MCB 2010-11 Season What do you think? Whom woud you cast?

[cubanmiamiboy]

Kronenberg and Guerra performed "selections" from T&V at the Open Barre performances last April. She has great warmth and was something of a goddess. I can still see Kronenberg's openness -- it was a rich, plush performance. For some reason, I was reminded of the actress Ava Gardner.

But I wonder if she has the right fearless attack , essential in some sections...(like those series of super fast chainee turns in three opposite directions in the ballerina's opening variation...)

The name "Rodriguez" in your list confused me for a second. Is he dropping "Garcia-Rodriguez"?

No, bart...he's not. I just momentarily forgot the "Garcia"

I would love to see Carranza with Reyneris Reyes. Carranza seems to draw energy and gain freedom when dancing with a strong partner. However, T&V is on Program I, and Carranza for the past few years has not participated in Program I.

Oh, that's right. Well, in that case, I guess Reyes can be paired with Patricia-(another option for her besides Garcia-Rodriguez)

Jeanette Delgado. YES. But right now I can't think of a perfect partner. She deserves to have one with whom she can work with regularly and build a shared history.

Even if he's never been Jeannette's frequent partner, I think Panteado would be a good choice for her. I mean, he has shown great, clean technique in the past seasons. He turns really well-(a high point of T&V for the male dancer). But for some reason I suspect he will be assigned to dance with Catoya, whom I hadn't included in my initial list.

About Albertson and Wu...

[Jack Reed]

(from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) Both MCB and the Suzanne Farrell Ballet (TSFB, as we distinguish it from San Francisco Ballet) are performing La Sonnambula this season. MCB's is staged by Allegra Kent, TSFB's is staged by Farrell, and lately by no coincidence I was in the New York Public Library's Dance Collection at the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center reading some of the transcripts of long interviews (60 hours altogether!) from May 2000 with the remarkable Frederic Franklin, who danced the role of the Poet in the original 1946 version and who has seen Kent's and Farrell"s and others'. I hope to see TSFB's performances at the Kennedy Center on 19th and 21st November at 7:30 and on the 20th at 1:30 (with "Monumentum/Movements", incidentally) and MCB's at the Broward CPA on 14th through 16th January, 2011.

What's different? Franklin's interviewers asked him, and here from my notes, is what he said about the differences, keeping the substance of the interview rather than attempting to summarize it, for reasons I think you will infer, and where I have tried to preserve the interviewers' interpolations [in parentheses]:

Sonnambula, I have done that [in Cincinnati before], and so has Suzanne [Farrell]. And both are so different. [Nancy Reynolds laughs]

...

...the Sleep[walker] [pas de deux], this is not what we learned; it's different. Also, there's lots of discrepancies in what we call the tango, that we did with Maria [Tallchief, the pas de deux between the Coquette and the Poet.] Also, since the Blackamoors have gone [have been deemed politically incorrect and offensive]...

Bart Cook is coaching in Cincinnati... He said, "Now, stop, "What did you do [in the original]?" Well, I did put it all right, and he's got it.

Then we got to the sleepwalking scene, and we've put that right.

... ... ...

What makes Sonnambula look so different from the way we did it is the fact that the men are in tights, and we were in trousers.

... It makes the men in tights with tail coats look stupid. [laughter] And poor Misha [Mikhail Baryshnikov] look like a man in a hole, to use Mr. Balanchine's expression. I mean, it takes away all the masculinity. We had beautiful gray [trousers]. I had on a lovely jacket. ... Mr. Balanchine approved and thought it was lovely ...

... ... ...

And there was Allegra [Kent], [her version] and there was Vicky [simon] [her version], and I said, "You know, if you haven't listened to the music, you will know you're in the wrong place and doing it with -- " And they said, "But that's how we learned it." Then who did they learn it from and -- we can't go into all of that, but that's what happens. And the little things go. So there you are.

And here we are. I've never seen Sonnambula with men in trousers, only tights and tail coats, as Eric Bruhn appears in a picture in Nancy Reynolds' excellent "Repertory in Review," presumably from early in the ballet's existence at Balanchine's NYCB, where it premiered in 1960, with Bruhn in that cast.

[Jack Reed]

(from Fort Lauderdale, Florida) But having posted that, I don't want to give the wrong idea. I'm less concerned with whether a performance is an accurate reproduction - "authentic" in that literal sense - than I am it be a memorable realization - give a sense of authenticity according to that meaning. It should come to life. Its choreographer may have made changes and adjustments along the way; some one today may see the need for some. And so we may have different but differently valid versions, or some invalid ones, which lack something inner, some coherence, some - as I say, and I know this is ambiguous, some life, some presence. Memorable, not a memory, as Suzanne Farrell says. In other words, a performance ought to be judged mainly on its own qualities, its own merits. Certainly never as a copy of anything - if it looks like a copy, then, in my book, it doesn't have its own life. A memory then, interesting, but not so memorable.