Michael

They have also had Carolyn Kuan, an extraordinarily gifted young conductor as an artist in residence. Funding, finding money for, paying for this musical talent is one of the very BEST things that City Ballet is doing. You have to look far and wide for another american company putting resources here. I'm thinking that it's the very generous Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro Fund for Musical Excellence that is providing support for this -- from MOMA to here, the NYC arts owe this couple a major debt of gratitude. Money well spent is what drives the Arts. But it is comparatively rare to find it well spent and almost unprecedented to find it as well spent as it is being expended here (compare Cedar Lake). And as we also saw recently in the NY Observer, generosity without multliple strings attached is equally rare.

Yvonne and Rachel in Barocco. Gulp.

Good for Sterling Hyltin to remember that Ashley Bouder also fell flat on her face (one of the hardest falls I've ever seen) in her first Dewdrop three or four years ago. It was in a balance in arabesque towards the end of the first third. She fell forward.

Perhaps in terms of throwing her weight around -- to push the advancement of students at the school and the casting in the company of students whom she "discovered" or "adopted," Ms. Bass herself hasn't been exactly guiltless. If it's no longer the Balanchine Kierstein company, she's not without blame herself.

Tuesday -- Dec. 13th I vote for Bouder. The Queen is Dead. Long live the Queen. Her dewdrop was extraordinary tonight. I don't think there is another dancer in the world who can do what she does with this role. The Freedom of it -- the rhythmic sense. Some of the jumps seemed like dance phrases in themselves. You feel that the arch and timing and breath in the air is in a sense a musical "phrase" in the same way that, in another dancer, an extension into arasbesque or a gesture of the hand would be. In general, tonight was one of the strongest Nutcrackers I've seen in years. Some particulars: 1. Andrea Quinn conducted beautifully. It seems that people really can change. Where she used to finish a Nutcracker a good ten minutes faster than Maurice Kaplow did, tonight she had beautiful and sensitive tempi and a great sense of orchestral dynamics. She listened and she watched. Her communication with the violinist during the panorama, and her command of the rest of the orchestra and the orchestrations, were lovely. 2. The divertissements were all beautifully cast and performed. Seth Orza and Rachel Rutherford are the best of casts in the Spanish Dance. I've long thought him one of the best of the boys. Lovely placement, shoulders down, chest up. Rachel has always been superb in this. 3. I run out of superlatives for Teresa Reichlen's Arabian dance -- perhaps today, after her debut this weekend as Sugarplum (see the picture in today's Times) a few words may be appropriate -- I think that in five years time we will look back with astonishment on this period when she was not yet fully recognized as one of the biggest talents on the international ballet scene. It is coming. The face and the figure are perfect. The beauty is out of Fragonard or Boucher. The physical facility is also extraordinary. She jumps and turns (in both directions) and has a flexibility not only astonishing for a girl her size -- but for a girl any size. She could dance demi caracter if she weren't so big. The range of her emploi extends across the board, she can do both first and second ballerina in Piano Concerto Number 2, big girl in Rubies, Titania or Hypollita in Midsummer -- the range is enormous. The physical facility right now is in the class of Diana Visnyeva. And the amazing thing, this year, is that she is suddenly developing presence. She's taking over the stage now in a totally different and mature fashion. The command of the stage and the sex appeal have just made this quantum leap. As I say, her Arabian dance is memorable. Who would have thunk it. My only criticism is that she consistently eliminates the pirouettes on the bent knee in the coda, doing a series of alongee poses insteade. Why cut them? She can do them and they're an integral part of the role. 4. Adam Hendrickson was lovely as Candy Cane. Great elevation, a sense of ease, that great puckish stage presence he has always had. Though no one is lineing up to interview him for Ballet Review, he's by far the best in the company in this role. 5. Also great to see both Ellen Ostrom and Amanda Hankes back on stage, if only as party guests in Act I.

Swan Lake has two basic scenes -- The Court and the Lakeside. At the Court it's mostly waltzes and jester and the whole Black Swan thing in Act III. At the Lake it's the two great White Acts with the two pdd's -- the Swans en masse in Act II and the pdd when Siegfried discovers Odette and falls in love with her; and the denouement in Act IV with the Swans in a cirlce and Siegfried rushing in to try to find Odette and to be forgiven. These are the White Acts. McKenzie at ABT has cut the White Acts and with them the role of the girls corps de ballet to an absolute minimum. He's completely eliminated Act IV for the girls' corps, and suggested it instead as a brief pas de quatre or something for the cygnets. Instead he's built up the waltzes in the Court to give all the boys lots and lots of dancing. He even has the suave non-reptile Von Rothbart seducing the princesses in a series of crude pas de deux at the beginning of Act III. Now I think all that waltzing at the court of Siegfried's mom, with or without the jester, is the dullest part of Swan Lake. I'm bored by it in both versions. In McKenzie's version, though, it amounts to 3/4 of what happens. When I think Swan Lake I think Ballet Blanc, moonlight (yes Hans, Act II Giselle a little bit too) and the girls corps de ballet in Swan mode. City Ballet does these white acts much better. Not only is their girls' corps de ballet better trained, and in better shape from top to bottom (that's the biggest difference in their favor between the two companies) -- but McKenzie has totally eliminated the White Act IV anyway so there' s no debate about this point, even if one wants to dispute which company's girls' corps is better. McKenzie has simply cut this material. If you love the White Acts, its thus NYCB pure and simple. In that theater that first season or two, Monique Meunier -- for those who remember her then briefly in her top dancing form before she blew out her hip -- was a beautiful Odette/Odile. And Silja Schandorff, in from Denmark for one guest appearance with NYCB on a Saturday afternoon when Miranda and the other girls principals had the Flu.

I don't think that at all. The season's programming was announced long long before this was choreographed. Strange programming for a Gala in that Martins chose to present the company as quite unclassical. Not a Tutu or a Tiara in sight. Fearful Symmetries is Ballet, but quite on the unclassical side, while the Robbins is Modern Dance, or something else, no matter what he called it. Albert Evans has evidently been watching Chris Wheeldon closely. The orchestra sounded extremely under-rehearsed in the Adams, particularly the beginning section where the entrances of all the various sections were muddy and uncertain and where Andrea Quinn also took her time finding and coordinating sure tempi. It got better as it went along. And if the orchestra itself apparently had little rehearsal, you can bet there wasn't much orchestra rehearsal with the dancers either. For which reason we should probably be surprised it looked as good as it did. The spirit with which they attacked it was very good. After all, it was Opening Night.

Actually I think it is at least very very good classical music (which only reinforces your point). I can and do listen to it over and over. I'd call Adam's score for this pre-Verdi. Rossini also might not past muster as "great" with the Austro-German school -- but It's plenty great to me and his contemporaries considered him a God. You make a fine point indeed about Ballet being theater as well as dance. That's probably the great justification for John Adams in Dance.

Well, Gottlieb did call it "Thou Stink"

Casting. My God -- Napoli in Texas -- a high school cheerleader with a tambourine.

Some dissenting views. Cover your eyes Julie Kent fans. 1. I thought Julie Kent looked quite stiff, to the point of being seriously broken down as a dancer, throughout the season. It appears to be her right side to me. You could see it in Gong, in Fawn and Kaleidoscope. Seeing her in Kaleidoscope after Veronica Part was exposing. Where Part flowed through the slow Balancee sequence luciously, with extension and stretch, Kent turned it into a little curtsey right, slight jetee left. A polite cheerleader. Kent's situation at ABT seems Darci-Kistler-esque to me. She's the prettiest girl in the class. Being married to Victor Barbee, she occupies a place in the company close to that which Kistler does at NYCB. Both are seriously stiff and have reduced range of motion. Both are in a company role where no one can really tell either of them that perhaps the career should be drawing to a close. Both can still look good in some things from time to time. But I thought that Kent's range of motion has seriously deteriorated since last Spring. 2. Jong Jing Fang had a pretty disastrous performance in Kaleidoscope on the Tuesday night, stumbling repeatedly and nearly falling a couple of times. Beautiful poses. But she appeared to never take a single one, all evening, without readjusting it not once, but two or three times. Of course she is miscast in this. And also Jared Mathews was no help, an extremely weak partner. Fang is a question mark to me. She's got the most beautiful placement in the world in her shoulders arms and neck. Also tremendous rhythmic sense, I love the way she reponds to music and particularly where and when she starts to move in response to a phrase. She strikes beautiful poses ... when she gets there. On the other hand, the feet appear weak. The pas de bouree is not fluid, as one saw in the Fokine. And the allegro skills seem deficient. It's a failure of the company to develop a great talent. She needs to dance more, a lot more.

Right about Act II being the night when Giselle is to become a Wili -- Thus it's a drama for her as well as for Albrecht, she is holding on to something, her fate is up in the air too, there is a dramatic inner tension for Giselle in Act II as well as for Albrecht -- There are probably as many ways to play this out as there are Great Giselle Act II's, but conveying a serious dramatic conflict for herself, as well as for Albrecht, is the key to all of them.

Stiefel was a great Apollo. Compact, muscular, raw, on the edge of parody even, a huge jump with clear articulation and attack, engaged and intense dramatically. Last night you could see that Stanley Williams trained him. And that Apollo really is demi character. Best I've ever seen Ethan.

The amazing thing about her views on Ashton is how self-centered they are. Her article is not about Ashton, it's about her and her tastes. No effort is made to deal with Ashton as Ashton, to describe his work, to relate to it -- the approach instead is to state her response and then to wonder why he doesn't measure up. It's juvenile. This is not professional criticism.

The Green Table is a beautiful work but it certainly wouldn't fill the MET stage, it's perfect here at City Center. It's very much out of the period of Brecht in Berlin but also relates to the medievil folk dramatic tradition of the Dance of Death, as well as to Breughel, Bosch and to universal dance traditions of Masquerade. No one would want to miss this who can manage to see it. It's being very well danced. Quite right to mention Kelly Boyd on Saturday and one should also note super performances by Kristi Boone, Melissa Thomas, Kenneth Easter and Matthew Murphy, indeed the entire cast. How often can you say that?

What could be better, I ask you? Actually, the casting here seemed to me either delicious or malicious, take your pick. You take the two women in the company who seem the haughtiest, most regal and distant of anyone -- you have them progressively disrobe until they end up costumed in red spandex bathing suits which ride high on the thigh, sneakers and red ankle socks, with their hair nevertheless up in Ballerina Buns throughout -- and then you have them performing this "Little Deuce Coupe-Chubby-Checker-Twist-and-Shuffle" with a sort of shimmy shake in the shoulders and neck, with a lot of other stuff mixed in, in an increasingly frenzied and sweaty manner. I think it was quite conscious on Kevin's and Co.'s part. And actually it worked. They seemed to enjoy it and the audience did too. Casting against type to exploit the contrast.

On a sleepy Wednesday evening in the Fall, with night falling earlier and earlier these days, and an unseasonal chill in the New York streets, both Twyla Tharp's "In the Upper room" and Tudor's "Dark Elegies" had their first performances of ABT's fall season last evening. The reaction of an audience is nearly impossible to predict, and it may be that it is always combustible material waiting for a spark -- but the Tharp provoked one of the hugest, most vocal ovations you will see at a Ballet, with the previously subdued audience on its feet for a long series of curtain calls. The Ballet (if we can call it that) is extremely theatrical. It's 40 minutes long, to a recorded Phillip Glass score which becomes increasingly ecastatic ("in the upper room" itself is a phrase irresisibly suggesting the seance of the Pentecost). The stage is filled with smoke and dramatic backlighting and the dance employs half of the company's principal dancers. It's an extremely forgiving piece, it doesn't require classical dancing much, just a lot of spirit, and company gave it all of that. You can really see, in fact, just who the classically trained people are because they are the ones who have most trouble with it. Of everyone, Ethan probably got it best, and Erica Cornejo among the women. But it's lovely to see Murphy and Abrera, usually pretty controlled in the stage affects, required to kick out the jams. Over the evening, two brilliant performances by corps members require comment. First, Adrienne Schulte in the 4th variation in Dark Elegies, the performance of a career as far as I'm concerned, by the far the most fluent and accomplished of anyone in this piece. Tudor requires these very sudden bursts of motion in this ballet, in very controlled and narrow physical circumstances. The dancers motions throughout Elegies begin and stop very abruptly within a narrow space - within which Adrienne managed to dance with complete abandon and flow, completing each phrase in legato motion only to stop it on a dime, and conveying -- the only one who did this -- the intense emotional stasis and then catharsis necessary to the work. Second, Sasha Dmochowski in the Tharp -- such an extraodinarily beautiful and well trained classical dancer, with strong feet and lovely lines -- but what sticks in the memory here more than anything is the incredibly sensitive and instinctive response to the music.

Correction: David Hallberg is not scheduled for any of the Apollos. Wishful thinking on my part. He is perfect for the role. Re Les Sylphides: Dvorovenko dances it like she's Kitri among the Sylphs. Beautiful ballet but quite exposing of the company's overall lack of classical style and training, at least to any depth beyond one or two performers on any given night or afternoon.

The thing about Hallberg and Abrera in Faun is that you almost never see the boy make anything of this role. I've loved Ansanelli and Taylor in this at NYCB (Ansanelli's first performance some years ago was one of the best I've seen) -- but I've no particular memories of the boy's role being a great performance. Which is odd, considering that the "Faun" is the boy. David Hallberg changed all that. With this, Apollo and the Green Table, it's his season here. Dale I agree totally that Kaleidoscope is a successful Ballet. I liked it and I'd see it again. The thing is that there is a need for fresh Ballets, including fresh "Neo-Balanchinian" ones, if nothing else because they are MADE on this company and on and for these dancers. That's how this succeeds. The role for Veronica Part is great one because she is a great dancer and Quanze perfectly embodied her in this. That part of it was great and was about Vernonica in the same way that Ballo is a great ballet and is about Merrill Ashley. Hey, despite any other criticisms, that's good praise for Mr. Quanz. He should, though, avoid the direct choreographic quotations, they are distracting. And learn to edit a little bit. The score might have been cut slightly. Funny thing about putting the Saint Saens next to Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto # 2. It shows how related to French 19th century music Tschaikowsky, Minkus and Glazunov are. It's not the Austro-German school one hear's in the Russians. It's the Parisians -- Gounod, Bizet, Berlioz and Meyerbeer. With Russian nationalism and melodic input in the mix.

Regarding the new Quanz last night -- with all of the formalist Ballets being made over the last twenty years, it would be remarkable if at least a mediocre Balanchine imitator did not emerge. As it was, though the piece is too long and is also uneven and a little trite at moments, it furnishes a nice, fresh vehicle for some of their dancers, particularly Veronica Part. Sarah Lane is exquisite. Now if only Herman Cornejo could partner. God I hope she is not going to have to be partnered this way for ever. (And note that where Balanchine -- choreographing to a piano concerto -- always had his Ballerina dancing against the piano cadenzas, as in the pirouette entrance for the Ballerina in Imperial, Quanz gave this material to Cornejo, in this case balancees and balonees). Then Vernonica Part had her entrance and after that you really didn't watch anything else. A gorgeous performance by her. What a developee the girl has, in the legs and in her arms also, with such beautiful Kirov development and placement in her shoulders, upper back and neck. And her feet seem much stronger, she is going through the foot so very much better in developpees and roll downs -- either new shoes or new training. Max Belesorkofsky should thank his lucky stars to dance with her -- they look damned good together.

The Saturday matinee of Afternoon of a Faun with David Halberg and Stella Abrera was beautiful, the best maybe I've ever seen Faun performed. This is why one keeps going to the ballet - because you never know when a performance like this is going to happen. I left immediately afterwards because there are some acts which should not be followed. One should note that in JP's staging at City Center the lighting is quite beautiful at the outset. The curtain goes up on a white scrim with milky light; the scrim then rises and the lighting seems to go through a transformation or two, through a soft golden glow, before coming up to performance level. There are several successful readings of Faun -- Hallberg's was to be quite taken with Abrera, to try to, but to be unable ultimately to escape the mirror and to break through to her. Something in him kept dragging him back to the mirror. It was the condition of his existence. Abrera -- who is looking very ethereal and attenuated these days -- read the part as a woman very dissociated from herself. With an animal quality too. She was gorgeous in costume, her hair sensual, she's lost weight and her eyes were very striking. Suddenly she seems like Ballerina material -- that transformation that happens when a dancer somehow becomes a little inhuman, more a creature of the stage than one of the street. What is it that constitutes dramatic immediacy? You know it when you see it. Stiefel and Kent were acting. Today, something real happened on the stage.

Re Julie Kent in Faun, the instability during everything she did on point was a major problem -- even more of a problem than any wordliness or lack of innocence on her part, though you are quite right about that too Carbro. Some weakness and instability (wobbling) can be absorbed in a performance. But when it's too pervasive, it defeats your ability to see much of anything else. I also thought Ethan didn't convey much. A very very flat performance of Faun. The orchestra did play heavenly though -- this company has a good one; has great production values; a great repertory. Now all they need is consistent dancing.

There is also an institutional dimension to this. Ten years ago (speaking broadly) people like Lincoln Kirstein and Jerome Robbins were still alive. And there were Board Members and other people like Stanley Williams around whom Peter had to please, or whom at least it was dangerous or inconvenient for him to displease too much, people who had either taken part in the Ancien Regime or remembered and had loyalties to it. If he wanted to stage "Musagete" there was either risk or inconvenience to him if he went too far. That was restraining in many ways, it led to balance. Today, twenty years into the directorship, the power of the Royal Family has become nearly absolute and we all remember the dictum about absolute power and what it leads to, abuses at least of all kinds. A lot of the criticism and hostility to Martins' and his choices reflects, I think, a sort of across-the-board discomfort with the exercise of this absolute power, the people who criticise coming at this from half a dozen different directions. Taken by itself there's nothing that shocking about an opening night without Balanchine, but as a symptom of this greater malaise it becomes much more disturbing.

Continuing to think after my post as usual, I would add that this is also true of the point which Hans and Paul are speaking to -- That is, as with the necessity for there to continue to be a traditional plot version available, so with the necessity for there to continue to be a traditional staging. Thus, unless we continue to have Swan Lakes which are staged in something resembling the form which the unbroken series of productions of this ballet have brought down to us from the late 19th to the early 20th century -- with the scenery, the production values, the mime, the alternation of pas d'action with divertissement (pas de trois, pas de quatres, etc.), of pas de deux and major dances for the corps, with the princesses and the national dances in Act III -- something huge would be lost. There would be nothing left to contemporize. This is about "Staging" writ large. It is quite apart from the issue of a more modern technique, such as the six o'clock penchee or of Zacharova kicking herself in the head in developee. Those things might become incongruous in a very traditional version, but they can co-exist with it nonetheless. It is when you do what Kevin did with Swan Lake at ABT, however -- take away the entire white act after the Black Swan pas de deux, shrink the dances for the Swan Corps de Ballet to nearly nothing elsewhere and emphasize the waltzes at the court to the exclusion (literally) of almost everything else, that you do violence (and senseless violence) to the work which cannot be repaired.

The issue at its broadest would have to be cast as "Traditional" plot or staging versus (what shall we call something like Wheeldon's "Swan Lake" in Pa.) "Contemporized" or "Updated" Plot? What I mean is that the most basic distinction is between a Swan Lake which on its own terms purports to be at a court, with a prince and a real swan queen, and one (to use the example of Wheeldon) in a 19th century dance studio with a dancing master/Von Rothbart, or -- to give other hypotheticals -- one which you might cast in Rio Di Janiero with the Prince being the son of a drug lord who, in a morphine induced semi delirium, falls in love with the Queen of the Mardi Gras ... Opera has been oscillating about on this issue for the past twenty five years with new contexts for Wagner at Beyreuth and, for example, Le Nozze de Figaro (Miller's version, in a Diner, was it?). There, as here, it's obvious at the outset that, unless you continue to have an identifiable academic, classical or traditional version, there is nothing to revolt against, nothing to update or to make contemporary. Only in the context of a strong and indentifiable Swan Lake being immediately familiar, could something like Wheeldon's Swan Lake make sense.