zerbinetta

I have more specifics which I'll post later.

Among them, Ashley Bouder and Amar Ramasar will do Valse Fantaisie.

Very tempting!

From the Lake Placid Center for the Arts website:

Thursday, June 28, 2007

An Evening of Exceptional Dance...

Nilas Martins & Friends

Stars of Ballet Monday, July 2 • 7:30pm

Featuring principals & soloists appearing courtesy of the New York City Ballet Company.

Featured performers to include:

Antonio Carmena *

Joaquin De Luz *

Megan Fairchild *

Sterling Hyltin *

Ask la Cour *

Ashley Laracey *

Nilas Martins *

Sara Mearns *

Seth Orza *

Tiler Peck *

Daniel Ulbricht *

The 2007 program will premiere a New Ballet

by Nilas Martins & John Selya.

Reserved Seating: $28

$50 Patron Seating Available (limited to 30 seats) includes a reception to honor the dancers following the program at the home of the Mitchell Family.

Great dancers don't usually make great choreographers, so it would be best to judge his choreography on its own merits.

Not that he's great .. yet, anyway. His work is still in progress but it's been interesting to watch his growth.

Nilas has been choreographing for at least ten years that I know of. The first of his works I saw was a lovely pas de deux to Puccini music he did for Santa Fe Ballet. He has also choreographed for opera: Aida for Washington National Opera in 1992; Candide for Rome Opera, also 1992, and Le Villi in 2006 for Di Capo Opera in NY.

He has a particular affinity for Puccini's music and has choreographed a full-evening of Puccini works from arias to chamber music.

His company consists primarily of NYCB principals and soloists, sometimes augmented by Ailey II dancers, SAB students and his close friend, Monique Meunier.

His style differs dramatically from that of his father. Romantic, heart-on-sleeve and sweet.

There are other threads on his work elsewhere on the board.

I'd like to see how you ballet stalwarts would cope with coming into the city from Long Island 2-3 days a week!

Not well. Not at all well.

Additional news from NMDC: Nilas is doing new choreography to Stravinsky's "Les Noces" for the Santander (Spain) Festival on August 21, 2007.

That's a biggie!

Although I was greatly dismayed at the "slap" article and continue to be bewildered by MacCaulay's unPARTisanship, he does write from the heart as well as the mind. His Kyra farewell report was more in the nature of an elegy. It's quite possible he was more emotionally invested in Kyra's departure than he was in Ferri's. This was true of many of us.

Also, isn't it part of his job to spread the reviews around the staff and not keep all the "good stuff" to himself?

Ready for another ride to Patchogue?

Off to the boonies again! (I'm going to hear from bart on that.)

Figurante, those of us unable to attend will look forward to your post.

From the office of the Nilas Martins Dance Company:

The Nilas Martins Dance Foundation announces the upcoming activities of the Foundation:

July 2 Lake Placid Center for the Arts

The Nilas Martins Dance Company

Valse Fantasie (Balanchine)

Agon duo (Balanchine)

New Ballet (Stephen Pier)

Le Corsair pas de deux

Intermission

Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (Balanchine)

La Sylphide pas de deux

New Ballet (Nilas Martins and John Selya)

11 November 2007

Patchogue Theater for the Performing Arts

The Nilas Martins Dance Company

Swan Lake excerpts (Peter Martins)

New Ballet (Nilas Martins and John Selya)

Intermission

Puccini Songs (Nilas Martins)

The Nilas Martins Dance Company

with Stars of the New York City Ballet*

7 March 2008

Festival Casals Centro Bellas Artes

Santurce, Puerto Rico

Valse Fantasie (Balanchine)

Intermission

Tarantella (Balanchine)

Pause

Barber Violin Concerto, pas de deux (Peter Martins)

Pause

Don Quixote, pas de deux

Intermission

Ray Charles Tribute (Peter Martins, revised by Nilas Martins)

8 March 2008

Festival Casals Centro Bellas Artes

Santurce, Puerto Rico

Who Cares? (Balanchine)

Intermission

Swan Lake, pas de deux (Peter Martins)

Pause

Agon, duo (Balanchine)

Pause

Stars and Stripes, pas de deux (Balanchine)

Intermission

Puccini Songs (Nilas Martins)

26 April @ 8pm & 27 April 2008 @ 4pm

DANCE AT DICAPO

Dicapo Opera Theater

184 East 76th Street, New York, NY 10021

Nilas Martins and guest choreographers will present three new works

Three new ballets to original scores

When I receive any information on casting, I will post it.

The lipstick story is an amusing one, drb, but I have serious doubts about something so minor throwing off Vishneva's performance. She is a professional and this sort of thing becomes history once she hits the stage.

Her Juliet costume became ripped at the waist last Monday and she had to dance the last two scenes with the back half of the skirt hanging dangerously close to the floor. She didn't miss a beat.

I was in the minority (perhaps even a minority of one) who loved Vishneva's Odette. Her Odile was problematic but I chalked it up to the amount of adrenaline she had pumped into Act II & a consequent drop after.

She had clearly worked long and hard on Odette and she moved me.

It wouldn't surprise me if this year she gets it all together. (Remember she hasn't been doing this role very long.)

I would not call myself a true blue Vishneva fan. Sometimes I love her and sometimes I don't, but I never find her boring or rote. She is an intelligent, hard-working, gifted ballerina who often delights me, occasionally disappoints me and always fascinates me.

Don't pre-plan your response. Let her take you on her journey. It will be worth it.

Carlos Lopez sustained an injury serious enough to keep him off the stage for a year. To my eyes, he is not all the way back yet. He is a very musical and charming dancer. Perhaps he will regain form by the fall or next year.

No, he is not a technician the likes of Cornejo but who is?

Curious, though, that Salstein wasn't tapped for a Mercutio.

Cornejo had been replaced due to injury as far back as Bluebird, so it's likely he agreed to do Mercutio as long as he didn't have to do the Mandolin Dance, which is normally done by Mercutio. Why the company felt the need to announce it prior to Act II when it was listed in the program is a puzzle. He was clearly limping at the curtain call so his injury would seem to persist.

drb, the head-to-toe inspection/rejection of Paris to which MacCaulay referred (the one in the choreography) and the one to which I thought you referred is in Act III, not Act I. She doesn't reject Paris until she's in love with another.

And my vote also to Part for a gorgeous almost but not quite over-the-top Lady C! So musical in every detail. I don't understand how MacCaulay can be so blind (and deaf!) to this woman's magic.

I really liked this, which he suggests he hadn't noticed before (I wonder if, just possibly, it wasn't in the original choreoraphy and was a DV-ism?):

When Juliet's parents are urging her to marry Paris, there's a moment when she finds herself standing near him, and - to a quickly rising scale in the woodwind - her eyes travel up, coolly surveying him from toe to head. Then her eyes turn away, and, rising on point, she briskly travels away from him, before arriving again on flat foot, looking steadfastly in the opposite direction, so economically saying, "No, this is not the right man, and I cannot be his."

I really like it when Macaulay gives the essence of the aesthetic experience like this!

It's part of the choreography.

Carbro- I did say "...in my opinion." And besides, I just may have seen every male principle dancer in the world- (major companies only) as that is where one finds the best. As for up and coming danseurs, we'll see.

I travel the world to see ballet performances and was a student (and friend) of Sir Antony Tudor. I am a ballet historian and a great admirer of MacMillan's work, esp. Manon. I feel truly sorry that you do not see what I see, or feel what I have felt, during Corella's performances. You have indeed missed out...

Glad I didn't, though!

"Opinion" seems the operative word here. Each pair of eyes sees something different, ears hear and hearts feel something not quite the same as one's neighbor's.

Perhaps "favorite" might work better than "best".

Beyond the basic attributes, all is subjective.

Abrera (tonight's Mistress) is clearly preferred this season, but not getting principal roles either.

Well, I don't know about that. So far this season Abrera has done Gamzatti, Symphonie Concertante, Lilac Fairy and Lescaut's Mistress - all principal roles.

what a waste of talent. my opinion of course.

I'm quite sure most of us share it.

But it's his to waste. And perhaps he's happier. I hope.

Thanks, carbro .. I guess.

What a dreadful photo of Danny on the Fox website! He's infinitely better looking than this.

Very memorable performance tonight. And with a pretty unusual twist: with this Manon being almost twice the age of des Grieux, it was finally possible to understand why she dumped the rich old man for him

Hnh? Ferri is 44; Bolle 32. I am arithmetically challenged here.

Oh good grief!

When is this on? What network?

I guess I will be forced to watch also. Better than no Danny at all.

Yurk ..

Just spoke with the ABT press office at the Met and was told that Vishneva was ill.

I think we'll stay home.

I'm in the minority here, vipa, in that I much preferred Vishneva's Odette to her Giselle, which I found muscular, losing the poetry with her athleticism. Her Odette, on the other hand, I found poetic and moving. She had clearly spent much time and thought and created something special, something her own. She did have a bit of a meltdown when it came time for Odile (and also at the very end of II) but my feeling was she had expended such enormous energy on the Odette that she'd run out of it by Act III.

She's a dancer who is constantly improving herself so it wouldn't surprise me if we got the whole package this year.

In other words, I'd go for the Swan rather than Yes Virginia Another MacMillen Ballet.

If the curtain has not fully closed or the last note of music ended, I do tend to get peevish when someone climbs over me. If the performance is fully over, however, they have every right to leave. It's not my business why they need to leave; it is sufficient that they do have a need which supercedes my preference to stay for all the curtain calls.

... as long as they don't step on me.

I have fond memories of Dennis Nahat's Carabosse - very glamorous, very witty and very evil.

First, I must admit that I'm impartial - I love Vishneva. Even though this season she's not quite her usual self, I think you will not regret going to see her. Even when she's not great, she's incredible, and God knows how much time she's got left. Maybe there will not be another chance to see her, especially in one of her signature roles.

"How much time she has left"? She's only 30, in great shape & strong enough to dance another ten years minimum.

Is there something we should know?

Don't forget - I've never seen any company in the US do the introduction to the "Grotto (of the Undead Ballonés) Scene" in Don Q, which features the old knight defeating a monster spider and cutting open her web to enter the cave.

Uh oh .. better keep this from reaching the ears of the McKenzie team or we'll have a new ending to Swan Lale, with Don (sic) Rothbart being dragged into his cave by giant scorpions in tutus.

Come to think of it, any change in McKenzie's last act of SL could be an improvement.