Jack Reed

I'm going to try. It's not only that she hears her music telling her how to move, how to inhabit it, but she finds such life in it, a neophyte spectator might think there's a story here they're not quite getting - except she doesn't load that much onto it. Does that make any sense? Hints of a situation. Wow. Yes. Performances like this do pleasantly rob me of sense, sometimes, too... Multiple technical difficulties here, too, by the way, but fortunately the peak of the program, what we're talking about, came through, and made the evening's tensions worthwhile.

Homans also evokes very well what was a hair-raising spectacle, in the first scene of Act III: You can glimpse some of this solo for yourself! In the biographical film about Farrell, Elusive Muse, there's about two minutes from that 1965 gala film, at about 23 minutes from the beginning. You will also hear for yourself that that 1965 film has very good sound in this scene, not what Homans reports. (Likewise in Act II, just for the record; but elsewhere in the film Homans is right about this problem.) So, aside from a few quibbles, having seen this film (once) and having seen most of the performances of Farrell's revival of Balanchine's ballet (in Washington, Edinburgh, and Toronto - Farrell's production was designed for portability), I think Homans's development of the theme she announces in her title is spot on, and I agree that DanielBenton's summary is a good one. But there is more in this film that's relevant to some of Homans's points. At the beginning, Farrell recalls a conversation with Balanchine: "You know Suzanne, if I weren't a choreographer, you wouldn't look at me twice." To which Farrell had replied, "You know George, if I weren't a ballerina, you wouldn't look at me twice." To us, she continues, "I think how you dance is who you are, and that's what he fell in love with." I think that sums up that part of the story pretty well, and I think it's consistent with Homans's more general observation that his "marriages dissolved in his hands as the muse became too domestic and real." (Homans doesn't go so far as to remind us of James and the Sylph, but I didn't need any help.)

Saturday, May 2 2:00 Matinee Allegro Brillante was made even more effective this afternoon by Paola Hartley's very, very good lead, though she seemed to have a few instant hitches early in the cadenza, like Arianni Martin did. Maybe this is part of the staging here, as though flow-through weren't so prized (as it is to me). It's the kind of instant which wouldn't be noticeable if the rest of these performances were less good than they are, and so I'm telling you I'm quibbling again. As with Martin, Hartley's dancing quickly seemed to come to itself, and then some. A pleasure, even from the eighteenth row again, and in spite of the substandard sound - I'm adapting, but BA's dancing is so good in this, it really deserves better sound so that that component is as clear: We need to see, not what they are dancing to, but what they are dancing. Which it does get in La Sonnambula and Stravinsky Violin Concerto. This Sonnambula is the now-popular version which blunts a number of dramatic points that were sharper with Mr. B. (and are with TSFB). I think it matches the ABT video and so may derive from their source; and my worst complaint may be with the very ending, the "light in the sky" ending: We are "told" the Sleepwalker ascends the tower with the body of the Poet, then to leave us by going up in the sky and disappearing, while the Guests watch from the courtyard where their party has been. This is mysterious and vague. Originally, a different set had an enclosed passageway over the arcade across the back, and we are told by the light of the Sleepwalker's candle being seen behind successive windows up there of her earlier approach, before she descends the tower, and her later withdrawal by the same route. Maybe it's not worth all these words, but to be told this way at the end that she is returning to her chambers with the body of the Poet is mysterious and horrible, as horrible as the murder. Natalia Magnicaballi danced Aria I in Stravinsky Violin Concerto disdainfully, as though uninterested, this afternoon. If she was wonderfully understated in it Thursday - she knows not to push anything on us, I think, but rather to show and let what she shows speak for itself - she's gone farther - too far? - in trying it differently. (That may be part of the way her dancing never becomes stale or routine.)* I'm surprised to be saying it, but I was more satisfied watching Huang today, with Zejnati in the Martins role in Aria II, besting Mazzo, her role's originator, again. And I felt satisfied that Aria II carries this ballet along and deepens it, following Aria I, an aspect of it which hadn't come to me before.

I'll say it again, I don't mind recorded music if it's done so well it fools my ear to thinking it's "live" - though if it's the same recording every time, the dancing may get automatic. (Some companies - and especially schools - rotate recordings.) Speaking of retirement performances, I had thought originally the Sunday matinee was to mark Hartley's farewell, but it's Huang's. Either way, that old show-biz rule, "Leave 'em wanting more," applies. This is looking like a nice little company.

I'm just back from seeing the first show of the weekend - as Helene has posted in another thread, the cast list is here - from a bit too far, row 18, and the hour feels late, so just a few quick impressions: The opening Allegro Brillante, while danced in tempos often too slow, nevertheless, overall, blew way the Carolina Ballet performance I saw by some coincidence several weeks ago. CB's ensemble lacked - well, ensemble, dancing in different times - though CB redeemed itself in the lead couple who turned up in the second and third shows there in Raleigh. BA's AB was organically coherent and effective tonight, from first note to last and from top to bottom, a listening organism responding to Tchaikovsky's score. La Sonnambula, which followed, lacked much of the energy and tension it has received in other times and places - no one I've seen has entered from the base of that tower like Allegra Kent did - she came on like gangbusters; but tonight Natalia Magnicaballi evoked the otherworldliness of the Sleepwalker whose body the Poet can affect, turning her this way and that, but whose mind he cannot reach. She was even more effective in the von Aroldingen role in Stravinsky Violin Concerto, replacing von Aroldingen's cool dispatch with a throw-away ease verging on spontaneity I found as effective in its slightly different way. I say "verging on" because Magnicballi's performance was clearly directed by what she heard at each instant. She showed us the music. It's another great role for her - she has many of them, as great dancers do. Tzu-Chia Huang, in Kay Mazzo's part, improved it - her dance, one where she is rarely apart from her partner, in contrast to Magnicaballi's duet (with Ilir Shtylla), where she rarely touches him, seemed also more grown from Stravinsky's music than from a dancer's frailty. The music was all recorded, but that's no excuse in my experience for it being so roughly reproduced in Allegro Brillante and thin-sounding all evening in a time when we have had so much better sound in our living rooms for decades - granted, these auditoria are much larger spaces to fill with sound, but I've heard it done so well with speakers and amplifiers I've had to check the orchestra pit for live musicians!

We talked a bit above about where to sit in Symphony Hall, and I concluded tonight that the 18th row is too far for me. It's hard to tell where the first row of the balcony begins, as it's closed for this weekend, but it's at least a couple of rows further back. It's probably a good location for a concert, though, as the main floor is rather flat, as most new halls seem to be, and this bodes ill for sound as well as sight lines - and maybe this is part of the reason Helene prefers to sit in the 17th row, where there's nobody directly in front of you in the cross-aisle, if I have that right? - whereas the balcony is "open-back" - it's not attached to the back wall of the auditorium. This feature, which I think Frank Lloyd Wright got from his days working on the Auditorium Theater in Chicago under Adler and Sullivan and may have imported into this area by including it in his design for the Gammage Auditorium in Tempe, bodes well for acoustics. It's rarely used, though, as far as I know, so I was surprised to see it. Do any of you have concert experience there versus the main floor?

Is there any doubt?

Mr. B.'s own practice about this changed back and forth over the years. Some thought listing his huge company alphabetically was insulting. (I doubt corps girl Sandra Zigars liked it! She couldn't win, though, regardless.) Usually, though, there were several ranks shown. Casting for a particular program was not listed anywhere other than the printed program for a long time, either, though in the last years a small printed list was pasted to the lobby walls either side of the entrance, several days or a week in advance. Connected to this was the idea that a "corps" member might turn up in a soloist or even a principal role if Mr. B thought she was ready; one alphabetical listing tended to suggest something of the sort could happen anytime. And there was the thought among some of us that a dancer might give more if she was reminded of this possibility, in contrast to the company next door, which rarely seemed ever to promote from within (except when Baryshnikov ran it? - I'm speaking of ABT, of course). So Ib Andersen may have some of this in mind. As for marking retirement, how do dancers feel about it? I'd take that into consideration. It probably depends, but it can't be a happy time for their fans. It's the last time for applause, though. (I remember my shock and sadness at arriving in New York to find Violette Verdy gone from the list and Emeralds revised to conclude with a dirge. After a time I took it as Balanchine's own response to her passing from the scene, but that "world beneath the sea" has never been as richly rewarding a place to visit since her leaving it.) There's something to be said for accentuating the positive, in my book. So, listing by rank, and a dancer's just vanishing - hmm. What sort of a world is that there, on stage? Do you want the illusion to come down with a crash? Do they? One of the things about ballet is that it makes us happy. That's what it's for, if I recall correctly the anecdote about Mr. B. explaining it to a neophyte. We're on another thread here, I think. Still, I'm looking forward to my visit, blistering heat - not unknown to a Chicagoan - and all.

There'll be a free preview of Ballet Chicago's Spring program tonight at 5:00 pm in their studios at 17 N. State Street, on the 19th floor. Running an hour, only enough time for excerpts from the full program to be presented at the Harris Theater on May 30 at 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm, there may be the first two movements of Daniel Duell's revised Concerto in A Minor, to the music by J. S. Bach; parts of two pieces of interesting, musically-sensitive work built on the classical foundation which the school BC is teaches, one - A Pulse Stolen - in contemporary vein to music from four sources, the other - Danzon! - drawing more on the Latin, specifically tango, tradition, heard in its music by Mexican composer Arturo Marquez, by Ted Seymour, who teaches at the school and dances with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet and the Cedar Lake Ballet; and, along the way, the solo variations from Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and, winding up, some excerpts from his Who Cares? (to songs by George Gershwin arranged for orchestra, typically some ensemble numbers as well as some solos, like "Fascinatin' Rhythm"). There'll be some spoken introduction, and music will be recorded. Ballet Chicago's number is 312-251-8838, but although there has been some publicity as part of a Chicago "Look at Dance" month, or something, I think you can just show up (until they run out of chairs!). Strictly speaking, Ballet Chicago is a school, but their Studio Company, drawn from the top ranks, is the only "pre-professional" organization to perform in the Harris Theater; as many of us here know, the line between school and professional is a fuzzy one in ballet, and BC blurs it even more, IMO.

Hartley distinguished herself with TSFB in Washington, DC, last Fall, and hopes of seeing her dancing some more was a major reason I decided to try this trip, along with seeing Natalia Magnicaballi, whose dancing has been a great pleasure there, and also Kenna Draxton. Three of TSFB's best. I'm not real crazy about the program, though it's not bad either, and this Old Audience member is coming to think that seeing Balanchine's Balanchine on stage is getting harder all the time (in contrast to performances by ensembles who show Balanchine's steps and movement, or most of it, but don't seem to "get it"). Now I'm learning Hartley won't be on view here in the future! So, partly by sad coincidence, a good time to have a look.

As a footnote to the announced repertory, the scheduled number of performances is adjusted from what it has been for many seasons, including the current one. There are only two performances of each repertory program scheduled for Broward (Ft. Lauderdale), in contrast to the four they have been giving there. West Palm Beach, which saw cutbacks years ago which have been restored in recent years, continues with the most, five each repertory weekend.

I haven't seen the book, of course, not even NYCB much since Martins took it over, but I find some irony in the idea of closing off the upper balconies ("Rings" for the uninitiated; they're the old-fashioned horse-shoe shaped ones) to pump up the ticket prices. The irony is in what seems to be the contemporary marketing strategy of "involving" the audience market with the dancers as people, via social and other media, vs. the old days when it was the every-nighters in the top of the house who figured out the names of all the dancers, right down to the bottom of the corps, by watching them dance. Now, how many can afford to do that? (I think there was also some thought then that when this mostly-young audience grew up and made more money, they would pay more and move downstairs.)

Speaking of restaurants, have you any experience with Pane Bianco? It looks like it's in between Maricopa Manor and downtown.

Thanks, both of you! A little cursor-hovering on the seating chart cleared me up on the seat-color mystery, but now I wonder whether the entire Balcony is unavailable for this program - in contrast to the Loge - or whether our computers don't like each other when that page is connected. So I can query the humans in the Box Office about this,* but I'm glad to have your comments about your favored locations and why you both favor them, and also that remark about qualifying for the accessible seats - they look like the ones I'd like to have, but although I do feel my 77 years, I don't think I'm going to get any. Not yet. (Sitting on your legs for a whole ballet, Arizona Native? Sounds superhuman to this antique! Are you a dancer?) Speaking of feeling far away in the Balcony, any idea what row Orchestra the front row of the Balcony overhangs? (And thanks, Helene, for clearing up that reference to a hockey rink! Something about American priorities? I'm reminded that whenever the Joffrey Ballet here in Chicago has moved on to spiffier studios, Ballet Chicago - more school than performing company, but putting on a really good show when they can - has taken over JB's old digs.) *The Box Office confirms the technology - no Balcony seats for this program.

Helene has made a few remarks about getting around downtown Phoenix and sitting in the Orpheum Theater (scroll down the linked page - there's even advice how to shop for tickets in the Orpheum there), but now that BA is back in its main venue, Symphony Hall, for most of its performances, I'm wondering about that story, not previously discussed here as far as I can find. (Is it really a converted hockey rink? Just curious. I think one of Carolina Ballet's regular venues in Raleigh is a converted basketball arena. Not that it matters. Whatever works, and center seats in Fletcher Opera Theater there are mostly pretty good, in my experience.) So, where are the better/worse seats for ballet in Symphony Hall? (And how do you order them? The interactive on-line seating chart looks promising until you discover that the little squares representing the seats contain one of four colors but only two colors are explained in the lower left corner of the chart. When the technology fails us, there's still some of our fellow humans around, but I haven't tried the box office - for the upcoming Balanchine program - yet.) And where are the better creature comforts these days? I gather downtown Phoenix has its share of huge chain hotels (and probably some urban noise, although the airport itself looks to be four miles east) but at the moment I'm considering taking that light rail up and down Central Avenue about four miles (half an hour?), to a little B & B, Maricopa Manor. Is this just off a busy intersection, though?

I haven't caught up with this broadcast yet, myself, not having known about it far enough in advance to see the broadcast, so it's good to read here that it'll be available for three years! That ought to give me enough time. Also good to read that the dancing was put on screen well. Has anybody noticed who the director was? I always believe in giving credit where it's due, even more than blame. PBS's NYCB Nutcracker of 2011 was atrociously put on screen. If that's the one Natalia means, I couldn't agree more, although replaying my off-air recording to try to get around that problem, I thought the performance seriously lacking as well. (Just a week later, I saw Villella's MCB do that wonderful Balanchine ballet justice in Fort Lauderdale. Of course watching from a good seat in a good theater is the best "editing" of all.) I had a very god time with L'Allegro in the theater and consider it one of Morris's best. It'll be good to try to revisit, even diminished as I think dance inevitably must be somewhat, on screen.

Regarding the costumes and versions of Square Dance, if I remember correctly, the Joffrey once staged the old-style version with the new solo to Corelli's "Sarabanda" inserted, in the new costume. I think you've got to do it in one set of costumes or the other, but the "Sarabanda" is such a fine dance it ought to be included if it can be done justice. Of the two versions of the ballet, I prefer the later "abstract" one. (I found the caller distracting - and amplified too much - when the Joffrey revived the ballet in the New York City Center years ago, but conveniently if mysteriously I also found using the earplugs I was traveling with to the City that Never Sleeps in those days cut down the sound of the PA system much more than the sound of the string players. Just in case this situation also gets reconstructed in Seattle.)

Any word as to how Square Dance will be costumed?

On the other side of the continent, I can't help with the identifications, and different people may mean different things when they use the same phrase, too, but these confusions about "who was that?" prompt me to reflect that intelligent dancing includes suiting the "movement quality" to the role, especially in as different ballets as these three are. Intelligent dancing is about showing us their dance, after all, not about showing us themselves. In conversation, some dancers greet with derisive laughter the idea of dancing everything - or even the same role - the same way all the time. So you may actually see the same dancer in different roles and not recognize them.

Any further details?

Arja led Ballo? Ashley's part? That's some recovery! She was cast in Symphony in Three Movements and Mercuric Tidings in Ft. Lauderdale a couple of weeks ago, but never appeared. Good for her!

I saw nearly all four shows in Broward, and I also liked the program a little better after the first one - I'm still disappointed, but adjusting. Symphony in Three Movements is a great ballet, even just analyzed, and a familiar face in the Saturday evening crowd, an amateur musician, was fascinated by the "rests" (in the musical sense), the very short silences or breaks throughout the music. I also had some satisfaction seeing Mercuric Tidings this way, although it was another occasion to notice Taylor's vocabulary is rather smaller than Balanchine's, and I thought the greater weight of effect Taylor's own dancers give his dances would have helped. Or is it also that only Symphony Three is danced on pointe? I like Frank Sinatra's music too, but it gets old faster than the other two, and so I cut the end of the Saturday matinee - I agree that the three pieces don't contribute to a sense of any whole, valuable as they are individually (or not). But I returned in the evening especially to see Catoya's second performance in "All the Way", and thought it "larger" than Friday evening. (With the ensemble's reprise of "My Way", her only appearances this weekend.) Patricia Delgado's Sunday afternoon turn in that number was very creditable, more full than most of the dancing on view this weekend, if not so implicative as Catoya's; and Kronenberg, too: She had two very disparate roles Sunday afternoon: Second couple - the largest part - in Symphony Three, where she looked masterly, utterly at home, most of the time, and like a stranger at a couple of instants, looking up or around - and a reprise of "One For My Baby." Nathalia Arja was absent all weekend, subbed by Nicole Stalker in Symphony in Three Movements and Emily Bromberg in Mercuric Tidings.

Friday evening 6 February in Broward Center for the Performing Arts A woman near me in the aisle after George Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements, to Igor Stravinsky's music, had seen what I saw but responded differently. "I was inspired," she said. "It was like ballet class." But "class" is preparation, sometimes pretty routine exercises repeated over and over, to strengthen the dancers' bodies and technique, their ability to realize something more. This was a performance in the theater, the purpose for which technique is developed, but that aim, that further realization of dance, was missing. Also scanted was the punch and strong phrasing in the music I had heard in the composer's last recording in the afternoon in preparation for attending the evening's show (although at least the tempos were pretty close) - admittedly a tough standard, but one well approximated by the performances I began attending in the ballet's first years in the 70s. Still, watching these drily etched movement phrases, each one finished before the next one begun as though the dancers could stop almost anywhere, without much sense of inevitable flow into the next phrase, one could still admire how the dance is constructed in relation to its music, as in a demonstration - at least when you can see the dancers. Although the lighting design for the second dance, Paul Taylor's Mercuric Tidings, is credited in the program to Jennifer Tipton, and therefore might supposedly be original, the slow second number was in half light. (Nevertheless, this buoyant little ballet to parts of some early Schubert symphonies brought a lot of the center section of the audience to their feet at the end.) It was in "One For My Baby (and One More For the Road)", the third of Twyla Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs that closed the program that robust continuity was manifest in the dancing, in this drunken-duet entertainment which Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg and Carlos Miguel Guerra have made a specialty of and which drew a lot of chuckles from those in the audience who had stayed for it. (The couple are featured in this on the cover of the program.) And Mary Carmen Catoya's elegantly expansive dancing was recognizable in the sixth song, "All the Way," with Reyneris Reyes.

If you're up to the technical complications, you may even be able to fix it, for yourself, at least: A few years ago we discussed this problem in connection with one of the "Choreography by Balanchine" DVD's on the Nonesuch label and how to deal with it by playing the disc in a computer where the free video player VLC is installed, and in post #31 there I tried to give a few steps for using the version of VLC available at the time. (The Equalizer corrections there apply to the Nonesuch DVD.) You don't even need to save the YouTube video to your computer first, but you do have to tweak and restart VLC for the tweaking to take effect, and then it will play the YouTube video in sync, directly off the Internet. Remember that to get VLC back to normal, you need to "un-tweak" the "Audio desynchronization compensation" setting and restart it again. At least, that seems to be true for v. 2.1.5, the latest one for Mac OS X. (Logically, the next step would be for somebody to figure out how to upload the "fixed" version to YouTube.)

I couldn't agree more with that part. [Emphasis added.] The most interesting dancers I see are the ones who hear their music differently each time. So it's never the same twice with them, and so any one performance couldn't be "representative" evidence or basis for judgement. I think Mr. B. himself, while technically demanding, wanted to see interesting dancers, and I think this is part of that.