Jack Reed

You can glimpse some of what I try to describe above in the rehearsal clip posted on the Kennedy Center web site for World Ballet Day (with different principals from Magnicaballi and Cook): http://www.kennedy-center.org/video/index/A92852 What we see here begins at the beginning music, but the video skips forward right away (at 00:22) over nearly a minute to near the end of the first minute and a half or so, where Gounod and Balanchine are signaling us to anticipate, on into Gounod's presentation of his second, flowing melody (beginning at 00:47) and the ballerina's little solo and return to her partner. The two dance together as the tune repeats (at 01:17). The corps enters for the fugue (01:48), and then we see the principals come back downstage (at 2:40) and dance until Farrell stops them (at 03:26) for detailed commentary. They go back a bit and start again (at 07:04) in that musical repeat; by 09:08, the corps have exited, and with a traveling lift (starting at 09:15) the principal couple exit the center upstage audience right to bring the movement to a quiet close. Then, beginning at 09:22 or so, Farrell adjusts the nuances of that lift sequence, so it can have "mystery." Here again, with Farrell as our guide, we encounter meaning and drama in the world of this little ballet.

We got a program in four parts: First, a spoken introduction by Jennifer Homans, actually read from the stage; then a rehearsal sequence, with Farrell sometimes speaking to her dancers and sometimes to us; then an interview/discussion with her and Homans, with Homans taking a minor role; and then finally the uninterrupted performance of the second movement, the Allegretto, of Gounod Symphony. About 90 minutes all together; no intermission. And the Skirball Center proved to be a good small venue for dancing, about twice the number of seats as the Joyce Theatre, where Farrell’s dancers appeared on their only previous visit to New York, the rows in Skirball needing only a little steeper rake, like most of the new theaters I’ve been in, for better sight lines. And the stage was well lit during the performing (if not during the speaking). The dancing was beautiful - Natalia Magnicaballi was magnificent, even compared to the different Magnicaballis she was in the two different Terpsichores with BA she showed us in Phoenix, in May. Immersed as always in the moment, in her music, and somehow seeming a little more mature, compared to the youthfully exuberant flavoring of her second Terpsichore. (She also had lightened her normally-black hair with a touch of gray or silver.) She and Michael Cook, especially, and the eight girls, too. And Farrell was on a roll. Our faithfully prodigious dirac has linked to Wendy Perron’s short notice of the event at Dance Magazine on line; I was glad to see Perron’s compilation of Farrell’s “bon mots”. Although I heard some of them differently, Perron caught more of Farrell’s short dissertation on time than I did. Here is my catch (pity there was no live stream, though there were two or three video cameras in the theater, so it was recorded if not broadcast): Introduction by Homans Gounod was made at a time of crisis and productivity for Balanchine. (He was preoccupied with LeClerq’s illness.) Ballets poured out of him. There were long lapses in performance of this one. Tape [film?] and notes from POB 1959 [?]. Revivals are very personal - it’s necessary to re-enchant the steps. 1985 different from 1990 different from today. Rehearsal remarks by Farrell, interspersed with the dancing Why Gounod? As Balanchine would say, Why not? Do you ask a rose to explain itself? You just enjoy its beauty and its fragrance. There was pleasure in pretending I was in the ballet. It has a new presence. A different pas de deux - eight women come in. There are patterns we have not seen anywhere else. We [she, Kristen Gallagher, TSFB’s ballet mistress, Natalia Magnicballi and Michael Cook] came here Tuesday, the eight women came Friday, [five and two days before this Sunday event] so we’re vulnerable, which is a wonderful quality. This [gesturing] is Kristen Gallagher. We think alike. [pointing] I’ve never seen that step. What Farrell was talking about and pointing to began as as familiar an arabesque as you could imagine, with Magnicaballi, supported by Cook, facing audience left, across the stage; but no sooner than she made the pose appear - big and clear - than she folded it, bending her working leg to put her foot behind her, bending the corresponding arm to put her hand before her, and turning her head to look back, facing audience right, all in one move. (They immediately did this twice more, in the music here.) *** Stay alive when you’re not moving. [Addressed to the corps of eight, on stage now, three minutes into this little five-minute movement, for the fugue which concludes it.] Discussion talk w/ Homans There’s not a story but not not a story; not smiling, but pleasant. You can have a different story every night, the world of Diamonds, the world of Gounod. I would be remiss as a teacher if I didn’t give them everything. I used to have a dream where my music is coming up but I can’t find the stage. I open the door and there’s a blank wall. As long as it lasts that it’s good, that’s forever. We want you to come into our world, not we come down into yours. As an audience you have to participate. You can’t be a performer and a spectator at the same time. When I staged Agon there was an extra girl in the ballet. I wasn’t there any more. [She was working with Balanchine and had a problem with something at first, but he only reassured her, and they worked on. Later he brought it up.] What was that step you wanted me to change for you? And I couldn’t remember. Remarks about Time; here’s Wendy Perron’s take: We can never harness time. We have to live in the music we have. Then, I heard, You make your tempo become your pulse. Perron again: Moving very fast and very slow opened up a wide range of music. I couldn’t change the palette at SAB; now I can. [commenting further on the 1991 SAB revival] We’re not in a garden. The dancers are the garden. Not just a pas de deux [four parts, with two variations]; it’s a symphony. We’re not doing the Minuet. Originally for six couples. [Here, Farrell was not so clear, though she mentioned that minuets can get long, and they typically repeat; this one is no exception.] “Memory” is past; “memorable” is forever. Some of these ideas were familiar, but I was struck by how fresh, effective language for them had come to Farrell this time - she herself exemplifies her own “in the moment” philosophy. Performance of the second movement, Allegretto (without comments or interruptions) Farrell said, “There’s not a story but not not a story,” and her idea about a drama without a story (and Balanchine’s idea too, I’m sure) came to me at the transition from the first part of this movement to the second part - the first music consists of a lovely tune, its flowing line playing off against hopping, staccato notes for a moment, and so on, but then, after a minute or so, becoming softer and fragmentary, it less satisfies us with something like the beauty we’ve been experiencing and instead tells us to anticipate something. The two dancers, still dancing together, also have some sequences at this point which don’t “read” so clearly, and we are intrigued, rather than satisfied as we were. What’s going on? Gounod and Balanchine have drawn us in, and now as Gounod gives us his second tune, all luminous and flowing line this time, we watch Magnicaballi unfurl a beautiful sequence, solo now, crossing the stage away from her partner, who, waiting where he was, watches her, as she turns back toward him and returns to him. (There’s no “story” at all here, as Farrell said, but to me there’s some little drama in the way Gounod and Balanchine collaborate in setting us up and then fulfilling our expectations - Balanchine maybe more surprisingly than Gounod. Whether this really qualifies as even a small part of the sort of thing Farrell had in mind, I don’t really know; but music for me is often more or less dramatic, without a story you can put into words so much as can be put into sounds.) So. Some pas de deux! Entree, two variations, and coda? As Farrell said, Not just a pas deux. Not at all! Every one of those are different, of course, different worlds, but we’re in a totally different kind of world here, a symphonic movement which Balanchine heard as a possibility for “steps for two.” (And then, maybe three minutes into this little five-minute movement, the corps of eight enters - as the principals exit - for the fugue. Finally, everybody is onstage at the conclusion.) [This topic first appeared elsewhere, where three replies also were posted. The first one of these appears here index.php and a later version of this long post appears there too, just above it.]

You can see her and Thomas Garrett's Millennium Stage Preview performance of the "Stars" pas de deux adagio right now, if you like. The video of the preview is up on the Kennedy Center web site, and if you open that page and let the video load into your computer (indicated by the black "thermometer" column creeping toward the right in the progress bar at the bottom of the video window), then (using your computer's cursor) you can move the white button there over until the running-time number (at the left end of the bar) says 24:15, and they will dance for you. The fact that Noelle and Garrett were in the Preview suggests pretty strongly that they will dance at least some of the weekend performances in the Eisenhower theater over the weekend of the 21st through the 23rd, so you should have some chance. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the whole repertory there myself. I have a "posting in process" here myself, where I try to provide a guide to that video. As I get information, I edit it in there.

For those who couldn't watch the live stream, or could only watch part of it, it's up for viewing on demand in the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage archive. When you get the video playing, you can nudge the progress button in the bar at the bottom of the video window left or right to navigate (or press your space bar to stop it where it is). Here are some playing-time points where the three ballet excerpts begin: [04:02] Danses Concertantes (three numbers out of eight altogether) [04:02] March The cast of fourteen appear in groups - four trios and a pair - in the order they will appear in in the middle of the ballet; in the full performance, this number is followed by a pas d'action for all of them, and then four pas de trois, a pas de deux, and a finale to a repeat of the March. Here, we skip ahead to the third and fourth pas de trois, and stop there. (The pas de deux pair here are Valerie Tellment-Henning and Kirk Henning.) [05:52] "Blue" pas de trois Jane Morgan Claire Stallman Ted Seymour [08:15] "Red" pas de trois Melanie Riffee Katie Gibson Ian Grosh [12:59] Gounod Symphony (second movement, Allegretto, out of the three on the program) Natalia Magnicaballi Michael Cook Melanie Riffee Lauren Breen Audra Johnson Claire Stallman Amber Neff Bethany Lowrie Cassidy Hall Katie Gibson [24:15] Stars and Stripes pas de deux adagio Allynne Noelle Thomas Garrett I may be able to post more details here as time goes by; others with information like this - in particular, those with dancer identifications - feel free to post or to PM me.

As part of their participation, or so it was titled, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet posted a twelve-minute rehearsal clip initially on Facebook, then in a private Youtube video, but now publicly available on the Kennedy Center website: http://www.kennedy-center.org/video/index/A92852 This shows parts of the allegretto moderato second movement of the seldom-seen Gounod Symphony, with a different principal couple from the pair we saw in the Skirball Center of NYU on September 11; I can't say whether it was live-streamed on October 4, but this clip has been edited, so I doubt it.

Anyone who misses it may find it through this link to the Millennium Stage Archive or through my first link above.

These events take place on a small semi-permanent stage at one end of the Grand Foyer at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and are not only live-streamed, but in recent years, archived as well, among the other Millennium Stage videos on kennedy-center.org, for viewing on demand. I expect the repertory to include excerpts from the repertory of the upcoming Eisenhower Theater shows over the October 21-23 weekend, all Balanchine ballets: Gounod Symphony, Danses Concertantes, and Stars and Stripes. Tickets for these Eisenhower Theater shows are available here: http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/event/BRBSB#tickets Millennium Stage previews are free (every day of the year at 6:00 PM, with different performers each day).

I doubt it. We have the example here of Ballet Chicago, basically a school, whose technique classes I rarely see, but whose Spring shows - sometimes including guest artists, sometimes alumni - I happily watch here. It is run by Daniel Duell, who danced for Balanchine in his New York City Ballet, and his wife, Patricia Blair, who danced for Edward Villella when he ran the Eglevsky Ballet on Long Island, and among the teachers and in-house choreographers is Ted Seymour, who sometimes dances with TSFB as well as in BC's shows. Duell and Blair are devoted to Balanchine's ways; Farrell could hardly be less devoted. Those shows are largely made up of Balanchine's ballets - his ballets, not just his steps - performed in fairly authentic fashion, as far as I can tell, set by Duell or Blair or Balanchine Trust stagers such as Sandra Jennings; and the advanced classes include long excerpts and movements from Balanchine's ballets. (As a supporter of the school, I once had the privilege of watching Seymour demonstrate the differences between traditional, classical technique and Balanchine technique; BC emphasizes Balanchine technique.) There is also the Washington Ballet in Washington, DC; I don't know what their relationship is to TSFB, although their performance calendar looks typical in featuring mostly contemporary ballet repertory. Yes, I'm shocked and saddened, though not surprised. Some think that what Farrell was doing was too sophisticated for Washington, DC, although I sat next to people who, apparently having bought a ballet series ticket, said things like, "I'll miss this troupe; it's all-Balanchine, and Balanchine is the best." This is a real loss, because Farrell's Balanchine looks even more like Balanchine's Balanchine than Ballet Chicago's. (Should I add here that I watched hundreds of performances of NYCB under his direction, during his last fifteen years, because I had to? I discovered that if I didn't, I felt something was missing from my life. But watching NYCB during the last thirty years does nothing for me, so I rarely do.) But it's not all just for us spectators: Several years ago, kfw and I and others attended a panel in Washington where several dancers were asked what it was like to work with Farrell. Natalia Magnicaballi, who danced first with TSFB before joining Ballet Arizona, described what sounded typical for a dancer's work, and then her voice thickened: "I love her," she said, "She gave me my life." Maybe this will continue in the studio, but her dancers will not be giving us so much of our life. I expect her to teach Balanchine technique in greater depth than BC does, if anything; not just how to listen to move the body, but to know why: If you look where you're going, she might say to a dancing girl being lifted into the wing, you'll tell the audience what's going to happen. Face front [as the girl had before the lift began] and surprise them. We need that quality of surprise.

So it is expected at 6:30 PST, as in the post and the press release, not at 6:30 PDT, as in the headline above?

I've seen the three shows so far and I agree! Not only that, the performances got better from one to the next. I'd like to single out some dancers for particular praise but I don't think that's right, or even allowed here, for a school performance, even this school, especially in case of a rehearsal; but, that said, I've seen 4 T's in other Workshops and this bore comparison well. And I haven't seen Dances Concertantes often enough in my long life yet. (Thanks for the comparison to the parent company, too, another experience that has become much less common for this Chicagoan.)

Having also attended last night's premiere, and to those on the fence about buying tickets, I'm largely in agreement with Olga and Marina Harss and those who found it a little weak, especially in Act II. I'm in agreement too about Part's sense of humor - Harss doesn't praise her that far, but she's been credited here - more agreement - and much less familiar with Part, this Chicagoan was delighted by that. Take it in its own ridiculous terms, and it's great fun - but, yes, maybe just once...

Presumably, the black-and-white bits flashing by in the unusually unsatisfactory trailer mussel has posted (no criticism of mussel - little glimpses of it are better than none of it) are from the film mentioned in that June 1st N Y Times article, by Marina Harss, of Fokine's 1937 version, which partly inspired Ratmansky.

And here's some still images and some conversation abut the repertory, in Dan Duell's blog on the BC site: http://balletchicago.org/duellblog.asp

BC has put up some very short rehearsal clips of the repertory on Vimeo: (if you click the underlined links rather than the small images, you not only get a larger image to watch, but you can find five more clips of these rehearsals in the right column on the Vimeo page.) Here's "Square Dance": Ted Seymour's "Celestial Rites": Seymour's "Secrets de Printemps": and "Stars and Stripes" pas de deux (in performance costumes):

Here's a link to BC's page with notes on the ballets and links to order tickets: http://balletchicago.org/springrepertory.asp (I expect the repertory will follow the order in my sub-title rather than in the order on the page linked to.)* Ballet Chicago is a Balanchine-oriented school directed by Daniel Duell, who danced in the NYCB while Balanchine directed it, and his "partner in life", Patricia Blair, who danced in the Eglevsky Ballet while Edward Villella directed it. Ted Seymour dances with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet in Washington, DC, and elsewhere and teaches and choreographs for the B. C. Studio Company. I gather that Ballet Chicago is the only "pre-professional" group to perform in the Harris Theater in Chicago; personally, in terms of performance quality, I think it blurs the line between "pre-professional" and "professional." Tickets are $25-$50. While music will be recorded (at these prices), at these shows it always sounds particularly eloquent to this music-lover; indeed, I believe Mr. Duell is a musician himself. *My bad. For the record, the program followed the order on the page linked to.

Friday May 6 and Saturday May 7 evenings and Saturday May 7 matinee The event of the weekend for me so far was Natalia Magnicaballi’s Terpsichore in Apollo at today’s matinee: Large, clear, yet with a certain luxurious soft luminosity; and with her partner, Jackson Dwyer, possibly taller than Roman Zavarov in the other cast, but more importantly, with knowledge of what to do with that length of torso and limb beyond Zavarov’s, they were a pair on such a level that the play in the pas de deux became, appropriately, "the gods at play." They are cast in Sunday’s matinee as well. And to put what I said above into perspective, in general, the dancing in these performances is on such a level of beauty and clarity, especially with respect to completion of phrase, if not as energetic as I’d like, that the frequent instants of stasis, of loss of forward flow - just instants - are the more noticeable as lapses. And it struck me that in the evening cast, Amber Lewis, the demi in Walpurgisnacht Ballet, danced with more lovely flow and appealing vitality than Mimi Tompkins, the principal. (Not that their parts are equal, the demi is much smaller; but I would like to see Lewis have a go at the principal role next time around.) (Sometimes there's a little fun at the applause. Not so important to note as the outstanding qualities of some of the dancing, but Magnicaballi teased one flower from her bouquet and handed it to Dwyer, a traditional gesture which looked quite genuine this time, in view of the quality of his performance. But he found himself short of hands as the four leading dancers joined hands downstage to accept our applause together. So he quickly put the stem of his flower in his teeth, to the amusement of many of us, not least Magnicaballi herself. And I soon gathered that this was Dwyer's first solo role! Nothing like starting your carer at the top, and well worth a little fun in celebration of it.)

Thursday May 5 at 7 pm Ballet Arizona opened their Balanchine weekend rather carefully last night, like someone might open an unfamiliar package, and there was a dutiful quality, a sense of showing what they’ve learned in the studio, and less of a quality of showing us what they hear - how the music is telling them to move, now. (We could see how the choreographer heard his music, and, as usual with Balanchine, that’s fascinating.) What these performances need is more “blood,” more boldness, more flow; detail was abundant, but not so much an organic outgrowth of these dances. This was opening night for this program, though, and maybe with more confidence, it will expand, and more abandon, just verging even on a little recklessness, will appear. I will say that Arianni Martin, in the role of Terpsichore, was rightly cast: The best of the evening. More “plastic continuity” of flow, with some cumulative effect as a result, and no loss of or glossing over the details along the way, either. And the pas de deux in last night’s Apollo (with Roman Zavarov in the big title role) had a welcome, unusually playful tone. (Apollo was staged by Ib Andersen, the remainder by Ben Huys; Huys, incidentally, might be seen dancing in an old video of last night’s opening ballet, Walpurgisnacht Ballet with the superb Kyra Nichols and excellent Nicole Hlinka.) But otherwise in Symphony Hall last night, there was often a more static effect of taking positions and moving to the next one, not to mention a general smallness, throughout the evening. (This was, thankfully, the original version of Apollo, although there were some minor “reinterpretations” in the form of lighting in the short initial “birth” scene which isolated Leto and her abstracted “labor” movements (not so intense as we sometimes see) high above the stage, the rest of the space below invisible in complete darkness, until the infant Apollo appears in his swaddling clothes and the handmaidens, called “Nymphs” this time, come to unwrap him; and also later in the use of a realistic gold lute in place of the symbolic white one used originally.) But I can always quibble; and these performances do show many of the virtues of these superb ballets - the latter two, arguably, great ones. If the opening Walpurgisnacht Ballet didn’t gleam with the life of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s rendition last Fall (nor did it have soloists near the caliber of that old video I mentioned above, or even of TSFB's cast), their Symphony in Three Movements stands comparison with the Miami City Ballet’s I saw last Friday, for fine detailing and finish to the phrasing as against MCB’s more full-blooded but currently glossed-over and clipped treatment of the movement (but it would have a harder time in comparison with MCB’s former power in this). Alistair Macaulay’s remark about Ib Andersen’s company’s place among the Balanchine diaspora, that it “ranks among the most significant,” quoted on BA’s web site, still seems to me judicious and apt.

Sorry if I misunderstood, but comparing our language it still looks to me like we're pretty close, pretty much in agreement - individuality in harmony with others was how it was with those companies, to me, anyway. But I can be very thick sometimes. (As in, "thick-headed"!) And when Messmer was just passing through here (in Balanchine's SPF with Ballet Chicago) on her way to San Francisco, I also sensed that she has a lot to offer, if only she can find the right garden to grow in and the right gardener to nurture her. (If she needs one. Some dancers do it more on their own, some respond to another. I've seen it happening at MCB, as I wrote about Arja and Albertson in Program A.) But, yeah, you get to keep your money, Buddy! We three had a good time, although it may have been derived more from the choreographies - the Balanchines - than from any individual's dancing. (That reminds me - my "modern" friend had looked at Serenade a few times before over the years, but this time, even allowing for how she might have changed over the years, she said she felt she'd seen it for the first time. Credit all around.) P.S. Historical note: Reynolds' book lists Kent among the "Other Casts" for Bourree Fantasque.

Yes, canbelto, LeClercq and Robbins originated the first movement, to the Chabrier music whose title Mr. B. hung on the whole ballet. And thanks for the studio shot for that. (Not literally taken from it, I think, but definitely in the spirit of it - as Jordan-Elizabeth Long and Shimon Ito showed us on Saturday, the tall girl paired with a short boy often has the "What am I doing with him?" bit to play with, in deadpan fashion.) Tallchief originated the second movement, the "Prelude," from Chabrier's Gwendoline - cribbing here from Nancy Reynolds' great resource, Repertory in Review - with Nicholas Magallanes; but LeClercq did also dance "Prelude", though Reynolds doesn't make clear who her partner was for that. What casts, right? What a company! What a time! What a world! Isn't there some footage of LeClercq in B F? First movement? So maybe some footage of Tallchief as well. That's what I was dreaming of seeing someday. But I agree with what I think Buddy is saying - if Lopez's MCB is so bent on conformity of style that someone of Messmer's obvious great potential doesn't fit, something needs to be made over, or made again, or rethought. Mr. B's NYCB (and Mr. V's MCB) thrived on individuality. (Though, I would add, wanting not to be misunderstood, not to the degree ABT has often shown over its history - "Dancers at a Gathering" some called it - an impressive collection of stars and a corps with little hope for promotion. There's an audience for that of course, but I'm not in it.)

For some reason, this reminds me of that late-nineteenth-Century custom, if I have it right, where balletomanes, taking the place of horses, drew open carriages displaying their favorite ballerinas through the streets of St. Petersburgh as tribute to them! (But what about the money I spent on my two friends' tickets?) But more seriously, no need to reimburse me, Buddy, we had a great time overall, even if we liked Messmer better in the second number of Bourree Fantasque than as "Waltz Girl" in Serenade. Both my guests hugely enjoyed this most ensemble ballet they'd ever seen, with scarcely any prominent, elevated roles except almost by accident, yet we saw that she still has to find her way more into the company which MCB is (people remark on their uniformity of style). So we also enjoyed reflecting (in fresh memory of the performance) on her casting as the girl who arrives late and has to find her place. Later, in Bourree Fantasque, her way of still being herself and different was more successful, though I found her still making a smaller effect than Jennifer Kronenberg had the night before. (I would love to see what Tallchief, whose role I think this was, made of this part in B. F..) And since the word love has been invoked above, the performing I loved was Jennifer Kronenberg's Friday night; but the choreography of the two Balanchine ballets on Saturday's program made it very strong for us - in fact my modern-dance fan was overwhelmed by the way Balanchine and Chabrier keep raising the energy level higher and higher at the end of Bouree Fantasque. I didn't say anything about the Peck novelty. Heatscape went past me. I could see that qualities of the movement sometimes coordinated with qualities of the sound, but that was about it; and even the optimistic Macaulay found that it’s “a hard ballet to add up”. But my modern-dance-fan friend found that after being bored by it at first, it was funny later.

Just coming back for a moment to confirm what I implied by not mentioning her name above, that Messmer was not to be seen here last night. She was, a couple of years ago, briefly, in Ballet Chicago's The Nutcracker, in the pas de deux, (the only Balanchine part of it), and I thought I saw somebody with great potential but a little underprepared. Maybe she'll be on tonight; I gather Kronenberg and Guerra are off. (Pity.) I'll add in that vein that Nathalia Arja, in the orange leotard in Symphony in Three Movements, fulfilled now the promise I saw in her when she first appeared on stage (under Villella) a few years ago. (My guest, a Joffrey watcher I gathered, also enjoyed Arja.) For that matter, Albertson's power grew under Villella since I first saw her years ago - still quite clean, but larger effect. So there was a lot to like, but the memory of their impact in Symphony in Three Movements in the Auditorium several years ago was not replaced.

I’m just back from Program A at the Harris Theater in Chicago and starting to fade, but it was Jennifer Kronenberg’s evening, for my money - she’s going out strong. Symphony in three Movements opened, and I thought it was very, very good - if not quite great, a little “careful” - not that it was careless under Villella or under Mr. B., which is my background, but a little “bigger” and more energetic - even more energetic, then. Tricia Albertson subbed for Patricia Delgado in the central role, and acquitted herself very well; but in the 70’s Sarah Leland, the originator, dancing on the larger stage of the theater fka the New York State Theater, made it larger, bolder, along with everyone else. But “careful” is not all bad, by any means: A friend in the crowd, a professional with a dancer’s acute eye - much more acute than mine, and with intimate knowledge of this ballet - was pleased by the accuracy of the detail throughout, spotting few lapses. So this is probably still some of the best Balanchine on stage today, and if it doesn’t quite draw this old Balanchine addict to Florida, it’s worthwhile for those without my experience to see. This is the fifth time I’ve looked at Viscera, and either I don’t get this busy, narrow ballet to similar music, also limited in range of expression, or there’s just not much to get; but Kronenberg’s superb dancing of the second movement - made possible by the superb partnering of Carlos Guerra - gave me the thought at one point that if I’d never seen her dance before, I would want very much to see her again: She articulated the movement in a continuous and what would have been a cumulative flow, had not the choreography been rather lacking in point, as far as I was concerned. But of course I have seen her before, and that this is the last season with MCB of a dancer still with this ability is saddening. Still, it was the most rewarding dancing for me and my friend this evening, approached only by Kronenberg’s smaller role in the last ballet: Ratmansky’s choreography for Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances struck me as better than the music: He’s appealingly and attractively inventive most of the time, though sometimes literally demonstrating what he hears, while Rachmaninoff goes on saying what he’s said often before, in other compositions, if maybe not so insistently as in his symphonies and concertos. Pretty costumes and lighting, too. I could even look at this again someday. But Viscera without Kronenberg, after seeing her in it tonight - I don’t know.

O, Canada! It sounds very like. The coarseness of some arts marketers amazes me. Don't they realize how counterproductive an approach like that can be to the very people of sensitivity who are their natural market? If marketing works by making a good impression, I'd think they'd want the prospective donor to make some positive association with giving to the cause, instead of a sense of irritation with it. "The lady on the other end" implied you're not qualified to be the judge of what to do with your money? That adds insult to injury.

I'm not a great fan of the Ring, but I thought the characters were more fantastical, inhabitants of some world more completely of the imagination, so that a setting that evoked the forests of the Pacific Northwest in a recognizable way might be pretty in its own right but take the viewer somewhere else than that more authentic and unfamiliar world, more unlike the one where our "ordinary" existence takes place, but the one evoked by the sounds. But about the worst example of scenic interference, if i can call it that, with re-creating the world of an opera for us to go to, was one at the Met I think (I was watching a television broadcast) probably of a Verdi opera where two people were singing a love duet. They were facing across the stage, but on different levels! Each gazing into the wings on opposite sides, one well above the other, neither in the other's line of sight. Hunh? In Verdi, if not in the Ring, it's usually a realistic situation, and I find it very helpful if the plot - which mainly serves as a dramatic framework for the music, motivating it - is reinforced by realistic staging, but this must have made anybody paying attention to it wonder, what's she doing up there? (It being a broadcast, I could shut off the picture and just listen, and it being the Met, what I could hear was pretty good, and worth hearing without distraction.) By the way, what kind of Ring stagings go on now in Bayreuth? Totally disconnected from tradition? I'd be surprised. But, to get back to MCB's Midsummer, dancing to the music assembled for the purpose of carrying it is the thing, and reports here differ as to whether the dancing was obscured by the scrim, which I gather remained in place the whole time, or maybe just given some competition by it, depending who was watching. Your posts read like it didn't interfere with your vision of the dancers.

Just to tease my friend Cristian a little - in 1972 Balanchine had Danilova restage Fokine's Les Sylphides - without the overture, without an orchestra (a piano instead), without the tulle skirts - the girls wore white tunics, with short pleated skirts, the boy a white blouse with full sleeves and black tights - and Ron Bates lit the scene in what looked like afternoon sunlight to me. No more moonlight! (I remember the girls even looked suntanned, but at Saratoga, they may have been.) He called it Chopiniana, the original title, and I'm wondering whether Drew had this short-lived NYCB production in mind. (Critical reception was all over the place, one calling it stroke of genius which revealed the clarity and precision of the choreography like never before, another complaining that you do not somehow reveal a masterpiece by destroying a ballet's intentions.) Fortunately we do not seem to have anything like as extreme a "makeover" as that with MCB's Midsummer! But we can wonder about obscuring the "intentions." I quite agree with Drew that evocation of "an alternate magical world" is the thing - I wouldn't say that the precedent of other opera and ballet redesigns automatically justifies more of them. They have to be judged by whether they contribute to or handicap the art's effect. I worry that "localizing" the production can take away from the audience part of their imaginative "trip" to that alternate world, and I think Floridians need that as much as anybody, even if they don't discover that need until they make that personal discovery, the experience of having that need met: An audience deserves the opportunity to go get that. (I don't think it was much of a stretch for Shakespeare's audience to imagine getting confused in a forest, speaking of how a setting can contribute to the effect. And Balanchine makes the music he and Robert Irving assembled over a few years seem like such an effective setting as to call forth the visible action. But underwater? Familiar - or magically strange?)