nanushka

So excited to read this!! Can't wait to see her Aurora again next week. After Manon and tonight, it should be a third triumph.

I could be wrong, but I don't think any of the actual performance footage last week was on the @abtofficial account. Most of the videos were stories, and I think they were on individual accounts. I agree about the value and quality of the account; I enjoy their content.

Yes, with her fan following I would imagine she feels pressure to dance even if she's mildly injured, which of course could only make things worse. Perhaps dancing only Odette was a way of performing through injury while minimizing the danger of a worsening injury. It's at least a reasonably defensible way of shortening the role and making it less taxing. Oh me too!!

Maybe not fully rehearsed, but I wonder if she was assigned as a cover for this run of the ballet. I believe there's an assigned cover every night, though I think that's often another dancer performing the role.

I found that to be an interesting development. I always assumed many companies would have social media policies prohibiting that.

Oh wow, very interesting. Good call, @Inge! If I didn't also find phone use in the theater so rude I'd be begging anyone at the performance now to live-post it here!! Is there any sort of injury she could have that would make Odette feasible but Odile not so?

I completely agree — though I'm also somewhat ashamed to admit that I once let out an instinctive gasp of pleasure hearing an announcement that Saveliev was injured and that Marcelo would be filling in as Rothbart. (I could be misremembering the first dancer and/or the role, but it was something just like that, and definitely Marcelo.) I felt terrible cheering a dancer's injury but I truly couldn't help myself. So I can understand (if not condone) the opposite happening as well.

Interesting, I hadn't thought of that — figured it was just because that's the costume she was wearing. I'm dying for more news!

If they stay and watch, they might be pleasantly surprised! +1

Uggggggh! If only we had known! If anyone is there, please report back on how she does! I'm so glad she's getting another shot at the role, though I really wish it were under better circumstances. (She's never gotten to dance it here with a full rehearsal period!) Still, it gives me hope for future casting that they brought her in when needed.

That interpretation of Siegfried definitely makes sense to me, and can be one compelling way of playing his character. To my eyes, though, Whiteside's characterization crossed the line into bratty, and that makes a character a lot less likable. It was only really that particular sequence that bothered me. (The fact that I particularly love that waltz theme was part of what made it not work for me. With its long, 4-beat first note, it always seems to me that it has the capacity to convey Siegfried's sadness, which may be why I want something more substantial in the characterization there.) Overall, I liked Whiteside much better than in some past performances — and I thought his dancing throughout the night was excellent. Oh my! How did you learn? I would give anything for a helicopter right now.

I thought Whiteside's acting in Acts I-II was good, but I found his characterization of Siegfried in the ballroom scene to be oddly petulant. After the queen tried to get him interested in the four princesses, he looked like a boy whose toy had been confiscated. I just seemed so trivializing. I wanted a deeper or more substantial emotion there — there are a number of different possibilities, but he didn't seem to go for any of them.

Very true, in dramatic terms. I was particularly thinking of how very crisp Brandt seems as a dancer — definitely a strength of hers, though perhaps not as fitting for O/O. Lane always seemed more lyrical to me, though I agree she’s developed in unforeseen ways. And so might Brandt.

Even though I don’t think she’d make an exceptional O/O overall, I was thinking tonight that I would love to see Brandt do Odile’s variation sometime. With her often astonishing control I bet she’d kill it. For instance:

Yes, I think you're right about that, now that I think about it. Like Forster, it seemed he might have almost had it, but then lost it. Well, to be fair, that's not an original feature of the ballet but rather a later interpolation... I actually quite like the maypole, as it's a nice spectacle that adds variety to the very long waltz. Tonight's tangling was unusually bad. When it works, it's a nice visual I think.

Also, Charles Barker tonight was so much better than LaMarche last night. The orchestra has been sounding unusually good this year, and Barker really got some very nice musicality out of them. The tempi were much less erratic and seemed more responsive to the dancers.

It's likely quite true that my experience the night before set up my reaction tonight. Seo's Odile was so disappointing that Shevchenko was bound to impress. Comparing in my mind her performance tonight to her Medora a few weeks ago, I'd definitely agree tonight was not as stellar — but then I felt her Medora was a new high for this already very accomplished artist, so I don't begrudge her going back to her more normal degree of excellence. Despite my lukewarm reaction to Act II tonight, I'd still count her Odette to be among the strongest few I've seen in the last several years. Expectations and context both definitely shaped my reactions.

Well I found myself rather unmoved by Act II (and surprisingly preferred Seo's performance there last night — I didn't like Shevy's mime, and I found her to have less grace and lightness than Seo, especially on her various types of beats; overall her dancing just seemed a bit heavier), but Act III was phenomenal. Calvin Royal stepped in as ballroom Rothbart and gave a superb performance, other than the balance (leg went up, came down, went up again, balanced for a moment, then it was over). Big dancing — dramatic, sexy, thrilling. Christine was on fire, with the best characterization I've seen since Part. Fouettés were singles, doubles, and turns a la seconde thrown in. The B section was solid singles, on the beat throughout. Entire PDD was excellent. Whiteside's jumps were soaring. Brandt was a real standout in the pas de trois.

As it turns out, we’re getting Forster’s lakeside Rothbart tonight — but I know that’s not what you had in mind! Excited to see a Trenary/Brandt/Gorak pas de trois! And it will be nice to see Ribagorda in Neapolitan (with Pogossian).

Completely. If a dancer is going to do anything other than straight singles, I like to see a discernible pattern of some sort, indicating that they’re doing something more (and more rehearsed) than just throwing in whatever their body happens to be capable of managing at the given moment. The latter is not truly impressive, no matter how many rotations they pack in.

Scout Forsythe (@scoutforsythe) has a cute Instagram story up now with Tom Forster stepping in as Odile to Calvin Royal’s Rothbart for a practice of the ballroom entrance.

I agree about clean solid singles being perfectly acceptable and often very impressive, and I also agree that on the beat — or at the very least starting off that way, in clear relation to the music (understanding that when multiples enter the mix each whip can take more like a beat and a half) — is really to be expected (though not always achieved). And now I am hoping that the tow truck AAA is sending to me on I-78 gets here quickly so I can still make tonight’s performance! 🙏

It's definitely possible — and I too would be surprised if there'd been no coordination between LaMarche and Seo — but my impression was that the tempo was just too fast for even a really technically strong dancer to keep up, if she expected to do the fouettés on the beat (which I suppose isn't necessarily a given). There could well have been multiple problems at play, including a somewhat off night on Seo's part and a tempo that wasn't quite what they'd planned on LaMarche's part.

I just looked back at what I wrote here on BA at the time, and it turns out it was Barker, not LaMarche. These were my impressions then of how her fouettés went awry: So if those impressions were correct, the situation was somewhat different, but still I felt there was a need for more sensitivity to the dancer's needs.

Yes, I don’t totally blame Seo for the fouetté mess last night, as I wouldn’t be surprised if she got thrown off by the tempo. Certainly, a really technically solid dancer might well have powered through, but it seemed quite possible to me that what happened with the music was at least a factor. I actually felt rather angry on her behalf at the conductor then — his speeding up the music seemed so extremely insensitive. (That said, I suppose it’s possible he and Seo arranged it in advance for some reason but then things just went awry unrelatedly. But based on what I heard, that didn’t seem likely.) I’m seeing three different conductors this week, according to the Met site, so I’m curious to compare more directly, though I’ve heard them all conduct the work before. Now that I think of it, I actually remember something similar happening with Sarah Lane’s fouettés — a sense that the conductor’s fast tempo (though not as extreme) had in part thrown her off. I’ll have to dig up my program to see if DLaM was the culprit then too. If so, I’m surprised he hasn’t been corrected on it. I doubt conductors in ballet have the same degree of authority they often have, for instance, in opera.