PetipaFan

Several new names have appeared in the roster at the NYC Ballet website... Jenelle Manzi, Troy Schumacher, Gretchen Smith, and Giovanni Villalobos.

"Peter Martins is probably and hopefully a good ballet executive for the New York City Ballet, but he is a wretched choreographer. He takes advantage of his position when it comes to programming and casting" -- KayDenmark's Translation of Henrik Lyding writing in Jyllands-Posten. It seems I have heard this before about Mr Martins!

We don't even know why Martins put 'Fearful' on the Opening Night program, did he make the decision himself? I do know that the dancers began working on it Tuesday and they will spend an enormous amount of time and effort to pull it off. Opening Night crowds are different from regular balletgoers, they are less the 'Ballet Maniacs' ('balletomanes') like here at Ballet Talk. It seems to me there is nothing symbolic about presenting those people with Balanchine. There's going to be plenty of Balanchine performed in the coming season.

"Now, now, Farrrell Fan. Let's be fair. There are so few Balanchine ballets that when "Tarantella" was pulled -- undoubtedly for an excellent reason -- it would have been impossible to find a substitute " -- Alexandra It's weird that Martins removed Tarantella and replaced it with his own ballet and not another Balanchine? What WAS the excellent reason for this? I just re-read this thread and no one has offered the excellent reason.

I think it's fantastic that Peter Martins is giving Albert Evans a chance on Opening Night with a new ballet of his and N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz was actually well received by none other than Robert Greskovic, writing in the Wall Street Journal last June. Farrell Fan, there seems to be some disagreement as to who is responsible for the break between Farrell and Martins...I think she must write a letter to Martins asking to return like she did to Balanchine and make it public. If he rejects her, then he will be the bad guy she has nothing to lose.

I'd take another episode of "I Love Lucy" before they jumped the shark and moved to Connecticut! :rolleyes: http://www.jumptheshark.com/ This begs the question of when New York City Ballet jumped it, I say never. Peter Martins wrote some interesting things which might be helpful in this discussion in the Preface for the 1998 book, "Tributes, Celebrating Fifty Years of New York City Ballet." "At its core NYCB has always been a choreographer's company, and it continues to be. When people think of NYCB, they think of Balanchine, of course, and they think of Jerome Robbins, but there were always other choreographers as well. That is the source of our strength, our continuity, and our constant renewal. This is a place where choreographers come to make new ballets. The dancers are equipped not only with superb technique, they are also tuned in to a choreographer's mind; they have the tools, mental and physical, to offer a choreographer. Our dancers, in turn, require new choreography. It stretches them, it keeps them engaged; it keeps them fresh. It enables them to discover things about themselves. The same goes for the audience. They want new ballets, they want to be part of the evolution of dancing. It is a faith that we, dancers and audience, share: a faith in the future of dance. At the same time, NYCB is the place where the tradition of classical ballet remains strong, perhaps stronger than anywhere else in the world. Balanchine believed in this idiom, in the classical vocabulary, and his belief still informs us. When choreographers come to work here, I insist-or try to-that they use this vocabulary. It is what our dancers know. We have women for whom it is second nature to dance on pointe; we have men who can jump and turn. This language is very difficult to speak, but it is very beautiful. I am always looking for people who understand this. I keep looking; I keep opening the door. It would be the antithesis of Balanchine's belief to close the door on the new, to exclude the rest of the world only to polish Balanchine. Dance exists in the present. With each performance, with each performer, a ballet changes. Balanchine made Apollo in 1925; over half a century he refined it, eliminating passages, paring sets, streamlining it into its final, distilled form."

Doesn't anyone have nice things to say about Peter Martins? I think he has an absolutely impossible job.

Remember what B was quoted as saying in Bernard Taper's book: "He says he doesn't want his works preserved. "For whom?" he asks me. "For people to see that I don't even know what they're like, that aren't even born yet? And are my ballets going to be danced by dancers I don't know, that I haven't trained? Those won't really be my ballets. The choreography, the steps--those don't mean a thing. Steps are made by a person. It's the person dancing the steps--that's what choreography is, not the steps themselves."" Why would you want to see Balanchine ballets anyway, Farrell Fan? (I'm joking, of course.)

"There was a lot of music he loved which he didn't think was appropriate for dance (Beethoven, for example) or to which he didn't feel he could do justice (much Bach and Mozart)." -- Helene It's hard to believe that Balanchine never did anything on Beethoven? If you ask 'what is ballet music' from the perspective of Balanchine it's something interesting but not too interesting. "In the case of Symphony in C, at the time there was a lot of fuss over the newly found score" -- Helene He chose something that would be popular and it's not too interesting either.

I wonder why Balanchine chose the particular music he used in ballets, why for example that Bizet Symphony in C and not some other? Was he always choosing works that were good for dance or did he just pick what he liked?

" The first picture looks gorgeous! As if it was taken underwater! " shulie It is exquisite I would call the picture 'Balancing Point.' See how Tracey's knee is bent there it's so perfectly natural and beautiful. This is something I love about the ballet, the naturalness of movement and gesture, especially as performed by great artists like Margaret Tracey and Nikolaj Hübbe.

There are 5 pictures of Margaret Tracey performing Zakouski with Nikolaj Hübbe at Corbis: Zakouski with Nikolaj Hübbe & Margaret Tracey The caption reads "Margaret Tracey and Nikolai Hubke dance a piece entitled 'Zakousi' from the NYC Ballet's Diamond Project which is showing at the Playhouse as part of the Edinburgh International Festival." Some spelling errors there!

This was posted in 'Links' here on this forum, but in case anyone missed it there was a story in the Hartford Courant on 17 August about the "The Ballerina in the 21st Century" Symposium held at the Nutmeg Conservatory. Story from 17 August Hartford Courant "The two generations of dancers disagreed regarding professional opportunities. Emily Patterson, soloist at the Joffrey Ballet, and Alexandra Ansanelli, principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, spoke of dancers' difficulties in finding places to forge a career. "I feel I am lucky to have a place to dance," says the Harwinton-born Patterson. However, Gregory and D'Antuono felt there are now more companies for dancers to perform than when they were starting out. "Now you don't just have to go to New York City anymore," said Gregory." I wonder what Ansanelli was arguing it's not clear from this story.

“One female dancer who has garnered accolades lately is the French-born and European-schooled Ms. Sylve. The fact that this glamorous-looking but nonexpansive dancer of uneven, old-fashioned technique has been variously hailed as a superlative Balanchine stylist..." -- Robert Greskovic, Wall Street Journal, (Eastern edition), New York, N.Y., 29 Jun 2005, page D8. "Sofiane Sylve dances with glorious virtuosity. Her musical phrases are sweeping, her pirouettes extravagant, and her leaps exultant. She looks like she could jump over a rainbow. Sylve has a clear affinity for Balanchine's choreography, but her background is European." -- Allegra Kent, Dance Magazine, February 2005. I see Sofiane Sylve as Allegra Kent described her she's sweeping not nonexpansive and her European background is a great asset.

I always like to read Robert Greskovic’s Dance column in the Wall Street Journal. At the end of June he wrote about the current and future state of NYCB: "If New York City Ballet were as successful at looking forward as its recent run proved to be in looking back, the impact and importance of the company founded by the visionary and forward-looking George Balanchine would be more securely on the track often touted by its current director, Peter Martins..." That's a fairly positive comment I thought! What he meant was he liked Jerome Robbins's 1958 “New York Export: Opus Jazz” which was revived. But speaking of the current NYCB dancers, of the men he only singles out Jared Angle for praise and says of Ask la Cour that he “is capable in many ways, so long as his parts don't demand clean, classical dancing, which eludes him.” Among the women, Greskovic praises Weese, Bouder, Fairchild, Reichlen and Hyltin, but seems not to care much for Sylve! “One female dancer who has garnered accolades lately is the French-born and European-schooled Ms. Sylve. The fact that this glamorous-looking but nonexpansive dancer of uneven, old-fashioned technique has been variously hailed as a superlative Balanchine stylist tells me either that standards for watching Balanchine dancing are fading or that they were never understood in the first place... But that's another aspect of NYCB and its future fortunes." -- Robert Greskovic, Wall Street Journal, (Eastern edition), New York, N.Y., 29 Jun 2005, page D8. I was surprised Greskovic said that Sylve has an 'old-fashioned technique' what is the sort of 'old fashion' he was referring to, a ‘European’ old style? It’s not very helpful for Greskovic NOT to tell us precisely what displeases him about Sylve as she might benefit from his criticism if it were valid. As though the ‘Balanchine Style’ were something so perfect that the differences individual dancers bring to it from their unique backgrounds is a lesser art than the ‘pure’ Balanchine we might expect to see from a SAB student? I don’t think it’s correct to call Sylve ‘nonexpansive’ in Balanchine: http://www.sofsylve.com/images/western-symphony-nycb1.jpg I made a list of the current NYCB principals and the year of their promotion: Kyra Nichols '79 Darci Kistler '82 Wendy Whelan '91 Miranda Weese '96 Yvonne Borrée '97 Maria Kowroski '99 Jennifer Ringer '00 Jennie Somogyi '00 Sofiane Sylve '03 Ashley Bouder '05 Megan Fairchild '05 Janie Taylor '05 And the men… Damian Woetzel ’89 Nikolaj Hübbe ’92 Nilas Martins ’93 Philip Neal ’93 Albert Evans ’95 Charles Askegard ’98 Benjamin Millepied ’02 Sébastien Marcovici ’02 Stephen Hanna ’05 I hope I didn’t leave anyone out there are now 12 female and 9 male principals at NYCB? It seems to me looking to the future the problem is definitely not Sylve but that new male talent is needed I suppose they will have to find an adult principal somewhere in the world to bring in? Who can they get?