Michael

Actually, now that I've read the entire article, the quotes make sense. The article is not about Whelan or Taylor. It's about Martins and Wheeldon. The context is everything. It's an injustice to the article actually to focus on these few brief comments that are really asides, and that are not at all central to Jacobs' argument. But anyone who has written, I'd say that anyone who has posted on this board even, has experienced that often it's the little piquant example you give that distracts the reader from the main point you are making. And after that, it's off to the races, everyone is chasing that particular hare. Here, where the thread started with only those quotes, we've got an excuse -- as in my previous post.

In fact, I agree almost totally with Jacobs' general points. I.e., as I understand them: that Peter Martins' choreography as it has developed over the years is mostly soulless, repetitive and dull; and that Wheeldon's choraeography has not consistently had much heart or real content either, that it's mostly been a facile surface without much underneath. But that's my paraphrase really. One needs to read Jacobs and unfortunately it isn't easy because you can't get at her article without paying something to the web magazine -- which does seem to inhibit discussion here doesn't it. It's too bad really it's published in only that format. Couldn't something be done to make it available on this thread? Alas, probably not, I know, I know. But doesn't that "stink" as they say? Well, the author or at least the publication does need to be paid. I only hope it's the author and not just the publication.

As to Taylor, one wonders when this was written. She's missed an entire year and truly, you can't critique the company at the moment with any reference to her.

With Whelan things are more complicated -- Though not in the Darcy/Kyra generation, she's entered a phase in her career when the physical facility is changing with age -- A critique of Whelan really needs to acknoweldge where she was between three to about seven or eight years ago, that was a distinct period to see her. Jacobs seems only to acknowledge the very young Whelan and then something else as if it were a static quality. But she's changed all along.

Would love to read the article as a whole but won't pay three dollars to do it -- Tant Pis

Very briefly Thurs Night -- Donizetti (replaced Fearful), In Memory Of, Firebird -- This was I think the best single start to finish evening at NYCB all Winter and Spring. You never know when you go to the theater. Low or no expectations may be the best frame of mind. But anyhow, the company was dancing brilliantly tonight and the energy between the stage and the audience very very strong.

De Luz and Fairchild had a great rapport in Donezetti, his partnering of her was certainly the best I've seen, the music played well, the tempi very fast but regular, and the corps de ballet dancing beautifully too (Craig Hall, Vinny Paradiso, Aaron Severini).

This can't really have been Whelan's debut in In Memory Of, though it was marked as such in the lobby, and though it certainly was Seth Orza's. Racking one's memory, people seem to remember Whelan maybe dancing this before. Never mind -- What a performance. Orza was a very strong partner for her. She was I thought a little cautious in the first "community" section, but she has seemed a little cautious and physically restricted at times to me all year. But then in the "Dance with Death" portion, when left alone with Askegaard, My God didn't she go into this other zone, she became so emotional, nearly inhuman, it was a performance to see, so raw and forgetful of self, the kind of thing you go to the theater and find maybe once a year or so. And so on, with her hair down in the Transfiguration scene. Maybe she can't do some of the physical stunts she once could (no, certainly she can't) but you dance a career to get to this point expressively.

Firebird then got a superb performance with Sylve and Jon Stafford. They've worked out a finished interpretation, one that even feeds off of any difficulties he may have handling her physically. She's bigger and stronger than he is, and they use this now in that he reads his role as becoming fascinated and then smitten with this creature in the forest, that he tries to relate to, but she plays it that she is from the other magical world -- She shows interest in him like a Cat would show interest in you and toy with you, but always she escapes his human advances and his attempts to connect with her. Ultimately she is feral (so to speak) or Sylph and he is human. But with Stafford it was a deeply sincere and engaged dramatic job from start to finish, breathing life into this piece where Chas. Askegaard has been putting me to sleep for a year or two now. And as for Sylve -- As the proverb goes she was born to dance this, she is beautiful in the Costume, perfect in her technique, and nowhere is her native character more suited to a role than this one. The Berceuse was perfect -- that last moment when she went stage right and then turned and held on point in a deep back bend with her arms extended, the music seemed to be pouring nearly from her. Plus the girls' corps de ballet were superb there too, as were Rutherford and Stafford -- Their reverence for the Firebird during the Berceuse was a touch you don't often notice in this ballet but which played and projected very strongly tonight.

Eric Cornejo's lovely Gulnare on Wednesday afternoon must be mentioned. She is beautiful in a tutu -- shoulders, arms, legs, long neck -- and a gifted adagio dancer. The Pasha did right to buy her first and would have been forgiven had he preferred her to Dvorovenko. Irina did dance Act I as if she thought the role of Medora were that of Odile as the Black Swan in Swan Lake, and as if she was interested in seducing her prospective purchaser. On the other hand, a wonderful Act II from Dvorovenko and Beloserkovsky that day, as they danced it very formally, with no attempt to dramatize it. And Irina may be in the best shape of her career.

I totally am of the same mind with whoever above said that Paloma Herrera had a fine performance on Tuesday night. One loves the fact that she so did not overdo anything, that she simply let herself project what was needed. As with Dvorovenko, Herrera is in great shape right now.

Jenifer Ringer looks to be dancing as well right now as she has in a very long time -- Bizet 1st movement and Brahms 2d were very strong in the last ten days. Both of them were danced "big," and with physical ease too. In Brahms the steps when she's lifted and does these big rondes de jambes beats from the knee with the working leg -- lightening fast, strong and easy -- all that read so legibly, just like it should look. She also appears consistently happy to be on stage at the moment and I didn't think that was true during the winter at times. She's carrying her performances right now in a way independent of her partners, the way a principal dancer does, she's the one responsible for making the ballets work.

Albert Evans is all wrong for Brahms 2d movement. He can dance it physically, has the strength, confidence, etc., but he has a very unclassical body and the costume in 2d movement (kind of an 1830 Louis Phillipe frock coat that leaves the bottom exposed and does something unflattering to the line of the legs in a short and bulky-legged guy, and shoulders too) emphasizes everything unclassical about him and makes those things even more extreme. (Nilas too looks really bad in that particular costume -- the company needs another type here, perhaps Veyette could do this if he can handle the tricky partnering, at least he'd look good in the costume). But then, this was Fayette's role and he didn't look so great in that costume either.

I'm already looking forward to seeing Tyler again in this role, in a couple of years, when he can relax and enjoy himself more.

And when he looks a little more grown up. Tyler looked like a schoolboy in love with his baby sitter, and Miranda like his babysitter joking with him.

Re Bar as the soloist in Brahms 1st Movement: She is superb at this, but I wish they would cast her in more lyrical roles occasionally, something which would allow her to show her interpretive side. She has this "Still Waters Run Deep" interpretation quality that is amazing but that the casting refuses to show us year after year. Instead, they give her "hard sell" material. Now she's become superb at this -- But the most deeply moving side of Ellen Bar is the other thing. A strong adagio dancer too, why not let us see her partnered and presented more? She has Third Movement Brahms first ballerina in her for example.

Somogyi was pretty amazing in the Red Violin though -- I loved how fully she realized the positions, she slightly distorted everything, a little hyperextension here, a little there, a leg, an arm, but the whole look of the poses was never lost: everything was coordinate.

We've got to see the Wheeldon again to judge, I agree. But it did strike me at the time that there was very little punch or content in the central pas de deux, nothing much going on. Now that may have been the point -- but with that unfinished Bartok concerto, and the suggestion of a dying gift to his wife, and the Saranac Lake setting (right out of German Romanticism, the wild heath at night kind of thing) . . . o.k., Damien flies off an leaves Miranda alone and maybe that's Bartok's death if we stretch it. But all the same, if that was true you'd still want some feeling about this imported into the dance, wouldn't you, some connection at some point between the two principal dancers? Damien and Miranda looked like they didn't connect and don't connect and never really have. It's suspiciously reminiscent of the emptiness at the center of An American in Paris. How many good central pas de deuxs has Wheeldon made in his ballets? Except for After the Rain, I can't really remember any.

A contrary argument can be made that "Evenfall" is not a particularly successful work -- The central pas de deux is empty and there is no chemistry at all between Woetzel and Weese. But maybe that's the point. But this is fairly consistent in Wheeldon -- If you go through all Chris's work, the only time he's made a romantic pas deux with real impact was for Wendy and Jock in "After the Rain." In this line of argument, to call Wheeldon a "man of genius" might be a bit strong. The argument proceeds that one wants a little bit of heart in a great choreographer.

People's reputations probably suffer as much from being excessively praised as from the lack of praise. The excess prompts a reaction to adjust in the other direction.

Re the new Wheeldon, to a Bartok piano concerto. Rockwell in the Times today sees it as kind of an homage to Tutu and Tiara classicism. Actually, I see it as more complex: the pas de deux is utterly classical, but in the corps de ballet work Wheeldon seems to me to be consciously trying to incorporate non-traditional elements. The girls are frequently presented feet forward, totally turned in. Also the frequent poses where the girls are not only turned in, but bent double with their hands to the floor, presenting their bottoms in the air and the big round tutus towards the audience like large Japanese fans. My take on this is that the choreographer is trying here to explore the incorporation of non classical elements into the classical canon. And given the fact that the work so resembles "Kalaeidoscope" at ABT last fall -- the Bartok concerto is not unlike the Saint Saens from that work, the color scheme and the costumes are also quite similar -- I think Chris was consciously commenting on and working off of that treatment, which was much more traditionally turned out and pretty-pretty.

He is to be praised for this, IMO. It's risky in that it risks non approval -- maybe it won't succeed. Wheeldon until now, though, has played it very safe with the critics and the audience. I'm happy to see him attempting to push the confines of the traditional forward in this way. It's quite interesting and ambitious from that point of view.

Another analogy (beside "overacting") would be that of "overplaying" music

-- specifically the way white guys are said to always "Overplay the Blues." You simply can't hear a white musician, instrumentalist or vocalist -- whether John Mayall or John Hammond or Paul Butterfield or Eric Clapton -- play the Blues with the natural and "laid back" quality you hear in John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters or T Bone Walker. "White guys always Overplay" my Guru used to say.

That analogy works for me with dancing, but you have to transport it out of the racial/musico context.

There are some dancers who do things as if from an inner nature and vision, effortlessly and without pushing, unselfconsciously. Then others come around and try to muscle it or get at it from the outside in.

How do you achieve the appearance of unselfconsciousness in a profession that requires so much preparation? It's a matter of spontaneity in a dancer. Some of them are very good at making something new on the stage.

I probably don't need to do this, so apologies in advance for over-moderating, or putting words in Michael's mouth - but. . .

To prevent advance confusion, Michael is using the word "grotesque" as a referral to a genre of dancing, not to Ulbricht being grotesque. It's not a backhanded insult, but a description of a hearty, almost folk-like style of character work.

That said, I would have loved to see the performance. Titania is a role that Kistler will probably be able to do until she decides to give it up. How was her Oberon? I saw the ballet last week in Philadelphia - what's interesting is the ballet is not cast for height; they don't have a large enough company to insist on tall-short mismatchings.

Yes, I meant "Grotesque" as in Noble/Demi-Caracter/Grotesque employment -- Danny does the role very much in the latter emploi which would, in fact, be that of Puck in principle.

De Luz replaced Millepied as Darci's Oberon. He acted and danced the role very nicely -- Good speed, elevation, attack. He's naturally a very fine dramatic dancer, having seen him do Alain in Fille Mal Gardee in his ABT days I should have remembered that.

Darci Kistler had a fine performance opening night. The new cast generally looked good. Jennie Somogyi's Hermia was very strong dance wise, she was the most "Ballerina" of anyone on stage all evening in fact, which was good to see as to her -- she seems to be far along the road to being 100% -- but a little out of balance for the production as a whole. Perhaps the Hermia/Helena -- Lysander/Demetrius quartet could have been a little more tongue in cheek, a little less Stanislavky method. In Act II Somogyi dominated the pas de deuxs in the Wedding March with Reichlen not far behind. I thought the Divertissement a little flat (Whelan and Hubbe).

Kistler's Fairy Attendants -- the senior girls corps such as now they are -- were very lovely in Act I.

The Bottom pas de deux, with Danchig Waring as Bottom and Kistler in Act I was not the strongest moment in the evening -- There was some trouble with the orchestra there. Quinn's tempi were generally quite strong and moderate all evening, but at that point something seemed to happen.

Danny Ulbricht's Puck is growing on me. His grotesque presentation of it is not inappropriate. The part suits him.

The Times has a general interest in supporting the status quo at New York's major cultural institutions. In its official critical pronouncements it generally never meets with a major event -- be it Museum (MoMA or Met), Opera or Ballet -- of which it does not offer at least guarded support.

There is some chauvinism in this of the structural sort. If New York is not implicitly the cultural capital of the World, or at least the equal of any of the other Pretenders to this role, the Times itself would be the journalistic organ of a backwater. So in the end, the Times -- while it may criticize specific performances and shows -- always supports the "powers that be".

That being said -- I pretty much agree with Rockwell that we shouldn't be looking for a change at City Ballet. It's a case of "be careful what you look for, you might just get it." The very names he mentions as possible successors show this -- There's not one among them whom I wouldn't regard as dangerously worse than the present regime. You have a great institution here at City Ballet. Martins isn't going anywhere. He's only 60, where else could he go, what else could he do? In the end, the institution itself will develop its succession, from within, just like it did with Peter.

It's so interesting to see how very different Nikolai Hubbe appears in this than he does today. You would say nearly a different dancer. The clarity of the beats, the easy - light and feathery jump -- and he's so much less bulked up in his physique, both the legs and the shoulders and neck, he was so much longer and more stretched in his lines as a young dancer. It's not the passage of time in itself that I'm convinced you can see in the contrast between this DVD and Nikolai today, it's the nearly twenty years of different training, the distance he has come from the Danish style. Lovely performance by him.

In the Midsummer casting -- Interesting that Jennie Somogyi is going into Hermia but not dancing Hipolyta, which was one of her finest roles, she would just clear the stage, there was no one else quite like her in that. Apparently, at this point in her return from the tendon injury, she is staying away from jumping and Hippolyta -- at the conclusion of Act I -- is just this series of ever bigger stag leap jetees. What a makeover/transformation/adjustment for Jennie -- from her early teens (and, I'm told, even before that, as a little girl novice in class) she had one one of the most striking and athletic jumps you'd ever see.

mangled micheal? I dont think so...

I wouldnt go so far as to say that Modest "overhauld" the libretto, he merely changed soem things.

He certainly did that in changing the tragic conclusion of the 1877 original (where Odette and Siegfried both disappeared beneath waters of the lake, agitated by a storm, until then "The storm dies down ... The moon's pale light breaks through the scattering clouds. The Swans appear on the Lake" as the concluding music elevates into a calm tragic mode) into an Apotheosis with Siegfried and Odette in a "temple of eternal happiness and bliss." The debate, lively to this day, on how Swan Lake should conclude dates back to this amendment. As to which, one wouldn't change the Petipa/Ivanov ending all the same.

Ballet scores are shifting sands. What Tchaikovsky himself wrote for Swan Lake was performed only twice during his lifetime, very early on. It was only after his death that the ballet as we know it took shape and at that time Tchai's brother Modest overhauled the libretto (generally acknowledged to be positive changes) while the Romanov court composer Drigo unfortunately mangled the score in places. I don't know that what Tchai himself wrote has ever fully recovered its integrity.

I would like to see Orpheus done with a strong narrative emphasis. As now performed, it comes off as just too stylized. Orpheus himself has to be seeker/poet/hero. He is determined. True. Someone who will go to the underworld to save his heroine. The role calls for emotional weight. I don't know who can do it at City Ballet or elsewhere right now.

Re, Apollo, different company but wasn't Stiefel (unexpectedly) wonderful in the role at City Center last fall. He did it wild, raw and demi character.

I don't think there is such a thing as a dancer who never needed coaching. There are only some who can succeed without it. Bouder and Korbes and Jennie Somogyi need or needed coaching too. They were just able to develop without it. And that's just coaching.

Ballet Mastering or Mistressing is something even more encompassing and fundamental.

Coaching is role oriented. The role of the Ballet Master or director starts in class or before it, in forming the dancers, nurturing and developing them, looking after them artistically, physically and emotionally, from casting at one end, to how you give feedback and approval (or whether you give approval at all -- the systematic failure to give it amounts to an emotional sickness) to the atmosphere in the dressing rooms and in how you treat the company as a whole at the other end -- That's the all encompassing thing.

When they come into the company most of these dancers are eighteen years old, some are even younger. They have grown up in a world subject to absolute authority in the studio and isolated from other kids, spending their teen age years staring at themselves in a mirror and trying to perceive defects that the lay person can hardly imagine. Even without that background, Kids at that age need to be taught things as much or even more than ones who are twelve to fifteen. Dancers don't stop needing to learn and needing authority when they reach the company, only it's different things they need: you are no longer dealing so much with the basics, though that stuff ocasionally needs tweaking too.

I would say that a system of classification has to be self-referential.

There usually has to be more than one term in order to classify. It thus has to be danseur noble as distinguished from something else, which is demi-character historically and as Mel says , also a third class, Grotesque in the historical language. And as Mel also points out, Grotesque as a male class has fallen by the wayside even more than the nomenclature for the other two.

If you have Noble and Demi-Character, you distinguish the taller dancers from the shorter ones, the princes from the jesters at least in what they do.

Just free associating here, but if these categories are to remain relevant, there must be just a few of them, they must be simple to apply, easy to understand and useful.

A big mess is that, in the transition from 19th century classicism to contemporary classicism, a third category has come into being -- the Classique dancers -- but can we have more than two categories and still have a useful system? And this doesn't even touch the girls yet, for whom the classification is even more fragmented and confusing. In NYCB terms, one speaks of the Farrell rep or the Hayden rep, or the Le Clerq rep, instead of using classical vocabulary. People use lyrical vs. acrobatic. Dionysian vs. Apollonian. Every kind of language has been applied to this ad hoc.

But back to Noble vs. Demi Character as a system. Since this at least is the historical language of ballet, it is useful to try to update it. Part of making classicism neo-classical. You shouldn't discard it any more than you discard the idea of the five positions.

Visually and aesthetically there is a principle here. Something about the size and apperance of the boy and the appropriateness of his casting and to some degree of what you have him do. Acrobatics, tricks and physical facility have become things across the board in contemporary ballet, they are no longer restricted to smaller dancers nor should they be. But certain things aesthetically about size and role don't change to the eye. There is a principle to this.

And historically, for staging and appreciating the older works, an understanding of this is even more important. There it really is analogous to the five positions, it's a foundation concept.

One way to proceed is, as someone suggested, to analyze the older works for the casting in those terms and then to work one's way forward in time.

Probably it is still important to have a category that distinguishes a male dancer of the taller order, and of regular and noble features and who dramatically fits the noble or regal type, from the trickster -- someone who is a Prince to the exclusion of other things. And to apply it to the physical set up and appearance and temperament of the dancer more than to his physical facility --

Remember in this connection that the class was also called "serieux", or serious as well as noble.

To continue to use the term means that at least the idea of this type continues to exist and the linked idea that it is important for some roles to cast someone who fits the bill.

I agree with Mel that there are few people who actually conform to the ideal and few roles that actually continue to require it. But it's still important to retain the concept. Casting that goes in that direction will be better in the ballets that did require it and the concept itself preserves a critical heritage of ballet.

Defined in that manner, I don't think either Acosta or Jose Manuel is really a Noble/Serieux type -- Neither is basically, essentially the Prince, both are too highly flavored, too able to be Puckish, too able to play a demi character lead in Don Q to be regarded as essentially of the other type.

But here's also where the usual verbal confusion starts -- there have been so many discussions of this subject which immediately descend into "he's a noble dancer ... how can you say he isn't noble?" Makes you think that the biggest problem with the class isn't the ambiguity of using this vernacular word which means one thing for the special dance term which means something different

Sterling Hyltin is learning fast from her teacher. This shows why she'll go far in this company.

The praise of Andy Veyette is mostly warranted. At 15, Andy had the body of a grownup and in some ways he is just now growing into his body as a dancer. He's progressed this season in his clarity and ability to finish steps and finish performances. He's got a nice line, tall, and particularly he's not -- like so many of the other men -- over muscled in the upper body. He's kept away from the weight room, thank God, and you can still see his neck and the sculptural way the head sits on his neck.

The biggest single thing he can do now in terms of his expression, artistry and indeed technique, is to keep his upper body calmer and more relaxed, his shoulders more down and to the sides. In Donizetti, where the Danish noble type demanded that, he got more and more tense as the difficult variations proceeded. And one would expect that -- he's young and gaining fast. But that's the thing nevertheless. (Compare Marcovici -- nobody more tense above the waist). One does like the idea of Veyette partnering Ashley Bouder more: he's the right age, the right American sensibility and a good emotional fit for her. He's not up to her chops right now, however.

Tina leBlanc, SO clear, and so fast, and able to modulate and phrase and place accents deftly in the midst of it all....

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The description of LeBlanc would also apply to Ashley Bouder. The specific part about the ability to "modulate and phrase and place accents" in the midst of the flow is probably the most distinctive thing about Bouder as well.

Interesting about this quality is that both LeBlanc and Bouder were trained at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. Surely not a coincidence I'd guess.

Magnificent performance by Bouder in this role today actually. One of her best.

Unexpectedly, this afternoon's Fancy Free was one of the high points of the entire season for me. It's the most beautiful thing about a repertory piece (about any drama really) when a dramatization comes "to life" on the stage -- I mean when the dancers or the players are so "into" their roles, have the kind of immediacy, that something happens on the stage between them, and they seem to bring a play to life. In the audience you feel it and it happened today with Danny Ulbricht, Tyler Angle, Ben Millepied, Rachel Rutherford and Gina Pascoguin in this. Fancy Free all of a sudden seemed a very moving item, properly called a Masterpiece, a tribute to Hopefulness and Youth really, and to Spirit when the three boys hauled themselves up from behind the bar at the end to find the girls had gone, dusted themselves off and started shooting gum wrappers one more time . . .

Never mind that Ben Millepied doesn't dance the rhumba like Jose Manuel does (though Tyler Angle was absolutely the best "nice sailor" I've seen -- the role is perfect for him, the open and broad eyed expression peaking out from under that hat, the ample sweeping variation, the skids across the stage terminating in him stretched out with a sweet smile at Rachel's feet) -- He and they had the kind of immediacy and vitality that made the Ballet work.