sandik, on Apr 24 2010, 12:50 PM, said:
This is very long, but I really loved this program, and have been thinking about it all week:
I loved reading every word.
sandik, on Apr 24 2010, 12:50 PM, said:
Carrie Imler dances the Dark Angel, which I am very sorry not to be seeing.
She did the Russian Girl twice this weekend. I saw her with the Vinson (Waltz Girl)/Kitchens (Dark Angel) pairing last night, and she was on the cast list for the Friday night performance, with Korbes (Waltz Girl) and Dec (Dark Angel); Nakamura completed this cast this afternoon. I'm still not sure why the women are listed in the order of Waltz Girl/Dark Angel/Russian Girl, because the Russian Girl is the second principal to enter in the first movement, which was there before the "Scherzo a la Russe" movement was added, but it can be confusing.
Both Vinson and Korbes were dramatic presences as Waltz Girl, Vinson with a dusky, mature quality in throughout the ballet. Korbes was sunny when partnered by Wevers in the "Waltz" and "Scherzo" movements -- they had wonderful chemistry together, from the moment he touched her arm at the end of the first movement -- but was more like a lost princess in the final movement. While her face is expressive, she created most of her dramatic impact through timing.
In the Elegy (final) movement the dynamics between the Waltz Girl and Dark Angel and the way Russian Girl reacts to them were different and marked among the casts. Kitchens might not have debuted as Dark Angel in this run, but she danced as if she were a young soloist making her debut: it was a fresh and direct performance, and she was a messenger of the Elegy Man's fate rather than a catalyst. Despite joining the company just a year after Vinson, she was a more youthful presence. Not so with Lindsay Dec, who was more like Brunhilde, a full participant and eager to announce Siegmund's death to him. Sadly for Korbes' Waltz Girl, Bold doesn't respond with an argument to make her change her mind and her own fate; it was a struggle of two equals. Ariana Lallone didn't need a Wotan to send her: she was more Athenian and very powerful, against which Laura Gilbreath's gallant Waltz Girl had no chance, which made the latter's fate that much more poignant.
When Carrie Imler or Kaori Nakamura swooned and fell in the first movement, it was an episode separate from the Elegy movement; when Lesley Rausch did, it was foreshadowing. Imler and Nakamura were temperamentally different through the third movement and in the Elegy: the stakes in the latter were higher, and they were more dramatic. I particularly loved the bit of swoon in Nakamura's pointes. There was something of a detached spirit to Rausch's presence in the Elegy, Romantic in the period sense.
There's a section in which Waltz Girl dances and there are three corps members in the background. I'd always watched Waltz Girl, and may have been dimly aware of other women in the background, until today, when I noticed Leah O'Connor, and I was reminded of Jacques d'Amboise's description of the young Suzanne Farrell in the last row of the corps "dancing up a storm". It was great to see Sarah Ricard Orza, another of the three, in semi-featured corps parts of the ballet.
sandik, on Apr 24 2010, 12:50 PM, said:
But instead of making the solo feel possible for a young dancer, as Serenade does. it seemed incredibly challenging. It's so exposed, and there are so many places that could fall apart -- my heart was in my throat over and over again during this section.
The male "Square Dance" solo is daunting within the first phrase. It was created for a dancer who never stopped moving: he was still moving forward as he stepped back, and even in stillness, his breath was part of the movement, and he was always in opposition to the floor. That's what I hear in the music, too, in the extended legato phrasing of the adagio.
sandik, on Apr 24 2010, 12:50 PM, said:
Right now Foster is working hard and making big progress, but she needs to find a more balletic solution to the challenges she's working on -- currently she strikes me as a powerhouse modern dancer in a different environment. But this was her first go at the part, so who knows how far along she'll get by the end of the run.
This is one of the ballets in the 50's pre-Farrell years that was all about Ballet with a capital "B". It's not just about speed: of the two parts of the girl's solo in the finale, one emphasizes turnout, specifically the open thigh and the presentation of the foot -- seen earlier in the attitude front in plie pose in the adagio section, like the muses in Apollo -- and the other demands great strength of the feet to fully extend in the beats and echappes. Those are the givens from which to shape the role, and without them, the role doesn't take hold.
Foster was more confident in the opening and the adagio last night than in her debut, but her fundamental approach is what you described; the ballets demands are not her strengths. Watching her again made me think of the difference between a meta approach and a broad approach. Foster's struck me as broad, because the underlying technical emphases in the piece weren't there.
I hadn't seen Mara Vinson in an allegro role for a while, including this role in the last run, and I missed her Odile; I wasn't sure how she'd tackle this. She was spectacular, using her formidable technique to create a whole and infusing it with joy and wit. She looked like she could have fit more in the music, and she really went for the big pas de chat lifts: Seth Orza looked like he had to scamper to keep up with her. Orza isn't as refined as Lucien Postlewaite or as precise as Benjamin Griffiths; instead his approach was more athletic, using a lot of space with fine energy, and it worked.
sandik, on Apr 24 2010, 12:50 PM, said:
Ariana Lallone owns Choleric in much the same way that Wevers is attached to Phlegmatic, and with this set of performances she gets even deeper into the violence of the part. She's like watching an electrical storm as it rages in the sky -- you just sit a little further down in your seat and hope it passes over you.
If Dec was a crabby Greek hero, Lallone was a crabby Greek god, and it was a great performance.
sandik, on Apr 24 2010, 12:50 PM, said:
All three women I saw (Lallone, Dec and Gilbreath) nailed the timing of it, which in itself is fantastic. That they used that energy to create a specific impression makes it just that much more thrilling. Gilbreath is still finding her own way to the anger implicit in the role, but Dec really made a big step forward here.
Gilbreath had the energy, but, I agree, anger wasn't at the forefront. Brittany Reid danced Choleric Thursday night, and it looked like Lindsi Dec passed the cheerleader mantle to her, a bright presence more than a malevolent one. Reid looks a lot thinner, and to me looks like she has lost some power in the way she moves.
sandik, on Apr 24 2010, 12:50 PM, said:
Karel Cruz is working on the role, but he's nowhere near as far along in his interpretation. Right now he's being very careful and very faithful about the shapes, so that the broken lines and in-turned limbs all register with us, but he hasn't found his way to connect them into a sequence yet.
Cruz performed last night, and it was still like a series of snapshots. There was not much time to develop this, with only two performances this run.
Lucien Postlewaite danced Melancholic in the same cast, and when he stopped moving, he created friezes and continued the characterization, like the George Platt Lynes original cast portraits. I had never noticed the last arm gestures, from the abdomen and out until he did emphasized them, and they reminded me of Carabosse's rolling gesture that she's about to tell a wicked story and place a wicked curse, only Melancholic was offering his sorrow from his gut.
Postlewaite replaced Jonathan Porretta in Melancholic -- in the Q&A we were told that Porretta is having trouble with his knee, and he is being rested to be ready for "Coppelia" -- and this afternoon, Benjamin Griffiths replaced Postlewaite. (There was a lot of murmuring about it, but no one asked why at the Q&A.)
There were a lot of wonderful Theme couples, all of them giving a different spin: In First Theme, there was the geometric contrast among the very tall, sweeping Laura Gilbreath and William Lin-Yee, the mediums Sarah Ricard Orza and Josh Spell, dancing taller than they are, and the shorter pair of Amanda Clark and Eric Hipolito, Jr., each bringing different emphasis to their roles. In the Second Theme, Lindsi Dec and Kiyon Gaines made an unusual physical pairing -- Dec, tall with long limbs and Gaines a medium, muscular dancer -- while Lesley Rausch and Andrew Bartee have similar slender body types. It happened backwards, but I was able to see the Sanguinic in Rausch's Theme. The Third Theme has my favorite music and, along with the Devil's Dance section, is my favorite section of the ballet. Rachel Foster was wonderfully lyric, and she has strong chemistry with James Moore. Last night Sarah Ricard Orza and Jerome Tisserand did an elegant reading.
The Devil's Dance was especially striking last night, with Ariana Lallone surrounded by Lindsi Dec, Sarah Ricard Orza, Laura Gilbreath, and Lesley Rausch.
Christina Siemens was the piano soloist for "The Four Temperaments" and she would have done Mr. Balanchine more than proud.
sandik, on Apr 24 2010, 12:50 PM, said:
Jordan Pacitti gave the curtain speech for Second Stage this year -- very clear delivery and nice to have it pointed out that, while college coursework is a valuable part of the program, they also exist for business/vocational training as well.
It was interesting to see the various audiences react. One night clapping began as soon as someone saw that there was a body coming through the curtain. Another night there was complete silence until he mentioned his name. Today was a blank audience, at least during the speech. I noticed that he often wore the same warm-up jacket that Russian Olympics team members wore, a white background with a red swirly pattern on the shoulders. I was almost expecting him to come out to ask us to donate to the Send-Allan-Dameron-To-A-Vacation-Location-Of-His-Choice-To-Enjoy-His-Favorite-Umbrella-Drink-Fund, because Dameron has been doing an incredible amount of work since Stewart Kershaw resigned unexpected after "Romeo et Juliette" last fall, and an extraordinary job with the orchestra, which has been superb in this program.
Mr. Dameron. And
to the orchestra that has been lead, too, by a number of guest conductors, including Alastair Willis, for whom the orchestra played beautifully last Saturday matinee.
Jeffrey Stanton gave another wonderful performance of Phlegmatic, and he was the guest speaker at the Q&A today. He was very mellow, even when an audience member pretty much asked him to choose favorites among his partners. (Peter Boal, paraphrasing the question, wryly noted that the questioner offered a couple of suggestions.) While refusing the bait, Stanton spoke about his partnership with Patricia Barker, how it started -- she was established, and he was a "young pup" and eager to learn -- and that it was able to develop over the years to the point where they didn't have to talk much about the partnering specifics. He also talked about having joined SFB in 1988, dancing as a student and then company member until 1994, when he auditioned for PNB, having been told earlier by a teacher that PNB might be a good fit and after several of his SFB colleagues joined the company.
Last night Ballet Master Otto Neubert moderated with Jerome Tisserand as Q&A guest. Unless there is a Pay-Otto-Neubert-A-Second-Salary-To-Moderate-Q&A's-Fund, I hope that this is immediately forgotten: Neubert is a great moderator. He starts by asking a few insightful questions and sets the standard, and he asks follow-up questions on interesting subjects. Last night he elicited more than the standard biography from Tisserand, and an interesting discussion of partnering. (This is one of the few Q&A's where no one asked how dancers learn roles.) Everyone thinks they know what Peter Boal does, and they rarely ask him, but someone did ask Neubert what a Ballet Master does.
Neubert spoke about the difference in approaching partnering in Europe compared to when he joined NYCB, and after Tisserand mentioned that he had learned Romeo and was fourth cast Sanguinic -- he danced neither role -- Neubert spoke about how hard it was to have a limited number of performances: the last cast doesn't always get to perform, and when there are four casts, a lead might only get two performances, and it's hard to grow that way, especially when the ballet might not be staged again for three or more years. When someone asked if the reason there weren't more Principals and Soloists in the company because of money, he answered directly that incoming funds might not be spent that way, because the company can't have Principals and Soloists without having enough performances in which to cast them. (Next year, there will be seven subscription performances instead of eight.) When asked why there were so many foreign-born dancers in the company, Neubert said that foreign tours exposed PNB to a lot of dancers who didn't know about them and generated interest in the company.
In response to questions about partnering, Tisserand spoke about the mechanics of partnering, including what the woman did to help, and how it became muscle memory to remember the difference between how to partner one woman versus another. He described having been trained for three years at Paris Opera Ballet School, then two years at a private school in Lyon, then at SAB where he met Peter Boal, and joining Miami City Ballet, which he said didn't go very well, before PNB. He said that in France there only is POB (for ballet), and that there, as a corps member, you're expected to dance and look like everyone else. He said that he wanted to join an American company for the freedom to "become your kind of dancer", but in answer to a later question, he said the hardest thing was standing out, "to become your kind of dancer."
Tisserand is learning Franz in Coppelia, and I hope this gets to the stage. There's an extra matinee performance, and Neubert is teaching 20+ kids, which hopefully will mean bigger audiences -- it was hard seeing empty seats for this program -- and meet budget for the rep.
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