nanushka

The Justin Peck documentary Ballet 422 is also available there.

There's a final post-season article by Macaulay on Boylston and Teuscher, along with some (mostly rehashed) remarks on the company more broadly. I've avoided Boylston for awhile, but based on reports from this spring here on BA I hope to see her at least a few times next year.

The reports above seemed to suggest that Jones was Wednesday night, while Woodward was Tuesday night — as they were originally cast. (FPF was reporting on Tuesday.) Were those incorrect?

My favorite IG dancer cat was always Gillian’s gorgeous fellow redhead Selah. (Forgive the overindulgent posting of pics!)

Also, it’s substantial dancing in 4 of the 5 major scenes, including 2 major multi-movement PDDs.

I’m not sure it’s a matter of running out of gas — rather, I don’t think of Hoven as a dancer who’s ever been noteworthy for his stamina in particular, and at 32 Solor is probably not the best test of what he can do with a full-length. I could imagine him succeeding quite well with Siegfried.

In principle I agree, though I also wonder if Solor is really the right role for either Forster or Hoven to show what he can do in a full-length lead. I wonder if Hoven, in particular, has the stamina at this point. It's a long role, with a lot of dancing. In any case, at least based on the Met reports, it sounds like Ahn managed quite well?

Isn't that what they were doing by casting Joo Won Ahn? He, like Forster and Hoven, is a company member. In fact, no imports were used at all in L.A. (That said, I completely agree that the latter two should be given more opportunities.)

Thanks, canbelto. I think the title caused some confusion at various points throughout this discussion, for those who maybe hadn't carefully enough read the linked articles. (I hope my pointing that out at times didn't seem like dead-horse beating!)

If I recall correctly, I think it may be before he gets the crown (and even perhaps before his final big jumping solo). The pasty chef comes on again and gives him the bowl that he'd been whipping back in Act I.

A real highlight, especially as performed by Simkin, when he ends up sticking his whole face right in the bowl!

I think I'm with @Ashton Fan in suspecting that Macaulay's criticism is less a response to the great diversity and scope of Petipa's oeuvre (though the Balanchine comparison is certainly apt) and more a response to the diversity of provenances of the Petipa and "after Petipa" productions in the ABT repertoire. I just question whether that diversity is itself in fact inherently problematic. (Whether any individual production is or is not good, or is or is not true to Petipa, is yet another question, and one that I know Macaulay has some strong opinions on as well.)

That’s very much how I read it as well. But since Macaulay typically lacks the space, initiative and/or ability to fully support many of his claims (such as the one I highlighted above: “But these different views seem to make Petipa have multiple personality disorder”), I wondered if anyone here might be able to do so! (Though his claims often don’t convince me, I’m willing to consider that they may have validity.)

Thanks for your thoughts, Ashton Fan. I guess I wonder whether and why this is really "a problem which has to be faced," or whether this is just the basic reality of what it means to have, at the center of the classical repertoire, a choreographer who stopped working over a century ago, at a time when modern archival capabilities were not yet in existence, in an art form that is typically dependent upon person-to-person (rather than textual) transmission. And if it is a problem, then what would it really mean to "face" it? Should ABT's first priority necessarily be to maintain the Petipa legacy as a legacy, by, for instance, working immediately to ensure that all of its productions are Ratmansky-style archive-based reconstructions? Is it really a problem for a company to have different productions represent different sorts of relationships to their Petipa originals? Why precisely, does the irreconcilable need to be reconciled by a company such as ABT? (To be clear, I'm not saying that it's not a problem or that it doesn't need to be reconciled — rather, just raising these as questions.)

As it is a fantasy (even if one the boy never emerges from, within the scope of the narrative — which doesn't necessarily mean we must think that he never emerges from it), the rules of reality needn't apply. In any case, the boy is given a big bowl of (inanimate) whipped cream at the end, so clearly within this particular fantasy there are both personified treats to interact with and non-personified treats to eat.

I really appreciated reading your insights, @Drew — and I agree with pretty much every one of your assessments.

You discern my intention correctly here, Birdsall. Indeed, just moving (what I find to be) an interesting discussion another step forward. For me, the impact of this particular work has nothing at all to do with anything it "says" or any "point" it makes. Similarly, the absence of any really engaging or complex narrative is not at all problematic, in my mind. The work engages me in other ways.

To clarify, the point I, for one, was making was not about style but effect. Obviously the style is quite different. That was in fact part of my point: Imperial Russian style cannot have the same effect in the modern era as it did then. Ratmansky and Ryden created, to my mind, a comparable effect using a very different style. And looking at the particular designs used in the procession (which are shown in the first image, titled "Princess Praline and Her Entourage," on this page — click on the image to enlarge), I'm not sure why their appeal should be limited to "millennials with nose rings, tattoos, and purple hair" (though I know that's a stereotypical exaggeration of one part of Ryden's typical audience — and of one group that might love the designs for one particular reason). I've witnessed the procession having a strong impact on children, 30-somethings, 60-somethings, and others.

That is one adorable pudgy cherub of a child!

I completely agree about the Petipa works. I think what has made them lastingly great are the best parts of their choreography. But an equal part of what made them great — or, at least, grand and impactful — in their contemporary context was the spectacle. I don't think those parts of them have the same impact for many in our modern-day audiences. (CharlieH's comment shows, however, that for some they still do.) What I think Ratmansky and Ryden have achieved, with the Act II procession in Whipped Cream, is something that does have that same impact for many in the audience. (Not all, of course. Some will disagree.) At the three performances I saw (two last year and one this year), the excitement and awe at that moment, when the procession enters, was palpable and electric in the audience, with audible gasps and murmurs of giddiness. The fact that some of the very best choreography in the whole piece (the PDD and solos of Princess Praline and the Boy) immediately follows reflects for me how, in Petipa's original context, these two different types of visual pleasure would not have been experienced as quite so separable as they seem to us now (when many of us sit rather bored through the processions waiting for the dancing, because the latter has withstood the test of time while the former have not).

I didn't hear the interview that CharlieH referred to in his comment above, but I'm not sure why we should assume that Ratmansky was talking specifically about the physical production in any reference he might have made to "the grand Imperial tradition in ballet." There are many other ways of evoking and memorializing that tradition — as Balanchine did in his own tributes to it, such as Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, Diamonds, Theme and Variations, and others. What's more, Ratmansky could certainly have been memorializing (or "following") multiple traditions at once. Art (and especially an art as multi-faceted as a staged narrative dance work) is often multiply referential. It needn't be a matter of X rather than Y.

Yes, as was the first line of my response. Nonetheless, jokes can simultaneously convey serious ideas — as I would assume any joke involving images of starving peasants might — and those I took your joke to imply were what I went on from there to respond to. Apologies if I was mistakenly inferring a critique that was not intended.

Some in Imperial Russia definitely could, they just chose not to share. In any case, the "grand Imperial tradition in ballet" that CharlieH references (which is certainly not the same as all of "Imperial Russia") is the same tradition Balanchine memorialized in a number of generally admired and oft-performed works that similarly celebrate its, well, grandeur, in a manner that should cause modern-day Marxist critics to groan. Then, of course, there's basically any production of Sleeping Beauty or any of a number of other Russian classics. I'm not sure Ratmansky is uniquely vulnerable to such critiques.

Personally, I felt quite the same about the music when I listened to it before seeing the ballet last year, but as with The Tempest (the music for which I found quite hauntingly lovely but didn’t at first consider very danceable) I thought Ratmansky did a pretty remarkable job of discovering the dance potential within the rhythms and orchestration. I was definitely in the minority on the latter and sounds like I am in the minority on the former now too. I’ve found Whipped Cream quite delightful, though certainly not without its imperfections. I do agree that some of the costumes, beautiful as they are, get in the way of allowing one to fully see some of the choreography. In any case, I wouldn’t recommend passing final judgment until one’s had a chance to see the full piece. That, after all, is the context in which the music really either works or doesn’t.

Does it? I read it as merely recognizing a milestone (a decade dancing together) and signaling a new phase of his status with the company. "Daniil, hope you come back from Germany often" sounds to me like he'll still be dancing with ABT at times, just not as regularly as before and with a frequency that's as yet to be determined — i.e. basically what I thought had already been suggested by previous statements from Simkin and from ABT. Certainly it could be read differently, but I don't see any particular reason why it should have to be.