Jack Reed

Of course it was you, dirac, I'm sorry for the silly blunder.

Add my thanks, too, carbro! And I'd say relevance trumps tardiness any day. Those of us who see MCB in Florida know the quality of the dancing bart describes, and I'm glad New York got to sample it. Congratulations! But doesn't this post rate a link over from the Balanchine centennial forum?

carbro, it's a large flag, and you may not have noticed me clinging to another corner of it in the stiff wind blowing nowadays, but I assume Kudelka is of the dancer species, not wordy by custom, and so, might he be allowed his approximation in usage? Juliet, why?

While I'm trying to come with something more like an adequate, meaning comprehensive, response to this question, I recall an anecdote I read about some time ago: A man had been hearing from Balanchine about the years of training, the weeks of preparation, and the not inconsiderable expense, of putting on a ballet performance. The man then asked what is for me the quintessential American question about it: "What's ballet for?" "It makes people happy," was Balanchine's reply. I think that's as unassailable a motivation for ballet performance as it is, these days, a hard sell.

Treefrog, I guess I hadn't noticed Dunner's "moving ability" because it's the usual musicians' awkwardness among the dancers that does stand out for me, so thanks for pointing that out. And I too am glad there's an orchestra in the pit; no mistake about it, the Joffrey has taken a big step in the right direction. Now, if the Auditorium management will do its part, we'll hear them as they should be heard. (I thought the amplification problem was worth mentioning on a thread inviting comparisons from different places. I wonder whether any other place pursues this odd-seeming practice?) bart, you may know better than I, with reference to your second question, that the Miami City Ballet had an orchestra only for Coppelia a few seasons back, because, according to AD Edward Villella's pre-performance remarks, a single donor, if I remember correctly, came forward with the money for that. And last weekend, at the question-and-answer part of another of his talks, in answer to a complaint that an orchestra was missed, he said, first, that when money is tight, he prefers to have recorded music rather than a smaller company or more repetitive repertory, and, second, that if "you guys" can give him $500,000, he'll give back live music "instantly". "We give back what you give us" was his motto.

The Joffrey Ballet has an orchestra for its performances; whether its their orchestra seems doubtful. (And the Auditorium Theatre's recent practice of amplifying the orchestra - can you believe it? - seems dubious, to say the least.)

As of 1st April, Programs III and IV are changed, although the emphasis bart points out is about the same (unless you count running time!): PROGRAM III --Dances at a Gathering (Robbins) --Ballet Imperial [instead of Symphony in C] (Balanchine) PROGRAM IV --Funny Papers (Taylor) --Serenade and Symphony in C [symphony in C replaces Duo Concertante and Tchaikovsky pas de deux] (Balanchine)

Mme. Hermine, I'm sorry to have lapsed into obscurity (again). I only meant to make a passing comment on Post #14, where Balletaime made mention of elitism in the course of some tastily parodistic (?) observations, not to lead the discussion off topic. Which was about the quality or lack of it in Balanchine performed by companies other than NYCB, right? Actually, I think it helps to discuss what's happened at NYCB by comparison and contrast with what we see elsewhere. Was some of that what you had in mind, Balletaime, when you brought up "the whole package"? For one thing, it would shed light on what might have happened at NYCB, if it's happening elsewhere. And I think I do sometimes see Balanchine danced Balanchine's way, which is the "correct" way and which was different every night, especially as alternate casts came out. Oops, see, I'm talking about his old NYCB, and this forum is about other companies today. Everybody's different, I think, and will see differently when they look at the same things. That said, okay, in recent years I've seen the most - what I would call authentic - Balanchine performances from the Suzanne Farrell Ballet and from some SAB Workshop performances, especially whatever Suki Schorer prepares. Miami City Ballet always seems headed in the right direction, and in the case of Sonatine when it was newly staged, it seemed to have reached the destination, but most of the time it looks a little subdued compared to what my memories (checked against the video evidence from time to time) tell me to expect. (That may be why Ari thought they looked tired when he saw them in Washington, if I remember him correctly.) MCB'sAgon, which is staged for them by Farrell, looked this way, so I was quite unprepared for the quality of the Agon pas de deux she presented in her pas de deux program at the Kennedy Center. carbro's remarks on the NYCB thread help to describe the qualities I have in mind. The best words I can come up with at the moment are more fully realized (made real, not left immanent) and fresh. Balanchine himself liked to compare what he did with cooking, and so maybe I can say that Farrell serves up his ballets a pointe, as the French say, not at all raw, but just done, at that peak moment before they become... overprepared.

I'm all for elites, as long as they're open to anyone...

cargill, would you like to tell us which years you've been watching NYCB?

Thanks for the warmup, bart. (I expect to see the program in Ft. Lauderdale this weekend.)

Glad to be of service, bart.

I'm posting this some time after the actual performances of 25th through 27th February in the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale - Program IV is already being shown - and Bart's account of Program III in West Palm Beach is consistent with my experience of it; but, for me, trying to write about it is, among other things, a way to relive it while seated at my computer, and there are some things about what I saw that just won't leave me alone (not that I really want them to): Deanna Seay's performance in La Valse was powerfully effective even from the second-rate seat circumstances obliged me to take for it Friday evening, especially the duet ending the first part of the ballet, to the last of Ravel'sValses Nobles et Sentimentales. Not a demonstration of plastique, nor ademonstrationof anything, but arealization of the dance, with its dark undertow, her every move in the supple flow of continually changing strangely beautiful angles of her body had expressive point. And in the eerie series of lifts - with their backs toward us - into the wing she and her superb partner Mikhail Nikitine achieved the effect of a series of weightless arcs. And later, she made vivid her character's torment under Death's spell with details like extending her arms to reach for the cracked mirror he shows her while at the same time raising her hands to push it away. (Sunday I was lucky enough to see them in this again, and from a good seat!) Saturday afternoon Jennifer Kronenberg was lovely in this, with very effective arms, unusually important in this ballet, but overall not so effective as Seay, and those lifts concluding the first part, with Carlos Guerra, didn't appear quite so effortless. Saturday evening Haiyan Wu, with Renato Penteado, gave this clear technique, but the experience of watching Seay and Kronenberg suggests it benefits from something more than just that. After intermission, Jerome Robbins's Afternoon of a Faun was danced the most satisfyingly by Kronenberg, with Guerra, on Saturday evening. Right through, they were seamlessly enveloped in Debussy's luminous music, never breaking the spell of it. The lift where she perches on his shoulder, for example, had the apparently effortless grace appropriate to this pastoral idyll, and in the second of the low lifts where she is horizontal, she shifts her profile on a note from the triangle in a way that seems to answer to the gleaming sound of that instrument. Friday evening, Wu's performance seemed to me to lack some effect, although the low lifts were lovely; her partner Mikhail Ilyin realized his role so well I noticed quotes from Nijinsky's setting that I hadn't noticed before. The following afternoon, Patricia Delgado, with Jeremy Cox, gave a performance more effectively continuous, and Cox, at the moment when the girl stands in profile with her head up and he passes his hand along her hair, kept his hand noticeably clear of her hair, as it had always been done in Balanchine's company, instead of actually touching the hair as some of the other men did this weekend. An importantly different effect. Sunday afternoon Katia Carranza, with Ilyin again, instead of the scheduled Renato Penteado, gave a performance which mostly went of itself but sometimes looked a little studied and careful, and I wondered whether it was her debut. Faunwas followed after a pause by Balanchine'sSonatine to the Ravel music for solo piano, and although the recorded music for the rest of the program was acceptably reproduced, if not so well as in the Jackie Gleason Theatre in Miami Beach, it was a pleasure not just to hear this music played on a piano on stage but to hear it played with sensitive phrasing, clarity among the lines, regard for the color of his instrument, expressively and simply at the same time, by the company pianist, Francisco Renno. I thought the best dance performances were by Mary Carmen Catoya, with Penteado, on Friday, and by Deanna Seay, exceptionally well partnered by Kenta Shimizu, on Saturday evening. Catoya's gleaming performance, with its quick, small movements of her feet very clear but not detached from the flow, was so different from Seay's luminous, creamy, luxe one that sometimes they seemed to be presenting different texts. (I wish I knew this ballet better.) Sunday afternoon brought what I later learned was only Tricia Albertson's second performance, which mostly seemed to go of itself but occasionally looked studied, a promising beginning, but she did not take over her space quite like Seay had. Pity that Albertson only began to show us this role at the end of the run, but on the other hand, as someone has said, success is doing what you can. And then, after another intermission, Fancy Free. The outstanding performances in this for me were Mary Carmen Catoya's as the passer-by in the yellow skirt in the two matinees and Luis Serrano, Jeremy Cox, whom I liked best, and Carlos Guerra as the the three sailors in the two evening performances, who brought their characters into clearer focus than the matinee cast did. In the early number where the sailors taunt the girl in yellow by playing "keep away" with her purse, the choreography makes clear how her impatience turns into anger, without any need for acting, and Katia Carranza was superb in this in the evening performances; but Catoya, without any exaggeration that I could see, made her effect larger and more vivid, so much so that, if I remember correctly, the evening audiences applauded the end of the number as two of the sailors took off after her after her exit, while at the matinees with Catoya, the applause began as soon as she had stalked off in a huff, before the sailors began to follow her. Good as these three men were, none of them were the equivalent even of Carranza or of Albertson, the second passer-by in the evening performances, who inflected their movement more meaningfully than the men. (Maybe this was part of why bart was less taken with these performances than with some past ones.) This brings to mind the well-known quote from Balanchine, "Ballet is Woman," which it occurs to me now to take not as any sort of edict but merely as a statement of fact, based on commonplace observation. (Sorry, guys.) I think the keen observation and economical plotting of this ballet is much remarked on and pretty well known. I was struck this time by how the duet in the bar between the second passer-by, in lavender, and the remaining sailor answers the question we may have when the girl in yellow and her two sailors, whom we last saw at odds with her, reappear as her friends, as to how that could happen, because we have just seen it happen in the bar. But another thing that makes this ballet greater than Faun for me is the aptness of the music at every moment. Of course, Bernstein tailored it to Robbins's purpose. In the case of Faun, though, something vaguely bothered me about it when I first began seeing it years ago, until I read Violette Verdy's acute observation that there is nothing in Debussy's music about the vanity of dancers. And so, glad to be in agreement with dancers I have long admired, I recall also Merrill Ashley's recent remark that Robbins's best ballet was his first one, Fancy Free. Don't get me wrong, though; I think they're both good additions to MCB's repertory, and La Valse is a superb one.

dirac and Amy, I couldn't help but wonder whether you'd taken into account very much Mindy Aloff's review of Teachout's book in the 24th October Los Angeles Times. Ari quoted quite a bit here - http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=17835 - and I think it seems a little more scathing for being a little compressed for a newspaper column, but doesn't she make points worth considering?

Oh, yes, Balletaime! Resist pressure and prevailing taste and all of that! Those people may be right in the larger picture, or something, or not, but if they're not helping you where you are, then you and they are a wrong combination even so. The critics who thrill Ari (and me!), the ones who help us get to the next step in our thinking, from confusion to clarity, for example, are the ones to pay attention to.

My short answer is that it's poor compensation for the great Schiller/Garrick Theatre or the excellent original Goodman which have been demolished with this city's characteristic profligacy, and that overall it seems cheap and meager in conception and finish - painted concrete, for example - as though built on a tight budget, which it may well have been. My main criteria are how you can see and hear, and the sight lines seem to be just adequate, mostly. I've been there only twice, and the sound was amplified both times, so I haven't gauged the acoustics, which I believe are adjustable, by the way. My wordy, rambling answer, along with others, appeared here: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...hl=Merce+Harris

I'm always pleased to see references to Ewin Denby, he's top-tier for me, but I would just like to remind readers that the Met he wrote about in 1944 is not the one we have today, where I agree that sitting upstairs is good for the over-all view, but toward the back of the orchestra seats is a compromise worth considering, to get a little closer. Consider sitting just across the aisle, so you can look down the aisle to the stage. (I saw some performances from upstairs in the old Met, and the main floor looked awfully flat and level, just the circumstances to give rise to complaints like Denby's.) Yes, the New York State Theatre is a lot better, not least just because it's not so vast, but I would still prefer that the main-floor seats were raked up more. In the years when I attended regularly, I could never quite decide between the middle of the fourteenth row, say, downstairs, and the front row of the first "Ring" (balcony), and finally gave consideration to the size of the casts I most wanted to see. I don't quite agree that the place is not too wide, but this may reflect a personal sensitivity: I don't have to move far to the side to feel they're dancing for the others, and I want to feel they're dancing for me! Smaller houses are better for ballet, and I think maybe 1000 to 1500 is about optimum; the three south Florida venues MCB dances in are too big, I think; even where the rows are well raked up, too many of them are just too far for those qualities theatre-goers sometimes call emanations to take place. In Chicago, the Auditorium Theatre is magnificent for sight-lines and acoustics (if not for wing- and back-stage space), but it seats very nearly 4000! The rows are well raked, as they must be for good acoustics, but 30 rows back is still pretty far. (In spite of the liveness of the acoustics there, in my long experience of the place, the current management sees fit to amplify pit orchestras, including most regrettably the mighty Bolshoi's!) The Lyric Opera House, on the other hand, may have no good seats, by my criteria; the main floor is pretty flat, and I have often been partly blocked in there (I'm 5' 10" or so), and the front section of the first balcony, called the Dress Circle, is pretty far from the stage. Add to this a fairly level ceiling. and you have pretty dead acoustics, too.

I've never seen advance casting for Miami City Ballet. It certainly matters to me at the time who dances what, but, traveling some distance to see the company, I get tickets to all the performances on a given weekend as a kind of insurance policy against disappointment. I probably would anyway, even if I knew in advance. It seems that the casts are evened out to some extent: One or two ballets will have a strong cast one night, the other will be very special on another night, and even within ballets, one night the principals will be especially strong, next night you'll see a series of soloists in it who make you glad you came. But it's true, some ballets are more susceptible to compensation like this than others. I have to say it: The guy who runs the show (Edward Villella) knows what to do with who he's got. Much the same was true - on a different level - in the old days at Balanchine's NYCB. I planned a visit to New York according to the repertory, and I was seldom disappointed. I can't speak for others.

Now I think Man Who Dances is one of the videos I remember, and that there was another promoting MCB. But, yes, Jewels, and a number of other ballets, would be good to have recorded. (I remember reading that Balanchine was ambivalent about the idea, fearing that people would think the recorded one was the only "right" one. To me, this is a reason to record several performances. Well, I can dream, can't I?)

I certainly agree with bart's point about program-making. That most practical and sensible of people, George Balanchine, "understood that he had first to capture the interest and arouse the enthusiasm of the public who came to his theatre. Then they would want to come back, and he could show them something new and start to educate them further. He needed the initial interest and enthusiasm to show them they could learn to enjoy pieces that were not readily accessible, that did not disclose their qualities on first exposure... His tactic for exposing his audience to work they might tend to reject was to arrange the program with the 'hard' piece in the middle. No ballet needed this treatment more thanLiebeslieder Walzer... When it was new in the repertory,Liebeslieder was last on the program, and some people who thought they would not like it for one reason or another left after the second ballet... So Mr. B moved it to second on the program, people stayed to see the last ballet, and over time they got to like Liebeslieder, too." (I'm quoting from page 12 ofSuki Schorer on Balanchine Technique; don't let the name fool you, this is not just a dance manual. There's a lot of wonderful material, including quotes and anecdotes, about working with "Mr. B" in the book. Pity that part's not indexed.) As to how to "get it," I think we're all different, and so what works for one may not work for another, but all the same maybe describing how I like to prepare for and watch a ballet performance would be helpful. I always try to get some familiarity with the music beforehand, because I've found that having the music in mind provides me with a kind of outline or sketch-map of the ballet, and then at the performance I sit there and marvel - or maybe not! - at how the choreographer fills it in with vivid, living detail. Ideally, I have a good recording at home and a score from a library - libraries are great resources for stretching the budget! Maybe see if yours has print music? - to follow along as I listen. (This is not the same as reading music, hearing music in your head as you see it on the page. I can't do that, I'm not a musician.) Being able to see each note on the page as I hear it on the recording can take a little practice, but it's a great aid to concentration, and unless the music is something I don't much like, this is very pleasant work! And in the theatre, the visual tends to dominate the audible for me, so this prior practice makes it easier to adjust the balance and take in both parts of the performance. In Balanchine's case especially, if I catch myself asking myself, Why does he do that there?, I've learned that it's a clue that I'm not listening. With his choreography, I find an essential part of the way to get it is to hear it as well as see it. If I apply the same method to other choreographers, it may show up a weakness in their dance's construction, in that the dance expression through movement may not be so intimately related to the musical expression of the moment, but only uses the music for mood and background, like in movies. The relation between those two kinds of expression is often constantly changing. Sometimes it's step for note, or "crash go the cymbals and up goes Pat McBride," as somebody once put it, but I think it's better if it's more subtle and complex. Maybe an easy example to give is the moment near the end of Robbins's Afternoon of a Faun, where the girl walks backward on toe out of the "Room with a Mirror" (as the location used to be identified at NYCB; MCB's program missed this) : Do you remember that as she goes, the harp sounds four slow, descending notes, and then the same notes a second time. In some performances, the girl takes a step on each note, so this can be an example of step for note, and at the same time, it's more. Those notes and the other music at that point say to us that the composer is winding down his event, and the choreographer, listening (as it were), disengages his dancers, and winds down his event; for me, there is some partnership here between the dance and the music, not just a use of music as setting, though there is certainly that in this, too. But it may not be for you. As I say, we're all different. Nicoal, your "preparation" to see a performance ofSwan Lake by listening to the music for it didn't turn out so well, so this might not a good approach for you. Still, maybe you might like to try listening to the Tchaikovsky Second Piano Concerto before you see MCB'sBallet Imperial. (I don't know a good one on CD, although there were two on LP, one by Zhukov and the Moscow Radio Symphony conducted by Rozhdestvensky and another by Magalov and the London Symphony conducted by Colin Davis, which weren't reissued as far as I know.) Even hearing a bad recording might give you a little "warmup" for the events of the performance by giving you some familiarity, so that the performance itself will be more like a second time, and you may discover things you might have missed, and you can get some of the benefits of a repeat experience, as bart and I recommend, for the price of one, if that recording comes from your library. Another benefit I get from this approach is that I can see some of the ballet again in my mind when I listen to the recording again after I've seen the performance. More bang for the buck! I hope this helps some, and that you both get a bang out of MCB's Program IV.

When Balanchine gave it alone at NYCB, it was called Capriccio, from the title of the music, Stravinsky's Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra. Does SFB adhere to this practice?

You and me both, kiki! Rubies, with the original cast, was the ballet that got me hooked on Balanchine, ballet, and theatrical dance in general. It's remained a favorite of mine since that fateful day in 1968... Anyway, I think the sad truth is, if you mean commercially available, no. As far as I know, only the pas de deux was broadcast, once in 1978, performed by Patricia McBride and Robert Weiss in "Choreography by Balanchine" Part 2 in PBS's Dance in America series, but not in the Nonesuch commercial reissue of that program on VHS and DVD; and again in 1979, performed by Heather Watts and Mikhail Baryshnikov in the PBS program "Baryshnikov at the White House," none of which to my knowledge has ever been released commercially. And there's a fragment of Rubies, shot from a position halfway to the side, of Miami City Ballet performing it, I think, in a documentary or promotional item about MCB or about Edward Villella, if I remember correctly. So if you can find somebody with a videotape collection in good condition going this far back, that's still all you can get. Sorry if I'm the messenger with the bad news.

In Naples, the company is brought in by the Naples Philharmonic's supporters and is accompanied by that orchestra, I believe; live music in the Miami Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach venues, where the company "self-produces", remains a sometime thing, although I can testify that the quality of the recorded sound in Miami Beach has greatly improved in the last few years. Both there and in Ft. Lauderdale, they have brought in their own sound operator and some better equipment.

kfw, when you've seen it, would you like to let us know how you like it? I haven't seen all of it myself yet, but after one look at most of it, my initial impressions are that some of the tempos are much faster than anything I ever heard in my time watching Balanchine's company (1968-1986); that a few times the frame is much too tight but, luckily, only briefly; that there is often the sense of dancing in too small space that you feared; that her pirouettes are a little wobbly sometimes, but that she dances the Flower Festival pas de deux beautifully (with a very young-looking "Rudy"!). For many years I've been able to remember a little bit of some of Tallchief's dancing I saw myself in 1955, her spectacular entrance in Firebird which apparently Balanchine took out later on (it brought the house down, and that may have been more reaction than he wanted). So now I can get more, longer sequences of her dancing, allowing for the reduced effect owing to technical circumstances, and I'm glad for it.

If all of "Elusive Muse" is like the first half-hour (all I've been able to see so far), it's got lots of tasty clips of her dancing, 32tendu, but I wanted to remind you of what you may already know, that you can have more of a gorge on it in the two "Choreography by Balanchine" DVDs recently released; on the first one, she dances all of "Tzigane" and the pas de deux from "Diamonds", and on the second, she dances in "Chaconne", all with Martins. (Not long ago, I watched the VHS video with the "Jewels" excerpts and "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" with a cultured friend, an amateur classical musician with just a little contact with ballet - some lessons when she was young, a couple of visits to performances, including one in Russia - who had worked as a graphic designer, and so had a keen eye, and when the tape was finished, her first question was, "Who were the ones who danced in the white costumes?" I started to say, "Suzanne Farrell and ..." "Oh, that's Suzanne Farrell! She was really..." Yes, indeed. Adequate words are hard to find.) But part of the fun of "Elusive Muse" is that we get glimpses of her earlier in her career, and even in her childhood. Sure, video isn't the same as seeing her on stage, but if you watch enough good video, I think you adapt to it some, and you notice what's different about her, like my friend, who had obviously heard of Farrell, did.