Wednesday, February 2d

[art076]

Sylve seems not only to be the one woman who is consistently applauded in this house these days, but also be the one who is most deliriously applauded. I led the charge myself as to her Theme. But I'm suddenly alarmed at what I see. I'm suffering a reaction myself.

What's distressing is that, in Ballet today, it's the athletic dancers, rather than the lyrical ones, who consistently seem to get ahead.

I must say about Sylve: when I saw her do several ballets in New York - Who Cares, Western Symphony, Sanguinic in the Four Temperaments, the Duchess in La Sonnambula - I thought she was a pretty enough dancer but nothing too noticeable. Her fouettes in Who Cares certainly drew notice, but they seemed more of an aberration than anything else.

I didn't really, really like her until I saw her perform the 2nd Movement of Symphony in C (a debut in Orange County). There, she was meltingly lyrical and sublimely musical. She didn't dance it quite the way you'd say it 'should' be danced - the Farrellisms, as it were, were not there, and it didn't look the same way it would on someone like Wendy Whelan or Maria Kowroski. But it was absolutely mesmerizing - and there was barely an athletic trick in there.

So I think Sylve is more than capabale of this lyrical quality: perhaps she just hasn't yet done a ballet this season that would show of her lyrical qualities in a similar way.

[perky]

I've only seen Sylve in La Sonnambula and The Four Temperments. Not really enough to form an idea of her style, although I loved her in both.

Actually Michael was one of the first posters on this board to really champion and rave about Sylve so when I read his earlier Mozartiana review I knew something big had to have gone wrong with her dancing in his eyes to have changed his opinion of her so drastically.

I think they need to be careful how they cast her. I don't know maybe she thought that Who Cares required an All American, cheerleader rah, rah approach. It could be a case of not enough coaching when she learned the part or simply miscommunication of Balanchine's conception of the part. Hopefully the showboating aspect of her performance will change. I personally would like to see her cast in the more "perfumey" roles. Casting her in Emeralds is a good start, which I believe she performed last year in Saratoga. Perhaps the Verdy part in Liebeslieder Waltzer. Or bring back Gounod Symphony with her in the lead. I'm afraid that casting her as Liberty Bell in Stars and Stripes (Doesn't she debut this week in it?) will only aggravate the problems Michael sees in her dancing.

[oberon]

Perky, I'm off shortly to see Sylve in STARS & STRIPES - not to mention Carla Korbes, scheduled for CONCERTO FOR 2 SOLO PIANOS. I'll write about my impressions of Sylve, though I am aleady prejudiced in her favor. She is different from our roster of ballerinas, but I don't hold that against her.

[rkoretzky]

I did see Sylve in Emeralds in Saratoga last summer. Ari had spent a few days with us and had just left with sadness that she would miss it. As I told Ari, I wasn't really pleased with her performance, and yet I have been a Sylve fan from the first time I saw her (in Western, where her fouttes WERE amazing).

In "Emeralds" I didn't see the warmth that Jenifer Ringer showed me the next night. Yet last winter season she literally took my breath away (did anyone else who was there hear me gasp?) as "La Bonne Fee", a role that requires warm, generous dancing.

I think I would prefer to see her in "Diamonds", rather than "Emeralds". With all respect to Michael, who always shows us a very keen eye, I would love to see her in "Theme". The role that knocked both Ari and me out in Saratoga was "Cortege", and I have seen her repeat it at State Theater.

I have read a few interviews with her and to me she comes across warmly, without haughtiness. But I seem to think of her in those "haughty" roles--Diamonds, Theme, Cortege. Even Slaughter and Western have those elements of haughtiness. How then to reconcile this breaktaking appearance as La Bonne Fee?

[Michael]

I don't think anything has gone wrong with La Sylve's dancing.

She's the one Ballerina in the company who can do Theme right now. That's important. She's wonderful in Cortege. And in Kammermusik too. She was superb in the last section of Ivesiana last Spring.

Whoever said she'd be good in Diamonds is probably right as well -- Certainly I'd rather see her in this than either Maria or Wendy, though I'll take either of them as well.

My criticism, my beef is with the way the audience is over-valuing her circus tricks (fouettes, balances -- she has great facility at that sort of thing) and with the way she herself seems to be over-selling that same item.

You can get away with a bit of that at the climax of the Polonaise in "Theme" -- but even there the Ballerina has to be careful. Not so in "Who Cares" or in many other things. It doesn't take much to cross the line and when it's done not at the end of a Ballet, but in mid-performance, it can very much start to interfere with the presentation of the piece.

[Helene]

My criticism, my beef is with the way the audience is over-valuing her circus tricks (fouettes, balances -- she has great facility at that sort of thing) and with the way she herself seems to be over-selling that same item.   

You can get away with a bit of that at the climax of the Polonaise in "Theme" -- but even there the Ballerina has to be careful.  Not so in "Who Cares" or in many other things.  It doesn't take much to cross the line and when it's done not at the end of a Ballet,  but in mid-performance, it can very much start to interfere with the presentation of the piece.

This is the meaning I read your original post. I've always been put off when dancers overemphasize the big effects over continuinty, unless the piece is purely a circus trick piece or section. This was really why I so disliked Louise Nadeau's performance in the Agon pas de deux last year, and why I thought she crossed the line in an earlier Aurora during the Rose Adagio. (But it's not typical of her stage demeanor: for example, her Second Movement Symphony in C was kissed by the Muse.)

I also consider the way a performer takes a bow in the middle of a movement or at the end of a movement as part of the performance, and I've seen too much great dancing marred for me by the way the performer milks it. I always have to remember when seeing an European or Russian company that this behavior is considered correct and obligatory.

[Andre Yew]

I did not like Sylve in Emeralds when NYCB visited Southern California last year. She stood out too much, and was a little too detached for the perfume of this piece. She has a magnificent, imperial stage presence, and was pretty much overshadowing everything else on stage (even the space-alien decor), but that looked wrong for Emeralds. Diamonds would be good for her, as well as any of Balanchine's neo-Petipa pieces, like Symphony in C and Stars and Stripes, both of which we also saw her perform last year. In the more abstract pieces like Agon and Stravinsky Violin Concerto, she has a very exotic presence because of her obviously athletic body and technique which fit those pieces very well, combined with her old-school, glamorous stage presence.

Having said all that, she's my favorite NYCB ballerina, primarily because she has such amazing stage presence and personality, and she has incredible ballet technique. Her bow (the one where one arm is swept back, almost like a reverance --- she seems to have 2 or 3 different styles) is also exquisite, and, for me, expresses everything about her dancing.

--Andre

edit: clarification for description of her bow