NYCB Weeks 1-3: SWAN LAKE Reviews

[FauxPas]

I attended Sofiane Sylve's debut on Saturday evening. She was magnificent and I have seen a lot of Swan Queens in my not so long life (Asylmuratova, Ayupova, Ananiashvili, Gregory's 2nd Act, Guillem, Meunier, Gillian Murphy, Part, Zakharova, Vishneva and more). I thought that Sylve ranked very high.

The production is another matter... The sets are drops that are dully unatmospheric, a court without a court, a lake scene without a lake... The colors on the backdrops are muted and dull but the costumes are neon and loud in their brightness except for Siegfried who always clashes with the backdrops and fades into obscurity. The lighting this time around isn't as good or my memory was rose-tinting my impressions of the first season of this production (Jock Soto and Monique Meunier as the leads). The problems have been discussed before but they were baldly evident on Saturday night. The corps was not up to its highest standard until the 4th act.

The soloists all tried to inject some juice into the proceedings. Kudos to the kinetic and dazzling Daniel Ulbricht as the Jester. He had some charm and made one grateful for the energy and wit he brought to the proceedings on top of his stunning technique. The first act pas de trois had Megan le Crone, Kristin Sloan and Sean Suozzi and they did a nice job. The Pas de Quatre had fine work from Tiler Peck, Megan Fairchild and Anna Sophia Scheller with a hard-working Jonathan Stafford. However the lack of dramatic connective tissue and the fractured style impaired visuals just made it feel very piecemeal and fragmented. The choreography mixing bits of Balanchine, Martins, Ivanov and Petipa didn't help matters. The second act corps formations in the original Ivanov version cannot be improved upon. Balanchine in his one act version kind of struck out on new territory and his work is good Balanchine but doesn't look well in the full-length context. I didn't like the allegro finish to the pas de deux and I missed the big swans. The fourth act is better.

Luckily most of the heart of Odette's role is preserved in the Ivanov version, especially her entrance, pas de deux and solo in the second act. The Black Swan PDD is the original Petipa and the fourth act has some attractive and effective things in it. So with a fine Odette/Odile, the disaster can be averted.

Sofiane Sylve is an experienced classical ballerina who has done full-length story ballets before and knows how to build a character through dance over four acts. She was mesmerizing to watch. She is a firm, athletic diamantine classicist with sculptured movements that never lose flow or elasticity. Everything in her Odette was smooth but had an undertow of nervous tension - her fluttering movements as she was cornered by Siegfried were superbly realized. So there was this tension between smooth flowing fluid movements and the sharp, perfectly controlled sculptural perfection of her steps, port de bras and footwork. Everything was suffused with energy and had stunning clarity but nothing was broken up into jagged lines or individual steps. Her Odette was not a weeping willow but a creature well aware of her situation and torn between resignation and fighting against her fate. She knew she was in trouble and she didn't want to drag Siegfried into her cursed fate. She had great authority and you knew that this was a Swan Queen and not just another swan.

The Odile drew upon this same diamantine brilliance and control. She was a cool calculating temptress who didn't give much away - was only sensual or seductive when she had to be but let her own beauty and charisma draw Siegfried like a moth to a flame. She never went over the top or spelled out her intentions too clearly. The fouettes, including several doubles and triples, were also fully within her control and never veered from the center line of the stage and were completed without much strain or seeming effort.

Charles Askegard is also experienced and has some background in story ballets as a soloist with ABT in the 1990's. He was hampered by costumes that didn't differentiate him from the soloist men and blended colorwise with the sets. His height and dignified bearing did set him apart and he showed good but not thrilling classical form in his solos. He seemed stiff and wooden initially but responded well to Sylve and Albert Evans as Rothbart who each gave him something to work off of. He also had great control and support as a partner in the crucial pas de deux with Odette and Odile.

The evening was ultimately a triumph for Sylve who made the evening memorable and all the disparate elements come together. I wouldn't want to see this production with a lesser performer.

Faux Pas

[drb]

I saw Bouder II this afternoon. A number of repeat successes from the Bouder I cast. It was pleasing to see a significant increment of technical improvement since Friday in Ben Millepied, as he returns from injury. Soon, it would seem, NYCB's resident prince may well be a full out danseur noble.

The already glorified PDQ team of Megan Fairchild, Ana Sophia Kitri Scheller, Tiler Peck, and (this time) Joaquin De Luz outdid themselves: today's conductor was Andrea Quinn and she set them a real speed test. As she and they finished right on the music, one could see her eyes rivited on them, grinning ecstatically and raising her left fist in triumphant joy! Music and dance as One.

Adam Hendrickson triumphed again as Jester, delivering both character complexity and a high level of virtuosity--not just jesterly tricks, but a promising amplitude of danseur noble.

Oh, yes. There was an O/O. A real, complete one. Odette this time around had a back seemingly less tense, more "Russian" (as is currently under discussion in another Ballet Talk thread). Ashley Bouder also inhabited Odette-the-Swan, as could be seen from the way she transformed the choreographed hand flutters into an icon of imprisonment. A moving swan-woman, tenderly partnered by Ben, and her variations were perfection. But then, you'd expect this to happen with La Bouder, just as she'd done in her second Sleeping Beauty. Odile was of course dazzling again. This time a more wicked, less innocent one. And perhaps trickier to dance, with the change from Friday's Kaplow to Quinn as conductor.

In Act 4, the lake farewell, she managed to top her triumph of Friday. This scene is, compared to what else is on offer in certain other companies, a true triumph for Peter Martins. The audience is respected, a fully un-Stalin, sad ending. Bouder the actress reaches a profound level in this setting. A moving moment as she protects Siegfried with the form of the cross as in Giselle. The Heart, the Soul, are touched, and as she fades through her flock, quietly and forever away from her redeemed love, I swear I saw the face of Ulanova.

[oberon]

Thanks for the great reports, drb & FauxPas...reading about Sylve, I will now be doubly looking forward to this Wednesday.

Nobody saw Miranda?????

Anyone reading here: if you went to a perfomance, please write and tell us about it. Don't be shy, I think everyone wants to read about these Swans.

[nysusan]

I've read several posters here marvel at how quickly Bouder grows into a role, but I was still astounded at the difference between her performances on Friday night & at the Sunday matinee. On Friday her Odile was thrilling, but even though there was some wonderful dancing & beautiful imagery in her Odette, at other times I thought her dancing in the white acts had a very abrupt, gawky quality to it. Ultimately I found her Odette lacking, even disturbing - especially in the first act.

When Siegfried first startled her she was not just frightened but absolutely panicked. Not a huge, frozen fear but agitated, raw & downright animalistic. She seemed that way for pretty much the whole 1st lakeside act. Far from being a woman trapped in a swan's body, to me her Odette seemed like a wild, frenetic creature without one ounce of vulnerability, tenderness or poetry. She danced with a relentless attack and kept accenting her movements right ON THE BEAT. Her 4th act was much better than her 2nd, with hints of things to come, but not quite there yet.

Despite the fact that I didn't like her Odette I still left thinking that it was a good start for a very talented dancer. But she was clearly an allegro dancer in a very complex role that really turns more on the adagio than the allegro. I figured that even if she never became a great Odette her talent was so great that she'd find a way to make the role work for her. But I figured it would take a year or two. I will admit that I just didn't know Bouder well enough.

Fast forward to this afternoon and the gawkiness was gone, the attack was softened, all the sharp edges were smoothed away. It didn't seem so much that she changed her approach as that she modulated it. Her Odette was still wild and unruly at first and then again as dawn approaches and she turns back into a swan. But this time you saw her wildness dissipate & her humanity emerge very early on. This time her adagio flowed. It was beautifully nuanced and she presented a very cohesive, moving interpretation. I am amazed to say that I went from disliking her performance on Friday to thinking that her performance this afternoon was one of the best I've ever seen, and I don't say that lightly. It is a very different approach from my favorite Odettes (Fonteyn, Makarova & now Pavlenko)- it would have to be since the staging is so different - but it was still very beautiful & heartbreaking.

There were two particularly wonderful moments I will remember for a long time. The first was part of her first act solo, when she burst into a circle of turns at breakneck speed and it seemed as if she was throwing all caution to the wind. The second was at the end of the ballet. After von Rothbart dies she is drawn away from Siegfried and pulled into the formation of swans. She resists the pull,tears herself away and comes back out to him. But she's already turning back into a swan - her arms have started to flutter uncontrollably. In a motif repeated from the first act he wraps his arms around hers and draws them over her breast in an embrace. He soothes her tenderly, quieting her arms. They go through this twice but she can't hold onto her human form, and is drawn away from him back into the lake. It's a beautiful moment.

[oberon]

nysusan, I agree that Bouder's first Odette had a very frantic quality but I sort of liked it. A wild creature utterly terrified of human contact. And the man has a crossbow! I hope she doesn't soften her approach too much. This in contrast to the softer shyness of Mearns, who then carried this forward with her dreamy adagio. This season I have really enjoyed the variety of interpretations offered by the leading ladies, and even the altering of some steps and the various fouette solutions. Each ballerina has made me see things differently...and I still have Sylve to come.

The ending of this production overwhelms me every time and you have perfectly described the transforming moments when Odette loses her battle and is doomed, beyond her control. The ranks of the swans closing in around her as she bourees off, and Siegfried's grim remorse, send chills up my spine.

[ShesnoFonteynsMom]

Well, this is fun.

After the blood, sweat & tears, to-the-mat discussion about Mlle. Mearns, and should he have or shouldn't he have, it sounds like it turned out fine.

Just goes to show that we can have passion and bloviate and sometimes we are wrong...(then again, we can have passion and bloviate and sometimes we are right...and sometimes we just have passion...and sometimes we just bloviate...and mostly we have passion and fun)

[AmandaNYC]

I didn't participate in the discussion, but from reading it, I got the sense the debate wasn't about whether Mearns COULD do it, but whether she SHOULD be doing it.

-amanda

Well, this is fun.

After the blood, sweat & tears, to-the-mat discussion about Mlle. Mearns, and should he have or shouldn't he have, it sounds like it turned out fine.

Just goes to show that we can have passion and bloviate and sometimes we are wrong...(then again, we can have passion and bloviate and sometimes we are right...and sometimes we just have passion...and sometimes we just bloviate...and mostly we have passion and fun)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[oberon]

No one could really have guessed how Mearns would fare as we have seen so little of her. In a way this worked to her advantage; she revealed her Odette/Odile as a finished product and a most attractive one at that.

I would imagine there are several girls at NYCB who could deliver a perfectly respectable Swan Queen; the challenge would be stamina. On a normal night, NYCB dances 3 or 4 short abstract ballets. Most nights a corps girl might dance in one piece, her total stage time 15 minutes or less. Building up to a full evening of dance, even if you are just one of 16 swans, is going to be a workout. But if you are tapped for O/O, a whole new set of responsibilities arise.

Wendy spoke in the Playbill interview of the issue of stamina in SWAN; you not only have to dance a long time but also create a character - 2 characters, really - which, on most nights, these girls don't have to consider.

[drb]

There were probably a number of factors that worked to Sara Mearns' advantage. First, the fact that she was cast for a second performance well before going on stage for her first. This surely took some of the pressure off. Combined with the choreographer's relative indifference to the "32", it probably made it easier to go full-out with Odette: she had license to run out of gas on Odile's fouettes. From the perspective of stamina, it is apparently safe to be exhausted after them, quoting Playbill:

"After the fouettes comes Act 4, which all the ballerinas love. Ms. Kowroski says, 'The technical demands are over and I'm completely exhausted, so I just let myself wind down with the beautiful music and focus on the emotions of the character.'" Further, Ms. Weese (please, someone, report on her O/O!) says, "You can really use the emotional and physical exhaustion from Act 3 to ease back into Odette's character."

Finally, that second casting was surely a sign of confidence in her. Being trusted by Mr. Martins would have given her own confidence a boost as well. So perhaps there were at least two people who guessed how well she would fare!

See you all tonight! And another happy "merde!" to Sara.

[oberon]

May I refer everyone to today's Links section (above) where you will find more reviews of Mearns, Bouder & Sylve.

[Bill]

I love these reviews - they paint vivid pictures of each performance. Being marooned in Washington, DC, I hang on every word. Brava! to the fledgling O/Os.

[oberon]

Hopefully SWAN LAKE will be included in the Spring season, giving the new Swans a chance to refine their interpretations, getting Kowroski & Somogyi back to the Lake, and - maybe - someone new? Like...Tess Reichlen? The house has been substantially full during most of the run; a good sign. Come on, Peter, how about 12-14 more performances of the production everyone loves to hate?

Besides, I missed Miranda this Winter and feel like I need to make amends.

[Balanchinomane]

Sorry Oberon, no swans this Spring. Just got the Spring Brochure in the mail.

Seven Diamond Project premieres, 3 Wheeldon 3 Martins, 7 Robbins,

16 Balanchine. The only full length ballet is Midsummer Night's Dream.

Maybe we'll see multiple Titanias.... Glad to see Liebeslieder and Vienna Waltzes

back. How would you like to see Mearns as the Firebird?

[oberon]

Thanks for the Spring rep news, B'mane...I remembered that this was a Diamond Project year. MIDSUMMER is always fun, maybe Mearns will do Titania...

[Dale]

I'm going to put up a link to the spring subscriptions, so lets continue Swan Lake talk here and move the spring stuff to the new thread.

[Michael]

Tuesday Night

For me, my favorite performance is always the last really good one I see. I second what's been written about Sara Mearns -- this really was an extraordinary performance. So finished, so pure and so clean -- she seems to have sprung fully formed onto the stage, amazingly precocious. It's a gift, one has to say, there is no other explanation.

First of all an exquisite person. Tall. She must be nearly 5'10", as big as Maria Kowroski or Veronika Part, but she's a different type, she moves more like a mid to tall dancer, not like a very tall one. A beautiful, round face, slightly exotic eyes, fine features . . . a long long elegant neck. The body slightly longer to the waist than above it, but she has the most beautiful chest, shoulders and upper back, what they call plastique there I believe, and long arms too and very fine hands. The feet are poetic, long but tapering, not blunt. She gives the impression of strength there but also delicacy.

She turns well -- particularly she spots her turns extremely well, everything she does on the stage is very well spotted with her eyes, one sees precisely where she looks and how she turns to where she's looked. She jumps too. But the thing you really notice is the stretch and the extension and above all the ease with which she extends. The repeated relevees up into a big, extended stretched high attitude rear tonight were memorable, glorious, I can't remember anyone else doing this, I'd have to go well outside the company to find the analogy. She's very pliable in the hips and between the hips and waist, perhaps not the most pliable upper back but oh what a beautiful one.

As others have ssid, this may have been the best Swan of them all. Defining best, as I said as the last one really good one I've seen. She's certainly, in her stretched physique, along with Sylve, the most natural bodily type for the role as it exists in Peter's choreography. For Bouder, whose waist falls more in the middle of her body and whose legs are not as long, and therefore who puts more expression into her back, it's a different stretch entirely. The two dancers are not really comporable.

But back to Mearns -- Dramatically, it was a completely and strikingly sincere performance. I don't know that vulnerable is the word I'd use, though I know what people mean. It does apply. But I found her more self contained than that, a reason unto herself, a mysterious quality, a little feral and sylph-like, her eyes do that maybe. She's one of those girls too who, when she's still on the stage, you watch her breathe.

Some other points:

1 The pas de trois got it's best performance tonight, Hyltin and Abi Stafford and Antonio Carmena. Antonio had a wonderful performance as Benno, he's the only one I've seen who has really made sense of the devilishly tricky choreography in his solo and he's also a slightly smaller and quicker type than they cast it with before when I saw Andy Veyette and I don't know who else.

2. Where (and why) have they been hiding Austin Laurent? He's a weird jester, sort of a metaphisical, Faustian one in tone, he's so much bigger than the usual jester type. But he can dance the role. A beautiful boy, tall and well proportioned, and I swear the best feet of any of the men. His batterie is the clearest I've seen here in donkey's ages. Turns well, jumps like one shot from the proverbial cannon. I was just blown away by him tonight, he is, I think, a major talent.

3. The corps de ballet, both men and women, deserves all the credit in the world. Mostly, it's the coming together of the crops from SAB in the three successive years PRECEDING 2005 for the girls, and of the last two years for the boys. There was a lot of turnover in the company among the girls in the two years before last spring -- last year they only took two girl apprentices and one of them was a hold over from the year before. But what was it in '05, five boys? At least.

Tonight didn't all of them look strong in the waltz in Act I. The new boys -- there are so many of them, one doesn't even know their names: but the impression was of great ballon, strong pliees on landing, a group of weightier dancers than we've been used too, I mean those pressed second position landings from jumps in Act I. Was that Megan Farichild's brother? Very nice.

And the girls -- if we needed proof of the depth of that talent, there is Sara Mearns herself who was buried amongst these recent corps girls until this weekend.

4. Ellen Bar had a great Russian dance, flirting with her partner and with the audience by turns.

5. Faye Arthurs seems to have woken up this week, both in the waltz and in Spanish. Don't remember when I've seen her so dramatically awake and present. She and Gwynn Muller, with Ramassar and Seth as the boys, had a good, exciting Spanish dance.

6. Aaron Severini likewise in Neaplolitan. Didn't know he had the stregnth to hold Dronova at the end.

7. To add to the rather amazing demi caracter dancing we had in the pas de troi and the pas de quatre tonight (latter same Peck/Scheller/Fairchild/De Luz cast) -- the four small Swans finally nailed their dance.

Amanda Edge and Elizabeth Walker were on the ends (where they've been since the premiere years ago I think) with Melissa Barak and Carrie Riggins in the middle. Any little mistake will show in this unison allegro number with linked hands -- tonight was flawless. Replacing Dronova with Edge did the trick in this group, even the little bouncing sautees on the diagonal appeared perfectly uniform.

Wonders I guess never cease. Now for Sofiane tomorrow night.

[drb]

Well, Michael has generously told it all! What about Sara Mearns leads to all this praise, even adoration?

Of course there is the youth, two days short of 20. You love to root for the new kid on the block. Sveta Zakharova was a similarly young swan, but at that time management was exploiting her then (NOT NOW!) horribly awkward hyper-extension. Yet what the two do share is great facial beauty. And Sara's face is already a superbly subtle instrument for expressing emotion, not for her to "write the emotion on it," it comes real--a gift or intelligence, who knows.

There are the arms, which seem to ripple softly like swan wings of old, and fingers Balanchine would have loved. She has the knack of making her arms longer, by making her shoulders part of them.

She also has a quality of filling space and stage. We would, like we did with Nureyev, happily watch her sit. I'm not sure she is that close to 5' 10". She does it with mirrors, or magic.

We know of her early interest in Swan Lake. I'd not be surprised to learn she's seen a lot of it. Surely she has thought a lot about it. There must be quite a lot of intelligence involved, the interpretation has a honed simplicity so full of right choices and deep understanding of the story and the steps: neither ever contradicting the other.

For bean counters like myself, the Odile answer is a dozen. For Act 4 fans like myself, Bouder's protecting her love with Giselle's sign of the cross, here becomes a last embrace by arms still in control of already palpable wings.

Like Bouder, Mearns also had a new conductor for her second performance, Quinn replaced by Karoui. The orchestra seems unusually intent on playing well this season.

Nilas Martins was again a very caring, tender partner. This time Albert Evans was her daddy. Such a tender, caring monster, that for once there wasn't a boo in earshot for the villain!

[Michael]

  Sveta Zakharova was a similarly young swan, but at that time management was exploiting her then (NOT NOW!) horribly awkward hyper-extension.  Yet what the two do share is great facial beauty.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

They share something else as well -- that step forward relevee and then hit the big, rich, high, attitude back as a pose -- I've seen Zakharova do that in Swan. And the magnificent arabesque. Funny you mentioned Zakharova, because she's exactly one of the girls I'd have gone outside of the company for a comparison with. Mearns is much more solidly upright, stronger, more balanced dancer, less of a Matisse like flowing line than Zakharova. But the comparison is not inapt.

Lucky girl, what? Two performances and we've got her beatified.

[oberon]

More about all the rising youngsters at NYCB:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/arts/dance/18rock.html

[Michael]

Interesting, Rockwell on the jealousy -- that's another thread I'd guess.

The memory this morning, the thing not mentioned, were the times in Act IV when Odette went to the floor. At least three times, the last two bent double, folded on herself, the arms extended, sequences that last for ten, fifteen, twenty seconds. Mearns was so poetic there.

[Dale]

Robert Gottlieb also weighs in at the New York Observer:

http://www.newyorkobserver.com/20060123/20...ttliebdance.asp

[Farrell Fan]

Thank God for Robert Gottlieb. His review is helping me recover from Oberon's request for more Swan Lakes in the spring. (I trust Oberon's plea was meant jocularly, to rile people like me.) For the record, I saw three of the Swan Lakes and liked two out of three. The performances were everything. The production has not improved with age, although critical reaction to it (except for Gottlieb's) seems to have grown numb.

[bart]

An excellent review. I can't speak to Gottlieb's take on the quality of dancing in this series of performances, but he has put into clear and simple words some of the reasons I have been relatively unmoved by this production/version when I have seen it in the past.

ABOUT THE LACK OF "STORY" IN ACT ONE:

"For Martins, all this is reduced to a mere divertissement—a series of dances, ably staged, with no content whatsoever.

AND THE EFFECT THIS HAS ON ACT II:

"And so Act II, the first lakeside act—with more Danish expressionist décor, which as it happens doesn’t really show the lake—comes out of nowhere.

(Edited after reading drb's post, following this one.) Is it possible to take the dancing (in a ballet as iconic and powerful as Swan Lake) and see it separate from the context? I know I couldn't do it, except possibly to regret the lost opportunities.

[drb]

NYCB's Front Row Center has four new Swans up now:

http://www.nycballet.com/programs/frc.html

They are Weese (2 Odettes), Ringer (O & O), Bouder I (O & O), Mearns I (O & O).

Farrell Fan, would greatly appreciate more about the performances you saw. Which ballerinas saved the performance for you, and how did they do it? Do you assess their performance as if it were in the context of one of those great versions of Swan Lake that nearly all the traditional companies have thrown away? Or do you find that it helps to de-context their dancing and try to see it outside the frame of Swan Lake?

[Farrell Fan]

drb -- I viewed the Swan Lakes strictly in a NYCB context, and very much enjoyed Bouder's performance even though she seemed a particularly nervous Odette in the first act. I agree with most others that the last act of this production is the best and had tears in my eyes at the ending of all three performances. The other two both had Wendy and Damian as the leads. (I have three subscriptions and never made it to the box office to exchange tickets.) I didn't really like the first one. As soon as the curtain went up all my antipathy for the costumes, decor, and underpopulated stage came flooding back and the Jester did nothing to alleviate the feelings. I was thus disgruntled all evening, despite the best efforts of the leads. By contrast, the next time I saw it the Jester was Daniel Ulbricht and his exhilarating bravura performance put me in a good mood which lasted. As Gottlieb says, "Never underestimate the power of cute." But Ulbricht is more than cute -- he's an exciting dancer.