7 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Reviews of the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet.

The Guardian

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Uliana Lopatkina opened the Mariinsky season as an exquisite but emotionally inaccessible Odette. Making her first entrance in Jerome Robbins's In the Night, she's a different being – legs kicking, arms furiously thrashing the air. Dancing one of three couples in Robbins's supercharged portrait of sex and love, Lopatkina suddenly looks wide awake. And so does the rest of the company. While the Mariinsky's stock repertory of 19th-century classics may be good for the box office, it's a relief finally to see them in the less familiar world of Robbins and Balanchine.

The Telegraph

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The relationship between George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, twin pillars of American ballet, could be the subject of several novels. Robbins adored his mentor Balanchine, who respected his acolyte - but couldn’t resist putting him down.

So this programme serves up a certain poetic justice: it is dominated by Balanchine but it’s Robbins who triumphs. His In the Night, fashioned at the end of a deeply turbulent period in his life, is a wonder - and the Mariinsky perform it to perfection.

The Arts Desk

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Great Mariinsky ballerinas are a breed apart, even from Bolshoi women. They take the stage with a consciousness of entitlement that’s thrilling to watch, and when this almost sacred sense of mystique and grace instilled in St Petersburg comes with vivid expressive distinction too, then there really is nothing like it. Even if three American 20th-century ballets might not be thought the likeliest territory to make such discoveries, what a night for ballerinas last night was. Viktoria Terëshkina and Alina Somova are on their way to joining the peerless Uliana Lopatkina at the high table.

[dirac]

Molly Glentzer talks to local choreographers about making dances in The Houston Chronicle.

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For that reason, Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch would even prefer not to name new pieces until after they've been performed once. "A third of the piece comes from your imagination; a third from what the dancers bring; and a third is this magic that happens once they're performing, and you see the audience's reaction," he said.

Unlike Weiner, Welch almost always draws his inspiration from music. He's kept Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 on his wish list for years. Each time he listens to the score, he writes out different plans, considering which parts sound masculine, feminine, right for a pas de deux and so on. He's finally utilizing the concerto for a new ballet that premieres next March, although he doesn't yet know how the choreography will unfold.

[dirac]

A review of 3eEtage by Tresca Weinstein in The Albany Times Union.

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Named after the third floor of the Palais Garnier theater, where new members of the Paris Opera Ballet are assigned dressing rooms, the company made its U.S. debut Wednesday evening at the Pillow with "The Disorders Program." It's a collection of 10 linked vignettes for the 12 dancers, most choreographed by ensemble director Samuel Murez, who also makes dances under the pseudonym Raul Zeummes.

What Murez has created is fresh yet timeless, serious and silly, self-mocking without eschewing emotion and connection. His approach to ballet (and balletic contemporary dance) is the opposite of frilly; it's masterful, muscular, fast and fluid, with silky-smooth transitions and sly physical humor. A dancer might be sticking out his tongue at one moment and whipping through a string of pirouettes the next.

[dirac]

Vanessa Zahorian and David Karapetyan get their marriage noted in The New York Times' 'Vows' section.

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At the end of June 2004, Mr. Karapetyan, who was a dancer with the Zurich Ballet, arrived on the West Coast for an audition with the San Francisco Ballet. Ms. Zahorian noticed him right away.

“He’s dark-haired and big-nosed,” she said. “I liked his big nose. His profile is so striking. He has a perfect physique: slim, long legs and perfectly pointed feet for ballet and a great arch.”

[dirac]

Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette, likewise, occupying 'Vows's' prime acreage.

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As soon as Ms. Fairchild joined the City Ballet, Andrew Veyette noticed her pixielike spirit and started flirting with her. “The whole first year I was in the company he tried to get my attention,” Ms. Fairchild, 27, recalled. “I thought it was a hazing kind of thing.” She was often backstage while he danced. “He’d look back at me and say, ‘What are you looking at?’ That went on for a long time.”

She liked his attention but didn’t like what people said about him. Ms. Lowery said: “He had this reputation for being a bad boy, and she was tentative because Megan always does the right thing. She got straight A’s, she was at the top of her ballet class.” Ms. Lowery added, “Andrew’s got the biggest heart, but he didn’t want anybody to know it.”

[dirac]

Mystic Ballet faces zoning disputes.

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Over the past few weeks, Larkin and Building Official Wayne Greene have issued permits to Subotic to attach the two classroom buildings to the home on the property to form one large house. Renderings show that one of the classrooms would now have a second story where one does not exist now.

But Hewitt Road neighbor Nancy Bestwick has filed an appeal with the ZBA asking it to revoke the new permit issued by Larkin for the reasons it overturned the first one.

[dirac]

Clement Crisp writes in to The Financial Times to defend critics bearing the hatchet (scroll down):

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....My anger is reserved for incompetent staging, for the traducing of the past, and for choreographers whose works are laden with intellectual pretensions, with flag-day generalities, and who deform existing works through insensitivities worthy of Attila the Hun. Here, comment must raise weals. My heart sang when I learned that a foreign choreographer was so offended by what I have written about his ballets that he refuses to bring his tedious offerings to this country. I had not laboured in vain. And to quote Lichtenberg again: “Such works are mirrors; when an ape looks into them, no apostle looks out.” I hope, ultimately, I am on the side of the apostles.

[dirac]

An interview with Sokvannara Sar by Wren Wertin in Vail Daily.

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Last year, Sar decided to retire from the world of dance. “I had a breaking point,” he said. “It wasn't that my body was hurting, and it wasn't emotional. But I felt like there was so much more I could in my life. And I felt like I'd never had a chance to choose this for myself. Plus, I'm the only Cambodian ballet dancer, and that's a lot of pressure.”

So he decided to quit. But it just didn't take.