Jack Reed

I was only referring to the Facebook link Helene posted in her first post, seattle_dancer; following that was how I got the "Content not Found" result. When the time came, I had something else to do, though I do think this is a good way to give people at whatever distance - I take it you're in Seattle? I'm in Chicago - a "free sample" of something coming up. Speaking of which, I'll be looking in on PNB's preparations for their City Center visit in the February 19th live stream. Even though I won't be in New York for the performances, I think a live stream can be interesting in itself, and I'm glad you had such a good time with this one. [On the technical side, I'm still using the seven-year-old Macbook Pro I used to watch Korbes's last program last June. It worked okay for that.]

Indeed they are! Here's a list: https://www.pnb.org/community/audience/presentations/ And on another page, we can sign up for reminders, though it's not obvious to me whether that's just for future live streams, which would be handy, or for all publicity about the company, which could be rather much: https://www.pnb.org/live/ Thank you for the nudge.

Curious how much advance notice we're apt to get for this type of event, I tried the link, and it didn't work.* Anybody else have better luck? *I might more accurately have said it took me to a page that said, "Content not found," but it amounts to the same thing.

Thanks for the quote from bart, Cristian. I didn't see her Don Q - I have a real problem with some music - but she brought very similar qualities to her Ballet Imperial. (If I'm right about Villella's reason for mounting that, that would be an even greater tribute to her than anything we can say; but don't let me stop you! I'm enjoying this.)

I think the first time I saw Catoya, it was Emeralds, she was in the Verdy role, and I had to stand at the back of the auditorium, having arrived late, no thanks to Miami's wonderful traffic. I had seen Verdy herself in the role many, many times, and from a distance I couldn't get out of my head that I was seeing her again! Reading my program at intermission, I earned that Very had coached Catoya. Excellent! An excellent coach, and a dancer who was prepared to absorb what Verdy had to offer - and as I saw from good seats at subsequent performances, who could add her own fine qualities! (When you have Catoya to watch, you go back, and then you go back again.) And Ballet Imperial, as MCB was calling Concerto No. 2, an opposite kind of role - a "non-stop outpouring of kinetic exuberance" as Nancy Reynods says - was made for her too. (A supposedly astute person told Villella, when Villella announced the ballet, that MCB wasn't ready for it. I think they rehearsed it on and off for seven months, and, oh boy, were they ready! I wonder now whether Catoya's presence might have been the main reason Villella mounted it.) In the Upper Room is not my kind of ballet, but there's a moment near the end, when two boys would pick Catoya up and toss her in the air. She never failed to crack a smile up there. She loved it, and because she did, I loved that moment too. What a dancer! What a range! Looking forward to Cristian's report.

"Channel surfing" resonates. It was how I discovered Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" in the 50's. I didn't care much for the music, having long since outgrown overhearing Mom's crooning pop singles in the 40's (does anybody remember Bing Crosby?) and finished with Les Paul, too, and Duke Ellington - amazing playing, but too slick, not to mention the strut and swagger of it put me off; improvised jazz had more immediate vitality - so Clark's interviews promoting musicians weren't interesting, but watching his kids dance was! Dancing to the music! Listening, and dancing what they heard! Moving as the music seemed to tell them to! I watched on and off for some time, but I wouldn't have that experience again until one evening in the mid-60's. I had by then found my way into classical music, listening casually at first, like at the movies, where music accompanies something else, and then eventually into "close listening" - listening note by note, and phrase by phrase - to the music itself, for itself. That evening at a ballet performance, when the orchestra struck up a light favorite of mine, Stravinsky's witty and playful Capriccio, which I was intimately familiar with in this way, George Balanchine's "kids" danced to it. Plainly, they were listening, and dancing what they heard - I knew in the back of my mind this was an arranged illusion, it was theater, but it looked - well, better, more exalted than Dick Clark's kids' improvisation could ever be, but still - and I was hooked. Need I add, I still am? Although my repertory of ways to watch dance has broadened a little, I mainly listen as I watch to see how the dancers hear their music.

Personally, I don't go to performances for technique primarily - though if I see dancing that is clear and distinct, say, rather than muddy and vague, I must be seeing it, or what it conveys. But demonstrations like you describe can nevertheless be good eye training just because it gets people seeing into something they haven't looked at at all before. (I remember not so long ago watching a demonstration of the difference between "Balanchine technique" and what the demonstrator considered traditional ballet movement, making the point that Balanchine's adjustments and modifications made a stronger, more vivid effect at each instant. You got "more." It was like a tune-up or something for my eyes, for my ballet-watching, a little like watching successive dancers in the same role can be.) But while I agree that the best experience comes when you have a good seat for a good performance, if the video is not too badly made, we can get a lot from that. As I say when people ask me how I look at ballet - what the marketers leave out - I listen as I watch to see how the dancers hear their music, and I can get that effect, that - illusion - diminished, for sure - from a good video. Yeah, there's some presence missing, and so on, but there is that. And then when you go in the theater for "the real thing," you're attuned, you're vulnerable, and it knocks you over. Sometimes? No?

Agreed. I don't really know what people mean when they talk about arts education in the schools. Are we all supposed to try to paint or sing? Personally, I hated that. It was forcing me into something I didn't care about, and I wasn't any good at it, and the teachers got on me for not imitating the other kids and just following the lesson. Mom had been trying to help me with anything good I was interested in - the judgement was hers but the initiative was mine - but that's a hard method to replicate on an industrial scale - in a classroom of twenty-five kids or more. I have a hunch they don't mean struggling through Aristotle's Poetics of Tragedy and then applying those ideas to Shakespeare's Othello. That's so very, very rare I might have missed it entirely myself except for some rare coincidences, like getting some good advice, but if there's any fine art on TV, somebody may stumble over it, and it may change them. Likewise movies, music on the radio, anything. Is that how you found that content on PBS, dirac, or did you know it was there through their marketing? I'm guessing the former method. The initiative was yours, mostly. But what the commercial media carry depends on what market - what audience - that content will attract for their sponsors. Public media might carry what isn't profitable according to that system, but there seems to be powerful opposition to using a smidgen of the national budget for that, or for arts generally. I don't understand the reason for that either, but I persist in thinking if you want to change something, it's likely to help if you know why it's the way you want to change. But don't public media also have a marketing problem? Who's tuned in? Do we hear that "Antiques Roadshow" has a much larger audience than "Great Performances"? Is the first one marketed more effectively than the second, or are neither marketed much at all? (I don't contribute, because as far as I know, it all goes into one pot and they would use as much or more of it for "Antiques Roadshow" than for "Great Performances." I presume "Antiques Roadshow," with the larger audience, has more corporate sponsorship, as well.)

Well, I do know that La Source was made on Violette Verdy, not Merrill Ashley. So, Ashley and not Verdy? Assuming Verdy, on whose special ornamented, detailed and nuanced dancing La Source was made, is still available, as she was when Villella invited her to stage Emeralds and Sonatine (helped in the latter with Jean-Pierre Bonnefous). At MCB, those two ballets looked much like they had originally - first seeing Mary Carmen Catoya in Emeralds from a distant point in the theater I had trouble getting it out of my head that it wasn't Verdy herself, although from a better spot later I could also appreciate what Catoya brought to it; and seeing first MCB's third cast for Sonatine took me back, too. Inviting originators to stage ballets was Villella's practice at MCB. But some of us have noticed that Lopez has brought a different style to MCB's Balanchine performance from what the company had in Villella's day - more demonstration than realization - and Ashley's own "cleaner" simpler style may be more in keeping with that, if she imported it into her staging of Source. I'm not seeing this run of MCB performances for myself, so I can't say whether it looks like she did, but you can see for yourself Ashley's style in her performance of Ballo della Regina, which was made on her (and which she made little short of stupendous) - on the Nonesuch Choreography by Balanchine video (along with Balanchine's company's style).

I'll see you and raise you, California. Besides the books, which I still haven't read completely, Kaiser has a blog on the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kaiser/ In particular, he wrote a recent entry which speaks to the main subject of this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kaiser/where-is-earned-income-gr_b_6830446.html He's touched before on the idea that the best donors often come from among the most enthusiastic fans; the trouble this article points to is that the development managers or marketers are focused differently, unaware of Kaiser's implication, as I read him, that if you sell these newly-rich people tickets, some of them will enjoy themselves and become donors. We hear a lot today (if we want to) that the older generation, which supported the arts, is dying off, and must be replaced if the arts are to survive. So it was refreshing to read in the Seattle Times article that So, if this is a problem, taking Mr. Johnson at his word (I first went to the Met in 1958, 52 years later), it's not new, it's perennial. It fell to the reporter herself to observe that Which for me (with Kaiser's support) is key, and it reminds me of an old anecdote about a man who was curious about ballet, and listened with interest to someone who ran a ballet company about the years of training, the weeks of rehearsal, the expense of production. Finally the neophyte asked his version of what for me is the quintessential American question: "What's ballet for?" "It makes people happy," came Balanchine's reply. (You couldn't get ahead of him.) If this new generation can be helped to understand that the value of art is not well reflected in numerical "data" they may come to appreciate it, feel its value, and support it. It doesn't take much, but the marketers omit it. (Instead, the people near me in the theater or the gallery have often have seen the PR - that's what got 'em in - but they're at a loss, until they get a few remarks from me. Then, if I say so myself, they smile and begin to enjoy it.) I would agree, though, that saving lives in the Third World instead of enriching those in the First is a powerful Utilitarian argument. (Not an Altruistic one at all, but never mind.)

It's almost a trite expression - except nobody really applies it - that Balanchine made music visible, but, yes, he made scents visible too, at times. Of course, in La Source he had a good collaborator in Delibes, one of his three favorites. Thanks for filling me in on Ashley, Cristian. I was thinking, Verdy, but what do I know? People like them continue to surprise me long after they've left the stage themselves.

MCB's site is down just now, leaving me wondering who's staging La Valse*? Is there a name in the printed program? (Not that that it's necessarily on the web site. Staging Balanchine well doesn't seem to be one of Lopez's priorities.) It's an old favorite of mine from Balanchine's days in New York, but I'm not thrilled by MCB's demonstrations of Balanchine these days. (I'll check up on them in April when they tour here in Chicago. I'm as much interested in their Symphonic Dances as in their performances of the Balanchine works flanking it.) In the Upper Room is not my glass of tea either, but everybody's in it, and I had developed some affection for Villella's troupe by the time they put it on. (I still remember how Mary Carmen Catoya was tossed in the air by two boys downstage near the end, and how she always cracked a smile up there.) Most of the few ballets by Martins I've seen have lacked point - reason for being - and all of the little music by Barber I've heard has been unpleasant. They might be suited to each other though, straining, contrived and empty. (Martins doesn't seem to hear his music very well, and with Barber there's nothing to hear?) Probably very trendy looking. *Of course, as cubanmiamiboy corrects me below, I meant to write La Source. Maybe because I was just looking at some footage of Cotillon, like La Valse, another mystery which ends with swirling movement similar to it, the old wires in my head short-circuited. La Source and La Valse are very different, as different as their music, as different as drinking champagne could be from dancing on the edge of a volcano.

That rouses my habitual skepticism, in the light of Balanchine's rough time in Paris making Palais, although that was over ten years later. That is the core of the matter. Except, that place was not to be found in Europe, but in our "land of opportunity". (Sometimes stereotypes hold some truth.) The quote from the Balanchine documentary in my edited post above comes just after we are told about his firing from new ballet ventures - in Paris and in Monte Carlo - twice in two years! They wanted older ballets - from Diaghilev's seasons! From London to Paris to Monte Carlo and back to London, where his and Edward James's "Les Ballets 1933" ran just twenty performances. As in his student days, his drive to experiment and innovate put him at odds with the tastes of the established powers. But in London he met Kirstein, who, as I see it, certainly had ideas for his American ballet, using American themes, but also had the intelligence to realize who he had in Balanchine and, usually, gave Balanchine the freedom he needed.

Thanks for laying out more of the virtues coming to America helped Balanchine to develop than I could list at the moment, sandik. But we remember that he was already exploring going this way - in his artistic development, I mean, not in where he would live and work, in the geographic sense - already very early, when he was nearly forcefully "separated from his origins" by getting thrown out of school for his unorthodox (and as we might say, "extracurricular") experiments in choreography. So I'm quibbling about the idea that he took that from American culture - I think he had it in him early, and he took from American culture the opportunities it offered to bring forth what he had within him. As the story about that meeting in the Cunard's kitchen went, he already had some idea: When Kirstein asked him what he was going to do, his response was, "I'm going to try to get to America, because there's nothing to do here." (That story is not to be found in Taper's biography, however, where the name "Cunard" doesn't even appear in the index; and I think now it originated with Balanchine. It's in that PBS documentary, at 22:58, where he tells it on camera in front of the NY State Theater. Taper tells of their third meeting, in the parlor of Kirstein's hotel in London, where Les Ballets 1933 was playing, where Kirstein poured out his dreams and Balanchine said he would like to try: "As far as far as he was concerned, Europe had become a museum; in America he sensed the promise of new possibilities.")

Just adding that the PBS bio Drew missed, broadcast in the American Masters and the Dance in America series at the time, was released, in a lengthened version, on DVD, Kultur D2448, running 156 minutes, vs. the 120 minutes of the broadcast. (Whether you can get your hands on it is another story, but I recommend it.)

But he had a lot of good things to say about American dancers and how they reflected their country, didn't he? Their speed comes easily to mind. I think he associated that with America in some of his statements. But he was very much a person "in the moment" - a "place" in time, and so, I think, very much "in the place" too - where he had who he had and what he had. So maybe those are ballets he would not have made, had they kept him on in the various places he worked before that fateful meeting with Lincoln Kirstein in London in Lady Cunard's kitchen, but are, if only implicitly, American. I agree, though, that the best art does transcend the time and place of its making (if that's consistent with your view).

Lots of good points, abatt. But not only that, aren't prospective permanent hires typically tried out as guests for a time? Corella is wise: Continual use of guests is not a good idea. It's not good for dancer morale, and it's not good for audience appreciation. He has in mind more than a talent show with a backup group, something better, much better. Farther up the page, I'm encouraged by the presence of Nichols and Askegard (fka Askegaard?), both admirable Balanchine dancers in their day, especially Nichols, though it's another question whether a dancer can coach as well as they dance. (Nichols's "Dewdrop" is the reason I recommend that Warner Brothers DVD when people ask about Nutcracker disks, not that there aren't other virtues on it; watching her is like watching Balanchine's own company - the one he supervised. Like the Old Days! And watching one of her last Mozartiana's on stage was large, although the rest of the cast was another story.)

When I let the film play out, I was offered, in the upper-left corner of the video window, a half-hour film titled, "Dance Stage with Ruth Page." Wasn't this scene we just saw her company and (largely) her choreography? I caught up with the production several years later when it had moved to the Arie Crown Theater at McCormick Place. Thanks for the living history!

Saturday, December 19, 2015 2:00 PM At matinees of this production, there's generally a number with very little bunnies, this year accompanied by a few mid-sized rabbits as - well - co-ordinators. In a collection of old images from this year's Nutcracker poster on the school's web site - in the top row, it's the third one from the left - you can get some of the flavor it's had sometimes. The new Battle scene seems to be a work in progress; the introductory unison business with Marie and the Mice escaped my eye this time, and the Soldiers mixed it up with them sooner. So, some cuts and filling in here and there, some dramatic tightening. With another appearance of Dana Coons and Kramer Snead in the SP roles and Meghan Behnke with Andrew Wingert in the Snow adagio, this may be a high point of the run, and indeed was taped by a small crew; not least of my pleasures with it was Shea Smith as the most satisfactory "Arabian Coffee" so far: flowing, clear, and present; listening. Nina Montalbano graced Marzipan as soloist, and Emily Fugett reprised her soloist role in Waltz of the Flowers from last night; this number is mostly unison in the first and last of the three sections, where the flutes play, but in the middle, where we hear only lower instruments, she has independent choreography, and as she progresses through the sections, she progressively distinguishes herself, with solo bits coming and going toward the end.

Friday, December 18, 2015 7:00 PM Another visit, another cast, some revised roles? Ted Seymour brought more eccentricity and a "lighter" mystery to Herr Drosselmeyer this evening than Joshua Ishmon had a week ago, and Seymour's grander movements were more consistently phrased for legibility, while Ishmon had achieved a more sinister presence. Both "work" for me. The novel Battle got underway with Marie dancing in unison with a corps of black mice, and this seemed dramatically odd to me - unanimity? Not conflict? Or was she entranced, under their power? But in due course the Soldiers arrive, led by the Nutcracker; and after the remarkable dancey projection of force and conflict, the battle ends, pretty much according to Tchaikovsky's sound effects, with the thrown shoe, the Nutcracker's running-through the distracted Mouse King, the cutting away of the Mouse King's crown and his spastic death throes, climaxed by the crown held triumphantly on high by the Nutcracker. The scenery having made its own multiple exits - some settees formerly dragged obviously off by thick white cords now motivated by invisible forces - Meghan Behnke, the little Marie of the 2012 production, now grown into the Snow Queen, quite beautifully introduces the next scene, in the adagio ably supported and complemented byAndrew Wingert; good a this was, it proved to be a set-up for the appearance of Dana Coons as the Sugar Plum Fairy, with the excellent Kramer Snead, in Act II. Coons was a delight to see - intermittently, running in and out, according to the role - as the principal in the Waltz of the Flowers a week ago; here she and her partner had the stage to themselves more continuously, early, again tantalizingly, in Act II and more fully in the mostly-Balanchine pas de deux near the end. Along the way, the excellent Molly Brown gave a more effective and sinuous rendition of Arabian Coffee, although maybe with a hint of rote-ness about it; well sometimes, we remember this is a school. (Uh, hunh. But mostly, we don't think of it.) But then Jade Eitner and Alexandr Allen's rendition of Chinese Tea suffered some by memory of Grecia Delgado and Elliott Nunez last Friday, who had more point and bounce. Then finally, Sugar Plum, even more inspired choreography, Balanchine's - or mostly - some of this is seen in the Royal Ballet's videos, so I'm wondering what's from Sergeyev's notebooks or Balanchine's memories of his boyhood - and this brings me to that idea that rarely pops up when I'm watching a performance: Watching Coons display, with flashes of some of her own personal pleasure her and there, maybe with how the music gives her this here and then that next, or so it looked - this magically developing flow of movement - no effort - where does this come from, but from what we all hear? - well, anyway, the idea came: This girl needs a contract! Won't somebody give this girl a contract? So here was another reminder, of a different kind from watching Molly Brown's "Arabian Coffee." A school? But for a fortune, a company!

Here are the casts and year of production shown in the images above, with some further information about where some of the dancers appear regularly now, although as I'm noting in my reviews on another thread, some have returned for the current BC Nutcracker production in Chicago: The first three images: Act I party scenes w/Marie - all Meghan Behnke, from 2012 (In 2014, grown up in just two years, she's in the role of the Snow Queen.) Ted Seymour appears in the second image as Dr. Stahlbaum, and the date also confirms my inability to place the third image, where Jordan Nelson appears as Drosselmeyer, in the newly-revised battle scene. Snow Scene: in all three images, Molly Brown & Ted Seymour, from 2013 (both now w/Suzanne Farrell Ballet) Arabian: Hannah Markowitz (now w/Richmond Ballet), from 2013 Waltz of the Flowers: Hannah Rosenfeld, Shea Smith, Emily Fugett , from 2014 (Hannah is free-lancing, Shea & Emily are at BC) Chinese: Elliott Nunez, Grecia Delgado (at BC) from 2014 Snow Scene: : Meghan Behnke & Ted Seymour, from 2014 Sugar Plum Pas de Deux: Dana Coons & Kramer Snead, from 2014

It's become a well-dressed production since it first "graced the boards" in 1997, I believe, but what draws me back each year is (of course) the quality of movement - the size of the effect - they dance "big" - and the apparent way they all hear their music - the choreographers and their dancers. Although the image shown above looks like it was arranged for the photographer, the new Battle is the "danciest" I've ever seen, as part of an "all-dance" Nutcracker, with no pantomime, but - as with any good dance - the action is clearly visible and effective owing to its (rapidly changing) layout (not to mention the clarity of the dancers' "line" individually).

That's the official name, given with capital letters, in the program. Their work is lovely too, and moves pretty well - you can't see that so well in these images.

Further thoughts have come: There is some "business", in the theatrical sense, with the Stahlbaum's two hapless maids in the first scene, before the party gets underway - which frankly I think a little silly - and the credits identify Behnke as one of them; I suspect she is the first one we see, and the one who makes her part's movements especially fluent, when called for - she also knows how to drop the gifts she's arranging and take a (choreographed) spill, landing rather hard on, well, on probably the best part of her anatomy to land on - and very "legible" - meaning her movements carry back in the theater. But other roles are much more important than the maids. Nina Montalbano animated the Snow pas, giving it musical vitality in its moderate tempos - it's an adagio, not a full pas de deux, to the Pine Forest music - with Kramer Snead (the Dr. Stahlbaum of this cast), who evidently gave her everything she needed to give her part its smooth flow, and more. The Waltz of the Snowflakes which follows is danced to a vigorous and shapely performance of the music - I say "unrelenting" about the tempos here not because they're driven along - they're not, and they're not dragged out either - but because they're a little faster than what would still sound "right" for the music. And the performances (on record) sound like they're chosen for their spirited inflection and transparent texture - you hear the parts of the orchestra as you don't always from a pit orchestra. And the other reason I enjoy this section is the beauty of the dancing in it; you'd still get a lot if, God forbid, you couldn't hear a note. In the Divertissements, Shea Smith and Kramer Snead (his third role) satisfied in Spanish Hot Chocolate, but Alexia Boyd, tall, long limbed, easy to see with all those dimensions, clear, with strong line, suffered a little by comparison in memory with another BC dancer who brought more cumulative, sinuous flow to Arabian Coffee years ago. No reservations at all about Grecia Delgado and Elliott Nunez, both a bit short, but springy and sharply pointed in the short, quick Chinese Tea. And David Riley earned his applause, leading the Russian dance (here called Russian Kvas) with four boys, though this especially energetic dance may have been "a hard act to follow" for Marzipan Sweets, led by Taylor Richard. Lacking a Mother Ginger, this production nevertheless realized the magical appearance of an endless string of little performers we see emerge from her skirts in the Balanchine version by the simple device of having a few Polichinelles on stage form a short line to reach offstage and return to the center augmented by a nearly endless stream of similar ones. This light-hearted number was a good set-up for the Waltz of the Flowers, very ably led with subtly moderated energy by Dana Coons - the choreography here also makes reference, for those if us who know it, to Balanchine's, in that Coons, like his Dewdrop, dashes in and out, coming quickly down a diagonal lane formed by two lines of corps girls, for her quick solos. But for those who don't know Mr. B's setting, the reference isn't lost: Just listen. In Duell's hands, these dancers do pretty much what Tchaikovsky asks for. In the Grand pas de Deux, he asks for more, and here Duell and his colleagues yield to Balanchine himself, and we see it here where many would prefer it to be, the grand climax of the evening. And then the traditional Finale music, with its own warmth and reprises of all the numbers of Act II. Years ago, the Sugar Plum Fairy followed everyone off stage alone, slowly making a lush, grand arabesque, which I interpreted, with a nudge from Tchaikovsky, as proclaiming, as she had in the beginning of the Act, "This... is my realm!" * But this year she ascends grandly, supported by her Cavalier, and grandly sails off, airborne, after the others have made their way a terre, and I haven't decided whether the "less is more" implications of the old ending, which could make us listen more, rather than giving us more to watch, wasn't more effective. Either way, this "old" music's possibilities are never exhausted; choreographers, dancers, and audiences alike can keep returning to it. Inexhaustible: What's your definition of greatness? *Coming back to this after re-viewing BC's 2004/2005 video, I see I left out that Sugar Plum makes a slow jete' into the wing after her arabesque, and it's this combination that gave the effect I described; the arabesque is still there, and it's the jete' that's replaced by the lift, just a little bit grander.

Interesting idea, but to someone who is more a reader than a blogger, would our rule against cross-posting prohibit posting a link in the relevant forum here - one where a certain company's spectators post, for example - when a blog is updated with something relevant? I also travel to see performances - well, if you live in Chicago like me, you already have reason to visit Florida in the wintertime - and I think people interested in dance, however scattered the places, would enjoy those additional comments.