choriamb

I think the solutions to a lot of ABT's cyclical problems are already quietly in the works. -- The increasingly longer LA seasons at the Segerstrom are turning into that "safe touring venue other than the Met" for trying out new dancers in lead roles. LA contains less dance competition than New York, but still has a large, moneyed, sophisticated audience (unlike a tour to a completely unprimed audience in the provinces or to a large city with a well-established company of its own). After all, this was where Lane got her first Sleeping Beauty. -- I imagine the promotion chain will free up too. Given Kent, Herrera, and Reyes' seniority, their salaries must have weighed somewhat on the management's decision not to elevate dancers. With that pot of money freed up, much is possible. -- I suspect that ABT's decision to not invest in a coach for their women to replace Susan Jaffe was driven by their desire to wait for the next dancer of similar calibre with a top-to-bottom knowledge of ABT's repertory to retire and assume her place: Kent. Other recent ballerinas with a similar profile either dominated a smaller slice of the repertory (Ferri, albeit more memorably) or a slice of the repertory already commanded by Kolpakova (Dvorovenko and Herrera). -- I'm with the pro-Ratmansky camp. But if one is worried about ABT's repertory being too loaded with the Russian classics and new works by Ratmansky, remember that ABT has long had a sideline in Ashton to counterbalance this. As Murphy and Seo shine in that repertory, I don't think that will change. -- ABT's problem over the past few years of finding healthy male dancers who were capable of partnering tall (and sometimes aging) ballerinas might have ended organically. After Semionova, I can't think of any visiting ballerinas who have been above medium height. On the homefront, most of the up-and-comers in the corps seem to be of medium height or shorter. FWIW, as much as he may deserve the promotion, I hope that Gorak is given another year as a soloist simply to adjust to his new roles: once he's elevated, the full weight of audience expectations will fall on him like a ton of bricks. Is he really ready to be held to the same standard as Gomes at this stage?

Agreed. And losing the ability to use three ballerinas (and their final partners) as back-ups so their farewell performances could go as planned must have been an insane scheduling challenge.

As far as I could tell, you gain nothing by being higher: there's really only a brief period in the ballroom scene where complex formations that benefit from an aerial view enter the game. It's more important to sit as close to the stage and as close to center as possible: there's a lot of mime action, some of which is pushed to the extreme sides of the stage. (NOTE: I've only seen ABT's production once, so I might have forgotten something.)

I agree with many of the rest: I think Perron is too lightly dismissing the ballet as socially irrelevant. An artwork that points so resolutely to social integration that even the "villain" resumes her place at the end seems particularly relevant to our fractured world. But I think the social impact of utopias (and comedies) is always given unnecessarily short shrift. Dystopias diagnose social problems...utopias point the way toward a solution. A simple critique is easy...an essayed solution is harder to get right. And it isn't like we're suffering from a lack of dystopias on TV or any other medium nowadays.

(In passing, have you seen this clip of Russian Seasons hidden away on Abi Stafford's bio page at NYCB?)

This doesn't seem to be a sign of someone abandoning ship: she's returning to her home state, according to the LA Times article. A useful reminder that as much as I despair at ABT's public-facing marketing efforts, it might be because ABT is focusing all its energy on donor-facing efforts...a more financially practical route. Still, I hope the next director works harder at building the public's interest: I wonder if any of ABT's staff will follow her.

Given that ABT's principal women have trended dramatic, commanding, and tall over the past decade, I can understand why Fille hasn't re-entered the rep recently: Reyes and Murphy would have been the only ones sparkly enough for Lise, I think. But now that ABT has unexpectedly hatched a full cohort of women who are appropriate for soubrette roles (Boylston, Trenary, Brandt, Copeland), I could totally see it: probably not this year, but in 2017-2018 when the younger dancers have become a bit more visible (and his shorter men have logged some more partnering time). Totally agree that Arron Scott should be used more.

Alvin Ailey has done Chroma and NYCB commissioned a McGregor work a few years ago as well.

McKenzie said in one interview that he wanted ABT to have an iconic Sleeping Beauty production: something that was recognizably ABT's and no one else's. Given that many companies appearing in NYC and LA also have Sleeping Beauty in their repertory, there's really a financial as well as artistic need for this. I do wonder if the only other way to differentiate ABT's Sleeping Beauty enough to make it really emerge from the shadows of the "standard" twentieth century productions put on by other major companies would have been to re-choreograph it entirely. I think that the route Ratmansky chose was better.

When Ratmansky created his Tempest (and to a lesser degree, his Firebird), I wondered if McKenzie had asked him for a half-evening narrative work based on a well-known theme in an attempt to reap the benefits of both a name-brand three-act ballet and a mixed bill. I'll be curious if Ratmansky goes for that format again, given that he has so many ballets on his slate for the upcoming year and has done some many reworkings of classics recently.

Agreed. I think Ratmansky (and Ashton) ballets are good for overall company engagement in general. While I've sometimes griped that Ratmansky's works can be too busy to have an emotional focus, I'm hard-pressed to think of even a short, mixed-bill piece by him that doesn't contain at least four meaty dance roles. As much as I love Onegin, on the other hand, solos are confined to four dancers (and Olga and Lensky don't dance that much).

How's this for a pedantic answer? It sounds like she's signifying Aurora will have white arms, which has both general and specific meanings in Greco-Roman mythology. The general significance is just that Aurora will be wealthy, as opposed to a poor woman who would have tanned arms from working in the fields. (And, like today, signifiers of leisured wealth were also signifiers of beauty...except that the description "tanned with poker-straight blonde hair" has the exact opposite connotation for us today.) The more specific meaning might be that she'll have a queenly or goddess-like status: Hera, the queen of the gods is often called "the goddess of the white arms." (By the way, thanks for the great review!)

Argh. Davis was good in the Forsythe program (and wasn't he tossed in as a last-minute replacement for Porretta in that, too?)

It's a pity Lane isn't getting the chance, but I can understand it from a scheduling perspective. Lane is dancing Aurora on Thursday (so her Friday is basically shot) and she has Florine on Saturday: that would leave her three days at best to review a role that she's never danced on the main stage with a new partner. Also, given the heights of Cornejo and Gorak, I wouldn't be surprised if she's the only back-up for both Obraztsova and Copeland. Copeland and Seo are in a better position purely from a scheduling/experience perspective. Copeland only has Florine on Thursday and has been actively preparing the role. Seo knows the role well at this point...and has regularly received praise for it.

Perhaps not: The gentleman is Joan Boada of San Francisco Ballet and the locale doesn't appear to be NYC (at least, I don't recognize the set in the background from any of ABT's productions.)

I'd pay to see her, too!

A pity that Murphy, Kent, and Vishneva are likely unable to pick up the extra performance. I'd love it if McKenzie gave one of the younger in-house team a crack at it--Shevchenko or Trenary for my money--but it would probably be cruel to thrust a newcomer in front of an Osipova-hungry crowd. I wonder if Part knows the role? In a non-bravura role like this, she would seem an even trade. [Cue wishful thinking] However, if the delay is due to contractual negotiations, I've heard there's this gal named Dorothée Gilbert who has danced the balcony pas de deux with Gomes before...

Thanks for the great news about Abi Stafford: I felt her absence in Midsummer and Goldberg Variations this season. I'm glad that she's out for such a happy reason...and might be back for next spring's Robbins ballets.

Where is the "raging envy" emoticon? (Thanks for the lowdown on the dancers in Rio.)

A lovely performance of Serenade to close out: -- Carla Korbes really gave a complete performance here (even more so than in her more emotional Diamonds, I thought). -- The way Carrie Imler looks at her fellow dancers warms the heart. -- Although she's a totally different dancer (her glory is her port de bras, rather than her feet), Lesley Rausch looked so much like Patricia Barker tonight. Nice touch.

You're absolutely right: she's average height. I just meant that--given the heights of ABT's male soloists and principals tend toward one extreme or the other--she was slightly too tall for the "short" contingent (Cornejo, Simken, etc.) and the "tall" contingent was otherwise occupied.

Some snippets from her year at San Francisco Ballet are at https://youtu.be/I5A5uXZKsDU?t=52s and https://youtu.be/S2nnuUKR7i0?t=1m23s . I'll be curious to hear how her story plays out. She was tall enough that ABT seemed to cast her only in roles that didn't require a tall, strong partner (Murphy, Part, Kent, Vishneva were ahead of her in line for the ones they had), which nixed much of the classical repertory for her. So, it will be interesting to see if she breaks into partnered Petipa roles at MCB. She has legs, at any rate: both my favorite finger variation in "Sleeping Beauty" and my favorite lead in "In the Upper Room". A bit of a Marie-Agnes Gillot type.

What a brilliant and unexpected surprise! Congrats to Messmer!

Just pulled the calendar for the Winter 2016 season from http://www.nycballet.com/Season-Tickets/Calendar.aspx . For 17 days of the month between January 21 and February 18, they're performing either Symphony in C, Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3, Ballo della Regina, or Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 (sometimes in combination with La Sylphide). It's amazing to think how many ballerinas the company can now field in these principal roles: just six years ago, we'd have been lucky to get two of these ballets in a single season, much less four. [Although I imagine Ashley Bouder and Tiler Peck must have begun investigating how to purchase a dressing room cryotherapy chamber to sleep in the instant they saw the schedule.]

If you love story ballets that are emotionally focused around a single character, stick with Swan Lake. At times, Cinderella can seem like a series of beautiful but disconnected Christmas pageant scenes. You'll see an almost equal amount of classical dance in both ballets, but Swan Lake has more bravura, particularly for the female lead. That said, as Drew mentioned, the dance wealth is far more evenly spread through the company, so it's more resistant to poor casting. Also, if you enjoy seeing up-and-coming dancers, more will probably be on display in Cinderella. I personally would stick with the Murphy/Gomes ticket: I'd pay to see this pairing in anything...and this is one of Murphy's greatest roles. Also, given the way the rest of the week is cast, Murphy's most likely replacements in the event of injury would seem to be Part or Boylston...neither of which would be a bad trade in this role.