Alban

I loved the cast Monday night. Cornejo was terrific as usual. His dancing is great artistry not just technical wizardry and that's not good news for the other men who have to dance alongside him. Nonetheless, Gomes was also impressive and grew stronger over the course of the performance, especially in his dancing with Juliet. The balcony scene was impressive and I thought Vishneva's interpretation was fine. I have never seen a Juliet appear so convincingly lifeless in the final scene. But I must echo the dismay of other posters at the lack of imagination in the choreography. I don't think I can watch this version again. Most of the choreography for Romeo and Juliet tends to look like an amusement park ride after a while with Romeo endlessly swinging Juliet around like a sack of potatoes. And that's some of the best choreography. Watching a Mercutio of Cornejo's calibre is especially frustrating. The music for his fight with Tybalt is so wonderful, full of interesting transitions, and all MacMillan can think to have him do is clank swords. The market scenes are just a mess. Compared to the ordered richness of the final act of Sylvia I saw last week, MacMillan's choreography is just chaos. Part was terrifically expansive in her Lady Capulet but at the end of the second act her chest thumping went on for an eternity. But it's hardly her fault. What a shame Ashton's version is so rarely staged.

Tonight's performance was pretty sensational and I find it hard to quibble. Yes the corps had some hiccups and the production is a problem but the partnership of Vishneva and Gomes was amazing. Absolutely fantastic in acts 2 and 3. I could watch Vishneva's arms and hands for days. There were some jaw dropping moments tonight. Her transformation at the end of act 2 was spin chilling. For me Gomes has grown in the last few years into one of ABT's best dancers and strongest partners. (I'm sad I didn't get to see Gomes' Von Rothbart on Monday, he seems to be the only one who can make that choreography really work.) I second the praise of the four cygnettes. I thought they nailed it. Simkin was terrific too, more so in the solos than the partnering. I've enjoyed him in everything he has done this year.

Boy this conversation has gotten a bit complicated. Since I brought up the matter I should probably explain my objection more clearly. Going from a debate about characterization's in the Bolshoi's production to dangling the threat of a ban on 19th century ballet is a bit of a bait and switch, drawing the argument away from the substance of the debate to a easily disparaged position. I'm not going to bite. The problem I have is not with politically incorrect 19th century ballet scenarios. It's about what the designers of a contemporary production expect from their audience. If you stage the Merchant of Venice today you're going to have to deal with the fact that some of the laughs in the play are not going to play for a contemporary audience. Shakespeare is very funny, but not when he's making fun of jews. So staging the play is a challenge, but of course it's made worthwhile because Shakespeare didn't just make Shylock an anti-semitic caricature he also gave him some of the most eloquent lines in the English language. So what's my point? Well, Corsaire has a plot that's hard to swallow, so what? So do a lot of ballets, operas, etc. The problem as I see it is that what the Bolshoi's production plays for laughs are simply not funny. Hooked nose, stingy jew getting his comeuppence? Not funny. Muslim character getting kicked in the ass while praying towards Mecca? Not funny. These are mime and makeup jokes, as far as I can tell, invented by this production because the designers thought they would get a response from the audience. Bad taste but also a miscalculation I would think. Show me where the evidence is that these specific mime sequences have historical precedent? And even if they do, they are no longer functional. Those mime sequences are there to be funny. They're not. So why do them like that? I can't speak to the black maid that's said to be in the Moscow production but being glad it's not included in the US tour is a strange blessing to have to count. From where I was sitting the character that got laughs, the mime that worked for the audience was Zulmea. But Lankedem and the pasha have opportunities to be very funny but not in this production. It may be true that historically Lankedem was created as a jewish character. If a production wants to honor the historicity of that, the designers, makeup artists, and actors still have a lot of decisions in front of them--decisions that are not easily answered by historical precedent because they are far more specific than any kind of historical evidence available. In short the actor must create a new character. This happens even when an actor has written dialogue as their starting point. Any actor who plays Shylock will speak the same lines but no two performances are going to communicate the same way. The actor will make all sorts of choices that transmit different ideas to the audience, hopefully compelling ones. Imagination is required to find a solution through the fundamental dilemma. This is as true with Lankedem as with other tricky parts made difficult for very different reasons, Albrecht for instance. The Bolshoi's production is a work of imaginations so limited that they could think of nowhere to go with the characters, no other dramatic/comedic opportunities, than to focus intently on communicating the bluntest of ethnic stereotypes. I just can't find my way to seeing historical accuracy as an excuse for what I saw last Sunday. But Lankedem didn't single handedly ruin the whole ballet for me. I thought the whole thing was pretty awful.

After having seen Osipova in her three performances at the Met I was among those disappointed on Sunday. Sorry to hear her absence from the performance was due to illness. I was consoled somewhat by the fact that I really disliked the Bolshoi's Corsaire. I must be missing something because most reactions I have heard were quite positive but I found it interminable. I found the cast quite a disappointment but was more troubled by the production. I had seen the ABT's Corsaire for the first time a couple of weeks ago and while it's certainly no great shakes I still enjoyed much of the dancing, especially Simkin as Lankedem and Corella as Ali. Which brings me to one bone of contention I had with the Bolshoi's production. In the ABT production Lankendam, no first name is listed for the part in ABT's program, is a dancing part and acted without any trace of anti-semitism. In the Bolshoi's he's a character part and played like the he's the Merchant of Venice. I know very little about the history of the ballet but I was surprised that this new production chose to have Lankendem, Isaac Lankendem in the program, acted in such a virulently anti-semitic way. That may be historically accurate for a nineteenth century Russian ballet, it's certainly par for the course in the literature, at least Gogol, but is it necessary for a new production? Is this common in most productions of Corsaire?

Glad to see Cornejo is dancing Mercutio on the Monday performance.

Wonderful news! I have been fearing that he would be out for the season.

I see that Cornejo's name has disappeared from two upcoming performances (May 25th and 26th). Does anyone know if he is injured?