melange

I haven't really noticed any individuality from one year to the next - probably due to my own inattention - but, given that The Nutcracker is the only thing on the menu at NYCB in December, one has the chance to notice in lurid detail the differences among the performances from night to night. Not only can the same key dancers be spectacular on one night and ragged on another, but sometimes the whole performance can be either great, or seemingly star-crossed, as when the children lose their bearings if the conductor treats the music as a timed exercise, when snowflakes start falling, literally, or when there are scenery malfunctions. The sheer number of performances, however, does afford ample opportunity to see how different dancers treat each role. Wednesday night was my first Nutcracker of the season and I was pleased overall. So was everyone else, apparently, as there were ample guffaws and spontaneous bursts of applause. Maria Kowroski and Charles Askegard were superb as the Sugarplum Fairy and her cavalier. She treated us to a fine demonstration of her adagio technique, using her sweeping long limbs to maximum effect. Her supported arabesque, pulled along on the sliding plate during the grand pas de deux was majestic: she stood tall, straight and utterly immobile. I think that when that move is performed correctly, with no wobbling, it underscores Balanchine's sheer genius as a choreographer. Kowroski and Askegard both wobbled a bit in the supported arabesque with Askegard on one knee near the end of the duet (I've noticed that this is frequently the case; would it be crass to ask an NYCB dancer if there is something peculiarly difficult about this?), but concluded with a smooth, graceful fish dive. They received a well-deserved tumultuous ovation. The grand pas did provide an unexpected risible flourish when Kowroski's tutu began unraveling in the back, giving her a long, thin tail, with a fuzzy bit on the end. It floated and danced, as if of its own free will, glistening brightly under the lights. When Kowroski rejoined Askegard after his short solo, her tail had been docked. Tea was marvelous, with Daniel Ulbricht wowing everyone with his madcap high jumps and wide splits. Newly-minted corpswomen Lauren Lovette and Sarah Villwock positively sparkled as his sidekicks, No Darn Fun and Achoo. Teresa Reichlen was wonderful as the Arabian dancer. Since she is my favorite ballerina, I'm inclined to take everything she does with a grain of sugar, so it's probably not objective of me to say that her extensions and overall slinkiness were fabulous. Reichlen usually dances with her face frozen in a toothy, but mirthless smile, so it was particularly captivating when, on the very last note, she ended with a kittenish grin. The audience was charmed. I don't know if her Coffee was enough to awaken every man in the theater, as my balletomanic elders and betters tell me Gloria Govrin's was, but it was enough to quiet the four French businessmen sitting in front of me, who otherwise ran their bouches for pretty much most of the performance. The only disappointment for me was Megan Fairchild's performance as the Dewdrop. Although capable, her turns were slow and her numerous sautes de chat were rather lackluster. Other Dewdrops (Bouder, Hyltin, Mearns, to name a few) end very effectively by freezing dramatically on the last note - wonderful! But when the music stopped last night, Fairchild was still moving. Since the Dewdrop is all speedy entrances and exits and tight turns and jumps through the flowers, a certain explosive verve is required to make the role, and Fairchild quite simply did not have it. Sara Mearns did bring all that to one rendition of the Dewdrop I saw last November, and for this reason, despite her falling, her performance was was far, far more compelling than Fairchild's. I made this observation to the out-of-town friend who accompanied me last night and was told that I am a nitpicking, spoiled New Yorker who doesn't know how good he's got it. I've seen Fairchild dance a much better Dewdrop before and I know she was just having an off night, so I will go watch her dance the role again this season...for you see, all it takes for me to get to the Ed Koch Theater is a short ride on the IRT. How good have New Yorkers got it?

If you want to spot nearly everyone at NYCB, you can't do much better than the Emerald Inn, on 69th and Columbus. I've been there only a few times after performances, but each time it was packed with dancers blowing off steam, and last time I had a brief but friendly chat with a prima who stole my seat while I was out smoking (I let her keep it - she'd been on her feet all evening).

In looking at NYCB's website today, I note that the corps' ranks have swollen, with the addition of Chrosniak, Gerrity, Hillyer, Isaacs, Jacobson, Lovette, Tong and Villwock. I'm very happy for them; one can only imagine what a feeling of accomplishment, euphoria and even relief it must be to achieve this after having spent an entire childhood toiling after it. The addition of new corps members also gives us more material with which to play "Spot the Principals," a great parlor game...

I think the above lineup, with the addition of Kowroski as Terpsichore, would be just fine. Among the corps members, I think Chase Finlay (in my mind, the most talented of the male newcomers) would be superb and I wonder how Justin Peck might handle Apollo? Not to belabor the tattoo issue, but as someone who regards ink as appropriate only for sailors and motorcycle gang members, I am inclined to disqualify those with tattoos from any role in which the blemish can be seen or cannot be masked. To be fair, however, if the tattoo is sufficiently unobtrusive not to be a distraction (Marcovici's sophomoric teardrops) then I suppose the dancer could perform a role in which it is visible. But I don't want Apollo prancing around with "Momma didn't love me" splashed across his chest.

I know some considerable time has now passed, but since no one replied to this query, I thought I’d weigh in on the June 23rd performance. The evening opened with Prodigal Son, in which Teresa Reichlen worked her usual magic as the siren. I had expected Mirage to be a letdown after Prodigal Son, but it was not. Composer (and conductor) Esa-Pekka Salonen's violin concerto was complex and gripping - particularly one passage for violin and oboe - and the solo violinist, Leila Josefowicz, who played without music, was singularly captivating. Only an out-of-place jazz/rock drum solo kept the piece for me an "A" rather than an "A+." The choreography was nicely thrown together, if not anything spectacular, and it lends itself to the music nicely. Jennie Somogyi and Jared Angle, Anthony Huxley and Erica Pereira, and Chase Finlay and Kathryn Morgan were the three chief duos and all were quite good. They were joined by eight corps members. Somogyi and Angle danced a nice extended adagio, while Huxley and Finlay were given the opportunity to make some huge jumps. The pas de deux were sufficiently intricate to be enjoyable. I should have written this out immediately afterward, but the impression I’m left with now is that the dancing was a bit repetitive, though not in an unpleasant way, and there was a lot of draping of the women over the shoulders of the men. The dancers were nearly always in the diagonal. One flourish I liked (but which my companion thought jivey) was when Finlay turned Morgan, who was standing in an arabesque facing the audience, completely over so that her upper body faced upward with her leg in the air. The piece ended with everyone performing this maneuver. I suspect this is a minority view, but what I singularly disliked about the piece was the Calatrava set - a huge, malevolent, spoked oval that opened and closed, pincer-like, and that also turned on its side and changed color. It hung precariously above the stage, like some Gimmick of Damocles, threatening at any moment to squash the dancers scurrying about below it. In my view, it did what I think sets should never do; that is, distract from the viewing of the dancing. In Mirage, the dancing is interesting enough (just enough) to stand on its own and NYCB should get rid of the set. On balance, I enjoyed the piece and would see it again (I would love to see Esa-Pekka Salonen and Leila Josefowicz perform the score alone as a concert piece). I should explain why I said above that I expected to be let down by Mirage. The chief reason is because I find that much of Peter Martins' choreography prevents dancers from showing what they are capable of doing. In fact, I find it downright straitjacketing: the dismal Naïve and Sentimental Music was a series of pas de deux on Thorazine that dragged on for 50 interminable minutes, preventing dancers with naïve and sentimental impulses from expressing them, or indeed from expressing anything at all. I’ve thought about this somewhat after reading member Jack Reed’s posting that he came away from Balanchine’s PAMTGG convinced that there is little that dancers cannot do, but that the question in the case of that work was why they were doing it. Other members of this forum who saw PAMTGG have said that they thought it ridiculous, or perhaps even pointless, but I don’t recall anyone saying he or she was bored by it. This suggests to me that even when Balanchine was plumbing the depths, he nevertheless created steps that exemplify the world-class skill and artistry of NYCB's dancers. Martins often does not do this. Mirage and a few others notwithstanding, I find Martin's works blandly formulaic and plodding, and unlike Balanchine's works, as well as most of Robbins' and Wheeldon's works, they frequently bore me.

Maybe I'm just used to NYCB's way of dancing Rubies, but I thought this work quite a peculiar choice for the two visiting dancers, as it would seem antithetical to the Paris Opera Ballet style. Still, I preferred it to the horror that followed it...

I've also seen two Nutcracker performances this season, with Reichlen and Bouder (my two favorites) alternating as Sugar Plum and Dewdrop. I noticed that both seemed to have more or less the same few unsteady moments toward the end of their Sugar Plum pas de deux, which made me wonder, as above, why this might be - particularly as I thought this would be a familiar routine that both their partners (La Cour/Veyette) and they would have down pat. By contrast, both turned in stellar performances as the Dewdrop, with Bouder in particular, just last night, provoking audible gasps from audience members around me and earning wild applause at the conclusion of the dance. Both also seemed to radiate a much greater enthusiasm for Dewdrop than for Sugar Plum. Maybe Dewdrop's just a lot more fun to dance than Sugar Plum.