4Ts

To the contrary of all the newpaper reviewers and all the expectations of the previous posters, I must say this Don Quixote was underwhelming. The good parts: Lorna Feijoo was wonderful - she must have nerves of steel or just not be bothered by the that which would scare the daylights out of normal people. She was funny, poised and technically impeccable. I would love to see her do other things. The soloists in the dream sequence were impressive as was the Street Dancer in the first act. These were places in the ballet where Nureyev left the Kirov's version alone for the most part. The worst part (from which all the rest of the bad parts flow): Nureyev's choreography. Overladen with meaningless steps, body giggling, it was too much of a not-very-good thing. My 10 yr. old daughter counted 54 ronde de jambe en l'air in the first act before she gave up. I thought that maybe this style was fun for the dancers, but the dancers didn't look like they were having all that much fun. They looked busy, but not very invested. Maybe it was first night jitters. Maybe it was the sparse crowd (the Red Sox were playing the night game that was about to lose them the pennant). Yuri Yanowsky, who I think was fantastic as actor and dancer last season as Onegin and Romeo and Tybalt and the Prodigal Son - that was a great season!) partnered well, but seemed technically insecure in his solos and looked like he wished he were somewhere else. The corps, to me again, looked uncommitted, particularly in the first act. In the second and third act there was more "story" to tell and the choreography for them was less in the way. The music was "improved" by John Lanchbery, which in this case meant taking pleasant, simple ballet-tune stuff and overloading the orchestration and juicing up the harmony to the point where the rhythmic impulse was almost gone. So, then he added more percussion. It's only my opinion, but if Nureyev didn't kill this ballet, he gravely injured it. I can understand that the artistic staff of the ballet didn't want to do the same old Don Q yet again. But this version didn't do the trick for me.

At breakfast this morning, believe it or not, the topic of the “shadow Clara” in the Boston Ballet staging of the Nutcracker came up. This shadow Clara, as she is officially called, appears with a shadow Nutcracker and a shadow Mouse King in the mime scene at the beginning of Act II. When the Nutcracker Prince is miming for the Sugar Plum Fairy the story of the battle with the Mouse King and Clara (aka Marie), a small scene opens up at the back of the stage. Timed with the Nutcracker Prince’s miming, a backup Clara, Nutcracker and Mouse King fight it out all over again. They aren’t in shadow, but nobody is very bothered about that. Our discussion was about whether this is traditionally done, either for Nutcracker or any other ballet. I said this was never in any Nutcracker I’d seen before. My wife said she’d seen it before – it didn’t come out whether in the Nutcracker or elsewhere. My daughter watched. Some more background. I assumed the first time I saw it that the Boston Ballet did this to make difficult-to-understand mime more “clear.” It did indeed do this, but at a cost. My attention was pulled from the symbolic mime scene at the front, to the enacted scene at the rear, weakening the effect of the mime. At the same time, the synchronization of the scenes, and the problems in achieving synchronization became a problem. I was occupied with it even though I didn’t care about that aspect at all. So, is this a traditionally accepted device? Should this be viewed in the same light as Odette’s appearance in Act III of Swan Lake? That scene isn’t necessary, either. Odette’s music is played at that point; we don’t have to see her flailing in a window to know Siegfried should be thinking about her (or is it Ken or Daniel)? Are there other cases? Is this part of the slow death of mime or an attempt to keep it alive? Pandering? An admission the dancers aren’t good at mime? Acceptance of changes in modern audiences?

I saw him as Lensky in Eugene Onegin in the Fall. He did a beautiful job both dancing and acting. I thought at the time, "What a find!" But I haven't seen him much since then. He wasn't in La Fille Mal Gardee at all as far as I can tell.

{When I decided to post a reply, I thought I’d make it short. But I can't do it. It always end up sounding like a German Professor. Maybe that’s what I should have done for a living – my German isn’t good enough, though.} I’m going to make some disconnected points about music because I know it better than other art forms. A lot of what we think about as high art now was meant to be popular at the time of its creation. Mozart’s operas, certainly large parts of The Magic Flute, were intended for a popular non-aristocratic audience. The Marriage of Figaro was a huge hit in Prague, where, Mozart reported, everybody – even the street vendors - were whistling the tunes. If these works were primarily popular, and didn’t have “serious” or “sublime” parts, we probably wouldn’t be hearing them now. But Mozart needed to make a living by them, so he included popular (simple, easily understood, familiar) elements. In all cases of Mozart’s writing, popular and more serious, the craft – how well he made the music – was very high. Leigh mentioned German Lieder and that made me think of Schubert, who wrote many songs intended to be popular – with folk like tunes and simple accompaniments. But he also, in both the middle and late parts of his short career, wrote songs of the same length (3-5 minutes) and combined them into song cycles, which are clearly the highest art. In these cycles, we’re following the progress of a life, not just experiencing moments of it. The world the creator wants to describe is larger than can be described in a short song. Maybe high art aspires to encompass more of life than middle or low art. Farrell Fan mentioned that Jazz is now considered high art. But I want to say that the Jazz I’ve heard that strives to the status of high art simply doesn’t make it. (Just me opinion, now) That Jazz has gotten too far from it’s roots, which are African-American folk music and popular song, and sounds stretched out and cleaned up for Sunday brunch. But I don’t get the same feeling when Bach includes Lutheran church chorales in the St. Matthew Passion. Somehow, he elevates these from their ordinary every Sunday use to a very high spiritual plane, so that even a convinced non-believer like me can have a deep religious feeling listening to them. Here, there is great depth and intensity of feeling and expression. For art to be “high” it’s got to have that at least some of the time. Now I’m going to dare to talk about a dancer (don’t kill me). Fred Astaire, who is a great, great dancer, but dances in a light, popular style, can’t produce high art. Because although he’s incredibly technically gifted and has the highest level of craft, his art doesn’t aspire to describe or embody a large part of life, and he doesn’t express much more than the fun and grace of beautiful movement.

I think they are trying to reach an audience that hasn't heard of this ballet and may not be able to get past the French title. (To give this some context: one ballet mom I overheard recently translated the title for people who hadn't heard of it as: The Girl in the Garden. I don't know about your town, but people here get their opinions based on very little evidence: it wasn't all that long ago that news people were saying that Mario Cuomo couldn't be elected president because his name couldn't be pronounced by most Americans. If the local folks think that "La Fille Mal Gardee" sounds weird, I'm afraid they just won't come.) I think the marketers want to emphasize that the Ballet is a comedy and you'll be delighted by it - it does have a French title, but it's not decadent, there aren't any rapes, the players won't wear powdered wigs, you won't be grossed out and your children won't be grossed out. It's also a good idea, in my opinion, to get people into the habit of bringing their children, and not just girls, to the theatre, because the habit may be retained by the children into their adulthood. And then the art form may survive. Since there's no discount for kids, for most families the cost will be doubled to bring their kids. This press release is trying to reassure parents that the experience for the kids (and the investiment) will be, as you said, safe. So, all in all, I think this press release hits just the right notes. I hope the performances are jammed with children (and adults), so that they all will see what a delightful, funny and beautiful ballet this is, just as the press release says it is. I also hope Boston Ballet has the money to advertise heavily, because I believe (and this press release seem predicated on the belief) that this ballet has the potential to widen their audience.

The sources of casting information I know about are 1) the Boston Ballet Subscriber Box office, which may be staffed weekends (or not). If you aren't a subscriber - since you're from NY, I assume you're not - they won't sell you tickets, but they may be able to tell you casting. Their number is 617-695-6955. OR 2) to (best) show up at the Wang Theatre and ask their Box Office people and buy your tickets there (or cadge a program insert, which has a 4-5 days of casts listed, if you are not buying). The Nutcracker run is in it's last set of performances now, and the ticket prices are about 20% cheaprer than they were before Christmas. Some rules that don't make much sense: You can't telephone the Wang Box office directly (so far as I can tell). Tele-charge (the telephone source for tickets for non-subcribers) will not know about casts and will bilk you with whopping service charges.

Merry Christmas, everybody! I've seen the Boston Ballet production of the Nutcracker three times this season. The reason is that I'm the parent of a child in the production: my daughter is Polichinelle Boy 1, so I am not a disinterested viewer. I should also mention that I trained as a musician and have no special knowledge of ballet. As is true of other companies, the Nutcracker is Boston Ballet's economic lifeline. They say it brings in more than half their ticket sales, 145,000+. The production uses more than one hundred children in the show and since there are four casts of children, this means they have to train more than 400 children, which is a major undertaking of the staff, the children and their parents. It's an important part of these kid's lives. Conversations with some other Nutcracker parents gave me and my wife the impression that their children attend the Boston Ballet School principally for the purpose of getting cast in the Nutcracker. This is a Boston's big artistic Christmas holiday event, bigger than all the Messiahs put together. With this many kids, there is a higher likelihood for mishaps than in a production with a bigger proportion of professionals. My daughter has many stories. Still, it's clear that there are high artistic standards and clear that the dancers are fully engaged in the dancing and acting. Over and over, in small ways, one sees that the dancers are reacting to each other, to the children in the cast, to the opportunities the story provides them for the small improvisations and liberties that keep the production alive and interesting. I'd seen this production twice before this season, about 10 years ago and again 2 years ago. The new artistic staff of the ballet must have felt some need to put their mark on this production because many small changes were put in place. Almost all the changes I noticed improved the production. The party scene was tightened and works better for it, I think. There were many nice touches. The dances by mechanical Harlequin and Columbine were sharp and funny - Harlequin takes a minor liberty with Columbine and she slaps his hand. The Russian Dance is done by a trained bear, who does the all the typical Russian dance tricks and also kisses Mrs. Silberhaus's hand before leaving on a leash. Tightening the first act meant fast tempos and musical cuts, which I generally dislike. On the other hand, I was glad there was only one run through of the party boy's rat-a-tat. I hope some day, that this bit will be dropped. The production also retains some silly sight gags. When the Nutcracker shoots the mouse, a little flag with Bang! comes out of the barrel - some people actually laugh at this. When other mice come to get the shot mouse, they carry out a stretcher with a red cross on it. More laughs. The Boston Globe critic erroneously reported that the production had dropped this stuff, but I think she was looking elsewhere or was expressing a wish. Another not-so-great thing is the way the parts of the Grandfather and Grandmother are handled. Drosselmeyer gives Grandfather's a hip flask of booze. Grandfather goes in and out of second childhood, annoying Grandmother who pulls hobbyhorses away from him and scolds him. Thankfully, the production dropped the part where Grandfather dances too fast for his age and pulls a muscle (funny!). This is purposeless ridicule of old people. You see the same kind of stuff with the Tutor in Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. I'm sure there are other ways to get a laugh. The second act has newly choreographed Spanish, Arabian and Chinese dances (Chocolate, Coffee and Tea). The Arabian dance is a pas de deux, with a stage backdrop that was (they say) inspired by the Bakst set for Scherazade. The dancers I saw were fantastic in it, particularly Paul Thrussell, who was in perfect ensemble with the ballerina and whose slow leaps were beautiful. The choreography (by the new artistic director?) had almost no gratutitous technical show in it. The "almost" is necessary to say because the choreographer threw in one tricky move where the ballerina goes into a supported 6 o'clock extension, and is then locked in position by the male dancer and turned, frozen, to horizontal and returned to upright. Very hard to do, I'm sure. The exit from this dance was magical, the ballerina held high from the waist, with her back arched, her arms slowly alternating in front of her, while the male dancer is slowly circling with her till they are in the wings. Much of the rest of Act II was wonderful (including the Polichinelles). Larissa Ponomarenko was the great Dewdrop; Christopher Budzynski had fine classical style where it was called for in pas de deux (I'd only seen him in athletic stuff). But the choreography (in my humble opinion) is a little flat in some important places. In the Act I Snowflakes, the music gets more and more exciting and the dancing just doesn't. In the Sugar Plus Fairy pas de deux, which has the grandest music in the ballet, the music builds and builds to a climax and the choreography is an anti-climax. Others may see these dances and have a completely different take on it, but my opinion is not just one night's impression. I keep getting the same let down. Maybe this is where the criticism that 6 different choreographers should not make one ballet comes from. To me, overall, the Boston Ballet is doing more and more of what is right and works well and is artistically and aesthetically strong. I don't think they could afford to change it all at once even if they wanted to, and I don't think they want to. If they continue to make small changes, get the kitsch out, improve the weaker dances, then performance by performance and year by year, it will keep improving and I'll be happy to keep coming.

Christine Temin wrote a Sunday "think piece" regarding dance audiences, ticket sales and performance venues which made many points consistent with what's been said here. She also corrected some of those numbers. The total capacity of the Wang Center for the Onegin run was 43,000 and 18,000 tickets were sold, she said. Still, this is horrendous. I saw Onegin twice and I don't do that often - it was beautifully danced and acted, especially by Larissa Ponomarenko. The male leads seemed weaker, but since the Onegin character is such a toad in this re-telling, it must be a hard part to act credibly. After seeing the ballet, I read the novel. There, Onegin is self-absorbed, bored and cold, not cruel, and a more believable character. But I digress.... This was such a wonderful ballet and it moved me so much, I just felt I was in a majority and assumed it was a great success. The audiences were tremendously positive. The Sunday matinee I subscribe to was quite well attended. At the Tuesday night performance, I couldn't get as good seats as I was willing to buy, so I thought all must be well. The numbers say otherwise. Since this was a wonderful ballet, it was danced beautifully, it had excellent notices, it was thoroughly accessible, what could be the problem? This should have been a hugh box office success. Well, I agree with all of what other posters have said here. Additionally, even educated people hadn't heard of it and it was choreographed recently, which in the view of one Nutcracker parent, made it risky and possibly avant-garde, like the Forsythe from the season opener. This was ignorance, and we could leave it at that, but if Nutcracker parents won't go for it, that may mean that a possibly large group of likely ballet goers isn't getting reached. I think there's another set of factors: ticket prices are pretty high and people are unwilling to risk a lot of money on something unknown, especially in the crummy economy. I know these are rough figures, but if 18,000 tickets were sold and 25,000 seats were empty and the ticket prices were cut 1/3, wouldn't they break even if they sold 9,000 more seats? The prices now are $12.50 to $72, but the $12.50 seats in the Wang are very bad. If the $72 went down to $48, and all but the lowest were reduced similarly, might not the people come? I'm sure this kind of thing is chewed over constantly in the theatre business and it is a big risk to lower prices, but isn't that what most businesses do when the product isn't selling? I think the Boston Ballet is dancing at a very, very high level now and that their recovery from the gross mismanagement of the past Board and other undesirables has been miraculous. I think on the whole that the season planned by Nissenen is imaginative and balanced. After the Nutcracker madness is over (in which I am involved in a chauffeuring capacity), they are putting on La Fille Mal Gardee. So many people would enjoy this, it would be an awful shame if this weren't a box office success. But I think that's likely as well, because it's got a French name - another Nut parent called it "The Girl in the Garden"), because it was re-choreographed recently (avant-garde risk), even if it was originally very, very old (heightened risk it's boring) and because most people never heard of it. I wanted to write the Ballet's marketing department about an idea I had for a clever advertisement for La Fille Mal Gardee, but they need more than clever ideas. Any feeling about lower ticket prices?

Mme. Hermine: You are of course right about Boston Ballet's Midsummer Night's Dream choreographer. Stanton Welch's Madame Butterfly will be later in the season. I mixed up the leading "Wel"s. It's impossible to hum a tune over Bulletin Board, but what I call Carabosse's music is the tune we first hear in the overture. It's played again at Carabosse's appearance in the intro and little bits of it show up again in the 1st and 2nd acts, either when she actually appears or when we're supposed to feel her influence. As to the cuts, maybe it's the fact that I go to Sunday matinees and the company wants to finish early. But there's just no question that in both Midsummer Night's Dream and Sleeping Beauty, the overtures were more than merely cut - they were hacked to death. Practices like this (IMHO) put in question of the musical integrity of the company.

Mme. Hermine: You are of course right about Boston Ballet's Midsummer Night's Dream choreographer. Stanton Welch's Madame Butterfly will be later in the season. I mixed up the leading "Wel"s. It's impossible to hum a tune over Bulletin Board, but what I call Carabosse's music is the tune we first hear in the overture. It's played again at Carabosse's appearance in the intro and little bits of it show up again in the 1st and 2nd acts, either when she actually appears or when we're supposed to feel her influence. As to the cuts, maybe it's the fact that I go to Sunday matinees and the company wants to finish early. But there's just no question that in both Midsummer Night's Dream and Sleeping Beauty, the overtures were more than merely cut - they were hacked to death. Practices like this (IMHO) put in question of the musical integrity of the company.

I don't know if this falls under the rubric of vulgarity, but I keep getting grossed out at the absolutely anti-musical cuts that the Boston Ballet has recently been dishing out. Now, I know the Boston Ballet has had bigger troubles than cuts and I know that if you keep the orchestra exactly one minute overtime, you may need to declare bankruptcy, BUT! there's great music in some ballets and when there is, it's kind of important, right? Here's how they transgressed. In last season's production of Sleeping Beauty, they started the overture, and right after the opening 8 bars of Carabosse's music... they cut the rest of the overture - no Lilac Fairy music, no dramatic juxtaposition. In this season's Stanton Welch Midsummer Night's Dream, they started the overture, and right after the opening long chords in the winds, guess what? they cut the rest of the overture. This music is not by Minkus. It is integral to the drama - in the case of the Mendelssohn, it is very grateful to dance - at least for Balanchine it was. To me, doing cuts like this suggests something of a disdain for music. Is this defensible in anyone's view?

I don't know if this falls under the rubric of vulgarity, but I keep getting grossed out at the absolutely anti-musical cuts that the Boston Ballet has recently been dishing out. Now, I know the Boston Ballet has had bigger troubles than cuts and I know that if you keep the orchestra exactly one minute overtime, you may need to declare bankruptcy, BUT! there's great music in some ballets and when there is, it's kind of important, right? Here's how they transgressed. In last season's production of Sleeping Beauty, they started the overture, and right after the opening 8 bars of Carabosse's music... they cut the rest of the overture - no Lilac Fairy music, no dramatic juxtaposition. In this season's Stanton Welch Midsummer Night's Dream, they started the overture, and right after the opening long chords in the winds, guess what? they cut the rest of the overture. This music is not by Minkus. It is integral to the drama - in the case of the Mendelssohn, it is very grateful to dance - at least for Balanchine it was. To me, doing cuts like this suggests something of a disdain for music. Is this defensible in anyone's view?

I read this story in Diane Solway's Nureyev biography. Nureyev had arrived in London and was stirring up the pot. He had just done Albrecht and had replaced whatever was the traditional 2nd act "dance 'til you die" step with entrechat six, which got him a lot of play. Soon after, Nadia Nerina, knowing Nureyev was in the audience, replaced the fouettees in Swan Lake with 32 (could that be?) entrechat six, as if to say "We girls can play that game!" Solway said that Nureyev immediately left the theatre in a rage.

I saw Saturday afternoon’s performance and I was totally delighted. I hope Alexandra won’t condemn me for agreeing with her, that this is the closest I know to a perfect ballet: loving, witty, charming, yet never trivial. The two hours I spent seemed to pass in a minute. And afterward, I wished that the whole thing could have been longer. I was also delighted by the quality of the dancing. My only source of comparison are the two most recent videos: the Royal ballet w/ Leslie Collier and Michael ??? and Alexander Grant, and the sadly undercommitted, undistinguished one by the Australian Ballet. The Australian Ballet performance only showed me that this ballet can be undone, if the performers aren’t committed and in-sync. Mara Galeazzi danced as though she’s done this role for years (maybe she has), with precision and fluidity (better in the last respect, I thought, than Leslie Collier). Her arms were lovely, but I noticed an odd rigidity in her hands, which sometimes seemed flat-fingered rather than gracefully curved. She executed complex stepwork with absolute finesse. I found her dancing in the Act I, Scene 1 dance with the farm girls to be just about perfect. She does indeed have a beautiful jump and she can do it without seeming to prepare, like a bird taking off. Her footwork in the Act II Tambourine Dance also impressed me. I love the music in this part – a delightful theme and variations – and she seemed to be dancing on air. (Sorry if these are cliches, I can’t think of any better way of putting it.) I don’t think the audience appreciated what they were seeing, because she got only the one curtain call, and I think she deserved many. She was also a very good comedienne, but still not as good an actor as a dancer, and I think one of the results of this was that the audience didn’t warm up to her as much as they might have otherwise. Of course, it could have been the audience, or me, or where my seat was, etc. It also may have been the slightly undercharacterised performance of Colas, by Johan Kobborg. This made the love between Lise and Colas a respectable staged presentation, but there needs to be a little more ardor to get the audience actually to love the dancers back. Kobborg was also technically very strong. He’s also quite handsome and one could easily believe Lise would fall for him. He seemed to me an almost faultless partner and did his leaps and spins beautifully. But, there was something just not “there” about the pairing of this Lise and Colas. It may have been the dancers or may have been other production choices. Alain, as danced by Giacomo Ciriaci was very fine. He may have danced just slightly too well to seem quite the dunce he’s supposed to be, however. He seemed a more gentle, sweet fellow than the Alain that Alexander Grant played in the video, but there was nothing wrong with that. The corp were fantastic. That so many people could dance so many interesting steps, with such energy, vigor and precision is a large part of what made the ballet so wonderful. Luke Heydon played the Widow Simone very broadly, more so than Brian Shaw in the old video. This production seemed to emphasize the physical comedy parts of her (his) role, with a somersault and a skidding exit on the clog dance (it wasn’t there as far as I can tell in the video), which was really good fun. (Now for the negative parts.) But in the wedding scene, instead of having Colas catch Simone sideways after she “cuts a caper, ” he catches her by the breasts as Simone slips backwards, which is still funny, but a bit cheap. Another unfortunate change has been commented on before on this board. In the old video (and I presume the original production) after Lise discovers Colas has witnessed her fantasies of wedded bliss, Colas assuages the embarrassment Lise feels by miming that he feels the same way about marriage and kids. In the newer version I saw, Colas rubs Lise’ embarrassment in, miming “Oh, so you want three babies?!” Colas just seems meaner for this, and it undermines the audience’s sense of the trust and love they should have. The next part, where Colas kisses the distressed Lise on the wrist, then the elbow, then the arm, as a consequence becomes a seduction, not a reassurance of love as it seemed to me it was in the original production. I now wish I hadn’t spent so many words on what wasn’t wonderful in this production, because this was a great theatrical and artistic experience. If any show could bring in kids and families like Nutcracker, this is it. I just wonder why we don’t see it every other year in the US, instead of every other decade. [ 06-11-2001: Message edited by: 4Ts ]

Here's a link to a translation of the story: http://www.mtroyal.ab.ca/programs/arts/eng...ght/sandman.htm