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ABT's spring tour 2015


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I guess ABT felt compelled to acknowledge de Mille in its 75th year. I'm afraid it will look second-rate next to the Tudor. And does ABT really need to program two overwrought one-act dramas in one evening? It's unfortunate that ABT's choreographic heritage consists mostly of two not very prolific choreographers whose approaches to dance represent dead ends in the history of American ballet. Thank goodness for Robbins' and Balanchine's one-offs for ABT. Or did they choreograph any other works for ABT that we don't usually see? Both de Mille and Tudor can seem terribly dated. Maybe Ratmansky will finally be the great choreographer ABT has always needed?

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I saw Rodeo by ABT at the fall 2012 season at City Center. Yes, it's a classic, but I couldn't sit through it more than once that week. Fortunately, it was programmed last, so I could slip out. The big highlight of that week was Ratmansky's then-new Symphony No. 9 and I can sit through that endlessly and never feel I've absorbed everything. I can't remember if they did Rodeo the following spring.

I see in the press release on the ABT site that Push is not mentioned for the 75th anniversary year celebrations. That was a milestone for the company and I was looking forward to seeing the revival with perhaps Cornejo and Simkin in the Baryshnikov role. I suspect they would both do a great job and it's so much fun for the rest of the cast. I will be on the east coast in mid-March and was actually thinking of spending a few days in DC to see it. Scratch that!!

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I see in the press release on the ABT site that Push is not mentioned for the 75th anniversary year celebrations. That was a milestone for the company and I was looking forward to seeing the revival with perhaps Cornejo and Simkin in the Baryshnikov role. I suspect they would both do a great job and it's so much fun for the rest of the cast. I will be on the east coast in mid-March and was actually thinking of spending a few days in DC to see it. Scratch that!!

I agree about the role that ballet plays in the history of the company -- I'm sorry that they won't' be able to included it in their programming.

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Both de Mille and Tudor can seem terribly dated. Maybe Ratmansky will finally be the great choreographer ABT has always needed?

My suspicion with Tudor revivals is that bad coaching and bad staging create that dated effect. In the right hands (as in those of the late Sallie Wilson), Tudor revivals need not be mere exercises in history.

As for Ratmansky at ABT, he will make no change to ABT's DNA. An interviewer once asked the great Cubist painter Georges Braque, "When did the public accept modern art?" Braque replied: "They never accepted it. They endured it." The same holds true for ABT's audience. The dance intelligenstia may love Shostakovich Trilogy but the regular ABT audience will only endure things like that so long as they get stars holding forth in the grand manner in Swan Lake and Giselle and Romeo and Juliet.

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Both de Mille and Tudor can seem terribly dated. Maybe Ratmansky will finally be the great choreographer ABT has always needed?

My suspicion with Tudor revivals is that bad coaching and bad staging create that dated effect. In the right hands (as in those of the late Sallie Wilson), Tudor revivals need not be mere exercises in history.

As for Ratmansky at ABT, he will make no change to ABT's DNA. An interviewer once asked the great Cubist painter Georges Braque, "When did the public accept modern art?" Braque replied: "They never accepted it. They endured it." The same holds true for ABT's audience. The dance intelligenstia may love Shostakovich Trilogy but the regular ABT audience will only endure things like that so long as they get stars holding forth in the grand manner in Swan Lake and Giselle and Romeo and Juliet.

That's a great way of explaining why the war horses are perpetually hauled out, one after the other.

I guess I'm in the minority as a regular ABT attendee. I do love to see the big ballets, but I don't get enough of their mixed rep programs or new modern ballets.

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I think most people head over across the plaza for mixed rep programs with modern ballets. It's really the best of all possible worlds because there is such a vast array of choices for ballet lovers. War Horse full length ballets = ABT; modern/contemporary = NYCB.

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My suspicion with Tudor revivals is that bad coaching and bad staging create that dated effect. In the right hands (as in those of the late Sallie Wilson), Tudor revivals need not be mere exercises in history.

Amanda McKerrow and her husband were coaching the Tudor ballets. Not sure if they still do the coaching. The Leave Are Fading and Lilac Garden are among my favorite ballets. I never feel that they are dated.

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Marcelo Gomes just sent out a Tweet with a link to an Instagram showing Ethan Stiefel teaching the men's company class at ABT. How long before audiences start noticing improvements? I like Marcelo's #inspiration in his message.

http://instagram.com/p/xKaETsiuVJ/

Stiefel is also now listed on the ABT "company teachers" list, although I don't know when that was posted. Marcelo has been sending a lot of holiday Tweets from Brazil and was in Russia before that, so it's hard to guess when that photo was taken.

http://www.abt.org/insideabt/staff.asp

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A separate men's class taught by someone like Steifel is a great idea considering how young so many of the male corps members are. But the men's class won't solve the very real problem ABT has with male dancers getting fed up with a lack of career movement and leaving.

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Casting is up on the Kennedy Center website. I've decided to see the Reyes/Gorak cast again, as this will be my last chance to see Reyes dance before she retires. I saw this cast last year at the Met, but I look forward to seeing it again.

No big surprises in casting, but I didn't expect to see Vasiliev there.

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Casting is up on the Kennedy Center website. I've decided to see the Reyes/Gorak cast again, as this will be my last chance to see Reyes dance before she retires. I saw this cast last year at the Met, but I look forward to seeing it again.

No big surprises in casting, but I didn't expect to see Vasiliev there.

He's not, I think you must have looked at last years Don Q?

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Casting is up on the Kennedy Center website. I've decided to see the Reyes/Gorak cast again, as this will be my last chance to see Reyes dance before she retires. I saw this cast last year at the Met, but I look forward to seeing it again.

No big surprises in casting, but I didn't expect to see Vasiliev there.

He's not, I think you must have looked at last years Don Q?

Thank you - you are correct!

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I hope he can hang in there. Every dancer I have spoken to about T&V has said it's the absolute hardest thing they have ever done. I remember reading this from a Dance Magazine article in which David Hallberg spoke about it: "When I ask David more about ABT’s 'cardio repertoire' he offers up Balanchine’s Theme and Variations as something that 'never becomes less stressful or excruciatingly painful' as the years go on. Theme has been a staple at ABT since it was created there in 1947. Though the ballet is only 20 minutes, Baryshnikov was famously quoted saying, 'If you can do a good Theme and Variations, you can do a good anything.' For the female lead the ballet is a dizzying display of hard-boiled technique; for the male there are combinations that David suggests are the most demanding feats in the classical idiom. 'I am so tired by the end of the marathon that the last thing I want is to have someone sitting on my shoulder,' David says of the famous last pose when the curtain goes down. 'No disrespect to any of the ladies, but I never get a ballerina down from a lift quicker than I do after Theme.' - See more at: http://www.dancemagazine.com/issues/June-2010/Literally-Breathtaking#sthash.YVYLHTw6.dpuf

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Though the ballet is only 20 minutes, Baryshnikov was famously quoted saying, 'If you can do a good Theme and Variations, you can do a good anything.'

Baryshnikov also said T&V was the hardest ballet he'd ever danced and that he felt his "legs would fall off" when he was done.

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Though the ballet is only 20 minutes, Baryshnikov was famously quoted saying, 'If you can do a good Theme and Variations, you can do a good anything.'

Baryshnikov also said T&V was the hardest ballet he'd ever danced and that he felt his "legs would fall off" when he was done.

It may have been excruciating to dance, but it was certainly exhilarating to see -- I only ever saw him on video with this, but what a wonderful performance!

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