Art's Place

A Wheeldon triple-bill at New York City Ballet

2012-01-30T23:43:00.000-05:00

New York City Ballet opened a program of three ballets by Christopher Wheeldon on Saturday night, the company’s first all-Wheeldon outing (as touted by the program notes). Wheeldon has enjoyed a lasting, productive relationship with New York City Ballet, so it seems appropriate that the company make a big occasion out of premiering two Wheeldon works—one of the ballets, Les Carillons, was brand new, and the other, DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse, was new to the company. The program offered a career retrospective of sorts as well. Stretching back to 2001, we saw the mastery and promise of Polyphonia, one of Wheeldon's first major works, created here at New York City Ballet; we saw what he has been up to in since then in DGV, which was new to City Ballet on Saturday but originally created at the Royal Ballet in 2006; and finally, we saw some of what he is thinking now, in the brand-new Les Carillons.

Wheeldon is one of classical ballet’s “it” choreographers, and the program provided plenty to explain why. He has a firm handle on the elements of classical technique and creates ballets that are classical-looking (pointe shoes, etc.) and that also explore and exploit the form’s possibilities. It seems strange to say it, but he seems to be a relatively rare choreographer for doing that. Ballet companies today are dancing more and more choreography that comes from the modern and contemporary worlds, so choreographers like Wheeldon and Alexei Ratmansky seem all the more rare for using the shapes and rhythms of classical ballet.

Two strains have emerged for me in Wheeldon’s work as I have watched it over time: there is the Wheeldon who inventively explores classical ballet through unusual and serious music. This Wheeldon puts together steps in new patterns and unexpected shapes, bringing surprise and delight to an eye trained to accept the classicism of Petipa, Balanchine, and Robbins. This Wheeldon abounds in Polyphonia, and it’s easy to see why this is the work that brought Wheeldon acclaim. The other Wheeldon strain is more troublesome to me: it’s the Wheeldon that is mechanical, whose choreographic explorations appear on stage as workaday aesthetic exercises. You can see him throw a movement idea on to the stage—perhaps something tied to a phrase of music, or a structure in the ensemble—then you see him try to wrench something out of it right in front of us. The ensemble patterns are over-stuffed with ideas, the partnering is over-complicated: we see more of the effort than the dancing. The theatrical result is often dull, the moment slogging along devoid of the musicality and invention of the other Wheeldon. On Saturday, I could see plenty of both Wheeldons, particularly in the newer ballets. It’s an interesting and frustrating contrast. I always look forward to a Wheeldon premiere, but the mechanical Wheeldon often threatens to overwhelm the effortless Wheeldon, often all in the same ballet.

Wheeldon's new ballet, Les Carillons
(Photo: Paul Kolnik, via Oberon's Grove)

Opening the program was the new ballet, Les Carillons. It was an elegant and lovely work, if a bit slight. The ballet is a suite of dances is set to George Bizet's bright and tuneful orchestral suites from L'Arlésienne, and there is no narrative except for suggestions of a relationship here or there. It was mostly just a pretty ballet set to some grand music. The most interesting material was the ballet’s middle 90%, where plush, noble dancing filled out the lines of Bizet’s music, and where the cast was showcased at its most attractive. As choreography, however, the whole thing was nearly undone by the plodding, generic opening and closing sections. These were set a Farandole that Bizet uses to open and close his orchestral suite. The music that has a pronounced, melodramatic theme: booming chords in the orchestra accented with timpani, just in case we didn't hear it strongly enough in the strings. Wheeldon didn’t do much with this music except have the dancers stand in diagonal lines, throwing their arms and legs around in time to the music. Soloists set a sequence of steps as a theme, which was then expanded to the ensemble as the musical theme was expanded in the orchestra. The steps came across as numbingly obvious to me, with the ensemble rushing around the stage to meet an awkward sketch of a pattern. It looked elementary and plodding, perhaps more so because it contrasts with the elegance of the ballet’s middle sections.

Those middle sections were a pleasure to watch. Comprised of solos, pas de deux, and combinations of three to five dancers, the dancing was sweeping and elegant. Sara Means radiated light in her solo, which had her sailing through the air, flitting around the stage, and making heart-stopping stops and turns throughout. This came off with little visible effort: she seemed propelled by sheer force of the music. Similarly, Maria Kowroski looked voluptuous and beautiful in her flowing pas de deux with Tyler Angle.

Polyphonia (Above and below, photos by Paul Kolnik)

Polyphonia, the second work on the program, showed Wheeldon at his best. Set to solo piano pieces by György Ligeti, it is a wonderful, quiet ballet with riches in the choreography. Each time that I watch Polyphonia, I always enjoy how it reveals corners of Ligeti’s music in the steps, and also how Wheeldon plays so freely with the ballet form. Everything seems to flow effortlessly, beautifully. In particular, I like the plaintive solo in the center of the ballet, danced on Saturday night by Sara Mearns. The woman seems to expand and contract with the long and short phrases of the music, and she borrees and turns with the stacattos, but never in entirely obvious ways. The music here is barely a hush, and it’s even more remarkable how the visual of the dancing is so expansive and yet still manages to capture a feeling of solitude and reflection.

The ballet is also fairly acrobatic, and part of the fun of watching it seeing the accomplishment of the dancers. Wendy Whelan and Jared Angle danced the two pas de deux that form the second and penultimate sections of the ballet. Whelan stretched and folded her body in all sorts of complex contorsions around Angle’s body, but it all stopped short of circus gimmickry in Whelan’s exceptional artistry and control. It’s not just a show-off opportunity here, but a bizarre, perfect expression of Ligeti’s jagged score. In the two pas de deux, Wheeldon shows his Balanchine lineage most clearly: a lot of the choreography and invention grows out of neoclassical works like Balanchine’s Agon. Polyphonia is a work that I always enjoy seeing here at New York City Ballet, and I can see why it set the stage for Wheeldon’s later successes.

Saturday's Polyphonia had some unintended drama when, part way through the third section, danced by Jennifer Somogyi and Gonzalo Garcia, Somogyi experienced an injury and had to leave the stage in the middle of the dance. It was a bit terrifying for the audience to see, since we could see her gasp, cover her mouth, and limp off the stage. The music continued, and Garcia tried to continue alone, but eventually he, too, followed her off while the piano continued. The performance moved foward, though the rest of the dancers looked shaken for a moment, understandably. Somogyi's part was taken over by Tiler Peck in time for the role's next entrance. Peck's performance was heroic all the more considering she also appeared in the other two ballets this evening (her hair was already styled for DGV by the time she came on for Polyphonia). The New York Times reports that Somogyi's injury was fairly serious—a torn achilles tendon—and that she will be out for the remainder of the season. Sad!

DGV: Danse a Grande Vitesse, was the third work on the program. It's new to New York City Ballet, though I have seen a few times before: twice with the Royal Ballet during the Royal's DC tour, and another time when Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon visited New York with it last year. Unfortunately, repeated viewing has revealed more mechanics to me than exhilaration. It is a ballet for a large ensemble of 26 dancers, led by four couples. The curtain lifts on a pack of dancers standing in a huddle at the back of the stage, quickly shifting back and forth and resembling an oncoming train—the musical score is Michael Nyman's Musique a Grande Vitesse, which was composed for the opening of France's high-speed rail system. The first principal couple, Teresa Reichlen and Craig Hall on Saturday, is downstage and performs a duet that features many deep, plunging extensions alternating with moments when Reichlen is tossed into the air in fast, high-flying slings. The music crescendos and the ensemble rushes forward, dancing quick, jagged steps, and generally taking over the stage with frenetic energy.

A photo of the Royal Ballet after DGV: Danse a Grande Vitesse,
from the 2009 Washington DC tour (Photo: me)

The first time I saw DGV, I found it impressive to see the dancers hurling themselves around, and who wouldn't enjoy seeing Marianela Nunez and Gary Avis sail through air as one of the principal couples? Even then, however, I noted being able to see the guts of the choreography’s construction. Now, with the element of surprise taken away, I couldn't help but notice all the labor and gimmicks involved. The ballet never quite reaches the theatrical impressiveness it seems to be going for—a lot of it is the more mechanical Wheeldon I described above.

There is a lot going for DGV: the stage design by Jean-Marc Puissant is visually appealing, with strips of the stage floor rising up into metallic, Frank Gehry-like structures at the back of the stage, folds of twisted metal reaching into the sky. The lighting by Jennifer Tipton is cool and sleek, saturated with deep blues and accented with strategically placed bright whites and fluorescents. The costumes, also by Puissant, are colorful combinations of purples, blues, and greens. It all looks a welcome change from the single-color backdrops and general illumination of many ballets at New York City Ballet. In the dancing, too, there are several moments where you think, “A ha! Now that’s interesting!” Towards the middle of the ballet, a line of dancers weaves back and forth across the stage in a giant, snaking line. The ensemble pattern is broken by a principal woman’s flying arrival from the wings, held aloft by her partner (Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle on Saturday). She is hoisted around in a mesmerizingly slow tableau. Then, suddenly, the music stops dead and the ensemble clears the stage. We watch her and her partner perform a slow-motion duet in arresting silence. Just as quickly as these moments appear, however, the next moment offers another labored exercise, twisting, turning, and hurling, seemingly without a guiding principle. The audience in the theater gave DGV a rousing, enthusiastic ovation (being opening night, the crowd was likely filled with supportive friends of the company and the choreographer), but I felt less moved.

It was an interesting evening that showed everything exciting but also frustrating about Wheeldon's choreography. I continue to enjoy seeing his mastery of ballet vocabulary and his ability to draw inventive, attractive steps out of his chosen music, despite many other moments that are less than satisfying. I'll certainly come to watch whenever a new Wheeldon ballet appears on the program, out of sheer curiosity and in pursuit of the high offered by his better work.

*
UPDATED TO ADD: I'm adding a few links here to the professional critics that I read after I finished my post. They have more perspective on Wheeldon's career in response to Saturday night's program:

Tobi Tobias in Seeing Things: "He started out as a prodigy. He got better and better at what he was good at: the architectural organization of a dance; the seamless incorporation of non-traditional dance movements into the classical matrix he had inherited; a deep understanding of the partnership of dance and music."
Brian Siebert in The New York Times: "...It was at City Ballet that he was treated as a potential heir to Balanchine and given the opportunities to prove himself the longed-for solution to the what-to-do-after-Balanchine problem. The suggestion of anointment so inflated expectations that some disappointment was inevitable. All the same, there was a renewed vitality at City Ballet during Mr. Wheeldon’s tenure, an energy ascribable to the climate of inspiration created by his unmistakable gifts."
Marina Harss, in The Faster Times: "...He has absorbed the lessons of Balanchine, Robbins, Ashton, and many others, and he is one of the few ballet choreographers working today who can be relied upon to make complex, well-built, musically astute and esthetically-pleasing work."

Balanchine and Robbins open New York City Ballet's new season

2012-01-23T15:51:00.002-05:00

George Balanchine's Who Cares? (Photo: Paul Kolnik)

I’m always excited when New York City Ballet’s repertory season starts in the winter. When one is afflicted with balletomania as I am, it’s a long time to go from October to January without a fix of good ballet (the wait used to be even longer but City Ballet has thankfully added a fall season in recent years). Nutcracker is okay but it only scratches the itch a little bit. I always look forward to the variety of repertory, choreography, and non-Christmasy stuff that the repertory schedule brings. This season, the good goods will come a bit later: I’m particularly excited about seeing Alexei Ratmansky’s Russian Seasons; the company premieres of Christopher Wheeldon’s new ballet and DGV: Danse a Grande Vitesse; and the returns of Agon and Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3 (both of which I’m anticipating wonderful casting for).

For now, though, the season has started with a few ballets that are fine but not my favorites. The company celebrated founder-choreographer George Balanchine’s birthday on Sunday with a double-bill of ballet confections, Who Cares? and Union Jack. Both are a kind of ballet tourism: Who Cares? travels down the street in New York for Broadway and Tin Pan Alley nostalgia, and Union Jack jumps the Atlantic for a jolly jaunt through the British Isles. Neither displays the things that I really love about Balanchine (his complex musical sensitivity, his unexpected interpretations of great music), but they’re fine. Fun and funny enough, they each come alive with the right casting.

Tiler Peck in Who Cares?
(Photo: Paul Kolnik)

Tiler Peck in Who Cares?, as the dancer in peach, is more than just right casting: she’s astounding, jaw-dropping brilliant casting. I have gone back to see Who Cares? at least three times now solely to see her dance this role. Something about her stage presence leaps off the stage—I've never quite been able to pinpoint exactly what. It’s more than just the dancing: her state of being projects a dreamy state of romance, the swoon of her back and arch of her tendu seem to stretch music and bend the normal confines of time. Late in the “Man I Love” duet, which she danced on Sunday with Robert Fairchild, Peck takes a series of quick turns across the stage that speed up with the swell in the music, reaching climax in a full, spinning arabesque into Robert Fairchild’s arms, timed to a crash of the music. Every time I see her in this moment, my heart bursts with joy. The night sky explodes with starlight, angels sigh, world peace is achieved, my email reaches zero unread messages… Ahem. Too far? It is a perfect ideal of romance right there on the stage—only she has been able to produce this effect for me. When she returns to the stage a few songs later for “Fascinatin’ Rhythm”, Peck’s jazzy inflections and razor-precise technique is a jolt of energy. New York City receives its power supply for the evening. (I’m stopping myself here.) On Sunday, she received the loudest cheers from the audience for her performance, and deservedly so.

The rest of Who Cares? is a bit too slight and saccharine for me, though I suppose it's fine enough for general entertainment. I find the opening sections, with the corps and demi-soloists, ingratiating. The boys and girls dance with dainty sweetness, arms held aloft and outstretched with a pseudo-jazzy, cant-let-go-of-ballet training carriage; the choreography is repetitive and unimaginative steps for poorly rearranged Gershwin songs. Perhaps I just feel that it is weird to be watching a half-baked nostalgia trip to Broadway here at the ballet, when one could see real jazz dancers dancing with the proper weight, character, and songs just a few blocks down Broadway. (I'll take an order of Kathleen Marshall’s choreography for the title number in Anything Goes, please!) Balanchine’s choreography doesn’t get interesting until the principal dancers arrive, and even then, the ballet lives and dies on the strength of its cast. These days I’m only going to Who Cares? when Peck is cast, at which point it’s so good that the entire experience is worth it. So it was on Sunday.

The Scotish & Canadian Guards Regiments in Balanchine's Union Jack
(Photo: Paul Kolnik)

Union Jack made up the second half of Sunday's program. This is the second time that I have seen Union Jack. The first was eight years ago, back when I was first watching City Ballet (and first watching ballet as well). My reaction this time was much as it was then: it’s fun, but not something I need to keep rushing back to see. The ballet is undoubtedly a spectacle. More than 70 dancers populate the stage and there are bright, colorful sets and costumes paraded in front of us. One of the most impressive parts is the opening section, when Scottish and Canadian Guards Regiments form an elaborate procession on the stage. They march into place, around each other, into formation and out of formation. The pas de deux of the Costermongers, who are both wearing English music-hall sparkly dresses, is certainly cute (though both times I’ve seen it I felt there was energy lacking).

My problem with Union Jack is that it is just so LONG. Every single guard regiment (there are seven) has its own lengthy dance, the Costermongers' pas de deux includes two variations and a coda, and the Royal Navy section has five parts. Despite the impressiveness of the spectacle, the choreography itself never rises to transcendence the way that certain parts of Mr. B’s other spectacles do—Nutcracker or Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example. There, I’m willing to sit through the mundane business to get to those few moments of glory, but things never quite get there with Union Jack. Oh well.

Despite the ho-hum ballets on the program, I still enjoyed myself this afternoon. (Did I mention Tiler Peck yet?) A nice touch for the Balanchine birthday celebration was the gifts they gave each audience as we arrived for the afternoon. We all got a pack of postcard photographs of Balanchine in rehearsal, on stage, etc., dated with today’s date. Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette gave a friendly on-stage introduction to the program, and the performance itself was book-ended by extra programs (a talk with a few principal dancers, an on-stage class demonstration with the School of American Ballet). I wasn’t able to attend the extras, but they certainly created a festive atmosphere in the theater.

Sterling Hyltin in Jerome Robbins' The Concert (Photo: Paul Kolnik)

On Friday, I attended a triple-bill of Jerome Robbins ballets. As with the Balanchine program on Sunday, I enjoyed the evening even though what I saw was not my pick for favorites. I love Robbins’ ballets for the rather more quiet, subtle humanity and characterizations that he brings to classical ballets. His Dances at a Gathering ranks among my all-time favorite dance works (I traveled 3 hours each way this fall to see New York City Ballet’s MOVES company perform Dances in Santa Barbara), and Opus 19/The Dreamer is high up there on the list, too. The company has been performing Robbins really well of late too, so I was looking forward to this program.

The Concert was the best of the bunch, and it’s a ballet that I never mind watching again even if I don’t seek it out on its own. Actually, it’s a masterpiece of dance characterization and joy to watch: at the beginning of the ballet, an on-stage pianist (who has made a grand, haughty entrance) plays Chopin while an ensemble of zany characters assembles to listen. There’s a disgruntled but passionate music fan with a beanie and dark-rimmed glasses, a society wife with her disinterested husband and his newspaper, two girls who reach into their bags and rustle around for candy before being sushed, a shy one who allows himself to be ordered around before revealing his, um, darker side, and a pretty ingénue who is so excited about the music that she hugs the piano. The ballet proceeds as a series of seemingly unrelated, very funny vignettes. One of my favorite is a rag-tag group of ballerinas who are supposed to be performing an ensemble dance, but each of them keeps messing up—one goes the wrong way here, another misremembers a step there. I rarely hear the audience laugh heartily at ballet, but here audience members actually guffaw. It’s all a lot of fun, expertly staged with Robbins’ deft theatrical hand (he’s better known to the non-ballet world as the director and choreographer of West Side Story, Gypsy and Fiddler On the Roof, among others).

So why don’t I run to The Concert every time? Well, it just is what it is: a light, puffy delight. The choreography is good but does not stand out, and the collection of vignettes never adds up to anything more substantial than its own short parts. But oh how fun it is to get there! So while I’ll watch The Concert every now and again—certainly more often than Union Jack—I’m happy to stumble upon it rather than chase after it (to Santa Barbara, for example). On Friday, Sterling Hyltin, Gwenyth Muller, and Joaquin De Luz led the silly proceedings and I smiled blissfully again, just as I always do. For some reason, the girl with the beanie and the glasses never gets a featured credit in the program—I always wonder who she is because I always enjoy this part! Anyone have an idea?

Robbins' In G Major
(Photo: Paul Kolnik)

I was a lot less familiar with the other two ballets that on Friday’s program, In G Major and In Memory Of. They both displayed the qualities I love about Robbins in showing the humanity of the dancers occupying the stage. The dancer-characters have nuanced personalities, even if they are not out-right “characters” as they are in The Concert. Both pieces were much more abstract in their plots. It’s not fair to compare Robbins to Balanchine, but in a company driven by the plotless repertory of the Great Mr. B, it’s hard not to: these two works don’t quite match on choreographic invention and overall satisfaction. I’m not sure if they are counted among Robbins’ top ballets in general, and again, while they were not bad ballets, they just weren’t my favorites.

In G Major is vaguely set on a beach (program notes tell us that this setting, with decor and costumes, was added for the Paris Opera Ballet production). The ballet itself doesn't make too much of the beach setting except for the carefree nature of the choreography's scuttling about. The ballet is more closely tied to its music, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. There is lots of amusing corps work and solos for two principal dancers. In the adagio movement, they dance a duet that is sweetly romantic and pensive, followed by a free-wheeling coda for the entire company. Maria Koworski and Tyler Angle danced the principal couple on Friday and were very great to watch. Kowroski wrapped her long legs around the steps with feeling and ease, while Angle’s ebullient stage persona and solid dancing was a pleasure.

In Memory Of was new to me. The scenario is a portrait of a young woman in life and in memory, based on the scenario of the violin concerto which Robbins uses as his score, by Alban Berg. Berg wrote the concerto in memory of a friend’s young daughter who had died young. In the ballet, we see a woman in joyous life, who dances a duet with a man—on Friday it was Wendy Whelan partnered by Jared Angle—and then in darkness/death in a duet with another man, at this performance, Ask LaCour. She dies, is carried off stage, and then returns with the ensemble in a flowing white dress, a memory of her former self. Wendy Whelan offered a touching portrait of this woman, very emotional her pas de deux in life and death. The Berg score wasn’t immediately accessible for me, but was episodic and clear to follow for the ballet. For me, Robbins makes a greater impact with fleeting impression and remembrance with Opus 19/The Dreamer, which seems to cohere somewhat more succinctly. In Memory Of had its haunting moments though, and I’ll have to give it another shot before confirming my feelings on it.

A set of Balanchine postcards that they gave to
the audience at the Jan 22 performance.

I must also share a geeky milestone that I reached at Friday night’s performance: it was my100th New York City Ballet performance! (I keep track of these things. In a spreadsheet. Geeky.) The love affair, if you will, began in May 2004 at what was then called the New York State Theater, with a performance of George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15, Variations for a door and a sigh, and The Four Temperaments. Since then, I have seen the company perform in New York, Los Angeles, Costa Mesa, Saratoga Springs, and Santa Barbara, and also on television, on DVDs, at the movie theater, and on YouTube. I treasure attending performances, and I look forward to many more!

New York's contemporary performance festivals: So much theater, so little time!

2012-01-23T15:51:00.001-05:00

Each January, New York City explodes with contemporary performance festivals. There are the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, PS122's COIL Festival, and Abrons Arts Center's American Realness Festival to name just a few. Ostensibly, this is because of the performing arts industry conferences that happen at the beginning of the month. These festivals were originally created to showcase work to the industry conferences, but they are also open to the public. With so many artists presenting some of their most interesting and varied work, it has become a bonanza of interesting stuff to see. There's almost too much of it though—my friends who live in New York have been going every day and still feel like they're missing some good stuff, and I only spent four days there. So much theater, so little time...!

But first, what the heck is this thing called contemporary performance? Truth to tell, I don’t really know. I’m somewhat of a layperson when it comes to watching and making sense of theater. But "contemporary" is what these festivals purport to offer, and lately it has been the kind of theater that I have the found most satisfying. The “contemporary” label is often slapped onto a kind of off-the-wall, dare I say “experimental” work usually found in New York City theaters situated below 14th Street (there was plenty of that on display throughout these festivals), or it sometimes also covers “devised” work—that is, work that is created by the ensemble or written with an ensemble in mind rather than as an independent staging of a pre-written play or script.

To me, the contemporary performance has been work that has unashamedly taken advantage of the possibilities of the live theatrical form in a way scripted plays recently have not (at the least, the plays that I have been seeing): they have heightened language spun in scenes that stretch over long periods, bizarre situations stretched to even stranger proportions, singing and musical staging. Basically, they are things that aren’t film-realistic (my love of opera and ballet are consistent with all of these criteria—they rarely work as film in its own right, and relish the liveness of a theater space). Contemporary performance defies the standard Broadway-defined conventions of theater and sometimes assaults and provokes the sensibilities of its audience in both grating and pleasant ways. Perhaps it is stuff that would never turn a profit on Broadway, or that might cause hordes of aging theater subscribers to shriek in complaint. Or, from a snobby perspective, it’s theater that some of us enjoy for being far too jaded from having seen too much regular theater.

In any case, I had a lot of fun trundling through this mess of shows and off-the-wall performances during the last two weeks. Nothing impressed me as much as Teatro en el Blanco’s Diciembre did at last year’s Under the Radar Festival, but I liked plenty.

Some thoughts on what I did see, in chronological order:

Photo: Urška Boljkovac

SUPER NIGHT SHOT (Gob Squad, Under the Radar Festival): This show was pure, simple joy that had me smiling so much that my face was hurting. Nothing happened in this show, and I’m not sure that the show really “said” much either, but it was delightful for its zaniness and earnestness. The performance of the show itself actually takes place one hour before the start time in the theater: the four actors of Gob Squad, an artistic collective out of Berlin, set their watches to match each other, then split up on the streets of New York City with video cameras in tow, each filming in a single, uninterrupted shot. They have a vague mission of gathering the elements for a super nighttime shot of a superhero character kissing a total stranger. The length of the video is limited by the 57 minutes of recording time on their video cassettes, and we know the recordings were just made because last shot is of the actors re-entering the theater building, taping all of us waiting for the show in the theater’s lobby. The results are played simultaneously on four screens on stage. We see hilarity, we see New Yorkers being both nuts and extraordinarily helpful, and we see the actors doing the darndest things. It was so funny and so fun, no more, no less.

Photo: Masahika Yakou

THE BEE (Tokyo Metropolitan Theater/SoHo Rep London/Noda MAP, Under Radar Festival): The Bee starts in a highly stylized, bright manner and gradually descends into a deep, dark corner of violence and revenge—not an easy show to take in by any means. In plot, the play takes after a Japanese horror story: a man returns home from work one day to discover than an escaped convict has holed up in his house and taken his wife and son hostage. As condition for release, the convict demands to see his own wife and son, but the convict’s wife refuses, prompting the man to take the convict’s wife and son hostage in return. The situation spirals out of control, and the formerly decent man finds himself performing increasingly despicable and violent acts of his own. The play does not resolve itself well, nor resolve itself much at all, and we were left with an uncomfortable feeling of horror and disgust. But was that the intended point, and was my intense feeling a sign of the play’s effectiveness? Perhaps. But I did have some problems with the styling of this particular production. The play was originally created and performed by Hideki Noda in Japanese with Japanese performers, and the hyperkinetic style of the first half seemed to be a remnant of this Japanese production (more in keeping with a hyperkinetic style familiar from Japenese television). This production though, was co-produced by SoHo Theatre from London and staged by Noda with English actors—Noda also plays the role of the convict’s wife, though in English. The British actors played it in a kind of standard English-classical way, and as a result the play oddly seemed like a British show grafted onto very Japanese tale. The result was a bit jarring, and to me at least, not entirely workable. It made the whole disaster of the plot seem bizarre rather than horrifying/stylized. Perhaps it all still worked though, since I was fairly unsettled by the experience.

Photo: Blind Summit Theatre

THE TABLE (Blind Summit Theatre, Under the Radar Festival): Cute and delightful, this was a performance more impressive for seeing the wizardry of the company’s animation of puppets and inanimate objects. Meanwhile, they spend an hour spinning charming stories for us. Most of the show takes place with a single puppet standing on a table. He’s speaking directly to us as he prepares to perform for us the longest play ever written. In a bit of meta-theater he’s very aware of his puppetness and he explains to us the theatrical dimensions of his “stage” and his stagecraft. A friend of mine described it as puppet stand-up comedy. Three people operate the puppet, but it is amazing how the puppeteers manage to fade into the background and yet remain as much characters in the show as the paper puppet himself. The show ends with an epilogue created from drawings on sheets of paper, pulled out of a briefcase in sequence: sheer virtuosity of planning. Blind Summit Theatre is also responsible for the puppetry in Anthony Mingella’s production of the opera Madama Butterfly, which I saw at the Metropolitan Opera House only a week before this. I was less impressed by their puppetry then, but not for their work on it (the staging didn’t use them well). But as a result of my previous experience with them, I entered The Table with low expecations. I was pleasantly surprised.

Photo: James Gibb

SONTAG: REBORN (The Builder’s Association, Under the Radar Festival): This show was one hour of in-character readings from the writings of Susan Sontag, animated with projections and filmed bits on top of and around the performance space. I’m not really sure what they were trying to do with this piece: were we supposed to admire the performer’s (not very convincing) caricature of Susan Sontag? Were we supposed to listen to the words and be visually stimulated by the nifty projections? Or were we supposed to be thinking about the things that Sontag is writing about, and that we are hearing read to us? Hearing the texts selected for the piece, I often found myself wondering if it were possible to over-think one’s life to the point of unhappiness: whether being too smart could be self destructive. But somehow I don’t think that’s what they meant for me to be thinking about while watching. I didn’t feel like I learned much about Sontag nor was I particularly taken with the presentation.

Photo: Big Art Group

BROKE HOUSE (Big Art Group, American Realness Festival): A totally bonkers mess of a show, but deliberately so… I think? I found it entertaining to watch the bizarre proceedings unfold, and to see the characters—and the set—disintegrate and into utter chaos. The show is loosely based on Chekov’s The Three Sisters: here we have three sort-of related people living in a giant old house, who are desperate to figure out what to do now that they are facing eviction and need to actually find jobs. One ‘sister’ falls for an internet hoax and is desperate to meet an internet lover in Nigeria (a stand-in for the Chekhov characters’ longing for Moscow), the others prop up their lives with flights of fancy to keep their egos in tact. The events are set in motion by the arrival of a documentary filmmaker whose motives we’re never quite sure of. Crazy, surreal YouTube videos are filmed, and each “act” of the play ends with the actual performers dropping character to re-shoot segments of the play we just saw. The audience watches a lot of the play on projection screens while the actors are being filmed in an obscured corner of the stage. I can’t find another way to describe the proceedings except as totally bonkers. We watch the actors tear down the set’s plastic tarp walls, throw plastic bags around the stage, enact incomprehensible YouTube videos, and burst into histrionic, melodramatic monologues about their lives right downstage center. Big Art Group is a spin-off of The Wooster Group, an experimental theater company known for similar use of projections and video in their deconstructed works. Broke House never quite achieves any insight into either its source work or anything beyond it. But oh boy is it bonkers to watch.

Photo: company

EL PASADO ES UN ANIMAL GROTESCO (Marion Pensotti, Under the Radar Festival): An engrossing play where nothing really happened except for the grinding passage of 10 years in four characters’ lives. The characters manage some rather extraordinary personal events in this time, but we don’t experience them with the usual explosive dramatic climax of many plays. Instead, we’re given only wry narration as we watch each of the characters going through the motions of living. Their lives are staged on a stage set that rotates non-stop throughout the play. The set is divided into four quarters, and as the sections pass in and out of view, we pass into and out of the various characters’ lives. The ensemble of four actors takes turns being a main character, a subsidiary character in another character’s main life, or being the narrator. If the constantly spinning set seems too obvious a metaphor for the never-pausing passage of time, the play itself compensates by being consistently interesting: it was like eavesdropping on a conversation on the street. I found myself getting lost in the character’s stories and lives. The play doesn’t neatly wrap itself up, much like life doesn’t wrap up neatly. None of the characters achieve a happy (or sad) ending—one of them dies neither tragically nor heroically, but simply because in the course of life, people sometimes die. The play just seemed to be presenting slices of life, some extraordinary, some mundane, without drama or interpretation. That it became absolutely fascinating was remarkable. The production was performed entirely in Spanish with English titles.

Photo: the TEAM

MISSION DRIFT (The TEAM, COIL Festival): This was overlong and somewhat of a misfire, despite the considerable earnestness of its cast. Mission Drift seems to want to say something about the American Dream, that oft-discussed idea that everyone can make it big and find their very own place in the world. It wants to say how the Dream doesn’t hold up, or maybe that we all don’t have the right idea of what it should be. All this in the face of 2008’s economic collapse. To tell this, Mission Drift tells a story about a Las Vegas casino waitress who dreams of great opportunity, placing all of her hopes in a possible job at a shiny new casino megaplex being constructed near her current job. When she is laid off with the economic collapse (tourists stop visiting Vegas), she has a wild dream in which two opportunist settlers are seen parading around the country exploiting opportunity after opportunity, and running away after each of their bubbles burst, the carnage of ordinary peoples’ livelihoods in their wake. Their latest bust is Las Vegas. Our main character experiences crushing disappointment and disillusionment, and spends the entire two hours of this semi-musical crying while a narrator type tries to add ironic commentary and lounge songs to the mix. Meanwhile, the opportunist couple occasionally parades around. The story that Mission Drift is telling doesn’t resonate after awhile: The myth of Las Vegas is fake yes, but Vegas itself revels in its fakeness, so a story about someone who experiences crushing disillusionment after taking the dream of Vegas so seriously doesn’t end up garnering much sympathy. Mostly, the piece suffers from multiple personality disorder: it doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be serious or whether it wants to be ironic and funny. It’s like they had a bunch of good ideas and decided to stuff every single one of them in without editing. Unfortunately, the sum of it all never quite takes off.

Photo: Blaine Davis

UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW (Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company, COIL Festival): This was silly, whimsical fun. Even if the show never quite made it to a place of deep revelation, the audience giggled a lot and nodded in recognition on jokes and messages. The big conceit of the show is that each of the five women on stage are stark naked for the entire piece, and they are women of all body types and sizes. It is normal women not wearing clothes, rather than toned models parading their wares. The other conceit is that is a theater piece comprised mostly of movement and movement vignettes. The show never quite gets over the nakedness of the dancers—towards the end they’re still getting us to giggle at jiggly choreography and split legs. Though the nakedness does eventually become like a costume, the show misses some opportunity to say something more substantive by being so much about these naked women. I did enjoy the piece for the most part, though. Faye Driscoll, whose dance-theater work There is so much mad in me I enjoyed at Dance Theater Workshop two years ago, directed the choreography along with Young Jean Lee and Morgan Gould. I liked the staging a lot. It was constantly watchable and highly entertaining. The music was super stylish and fun. At the end of the day, the show manages to entertain and pass on at least a few ideas about womens’ roles and society’s usual thoughts about women.

2011 in review

2012-01-06T12:32:00.002-05:00

2011 was a good year for me. There was much that inspired, much that revealed, much that challenged, and much that I will remember for quite some time. (There were also many things that I wished I had written about on this blog. I’m hoping that 2012 will be the year that I return to writing more than an annual end-of-year post.)

Following is a list of my favorites from 2011. It’s not a comprehensive list—I saw a lot of random stuff all over the place, and for some reason I notice my top favorites skew classical this year—nor is it any sort of ‘state of the field’ missive. It’s just plain and simple a list of things I saw and that I liked.

But first, the numbers: I saw 172 performances, 40% of which were dance, 36% theater, 14% opera, 8% music, 2% other stuff including circuses and other performances. In July, I saw the 1,111th performance since I started counting back in high school (it was the Mariinsky Ballet at Lincoln Center Festival). In September, my count of live performances of George Balanchine’s Jewels surpassed my count of Nutcrackers. Geographically, I lived in Connecticut for 9 months and in Los Angeles for 3, but went to New York and Boston frequently for performances. I traveled for both business and pleasure to London, San Francisco, and Washington DC, where I of course took the opportunity to watch even more shows.

Here’s the list:

Teatro en el Blanco in Diciembre (publicity image)

TEATRO EN EL BLANCO in Diciembre, written and directed by Guillermo Calderón, at the Under the Radar Festival in New York City: This show rocked my world. It’s probably on my list of favorite theater pieces ever, not just of 2011. The play itself takes place in a dystopian Chile of the future, where Chile is at war with Peru. A brother has returned home to his two sisters on leave from the army: one passionately patriotic sister glorifies the carnage and brutality he has experienced for the sake of his country, the other desperately tries to convince him to desert in the name of anti-war liberalism. The play takes no explicit position on the rightness or wrongness of war, but jostles the audience wildly between the two extremes of debate, all the while hurling at us some of the most insanely beautiful language and dialogue that I have ever heard inside of the theater—and all in Spanish (there were English surtitles for comprehensibility but just hearing the words was an experience in and of itself as well). It was mesmerizing to be so completely yanked around by words alone—words in another language for that matter—and to be given so much food for thought about both the consequences and maybe utility of war. I also appreciated the play's intense theatricality: a kind of dialogue that could only be performed live and never in film. It was an incredible experience. And just as incredible was the company’s Neva, also written and directed by Calderón, which played at the Radar LA Festival in Los Angeles later that year. Same bold style with language and performance, same simplicity of presentation, same stirring vitality.

Sara Mearns in the Diamonds, from George Balanchine's Jewels (Photo: Paul Kolnik)

ASHLEY BOUDER, SARA MEARNS, TILER PECK, and WENDY WHELAN at New York City Ballet: These four women, spanning the range of seniority among the re-enlivened principal ballerina ranks at New York City Ballet, delivered much joy and many thrills in their performances at Lincoln Center this year. Ashley Bouder dazzled with her sheer joy-of-dancing stage presence, effortless brilliance, and technical command; Sara Means thrilled in everything from the most exquisite adage to the most voluptuous of Swans with her take-no-prisoners, daring style; Tiler Peck continually amazed me in everything she did with her instinctive musicality and intelligent wit; and Wendy Whelan, now dancing in her 40s, was at the peak of sublime, bringing expansive maturity and heart-stopping command to everything she danced. A short list of roles with which these women made my year: Ashley Bouder as the Sugar Plum and Dewdrop in Nutcracker, and as the principal women in Rubies and Divertimento No. 15; Sara Mearns in the ballerina role of Diamonds (to die for), Walpurgisnacht Ballet, and Dances at a Gathering; Tiler Peck in the third variation of Divertimento No. 15, in “The Man I Love” in Who Cares?, the girl in pink in Dances at a Gathering, Polyhymnia in Apollo, the first girl in Emeralds, and Dewdrop in Nutcracker; and Wendy Whelan in the ballerina role of Diamonds (made my hair stand on end), Opus 19/The Dreamer, Agon (I went back to see this twice), and Polyphonia.

"Suor Angelica" in the Royal Opera House's new production of
Il Trittico, with Ermonala Jaho (Photo: Bill Cooper)

IL TRITTICO at the Royal Opera House in London: Puccini’s three one-act operas came to life with Antonio Pappano’s vibrant musical reading of the score and Richard Jones’ gripping new production, both of which combined for a fantastically entertaining and moving evening of music theater. Il Tabarro read as a heart-thumping thriller, Suor Angelica a shattering emotional roller-coaster ride—especially with Ermonala Jaho singing the title role— and the Gianni Schicci one of the funniest productions of this opera that I have seen. I had enjoyed Trittico a lot before when I saw it at the Met two years before this, so maybe Puccini’s masterful construction of the operas has a lot to do with it, with his compact storytelling and compelling music that is both dramatic and scorching beautiful. Jones’ production makes the Met’s look like a giant cartoon, though, so it was even better this time around. Get a chance to see this production yourself when the Royal Opera broadcasts the production to cinemas in February 2012 (check Opera in Cinema for US dates, and Opus Arte for locations internationally).

The Royal Danish Ballet in La Sylphide, with Caroline Cavallo
and Mads Blangstrup (Photo: Martin Mytsk)

THE ROYAL DANISH BALLET in La Sylphide, which I saw on the company’s American tour in Berkeley, California (the company also travelled with this production to New York): This is the Royal Danish Ballet’s heritage piece, and they perform it with style and conviction. It is not only a perfect realization of a Romantic piece of art (Romantic with the big “R”, representing the period of art history with grand ideals and floating sylphs), but the story is still chilling today and the company’s dancing was buoyant. The company’s style is that of August Bournonville, prized for a particular carriage of the upper body and legwork as well as dramatic persona, and it was just as wonderful to see this style done well as it was to see La Sylphide in all its glory.

Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera (Photo: Ken Howard)

PHILIP GLASS’ SATYAGRAHA at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in a production by Phelim McDermott, Julian Crouch, and Improbable Theatre Company: This was a gorgeous production that made a dense opera uplifting and quite powerful. Glass’ music is difficult to face at first, written as it is in long cycles of repetition and set to Sanskrit texts. Nearly four hour in length, the score has no dramatic structure in the traditional sense. Instead, there are musical images that represent various episodes in the early life and activist career of Mahatma Ghandi. This staging at the Met filled in the holes by supplying a few literal representations of Ghandi and important figures in his life, then taking over the rest of the stage with figurative images: giant puppets, slowly moving ensembles unfurling rolls of plastic tape across the stage, a ritualistic burning of registration cards. Somehow it all worked, and somehow it was all a hugely immersive and satisfying experience.

San Francisco Ballet in William Forsythe's Artifact Suite
(Photo: Erik Tomasson)

SAN FRANCISCO BALLET in ARTIFACT SUITE at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco: I guess it is kind of a cheat putting this performance on my list in 2011, because SF Ballet’s performance of this same ballet was also on my list in 2007. But seeing it again was so good. Artifact Suite is a 40ish minute condensation of William Forsythe’s full Artifact (which is being presented in London with the Royal Ballet of Flanders in April—go if you can) that, as I understand, extracts most of the full ballet's classical dance moments. Classical for Forsythe that is, which is a stretching and off kiltering of the straight-forward classical technique. Artifact Suite is wrapped up in a theatrically jarring package that features fire curtains that suddenly fall from the flies, sharp side lights, and sudden burts of frantic activity. I loved it both as theater and as dance, the latter especially in the ways that Forsythe explores and stretches the classical aesthetic.

AUDRA MCDONALD in concert at the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa, California: McDonald's concert was sheer joy in song. McDonald is a compelling performer not just for her soaring voice but also for her personable concert persona. She told charming and hysterical stories, then pulled out all the stops to sing musical theater songs both old and new. Perhaps most remarkable was her commitment to new theater music and songwriting, which at this concert yielded both a guffaw-inducing set of lieder songs by Gabriel Kahane set to the text of Craigslist ads, as well as a heartbreaking song from a character remembering Sept 11. Both brought over with the same seeming effortlessness.

A FEW OTHER THINGS WORTH MENTIONING

Natalia Osipova in the Bolshoi Ballet's Don Quixote, which was broadcast
to cinemas worldwide (Photo: Damir Yusopov)

In dance: the increasing number of cinema broadcasts of performances from the Bolshoi Ballet, the Royal Ballet, and New York City Ballet, all of which have allowed balletomanes see top-flight classical dance performances without having to leave home. I hope this trend continues. Wayne McGregor/Random Dance in Far was great to see at Montclair State University in New Jersey. I’ve found McGregor’s higher profile work with major ballet companies interesting but not totally satisfying, but in this piece, with his own company, I finally saw all of his ideas come together as a highly watchable whole. Boston Ballet put forth strong performances of Balanchine and Robbins in its quadruple bill last spring, and made Jorma Elo look positively fantastic in the company’s Elo Experience program in February.

I very much enjoyed seeing Alexei Ratmansky’s charming ballets pop up all over the place: at American Ballet Theatre with The Bright Stream and his new Nutcracker, and with the Mariinsky Ballet in The Little Humpbacked Horse at Lincoln Center. While in London, I enjoyed Arthur Pita’s dance-theater piece The Metamorphosis at the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House. And in the ROH’s main house upstairs, I found Marianela Nunez with Thiago Soares thrilling in Diamonds, from the Royal Ballet's production of Jewels. In Los Angeles, I was assaulted by the noise of Hofesh Schecter Company's Political Mother at UCLA Live. but it was worth it. And Wim Wenders’ documentary tribute to Pina Bausch, Pina, made me feel the elation of seeing her work all over again.

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's production of Clybourne Park
(Photo: Stan Barouh)

In theater: Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington DC put on a great production Clybourne Park, a play which raises a fascinating discussion about gentrification and changing urban neighborhoods. The National Theater’s production of One Man, Two Guvnors was broadcast live to American cinemas and had me in stitches. And the Under the Radar Festival in New York City, produced by the Public Theater, presented the most exciting theater I saw last year, including Teatro en el Blanco's Diciembre, mentioned above.

The set for Willy Decker's La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera House.

At the Metropolitan Opera, I liked the new perspective that Willy Decker’s Salzburg production of La Traviata brought to a tried and true war horse opera (even if the singing itself did not quite impress). I found a new favorite opera in Ariadne auf Naxos in this year’s Met performances, and Diana Damrau impressed me yet again with her Gilda in Rigoletto. In Los Angeles, there was a particularly strong performance of Cosi fan tutte with a fantastic cast.

I'm already in the throes of this year's Under the Radar Festival in New York City, along with the myriad of contemporary theater and dance festivals happening at the same time. And I've booked a whole bunch of opera and ballet tickets for the spring. Things are looking good for 2012, and I'm having fun diving in.

Three productions of Giselle

2011-02-16T01:57:00.009-05:00

The Royal Ballet's Giselle. Photo by Bill Cooper.

It’s odd sometimes how it seems that everyone will be performing one particular ballet all at the same time. A few years ago, every company and its mother was doing a new Sleeping Beauty or was touring to my city with it; another year, there was a flood of Swan Lakes. Two years ago, I noticed productions of George Balanchine’s Jewels occurring in Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle, as well as a DVD release from Paris. Perhaps it is just that the classical ballet repertory isn’t very extensive—in opera and repertory theater there is at least a bit more variety of repertoire from company to company, and not everyone decides to do King Lear during the same summer.

This year, it’s the year of Giselle. Since January, I’ve had three encounters with that feeble-hearted peasant girl: first from the Bolshoi Ballet, which broadcast its production from Moscow to movie theaters around the world on January 23; then, two weeks later, I saw San Francisco Ballet’s production live in San Francisco during its several week run there. This past weekend, I attended a transmission of the Royal Ballet’s production from London, which had originally been beamed live to movie theaters on January 19. Also, in early in January, Pacific Northwest Ballet presented a very informative lecture and demonstration at the Guggenheim Museum in New York—webcast free on the Guggenheim website—about the company’s forthcoming production. Scholars explained the history and choreographic details of the work, and the company’s dancers performed excerpts. The full production will be presented in Seattle in June.

Giselle-O-Rama doesn’t end there (though I won’t be seeing all of it): the Mariinsky Ballet just concluded a week-long run of Giselles at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC; American Ballet Theatre is performing the ballet as part of its spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City; and the fledgling Los Angeles Ballet is creating a new production, staged by Thordal Chirstensen and Colleen Neary, this May. I’m sure this is an incomplete list. (This season also happens to be a Swan Lake heavy season, with the movie Black Swan stirring popularity and sold-out productions of the ballet on stage at New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Pennsylvania Ballet, The Royal Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, on top of a visit from the Mariinsky Ballet to Toronto with its sterling production.)

I don't necessarily seek out Giselle. It’s not my favorite ballet, though I don’t mind watching it when it appears. The interesting thing about seeing so many companies do the same ballet is that watching the different productions tells you a lot about the character and performance style of each company and, to be fair, also tells you a lot about my preferences as an American ballet watcher who came to dance via the theater.

The Bolshoi Ballet in Giselle.

The Bolshoi Ballet excels in Giselle’s second act, in the forest of with the Wilis. Here, narrative takes a back seat to the poetry of beautifully performed, pure classical dance. Act One, full of pantomime and human storytelling, is given by the Bolshoi as a series of broad gestures. In the Bolshoi performance that was broadcast, this narrative looked silly, played as cute dramatic vignettes, and the people read as cartoonish archetypes of peasant villagers and aristocrats: we get the story and emotional moments but not a fully realized version of them. What we definitely see over the entire evening is the Bolshoi’s emphasis on technique and bravura dancing. The company’s school produces a seemingly miraculous, constant stream of fantastically trained dancers, and they’re all on display in a ballet like Giselle.

At the live broadcast, we had the further bonus of seeing this whole company in full flight with Class Concert, a short 30-minute ballet that was performed before Giselle. Class Concert is unabashedly about technique. It starts with small children at the ballet barre and progresses to towards the highest level of principals in the company. By the end, they are all bounding through the air and zipping across the stage in a mesmerizing parade of virtuosity. It's a cheap trick of a ballet, but with the Bolshoi dancing it, it sure is fun.

One might get the sense from this packaging of Class Concert and Giselle that the Bolshoi is all about technical dazzle. But that doesn't take into consideration the company's repertory of long-winded dramatic ballets from the Soviet era, like Spartacus (the most famous one), The Stone Flower, or the original version of The Bright Stream (a ballet recently reawakened and given new life by Alexei Ratmansky). My sense though is that the company has always been good at conveying drama through broad gestures, the kind that fill vast auditoriums and make grand, not-subtle statements. Their drama comes through the dancing: the heroism and spunkiness of gravity-defying jumps and spitfire turns, and the heartfelt emotion and poetry of an exquisitely controlled adage. There isn’t so much realistic stage acting, at least not in the way that Americans are used to seeing. And lets not forget the Russians' outdated stage effects, too. In this Giselle, there were like twinkling lights in the bushes that seemed to scream "GHOSTS!" at the beginning of Act 2, and there was a the mechanical seesaw that delivered a ghostly Giselle from the trees as though a UFO were dropping her off for the evening.

Giselle probably doesn’t show the Bolshoi at its best. I’ve greatly enjoyed seeing them recently in their Don Quixote and in the cinemacast of Ratmansky’s The Flames of Paris, and in the past I’ve enjoyed their La Bayadere and Swan Lake. All of them contained some measure of broad posturing, but it’s not so extreme as we saw here in Giselle.

The Royal Ballet in Giselle.

In contrast to the Bolshoi production, the first act of the Royal Ballet’s production is practically a Shakespeare play without the words. The acting is much more naturalistic and nuanced, and the scenario is flush with character details and dramatic motivations. But where the Royal excels at acting and drama, it makes comparatively less of an impact with pure classical dancing: the Royal’s Act 2 doesn’t have the effortless buoyancy and ghostliness of the Bolshoi’s, and while the characterizations and relationships are still rendered with vivid detail, this nearly all-dance act stays earthly and compact—not a bad thing, just a different one. The Royal Ballet’s production of Giselle was created by Sir Peter Wright, who originally danced for the Royal Ballet and first created this Giselle for the Stuttgart Ballet before bringing it back to the Royal Ballet.

Wright must have had an amazing dramaturg, because the level of dramatic detail here is astounding. Everything has a clear motivation and is fully thought through. For example, the hierarchy of nobility and peasantry is clearly defined—there are no cartoon nobles who generously and good-heartedly swoop in on the peasants. Instead, they pass through, demand water as an expectation of a peasant’s dutiful behavior, giggle patronizingly at the peasantry’s awe of at their arrival, and would really rather not touch a peasant, thank you very much. When Bathilde gives Giselle her necklace as a gift, she laughingly confers with her friends before giving it to her like a toy, then pulls away when Giselle makes a move to thank her–peasantry doesn’t touch nobility in this medieval world. Then, when Giselle dies, the lead noble hurriedly scoots the aristocrats straight out of there, as though they’d rather not be caught up in any of this peasant mess, and everyone leaves hurriedly and without much sympathy–in other versions, we see the nobles practically weep for Giselle. Instead of the fairytale-like French countryside seen in many Giselles, we have a drab clearing with thatched-roof shacks and the peasants wear faded working clothes. Hilarion is a rugged man-of-the-earth type who hunts well and doesn’t quite realize his roughness and force: when he grabs Giselle, he hurts her wrist by squeezing too hard (in other productions he is barely a character at all). And the forest clearing in Act 2? It’s scary and way overgrown: Giselle was buried here because, in this production, she had stabbed herself and therefore committed suicide (according to Jennifer Homans' new book Apollo's Angels, this was actually in the ballet's original scenario, but it has been variously replaced by Giselle's dying of a weak heart instead). By committing suicide, she cannot be buried in the church graveyard, and instead had to be buried far out in the forest, ripe for Wili-taking.

Sounds depressing all of it, but to me this makes the world of Giselle a very complete one: instead of a silly fairytale story, we get an emotional, tragic tale with deeply felt consequences. Some may find all the extra details in the Royal’s Giselle fussy, and others decry changing details of the narrative, but I love extra interpretation and completeness of this world. It makes a strong point about why we bother to watch Giselle these days.

I’d posit that this tradition of strong drama comes out of the Royal’s way of fully-realized productions, with Sir Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, and the Ballet Russes as forbearers. Here’s my unresearched, non-academic, and maybe oversimplified view of ballet at the Royal: the company’s repertory is filled with works by Frederick Ashton and Kennth MacMillan, all of which tend to have more drama in them than bravura (relative to the Russian ballets). There is a technical “style” to the dancing, and certainly Ashton’s steps are very distinctive (delicate and quick, what one normally thinks of when an “English” style is spoken about); MacMillan was very influenced by the Soviet-style of big lifts and such, but my perception is that a lot of his dances were very much in service of a more naturalistic style of story telling. The influences in World War II and post-World War II Britain would have been from the Ballet Russes but also from a very strong tradition of Shakespeare and London theater in general, which in turn had influences from people like Ibsen, Chekhovm and Stanislavsky (the latter two being Russian, ironically). In the West it seems these influences stuck, and realism and naturalism have become the dominant forms for theater, film and other drama, so we see a lot of that on stage, including at the Royal Ballet. In Germany and eastward, they started exploring more expressionist types of theater, and in Soviet Russia, cultural comissars knocked down all sorts of other things that didn’t involve the heroic ideals of the Communist Party. This is a major oversimplification of theatrical history refracted through my poor memory of theater history class, and it also doesn’t take into account the fact that the Royal is now populated with dancers of many international backgrounds (and Peter Wright’s Giselle has also filtered through many companies).

But similar drama and naturalism can be seen throughout the company’s repertory. MacMillan ballets are filled with this: the ensembles in the crowd scenes all have their own little stories that they are acting out, they aren’t just watching from the sidelines like in many Petipa ballets. Take a look at video recordings of Romeo and Juliet from the Bolshoi and from the Royal and you’ll see big differences in the how the background ensemble reacts to the principal action. This emphasis on drama can go two ways. One of the good ways is Wright's production of Giselle and the MacMillan ballets, if you like them; some of the rather worse ways are some slightly overwrought performances of Balanchine (too much emoting going on in some but not all), or the overcooked Swan Lake that has been part of the Royal’s repertory for the last twenty or so years, with distracting, MacMillan-style crowd activity in the Act 3 ballroom scene.

San Francisco Ballet in Giselle. Photo by Erik Tomasson.

San Francisco Ballet comes somewhere in between all of this. The company’s current production of Giselle was created by artistic director Helgi Tomasson, who became the company’s director in 1985 and has since lead the company to international renown. The company performs a lot of new and 20th century choreography, with extensive commissioning of new ballets each season, performances of works by George Balanchine, alongside productions of classics like Giselle. There is also a yearly marathon of Nutcrackers—de rigueur for an American ballet company. The normal run of the season consists of five or six mixed-bill programs and one or two programs of story ballets (this year only Giselle could be considered “traditional” – the other story ballet is John Neuemeier’s very contemporary Little Mermaid). Tomasson came through the ranks at Balanchine and Jerome Robbins’ New York City Ballet during the height of the pair’s creativity: they created many plot less one-act ballets that Tomasson himself danced in as a principal dancer. Disciples of Balanchine like Tomasson have come to run major companies throughout the United States, such as Miami and Seattle to name just two.

Giselle at San Francisco Ballet is performed in this context. Helgi Tomasson's production doesn’t have quite the level of dramatic detail that the Royal’s does, but nor is it as broad and classically pure as the Bolshoi’s. The dancers convey the general emotion of the scene—especially in the Act 2 forest—without being particularly special dramatic actors. The sets are fairytale Romantic, and the story is told with a straightforward, unencumbered simplicity that hits each of the right notes for a good Giselle. There’s not much more to say for it than that: I was thankful that the drama didn’t look as cartoonish as the Russians, but missed some of the well-thought-out performances of the Londoners.

If I had to pick, I’d say I most enjoyed the Royal Ballet’s dramatic take. Giselle is such an iconic, over-performed ballet that I feel like you have to be taken along with the story to stay interested in it. With the Wright’s version the story is being told to me anew each time I see it (I’ve seen it several times now: a few times in person when the Royal toured to Orange County in 2004, then on the DVD release with Alina Cojocaru in the main role, and this year in the cinema broadcast).

Marianela Nuñez (pictured above left) was wonderful as Giselle. Her arabesque could probably hurt someone with its strength and authority, but she harnesses that steely technique towards the dramatic moment she is in—her brilliant dancing ability is especially effective in Act Two. Her technique in combination with her sensitive acting made for a heartbreaking performance, with a tear-jerker of a mad scene. If only her Albrecht were more interesting: Rupert Pennefather was a handsome if adequate Albrecht who did everything correctly, but this was definitely the Marianela show. In fact, it was Gary Avis’ Hilarion, Albrecht's rival, who was more interesting to watch. This created a somewhat unintended side interpretation of the drama: beware the pretty boys for they may be hiding something (go with the rugged, sturdy mountain man instead!). In any case, I enjoyed the Royal’s Giselle tremendously.

As for the Bolshoi, I found most of the first act in the company's production rather boring. Act Two was where the company shone, particularly with Svetlana Lunkhina as Giselle. Her wraithlike, otherworldly appearance along with exceptional technical control yielded an exquisite performance here. But the broad gesturing and posturing of Act One left me cold.

San Francisco Ballet’s Giselle was headed by a strong cast, with Lorena Feijoo as Giselle, Vitor Luiz as Albrecht, and Sofiane Sylve as Myrtha. I haven’t admired Feijoo in everything, but I found her Giselle bright and vivacious in Act One. She’s a girl who just can’t help but dance, and it’s all the more tragic that her weak heart won’t let her. Vitor Luiz was an attentive and passionate, played as a kind of victim of circumstance. His Albrecht really did love Giselle, but he was beholden to his situation to marry an aristocrat instead. It is not a necessarily a sympathetic portrayal but it seemed to play up the love aspect. Sofiane Sylve, who danced Myrtha, is a dancer who I’ve enjoyed watching a lot over the years, starting from when she was with New York City Ballet. She’s basically perfect for Myrtha, with a powerful, athletic technique, jet-black hair, and large, expressive eyes. She delivered on all cylinders, and I also like that San Francisco’s production gives her a bit more to dance, with an extended allegro passage in Myrtha’s entrance solo. Act Two was probably the most enjoyable in this production: the set was truly beautiful to look at, and it extended in forced perspective deep into the stage. Spooky and atmospheric, and an completely enjoyable performance.

Inset photographs: (1) Marianela Nuñez as Giselle in the Royal Ballet's production, photo by Johan Persson. (2) Lorena Feijoo as Giselle in San Francisco Ballet's production, photo by Erik Tomasson.

Looking back on 2010

2011-01-06T01:31:00.005-05:00

2010 was a pretty good year for show going. For me personally, six months of it were spent living in New York City and I took full advantage: I saw more shows in the space of those six months than I had in any one previous year. Most excitingly, several things were new and wonderfully surprising to me.

In summary, I saw 184 performances last year. 44% were dance performances, 29% were theater (plays and musicals), 11% were opera, and 8% were music. This year’s count represents an increase of 54 over last year (a 43% increase). I also attended my 1,000th performance since I started counting in back in high school: it was Mark Morris’ The Hard Nut in December.

DANCE

Serenade at New York City Ballet. Photo by Paul Kolnik.

I really fell in love with New York City Ballet in 2010. I saw dozens of performances during the company's winter, spring and fall seasons (the fall season is a happy new addition to the schedule), and the company has an incredible repertory of classic and contemporary works, most of it performed with enthusiasm if not perfection. The company don’t win with everything—there were some woefully undercoached and underrehearsed performances, as well as a few misfires in the newest repertory—but when the company did win, it won big. There were thrilling performances from dancers like Ashley Bouder, Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck, Gonzalo Garcia, Tyler Angle, and Daniel Ulbricht, and, even better, beautiful full-company efforts in staples of the Balanchine repertoire: these were performances that reminded why these ballets are still exciting and relevant today. In particular, I loved seeing performances of Balanchine’s Agon, Duo Concertant, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, and especially Divertimento No. 15; Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering; and Wayne McGregor’s new ballet for the company, Outlier, presented as part of a festival of new choreography in the spring season. There were also memorable farewell performances for beloved company members, notably the performance of Serenade at Philip Neal’s farewell. Though these great artists were leaving, the generation coming in behind them is no short of brilliant exciting. Fantastic performances this year included Ashley Bouder in Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, Firebird, and Scotch Symphony (a debut no less); Gonzalo Garcia and Wendy Whelan in Robbins’ Opus 19/The Dreamer; Kathryn Morgan’s debut as Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty; Tiler Peck in Who Cares? and Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty; and Tyler Angle in lots of things, including small roles in Agon. I can’t wait to see what the company will bring this year.

Pina Bausch's Vollmond. Photo by Laurent Philippe.

Of course, being in New York meant that there was plenty of other great dance to see. Among my favorites: Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal in Volmond, in the company’s first New York appearance after the death its of founder-choreographer Pina Bausch; Keigwin & Company at the Joyce new to me and very exciting; Faye Driscoll’s There is so much mad in me at Dance Theatre Workshop; Diana Vishneva and Marcelo Gomes for their passionate and inspired performances in American Ballet Theater’s productions of La Bayadere and Neuemeier’s Lady of the Camellias at the Metropolitan Opera House; as well as Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg's witty and pristinely delicate performances in Ashton’s The Dream, also during American Ballet Theatre’s spring season at the Met. In Philadelphia, I caught a particularly remarkable performance by Pennsylvania Ballet, in Jerome Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun (dreamlike and entrancing) and in William Forsythe’s In the middle, somewhat elevated (a fabulous jolt to the system).

December brought four productions of The Nutcracker, and I enjoyed them all: the classic Balanchine production at New York City Ballet, the Royal Ballet’s on DVD, Alexei Ratmansky’s new production for American Ballet Theatre, and Mark Morris’ campy Hard Nut, especially in his whimsically musical choreography in the Waltz of the Snowflakes.

THEATER

Lily Rabe and Al Pacino in the Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice, directed by Daniel Sullivan, which originated at Shakespeare in the Park. Photo by Joan Marcus.

While my year definitely skewed towards dance, there was plenty I enjoyed in the theater as well. On Broadway: the new company of Next to Normal, featuring Marin Mazzie and Jason Daniely in understated performances that, in my view, exceeded the already excellent performances of the original cast; the Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of La Cage aux Folles, which was hysterically fun and sweetly heartwarming all at once; a strongly acted and deftly directed production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge starring Liev Schrieber and Scarlett Johanssen; the inspired casting of Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch in A Little Night Music, who made a decent production brilliant; and Fela!, which was anything but a linear, traditional Broadway musical but was exciting and moving anyway.

Off Broadway and around town, there was Neighbors, at the Public Theater; the Glyndeborne Opera’s production of The Fairy Queen at BAM (a production that was more theater than opera really); Elevator Repair Service’s brilliant Gatz at the Public, in which the entirety of Great Gatsby the novel was read on stage; and the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production of The Merchant of Venice, which later transferred to Broadway with a headliner in Al Pacino and a true star performance in Lily Rabe.

While traveling to Bangkok, Thailand this summer with family, I also managed to see a Thai production of La Cage aux Folles at the Rachadalai Theatre, called Kinnaree See Rung. It was a great adaptation of this show, very fun and very funny, and in many ways, the show worked even better in the context of Thai culture. They played up a fascinating tension between the conservatism of Thai family life and the risqué, drag shows popular among foreign tourists, giving a real truth the show that resonated quite powerfully (where in the 2010 New York production, they had to really remind us the show was set in the 80s to make the main plot twist more believable). Oh, and did I mention that the Thai production was just a ton of fun, too?

In operatic theater, I very much enjoyed Richard Eyre’s new production of Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera, with searing performances from Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna; Anna Netrebko was fantastic in the still-good Zefferelli production of La Boheme; and I also very much enjoyed seeing Diana Damrau in several things this year: in Bart Scherr’s production of Il Barbiere de Siviglia and especially in concert, singing Strauss songs and Zerbinetta's virtuoso showcase aria from Ariadne auf Naxos, with the MET Orchestra.

MOVIES

These weren’t live performances but their storytelling excited me anyway: The Social Network and Toy Story 3.

Adventures in Nutcracker: 2010

2011-01-05T00:57:00.007-05:00

Balanchine's Nutcracker at New York City Ballet. Photo by Paul Kolnik.

For a ballet junkie like me, most of the options for ballet during the month of December boil down to The Nutcracker, especially in the United States. That doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, though. This season, I was lucky enough to see four wonderful Nutcrackers. In person, I saw George Balanchine's version at New York City Ballet, Alexei Ratmansky’s new one for American Ballet Theatre, and Mark Morris’ The Hard Nut, for his Mark Morris Dance Group. I also saw The Royal Ballet’s production by Sir Peter Wright, in a new recording that was made last Christmas at the Royal Opera House in London and screened at cinemas this Christmas (it was also released on DVD). These performances reminded me of the genuine charms of this ballet: the gorgeous Tchaikovsky score and the clever theatrical potential inside of it, the joy of Christmas as seen through the eyes of children, and—occasionally—some fantastically inventive choreography to go along with all of that. Living in the New York area has greatly improved my outlook on this ballet. I saw some pretty dreadful, unimaginative productions when I was living out West, enough to make me weary of Nutcracker (and to develop a personal rule to never, ever go out of my way to see The Nutcracker).

I’ve come across what may be, to my eyes, my personal favorite Nutcracker: Balanchine’s version, which has seriously good ballet choreography that rises to the occasion presented by the music. Balanchine’s version also has a simple, uncluttered narrative that doesn't try to hard to add too much plot or sense to the whole thing. It's sweets and simple vignettes, expertly staged so that we don't get too bored. Various other Nutcrackers spiral out from here in my view.Some productions focus more on the narrative than dancing, and others go straight to the spectacle, making everything as grand and resplendent as possible.

The snow scene in Balanchine's Nutcracker, at New York City Ballet. Photo by Paul Kolnik.

New York City Ballet’s production of Balanchine’s Nutcracker is the stalwart (there are also productions of the Balanchine version at Pennsylvania, Miami, Atlanta and Oregon Ballet Theatre). Every time I see it, I get giddy over the entire experience of it all. Walking up the steps of Lincoln Center, sitting in the jewel box of a theater, and seeing the illustrated blue curtain during the overture. And Balanchine’s choreography has me in awe every time, with its constantly unfolding and surprising patterns and the joyous speed of the dancing with the music. I’m sure the dancers must get tired of the endless repetition of performing this ballet, but I love seeing it every time. This year I saw Tiler Peck and Joaquin De Luz as Sugar Plum and the Cavalier, and Ana Sophia Scheller as Dewdrop. All of them a joy to watch.

Most charming about Balanchine’s production is his use of children. We see the ballet through young eyes from the moment the curtain rises. The child Marie is peeking through the keyhole at the family room, where parents are decorating the tree. From there, the childhood fantasy keeps growing, from an ideal Christmas party—where the children are mostly well-behaved and get some actual, pleasant choreography to dance—to a heroic battle, to a dream of a snow-scene, and a trip to the land of the sweets. Children get featured roles throughout the ballet, from being the cutest-angels-ever to big dance parts in the Candy Canes and Mother Ginger dances. Seeing these children on stage—dancing so well in such pleasing choreography—puts a smile on my face and makes me a happy child for two hours.

The Royal Ballet's Nutcracker, by Sir Peter Wright, with Miyako Yoshida and Steven McRae. Photo by Johan Persson.

Grand and resplendent is the route taken by the Nutcracker at the The Royal Ballet, created by Sir Peter Wright. It has a beautiful physical production with glittering, enormous pieces of scenery and elaborate costumes. In this production, I most enjoy seeing the Grand Pas de Deux for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier, which appears near the end of Act 2. It has gorgeously classical, majestic choreography (which I gather from various sources can be traced back to Lev Ivanov’s original choreography from the first Nutcracker in Russia). In this DVD, Miyako Yoshida and Steven McRae perform it with crystalline perfection. Also noteworthy is Laura Morera’s smashing performance as the Rose Fairy in the Waltz of the Flowers.

This is the second recorded version of this Nutcracker production to have been released since 2000, and both of them have featured Miyako Yoshida as the Sugar Plum Fairy. Comparisons are inevitable since both discs are so readily available: as nice as it is to see Yoshida and Morera on the new disc, the older one is generally better. Alina Cojocaru was perfect as Clara on the old disc—young and sweet in character, expansive and spontaneous in her dancing—and it’d be hard for anyone to match that, even though Iohna Loots is just fine as Clara on the new disc. Regarding Yoshida’s double performance, before recording this DVD, the smile police must have told her to smile extra hard this time out: in 2000, she was cool and regal (maybe even a bit icy), but this time, she looks like she’s about to kill with kindness. Personally I prefer the calmer version on the old disc, but her performance with McRae is very much a joy anyway.

American Ballet Theatre's Nutcracker, at BAM.

This year, American Ballet Theatre offered New York City a classical alternative to Balanchine’s tried and true classic, premiering a brand-new version by resident choreographer Alexei Ratmansky. I loved this new production. It is very theatrical, focused more on narrative elements than either the Royal or Balanchine productions. While it tells essentially the same story—family Christmas party, girl falls asleep and has a dream filled with battles and candy sweets—the details make Ratmansky’s Nutcracker entirely original. It is very playful: jokes abound in the story and choreography, right from the beginning. Mice amusingly take over the kitchen during the first scene; during her iconic variation, the Sugar Plum Fairy bounces off stage then takes a peek-a-boo from the wings before launching into her final series of turns; the list goes on. There were surprises throughout, and I eagerly waited for every tried-and-true Nutcracker moment to see what Ratmansky would do with it—and each time I was happily tickled by the results. This production is a huge improvement over ABT’s old McKenzie production, and it’s a welcome addition to the cadre of American Nutcrackers. Also very exciting was the company's performance in this production. There was a palpable level of energy, playfulness, and commitment on stage that was especially noticeable since I saw so many tired performances during the company's Met season last spring. Perhaps having a new production and having Ratmansky in the room creating with them gave the dancers something to get excited about (where in the Spring they're performing things that they have done over and over). In any case, it was thoroughly enjoyable all around.

Mark Morris' The Hard Nut. Photos by Stephanie Berger.

But if a classical alternative just wasn’t alternative enough, Mark Morris’ The Hard Nut provided more than enough quirk to get through any holiday season slump. This production was presented at BAM in the week just before ABT’s new production, and it has been showing up off and on around the world for nearly 20 years. Though it’s certainly different from a traditional Nut—and certainly it was hyped that way—I was surprised to find that it was actually pretty straightforward and loyal to Tchaikovsky’s score. Morris revels in the music, and the Mark Morris Dance Group Music Ensemble gave it the best reading that I heard in any of these four productions—it was sweet, nimble, and appropriately grand at all the right moments. And there was a live childrens' chorus for the Snow Scene (the excellent Brooklyn Youth Chorus)! From this excellent music grew the choreography, and Morris is one of the most musical of choreographers.

The best parts for a dance lover were the Waltz of the Snowflakes, the Waltz of the Flowers and the Grand Adagio in Act Two. In these moments, Morris offers a fantastic modern-dance alternative to classical ballet. He finds the joy and emotion in the score and brings it to the surface, giving a dance on flat foot that doesn’t wish like it was ballet (I have sadly seen that too often in other choreographers’ work) and is also hysterically wonderful as well. The dramatic scenes show quirky, but lovable characters, all finely drawn and fun to watch. Morris solves the Act Two problem of Nutcracker (where endless divertissements can bore) by inserting his own story on top. The device doesn’t work all the way but it keeps us gainfully entertained for the next 40 minutes. This is another Nutcracker that kept me smiling for the whole two hours.

Gatz

2010-12-08T23:22:00.004-05:00

Photo: Chris Bierens

It’s difficult to describe the experience of seeing Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz and how it’s such a fascinating theatrical experience. Described plainly, it’s an 8.5 hour performance given in two parts (with a one hour dinner break in between and 15 minute intermissions) during which the entirety of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is read out loud. The setting is a drab office, and the conceit is that one of the office drones entertains himself by reading The Great Gatsby while waiting for tech support to come fix his computer. Bit by bit, the novel comes to life around him. His fellow office-mates become the characters in the novel and begin speaking the lines of dialogue, and he himself eventually takes on the role of the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway.

In performance, the show begins on a lighter note and gradually darkens as the tone of the novel does as well. Most of part 1 is brightly lit, the scenes staged with lots of action (sheaves of paper thrown around the room at Myrtle’s party) and a bunch of meta-comedy (the narrator’s raised eyebrows and smirks at amusing lines in the text). By part 2, most of the lighting palate turns to dark blues, deep shadows and cold white fluorescents. The performances become more straightforward and somber, and the narrator takes his job far more seriously.

It is not staged as a literal stage adaptation of the novel. Rather, we get one person’s imagining of the novel as he reads it, in context of the space that he’s reading it. Sort of. Parts of it make clear the office environment and even the space of the theater—for each intermission break, the narrator puts the book down, turns to the adueince and says, “We’re going to stop here for fifteen”—and in other parts, it seems like we’ve completely fallen into the book. This is especially the case during the last chapter of the novel, when our narrator (performed, brilliantly, by Scott Sheperd) puts the book down and speaks the text directly to the audience, perhaps completing the transformation into Nick Carraway.

Photo: Mark Barton

Before I saw it, the idea of an 8-plus-hour show already sounded like a slog to me, and the prospect of hearing all of The Great Gatsby in one sitting seemed brutal, too, even if I actually like the novel. But the theater press had been buzzing about the show, and so had friends who had seen in Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere (Elevator Repair Service has toured with this show for several years before this run at the Public). But how much, I wondered, could this staging add to it, anyway?

Well, a lot and not a lot, but all of it good. There are parts where the show really does just feel like a reading of the novel, but then, one line is read a certain way, and suddenly the text is fantastically illuminated. Or, through a brilliant performances or a clever bit of staging—all directed with intelligence and wit by John Collins—a scene comes to life with blinding clarity and emotion. Some of this was unexpected to me, even with my familiarity of the novel, which I had read in high school and again in college. It’s amazing how interesting it is to hear a novel like The Great Gatsby read and revealed to you: like story time for adults, but with an added level of intelligence and maturity. It made for really great theater, and just like the characters on stage, at the end of those eight hours, you feel like you’ve gone on a wild ride, too.

Gatz concluded its run at The Public Theater on November 29.

Così fan tutte at the Met

2010-12-07T23:59:00.001-05:00

Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

Even though it’s one of Mozart’s most popular operas, I’ve never really liked Così fan tutte—I have tried to see it twice before, and have never made it through the whole thing for sheer boredom over the contrived plot. To be fair to Così, both times were pretty substandard productions, one a regional opera company (when I bailed at intermission) and the other was at a music conservatory (when I jumped ship only part way through Act 1). So I came to this performance at the Met with reservations. I willed myself to go because I figured that it’s one of Mozart’s most beloved operas and perhaps I was just missing something. And on paper, this performance looked great: the cast and musical team were made up of people I love to hear, especially Miah Persson as Fiordiligi, who I’ve loved in Mozart since I heard her sing the Mozart Mass in C with the Los Angeles Philharmonic several years ago, and William Christie, whose conducting of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at BAM was just fabulous to hear. Plus, the Met was pushing this team as a youthful and sexy cast—can’t go wrong with that, right? (Well, you can, but that’s not related to this performance.)

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed myself last Saturday night (Nov 27). The plot remains ridiculous to me: a silly farce where two men decide test whether, as their friend says, ‘all women are unfaithful’ by disguising themselves as foreigners and wooing the other’s girlfriend really hard. If any one of my “lovers” tried to pull that trick on me I would have slapped him really good. But I imagine one must suspend one's disbelief and allow that Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte wrote the thing long before the time of Girl Power®. Nevertheless, it was possible to sit there and just let Mozart’s beautiful music wash over. Sometimes, I just closed my eyes and listened to the music rather than actually observe the bizarre happenings. The score is filled with gorgeous arias, duets, trios, quintets, and more. All of them are exceedingly easy on the ear, and it was even more pleasurable given the stellar vocal performances rendered by the cast. Miah Persson’s voice was warm and enveloping, Pavol Bresslik (Ferrando) bright and clear. Danielle DeNeise was a ham on stage, a pleasure to watch, and William Christie’s conducting was brisk and crisp. The production was straightforward and didn’t take too many interpretive liberties. It just was what it was, but that allowed the music to stand on it’s own—and that was fine by me.

New York City Ballet: Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, Liebeslieder Walzer

2010-02-22T17:51:00.019-05:00

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, choreographed by George Balanchine. Photo by Paul Kolnik.

New York City Ballet danced Liebeslieder Walzer and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 last week, and I loved seeing Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 so much that I returned twice more to see the program. It was kind of a relief to see these two Balanchine one-acters back after several weeks in story-ballet land.

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, presented at the end of the program, showed Balanchine's choreographic genius at its finest. I marvel at the way steps and patterns unfurl in a seemingly effortless progression over the course of the ballet's 36 minutes. Everything fits so perfectly in the music, as though they all simply belonged there - the music comes to life in an almost thrilling way that is clear, unforced and illuminating. This Tchaikovsky piano concerto is quite possibly more interesting with Balanchine's choreography than it is on its own.

The ballet is classically formal in manner and structure, recalling grand classical ballet at its Russian Imperial height (TPC2 was originally called Ballet Imperial and staged with grand tutus and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling - several companies still dance it this way, but NYCB dances it in a later version using simpler chiffon dresses and an empty stage). The dancing occurs in neat lines and circles of corps dancers that surround a principal couple and soloist ballerina. The dancers behave with a noble, courtly demeanor, bowing to one another as men graciously escort women around the stage, and the dancing looks rigorously academic and classical. What makes it a 20th century ballet instead of an old-fashioned 19th century one is the speed with which the steps are accomplished, and the rather more intricate way that the dancers weave around one another in their stage patterns. No particular story emerges in the ballet, but we see suggestions of a relationship in the pas de deux. The 'narrative' of the piece comes more from the music, and the choreographic ideas that Balanchine neatly fits into it. The bottom line for a viewer is that it that you get to watch plenty of classical ballet at once, choreographed to perfection, and without waiting through mime to get there.

There are also opportunities to see spectacular performances in the principal roles. The main ballerina role starts out with a devilishly tricky solo filled with quick turns and dramatic pauses. It continues with a pas de deux that must look gentle, though the steps are strung together with fast lifts and sudden changes of direction. In the second movement, there is a melting adage, followed by a third movement loaded jumps. The second ballerina in the ballet dances mostly alone; there is one brief section with two supporting cavaliers. This is a mostly flashy role, with lots of jumps and turns. She leads the corps de ballet in several passages leading up to the principal couple.

Ashley Bouder was stunning in the main ballerina role at the midweek performances (pictured to the left and above with Jonathan Stafford as her partner). She has had one heck of a season, with great showings in Firebird, Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, and she really outdid herself here. Bouder is short in stature but huge in presence, using the easy flow of her dancing and the clarity with which she illustrates the music to dominate the stage. It's an assured, highly engaging performance that dazzles as much with her technical accomplishment as it does with her personality and musicality. Jonathan Stafford partnered her with confidence and sensitivity - the second movement, when he gazes longingly at the ballerina as she disappears off stage, was particularly affecting.

Teresa Reichlen danced the main role on Friday and Saturday, and though she brought her own qualities to the role - beautifully controlled long limbs, lush phrasing and musicality - she didn't quite match the exuberant vigor of Bouder's interpretation. It was still a good performance though, and her partner Stephen Hanna was wonderful as well (making more of an impression in the role than Stafford).

Kathryn Morgan danced her first performances in the second ballerina role over the weekend (I saw it on Saturday) and was really great in it. Delightfully peppy yet refined and gracious, she held the stage on her own merit while preparing the audience to see the principal couple coming up. Savannah Lowery danced this role at the weeknight shows. She's an interesting-looking dancer: very tall with muscled, broad shoulders and a stocky neck. In classical dress she looks severe and almost uncomfortable, but when she gets moving, you notice that her dancing has a real pop to it. She really explodes with the music and can spin into it in a way that ultimately works. Lowery is not quite as pleasant to watch as Morgan, but you can't fully dismiss her performance either.

The liability in this performance was the corps de ballet. For as long as I have watched New York City Ballet, the corps has always been problematic in these more classical pieces - they seem fine in the more contemporary-looking ones like Agon or Stravinsky Violin Concerto. Balanchine's patterns carry, but the corps looks effortful when performing them. You see them straining to keep up, looking slightly panicked as they rush into formation (it was particularly noticeable in TPC2 at the beginning of the 2nd movement, when two lines of corps dancers swing back and forth behind the male cavalier and two demi-soloists). Other companies that I've seen perform this work have a much cleaner and stylistically secure corps; they seem to have as much a sense of place as the principals. True, they don't dance the ballet quite as quickly as NYCB, but it doesn't look ragged or teetering on the edge of control. Here, its the principals and soloists carrying the ballet through.

Liebeslieder Walzer, choreographed by George Balanchine. Photo by Paul Kolnik.

I've waxed rhapsodic about Liebeslieder Walzer before. Watching it again this season, its beautiful subtleties emerged even more and I had the opportunity to focus on some of the fine performances. I'll give that it's not the easiest ballet for audiences to digest. At each of the three performances that I attended, I frequently heard audience members around me talking about having fallen or sleep, or having "made it" through the slog. The ballet is one hour long, and the first half-hour is just a bunch of waltzing in ball gowns - the music is four hands on a piano with classical voices singing German. Things can (and do) look the same when you're unfamiliar with it. I started there, too, when I first saw it early in my ballet-watching, but came around to it as my musical and dance sophistication has grown.

Jennie Somogyi and Wendy Whelan were the standouts for me this time around, giving beautifully sensitive performances. Their dancing had an impulse that extended beyond the mere execution of the steps: emotion complemented the expansive sweep and flow of their waltzing, and it became particularly poignant in the second act, where they dance on pointe. They connected with their partners - Justin Peck and Jared Angle, respectively - in a way that made it seem like they were alone together on stage, the audience privy to private conversations. The male roles in this ballet appear secondary to the female ones, but they are just as important in providing a solid foundation for their partners. Peck and Angle did this wonderfully for Somogyi and Whelan (Peck's performance was a debut in the ballet).

Janie Taylor, Sebestien Marcovici, Darci Kistler and Philip Neal comprised the other two couples; I found their performances a bit shaky at the start of the run, though by Saturday, the entire group was giving beautiful performances. Kistler and Neal gave their final performances of Liebeslieder in their careers; both will retire at the end of the season. The vocal quartet were wonderful to hear. Ashley Emerson, Katherine Rohner, Michael Slattery and Thomas Meglioranza sang, and I thought Emerson was particularly pleasing in her solo moments. Susan Walters and Richard Moredock were the pianists.

All photos by Paul Kolnik. Top center, and inset (1) and (2) - Ashley Bouder and Jonathan Stafford in Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, choreography by George Balanchine; inset (3) Teresa Reichlen, pictured here in the second ballerina role, and the New York City Ballet corps de ballet in Piano Concerto No. 2. Second center photo - The 2010 cast of Liebeslieder Walzer, choreography by George Balanchine. Inset (4) - Jennie Somogyi and Justin Peck in Liebeslieder.

New York City Ballet's Swan Lake

2010-02-16T11:38:00.007-05:00

Thurs, Feb 11 - Through no particular fault of the company's or the production's (though there is plenty to pick over in the latter), I was pretty bored at New York City Ballet's Swan Lake last Thursday. I think it may have been more of a personal overdose full lengths Swan Lakes. I was antsy through all of divertissements and waltzes, and waited anxiously for them to just get it overwith and hurry along to the main stuff with Odette/Odile and Siegfried. When they did get there, it was actually pretty good - I'm a big fan of Ashley Bouder's dancing in general this season, and as Odette/Odile she gave plenty to marvel at. But I find that I'm increasingly unwilling to sit through two hours of fluff to get the 30 minutes of stuff that I'm actually interested in seeing. At this point I prefer Balanchine's single-act condensation of Swan Lake, which NYCB presented last year. (I realize this may be a very personal view of full-lengths, Swan Lake in particular.)

This production didn't exactly help matters: there's lots of motion, but at the expense of drama. Peter Martins' staging has received mixed reviews for most of its life, so I came in well prepared to expect garish sets and choreographic curiosities. And honestly, neither of those elements were so bad to me. Per Kirkeby's scenery is vague and impressionistic, but it works in a way - the backdrops look like they began with the usual scenes but then the paint ran all over the canvas instead. (Also, I didn't really see the backdrops for most of the show - I was sitting in the 4th Ring). The costumes in the ballroom scenes are cheap looking, but the swans look appropriately wistful and traditional.

On its own, Martins' choreography has a propulsive energy that keeps the dancers constantly dancing throughout the evening - they move through pretty standard but satisfying and efficient stage patterns that serve the music well. But in exchange for constant movement, the drama and mime is almost entirely stripped away. You can have drama without the mime, but here there is neither; you'll have to read the program to know what is being represented on stage. Further, the scenes that traditionally establish character and relationships are musically abridged, so we as an audience don't get much time to connect with the characters we're watching. For example, there is a scene in Act 1 where the Queen arrives to give Siegfried his birthday gift and to tell him that he must choose a bride by his 21st birthday. In this production she briskly walks on, points at a few things, hands over the hunting bow and is gone again in about two minute - Tchaikovsky's musical interlude for this scene is cut roughly in half. I'm all for brisk storytelling (it actually works better in Martins' production of Sleeping Beauty), but here it works against the production. The non-stop dancing - which all looks the same, by the way, despite its efficiency - becomes a blur of motion.

That said, there are some things to like about this production. The final lakeside scene is particularly affecting, and I loved Martins' version of the ending. In the traditional Swan Lake, Siegfried swears his love to Odette, who is being held captive by the evil magician Von Rothbart's spell. Siegfried must remain faithful to her, however, otherwise she is doomed to remain a swan forever. When Von Rothbart tricks Siegfried by sending his evil daughter Odile after him, the lovers appear to be doomed until they both commit suicide by hurling themselves into the lake - Rothbart is vanquished and the lovers reunite in the afterlife. Tragedy with an uplift. In this production, most of the story is the same but instead of committing suicide, the lovers vanquish Rothbart by sheer force of their love. Then, Odette sadly leaves Siegfried and returns to swan form forever, a consequence of the ever powerful spell and of Siegfried's infidelity. She bourrees away from him, both of them resigned to the fate that he has assigned to them - it's rather like Giselle in its heartbreaking finality.

The dancing is the main reason to continually revisit Swan Lake. Ashley Bouder's Odette/Odile is very compelling. She's much faster and active than most Odette (the Russians and many Odettes after them tend to take it at an elegaic pace), but it works: she feels really alive and the performance has an urgency that suggests Odette's struggle. And her dancing is fast, but also controlled and precise, so you see the lines and the choreography very clearly. Given Bouder's technical proficiency, the dazzle of her Odile is not unexpected, but it's still a marvel to watch. The adage was crisp and sexy, her variation was fantastic and her fouettes whipped the audience into a frenzy. Her Prince was Benjamin Millepied, who gets plenty of stage time in the Martins production. He was great in his solo moments, but in Swan Lake, isn't it usually about the ballerina? The swan corps looked very good overall as well. In general, the company takes things at a faster clip than many classical companies (the fleet-footedness is ingrained in the company style), but it fit with Martins' more efficient version of things in this production.

I had initially planned to see all three casts that the company was fielding for this production (Maria Kowroski/Stephen Hanna and Sara Mearns/Jared Angle were the others) but I couldn't bring myself to sit through the whole show just for their moments. All of them are cast in Jewels next week, with plenty of opportunity for ballerina glamour in a much shorter ballet. I decided to skip the rest of the Swans and wait for Jewels.

Inset photo: Ashley Bouder as Odette, photo by Paul Kolnik.

La Fille du Regiment at the Metropolitan Opera

2010-02-11T00:05:00.014-05:00

Diana Damrau in Laurent Pelly's production of La Fille du Regiment, photographed at San Francisco Opera by Corey Weaver.

Feb 10 - It was blizzarding outside tonight, but it couldn't have been warmer inside the Met. Laurent Pelly's production of Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment was pure, silly fun. The staging is amusing and hyperactive, and while Pelly's direction makes light of the already silly story, he doesn't cheapen it. The focus is drawn to the heartwarming love story and we get to languish on the vocal high points. And with Diana Damrau as Marie and Juan Diego Florez as Tonio leading this performance, there were plenty of vocal highlights to be had.

I especially loved Damrau in her slow arias, “Il faut partir” at the end of Act 1 and “Par le rang et l’opulence” in Act 2. Florez reliably hit the nine high Cs in "Ah mes amis" (drawing a prolonged ovation from the crowd). I did have a some trouble hearing her over the orchestra in the some of the secondary music, but then she pulled out all the stops again for each of the showcase coloratura moment, so I basically forgot my quibbles. Florez seemed to be having fun but didn't put forth his real spark until "Ah mes a mis" and then his big Act 2 aria. Meredith Arwady was sheer delight as the Marquise of Berkenfeld and Maurizio Muraro hammed it up as Sulpice. Kiri Te Kanawa made the most out of her Act 2 appearance as The Duchess Krakenthorp. She has been a much-loved a star soprano in her own right during her younger days, and here she gave a short song - to the audience's delight - even though her role is a mostly spoken one.

I had seen this production first in the Met's movie theater broadcast, with Natalie Dessay as Marie, on whom Pelly originally staged this production with Florez. I came to tonight's performance with pretty high expectations for a hysterical romp through this opera, but this performance was not nearly as hyper as it was with the Dessay (she takes opera hyper to an entirely different level). Tonight it was just silliness instead of a hilarious romp, but I think I'm okay with that - I was still entertained for the whole two hours and forty five minutes. And I much preferred Damrau's voice to Dessay's. Damrau's voice has a heftier weight to it, which served her very well in the slower arias, thought she was still able to show off in the flighty coloratura moments. Especially after her stunning Carnegie Hall concert three weeks ago, I'm firmly in the Diana Damrau fan club. Her upcoming performances as Rossina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia later this month can't be missed.

Best part of the night: my insane student rush ticket, courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera box office. Presumably due to the snow day and subscriber returns, I was seated 9th row, center. While being so close on the floor probably accounted for some of the orchestra-singer imbalances that I mentioned earlier, it was truly stunning when Florez and Damrau came right in front of me and sang for all they were worth. Amazing.

Inset photos: (1) Juan Diego Florez, photo by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera. (2) Juan Diego Florez and Diana Damrau, photo by Cory Weavers/San Francisco Opera. (3) & (4) Curtain call at the Metropolitan Opera, my photos.

New York City Ballet: Agon, The Lady with the Little Dog, Cortege Hongrois

2010-02-10T11:44:00.019-05:00

Wendy Whelan and Albert Evans in Agon, choreographed by George Balanchine.
Photo by John Ross, from Ballet.co.uk.

Wed, Jan 20 & Tues, Feb 9 - This program was one of only a few mixed rep performances during New York City Ballet's 2010 winter season. Full-evening story ballets dominate the rep this season, so it was nice to see the company in repertory mode for a smattering of performances.

Agon was the most exciting piece for me. Set to a modern, atonal score by Stravinsky but arranged structurally in the manner of formal academic dance, the ballet manages to look both contemporary and sharply classical all at once. The title is a Greek word for competition, and the various dances - named after French court dances (ie sarabande, bransle, etc.) - are arranged presentationally in an escalating showcase, with the pas de deux as the culminating event. The choreography is fascinating: it's classical ballet but stretched, twisted and rearranged into something that looks refreshingly modern even now, more than fifty years after the ballet's premiere.

The two performances of Agon that I saw were fantastic. There was urgency and tension, the dancing crisp and decisive. Wendy Whelan was particularly thrilling in the pas de deux (she danced it with Albert Evans on Jan 20 and Sebastien Marcovic on Feb 9). Her performance appeared effortless: it was clear that she was the one who held the power in the relationship with her partner, and she was flirtatious, mysterious and powerful. She alternated between breathtaking slow stretches and well-timed angular leaps, timing everything with intelligence and control. She has mastered this role after so many years doing it, and the performance she is giving right now is nothing short of amazing.

I also love the Bransle Gay, which is the solo female role in the second pas de trois. At the Feb 9 performance, Ellen Bar debuted in this role, and I thought she did a particularly good job here. She captured the quiet allure of the role while not letting the fast technical challenges get a hold of her. Teresa Reichlin was reliably good in this part on Jan 20 and Amar Ramasar and Adrian Danchig-Warig stood out in the Bransle Simple (the other part of this pas de trois) at the February performance.

I sat at the very top of the 4th ring at my second performance of the run, and I found the aerial view completely revelatory. The quickly shifting patterns and groupings around the stage really added to the tension in the piece, and Balanchine's genius in this choreography emerged even more.

Alexey Miroshnichenko's new ballet The Lady with the Little Dog, second on the program, was a total bore for me. It's one of two brand new ballets this season, and framing it with two Balanchine ballets on this program did not help it look any better. The ballet's scenario is based on a short story by Anton Chekhov about a man and a woman - the titular lady with the little dog - both unhappy in their respective marriages who meet and have an adulterous affair. Miroshnichenko takes the themes of the story and ends up makes fairly generic dances about them. Things amount to a collection of movements and moody interludes that don't look like they belong to any particular character, and it becomes a long blur, especially since the movements lack any real originality. Nor do the steps and episodes come together in a logical flow. The props were handled awkwardly, and the costumes for the principal characters kept coming and on and off without any more explanation than "oh it happens in the story." And it all feels really really long.

The redeeming factors were Sterling Hyltin and Andrew Veyette's performances in the main roles; they were both interesting to watch in their many moments. But even so the ballet dragged on and on, a feeling exacerbated by the many times when it looked like the ballet was about to end, only for it to go on for another new passage. The biggest audience reaction came at the beginning of the ballet, when Hyltin's real dog accompanied her across the stage - the audience erupted in giggles. Overall, there was just nothing interesting being said about the story or the situation of the characters, it was just a really long ballet.

Cortege Hongrois completed the evening. It's a delightful puff of a ballet, filled with sparkly tutus and jangling metal on the costumes. This ballet, too, can feel overlong at points, but at least there is real choreography to watch the whole time. Balanchine choreographed Cortege using music and variations from the third act of the full-evening Raymonda, originally choreographed by Petipa with music by Glazunov. The choreography references the classic Petipa at points, but the steps are mostly Balanchine's own, especially in the music from the Grand Pas Classique. Traditionally, the Grand Pas is Raymonda's big wedding pas de deux, but here it is given to ten corps de ballet couples who perform a supported adagio in mirror-image unison. Later, the principal couple - a classical ballerina and her cavalier - dance a pas de deux to music brought in from Act 2 of Raymonda, and later another principal couple in flat shoes lead a contingent of dancers in Hungarian-flavored character dances.

I really enjoyed the cast at the Feb 9 performance, where Sara Mearns and Stephen Hanna debuted in the principal roles. There was an easy musicality to Mearns' dancing that was a joy to watch, and she was particularly gorgeous in the 'clapping' variation, set to Glazunov's beautiful Act 3 piano variation. Hanna - back at NYCB as a guest principal after a year away performing in Billy Elliot on Broadway - was an attentive partner, but even better solo dancer. His variations were athletic but brightly musical; his jumps and turns brought the music to life, while his athleticism also made it fun to watch. At the Jan 20 performance, Maria Kowroski and Jonathan Stafford were wonderfully regal in their own right. With her gorgeously arched feet and long extensions, Kowroski is a natural glamour girl. But perhaps because of her long legs, the performance was less fluid and free flowing as Mearns'. It was still nice, but the role didn't fit her quite as easily. It did, however, make me look forward to seeing Kowroski's performances in Diamonds and Swan Lake later this season.

I should also note: the character dancing in Cortege Hongrois was the some of the most exciting character dancing I've seen in awhile. Rebecca Krohn and Sean Suozzi lit up the stage as the leading dancers in the Kowroski/Stafford cast. (Savannah Lowery and Craig Hall danced in the Mearns/Hanna cast.) A fun way to end the evening.

Inset photos by Paul Kolnik: (1) Sterling Hyltin and Andrew Veyette in The Lady with the Little Dog, choreographed by Alexey Miroshnichenko. (2) Maria Kowroski and Jonathan Stafford in Cortege Hongrois, choreographed by George Balanchine.

Follow me for now

2009-10-07T09:55:00.005-04:00

I've been a bit too busy to write full posts. But I joined Twitter! So, follow me on Twitter if you'd like. My profile is here, or follow my tweets in the sidebar.

Tanglewood

2009-08-27T00:32:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite parts of summer in New England is going up to Tanglewood, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra makes its summer home. Nestled in the Berkshire Mountains, in Western Massachusetts, the scenery is just gorgeous and the atmosphere serene. It's a fantastic place to sit outside under the stars and listen to some really spectacular music.

Pictured above is the main music shed with its giant lawn, where many people set up picnics for the evening. You can pay more to sit inside the shed - which is useful if it is raining on concert night, but I can't imagine why you'd want to do that on a gorgeous evening like this one.

There is also a smaller venue on the grounds, Seiji Ozawa Hall. On many concert nights, they have a pre-concert given by students and fellows studying at the Tanglewood Music Center. During the week, they also have full concerts here of opera and occasionally of dance (Mark Morris Dance Group performed here this summer).

Showtime as night falls.

Screens inside the shed project images of the orchestra so that people in the back and on the lawn can see the stage.

Pacific Northwest Ballet dances Ulysses Dove at Jacob's Pillow

2009-08-26T14:02:00.002-04:00

(Pacific Northwest Ballet in Vespers, choreographed by Ulysses Dove.)

Fri, Aug 21 - Pacific Northwest Ballet visited the northeast last week to perform a triple bill of ballets by Ulysses Dove at Jacob's Pillow (a place that I wish I had gotten the chance to visit much, much more often this summer - it's gorgeous up there and a spectacular haven for dance of all kinds during the summer). This program shows the imprint of PNB's artistic director Peter Boal, who, after taking the reigns at the company a few years ago, has added a significant number of contemporary and new works to the company's repertory. Boal originated a role in one of the Dove ballets on this program - Red Angels - which he danced while a principal at New York City Ballet (the performance was also broadcast on PBS several years ago).

Overall, it was a good program, even though I had previously seen two of the three pieces danced better elsewhere. In any case, Vespers, the middle work on the program, is such a well-constructed piece that it was still very satisfying and exciting to watch. The work is choreographed for a female ensemble and features chairs scattered about the stage. The music is a an incessant, percussive rhythm that builds to a climax as the dancing becomes more frenetic. Steps and movements are arranged in a sort of canon as the dancers climb, sit in and move around the chairs. It builds consistently towards an exhilarating climax. I first saw this piece performed by the Ailey company, which perhaps has Dove's movement more in settled the company's contemporary dance style. PNB's women did it well enough, and the same effect was still there at the end, but there were many moments where it did look like they were concentrating harder on just getting the steps done than actually dancing.

Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven was the program opener. Here, the dancers seemed a bit confined by the smaller space of the Ted Shawn Theater's stage (PNB usually performs on a larger stage at McCaw Hall in Seattle - and Dove choreographed this work for the Royal Swedish Ballet, who also perform on a larger stage). The Ted Shawn Theatre is also very intimate for the audience, so we could hear every step on the stage and see all of the effort and sweat involved in the dancing of what I imagine should be an effortless-looking ballet. Stanko Milov, quite wonderful in his featured part, also spun off a shower of sweat around him when he did pirouettes.

I was really looking forward to seeing Red Angels, which was such a memorable part of that PBS broadcast from several years ago. It was an odd experience seeing it a the Pillow: the music is performed by a single electric violin, and violinist Mary Rowell stood at the corner of the stage to perform it live. Trouble is, the music is so unusual and exciting that I couldn't help but want to watch her play it - so I kept getting distracted from the ballet to watch her create a one-woman rock band out of her violin. The dancing of the ballet was good too, but lacked the unbridled energy that the original cast showed on PBS. I guess it's hard to match that, especially when your company's director was in that original cast. Nevertheless, there was some sense of the ballet as it was originally, and it was still good to see.

PNB dances in New York City at the Joyce Theater this January. There was enough good in the company's performance here to make that engagement something to look forward to for the winter.

Performance photos by Angela Sterling: (1) The company in Vespers, and (2) Olivier Weavers and Ariana Lallone in Red Angels, both choreographed by Ulysses Dove.

Romeo & Juliet at American Ballet Theatre

2009-07-12T12:52:00.007-04:00

(American Ballet Theatre's production of Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo & Juliet. Photo by Gene Schiavone.)

Sat, July 11 - Romeo & Juliet isn't one of my favorite ballets. I find it over-the-top and padded with way too much boring filler. I often feel like I should go down the street for a coffee break during the whole of Act 2, where virtually interesting happens dance-wise (40 minutes of piddly crowd dances that are mostly uninteresting to watch). And, there are cheesy sword fights where the corps runs around waving tinny, clanking swords, and all manner of groan-worthy, melodramatic mime - lots of hands to foreheads, leaning backwards with big, sad eyes.

Not all of it is the fault of the choreographer: the crowd dances, the overdramatic swooning and the angry Capulet stomping are all built into Prokofiev's giant three-act score. I have not seen a ballet production of Romeo & Juliet that I haven't been bored at, and most choreographers seem hemmed in by the structure of score itself. That and the Romeo & Juliet story is so overdone in Western theater that the it no longer holds much romantic magic in my mind. Perhaps part of my reaction stems from R&J fatigue.

All of that being said, I do visit Romeo & Juliet every once in awhile because it can be interesting to see dancers navigate the dramatic and choreographic challenges of the title roles. The right dancers make the little bits of interesting choreography transcendent. Kenneth MacMillan's version, which is the version that American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Ballet dance, has a balcony pas de deux with soaring lifts and hot-blooded passion, as well as a few dramatic scenes in Act 3 that are particularly affecting.

At this performance, I got much pleasure out of seeing Gillian Murphy as Juliet and David Hallberg as Romeo. For me, they are two of ABT's most interesting house principals (the ones who stay with the company year-round, as opposed to the international stars that only swoop in for the company's New York spring season). Hallberg threw himself in the character and wore all of his emotions on his sleeve. His Romeo was one who seemed to do everything impulsively, and he threw himself into every situation head first. Hallberg is also a gorgeous dancer, so Romeo's dance moments were particularly nice to watch. I've seen Murphy mostly in technique driven roles, so it was interesting to see her in a role where acting is more important. I thought she was wonderful here - she has a very unaffected way of dancing and acting, so that no mannerisms clouded her performance. She was earnest, clear, and very moving in Juliet's very important final scenes. As a pair, the two of them matched each other wonderfully, and their dancing was a joy in the balcony pas de deux.

I wasn't able to catch some of the starrier pairs that American Ballet Theatre put on during the week, at other performances of Romeo. But I'm not sure that I would have been able to sit through several performances of this ballet in just one week. While it was good to see Murphy and Hallberg here, I think I'm done with Romeo & Juliet for at least another few years.

Inset: Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg, my photo.

Frederick Ashton's Sylvia at American Ballet Theatre

2009-07-05T20:31:00.004-04:00

American Ballet Theatre bowing after Frederick Ashton's Sylvia. My photo.

Thurs, July 2 - I ultimately enjoyed American Ballet Theatre's performance of Sylvia last Thursday, though with considerable reservations. Frederick Ashton's choreography for Sylvia, originally created in 1952 and revived here in 2004, just doesn't seem to fit naturally on ABT's dancers (a concern that I voiced the last time I saw them do Sylvia in 2006). And especially in Act 1, the lightness, delicate musicality and, to a certain extent, the joy of Ashton's steps was missing. They seemed to be tracing the outlines dutifully, but dancing them without the heart. But I did say that I enjoyed the performance, and this because of some really wonderful dancing in Act 3 to close out the show, as well as Leo Delibes' wonderful music for the ballet.

This production was created in 2004 at the Royal Ballet as a revival of Ashton's original 1952 ballet, which had fallen out of repertory (Ashton's version of Sylvia was his own creation, based only in libretto and score on the original 1876 ballet). The choreography for the revival was restaged by Christopher Carr, who used memory and an old archive videotape. Darcey Bussell danced the title role at the premiere, and later casts were led by Marianela Nuñez and Zenaida Yanowsky. Subsequently, the production was recorded, aired on BBC and released on DVD. I loved Sylvia in the Royal's incarnation: I thought it was fun, the choreography delightful and the performances really wonderful - Bussell and Roberto Bolle danced in the DVD production, which is really dazzling to watch. American Ballet Theatre brought the revival across the pond in 2005, performing it during its spring season at the Metropolitan Opera and on tour in Costa Mesa, California, where I saw it twice more.

Gillian Murphy as Sylvia, in Act 1. Photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

Delibes' music for the original 1876 ballet is gorgeous, featuring a full range of orchestral sound (including a saxophone!), and buoyantly tuneful melodies. Characters and emotions emerge from score's many colors, and it's symphonically pleasing as well as danceable. It has been said that Tchaikovsky was inspired by the example of Delibes' ballet compositions as he set out to compose his great scores for Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. Delibes' work here is really gorgeous.

As wonderful as the score is, the music and the ballet's libretto also hem in a clunky narrative and less than ideal dramatic structure. The way the musical scenes are arranged, there isn't much room to fully develop the characters and their relationships. This is perhaps part of the reason that Sylvia teeters on the edge of silliness in performance - neither version of the ballet that I have seen tells a very satisfying story (I've seen Mark Morris' and Frederick Ashton's versions - there is also one by John Neuemeir, on DVD with the Paris Opera Ballet, which I am intrigued about). You can read a full synopsis here on Wikipedia, but basically, it is a vaguely mythical story about a huntress Sylvia and shepherd Aminta who fall in love at the hands of the god Eros. She gets kidnapped, gods intervene, and various complications ensue. Then, in Act 3, right where the finale should be, a new character randomly charges in from the heavens to display her rage. Diana, chaste goddess of the hunt, has appeared to smite Sylvia for falling in love with Aminta, but all is saved with Eros reminds her that she too fell in love when young. It's a very random moment, one that you'd have to read the program to fully understand.

But a few things can override this dramatic deficiency in performance. The sweet sound of the score very nearly does it on its own, but good choreography on stage is needed too. When the Ashton choreography is done right, it is wonderful to watch this ballet. The quick-moving steps provide a fast romp: it's not very heavy, and it's easy to just sit back and watch the choreography without thinking too much about the story. But when the choreography is not performed as well as it should be, when it's weighty rather than buoyant in Act 1 - things don't work out so well.

Curtain Call: (1) Gillian Murphy and Maxim Beloserkovsky; (2) Murphy in front of the Met's gold curtain; (3) Murphy and Beloserkovsky. My photos.

The ballet is problematic at ABT. I'm not an expert on how the choreography supposedly looked under Ashton's direct supervision, but it felt a lot different when I saw the Royal do this a few years ago. At ABT, nearly the whole stretch of Act 1 felt labored, where it was more bouncy and quick at the Royal, and more dramatically focused. The difference was apparent in the very first bit of dancing, with eight fauns and dryads cavorting in the forest. In the choreography, there's a small drama happening here, where fauns observe dryads playing in the woods, then run out to capture them: the dryads, however, are smarter. They stun the fauns with a look, but then take to them softly anyway. The steps involve lots of quick jumps and scurrying in several directions. The ABT corps walked (in measured ballet steps) rather than scurried, the jumps were there but then the dancers looked out at the audience and smiled brightly - inappropriately. There was even more smiling happening when the dryads got caught. The music goes into a minor key to spell danger, and here the ABT girls were smiling, oddly. Then, when the dryads turned to look at the fauns, I could almost see the fauns counting '1, 2, 3' before they then turned to look away in fear - it was not organic, even though it could have been since both the drama and the music provide cues. The heart, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, was not there.

Things were better with the soloists and principals in Act 1, though still not as natural as they could have been. The ballet looked cute and pretty with ABT, the company doing everything as correctly as they were. When I watched the Royal's production, I had really felt there was much more to it than just cute.

Gillian Murphy, as Sylvia, was a possible exception in Act 1 - her fast footwork and jumps made a very good case for the choreography. She has, however, a tightness in her upper body and shoulders that detracts from her overall look. Especially in arabesque, it's odd to see her upper body so stiff. She did, though, act the part fairly well, taking authoritative control over her huntresses and effectively playing coy for Orion in Act 2. The role of Aminta is a thankless role, and Maxim Beloserkovsky barely has anything to do until Act 3. He dances one solo at the beginning, which Beloserkovsky did well, then gets shot with an arrow and hobbles around some. But in Act 3 he gets a really wonderful solo with very impressive jumps and leg work. I didn't notice Beloserkovsky very much until this moment, and it was a fantastic moment.

Gillian Murphy and Maxim Beloserkovsky in the Act 3 pas de deux. Photo by MIRA.

The company's dancing in Act 3, with its tutus and pure dance divertissements, was much better than in other parts of the ballet. This seems to be the type of Ashton choreography the company is more used to, after several weeks of story ballets in the spring Met season. Murphy gave a great performance of Sylvia's very difficult Act 3 variation (in a tutu her upper body doesn't seem to look as much of a problem), and Beloserkovsky was, as mentioned, particularly exciting to watch in his high-flying solo. Their pas de deux was grand and elegantly romantic, actually making the awkward ear-hug moment look good on Thursday. In small parts as visiting gods and goddesses, Veronika Part, Alexandre Hammoudi, Caroline Duprot, Issac Stapas, Hee Seo and Grant DeLong were also great fun to see. The corps de ballet was spot-on and celebratory in the general dances, especially in the Bacchanal March, probably the most famous part of Delibes' score.

And I can't go without mentioning Peter Farmer's sets and costumes for this production, based on original 1952 designs by Robin and Christopher Ironside. They are beautiful, colorful and totally enveloping - a big part of why this production is ultimately enjoyable. Mark Jonathan's lighting design makes the stage glow with adventure and even more color.

Happy 4th of July!

2009-07-05T18:16:00.003-04:00

Nina Ananishvili bids farewell in ABT's Swan Lake

2009-06-28T14:52:00.009-04:00

Sat, June 27 - Nina Ananiashvili bid a fond farewell to American Ballet Theatre at tonight's performance of Swan Lake, giving a memorable performance in one of her most iconic roles. If her technique has deteriorated slightly with age (and only slightly, it seemed), she still has all of the magic and magnetism that made her a star: she commanded the stage with old-fashioned ballerina authority and held the audience spellbound with her bold, dramatic style. The audience went wild at the end of each of her major solos and pas de deux.

It was a wonderful way to say farewell. As Odette, in the White Swan Pas de Deux and Odette's variation, she was the tragic heroine, melting into Siegfried's arms and showing off her expressive arms at the same time. She still has a remarkably beautiful arabesque, can whip into turns with clarity and speed, and conceals late-career deficiencies in strength as interpretations of the music. And did I mention those arms? She's a master of the "ripple effect," where her arms seem to ripple like delicate waves in the water.

(Ananiashvili with Angel Corella at curtain call, my photo.)

As Odile, the Black Swan, she pulled out the old-fashioned Bolshoi flash and dazzled in a technically daring performance of the Black Swan Pas de Deux. At the end of the pas de deux, with the audience already stirred into a frenzy with her fouettes and turns, she had Marcelo Gomes – dancing von Rothbart – pick her up and throw her into her Prince Angel Corella's arms, ending in a spectacular fish dive. It was a neat trick that the audience went wild for. (During her fourth curtain call, she, Corella and Gomes repeated the trick for the cheering audience.)

Bows continued for nearly 20 minutes after the performance. After the the usual curtain calls for the corps and principals, bouquet upon bouquet was brought out for Ananiashvili. The female corps did a cute mini-ceremony where each girl dropped a flower at Ananiashvili's feet. Then, each of the company's principals brought out a bouquet and added it to the enormous, growing pile in front of Ananiashvili. Confetti flew at the end of the flower parade and the audience demanded at least five or six curtain calls in front of the Met's gold curtain.

(Nina bowing to the corps de ballet.)

Through it all, the most impressive thing about it was Ananiashvili's generosity and thankfulness for the other dancers on stage, for the orchestra musicians in the pit and for the audience. She repeatedly bowed to her partners and bowed in deference to the corps – she kept waving the entire ensemble to the front of the stage to bow with her, thanking them just as much for creating the performance. It showed her to be a fantastically classy ballerina as well as a true star.

Though tonight truly was the Ananiashvili show, there were other good performances as well. Marcelo Gomes, as the ballroom von Rothbart, is reliably seductive and sexy in this role, and he really turned on the heat in this performance. Angel Corella was his usual virtuoso self as Prince Siegfried, with impressive tricks, jumps and turns; it was highly enjoyable, but compared to last night's beautiful performance by Roberto Bolle, Corella looked a bit crass and less of a noble Prince. We saw Corella on stage, not necessarily Prince Siegfried. It seemed a difference between American and European styles of performance mannerisms, and I think I prefer the Europeans. The swan corps was particularly good tonight, every bit deserving of the shared bow that Ananiashvili offered to them. The production itself remains ingratiatingly uneven in any dancing that was not the most iconic Swan Lake choreography.

I have to admit that, early in my ballet-watching, I had the opportunity to see her Swan Lake and totally skipped it, not yet knowing who she was - I was younger then. I've learned better since, getting the opportunity to marvel her work in other roles she has done with the company, including Le Corsaire, La Bayadere and in various Balanchine roles in Mozartiana and Ballet Imperial. But she's altogether in another class as Odette/Odile, and I'm glad I got to see this performance at the very end of it all.

*

More photos from the occasion:

Members of the corps de ballet each giving Ananiashvili a white rose.

Confetti falls on the stage in celebration.

More bows and flowers.

The curtain closes on sixteen years of memorable guest appearances with ABT.

More bows in front of the Met's gold curtain.

The cheering crowd brings her back for several curtain calls.

Veronika Part and Roberto Bolle in ABT's Swan Lake

2009-06-27T00:37:00.005-04:00

(Curtain call for American Ballet Theatre's Swan Lake, with Part and Bolle, center. My photo.)

Fri, June 26 - For all of its shortcomings, American Ballet Theatre's production of Swan Lake nevertheless provides an efficient, attractive-looking Swan Lake that manages to hit all of the major "Swan Lake" moments. And, perhaps more importantly, it provides a vehicle for the company's bevy of star dancers. Tonight, the stars were Russian-born Veronika Part, an import from the Mariinsky Ballet who has recently been promoted to the rank of principal, and Italian star Roberto Bolle, a guest from Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

With these two on stage, it was a night of beautiful people. Part, in a tutu, has a voluptuous hourglass figure and her gorgeous arched feet that move like silk, and Bolle has tall and runway-model handsome looks and authoritatively graceful movement - quite a pair to watch. They are ideally suited to each other in height and temperament, and even more, they shared a remarkable chemistry in this their first performances together. In the Black Swan Pas de Deux, heat radiated from the stage.I n Odette and Siegfried's reconciliation scene that followed, their relationship was touching, filled with simultaneous sorrow and urgency.

Bolle was particularly good tonight. His every stage moment was focused and dramatically present; his acting and mime were appropriately large and theatrical, but seemed unforced and completely natural. I loved the way he really looked into Odette's eyes and reacted to her in every moment. When Odette told him that she was the queen of the swans, his eyes grew large and he meant it when he bowed down in respect to her. Then there was his dancing: it was powerful and athletic, yet totally graceful and controlled. It looks surprising particularly because of his height; you almost don't expect that sort of elegance from a guy with such muscular legs. But there he was, a model of princely nobility and grace. And more – he's a fantastic partner, always supporting and deferring to his ballerina, knowing that in many ways, Swan Lake is about showing off the woman in the white tutu.

With Part as the woman in the white tutu, there was plenty to show off. In the right roles, Part can be a very compelling dancer, and she is at her strongest in Swan Lake. The creamy, liquid quality to her dancing is particularly suited to the role, and her Russian background gives her a kind of easy access to role's grandly stated moments. She was particularly good tonight in the Black Swan Pas de Deux, where she played up the glamour and was flawless in the sparkling, technically tricky steps, and in the final lakeside scene, where she and Bolle played off each other to convey the scene's tragic beauty. The more famous Act 2 lakeside scenes, including the White Swan pas de deux and Odette's variation, were good as well, though in Act 2 she started off a bit stiff, some of her movements slightly jerky. She warmed into the White Swan pas de deux, though, and the variation was very good.

More curtain call images: (1) Part and Bolle on stage; (2) Bolle in front of the Met's curtain;
(3) the continued standing ovation.

The surrounding production has all of the charms and flaws (mostly flaws) that I noticed last time I saw it (in Los Angeles, last year): act one, in the prince's court, and the act three, with its national dances, are a total bore with uninteresting choreography and clunky narrative. The sets are bright and colorful, providing an attractive frame to the proceedings. This time I sat in the orchestra and did not have to see at the overgrown-moss green floor. Thankfully iconic Ivanov choreography in the Act 2 lakeside scene, and the romping Petipa Black Swan Pas de Deux remain mostly intact, along with the delightful Pas de Trois in Act 1.

Tonight, the pas de trois was danced with verve and brio by Stella Abrera, Blaine Hoven and Maria Ricetto. Abrera was particularly bouncy in her variation and in the coda, Hoven was fantastic (and thud-free) in the very athletic male solo, and Ricetto was charming and solid in the second female variation. Genadi Saveliev danced the ballroom part of the dual Von Rothbart role, making a convincingly seductive case for the scene's visiting pricesses. Maria Bystrova was a wonderfully regal and grand Queen. Though the corps lacks the effortless precision of the Russians I saw last weekend, tonight it nevertheless looked very good in the two lakeside scenes.

The Royal Ballet in Washington DC: Chroma, A Month in the Country and DGV

2009-06-25T21:39:00.009-04:00

(The Royal Ballet after Christopher Wheeldon's DGV: Danse a Grande Vitesse,
while on tour in Washington, DC. Designs by Jean-Marc Puissant.)

June 23 & 24 - The Royal Ballet, visiting from London, gave a spectacular and varied program of three short ballets at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC this week. Over the course of the program, the company showed its treasured past in a beautiful production of Frederick Ashton's A Month in the Country; a provocative look towards future in the aggressive Chroma, created by the company's current resident choreographer Wayne McGregor; and a solid present that seemed to combined the two viewpoints in Christopher Wheeldon's pulsing, fast-paced DGV: Danse a Grande Vitesse. I was lucky enough to see the full program twice in performance and once at the public dress rehearsal. The Royal is my favorite company and I don't get the opportunity to see them very often, so I jumped at the chance to see them all three times..

Chroma, the first work on the program, is set to music originally composed by The White Stripes, reorchestrated and reinterpreted by Joby Talbot. The sound is loud, cacophonous and heavily percussive, with recognizable tunes poking their heads through the noise every once in awhile. It works entirely for Wayne McGregor's ballet, and I really liked some of the percussive sounds that came out of the orchestra pit (I even went and found Talbot's recording of the songs and downloaded it from iTunes when I got home).

(Bows for Wayne McGregor's Chroma, scene design by John Pawson.)

The ballet is aggressive and stark: the stage is a giant, brightly lit white box where the dancers perform all sorts of overextended acrobatics. The women throw themselves into the men's arms, everyone bends and throws their limbs around in all sorts of gymnastic positions, and the stage is filled with all manner of frenzied, hyperactive commotion. Edward Watson and Mara Galeazzi were standouts in the mostly principal and soloist ensemble, and Sarah Lamb and Eric Underwood were also fantastic in their parts as well.

Seeing it the first time, Chroma came off impressively for the sheer skill and energy of the dancers. They performed with such conviction and full-bodied force that it was simply awe-inspiring to watch. The second viewing, however, brought fewer pleasures. I noticed this time that the choreography is filled with gimmicky effects that don't really build up to much over the course of the work. Its aggressiveness seemed less bold, more noisy.

McGregor has now made three works for the Royal. After Chroma premiered in November 2006, he was named the Royal Ballet's resident choreographer, and he then made Infra in 2008. Based on the BBC television broadcast of the it last year, Infra seems a much calmer, much more subtle and interesting piece, with McGregor's full-bodied style used for more subtle effects. In the spring of this year, he also staged a double-bill of Handel operas, for a collaboration between the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet. Dancers were used to convey the drama on stage while singers sang the music (a recording of the performances is scheduled to be released on DVD later this year). Before he was making work for the Royal, he had his own contemporary dance troupe, Randomdance; I have to admit that I wasn't a huge fan of his work when Randomdance appeared at UCLA several years ago. But that was just that one work, and I really liked Infra when I saw it on television.

Chroma was at least interesting for what McGregor does with the dancers, and dancers like Mara Galeazzi and Lauren Cuthbertson looked truly fantastic in his work (Cuthbertson was in Infra but not in the DC performances of Chroma, reportedly due to illness). But it remains to be seen whether McGregor's style will become a larger part of the Royal Ballet's future direction. With the company's heavy back-catalogue of very classical works, it will be interesting to see how much of his very different style it will be able to absorb.

Frederick Ashton's A Month in the Country is one of Ashton's one-act dramatic masterworks. It is filled with quiet, subtle emotions that ride beneath a more heated narrative melodrama, about a bored young country wife who falls in love with her daughter's tutor. Ashton, the founding choreographer of the Royal Ballet, is wonderful at communicating a character's inner thoughts and traits through quick steps and movements that are small scaled but read with burning clarity. Set to plaintive orchestral rearrangements of Chopin, danced with clear classical technique and bedecked in elaborate 19th century costumes and a full drawing-room set, Month in the Country was a decided change of pace from the comparatively wilder Chroma (though after the nearly 30-minute long intermission, presumably to allow for the large scene shift we had plenty of time to change our moods).

(Wednesday night's cast of Frederick Ashton's A Month in the Country.)

Created in 1976, Ashton's ballet is loosely based on the Russian play of the same name, written in the 19th century by Ivan Turgenev. Each character gets a short solo to establish his or her personality, and the dances are very Ashtonian in their quick, delicate turns and steps. The ballet movement becomes as much a part of the characters' language as regular walking and gesturing in the way that Ashton folds the dance into the drama. Relationships are very effectively conveyed in pas de deux, long looks and silences. The climactic pas de deux between Natalia and Beliaev is particularly effective: it is at once tender is tender and tense, communicating many mixed emotions simultaneously. Attraction, reluctance and yearning all bubble to the surface. Sure, there are several moments of over drama—the audience giggled at moments like Beliaev's arrival, when a thundering down chord in the orchestra heralded each character's melodramatic head turn out to the audience—but the quiet moments more than compensate. Heightening the drama is Ashton and musical arranger John Lanchberry's choice of Chopin piano music to underscore the proceedings (I found this interesting article about their selection of music for the ballet, over at ballet.co.uk). The melting, quiet cords of Chopin's Andante Spianato were the perfect accompaniment to illustrate Natalia and Beliaev's tentative embrace at the end of their duet together.

The Tuesday night cast, led by Zenaida Yanowsky and Rupert Pennefather, was very good, and better overall in its acting and dancing than the Wednesday cast. Yanowsky is one of the Royal Ballet's most dramatic dancers, and she naturally fits into the role of Natalia with her taller stature and glamorous looks. With her acting ability, she was able to convey many shades of the role, and she gave a wonderful performance. Pennefather was a tall, handsome Beliaev, it was easy to see why both Natalia and her young ward would both fall in love with him. Secondary roles were filled with great character dancers: Bethany Keating as Natalia's ward Vera, Paul Kay as her son Kolia—giving a very impressive variation jumping around the room dribbling his ball—and Christopher Saunders as Natalia's older husband.

On Wednesday, Alexandra Ansanelli gave her final American performances with the Royal Ballet (her very last performances with the company will occur during the company's tour to Cuba next month; see here for a story about her retirement). She sketched out the role just fine, but she did not yet seem entirely settled into it. Her Natalia was dour for most of the ballet's first half, and bit over dramatic in the second. It was not as rich a portrayal as one might have wanted, but she has only performed the role a few times so far. Perhaps more performances would have drawn her further into the role, but alas this was among her last. Her dancing, though, was soft and subtle. The pas de deux was very emotional, and Ashton's choreography seemed to have worked its magic anyway. As Beliaev, Ivan Putrov does not have the tall, immediately handsome looks that Pennefather or the role's originator Anthony Dowell both have naturally, but he compensated with polished dancing and earnest acting. Some of the secondary roles were weaker as well tonight: Jonathan Howells looked too young to be Natalia's older husband. But overall, the ballet is solidly enough constructed that the drama still came through, and the pas de deux at the end still brought sighs.

Christopher Wheeldon's DGV: Danse a Grand Vitesse was a shot of energy at the end of the program. It felt like a combination of the postmodern aggressiveness of McGregor's piece and with the classical traditions represented by the Ashton. The work is performed in pointe shoes, but with contemporary leotards and an industrial age stage set comprised of wavy metal structures designed by Jean-Marc Puissant at the back of the stage— the structures looked very much like a Frank Gehry piece.

(Christopher Wheeldon, left, in the white shirt, bowing with
the company after DGV: Danse a Grande Vitesse.)

It is set to a 1993 score by Michael Nyman, MGV: Musique a Grande Vitesse that was written to celebrate the opening of the French high-speed TGV train service, and there is a propulsive, constantly chugging sound overlaid with a slick, smooth musical line providing the melodies and atmosphere. The music dominates: it is played loudly and its constant beat is inescapable. It culminates with a drum that literally pounds away for the last five minutes, at which point, as a viewer, your brain is now moving just about as quickly as the driving beat and dancing on stage.

The main choreography tends to follow the music's smoother overline, and coming in four stretchy, bendy pas de deux for four sets of principal couples. In the background, the corps runs on, off, behind the metal structures and all around the stage as the music builds and recedes, and in groups and formations they also catapult onto the stage from the wings when the music takes abrupt turns, as though the train is abruptly switching tracks.

The cumulative effect is a major rush. I just sat back and took it all in, marveling at the way Wheeldon built and moved around ensembles and the principal couples. Wheeldon makes use of the stage in a very full, theatrical way, choosing not to confine himself to the formal classical patterns established by Petipa or Balanchine. Every corner of the stage is used for dancing and for effect, and they rarely line up in symmetrical, even lines – dancers leap and roll behind the scenery up stage, they enter from unusual corners and spread themselves out in unusual patters. It's a ballet that takes full advantage of contemporary notions of theater and visual space.

There was ample opportunity for some fantastic performances in the principal roles. Marianela Nuñez and Gary Avis danced the third couple at both performances. Their duet is the more extended, slow and controlled of the four in this fast-moving ballet. I'll admit to loving Nuñez in practically everything she dances, and her performance in DGV was no less wonderful, with her long lines, quicksilver turns and full-bodied expressiveness. Her gaze is intense and powerful, too, making a complete performance. Avis' partnering was dazzling; amidst all of the slow contortions, he had to hold Nuñez in various awkward positions and carry her on and offstage high above his head, all with full power and full control.

Also impressive: Leanne Benjamin and Edward Watson as the second couple, in an exposed, athletic pas de deux. Benjamin is another dancer who impresses me a lot, and it was great to see her on stage. Laura Morera and Stephen McRae danced this duet on Wednesday night with a different kind of attack, more emphasis on the flow and less on the role's angular qualities, but still interesting. Cindy Jourdain and Eric Underwood were the first couple and Mara Galeazzi and Federico Bonelli the fourth at both performances. Galeazzi and Bonnelli's performances were even more impressive because they had already done major work in McGregor's Chroma earlier in the evening.

Looking back over the performances in three ballets performed on this tour, I love the Royal dancers' style and their on-stage intensity. They all look completely present when they are dancing, whether it is in a dramatic situation or one that is more abstract but nevertheless fully engaging. The works they performed in this mixed bill fit those styles perfectly, and the sheer variety of the work kept everything interesting for every performance. They really chose a great mixed rep to bring this time, picking the best of the company's recent work in London, and I'm really glad that I got to see it in DC live.

*

The company's run continues through Sunday with five performances of Kenneth MacMillan's full-evening story ballet Manon. I have seen the Royal do this work before (in Boston four years ago, when I flew out specifically to see it), so I did not stay in DC to watch—Veronika Part and Nina Ananiashvili were calling with their Swan Lakes in New york. But it's interesting to note that the works the company has brought on tour this year represents a full range of the Royal's creative heritage. They are all works created in the last 50 years, from its founding choreographer Frederick Ashton, through the narrative works of Kenneth MacMillan, to new experiments by Royal Ballet school alum Christopher Wheeldon and its current resident choreographer Wayne McGregor. Pretty remarkable to think of it in those terms.

Curtain call photos by me. In-text photos: (1) Edward Watson and Mara Galeazzi in Wayne McGregor's Chroma, photo by Bill Cooper; (2) Zenaida Yanowsky and Rupert Pennefather after Frederick Ashton's A Month in the Country on Tuesday, June 23, 2009, my photo; (3) Alexandra Ansanelli and Ivan Putrov after A Month in the Country on Wednesday, June 24, 2009, my photo; (4) Marianela Nuñez and Federico Bonnelli in this 2006 photo of Christopher Wheeldon's DGV: Danse a Grande Vitesse. Nuñez danced a different role and Bonnelli danced with Mara Galeazzi during the Washington performances. Photo by Johan Persson.

The Bolshoi's overstuffed Le Corsaire

2009-06-22T23:28:00.003-04:00

(The Jardin Anime scene in the Bolshoi Ballet's production of Le Corsaire. Photo by Damir Yusupov.)

June 20 & 21 - The Bolshoi's new production of Le Corsaire, shown in Washington DC last week, is a reconstruction of the original 19th century production that also includes many of the little bells and whistles that have been added in the intervening yeaers. The whole thing is really more of a spectacle than an evening of ballet. There are big sets, a live on-stage shipwreck and a ridiculous amount of costumes and costume changes. The story is told with the maximum amount of kitsch and political incorrectness; one might even say that this spectacle revels in its outmoded attitudes towards women and foreign cultures. Somewhere in between lies some bravura classical dancing, done big and brassy because this is after all the Bolshoi Ballet. The show had its fun parts, but I can't help but feel that I may have outgrown such lavish kitsch: I'd rather see more dancing, or at least a story ballet that isn't so outlandishly corny.

Corsaire tells a fairly convoluted tale of merry pirates, slave women and a Pasha with a harem full of beautiful women in tutus and tiaras. The main characters are Conrad, a free-spirited pirate, and a beautiful girl Medora. They fall in love, but Medora is sold away to the Pasha. To steal her back, Conrad takes himself and his pirate gang on several swashbuckling adventures that involve plenty of sword fighting, backstabbing subplots and a not insignificant number of tutus and flowers.

(Curtain call, with the shipwreck in the background. My photo.)

The story and character details in this production differ in many ways from the story that American audiences are familiar with, most notably in Anne-Marie Holmes' production for American Ballet Theatre and Pyotr Gusev's production for the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet. The Medora/Conrad relationship is mostly the same, but Gulnara is very different in this Bolshoi production: we don't meet her until Act 2, where she is already a member of the Pasha's harem and is quite happy to be there. Gulnara and another harem girl Zulmea compete to be the Pasha's first wife, and much scheming and plotting is scene accordingly. Gulnara is much more playful and giddy here, scene playing many jokes on the hapless, overdramatic Zulmea. The pas d'esclaves that Gulnara dances in the ABT and Kirov productions is reassigned to two nameless slave characters – effectively another place for young Bolshoi soloists to step in and shine.

This production's Act 1 contains all of what the ABT and Kirov productions split into Acts 1 & 2 (the bazaar scene and the pirate's cave scenes). Act 2 is the Pasha's palace and the Jardin Anime scene, and Act 3 is entirely new to American audiences. Here, there is a complicated sham wedding, in which the pasha thinks he is marrying Medora but instead is wed to Gulnara in disguise – meanwhile Medora is fleeing the palace with her beloved Conrad. The escape scene on the pirate ship is elaborate and ends in a spectacular shipwreck, with the giant stage ship splitting into two pieces. Miraculously, Medora and Conrad are the only survivors, washing up onto the shore to live happily ever after.

The story tends to be an excuse to arrive at various showpiece classical dances, though in the version presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington last week, there was much more story and groan-inducing mime, and much less dancing. (Repordedly, the full production, which was seen in Moscow and on tour in London during past seasons, includes a few suites of dances that were excluded from the Washington run due to time constraints.)

What dances we did see, though, were spectacularly entertaining, in true Bolshoi style. The company specializes in grand classical dancing: the technique is crystalline, the style is brash and showy, the jumps are always big, the turns always in multiples. Both the women and the men possess these qualities, and the Bolshoi amplifies it in numbers. Nearly everyone that parades in front of the audience has this spectacular technique and it can be dazzling to watch. The Jardin Anime scene in Act 2 is the prime example of this glory – nevermind that it is a scene that comes, narratively, when the Pasha decides to show off his garden of beautiful ladies (groan). It's a big classical showcase that is so overstuffed that one can ignore the story and just watch the spectacle on stage. The corps here showed the marveled unison of a company that dances with unity of style, and the principal women showed off in dazzling variations.

There were other showpiece moments: the famous pas de deux for Conrad and Medora in Act 1 (in many other productions it is a pas de trois for Medora, Conrad and the slave Ali, but in this Bolshoi production it is cut to just the two characaters – it makes more narrative sense to me), the dance for the three odalisques in Act 2, and the pas d'esclaves in Act 1. They're fun enough to watch that I was nearly – nearly – able to ignore the filler in between. Act 3 is nearly entirely mimed (a major dance was cut from this act for time), and features the story's resolution and the big shipwreck.

Ekaterina Shipulina and Ruslan Skvortsov ended up dancing at both performances that I attended. Originally, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev were scheduled to dance the Sunday afternoon, but both had to bow out due to illness, so Shipulina and Skvortsov heroically stepped in to dance what was reportedly their third performance this weekend. Shipulina was glamorous and technically up to standard for the role, I thought she looked very pretty and was appropriately funny and technically dazzling. Skvortsov did everything he was supposed to with satisfying athelticism and fun as well.

Unfortunately, this production is really not interesting enough to be seen twice in a row with the exact same cast. It would have been fun to see Osipova swing through its acting and technical challenges, especially after seeing her spectacular performances with American Ballet Theatre earlier in the week (I was particularly looking forward to seeing her showoff her spectacular technical abilities). However, it was not so fun seeing the exact same performance yet again with no surprises. Shipulina and Skvortsov were fine, but neither were compelling enough to command immediate repeat performances. On Sunday, after reliving the Jardin Anime scene – the best part of this production – I decided to skip the rest of show, which was all mime anyway.

Inset photos: (1) The Act 1 bazaar scene, photo by Damir Yusupov; (2) Ekaterina Shipulina and Ruslan Skvortsov during bows after Act 1, my photo.

Natalia Osipova in ABT's La Sylphide

2009-06-18T19:16:00.005-04:00

(Natalia Osipova and Herman Cornejo at curtain call.)

Wed, Jun 17 - Natalia Osipova was even better in tonight's La Sylphide than she was in Giselle on Saturday. Her jumps, as they were over the weekend, were still gasp-inducing, yet light and airy, but in Sylphide, that remarkable technical feat was folded into a complete performance, used as part of a seamless artistic performance. Osipova's Sylph was at times mischievous and childlike, at others mysterious and an otherworldy beauty.

When she wasn't in the sky, her dancing was fluid and easy, high extensions and developes unfolding languidly. Her attack is big and bold, and though it sometimes clashes with the delicacy of the choreography – created in distinctive "Danish" style the 1800s by August Bournonville – she still captured the role's many qualities. This Sylph was the perfect foil for Herman Cornejo's James – we totally get why he would chase after her into the forest.

Cornejo's James placed heavy emphasis on his jumps and virtuosic solo moments. It didn't seem a particularly refined performance, more of an athletic one, and it was even less Danish than Osipova's Russian-inflected performance. Dramatically, he was much more intense than the rest of the company, and so I'm not sure if part of the incongruity in his performance was because of this mismatch. Basically, I could see the effort in his performance, even though his jumps were mighty fun to watch.

ABT's production is fairly straightforward, though the company performs it more like any old story ballet, rather than taking into the details of style and drama that are unique to the work. The story gets across clearly enough, I suppose, but it perhaps wasn't as charming as a well-staged Sylphide could be.

(Natalia Osipova as the Sylph, in this photo from Bolshoi Ballet's production of
Bournonville's La Sylphide. Photo by Damir Yusupov.)

La Sylphide is interesting as one of the few still-performed examples of a Romantic drama and ballet. The Romantic (with a capital "R") movement in the 18th century literature and art that placed a strong emphasis on idealism and an elusive higher state – characters and images chase after higher, unattainable ideals and expressed an aspiration for some sort of higher reality than the flawed human one.

The story of La Sylphide captures this Romanticism, while mixing in a morality tale of its own: a Scottish nobleman James sees visions of a pretty female creature with wings. She is in many ways an Romantic vision of ideal femininity, with her airy purity, white dress and sprightly character. He chases after the sylph, abandoning his human bride-to-be at their engagement ceremony, only to kill the sylph when he finally manages to capture and kiss her. He has ruined his ideal by tarnishing it with his flawed human touch, and in the meantime, practical happiness has escaped him as his bride chooses another to marry while he was distracted chasing his unattainable ideal.

It's a story out of a specific era, but it remains a fascinating drama: steeped in societal traditions as it is (James afterall pays for his decision to chase after woodland creatures rather than stay put in the "correct" human world), perhaps it is a warning of sorts not to get too overly carried away chasing ideals. Or, be nice to homeless old people because it might come back to get you later: the story also contains an old witch, who acts as the catalyst for James' doom when he is cruel to her, mocking him when he is in a daze chasing after the Sylph.

The dramatic structure is strong enough to tell the story clearly and without too much outdated mime, and the choreography is also good enough to be entertaining dance. It is a fairly short ballet, only taking about 80 minutes total with an intermission. Act 1 is mostly narrative, where we see the Sylph teasing James, James chasing after her, and James with his bride and her friends at the lodge. In Act 2, James is in the forest and we see the Slyph and her friends dance in an extended sequence of classical dancing – the "white acts" of Giselle, La Bayadere and Swan Lake might be seen as descendants of this type of all-in-white divertissement. Finally, James obtains a charmed scarf from the old witch to capture the Sylph, she dies and is carried into the clouds.

(1) The corps and ensemble at curtain call; (2) Natalia Osipova and Herman Cornejo.

Tonight's program also included Paul Taylor's Airs as a curtain raiser, in order for the company to make a fuller evening of it. Set to sort Handel pieces and danced on flat foot, the piece was a lovely, mindless way to mark time until La Sylphide. To be fair, the choreography is quite sensitive to the music and was pleasing to see, and the work also gave a good opportunity for the young corps dancers in the cast to shine in solo parts. LeAnn Underwood made a particularly strong impression tonight, after standing out in Saturday's Giselle as well.

New York City Ballet: A Midsummer Night's Dream

2009-06-17T10:35:00.006-04:00

(Photo: Paul Kolnik)

Tues, Jun 16 - New York City Ballet concluded its spring season this year with George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Based on the Shakespeare play of the same name, it is a light, early-summer creamsicle of a ballet. I attended Tuesday night's first performance, the beginning of the company's week-long run that will go through Sunday.

Joaquin De Luz started the performance as Oberon in Act 1, but was replaced later in the performance by Gonzalo Garcia. (Philip, at his appropriately named blog Oberon's Grove, reported that the switch happened right after the Scherzo; I didn't notice the switch from my seat farther away until they announced the change before Act 2.) What De Luz did perform, though, was spectacular: his dancing in the scherzo was gasp inducing, with all of its direction-changing jumps, fast entrechats and turns. The virtuoso antics were tempered by a real elegance, and his imperiousness as the character of Oberon in the overture scene was just perfect. The switch between DeLuz and Garcia was seamless, and Garcia, too, has a remarkable elegance and jump, though Oberon's dance role diminishes after the Scherzo. No explanation was given for the cast switch, though I hope its not a serious injury or something like it.

Darci Kistler's Titania had an appropriately commanding, regal air in her acting scenes, but I found her dancing shaky, lacking in ease and flow. The dance in Titania's Bower, with its grand adage, is one of my favorite moments in the ballet, but it wasn't as smooth as it could have been. Sadly, the erosion in her once-prominent technique is showing, and you can see the big effort she has to put into her dancing now (I didn't see those earlier years live, only having seen them on the few videos of her in Nutcracker and Theme and Variations).

Teresa Reichlin was a very impressive Hyppolyta, long legs and all. Daniel Ulbricht's Puck had all of his usual high-flying impressiveness, but some of his characterizations were a bit too hammy for my taste. The scenery for New York City Ballet's production in Act 2, looks way too much like The Nutcracker, with its over-abundance of pink painted drapery (I prefer the more elegant midnight ballroom shown on Pacific Northwest Ballet's video of Midsummer). However, Jennifer Ringer and Philip Neal were fantastic as the divertissement's central couple, and the corps' dancing had a delightful, energetic quality here. It was a wonderful way to end the evening.

Overall, though there were many charming things about the production and the performance, it is not one of my favorite ballets. I can understand its popular appeal (it is revived regularly in the end-of-season slot), with its colorful sets and costumes, and I adore the brilliant Act 2 divertissement – a plotless mini ballet of its own. But I often get bored during Act 1, with all of its story-telling fussiness. I can't help but fall into the comparison trap here, and I find that Balanchine is much less adept at conveying narrative and literal characters than his contemporaries Jerome Robbins, whose work was shown at City Ballet last week, or even the Royal Ballet's Frederick Ashton. Ashton's one-act treatment of Midsummer, entitled The Dream, is to me more entertaining and has much more vividly drawn, interesting characters than their equivalents in the Balanchine work.

(Photo: Paul Kolnik)

Balanchine's Midsummer, is rare in his oeuvre in that it is evening-length and a story ballet; Midsummer and Balanchine's version of Nutcracker are the only two that are in regular active repertory, and his Don Quixote has been only occasionally performed for the last several years. Balanchine's brilliance comes from his stirring musical sensitivity. In his ballets, there is a near-perfect visual interpretation of the music – but more than that, from the music, Balanchine also drew a great depth of emotion and tantalizing suggestion of characters and relationships among the dancers on stage. Narrative is not explicitly stated, but the viewer can often find something of his or her own interpretation in the dancers' interactions.

In telling a full narrative with A Midsummer Night's Dream, Balanchine follows the rough sketches of Shakespeare's story pretty closely. The plot is reduced to 60 minutes in Act 1 and its telling relies on the audience's prior knowledge of the play. It is relayed mostly through broad gestures: boy in blue loves girl in blue, and indicates such with a big hug, while boy in red tells girl in red he does not love her by throwing his hands at her in disgust and stomping away, etc. - all this representing the love quadrangle of Hermia, Lysander, Demitrius and Helena. The fairies get most of the attention and dancing, perhaps because ballet's language of pointe shoes and bourres lends itself naturally to a heightened world of flying creatures.

Act 1 is laid out in episodes and presentational dance moments: after the overture, where we meet the main characters in a sort of grand pageant, there is a dance in Titania's bower that shows her as an elegant queen among a retinue of girls. Oddly, though, she dances here with a male cavalier who is unrelated to the story (his presence as the lone male in her bower brings up all sorts of questions...). Oberon gets a dance scene next, and it is highly virtuosic, filled with flashy jumps. He is surrounded by his entourage of butterflies, danced by corps girls in pointe shoes as well as a huge gathering of the cutest young children imaginable - in NYCB's production, they are all young students from the School of American Ballet.

These are great dance moments and wonderfully entertaining when danced well, but they only establish generic ballet types for these fairly complex characters. Ashton's The Dream, in contrast, choreographed unique, individual steps to his characters that establish personalities for them. Titania, for example, has a sort of zigzagging hop on pointe that gives her a simultaneously imperious and flirtatious nature. Oberon's overbearing impetuousness is more clearly drawn simply in the way that he walks. Balanchine's scenes for the quartet of human lovers tells their story very straightforwardly, but for some reason I find these passages long and boring, the characterizations and choreography generic. In the Ashton it is charming and amusing, the story told more economically. Ashton quickly gets us back to the fairies' dancing, which is more interesting to me in a non-speaking production.

I further love Ashton's climactic pas de deux for Titania and Oberon, set to the gorgeous Nocturne from Mendelssohn's score for Midsummer - it appropriately finishes out the story of our two main lovers. But Balanchine gives no such pas de deux to Titania and Oberon, and he uses the Nocturne for a comic pas de deux between Titania and the donkey Bottom.

There are, though, many things that the Balanchine version gets spectacularly right: the children who play butterflies and woodland creatures throughout the whole ballet. They bring a delightful innocence and joy to all of the proceedings. I also like how Balanchine uses Mendelssohn's Midsummer Overture in full, as composed, where Ashton's version chops it up into pieces to fit his dance scenes.

And the Act 2 divertissement is one of the most beautiful pieces of Balanchine choreography. At its center is a suite of dances set to Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 9 and a meltingly gorgeous pas de deux for non-named divertissement dancers, one of the romantic of Balanchine's pas de deux. The entire essence of Midsummer's themes of love is encapsulated here in this non-narrative dance, making the dance very much like Balanchine's standalone plotless ballets. It's brilliant, and nearly worth the entire ballet itself.

All photos by Paul Kolnik, of Midsummer Night's Dream, choreographed by George Balanchine: (1) The New York City Ballet corps and children from the School of American Ballet in the finale; (2) Darci Kistler as Titania and Charles Askegard as her Cavalier in the Bower scene; (3) Kister as Titania, with Botton; (4) the finale with a different cast than the one reviewed here, Adam Hendrickson as Puck.

ABT's Giselle with Natalia Osipova

2009-06-14T21:18:00.004-04:00

(Curtain call for American Ballet Theatre's Giselle, my photo.)

Sat, Jun 13 - I really enjoyed tonight's performance of Giselle at American Ballet Theatre. The main attraction was guest star Natalia Osipova from the Bolshoi Ballet, dancing in the title role. I, and many other Stateside balletomanes, know her from sensational performances as Kitri in Don Quixote, where she showed off rock solid technique, a gasp-inducing jump and a charismatic, spunky stage personality. She has recently expanded her repertoire in Moscow to include Giselle and the Sylph in La Sylphide (which she dances later this week at ABT), and these performances are her first with the roles in the West.

She was fantastic. I really loved her performance, and not only for her jump, which was truly amazing. In the Grand Pas de Deux in Act Two, there is a sequence of entrechats - quick beats where the dancer jumps up and, basically, quickly shuffles her feet multiple times - that Osipova made look like she was bounding about on a trampoline. It was a spectacular effect: I and the audience went gaga for it. Her adage was exquisite, even if at times it seemed she was more inclined to run and jump than to pause for lyricism.

But there was more than just the technical feats. Her characterization of Giselle in Act One was very endearing. She convincingly played a young girl because she essentially is a young girl herself, and her acting was charming, but not over-the-top. I liked the choice she made to emphasize Giselle's physical weakness in her heart condition – most Giselles do the requisite faint during the group waltz, then basically forget about the heart condition until she falls again in the mad scene, but Osipova really made it look alarming when she fainted. Then, she looked genuinely sad that this condition prevented her from dancing, showing some hesitancy in rejoining the group, only finally throwing herself back in after Albrecht's very persuasive puppy-dog looks.

A good production of Giselle is more than just its star, though, and I thought American Ballet Theatre really stepped up to the plate tonight. The production is a basic one that tells the story in clear, simple terms, without fuss or extra additions (unlike the company's productions of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty). On the whole, the dancing was very strong from top to bottom.

David Hallberg was a good, very passionate Albrecht. In Act One, his peasant ruse seemed more a heedless dive into a love affair that he hadn't completely thought through the consequences of. In Act Two, he poured all sorts of sorrow and emotion into his duets with Giselle's shade.

Veronika Part's Myrta was commanding and sturdy. It was a pleasure simply to look at her dancing, with her gorgeous feet and her plush upper body. Leann Underwood made a particularly strong impression as one of Myrta's attendants, the one with the second solo in the dance of the Wilis. Hee Seo and Blaine Hoven danced in Act One's Peasant Pas de Deux: it wasn't the smoothest performance, but accomplished and entertaining enough.

It was Osipova who left the biggest impression, though. I'm really looking forward to seeing her in Sylphide on Wednesday, and with the Bolshoi in Le Corsaire on Sunday. It has most definitely become an Osipova week!

Inset photos: (1) Natalia Osipova as Giselle and David Hallberg as Albrecht; (2) Veronika Part as Myrta.

*

EDITED 6/28 TO ADD: Osipova didn't end up dancing in the Bolshoi's Corsaire after all, bummer. Ah well, casting changes are a fact of life in live performances, and I'm glad I got to see her with ABT at least.

Liebeslieder Walzer at New York City Ballet

2009-06-14T19:14:00.003-04:00

(A 2004 photo of New York City Ballet in Liebeslieder Walzer, choreographed
by George Balanchine. Photo by Paul Kolnik.)

It is hard to describe what exactly makes Liebeslieder Walzer such a beautiful work. It's not just a ballet, for even though there is plenty of dancing, the performance of the music is just as important. Johannes Brahms' Liebeslieder, op. 144 and Neue Liebeslieder, op. 65 are an intimate, yet enveloping set of waltzes for four-handed piano and a quartet of vocalists. The songs are about about love, its trials and associated emotions – the titles literally translate as love songs, and new love songs – and the sound is at times joyful, at others melancholy and troubled, at others plaintive and longing. There is a huge range of emotions that is suggested simply by the tune, nevermind that the lyrics are in German.

In the dancing and in the movement, there are quiet, emotional subtleties, and with only four couples waltzing around on stage with one another, it all somehow manages to feel enormously romantic and stirring. Balanchine's ballet is more than a mere visualization of Brahms' music: equally romantic dances are layered on top of the music with stirring sensitivity and drama. It's a brilliant pairing of music and steps, with Balanchine's sensitivity for music and his masterful ability to suggest relationships and emotions in through dance. To watch such gorgeous dancing and drama paired with Brahms' glorious music is almost too much to take in at once, it just works so well.

The two parts of Liebeslieder Walzer: (1) The first part in ball gowns, here with
Janie Taylor and Sebastien Marcovici, photo by Paul Kolnik. (2) The second part, with
the women in ballet costumes. Pictured here are Wendy Whelan
and Nilas Martins, photo by Erin Baino.

The first part of the ballet, danced to the Liebeslieder waltzes, has the four couples dancing in elaborate ball gowns and tuxes inside a grand ballroom; the four vocalists and piano are on one side of the stage. The women dance in heeled character shoes, and the waltzing here is very much like 19th century ball dances, though inflected with balletic extensions and lifts. More important are the looks that the dancers exchange with their partners during the various ensemble and individual pas de deux: they seem to be dancing in their own worlds here. It ends with the couples running out of the ballroom's back doors and the curtain falling.

After a brief pause, the curtain lifts and we see the same ballroom, but the lighting is dim and a night sky is seen behind the open doors. The couples are back on stage but this time the women are costumed in knee-length ballet dresses and are wearing pointe shoes. The dancing, too, switches to something much more balletic and Romantic. Of the contrast between the first and second parts, Balanchine has said that in the first part, we see the actual people dancing – in the second, we see their souls. The people are less concretely drawn and the emotions in the dancing more heightened; we went from a ballroom world into a much more spiritual part of romance.

Towards the end of the ballet, each of the couples leaves the stage and returns, dressed again in their ballroom gowns from the first part. They all sit and listen attentively to the music, and the curtain falls as the music ends.

At the performance I attended on Saturday (June 13), I was sitting on the vocalists' side of the auditorium. So I got to hear and feel the music with real immediacy, and the musical performance was just wonderful. The singers were Julianne Borg in the soprano part, Katherine Rohrer the mezzo-soprano, Michael Slattery the tenor and Thomas Meglioranza the baritone. The pianists were Richard Moredock and Susan Walters.

The dancers today were Darci Kistler, Jennie Somogyi, Janie Taylor, Wendy Whelan, Jared Angle, Sebastien Marcovici, Nilas Martins and Philip Neal. I particularly loved Whelan's moments; they were achingly beautiful in the way that she fell into and luxuriated. Darci Kistler looks very good in this ballet, as it does not expose her deteriorating technique quite so glaringly, and her maturity as an artist and understanding of the role really bring out beautiful qualities in the dancing. Needless to say, I loved seeing and hearing this wonderful performance.

More to come...

2009-06-14T02:18:00.000-04:00

Coming soon: Why all of these people are clapping, and more.
.

New York City Ballet: An all-Robbins program with Glass Pieces, The Cage, Other Dances and The Concert

2009-06-12T23:47:00.003-04:00

(The opening part of Jerome Robbins' Glass Pieces. Photo by Paul Kolnik.)

Thurs, June 11 - New York City Ballet performed an evening of all Jerome Robbins ballets tonight, and it was my first time seeing all four of these works (though I have read much about them over time). It was a very well-balanced program, really interesting to watch, and with very good dancing all the way through as well.

Glass Pieces was first on the program, and it was my favorite work of the night. It was the only piece that was purely dance (the others had narrative elements, or was just a short pas de deux), and it was consistently surprising in its choice of movement and its use of the ensemble. The music was several compositions by Philip Glass, two sections from his 1981 Glassworks and some excerpts from his 1983 opera Akhnaten, creating a kind of space-age soundscape for the work. There are three parts to the work: the first has dancers wearing practice ballet clothes, and they simply walk across the stage, first one at a time, then suddenly all of them at once, criss-crossing around each other like the crowds in Grand Central Terminal's grand concourse. They are interrupted at various points by three different couples in shiny leotards, who perform brief balletic duets. The second part is quieter, danced against a glowing blue grid background – it is mainly a slow, leggy pas de deux for a central couple, who were Maria Kowroski and Philip Neal, giving fantastic performances tonight. Through this female corps, lit only in silhouette, slowly steps across the stage in a line, behind the pas de deux.

The most exhilarating part of the ballet is the third part, for the corps de ballet. Using percussive, highly charged music, the company basically runs through the last movement, constantly dashing from grouping to grouping as the music builds and builds. The section starts with the men in unison, jumping and turning, before the girls join and the ballet erupts in ecstatic movement. It was exciting to watch.

The Cage is fantastically odd ballet about a man-hating group of what appear to be alien, arachnid women. The stage design is dominated by a web of strings hanging above a dark stage, and the women are in yellow unitards accented by squiggly lines, their hair tussled and disheveled above their heads, and their faces aggressively made up with black eye make-up. The dancing in the ensembles is angular and jagged, matching the strings in Igor Stravinsky's score.

When a male dancer wanders onto the stage, the women attack, climbing onto him, twisting him into submission and ultimately killing him. We also see the tribe initiating the newest girl into their clan, but she clearly hasn't learned their ways when she finds herself attracted to another man that has wandered into their midst. They share a tentative, yet passionate pas de deux before they are discovered and the queen orders his death as well.

Janie Taylor was the novice and Sebastien Marcovici was the man in the pas de deux, and their performances looked really good tonight. Robbins' choreography here is inventive and dramatically interesting as well. Teresa Reichlin was a domineering Queen, a role that played well to her naturally leggy appearance and striking blond hair.

Other Dances was originally created as an occasion piece for Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, two mega-star dancers, and it is a short set of variations and a pas de deux set to Chopin pieces played by an on-stage solo piano. Presented here on a regular repertory program, I don't think it has quite the same level of excitement or interest to the choreography itself, however it did provide a nice vehicle for Ashley Bouder and Joaquin De Luz to show off. For whatever reason, Bouder hasn't been on stage much this spring season, after her very good Theme and Variations in February. De Luz is just a delight to watch in most of the things he dances, and he was an applause trap here with athletic, virtuosic dancing in his solo variations. Bouder was equally wonderful to see, with moments of speed poking out from the prettiness of the female choreography. Ultimately I thought the ballet itself a bit too slight for my taste, especially considering the other works on tonight's program.

Robbins' comic ballet The Concert closed the program, and it was a lot of silly fun. Robbins is a master at creating characters on stage just through their movements and movement quirks, and here he creates a charming bunch of earnest, individually odd characters who are gathering to hear a piano concert. As they arrive one by one and set up their folding chairs near the on stage piano (played by a pianist who is just as much a part of the action with her haughty, diva persona), they single themselves out as a girl who loves the music so much that she must physically sway with it, a rich husband-wife couple who hate each other, a nerd, a grouchy "serious" listener who demands that everyone stay quiet, the list goes on. And so do the antics, as the characters variously chase each other around the stage or meet for silly rendezvous.

The most sustained period of dancing comes with a mismatched group of eight girls who dance a ballet-school type ballet performance, only they can't keep in line with one another, a few forget and mess up the choreography in some parts, arms are pointing the other way in other parts. If there is anything to really complain about amidst all of the fun, its that the ballet is more of a slapstick sketch comedy that does not actually take the characters from a beginning to an end – only through unrelated jokes. For example, the nerd, early on, unexpectedly phwacks the passionate girl over the head and carries her off stage unconscious, but the next time they appear on stage it seems as though this funny episode never occurred.

Sterling Hyltin was the passionate girl (who also dons a variety of crazy hats at one point), and Andrew Veyette and Gwenyth Muller were the rich couple. The ballet culiminates in a dance for the whole ensemble, who have by now donned colorful butterfly wings, only to be chased off stage by the angry pianist, bearing a butterfly net. Silly fun to the extreme.

Balanchine's Swan Lake and Robbins' Les Noces at New York City Ballet

2009-06-11T20:23:00.002-04:00

Sat, Jun 6 – Balanchine's version of Swan Lake, created in 1951, is the Balanchine's one-act distillation of the themes and dances from the traditional, evening-length Swan Lake. The full ballet's iconic choreography - mostly, Lev Ivanov's lakeside dances from Acts 2 and 4 - is filtered through Balanchine's own style with slight alterations. There are more and faster steps here, and the corps has more intricate patterns to move through. The key difference is motion: where the traditional Swan Lake emphasizes beautiful images formed by poses, formations and arms delicately arranged just so, Balanchine's achieves its effects through the dancers' constant movement, driven by the engine of Tchaikovsky's music. If you know the original Swan Lake, Balanchine's version is fascinating in that it shows the contrast between the traditions that Balanchine grew up with and the new directions that he was taking classical dancing.

This version of the ballet follows the basic structure of Ivanov's Act 2 lakeside scene, though the dances of the big and little swans are excised and two corps dances from the Act 4 score - the Valse Neuff from the 1877 score of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and the Valse Bluette, a Tchaikovsky piano work orchestrated and subbed in for the Valse Neuff in Petipa/Ivanov's seminal 1895 staging - are interpolated instead. These two dances, choreographed for a leading demi-soloist and a small corps de ballet, add a more melancholic overtone to the ballet. (New York City Ballet's production further puts all of the swan maidens in pitch-black costumes, adding even more to the ominous undertone; the original production used the traditional white, as do other current productions of Balanchine's choreography, like Miami City Ballet's recent staging.)

Balanchine simplified the Swan Lake story and contains it within this single act: Siegfried and his friends are hunting by a lake when he observes Odette transform into a swan. He dances with her in wonder – a vision of beauty in the moonlight – then releases her as she returns to swan form, still under the spell of her captor. Siegfried bows in honor as the swan form Odette glides away. This narrative compression removes any complex psychological reasoning for Siegfried's jaunt in the woods (he just seems to be out hunting with friends here, rather than sadly moping about loss of youth as he does in the original story). His encounter with Odette becomes an overwhelmingly memorable brush with beauty and moves Odette to the narrative center of the ballet – this makes Balanchine's Swan Lake very similar to many of his other non-narrative works, where the ballerina is adored and revered as the work's central representation of beauty.

At the Saturday matinee that I attended, Odette was danced by Jennifer Ringer (originally, Wendy Whelan was scheduled, but an announcement just before curtain indicated a cast change) and Siegfried was Sebastien Marcovici. Ringer was great as Odette, particularly as Balanchine's Odette: I loved the liquid, delicate quality to her movement, which very much paid tribute to the role's traditional look and interpretation, but also loved seeing the quick, sleek overlay to her dancing. She didn't languish in the swan poses like the Russians might, focusing more on the phrasing and musicality. Ringer is a veteran New York City Ballet dancer, and I've loved her work in the past – her Odette was no less wonderful (and quelled any possible disappointment at the last minute cast change).

Marcovici was a noble, solid partner: his variation was secure without being overly flashy, and the dramatic weight that he gave to the respectful bow he gave to Odette's swan form as it floated away was a perfect way to bring the curtain down. The Valse Neuff and Valse Bluette were danced by Deena Abergel and Savannah Lowery, respectively, both lovely and musical.

Saturday afternoon's performances concluded with a correct but studied performance of Balanchine's Concerto Barocco and Jerome Robbins' rendering of Stravinsky's Les Noces. Concerto Barocco featured Teresa Reichlin's debut in the principal role. We saw her spectacularly long legs wrap themselves around the adagio movement of Balanchine's choreography: there were some great moments, but overall the performance from the corps and supporting dancers seemed subdued and careful.

Les Noces was given a very good musical performance, with a full chorus on stage, four vocal soloists, percussion and four thundering pianos. It's a fascinating Stravinsky score, and it was great to hear it performed full force. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Robbins' ballet: the original was choreographed by Bronislava Najinska for Diaghelev's Ballet Ruses, and its somber, angular form plus the non-narrative, pageant-like episodes that represent a rather terrifying ritual of a Russian peasant wedding are in their own way quite iconic as well. Robbins' work follows the same structure, but without the severe, stark impact of Najinska's images – they seem overwrought and, well, Broadway in contrast. I'll have one more chance to look at this piece, when it is paired with Liebeslieder Walzer next weekend.

All photos by Paul Kolnik: (1) New York City Ballet's production of Swan Lake, as choreographed by George Balanchine. Photo from nycballet.com. (2) Tiler Peck in Les Noces, choreographed by Jerome Robbins.

Cirque du Soleil's KA

2009-05-30T13:36:00.002-04:00

Ka is very different from many of Cirque du Soleil's past productions in that it is decidedly darker in tone, and it tells a complete story over the course of its acrobatics. The circus acts and acrobatics are folded into a larger narrative, and instead of a traditional circus, Ka becomes more of a wordless fable told in grand, spectacular style. Highly elaborate sets and special effects add to the human spectacle of acrobats and performance artists.

Stage director Robert LePage was brought in to create the production, which roughly tells the story of two young princes who are destined to be king. At a ceremonial celebration, the kingdom comes under attack, the king and queen are killed, and the boys are separated during the chaos of escape. The show chronicles their separate journeys to find each other and to recapture the kingdom for its rightful rulers. There are harrowing mountain battles, flights from high platforms, dances with fire, and a centerpiece stunt with a so-called "wheel of death" (basically, an dangerously spinning, multi-part hamster wheel for humans).

The most remarkable thing about the spectacle is that performance area itself has no stage floor: a giant, independent hydraulic platform emerges from beneath the stage to spin around, raise into an enormous incline, then literally flip itself over and over with performers climbing all over it. One spectacular scene has performers climbing its face, then battling on it while hanging off "arrows" that have been shot into the surface. They bounce down the inclined stage into the pit below like balls in a larger-than-life pinballs. The finale is a particular technical marvel. Here, the audience observes an entire battle with a birds eye view, except that we're not above the performers at all. The stage floor has been raised to be completely vertical, and the performers are suspended on wires like marionettes, their choreography as much a choreography of strings and pulleys as it is one of acrobatics.

Amidst all of the spectacle, there are also some beautiful, touching moments in the show that involve nothing more than two actors on a level floor with very simple lighting effects. Resting in the woods, one of the boy princes and his caretaker entertain themselves by creating shadows of animals with their hands, and in another, the other boy prince falls in love with one of his captor's sympathetic flute players.

Even with all of the spectacle, the show is uncharacteristically dark and emotional for a Vegas show, or even a Cirque du Soleil show. In place of relentless dazzle there is a calculated reveal, an attempt to touch at viewers' hearts. It's a fantastic show in that way, but not one you might expect in a 90-minute casino spectacular.

New York City Ballet: Allegro Brillante, Hallelujah Junction, A Simple Symphony and The Four Seasons

2009-05-22T21:18:00.004-04:00

(NYCB's box office, with a promotional image featuring Peter Martins' Hallelujah Junction.)

Wed, May 20 - This was my second performance in a double-header ballet day. Every spring, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre go head to head right across the Lincoln Center from one another, and this year a programming quirk has both companies performing Balanchine's fifteen minute ballet Allegro Brillante at exactly the same time. Tonight at 7:30pm, the curtain went up at both the Koch Theatre and the Metropolitan Opera House on the exact same music and the exact same choreography. A comparison is inevitable, and New York City Ballet wins in this regard – it wasn't just Allegro Brillante, but the entire performance of four very different works was fantastically danced and great fun to watch.

New York City Ballet's performance of Allegro Brillante was fantastic, especially from Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette in the principal roles. It was a seamless performance from the moment the curtain lifted on the already dancing ensemble, all the way through to its swelling finale. On stage, it looked like everyone was dancing with a similar musical impulse. At ABT's performance earlier in the day, there were clear breaks between the ensemble bits and the soloist bits, and soloists stepped up and tried to make their moment in the sun stand out from the crowd. Here, at NYCB however, everything simply emerged and submerged as though a natural ebb and flow of the tide, soloists and ensemble dancers all part of the same group of mercurial beings. The ensemble was musically alive and danced joyously, while Fairchild and Veyette lead the proceedings with real authority.

Fairchild has an unforced technique that really dazzles in its speed and clarity: she uses it to thrillingly bring the music to life, and the energy that you hear in Tchaikovsky's cascading piano scales bursts forth on the stage when Fairchild zips across. Veyette's performance was wonderful for its nobility: he had the requisite technical brilliance, but didn't draw attention to it. The jumps and turns were folded into a cohesive performance that gave deference to his ballerina and to the music.

The choreography came across in an exceedingly vivid way tonight, and I noticed some things that I hadn't before. There is a moment after the women spin off stage where the men get a chance to shine, and I never quite noticed the stage patterns in the choreography before. The men jump forward towards the lower left corner of the stage - then the music cascades down in the musical scale, and at this performance I noticed that the men at this point elegantly bow, step backward, then jumps quickly in a circle to end up in a formal, presentational formation at center stage. It's elegant in its air of court formalism, yet filled with exciting jumps and turns, a perfect example of how ballet exists at that fine juncture of brilliant athleticism and refined beauty.

Where Allegro Brillante looked more traditional, with its more formal mannerisms and noble gentlemen, Peter Martins' Hallelujah Junction gave off a sleek, decidedly more contemporary feeling. The music is John Adams' eponymous 1998 composition for two pianos and the sound is at times pulsing, at others plaintive. Peter Martins, who is NYCB's director, created this ballet in 2001 for the Royal Danish Ballet, and brought it to New York City Ballet a few years later. It is set on a bare black stage, with the two pianos on platforms at the back of the stage, behind a scrim. The movement is the kind of spare neoclassicism that Balanchine pioneered, except even faster here, and in some ways more streamlined and liquid as well. The three principals – they were Sterling Hyltin, Gonzalo Garcia and Daniel Ulbricht at this performance – zip across the stage, pausing for a plaintive pas de deux in the middle section.

I really enjoyed this piece (I've seen it one other time, when City Ballet was on tour to Los Angeles), partly because I find Adams' piano music for it so interesting. Martins' response to the score and the ballet's visual look are all perfectly matched, and it is also great fun to see the dancers whizzing through the choreography. Daniel Ulbricht was really good today, with an ability to jump high and spin endlessly – he practically stole the show. In Hallelujah Junction he appropriately toned down the scenery-chewing persona that he usually gives (like in Tarantella last week, or Stars and Stripes). Steling Hyltin and Gonzalo Garcia were the central couple in white, and both of them were great as well. The eight-person corps de ballet was noteworthy also - I don't know them well enough to recognize who was dancing what, but each couple gets a major solo moment during the third movement, and many of them were very impressive as well.

(Melissa Barak's A Simple Symphony. Photo by Paul Kolnik.)

Former NYCB corps dancer Melissa Barak's new ballet A Simple Symphony seemed very tame compared to the thrills of Hallelujah Junction and Allegro Brillante. The piece, set to Britten's 1934 symphonic work of the same name, looked like old-fashioned ballet, with its light purple tutus and its orderly, formal ballet choreography. Balanchine's influence on Barak's work is apparent in the way she structures and uses the corps de ballet, arranging them in V patterns in the corners of the stage then moving them in unison back and forth around the principals. Still, Barak displays a remarkable fluency in composing choreography, and both in A Simple Symphony and in her recent work last year at Los Angeles Ballet, she shows a consistent ability to solid, eminently watchable choreography.

There are several moments of charming originality: in the pizzicato movement, first the principals, then the corps, then a demi solo quartet is seen hopping and bouncing around the stage in what starts out as seemingly random fun but which later reveals itself to be a pre-determined choice as patterns emerge and fold back into one another. The ballet stops short of a triumph in that it follows Britten's score a bit too literally, providing only pretty when the music suggests perhaps more. But like the other work of hers that I have seen, it's a promising work, and I'm interested to see her further develop as a choreographer.

Jerome Robbins' The Four Seasons closed the evening on a happy, joyous note. It was a very fun ballet to watch, with its colorful sets and costumes and witty pleasures in the choreography. Robbins used the ballet divertissement that Verdi composed for the opera I Vespri Siciliani, back when opera composers created fluffy entertainment ballets to be performed in the middle of operas as a kind of break from the action. The ballet music is not performed with the opera anymore, and here Robbins' uses the music as a sort of tribute to these grand divertissements from a bygone era.

Robbins' ballet begins as a grand pageant, with a master of ceremonies greeting four elaborately costumed representatives from each of the four seasons. From here, the ballet goes into each season: Winter is silly fun with the girls standing on the stage shivering to the spiky violins of Verdi's score before the central trio of dancers comes in to perform. The Spring section is a, well, springy pas de deux framed by an ensemble; tonight Jennifer Ringer and Tyler Angle danced it, and it was a highlight of the ballet. Summer has a leggy, luxurious duet, tonight danced by Rebecca Krohn and Amar Ramasar. Autumn is a pure shot of energy, with some seriously crowd-pleasing pyrotechnics in the principal roles. Tonight, there was a very exciting performance from Tiler Peck – whose turns seemed to go on forever, with nary a wobble – as well as very impressive work from Benjamin Millepied and Antonio Carmena as well. This was the kind of ballet that sent you out of the theater with a smile on your face.

Production photos by Paul Kolnik: (1) credited above, my photo. (2) Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette in Allegro Brillante, choreographed by George Balanchine. (3) Peter Martins' Hallelujah Junction, pictured with Andrew Veyette, Janie Taylor and Benjamin Millepied. This performance featured Gonzalo Garcia, Sterling Hyltin and Daniel Ulbricht in the same roles. (4) Melissa Barak's A Simple Symphony, credited above. (5) Tiler Peck in the Autumn section of Jerome Robbins' The Four Seasons.

American Ballet Theatre: Balanchine and Tchaikovsky

2009-05-22T01:33:00.005-04:00

Wed, May 20 - American Ballet Theatre just started its spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House this week, and this Wednesday matinee was the first opportunity that I had to see the company's season. I'll have miss the next two weeks of the season, sadly, when I'm out of town (the next two weeks include Le Corsaire - which I'm okay missing - but also include a premiere by Alexei Ratmansky, ABT's new artist in residence, whose Concerto DSCH at NYCB I really loved).

This particular performance of the company's Balanchine-Tchaikovsky "Spectacular" (their word, not mine) was an opportunity to see the company's promising, lesser-known dancers step up to the plate in larger principal roles. The programming, not the most exciting way to program an all Balanchine evening, was all Tchaikovsky: plenty of lush, romantic music and ballet skirts to be seen. And the results were were hit and miss. All of the ballets were decently performed, but it nothing was particularly stylish or memorable. It was more simply fascinating to see how these dancers stacked up in these Balanchine tests.

(American Ballet Theatre in Allegro Brillante, choreographed by George Balanchine.
Pictured here are Gillian Murphy and Corey Stearns, though the cast at this performance
featured Xiomara Reyes and Daniil Simkin. Photo by Gene Schiavone.)

Allegro Brillante started the program, with Xiomara Reyes and Daniil Simkin in the main roles. The ballet is a twelve-minute run through Balanchine's ideas about ballet formalism, dressed in flowy pink dresses for the women and formal cavalier tunics for the men. The curtain opens with the dancers already dancing, and the dancing continues in a virtually uninterrupted sequence through ensemble formations, pas de deux and prinicpal solos, the stage pictures seeming to expand and contract with Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 3. Reyes was the most senior dancer at this afternoon's performance; she was lovely in the part, with expressive elegance and her typical springy, light steps. Simkin did fine, though he tended to over emphasize his moments in the spotlight, trying to make them more bravura than the ballet appropriately calls for. It was out of character for the ballet.

Not incidentally, New York City Ballet is performing Allegro Brillante this week as well - at the Wednesday evening performance, the performances of this ballet occurred at exactly the same time (which seems to me a rather bizarre misallocation of resources - why marshal the forces of the city's two biggest dance companies into the exact same ballets at the exact same time?) Comparisons between the two companies are inevitable: I saw NYCB's Brillante at the evening show on this same day, and overall City Ballet performance's was superior. ABT did it fine, but there was a certain instinctive musicality that NYCB had, which was not present here. I know I should judge ABT on its own merits, yada yada, but seeing the two shows so close together, the better one has inevitably clouded my judgement. (More on NYCB's performance here.)

Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux today was most interesting for the debuts of Misty Copeland and Jared Matthews, both soloists in the company. Copeland is a bright stage presence, and has been making herself noticed in small ways with roles here and there over the years (I noticed her, in good ways, with bits in The Sleeping Beauty and Giselle during ABT's recent visits to southern California). Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, though, is a technically exposed, bravura duet - probably the biggest thing I've seen her do.

It was a very good performance, spunky and technically accomplished. She didn't quite get through all of the technical tricks - the fouettes at the end seemed to fail her as she got tired - and she didn't perform it with the Balanchinean ease that might make it really great, but it was okay for a first outing. And it'll be interesting to see her in more big roles like this as time goes on. Matthews was more confident in the male role, having done a few large roles before. The tricks were executed with aplomb, if not the all out flash that other performers put into the role.

Balanchine created Mozartiana in the early 80s, as he was nearing the end of his life. Despite the tuneful music - Tchiakovsky's Suite No. 4 for orchestra, which the composer subtitled "Mozartiana" - the ballet is filled with images of prayer and death, particularly in the décor. The stage is framed by black curtains that droop in at the top and sides of the blue cyc backdrop, giving the stage vaguely funeral parlor setting, and the female costumes are pitch black, with black transparent gauze hanging over white material underneath. The men are costumed in purple tunics and white tights that are accentuated with black ribbons.

In the ballet's opening section, the Preghiera, the ballerina and four young girls perform a elegiac prayer, hands stretched upward towards the heavens. The final theme and variations section is a set of alternating solo dances for the ballerina and the male principal. Its springiness seems to contrast directly with the more somber moments we have seen before. I find the contrast of the very dark décor and the dancing's elegant, bravura elements both fascinating and puzzling.

This performance was a studied and rather dull affair (somewhat unfortunate, as ABT has yielded good casts in this ballet before). Maria Ricetto danced the principal ballerina role, all correctly but without any of the mystique or emotion that the music and steps suggest. Her performance did not extend much past her face, with small smiles and glances that I could see in the orchestra (with a lucky student rush ticket), but which did not radiate through the rest of her body. Blaine Hoven was giving his debut performance in the male role; while it nice to see him in a large role and accomplish the role's tricky quick steps, he too was studied and subdued. Aaron Scott danced in soloist male role in the Gigue section, and it was similarly small scaled and underwhelming.

Sarah Lane and Corey Stearns led Theme and Variations to close the program. Stearns was a last minute replacement for Herman Cornejo, who was originally scheduled to dance but had to step down due to injury (so said the announcement before the curtain went up). For a performance that was the pair's first time together, it went remarkably well. Stearns, however, is much taller than Lane and this made her look like a little girl among adults. Lane is a wide-eyed, accomplished dancer who made the role's famously tricky challenges look very easy, finishing complicated steps with time to spare in the music. Her big brown eyes tend to make her look a bit dazed on stage, and her short stature, accentuated by her difference in height from Corey, really took away some of the role's ballerina glamour. Stearns did well for one of his first runs through this role; he's tall and handsome, with a noble, generous manner that this cavalier role requires. Save for a minor mishap at the very end of the ballet, I thought he did fine. ABT's production puts the two principals in bubble gum pink costumes - the pink tunic doesn't work well on most of the company's men, and it was no different here. I wish they'd change it to a more elegant color for them.

Photos: (1) ABT's banner at the Metropolitan Opera House, photo by me. (2) Credited above. (3) Misty Copeland in Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, choreography by George Balanchine. Photo by Rosalie O'Connor. (4) Curtain call at the matinee on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 for Theme and Variations, choreography by George Balanchine. Sarah Lane and Corey Stearns are center. Photo by me.