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MCB Program II


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MCB's site is down just now, leaving me wondering who's staging La Valse*? Is there a name in the printed program? (Not that that it's necessarily on the web site. Staging Balanchine well doesn't seem to be one of Lopez's priorities.) It's an old favorite of mine from Balanchine's days in New York, but I'm not thrilled by MCB's demonstrations of Balanchine these days. (I'll check up on them in April when they tour here in Chicago. I'm as much interested in their Symphonic Dances as in their performances of the Balanchine works flanking it.)

In the Upper Room is not my glass of tea either, but everybody's in it, and I had developed some affection for Villella's troupe by the time they put it on. (I still remember how Mary Carmen Catoya was tossed in the air by two boys downstage near the end, and how she always cracked a smile up there.)

Most of the few ballets by Martins I've seen have lacked point - reason for being - and all of the little music by Barber I've heard has been unpleasant. They might be suited to each other though, straining, contrived and empty. (Martins doesn't seem to hear his music very well, and with Barber there's nothing to hear?) Probably very trendy looking.

*Of course, as cubanmiamiboy corrects me below, I meant to write La Source. Maybe because I was just looking at some footage of Cotillon, like La Valse, another mystery which ends with swirling movement similar to it, the old wires in my head short-circuited. La Source and La Valse are very different, as different as their music, as different as drinking champagne could be from dancing on the edge of a volcano.

Edited by Jack Reed
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Hi Jack. I think you meant to write "La Source" instead of "La Valse". That said, Lourdes Lopez went onstage and gave a little pre performance talk, in which she stated that Merryl Ashley had come to stage it, along with Nilas Martins to stage his father's piece. Tricia Albertson and a lovely Renato Panteado were the leads, with Zoe Zien as the soloist girl. I liked the piece, although I don't see it being a favorite of mine a la T&V, Symphony in C or Diamonds. It has an elegant allure though.

Then came the Martins thing. It had something to do with two couples onstage, one representing classical ballet, the other modern dance. Boring stuff...completely forgettable.

And then.."In the Upper Room", which by now it seems to be the presentation card of MCB. It looks as it is danced every other season. Can we have a break from it..? Of course, the audience was whistling and cheering by the end. Miami LOVES this type of stuff, as much as they adore Cirque de Soleil. Oh well. By the way...I also remember fondly Mary Carmen in the segment you mention. She was wonderful. I really miss her dancing a lot.

I was sitting in a box, and my neighboring box was full of MCB dancers who were very enthusiastic by the end of the Tharp piece, screaming and encouraging their peers. ;-)

Now...let's go back to the Raymonda conversation....

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ROTFL, Christian...."the Martins thing..." As for the Tharp, I was with you when you first saw it and EEK! I love La Source, especially the section in which the corps ladies are in a line on point, facing backstage, bourreeing backwards toward the audience. Balanchine had a way of perfectly capturing the "perfume" of the music.

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It's almost a trite expression - except nobody really applies it - that Balanchine made music visible, but, yes, he made scents visible too, at times. Of course, in La Source he had a good collaborator in Delibes, one of his three favorites.

Thanks for filling me in on Ashley, Cristian. I was thinking, Verdy, but what do I know? People like them continue to surprise me long after they've left the stage themselves.

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Well, I do know that La Source was made on Violette Verdy, not Merrill Ashley. So, Ashley and not Verdy? Assuming Verdy, on whose special ornamented, detailed and nuanced dancing La Source was made, is still available, as she was when Villella invited her to stage Emeralds and Sonatine (helped in the latter with Jean-Pierre Bonnefous).

At MCB, those two ballets looked much like they had originally - first seeing Mary Carmen Catoya in Emeralds from a distant point in the theater I had trouble getting it out of my head that it wasn't Verdy herself, although from a better spot later I could also appreciate what Catoya brought to it; and seeing first MCB's third cast for Sonatine took me back, too. Inviting originators to stage ballets was Villella's practice at MCB.

But some of us have noticed that Lopez has brought a different style to MCB's Balanchine performance from what the company had in Villella's day - more demonstration than realization - and Ashley's own "cleaner" simpler style may be more in keeping with that, if she imported it into her staging of Source.

I'm not seeing this run of MCB performances for myself, so I can't say whether it looks like she did, but you can see for yourself Ashley's style in her performance of Ballo della Regina, which was made on her (and which she made little short of stupendous) - on the Nonesuch Choreography by Balanchine video (along with Balanchine's company's style).

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