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

SFB: Dances At A Gathering & Elite Syncopations, 2-8 mat


Recommended Posts

wit is a wonderful quality in a dancer -- Monica Mason had it in everything.... it makes them accessible.

THis shold be a tpoic of its own -- the corps dancer whom everybody loved. I can think of 4 or 5 right off the bat in San Francisco -- startng with Kim Davy, who isn't here any more but in Symphony in C, in hte last movement, there's this tiny moment where 2 girls run forward from hte back and make a huge circle and run back to the back, before then next big section begins -- Kim was hte girl stage left, and wshe made this one of the HIGHLIGHTSA of the entire ballet -- it's kind of like a drumroll -- it announces that something even MORE wonderful than everythign so far is ABOUT TO HAPPEN, and she made it like a cascade of pearls.......

And there was Askia Swift, also gone -- to Ailey? -- wonderfully musical,always, in everything. He wsa especially thrilling in Val Caniparoli's LAmbarena, the plastique in the jumps was amazing, and hte part of hte body that initiated the movement -- it's a character ballet, with lots of Senegalese movement fused with ballet -- was always extremely clear -- his ribs were so expressive.....

And Chidozie Nzerem, who's also african american - -still with SFB, anda wonderfully answerable dancer-- when he was young, he was rather rigidly classical -- he was oneo f Larissa Sklyanskaya's greatest students, and his clarity and power were so noble and so Russian -- I saw him do the barrel turns from Corsaire at the student show, it was like the young Nureyev -- He's a wonderful character dancer -- as a guest at the Nutcracker party he steals he show, the character has been so thought through -- and of course, as the black face at the party, he does stand out..... but he does nothing to gravb focus, he just is responsible for what you see. I LOVE that. As hte tuba in Robbins fanfare.... he understands the vaudeville side of the role; he's a scream. And in d'Amboise's role in Western Symphony, again he understands the relation of the creature he;'s presenting to antecedents in American popular theater and he uses all the tradition -- he's got some black shtick, he's got some cowboy shtick, he's got his Russian tricks, he's got his sweet danseur noble deference (as he ducks under her leg, well, that's what a cavalier would do, the lady's the man, its SO SWEET).... and with Leslie Young (who's CHinsese American) , they really look like hte old wild west, where such racial mixing on an absolutely equal basis was a real possibility, maybe the first place in the world......

NOt to mention Sara Sessions, the TALL GIRL in everything who was never out of hte corps and in everything, a wonderful dancer in modern stuff (Lar Lubovitch' has his corps BE the storm in Othello -- kind of an awful ballet as a whole, but with so MANY redeeming features, and she was fantastic), perfect in Agon, perfect as the Wili center left in hte back row, very fine in "Company B" -- and now the poster girl for ballet.co (here's he link to her interview.... http://www.ballet.co.uk/magazines/yr_99/ma...ra_sessions.htm)

And that's just a start.....

Link to comment

At risk of veering far off topic, let me run this by you.

I have found that in ballets where I have had a favorite dancer occupy a role for a number of years, my eye becomes trained to her (usually her) blocking. After she has moved on (up or out), I have a hard time not watching her usually less worthy successor.

I still "follow" Judith Fugate's corps/demi successors in Serenade and Who Cares! :rolleyes:

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

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