Michael

Agree - Fairchild, De Luz and their supporting corps de ballet had a beautiful third movement. That and Miranda Weese in Tschai Pas were highlights tonight.

Well, all I can say is that if that is what they are looking for -- the angry urban mood of modern America, gang warfare, alienated youth ... NYCB is NOT getting that out of this production right now. I get the opposite out of the State Theater production. It's hard to see Tiler Peck, Stephanie Zungre, and Antonio Carmena as anything but grinning, goofy and happy as hell in this. The Mickey Mouse Club. That's exactly what I can't quite get to the bottom of. But why believe Anna Kisselgoff that this was Robbins' intent? How does she know that?

Well the thing I find weird about it as seen at NYCB -- is precisely that I find it so determinedly innocent. I had to think hard to find something dark underneath, except for the pas de deux between Hall and Rutherford. Even the bit with the girl on the roof seemed a pose, harmless -- though she's tossed off the stage. Did it play that way at the Joffrey and ABT? Do other people see it that way at City Ballet or is it just me. Interesting Carley, the West Side Story chronology. If cousins, distant distant distant ones. West Side Story has tragedy, drama. I find very little of that here. Instead a kind of determined suburban white bread optimism that seems a pose, wilfull denial if you want to read in irony. But I feel no irony in these performances really. It's white bread. It feels like the suburbs to West Side Story's city. As I said, very much a portrait of its time, but the time it displays is in some way dissociative. I still feel confused by this ballet. Which is why it took so many damn words to surround it.

The New Wheeldon -- Well I'm posting too much but I've got to say I think the new Wheeldon is the best thing he’s done. First there's the structure and progression, the integrity and the organic quality of the piece, its simplicity. Polyphonia was more or less strung together in serial fasion. “Pas de deux, pas de deux, pas de deux, solo, then pas de deux, then everyone comes on stage and does their thing at the same time.” In After the Rain, the two sections had little to do with each other. In tonight’s ballet, though, everything was unified, organic in development, part of the same idea, following a single impulse. The ballet consists of two principle couples and two threesomes, with each threesome being composed of a girl and two boys. Everyone is on stage at the outset for the statement of the musical theme, then the development proceeds first with a strikingly romantic pas de deux for Weese and Evans; after which the other principle couple enters briefly as a transitional device and exits, leaving the two threesomes to take the stage each for an ensemble dance on opposite sides of the stage: the dancers here are Pauline Golbin with Tyler Angle and Craig Hall; and Melissa Barak with Sean Suozzi and Andy Veyette. They finish and exit and the second principle couple -- Whelan and Marcovici – enter for a more modern and angular pas de deux. At the end of which, three other couples enter briefly (Weese and Evans, Golbin and Hall, Barak and Veyette), and divide the stage into four quadrants, then the other two boys join them so that you have the two couples and the two threesomes spread out, and the ballet ends with an ensemble piece, simple and complete. The material for the dancers is beautiful and absolutely appropriate for each of them. The overall movement palate is unified. Wheeldon is working in his own idiom here: there is a great deal of movement which proceeds seemingly inside out, as it were, the women and the couples in their partnering gathering themselves into a center and then sweeping outwards, with simple rhythmic motion. Off balance sweeps of the women end in slight skids on the flattened feet. Everything is kept very simple and reduced in complexity -- the pas de deuxs are lovely and each is different, each having a kind of unexplained symbolic content, a situation you will supply. Of all Wheeldon’s ballets, the influence of Kenneth Macmillan is the most obvious in this one, particularly in the opening ensemble, and given the Elizabethan echoes in the costuming, with their whiff of Romeo and Juliet. But it is his own idiom after all. Here Chris has absorbed his influences. He’s made them his own. You would know this for Wheeldon’s work if you saw it anonymously. It was particularly interesting to see Wendy Whelan in this ballet, in that she seems somehow to be channeling Jock Soto, to have absorbed him in his absence. There is no other way to say it, you could see Jock in Wendy tonight. It was like he was still there. And given Soto’s warm relationship with Wheeldon as well, I think that’s a trait of union between them too. Chris also has absorbed Jock Soto. Finally a word about Pauline Golbin – the performance of a career. Pauline has always been a little strange to be a corps de ballet girl primarily. Because she’s very unique, very noticeable, she’s not uniform, you pick her out, she not one who vanishes in a crowd: what with her dark romantic features, the slightly blocky upper body, the displacement of space and particularly the eyes – You always felt she was more naturally a soloist in type. So it was wonderful to see her dance this role tonight that Wheeldon has made on her – She was lyrical and plastic, with lovely placement, one might say displacement of volume on the stage. Perfume and mystique, Chris had her picked her up and posed her in the air, turned her back to the audience with the arms a la seconde, displayed the lovely shoulders, the back, the mood and the poetry – a splendid, splendid performance by this girl. I now promise to shut up for at least a week. But before I go, Abi Stafford fans will be pleased to hear that she was really wonderful in Episodes tonight. And Mother Goose also had a lovely performance. Best night in the theater this Winter.

What do folks think of this? Jerome Robbins’ New York Export Jazz has been a controversial among my friends. And I myself have also been of two minds. As background, having seen it a few times now, the general theater seems to like it quite a bit. It seems to hold the attention of the theater (which is something you can perceive when you are there, oddly enough) and it provokes warm applause. On the other hand, the reaction among the Ballet Alert people, myself, family and friends has been more mixed. The negative view, when expressed, has been that the piece appears “dated”, or “boring,” and that it’s a production to be avoided. One regular goes home early or out for coffee whenever he can avoid seeing it again (I’ve done this myself once); another opined that he hoped never to “sit through that again.” Going over some of my old emails, I find I’ve myself described it as the “Micky Mouse Club on Amphetamines”, or “What Happens When You Give Speed to Annette Funaciello” and/or as “Limp Wristed Horsing Around, a Sort of Gay West Side Story.” Last night, though, viewing number 5 – I think I finally got it. I enjoyed it again, even more than the first time I saw it, when I initially liked it as well. What made the difference was my perception that what is difficult about the work is precisely that it is a snapshot of a a particular moment (which I did experience but when very young) and of a generation of which I was not a part. Export Jazz is not West Side Story. It’s five to ten years earlier, in a different social milieu (Levittown slumming let’s say) and portrays a different culture. The Baby Boomers are not whom this is about. Rather, it’s a picture of the teenage and early twenty years of a generation old enough to remember the War, but too young to have fought in it. It’s Bill Haley and the Comets meets Maynard G. Krebs. Consider 1958, the year it was made: Segregation and the KKK in the South but Brown vs. Board of Education just decided. On Television (then a new medium): The Micky Mouse Club, Annette Funaciello, Davy Crockett on Walt Disney; Richard Rogers’ Victory at Sea; the Doby Gillis show; My Little Margie, Andy’s Gang. In popular literature, the first Ian Fleming novels. In the news, the nuclear arms race, the missile race, the 100 Kiloton Hydrogen Bomb, primary school kids (me) climbing under their desks at school for air raid drills, reading the Weekly Reader which taught us how to identify the profiles of Russian aircraft, then eat your milk and cookies. In “Jazz,” it was a time when the remnants of the jitterbug and the big band era met Tito Puente and Miles Davis. Promised a “Consumer Paradise,” models of Nike Missiles came in the boxes of Cheerios my family ate. It was an incredibly inconsistent and contradictory and strange period of which Robbins has provided us with a remarkable dance embodiment. The music is a fair pastiche of the moment: the score ranges from early Pink Panther, to decadent jitterbug, from sad and elegant Trumpet melody (a la Clifford Harris), to conga drum rhythms with saxophone riffs, finally also to cha-cha-cha. The décor is also of the moment. The movement idiom is also uniquely Robbins, you won’t find it anywhere else, even within Robbins’ work: it’s part conscious bravado, whistling to silence the Nuclear wind, as it were, a determined innocence with all that hip thrusting; it’s part Micky Mouse Club, put both hands in front, bend over and strut around the stage; it’s part “beat” generation, pre-out-of-the-closet limp wrist-ism (Robbins would have known something about that); with the occasional classical dance lift interpolated. The characterizations are similarly surface innocence with something else underneath: boys and girls with the determined white bread optimism of the time, innocent and slightly silly, a pose which doesn’t allow for tragedy even or much emotional weight and that will not wear well – part sock-hop flight from realityh, part the adoption of a youth culture style as an identity thing (partly consumer) – As I said, milk and chocolate cake after Nuclear air raid drills at school. Everybody’s clean cut, in sneakers, but the interracial pas de deux (probably new but a stroke of dramatic inspiration in J P Froehlich’s staging to take advantage of his cast) and the girl thrown off the roof allow a moment’s glimpse under the facade. I note that, if I read this correctly, that might be why I like some of the performers in this better than the others. Generally, Ellen Bar, Gina Pascoguin, Rachel R., and Sarah Ricard among girls; and Sean Suozzi, Andy Veyette and Jon Stafford among the boys get it best. They are a little dark under the clean cut-ness. While Ashley Laracey, Tiler Peck, Amar Ramassar and Antonio Carmena get it worse – they smile too much, horse around too much, don’t seem to get any weight underneath. I am anyway, happy they revived this. It’s an important work, an important piece of dance. Confusing, unfamiliar, entertaining, and graceful, and the better for being all four things.

Wed Night Beautiful first performance of Firebird last night, particularly by the orchestra (under a guest conductor -- I've never heard it played more perfectly at NYCB or elsewhere -- and at the best dancing tempi too), Ashley Bouder and Rachel Rutherford. Charles Askegaard really looks only half-there on the stage these days, he seems to go into and out of character by the second -- Last night, when surrounded by the rather curious and muppet like monsters in this production, he looked like he wanted (perhaps not inappropriately) to swat mosquitoes rather than seek magic salvation. There is, though, a hint of whimsy in the score at that point -- perhaps the monsters and Chuck are not totally wrong here. The first of the season Episodes got a solid, workmanlike, scrupulous and particularly a well rehearsed performance. Except for Darci in the culminating section. The arabesque not only gone, but the feet now starting too, particularly demi point when she needs to rely on it. Other casting was Abi Stafford in first movement (she seems to look good in leotard ballets, despite the fact that she is basically unsuited by type -- she's not long legged and when she shows a flexed foot it looks a little strange on her, one can't really say why -- it's not the line one looks for -- but in all she's very good in this as were the girls with her) and Tess Reichlen and Jason Fowler in the second movement. Jennie Somogyi in the third movement continues to struggle with her foot -- she favors it, it restricts some motion, particularly her turn-out to the right and her ability to cut loose in that direction -- but that doesn't matter -- the important thing is that she get through this season. This season for her is about the next dozen ones for all of us, so all in all one was very happy to see this performance. A good Episodes. Well played, you could see the great choreography. The other ballet was Export Jazz. I'm prepared to make an argument for its integrity, validity -- the pleasure of seeing it. But some other time. I liked it very much last night. Good performance by Becky Krohn in the thrown off the roof by the boys section. Great performances by Rachel Rutherford and Craig Hall in their pas de deux. Dance as whole very animated, very well received by the audience.

I can't say enough about Sofiane Sylve's performances in both Fearful this afternoon, and in Bizet 2d movement tonight. The Bizet was just one of those special ones -- She performed it almost in a trance it seemed, very dreamy to the woodwind melody and lost in the music and in the motion, she seemed almost of another race, sort of inhuman or more than human. ( "o quai te memore virgine ..."). The dancing was very pure, geometric even at times, and completely without ballerina airs -- she let the dancing, the steps convey everything, nothing was "emoted" -- but with total ballerina authority. In that sense -- that she lets the steps do the talking without more, she is the most New York City Ballet of all the NYCB ballerinas. My gosh, also those sharp escapes to point in 2d position, and the way she etched the jetees in transition into further steps. Lovely. And this, in the most regal, the most "Paris Opera" of tutu and tiara roles, after displaying just a gorgeous, modern weight and plasticity in the adagios in Fearful Symmetries this afternoon. Tremendous range this girl has. The company I think would be quite lost without her right now. She literally carried City Ballet through successive performances today. It was all the more important because Bouder came out of 3d movement Bizet tonight too, just as she did Ballo this afternoon. Although it's a minor point, I also have to mention how good it is to see Sophie Flack getting a chance to dance in prominent corps de ballet roles night after night. She came out of SAB with Tess Reichlen, at least I think so, but has not had a great deal of opportunity. She's a corps de ballet girl through and through, very lovely in what she does -- one means it as the highest complement. No corps de ballet, no company.

Well, to begin with, it's hard to bring a readable dramatic action, or even a kind of symbolist/surrealist emotional meaning (think the mysterious relationships between the women and men in Serenade) to a ballet with six protagonists making four entrees. That's a basic point. Peter Martins does that a lot -- too many characters, too many things to look at on the stage, too much action lasting too long, no hierarchy, little focus. But even when he does reduce to say, a man and two women (I'm thinking of the thing he did for the Gala, with Laracey in it two springs ago) -- He's not particularly good at creating a pas de deux with real emotional depth and resonance in it. By way of contrast, again, when I think of Balanchine -- say the pas from Agon, or the action in Serenade -- I think of the complex evocativeness that he's able to bring to a non-specific dramatic action. I think of the woman with the hand over the boy's eyes in Serenade as he walks to the girl on the floor -- the "dark angel" thing: everyone has their interpretation, everyone is moved. The very fact that you can say "Dark Angel." Something has happened. With PM, I won't say it's never the case, but very seldom. Actually, it's hard to think of when something like that ever "happens." There is little emotional depth to his pdd's. And certainly not in Morgen, where none of the characters or their situations has dramatic embodiment, much less definition. There's the girl who throws herself at the guy at the risk of a broken back (the Taylor role); the older girl who giggles and turns (Kistler); and the lush girl who swoons (Ringer). The men are even less defined since they basically pace and look around. Last night of course had two new men -- Nilas Martins in place of Jock Soto (retired); and Charles Askegaard in place of James Fayette (also retired). But with Jock and James the basic dramatic lack was the same. And, actually, Morgen is one of Martins' better recent ballets.

I vote for the anti-Morgen party -- The piece is not unusual for Martins. Some fine moments, which appear and then disappear randomly. The ballet is organized around the three men and three women switching partners -- I call it organization, not "structure" (which should be something more organic) -- this happens three or four times, thus three or four entrees for each dancer. The switching partner thing is a device Martins uses a lot. It substitutes not only for structure, but also for meaning, plot, emotion, even sincerity or real engagement by the heart of the choreographer. The piece seems shallow, somehow kept at a distance, a series of poses, signifying nothing much more than ... well, switching partners. "Don't like this one, maybe that, gee I'm sorry, oi vey I yearn." Soprano's diction was poor, but I enjoyed the singing. Choreography is not up to Strauss's songs.

And the point she made was quite correct. Darci has lost the ability to carry her arabesque into her back -- It's a serious serious handicap for this role and for a lot of others. It was very difficult in Orpheus last year too -- where, like Monumentum/Movements, she was given every single performance (and there with Nilas Martins; thankfully, no one has had the idea to put him into Monumentum).

The danse d'ecole classified dancers according to types. Demis are quick, virtuoso and smaller. It's not just divertissement entrees, however, the dramatic range is different: they are not princesses, they are more soubrettish in type but not only that. Think Petipa's Don Q: the street dancers, the flower girls, sometimes Kitri herself -- though she's not cast demi by the Kirov or the Bolshoi, they use Kitri as a contrast to the more demi variation dancers. Don Q is nonetheless said to be "the great demi caracter ballet." The typology was discussed at length on this board some years back, I'm sure you can find it in the archives. It's where the classical roles come from and a basic grasp of it is quite useful.

My thought is that Darci Kistler is just scary in this ballet. If we tried it without her we might just see what it looks like. Maybe try to sit well upstairs for this.

Interesting, Rockwell on the jealousy -- that's another thread I'd guess. The memory this morning, the thing not mentioned, were the times in Act IV when Odette went to the floor. At least three times, the last two bent double, folded on herself, the arms extended, sequences that last for ten, fifteen, twenty seconds. Mearns was so poetic there.

They share something else as well -- that step forward relevee and then hit the big, rich, high, attitude back as a pose -- I've seen Zakharova do that in Swan. And the magnificent arabesque. Funny you mentioned Zakharova, because she's exactly one of the girls I'd have gone outside of the company for a comparison with. Mearns is much more solidly upright, stronger, more balanced dancer, less of a Matisse like flowing line than Zakharova. But the comparison is not inapt. Lucky girl, what? Two performances and we've got her beatified.

Tuesday Night For me, my favorite performance is always the last really good one I see. I second what's been written about Sara Mearns -- this really was an extraordinary performance. So finished, so pure and so clean -- she seems to have sprung fully formed onto the stage, amazingly precocious. It's a gift, one has to say, there is no other explanation. First of all an exquisite person. Tall. She must be nearly 5'10", as big as Maria Kowroski or Veronika Part, but she's a different type, she moves more like a mid to tall dancer, not like a very tall one. A beautiful, round face, slightly exotic eyes, fine features . . . a long long elegant neck. The body slightly longer to the waist than above it, but she has the most beautiful chest, shoulders and upper back, what they call plastique there I believe, and long arms too and very fine hands. The feet are poetic, long but tapering, not blunt. She gives the impression of strength there but also delicacy. She turns well -- particularly she spots her turns extremely well, everything she does on the stage is very well spotted with her eyes, one sees precisely where she looks and how she turns to where she's looked. She jumps too. But the thing you really notice is the stretch and the extension and above all the ease with which she extends. The repeated relevees up into a big, extended stretched high attitude rear tonight were memorable, glorious, I can't remember anyone else doing this, I'd have to go well outside the company to find the analogy. She's very pliable in the hips and between the hips and waist, perhaps not the most pliable upper back but oh what a beautiful one. As others have ssid, this may have been the best Swan of them all. Defining best, as I said as the last one really good one I've seen. She's certainly, in her stretched physique, along with Sylve, the most natural bodily type for the role as it exists in Peter's choreography. For Bouder, whose waist falls more in the middle of her body and whose legs are not as long, and therefore who puts more expression into her back, it's a different stretch entirely. The two dancers are not really comporable. But back to Mearns -- Dramatically, it was a completely and strikingly sincere performance. I don't know that vulnerable is the word I'd use, though I know what people mean. It does apply. But I found her more self contained than that, a reason unto herself, a mysterious quality, a little feral and sylph-like, her eyes do that maybe. She's one of those girls too who, when she's still on the stage, you watch her breathe. Some other points: 1 The pas de trois got it's best performance tonight, Hyltin and Abi Stafford and Antonio Carmena. Antonio had a wonderful performance as Benno, he's the only one I've seen who has really made sense of the devilishly tricky choreography in his solo and he's also a slightly smaller and quicker type than they cast it with before when I saw Andy Veyette and I don't know who else. 2. Where (and why) have they been hiding Austin Laurent? He's a weird jester, sort of a metaphisical, Faustian one in tone, he's so much bigger than the usual jester type. But he can dance the role. A beautiful boy, tall and well proportioned, and I swear the best feet of any of the men. His batterie is the clearest I've seen here in donkey's ages. Turns well, jumps like one shot from the proverbial cannon. I was just blown away by him tonight, he is, I think, a major talent. 3. The corps de ballet, both men and women, deserves all the credit in the world. Mostly, it's the coming together of the crops from SAB in the three successive years PRECEDING 2005 for the girls, and of the last two years for the boys. There was a lot of turnover in the company among the girls in the two years before last spring -- last year they only took two girl apprentices and one of them was a hold over from the year before. But what was it in '05, five boys? At least. Tonight didn't all of them look strong in the waltz in Act I. The new boys -- there are so many of them, one doesn't even know their names: but the impression was of great ballon, strong pliees on landing, a group of weightier dancers than we've been used too, I mean those pressed second position landings from jumps in Act I. Was that Megan Farichild's brother? Very nice. And the girls -- if we needed proof of the depth of that talent, there is Sara Mearns herself who was buried amongst these recent corps girls until this weekend. 4. Ellen Bar had a great Russian dance, flirting with her partner and with the audience by turns. 5. Faye Arthurs seems to have woken up this week, both in the waltz and in Spanish. Don't remember when I've seen her so dramatically awake and present. She and Gwynn Muller, with Ramassar and Seth as the boys, had a good, exciting Spanish dance. 6. Aaron Severini likewise in Neaplolitan. Didn't know he had the stregnth to hold Dronova at the end. 7. To add to the rather amazing demi caracter dancing we had in the pas de troi and the pas de quatre tonight (latter same Peck/Scheller/Fairchild/De Luz cast) -- the four small Swans finally nailed their dance. Amanda Edge and Elizabeth Walker were on the ends (where they've been since the premiere years ago I think) with Melissa Barak and Carrie Riggins in the middle. Any little mistake will show in this unison allegro number with linked hands -- tonight was flawless. Replacing Dronova with Edge did the trick in this group, even the little bouncing sautees on the diagonal appeared perfectly uniform. Wonders I guess never cease. Now for Sofiane tomorrow night.

The great thing about Bouder's Act II, DRB, is that she used the flaps as musical accents. Quite incredible it was and only she of everyone I've ever seen would have had the instinct to use them that way. Coached to flap, she found the places in the melody -- the viola and the woodwinds in the adagios, and at times even the trills or crochets in the orchestrations -- that the arms could be employed musically, along with that intuitive gift she has for finding the still place, the place to stop in the middle of the phrase which makes all the music make sense. The more extreme arm flapping in PM's Swan Lake actually started with Somogyi's first performance three or so years ago.

Can't compare to the Balanchine years, pre 1980s, because that's before my time but -- Compared to ABT and to the Russian Companies we see here, the arms and upper body is still a distinctive style -- arms and pulled up chest are not emphasized. (Sofiane Sylve, with her lovely, more traditional and very pulled up European placement is a huge contrast to the other girls). At NYCB across the company the upper body placement is very casual; it remains in type the "athletic-tennis player-girl next door at the swimming pool -- unaffected style" which Balanchine is said to have been looking for. The fleet footedness he sought is also still markedly present, in contrast with other companies. Likewise, the feet -- the distinctive roll up on to point through the foot, and roll down off of point through the foot the same -- is very marked compared to ABT and to the Russian companies. You know the NYCB girls by their feet. Very strong, and also the way they present the foot: it's visually the focus much more than at other companies. As to legs -- the company is plenty leggy and, with the exception of a couple of the principal dancers, the girls maintain themselves in noticably thinner shape than the competition. If you were dropped down from Mars without a roadmap, you'd know these girls as NYCB dancers with a glance. Again, the type: if you saw Ashley Bouder or Janie Taylor in street clothes much less in a tutu, and knew nothing else about them, you'd know them for City Ballet. I agree with whoever said that Dunning's remark about the arms had to do with Swan Lake -- I haven't seen Sara Mearns yet, but everyone else has uniformly overdone the flapping and twitching arms thing for Odette. Since people mentioned Peck, Fairchild and Scheller -- the striking thing is that they are such pure demi-caracter dancers. Their presence and the purity of their demi style is the biggest difference in this company than anything I've seen in recent memory. They represent a purer and more traditional European "type" than we've seen here. A lot of Danish dancing is said to employ clear demi-character, and the Russians do too in all those Petipa variations (and Volkova was a link between the two traditions) and I wondered, watching Peck/Schller/Fairchild fouetting in perfect unison the other night, whether that -- the fact that we were seeing ensemble demi-character dancing of this type at this level of precision, wasn't the biggest difference I've seen here in recent years.

A great performance by Bouder tonight. I have no reservations about it. As good as you knew her black act would be, her white acts were incomparably better. I agree that it was especially Act IV. The body just singing. She seemed to energize everyone in the cast, I can't remember a performance of this when so many dancers danced their best -- princesses, cygnets, national dances, you name it. But especially the pas de quatre in Act III -- This is being performed extraordinarily well by Ana Sophia Scheller, Tiler Peck, Megan Fairchild, with Jon Stafford tonight and De Luz last night -- This group is getting better at this night by night. This is as good as you will ever see Megan Fairchild dance. And it's as good ensemble dancing as you will ever see from this company. Just about perfect dancing by all four dancers in all particulars and everyone just about perfectly coordinated together too.

I would like to address the moderator's Beanie -- This is not aimed at anyone, I am quite often guilty of this -- Helene, I think the problems starts when the discussion veers to the "I'M RIGHT" and "YOU'RE WRONG" -- "La Sublimova was sublime in Corsaire, I saw the performance, How can you say she didn't project ..." etc. ..." variety of discussion. When you allow that, you inevitably have ad hominem discussion, because the bias, or alleged bias of the person you are arguing with, and the knowledge base and taste, or lack thereof, of that person, are the key points in such an argument. One person says this, another person feels attacked and responds in kind ... voila It's ARGUMENTATIVENESS that is to be avoided. If everyone states their point and observations and then lets the other's live and let live ... that's the way to avoid it.

Not surprisingly one did take a very hard look at Sara last night in Monumentum. And what you see is that Mearns is obviously a very strong girl. Super strong feet, good balance, body very well turned out at the hip, figure very solid, makes you think of Monique Meunier back in the mid-90s. Only Sara points her feet. On the physical side I expect she'll get through SL just fine. But I must admit that something which troubles is the message this sends to all the other dancers in the company. Ballet companies are hierarchies. In any organization, people like to think they are going to be treated fairly, be rewarded for hard work, that things are going to be done based upon merit and not random whim -- You have dancers there, lots of them, who've worked very hard for years and who could reasonably be regarded as equally capable of doing this once the opportunity arose (whether they can do a triple fouette in the coda or only a double, who cares?) -- what do you have soloists for, or senior corps girls for that matter, if not to move into more prominent roles when the occasion demands? Now I know that what I am saying is naive -- this is the way all Ballet Companies operate as a friend has even said to me. It's always the obscure Kafka-esque decree from the Kastle, somebody has a cheerleader, or the director has to choose, that's what they get paid for. But that doesn't mean I have to like it or approve of it. In a lot of ways ballet company culture can be pretty abusive for the kids. That said, best of luck for Sara Mearns. You can't, and I don't blame her for being out front or for wanting to be. I think she'll do just fine.

My impression was that Sylve may have been having trouble feeling confident or comfortable with with Charles Askegaard -- no idea if that was the case -- What one saw however was that she seemed to be a little cautious in the partnered adagio, she moved a little smaller and with much less legato flow than I've seen her employ in Cortege or Theme, for instance; didn't extend her balances too much, really didn't dive for the floor. In the supported arabesques the trailing arm (the one where he was gripping her hand for support) would be kept quite flexed and she would be constantly readjusting her counter pull against his hand. Then again, some of it was also a different style in the arabesque -- She set the center of gravity towards which she reached, the point to which the lead hand and face were extended at the fullest reach of the arabesque, more in front of the body horizontally than one has been used to in 2d movement with this company. Not as much penchee, more in front. That's really sort of a lovely, classical, euroepean style (look at old video of Fonteyn) but not what we've been used to. Then again, Sylve showed me something very different about the musical phrasing and shape of the petite adagio that sort of erupts in her solo turn during 2d movement -- it was totally lovely, musically phrased, very fluent, and she covered a lot (a lot lot) of space. Just ate up the stage there. And her coda was just superb. But as a very wise friend said after the performance, "When was the last time you saw someone dance 2d movement and what you were saying after the performance was 'What a great Coda'?"

No you are not the only person who saw it that way Drew. I fully share your perception and then some. OhmyGod, Miranda Weese was so incredible in Allegro last night -- what a performance.

Well I wish I'd left Abi out of it. She's just fine now. But Sara has never even danced a solo. A director who puts someone into a full length Swan Lake in that circumstance -- how can you know what's going to happen. Much better to prepare someone don't you think?

Mearns as Odette is a mistake and I mean it for her even more than for the audience. She's not ready for it. It's not the way a major company should function. You bring a dancer along the way you teach a kid to walk -- you want them to succeed, you don't want to set them up to fail or to disappoint -- you give them what they can handle increasingly. It's a big break for her no doubt, the "star is born" scenario will sell tickets ... but the best one can hope for her is that there will be diminished expectations and that she'll come out of it with the kind of modest success that leads somewhere else. I keep thinking back to Abi Stafford in Theme and Variations -- it wasn't a good thing for her in the end, it set her career back a couple of years and you can argue that she's only just now getting back to where she was then.

Maybe I'm crazy but I thought opening night was pretty flat and ragged throughout. Barocco was well rehearsed but I didn't know who the principals were -- they were framed as such but not principal dancers. Diana Adams and Tanaquil Leclerq? What are our expectations today. Though I thought the adagio well done. Rachel Rutherford got through it on "soul." She does not have strong feet and there is a lot of relevee, as a musical step in Barocco. She disguised it and made it upper body. Re the Bizet -- Jenny Ringer is out of shape, major, even by the rather liberal allowances one makes for Jenny Ringer and has been making for several years. Third movement was also miscast and messy -- I'm not complaining about the messiness in the corps de ballet. 3d movement was the one place Bizet looked underrehearsed but it was a first performance and this is just my for the record view which I note is at odds with everyone else. But I do complain about the casting -- I think Megan Fairchild is quite wrong for 3d movement, would have been better in 4th. If it's a "jumping movement" (which I actually dispute, I think "chassee" is equally applicable) -- Megan doesn't jump. More to the point, you want a ballerina who sticks the arabesques with extension on the music with a bang (again not Megan) and who escapes into the air on the glissades to the side with an explosion (again not Megan). And Ben Millepied self consciously upstaged her. In 4th movement the corps de ballet is coming together with apprentices being thrown into the mix and it's going to be good. Genevieve Labean and Aaron Severini were lovely in the demi, it was good to see that. But ... though I thought Abi Stafford looked superb in the Martins, she's a solid soloist -- as in Barocco I again just didn't know who the principal dancer was. So I saw it as a B minus opening night, not to be complained about in itself, but not to be overestimated either. The corps de ballet looked pretty good. Things were well rehearsed. It was at the principal level that things were really lacking. We'll see about the season. Somogyi is going to need to come back slowly. Ringer I repeat is out of shape. Miranda, Sofiane and Ashley Bouder have a lot of work in front of them if this is going to come off. Tess Reichlen will also need to be pushed up front more quickly than she otherwise would have, which on balance will be a good thing.