nanushka

Yes, Raymond Rodriguez is Gabay's partner in the video, and I'm pretty sure I saw them together in this. The choreography shown looks quite decent, for the most part, and there's some nice dancing by all the leads. I never got to see Cynthia Gregory dance with the company, though I distinctly remember seeing her photo among the principal dancers in their season souvenir book (which I wish I still had). I'd never heard of her at the time, but just from her picture and brief bio I could tell she was a star. (Her headshot, if I recall, was rather striking and alluring, with bare shoulders and a lovely long neck.) I remember wishing desperately that she'd be the Odette/Odile on the date I went, but she wasn't, and I have no memory of who was.

My very first experience with ballet came when my older sister took me to see Nutcracker at Cleveland Ballet, near where I grew up. I was instantly hooked. Cleveland Ballet, headed by former ABT dancer Dennis Nahat, later became Cleveland San Jose Ballet then moved exclusively to San Jose in 2000. A new company, also called Cleveland Ballet, opened in 2014. (More info is available here.) I was delighted to recently find the video below, which — though amusingly dated — contains a good deal of footage of Dennis Nahat's Nutcracker production. One of the four ballerinas profiled is Karen Gabay, the dancer I originally saw as "Maria" (though this would have been a few years later — in maybe 1985). I'm curious if anyone else has memories of Cleveland Ballet, of their Nutcracker, of their Swan Lake or Coppélia (which I also subsequently saw), or of anything else about the company. In any case, I thought others who may have seen this production years ago might also enjoy the memories.

Yes I think I recall that too. I don’t remember it sounding quite so snarky/personal before, though. Seemed like it was more in aesthetic terms, more critically objective. I may be wrong though.

Right, I see what you mean. I hadn’t considered it dramatically, more just abstractly.

Macaulay's annual season recap has arrived. I'm struck first by the impression that he has soured a bit on Hallberg: He "didn't grace those ballets...with his presence" — ouch. I'm also curious about some of what he writes about Petipa: A few questions arise for me: What's the difference between a choreographer with "multiple personality disorder" and one who, over a rather long career, created works in a wide variety of styles? Is this just about the different uses of mime in Harlequinade and Swan Lake, or is he making a bigger point about the apparent artistic discontinuities between these works/productions? And could we really expect more, given the difficulties of maintaining choreography over a century and a half across works with widely varying production histories? Should ABT be making it a priority to give a more cohesive impression of the choreographer who, in part or in whole, was the originator of such widely differing works? Which parts of the mime are missing from ABT's Swan Lake? I always had the sense that a fair amount of the traditional mime was kept intact, particularly in comparison with 20th-century Russian/Soviet productions. Was Petipa's original Don Q really less flashy and trivial than modern productions? In what specific ways? Macaulay has long complained about this ballet (along with Corsaire), but I always thought he hated the ballet itself, not just modern "after Petipa" versions of it. What, I wonder, does he think would have been in the Petipa original that he would have liked more than what we have now? (Curiously, he doesn't mention Ratmansky's version, though he goes on to praise the latter's "passion to establish a view of Petipa that shakes off the many stylistic changes of the Soviet era.") Finally, I knew that Makarova had rehearsed the dancers for Bayadère this year, but Macaulay also writes this: Does anyone know what specific "improvements" he's referencing?

Yes! Reminds me of those killer pirouettes in the lead ballerina's opening candenza in Ballet Imperial, with her heel barely off the ground and the other foot tracing circles around her.

Closer, yes, though I much prefer Serrano's relevé to pointe with every hop.

Thanks so much for reviving this thread, Cristian, as I'd missed it before. I just watched the Alonso video you posted back in 2012, and what she does with her upper body while hopping back on pointe (which you describe above) is stunning, gorgeous, and super impressive (even if, admittedly, a bit stiff looking as well — but c'mon, can't blame her)! Wow. Also, what Lupe Serrano does in the video you just posted may not be quite as challenging as the continuous hops on pointe, but I quite like the effect.

This makes a lot of sense. Perhaps the takeaway (at least for me) is that, for a certain type of transcendent choreography (including in the three ballets you mention), "fully embodying the role" means (or at least can mean — maybe there are other good ways of doing it) "disappearing into the choreography." (I.e. the latter is one possible way of achieving the former.) Really like this description:

You describe something very important here as well, Kaysta. The difference between that and what I was describing (I'm not trying to speak for canbelto — just drawing a distinction between your idea and my own), is that that experience ("I can't decipher the choreography without the music or the music without the choreography") is perhaps only going to be possible with works in which the two are potentially so perfectly inextricable. That's true of most Balanchine (he's particularly known for it), but it's maybe not true of, say, Don Quixote (to use the piece that gives this thread its nominal topic). And yet, a dancer can fully embody the role of Kitri or Basilio in the manner I've described.

@canbelto, I wonder if what you're calling "disappearing into the choreography" is more or less the same quality that I've tended to think of as "fully embodying the role." The latter metaphor makes more sense to me, because I don't think an individual dancer's distinctive qualities are ever fully gone — nor would I want them to be. A Smirnova Diamonds — even one in which she "disappears into the choreography" — is still going to be distinctly different from a Farrell Diamonds or a Kowroski Diamonds or what have you. It's still going to be shaded by the idiosyncrasies of the individual dancer. What matters to me is whether the dancer is wholly committed to embodying the role/choreography and fully realizing its distinctive qualities, energies, nuances, etc. — in his or her own distinctive way. It's not so much that one disappears into the other; rather, the two become one. (How can we know the dancer from the dance, and all that.)

Having seen some of ABT's performances of Theme and Variations, Mozartiana, Tchai Pas, and others, I have a hard time believing that those audience members who didn't possess the seasoned eye to see the specific ways those performances differed from the Balanchinean ideal would have nonetheless been quite so turned off by the mediocrity of those performances. (Those who did possess such a seasoned eye would of course have known that what they were seeing was not the best that could be made of the material.) I've known novice friends who have attended such performances, and they've come away wanting to see more. Like Shakespeare performed by a second-tier but still passably decent acting troupe, Balanchine holds up. His best works are that good, even if every step isn't there. (One friend in particular started talking again the other night about the excitement of a Tchai Pas from last year with — I believe — Murphy and Whiteside.)

Canbelto, I find what you wrote after the above to be a much more nuanced, more precise, and therefore more useful (to me) formulation of your broader claims. That said, I do have a few further thoughts: On your point #1, I personally don't think it makes sense to say that a particular dancer should never be cast in a particular role simply because he or she cannot successfully perform 30 seconds of the role's traditional choreography. That said, even if I were to make such a claim, arguing that other company dancers should be given those opportunities instead, that claim seems to me quite different from saying that an entire company has no business dancing a particular choreographer's works and that their attempts to do so are disgraceful. (To say that Dancer A should get the part instead of Dancer B makes a certain sense, since casting is basically zero sum. To say that Company A should get to perform a ballet but Company B should not is a very different sort of claim.) Many on this board (including you yourself, I believe) have argued that ABT is no longer a "world-class" or "top-tier" company. Given that, I personally don't see anything terribly wrong with a second-tier company doing their best to do justice to some very difficult ballets — ballets that, in my opinion, can hold up and give pleasure even when imperfectly realized. I will always advocate a company such as NYCB continuing to adhere as closely as possible to the traditions of Balanchine style. As long as such companies are playing that (in my mind) essential role, I don't see anything terribly wrong with other companies also showing what they can do with the material or what can be made from the material. Balanchine's choreography is not scripture. So long as there is strong maintenance of the Balanchine tradition (and I do think it could be much stronger!), I don't see anything terribly wrong with other companies performing the material as well. Maybe it doesn't make good sense for ABT to perform certain canonical Balanchine works right across the plaza from Balanchine's own company, particularly when their performances fall within the same general season as NYCB performances of the very same works. Maybe ABT's resources would be better focused on material that's more at home in their idiom. Such claims seem rather different from saying that ABT has no business performing Balanchine at all or that their attempts are disgraceful. Finally, I have some qualms about statements such as these, in the context of an argument against ABT's performing Balanchine's works: Besides being an extreme statement of a probably unreachable Platonic ideal, in the context of such an argument this suggests that if that "right" way of performing exactly as one is "supposed to" cannot be achieved, that the performance should not occur at all. Again, I'm all for maintaining the Balanchine tradition, but such rigid adherence to performance ideals seems unnecessarily limiting to me. Is it so terrible to occasionally see these great works performed in different idioms? I don't think so. I'm in favor of ABT continuing to season their repertoire with occasional Balanchine works, even if those performances are flawed, since their doing so means that I and others have even more opportunities to see those works performed live onstage.

At the very least it would seem to be hyperbole to say that a performance of Mozartiana is an "unmitigated disaster" if you also say that the Preghiera was "lovely." That's not what "unmitigated" means. (To say that Part and Hoven, however ill-suited to Balanchine they may be, "got almost none" of the 4th movement quick footwork seems similarly an exaggeration. As a side note, I believe Hoven has actually had some training in Balanchine, or at least one of his primary teachers was a Balanchine dancer; I don't recall the exact details at the moment.) I'm not disagreeing that ABT is not a great company for dancing Balanchine (and of course I wouldn't suggest that Stella should be dancing Agon). I'm disagreeing with some of the (in my opinion) extreme language, and about just how extremely bad they are.

I have to say, “almost none,” “disgrace,” and “unmitigated disaster” just seem like pretty extreme hyperbole to me. I’m thinking of what those words and phrases actually mean. Just my opinion, but there it is.

It couldn't have been that early. Julie Kent is in it, and although she's quite young, she's definitely not 11!

It's also on YouTube, or was not too long ago. I won't post it here, for fear that could jeopardize its remaining up. Edited to add: I just checked; search for "Balanchine Sonnambula" and it shows up.

This I wholeheartedly agree with.

Personally, as a Balanchine lover, I think many of his works (including T&V) are great enough to withstand even imperfect realization by a suboptimal ensemble. I’ll gladly take the opportunity to see a live performance of one of his better works even under such conditions, and will get much pleasure even from those “unmitigated disasters.” There’s so much to see in them, and I’ll never see enough.

I completely agree. What do people imagine could be his breakout role? Siegfried or Albrecht, perhaps?

I don't see this on ABT's website, but there was a notice on Stella Abrera's IG and an article on broadwayworld.com. Edited to add: Actually, there is an article in the "ABT News" section of the ABT site. Too bad they don't link to it from their main page or from the Studio Company info page.

I've looked earlier on this thread but didn't find — could someone refresh my memory of what exactly we know about that "full blown investigation treatment" and about ABT's actions regarding this? My recollection is that that publicly available information was quite limited when this all happened earlier in the year, which means there are a lot of different possibilities of what did, in fact, happen. I'll be continuing to search for that info as well, but just in case someone has it at their fingertips I wanted to ask. Thanks!

Part of Stearns' problem is that he does not have a face that reads well from onstage. (Granted, he doesn't do very much to use what he's got, but he's starting from a deficit.) I passed him on the street the other day and even up close his face just projects blankness. His eyes kind of just disappear.

I agree, there’s a value to having a contingent of soloists who may well not be headed to principal rank.

See the post above re: Scout Forsythe's comment that these are the only promotions at this time.