MCB at Vail Intgernational Dance Festival

[bart]

Thanks to dirac for posting the following Link about Miami's visit to the Vail [Colorado] International Dance Festival.

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20090729/...299958/-1/RSS02

The Sat. 8/1 program is all-Balanchine: Tarantella, Four Temperaments, and Serenade. On Sunday, dancers from the company are scheduled to appear in a special Festival Highlights program. On Monday, the program is "Edward Villella with the Miami City Ballet."

I hope that anyone who has the chance to see any of these will post about it here. Or, if you find some interesting reports or reviews on line. This is the first MCB performance after their summer hiatus, which means that casting choices, etc., might tell us something about the season to come.

[bart]

From today's links. (Thanks, dirac.)

Edward Villella is interviewed by Kyle MacMillan in The Denver Post.

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_12941058

I especially like the input from the Vail Festival director, Damian Woetzel:

Woetzel, who joined the New York City Ballet after the choreographer died in 1983, visited the Miami City Ballet several times and participated in Villella-led classes (intensive warm-ups in which the fundamentals of movement and style are conveyed).

"The room comes to life under his sort of rhythm, his own understanding of how music is treated," Woetzel said. "And Balanchine choreography, of course, is the most related to the music of any choreography that has been put on the stage."

"When Eddie starts in class, there is a jazzy rhythm that is so much of the time when he was around Mr. Balanchine's work. It's very specific, and it's very different than anywhere else I've ever been."

This rhythmic feel, Woetzel said, can be seen in the company's "intensely jazzy" approach to the fun, high-flying "Rubies," the most famous section of the choreographer's 1967 ballet, "Jewels."

[cubanmiamiboy]

Thanks for the post, bart. It is nice to see our troupe getting busy. I wonder how the absence of Cox will affect all the upcoming performances. We'll see.

It's great to see Woetzel doing all this.

[iwatchthecorps]

MCB faced a cold evening on Sunday but seems to have done very well. Keeping Balanchine legacy alive, kicking

[bart]

Thanks, iwatchthecorps. It's a good, fairly detailed, and high-level review. "Cold" and "Miami" don't usually go together, so I'm impressed at how well they did. The reviewer mentions that the Rubies dancers had to wait 3 hours before going on, but still were wonderful.

Did you get the chance to attend, iwatchthecorps?

I love hearing about pre-season performances, partly because it gives me something to look forward to. In this case, even though they aren't doing the 4 T's in Florida, I'm delighted Daniel Baker did so well in Melancholic. He's definitely a comer. Glad also to see corps member Amanda Weingarten mentioned TWICE. And that Alex Wong is still lighting up the MCB stage with Jeanette Delgado in Tarantella. Also, it's always good to see the excellent Didier Bramaz get the attention he deserves.

I hope some of the MCB dancer were watching Stiefel and Murphy closely. Although Miami hasn't scheduled one of their versions of the classics on the schedule for 2009-10, there's always next year.

Edited to Add: Reminder about MCB's new Blog site, which iwatchthecorps told us about recently. Dancer Leigh-Ann Esty brought a video camera to Vail. The blog site promises it willb e available soon. In the meantime, there's a video interview with Esty:

http://www.miamicityballet.org/blog/2009/0...ucing-mcb-blog/

[cahill]

I found some links for pictures and video from the dance festival:

See flicker:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vailvalleyfoundation/

There is also some video on the Vail Valley Foundation Blog with Alex Wong and Jeanette Delgado:

http://vailvalleyfoundation.blogspot.com/2...f-miami_04.html

[Jack Reed]

Thanks, cahill! That's quite a collection of images, scattered over ten pages. I think some of the captions could better credit the dancers, though; for example, I believe the principals in Rubies, shown in images numbered 28, 21, and 22 (and some later ones) are Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg and Renato Penteado.

[bart]

Thanks, cahill. The same interview with Delgado and Won is now up on the new MCB blog:

http://www.miamicityballet.org/blog/tag/va...dance-festival/

Both Delgado and Wong made for a delightful interview. I especially liked the way they both talked about their experience living within the "family" that has been created at MCB. I know that Villella is their boss, but the way the discussed his effort to create a friendly, supportive community sounded genuinely affectionate and appreciative.

They also addressed something we haven't mentioned so far in this thread: the difficulty of dancing at such a high altitude with no chance to acclimate.

Wong mentioned also that he was doing a short solo from Agon later in the festival. This opened the door for me to think about the large range of rep -- Balanchine rep in particular -- I'd like to see him do.

Off topic: I loved the tongue-in-cheek way the interview asked D and W about what they did in their free time in Vail: "What do you dancer's do -- just hang around and stretch?"