volcanohunter

According to the company's site, it will be the third movement of Glass Pieces, Chiaroscuro and Stars and Stripes. https://www.nycballet.com/season-and-tickets/spring-2025/andrew-veyette-farewell/

I disagree. With only six performances of Jewels, I don't think any should be taken away from the company's dancers and turned over to Sara Mearns. NYCB performed Jewels in the fall. It will perform them again in Washington in June. Typically it performs the ballet every other May or so. In other words, a lot. If NYCB has never cast Mearns in "Rubies", I don't see why the NBoC is obliged to provide her with the opportunity, just so that she can complete a Jewels trifecta before Mira Nadon does.

Speaking as someone who now visits New York as a tourist, I'm sorry that there is less variety in programs each week. This year, the fourth week of the winter and spring seasons feature five different programs over 7 shows (which proved irresistible when one of the repeating programs was Four Temperaments plus Liebeslieder). Next spring the Innovators and Icons II program will be performed six times over the span of seven days. Perhaps it is easier on the dancers to have a smaller number of ballets in rotation at any given time. It is occasionally possible to see a larger number of programs by straddling the weekend. The second weekend and beginning of the third week of winter 2025 will feature five different programs. It's just a matter of finding something else to do on Monday night.

For my part, the first time I saw a Romani dance from Hungary, performed by a company that strove to present traditional European dances in a more authentic manner--rather than souped-up, audience-facing choreography--one of the thoughts that ran through my mind was that it looked nothing like Balanchine's Tzigane.

Quasi-ethnography was pervasive in the 19th century, and we tend to turn a blind eye to it because we put it down to the standards of the time. In 1924 Ravel was coming late to the cultural (mis)appropriation game, as was Balanchine in 1975, and Ravel's work, as you explained, was an extension of a composing tradition, rather than being informed by serious ethnomusicology. I can't help wondering whether people a hundred years from now will cringe at more recent "explorations" by Western composers of percussion from Southeast Asia, for example. Trends inevitably change, as in the case of Mozart's use of "Turkish" musical elements. In truth, Mozart's works are only superficially similar to the source. But with time it's possible to engage these works with greater detachment. A month ago Fazil Say and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta presented a concert that explored Mozart and his influence from various angles, including, of course, this piece:

It would have been helpful if the world of classical music had taken the initiative and changed the title of Ravel's piece, but as of June 2022 it was still being performed as Tzigane. If there were a consensus about calling the piece Ravel's Rhapsody for Violin, for example, (since as far as I know Ravel's only official rhapsody is the "espagnole"), that could just as easily work as a ballet title. Perhaps then Ravel's and Balanchine's faux depictions of Romani culture would seem less objectionable because there wouldn't be intimations of authenticity.

The Gypsy Robe doesn't refer to an ethnic group. It was used by a group that chose to use the term to describe their profession. No one imposed it from the outside, no outsider took it upon himself to define that group. Even so, when groups, associations or sports teams have discovered that their chosen name is problematic, they have usually changed it to something else. Both the music and the choreography of Tzigane use ethnic stereotypes, and they are works by outsiders to the culture, in which case there is always a risk of simplifying, distorting, misrepresenting or caricaturing that culture, no matter how much the creators may admire it.

I hope that the right people were consulted. Obviously words such as drifter, nomad, rambler or vagabond would have been inappropriate. Wayfarer tends to be associated with a Mahler song cycle. It does seem like a mistake to recycle a title Balanchine used for other ballets, even if it's desirable to use a title without negative connotations. I haven't yet encountered a case of the music being renamed in concert settings.

Most European languages have traditionally used a similar word, which originated in Greek, to describe the Romani people. You'll find the same root in the Romance (ţigan, zingaro, cigano), Germanic (Zigeuner, Zigeiner, sigøjner, zigenare, sigøyner, sígauna) Slavic (cygan, cikán, cigán, cigan, ciganin) and Baltic (čigonas, čigāns) languages, Hungarian (cigány), also Turkish (Çingene), even Esperanto (cigano). But just as the Romani consider the word gypsy offensive, they dislike its other European cousins. Of course, the word also appears in European languages that use other alphabets, such as Greek Τσιγγάνος, Bulgarian циганин, Ukrainian циган or Yiddish ציגײַנער. It's pervasive.

Sara Mearns has been visiting Toronto again. Her Instagram stories include the Côté/Lepage Hamlet, which played last week at the Elgin Theatre, and the CN Tower.

Before I was born, my parents lived in San Francisco. My mother described being woken up at night by tremors. My first was the Northridge earthquake of 1994, which literally threw me out of bed. Having no frame of reference, I assumed this was the sort of thing my mother had experienced regularly and initially no idea how serious the quake really was. The New National Theatre in Tokyo was the first theater in my experience (at least in English) that included instructions on what to do in the event of an earthquake as part of its pre-show announcement. (In fact there had been a tremor two days before.)

The thing with Prince Gremin is that Curley may qualify as "too hot" for the role, i.e., excessively strong competition for Onegin for the story to be plausible. When the National Ballet of Canada performed the ballet in November, two debutant Gremins were yanked at the last minute, though neither was injured, and at least one of them qualified as extremely imposing. Another dancer ended up performing Gremin in 6 of 7 performances.

The remaining two streams are now on sale for $80. https://order.pnb.org/packages/fixed/1098 Crystal Pite's piece is also available on Paris Opera Play, though the rest of the program is different, of course. https://play.operadeparis.fr/en/p/thierree-shechter-perez-pite-evening Since the Paris Opera Ballet livestreamed Don Quixote today, which will be available on demand until April 9, now is as good a time as any to take advantage of POP's 7-day free trial. 💃🕺 https://play.operadeparis.fr/en/p/don-quixote-2024

Additional casting for the POB livestream of Don Quixote includes Roxane Stojanov as the Street Dancer, Florent Melac as Espada, Héloïse Bourdon as the Queen of the Dryads, Silvia Saint-Martin as Cupid, Inès McIntosh as the Bridesmaid, Yann Chailloux as Don Quixote and Fabien Revillion as Sancho Panza. https://play.operadeparis.fr/en/p/don-quixote-2024

I'm afraid I have to agree. I can imagine that Bacchus probably produces a strong kinesthetic effect in person, but on a screen it seemed like derivative choreography set to even more derivative music. On screen I hated the lighting for both pieces, because it seemed to conspire to obscure the dancers. As for One Thousand Pieces, I never would have suspected that it was inspired by Chagall's America Windows. For one thing, it's so damned dark. Stained glass is nothing without light. The male dancers were practically invisible. Stained glass by definition has color! I was so frustrated by the piece that I came close to turning it off three times.

On March 25 much of the Kyiv Academy of Decorative and Applied Art and Design was destroyed in a rocket attack. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/gW4SK38ZJAEidPmL/?mibextid=oFDknk https://www.facebook.com/share/p/8tenbbfZx7WfS5UJ/?mibextid=oFDknk The school bears the name of muralist Mykhailo Boychuk, whose work had similarities to that of Diego Rivera. In the summer of 1937 Boychuk and three of his students were executed by the NKVD, and their works were destroyed. Later that year Boychuk's wife was also executed. In 1952, at least 14 of Boychuk's works that had survived in an archive in Lviv were also destroyed as "ideologically harmful."

I saw the previous version of The Snow Queen, and it always featured a mixed bag of composers. However the big set piece in the Snow Queen's domain was previously set to Tchaikovsky, and in that instance the music was changed and the section rechoreographed.

If you wait until April 2, the remaining two streams should be available for $80 and you'll also get Coppélia. Alternatively, Seasons' Canon is in the library of Paris Opera Play (but on a program with three different choreographers), which includes a 7-day free trial. Again, wait until April 2 and you'll get a livestream of Don Quixote into the bargain.

In Ratmansky's production there is something like a pas de cheval in the shades' entrance, and the tempo is much faster than what we are used to seeing. In his production Nikiya does the scarf dance completely on her own, and when she's done with it, the scarf flies up and into the wings. I'm going to guess there was a technical reason why this wasn't done in Bloomington.

Cool! Thank you for the link.

Congratulations to her!

I attended the first three performances of the triple bill. I am completely baffled by the decision to present William Yong’s UtopiVerse, given its thematic similarity to Wayne McGregor’s MADDADDAM, premiered a year and a half earlier. I am just as baffled that Hope Muir didn’t point out to Yong that 40 minutes was just too long for his piece. UtopiVerse is pompous, bloated and, in my case, literally sleep-inducing. The movement vocabulary is uninventive. The signature move has the dancers grabbing their left ankle/foot/shin and extending it to their foreheads again and again. There is also a repeated modern-style renversé on a bent supporting leg, with the arms thrown behind the back with clawed hands. There are enormous video projections of dancers, which inevitably dwarf the action on stage (they always do), little glowing cubes signifying…I dunno, and a large metal oval above the stage that rises and falls. The program stated that “UtopiVerse presents an alternative way of seeing traditional notions of utopia, paradise lost, the Garden of Eden, human evolution and the meaning of God. These iconic ideas are reimagined, each in its unique futuristic context, challenging our preconceived notions and inviting us to explore new dimensions of thought. “The ballet dances between the domains of the hidden and the overt, unveiling the complexities of information and misinformation. Dancers embody the ever-shifting landscapes of truth and illusion, evoking a deep sense of wonder. On stage they embark on a journey of different mindsets, exploring the ideas of inventing, rediscovering, engineering and rerouting to forge a new utopia.” I saw nothing that fit that description. I did see Christopher Gerty, dressed like a Franco-era tourism poster, and Ben Rudisin both looking extremely uncomfortable in the choreography and vaguely embarrassed. In the second cast Noah Parets and Siphesihle November fared a little better. The saving grace was Emma Ouellet, who has a wonderfully grounded quality of movement. Had the music been less substantial, the shortcomings of the piece might have been less obvious. The score consisted of various and sundry pieces by Benjamin Britten, including the first movement of his violin concerto, well played by Alexi Kenney. This worked for dancing. Two excerpts from Britten’s string quartets did not. There were also a few selections from Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. Hans van Manen made a ballet to the entire piece, and it occurred to me that had the bill included his Frank Bridge Variations instead, it would have made for a much better program: less pretentious and more concise. Emma Portner’s islands was conceived as a commentary about how classical tutus physically distance women in ballet. So instead she dressed them in a conjoined pair of four-legged trousers. The first part of the duet plays on optical illusions in which the audience tries to figure out which legs belong to whom. (This is hardly a new idea; it has been used often enough by circus clowns and vaudevillians.) In the second part of the duet the trousers come off and they dance as if joined head-to-head, which looks a lot like typical contact improvisation. In the third part they separate and dance mostly side by side in unison. I thought the pairing of Heather Ogden and Ouellet on the first night was most effective in putting the piece across. I didn’t appreciate Hope Muir’s “suggestion” that the piece also be danced by a man and a woman. Sure, a man can physically perform the choreography, but the point of the piece is lost. Furthermore, Alexandra MacDonald’s legs did not look as though they could possibly belong to Alexander Skinner, so the visual element was dulled as well. What that pairing showed us is that women are bendier, and men have a higher vertical jump. During the intermission I also observed that the queue to the men's toilet was shorter than the queue to the women's toilet. Serge Lifar’s Suite en Blanc proved to be an enormous challenge for the company. Lacking the numbers of the Paris Opera Ballet, the National Ballet’s staging had the Adage and La Flûte performed by the same ballerina, who also did the fouettés in the finale. The female soloist of the Thème Varié performed the manège in the finale. And the company followed POB practice by having the Mazurka soloist do the diagonal of barrel turns and the Adage man do the manège that follows. On opening night Monika Haczkiewicz gave confident performance in La Sieste, while Svetlana Lunkina and Harrison James danced a marvellously regal Adage, followed by her highly refined Flûte. Everyone in between looked terrified to varying degrees. The dancers were vexed by the tight swivels in fifth from croisé on one side to croisé on the other side, by the quick changes from effacé to croisé and back again, by the super-slow fouettés, and by the weight shifts back and forth between en avant and arabesque. There was little chance of them dancing with the requisite French articulation or style. I found myself railing against the state of the company’s classical technique: it should be dancing Bournonville, it should be dancing a lot more Balanchine, there need to be frequent performances of Etudes and Suite en Blanc, different teachers need to be hired to teach class!!! On the second night there was finally a majestic Thème Varié. Koto Ishihara looked much happier here than in the Pas de Cinq the night before (and did a sensational manège in the finale). Thanks to Naoya Ebe and James in that section and Lunkina in La Cigarette, we finally saw some first-class entrechat-six. Ayano Haneishi, making her debut a day early, seemed totally at ease in the Pas de Cinq. On the third night 19-year-old Aidan Tully delivered by far the best Mazurka I saw. Although he didn’t have much in the way of batterie, I admired the elegance and musicality of Donald Thom. I also admired how Tene Ward shot out of the wings like an arrow in her diagonal in the finale. Emerson Dayton has lovely fouettés, even if she didn’t finish them immaculately the first time out. By the third performance the dancers looked much more confident and at ease, though my opinions about Bournonville, Balanchine, Etudes/Suite en Blanc and more persnickety teachers stand. On opening night Charles Jude, who had staged Suite en Blanc for the company, came out for a bow. I was sorry that most people in the audience didn’t seem to know who he was.

When she was young, the technique of Agnès Letestu was the eighth wonder of the world. She remains unsurpassed in ballets such Suite en Blanc and Etudes.

The stream is up and running.

I wasn't going to post anything until after seeing multiple casts, but this is more of a public service announcement for people who haven't yet seen the program. Arrive 40 minutes late. Utopiverse is a colossal turkey.