Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

Kennedy Center Honors for 2014


Recommended Posts

Patricia McBride will be honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2014. I'm pleased to see dance included this year and especially pleased to see McBride as the honoree. I suspect we'll see quite a parade of her former colleagues at NYCB on the program.

The broadcast will be on CBS on December 30.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/hanks-and-tomlin-among-new-kennedy-center-honorees/?smid=nytimesarts

Link to comment

Oh, sweet news flowers.gif.

While she had so many fans, her contribution was overshadowed by her partners Villella and Baryshnikov. The parts Balanchine created for her in those ballets with Villella, Tomasson, and d'Amboise were among the great roles for women: Rubies, Harlequinade, Coppelia (part reconstruction with Danilova and Act III original), Who Cares?, Tales from the Vienna Woods, Hermia, Baiser, Tarantella, and Costermongers.

Joseph Mazo describes her as indefatigable: offstage when others were bent over heaving to catch their breath, she would exhale and be ready for her next entrance. Although typecast as a soubrette, she took over roles made for others, like Melissa Hayden's role in Liebeslieder Walzer, and made them her own, and she danced the most difficult technical roles, like (Tchaikovsky) Piano Concerto Number 2. And there was the Robbins legacy, notably the Girl in Pink.

I hope Sarah Mearns is featured in the performance: McBride trained her in North Carolina.

She joined NYCB right just a few years after the company was in turmoil after Tanaquil LeClercq contracted polio, speeding to Principal Dancer in two years. During a period where there was chaos, illness,and injury, she danced performance after luminous performance, and Lincoln Kirstein later credited her with carrying the company and saving it through very difficult times.

My father and I had Sunday night subscriptions, and dancers often gave their retirement performances then. It was three decades before I encountered one that was as much of a love-fest as hers. She would have deserved the title People's Artist.

If she had made it look harder, she would have been honored earlier. I'm glad they realized that it's about time.

Link to comment

My father and I had Sunday night subscriptions, and dancers often gave their retirement performances then. It was three decades before I encountered one that was as much of a love-fest as hers. She would have deserved the title People's Artist.

Lovely to read, not hard to believe. She caught my heart the first time I saw NYCB, in 1979. You mention the Joseph Mazo book; I remember he also had something unkind and totally unnecessary to say about her and her then husband.

Who will introduce her - d'Amboise again, as he did for Farrell? Farrell? A big-name Broadway contemporary who will declare herself a fan?

Link to comment

Suzanne Farrell is a past honoree. But the only Tweet she sent out today was a #tbt about her own award - no mention of McBride's! Tacky!

Farrell Ballet ‏@FarrellBallet · 1h

#TBT to the 28th Annual Kennedy Center Honors where Ms. Farrell was 1 of 5 artists who received the award. pic.twitter.com/FgGT0B5IyF

Link to comment

No one deserves it more than McBride. flowers.gif I just hope most of her tribute makes it into the telecast. These have shrunk from about 25 minutes in length in the past to about 15 minutes today, perhaps a bit longer for the pop stars. And I'd also love to see Mearns perform, even if she bears little resemblance to McBride as a dancer. Like GeorgeB fan, I would also prefer to see a single, complete piece, rather than a choreographic montage. "The Man I Love" would seem to be an obvious candidate.

Link to comment

Who will introduce her - d'Amboise again, as he did for Farrell? Farrell? A big-name Broadway contemporary who will declare herself a fan?

Hmmmmmm, Villella will host and Mearns will dance.

Oh yeah, Villella, I should have thought of him. An excellent and likely choice. Back to George B Fan's hope for "The Man I Love" pas de deux from Who Cares? - Tiler Peck is acclaimed in that role nowadays.

Link to comment

Who will introduce her - d'Amboise again, as he did for Farrell? Farrell? A big-name Broadway contemporary who will declare herself a fan?

Hmmmmmm, Villella will host and Mearns will dance.

Oh yeah, Villella, I should have thought of him. An excellent and likely choice. Back to George B Fan's hope for "The Man I Love" pas de deux from Who Cares? - Tiler Peck is acclaimed in that role nowadays.

Peck was the dancer I immediately thought of when I suggested "The Man I Love." I understand the reason behind the idea of Sara Mearns dancing for McBride but Peck comes closest at resembling McBride as a dancer. McBride was best known for musicality, high-spirit, openness and her sense of Americana...qualities that Peck has. IMO.

Link to comment

Even though we don't always get to see it, more than one piece is performed. With Makarova we got to see Peck in ("Other Dances") and Part ("Swan Lake"). I think it would be great if her protegee danced for her, and then someone who brought some of McBride's qualities.

"The Man I Love" would be perfect: short, telegenic, and set to popular music. It's also one of the most iconic roles, and she was the star of it. If they wanted to spread the wealth, they could have someone else do "Fascinatin' Rhythm."

When she did her farewell program, everything on it was a role she created except "Liebeslieder.". She took Hayden's role fairly soon and was in the CBC TV broadcast. Mearns could do the haunting penultimate pas, and that would give opportunities to two pianists and four singers. McBride ended the program with Columbine's solo from " Harlequinade.". It might be a good way to end the Kennedy Center Honors tribute. Maybe Megan Fairchild?

Link to comment

I think the honoree has some say in who and what goes into their tribute. In 2005, in Farrell's, for the "live performance" part, we got the last movement of Divertimento No. 15 in its entirety, with TSFB dancers - not that that was their only allegiance. So we can reasonably hope to get something with artistic integrity for McBride, too; we didn't get all of Tharp's nine Sinatra Songs, but we got the little suite of them she has presented elsewhere.

d'Amboise was a particularly good choice for Farrell's Honor, too - very animated, ebullient, and getting an amused response from the honoree for his salutation. I gather they've gotten on pretty well practically since her arrival in New York from Cincinnatti decades ago.

I know less about McBride's story - although I certainly share the admiration for her performing career expressed here - and I recall she herself expressing pleasure if not downright adoration when dancing Rubies with Baryshnikov - some out-of-role rolling of eyes in his direction followed by a gleaming smile in ours, as though to say, "Look who I've got!" for example - so maybe we'll see him in tribute to her. (He was also superb with her in Harlequinade.)

The points about some material from the show not making it onto the TV program are correct - in the theater, it ran about two hours in 2005, with one intermission of about twenty minutes, but when you take the commercials out of your recording of it you've got exactly 90 minutes left, and this is very probably deliberate. They want enough material that they can pick and choose. Not a lot got cut out of Farrell's part, mainly the outspoken but aging Maria Tallchief's appearance, on Arthur Mitchell's arm, when she recited some brief prepared remarks and then apparently ad-libbed effusive praise for Farrell's dancers.

But this is wonderful news about McBride - three months to go, and I'm already having fun reminiscing about her performances!

Link to comment

Suzanne Farrell is a past honoree. But the only Tweet she sent out today was a #tbt about her own award - no mention of McBride's! Tacky!

Farrell Ballet ‏@FarrellBallet · 1h

#TBT to the 28th Annual Kennedy Center Honors where Ms. Farrell was 1 of 5 artists who received the award. pic.twitter.com/FgGT0B5IyF

Suzanne Farrell Ballet just sent a congratulatory Tweet to McBride -- better late than never!

Farrell Ballet ‏@FarrellBallet · 20m

Congratulations Ms.Patricia McBride on your prestigious 2014 Kennedy Center Honor! @CLTballet dancers' reaction:

Link to comment

It’s interesting that with the rise of social media something that would normally be a semi-private matter, like congratulations between old colleagues, has become another source of public scrutiny, with people checking out a person’s tweets in search of snubs or omissions.

I think Villella and “The Man I Love” are both obvious choices. Would love to see Tiler Peck dance it. Baryshnikov would be nice for name recognition value even if it wasn’t a partnership made in heaven.

McBride and Helgi Tomasson danced quite a bit together before the hiring of Baryshnikov. Tomasson probably isn’t enough of a name but it would be nice to see a tribute from him.

Congratulations to Edward Gorey’s beloved Miss McBride!

Link to comment

It’s interesting that with the rise of social media something that would normally be a semi-private matter, like congratulations between old colleagues, has become another source of public scrutiny, with people checking out a person’s tweets in search of snubs or omissions.

Farrell Ballet is one of many, many dancers and companies that I "follow" on Tweet, so those Tweets are fed in automatically all the time. What was odd about Farrell's: four hours after Google Alert sent out the info on McBride, Farrell sent out just one Tweet -- a #tbt about her own award years ago. And then took another full day to congratulate McBride. If Farrell were not posting regularly on Tweet and had said nothing, nobody would have thought twice about that -- many people don't tweet. And it's possible, of course, that those Tweets are being sent out by a staffer, not Farrell herself.

Thanks to social media, as you note, public figures of all sorts are under scrutiny they didn't experience just a few years ago!

Link to comment

No doubt it was merely clumsiness on the part of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet's Twitter administrator, who had planned a "Thrownback Thursday" tweet in advance and didn't consider that it would look ungracious on the day of the McBride announcement. Hopefully, next year he or she will try not to steal the thunder from a colleague of Farrell's by checking the list of inductees first.

Link to comment

I think Villella and “The Man I Love” are both obvious choices. Would love to see Tiler Peck dance it. Baryshnikov would be nice for name recognition value even if it wasn’t a partnership made in heaven.

McBride and Helgi Tomasson danced quite a bit together before the hiring of Baryshnikov. Tomasson probably isn’t enough of a name but it would be nice to see a tribute from him.

Completely agree with all of the above--and I always found Mcbride-Tomasson a wonderful partnership!

Link to comment

Something similar happened a few years ago in the entry on Duo Conertante for Farrell's. Note From the Ballet blog. Discussing the ballet she mentioned that she danced it with Peter Martins who originated the role, but she neglects to mention Kay Mazzo by name as the first to dance the female role. It struck me as an odd oversight. In light of this discussion, I can see that it could be interpreted as a statement that her interpretation was the first one that mattered.

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...