (and used to be competitive for top awards with Pasha and Anya when they were still competing). Iveta and Gherman are ten-dance champs (meaning, they compete in all ten dances, both Latin and Standard). They also do wonderful ballroom showcases.

Also performing are some dancers who were featured on the PBS show America’s Ballroom Challenge (which should be airing again soon, in early February): Evgeny Dyanchenko and Inna Ivanenko (above pic, in the middle), Tony Scheppler and Erin Bomboy, and Mayo Alanen and Lisa Vogel.

Tix are $45-$50. If you’re in New York, go here for more info. There isn’t a lot of Latin / Ballroom concert dance in New York so I’m very happy about this!