Jack Reed

Those frustrated by videos here that refused to play might try again.  I think I've got them working better.

The Ballet Chicago Studio Company presents their annual run of their version of The Nutcracker this weekend and the following one, previously eight performances, but this year, nine:  Curtain times are 7:00 PM on December 13, 14, and 19-21, and 2:00 PM on December 14, 15, 21 and 22, in the Athenaeum Theater, 2936 N. Southport, near the intersection of Southport, Wellington, and Lincoln Avenues in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, next to the landmark St. Alphonsus church.

Ballet Chicago is one of the country's leading Balanchine-oriented ballet schools; most of their ballet curriculum consists of Balanchine ballets or fragments of them, but Spanish and modern dance are included, as well as choreography by faculty like Daniel Duell, who danced in Balanchine's NYCB; his partner in life, as well as in art, as he likes to tell us before the curtain, Patricia Blair, who danced in the Eglevsky Ballet when  Edward Villella was running it; Ted Seymour, who danced in the Suzanne Farrell Ballet and elsewhere, and others, some with background in Spanish and modern, and some alumni.

The Ballet Chicago Studio Company takes in B.C. students "when they are ready"; thus it's the cream of the school and performs the top roles, including the surviving parts of Balanchine's Sugar Plum pas de deux in this production, to which Duell has contributed a male variation to replace the lost Balanchine one.  Blair has contributed the choreography of the Snow Scene which concludes Act I and includes an adagio pas de deux to the Pine Forest music, as well as other parts, along with a lot by Duell and some by Seymour.  (I gather these last two are the ones who remade the Battle scene into the dancey-ist version I've seen, deploying some of the classical vocabulary unexpectedly in martial action.)

Personally, enjoying dancing most when I see what I hear, I prefer this production, made by people true to their roots in Balanchine's way - "See the music, hear the dance" -  instead of the new Joffrey one, by Christopher Wheeldon, which doesn't look to me nearly as well heard as his Polyphonia did, for example.  In these peoples' hands, these dancers do pretty much what Tchaikovsky asks for.

And with tickets at about one-fifth the price of the Joffrey production, it's value for money in that way too.  That the dancers are paying tuition instead of drawing a salary and that the musicians are recorded (from well-chosen performances) are partly responsible for the lower prices.  Belying the low production budget, the costumes, sewn up by volunteers, "The Guild of the Golden Needle", look good and move well, too.  (Have a look at some images from my previous, longer posts in this forum here.)

Here are some moving images from a few years ago:

(If clicking the embedded images here doesn't start the video, use the links on the left.)

Mirlitons [Flutes]

Waltz of the Flowers:

Finale:

And here's Act One, from 2014, beginning with an introduction by Ballet Chicago's Artistic Director Daniel Duell:

(Inevitably, this imagery provides only glimpses.)

How some scene and costume changes are accomplished in full view adds drama for me along with the charm of the evident, dedicated community producing this show.  Except for a very brief number with some three- and four-year-old bunnies in the matinees, no one on stage is trying to do something even a little beyond them; and aside from charming the audience (including their parents), these little ones remind us that stage experience is part of a dancer's training.  Most of the time, though, we don't notice.  We see the music.  We're entertained.  We're lifted on high.

For background on this staging, Alistair Macaulay's review of February 7, 2015 gives as usual the nub of the matter - except that this time around, four years later, the dancing may be even a little better:  A better observer than I told me that BAZ's dancing in Napoli in its first season made him aware of the steps, which left some room for improvement.  We agreed that ballet is better if you're not so aware of the steps, and now Napoli has improved.  I didn't see that first season of it, but I did this one.  All of it.  And I'm really glad for it.

There's a lot to see.  Macaulay has a short, expert paragraph summary; there's a good synopsis in the program, and though the entry in Balanchine's Complete Stories of the Great Ballets has the dry pedantic flavor of the entries I think are written by Francis Mason, it gives you a good impression of how full this ballet is.  (The account written by Cyril Beaumont early in the last century goes on for pages; Beaumont was like that.)  For instance, there's so much going on the the first Act that it wasn't until Saturday evening - my fourth visit - I actually saw Gennaro and Teresina sneek off upstage to get into their little boat so the plot could progress into the Blue Grotto scene, and then only because I looked for it.  

Some say this is Bournonville's best; I can't compare but any ballet lover should at least give it a try.  If you missed BAZ's this time around, there's a pretty good video on Youtube of the 1986 staging by Kirsten Ralov, but if there's any justice, this one will come around again.

Act II is easily the most beautiful (my neighbor in the theater one night was really delighted), while Acts I and especially III are the most joyful, and BAZ's Act II is credited to Ib Andersen alone.  I believe it; the movement style and flavor of Acts I and III seem to me different from Act II.  Act II is in a different vernacular, closer to the Balanchine I've watched for decades.

Not surprisingly, the high point of Act II is the role of Teresina, the Neopolitan fisherman Gennaro's intended bride.  Her first long dance with the chilly sea spirit Golfo, in whose Blue Grotto she arrives, washed up by a storm, is a contradiction to the trite nonsense that "Everything is beautiful at the ballet":  Her moves are  beautiful except for an additional alienated, estranged quality both dancers here gave them, early in the scene.  Arianna Martin, the first Teresina I saw, on Thursday night, was quite spooked in her first long dance with Luis Corrales' Golfo 

Teresina is ill at ease with Golfo - we later see some pantomime, rejection gestures, but what I found taking is the way Arianni Martin and especially Jillian Barrell gave the movement a quality that said, I'm going through the motions here, because I have to - she looked worried to the point of distracted.  (Barrell, the more veteran dancer in this, already in the action of Act I phrased her port de bras on a larger scale and so, more effectively than the younger Martin.  Yes, I would also say she was radiant - her role radiated to the back of the theater.)  

There was not a fearful trembling I could see, but she showed us her soul was trembling, if you will.  Ballet is one of those arts that make the invisible visible - often it's about making the music visible as best demonstrated in Balanchine - and that was here, too, Bournonville or here, Andersen, are that type of choreographer, but this was something more, another dimension.

Soon, Gennaro having found his way into Golfo's cave and prevailed on the lovely Naiads there to reveal Teresina to him, smoothness and sweetness returned to her movement, but not expansive scale, not even the scale of her falsified dancing with Golfo; she is not the Teresina we saw in Act I, she's more withdrawn, remote, uncertain.  But finally, Gennaro deploys the amulet Friar Ambrosio gave him at the end of Act I, and  her dancing recovers its former large scale and energy and warmth as she recovers her realization of herself and her awareness of who Gennaro is.  Not to say its former joy!  Joy bubbles up repeatedly in Napoli, the more effectively for the occasional contrasting sorrowful or threatening moments.

There's a lot to see in Napoli, even in one role, in one scene.

Lacking a link to an on-line copy of Garis's review of the premiere, I offer this savagely condensed version, trying meet our word limit on quoting published material:

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Unquestionably a major work, but I admire it also because it is a big hit and was meant to be...  Jewels is a work of genius both as a work of art and as show-business…

'Emeralds' turned out to be unlike anything [Balanchine] has done before.  To suit the slow, even flow of the Prelude he has invented a paradise of motionless motion; it is a mondaine and elegant paradise appropriate to the music; the movements, like the music, are pure the way expensive things are pure; yet the ballet is far nobler in feeling and scale than Faure'…  '...Luxe, calme et volupte' [Baudelaire]

'Rubies' reminds us of other Stravinsky works… but the Capriccio is reminiscent too of Stravinsky's more serious music…  When [Morris's] limbs are manipulated by four men, the effect is funnier than similar things in Agon, but the quiet music keeps it from being openly comic…  The high point of [the last] movement, Villella circling the stage with his gang, crystallized the period nostalgia and parody you sense throughout ['Rubies'] - it looks like a trick cyclist's act.  But the basically loose carefree charm is fiercely charged up by Villella's brilliant virtuosity…

That there is less to say about 'Diamonds' is a fact about the ballet's meaning, not about its value.  'Diamonds' is not a newly invented world, like 'Emeralds,' nor an inspired new combination of familiar materials, like 'Rubies'; its impulse is toward radical purification, distillation, abstraction.  When Farrell is at her best, 'Diamonds' is one of the largest, most intense, most uncluttered experiences in ballet.

I'm curious, mussel, how about that added duet, and the order of the second and third numbers, the two ballerina variations?  Originally, as you probably know, Verdy led the ensemble first number, then Paul had  a variation, then Verdy had her "Spinner" variation as the third number.  When she retired and Balanchine added the concluding septet, he also put "Spinner" second and the Paul variation as the third number.  So I'm wondering how closely Mariinsky sticks to the original sequence (which of course included the remarkable "walking" pdd), which sequence I prefer - when adequate dancers are available.  (Edward Villella had Mary Carmen Catoya in his MCB year ago, who, coached by Verdy, danced Verdy's part so well I thought he could have restored the original sequence, but he didn't.)  Personally, I'm encouraged that they have dropped the septet.

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and I *love* to brush up on my history before seeing a show. It makes it all last longer.

My preferred method also, Sygyzy!

And there are lots of good recommendations here, mostly, I assume, of the version with the revised "Emeralds" Balanchine made in 1977 on Verdy's retirement, which is the one you will probably see. 

In addition, Robert Garis wrote up his sensitive and evocative perceptions of the original suite in Partisan Review for Fall 1968 if you can get your hands on it somewhere.  Nancy Reynolds quotes his review at unusual length in her Repertory in Review: 40 years of the New York City Ballet (1977), itself hard to find now, I'm afraid.

The trouble with the Front Balcony is the distance.  Likewise the Dress Circle, the last part of the Orchestra.

I think there are a few Dress Circle seats which are partly obstructed by (slim) posts supporting the balcony above, indicated on the seating charts by dark disks with exclamation points on them; but the Auditorium seats nearly 4000:  It's a huge opera house, not ideal for ballet IMO but with better sight lines than the Met, where I sometimes sit in whatever the lowest balcony is called in there.  (The Parterre?)

The point is, most of the seats, while unobstructed by the people in front of you - unlike on the Met's main floor, because of the unusually steep and progressive rake in the Auditorium, increasing toward the back - are pretty far back.  (Not a lot of seats where you get the "emanations," toward the back of this place - you can easily wind up feeling outside the event.)   

I like the center of Row P - seats numbered in the 300's - on the main floor because it's not so close as to be too low.  The first ten rows of the Front Orchestra are very risky to being blocked for someone like me who is 5'8" in his socks, though things do get better toward the back of this section.  But Row P, being the first row of the Back Orchestra, is a bit higher than the gradual progression in the Front Orchestra would put it, and I prefer it to Row O, right in front of it, an extra step down into the Front Orchestra.  Likewise Row Q is better than Row O, IMO.  (I was glad to watch some performances of ABT's Whipped Cream from Rows P and Q in April.)

I also find that an inside, "no view" room is usually a good strategy for peace and quiet, the exception being where there is noisy, malfunctioning machinery down in the court.

On 10/14/2019 at 1:20 PM, Buddy said:

The Congress Hotel is across street. I stayed there maybe fifteen years ago and thought that it was fine. The man at the ticket office said that he thought it would be fine also. If you do want to stay there don’t get a room in the back of the hotel which faces the elevated train nearby and would be very noisy. The man also said that there’s a Hilton nearby that is recommended.
 

Good point about the train!  I do have friends who can sleep anywhere, but for the rest of us, beware. 

Also, the former Congress Street, recently renamed Ida B. Wells Drive, between the Congress Hotel and the Auditorium, gets heavy traffic, so visitors might better consider the east side of the Congress, on Michigan Avenue, with a nice view of Grant Park and Lake Michigan beyond, and less noise trapped and building up between the hotel and the theater building.

There are actually two Hiltons in the neighborhood: the luxurious Hilton Chicago is two block south on Michigan Avenue, also affording views of the Park and farther from Wells Drive but also exposed on the back to the dreaded "L" trains; and the moderate Palmer House, four blocks north up Wabash Avenue, above which those trains rumble and squeal and facing State Street - no trains but plenty traffic - on the other side.

So, a room in the Congress in the south-east corner of the building might be the best value. 

Amazing!  Do you remember the venue?

On 8/31/2019 at 8:47 PM, pherank said:

The SF Ballet Blog has an interview with the new Executive Director, Kelly Tweeddale:

 "... movement connects music with emotion ...

look up, take notice, and see what happens beyond our screens and ourselves..."

I'm encouraged to see music mentioned by someone who intends to market dance, when I've too often noticed its omission from that context - we're commonly supposed to relate to the dancers' physical effort, although they're normally so good that effort is invisible, or to the ordinariness of their personal lives, or to their choreographer's biography.  No, it's important to listen as you watch, to see how the movement connects with the music, as she says.

And what's it all for?  Watching dance, liking the experience of other art, takes us out of ourselves, it takes us up, to somewhere beyond, at least for a time, but sometimes, to change us permanently.  

I'd say Tweeddale is on the right track, and I wish her good luck too - especially with finding staff who embrace her enlightened view and do not talk down to the people they bring in.   

I realized that I hadn't read a lot by Kourlas, unlike others here, so I went searching, and found that she edited the dance department at TimeOut for twenty years, maybe the period Macaulay refers to, so I'll try to catch up there.

But in the meantime, I'll hope her work has some measure of the virtues I've found in that of Denby, Croce, and Macaulay himself, and others to a lesser degree, writing that enables us to see what they saw through their eyes, that enables us to follow their thinking along to their judgements and conclusions, and, regardless whether we agree with them or not, that enables us better to draw our own conclusions and to deepen our own experiences of the performances we see - even of ballets these writers didn't write about.  "Just like being there," yes, great exercise for strengthening our seeing minds.   

And BAZ itself doesn't always have an orchestra.  This Chicagoan prefers their Balanchine weekend, in May, performed in Phoenix Symphony Hall, when their music has been played from recordings for several years.  Yes, no reason to exaggerate; but Turner's little bio in the BAZ program presents her as a marketer, so true to that role, she may feel exaggeration to promote her company comes naturally. 

Actually, my long experience watching MCB in Florida taught me that recorded sound can be quite satisfactory: Part way through my career in the audience there, there was such a dramatic improvement in the quality of the sound I heard over the previous season (in the Au-Rene Theater in Ft. Lauderdale) that I had to look in the pit at intermission to see whether there were any players in it, but there was no sign of any.  (I had already noticed different loud-speakers set up at the sides of the stage, and inquiry brought out that they were responsible. Indeed, if I remember correctly, I was told that the rest of the equipment was the same as before.)  

So, with all due respect to hard-working musicians looking for long contracts, "live" vs. "recorded" is a little irrelevant to me.  Agreed, though, BAZ, a company of 30 or so, has a lot to brag about, without exaggeration.      

Indeed, seen in 2017 and 2018, the view from the Compass (300' up) is pretty dramatic when the sun is out, if maybe less so than from the Space Needle in Seattle (600') - when it's not fogged in!

But I have another question about accommodations in Phoenix:  When that wonderful oasis of a bed and breakfast, Maricopa Manor, is booked, what's second best?  BAZ's Napoli weekend in October has already been booked there for a while - what I'm thinking of as a "snowbird" phenomenon - so I'm seeking more advice from the wise people here who sent me there in the first place years ago.   

3 hours ago, angelica said:

My former ballet teacher used to say that ballet is a Fine Art, like painting, and is not in the same category as other forms of dance. This is, indeed, an elitist attitude to which I wholly subscribe.

I think it's an elitist attitude to which we can all aspire! 

I agree with you about Bourree Fantasque, which has a lot of jokes to stretch the range of the classically well-trained SAB students, but if you look again, I think you'll see that in the passage you quote I was writing about the Agon pas de deux Durham danced with Brown.

Cyril Beaumont's books, by a spectator rather than a participant, are focused on Europe, and the last supplement to The Complete Book of Ballet - a four volume series in all, if I remember correctly - appeared in 1945 or so.  Very detailed accounts of the ballets. 

For some of the dancers themselves, or their companies, he published separate volumes (some listed on Amazon) which I haven't seen.  The question is, which are available outside libraries.

Andre Levinson is an author whose name I know only by reputation - that he was one of Beaumont's co-authors adds to it - but he wrote about the period and location you're interested in.

I went to Saturday evening's performance too, and in view of the apparent error in the Broadway World review of  that one linked to by our indefatigable dirac, I can testify that a change slip in my program identified Ross Allen's substitution for Jonah Glickman in the last movement, "Fete Polonaise", of Bourree Fantasque.       

I went:

Here are the leads in Monday evening's Workshop, in case they haven't been published elsewhere yet:

Concerto Barocco:  Magnussen, Lepson, Tomasini (the same as the Saturday matinee)

"Garland Dance" (the same as Saturday's casts, unless I missed somebody in the huge corps list...)

(Intermission)

Agon pas de deux:  Savannah Durham and Lajeromeny Brown  (The Agon pas de deux, staged by Maria     Kowroski  and Tyler Angle, was listed second after Intermission in the printed program, after the New Sleep pas de deux, but performed before it.)

New Sleep pas de deux: Quinn Starner and Cainan Weber

Bourree Fantasque:  Edwards and Takahashi; Domini and Clark; Hong and Allen (same as the Saturday matinee)

I thought Durham's performance was large, clear, and strong - she is a tall girl to begin with - perhaps lacking only a little in energy and attack compared to some I have seen over the years; but she's "only" 19.  We learned from the pre-performance announcements she had been accepted as an apprentice into NYCB three days before.  (Good for them!)   

Durham looked like her partner gave her everything she needed - she was completely secure - but I have a few reservations about Brown otherwise:  He's a bit short - as a friend pointed out, we've usually seen men standing head and shoulders over the pas de deux woman in the past - and his movements would also have made more effect had he been able to give them more apparent weight or emphasis.  

Still, "loyalty" to your lady goes a long way with me - we've seen some men over the years who look as though they care less for them than for their own dancing.  (I say "look as though" because I think I've picked up accurately over those years that partnering, when the boys encounter it, is almost a whole new game.  Still...)

And having criticized the "Workshop Orchestra's" playing in the Chabrier in fast tempos previously, I should add that Monday evening's musical performance was clearer and even more fun.   
 

A few of us saw both Saturday shows, and we thought the superb matinee casts were somewhat bettered by the excellent evening ones.  

Concerto  Barocco had two completely different casts.  I was particularly pleased to visit the "world" Suki Schorer's staging of it set before us; not taking anything away from what I said abut the fine, but bolder, staging I saw in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, but early on here I was aware of "seeing" more notes, more of the music, than I had there, even if these performances were a little subdued in energy both onstage and in the orchestra pit by comparison.  

I'm not complaining; I'm just noting some differences.  This was the finest Balanchine I've seen in some time:  Clearly, richly detailed within supple phrasing, never a "demonstration", but a vital and satisfying realization of what I heard.  Well worth the trip.

The Garland Waltz from The Sleeping Beauty is a very different dance from most of what we see in that there's little "upper body" in the choreography (the dancers' arms are occupied with holding  the garlands); but it's not all stage-filling patterns arranged and rearranged according to the near-repetitions of the waltz rhythm, and I found much to enjoy merely watching the clear eloquence of the older girls' feet when they were visible downstage - compensation enough for me for the reduced activity up above.   

Both performances of a pas de deux from William Forsythe's New Sleep seemed highly accomplished and technically secure; neither did much for me.  The movement generally looked coordinated with the noisy sounds we heard, but they never looked necessitated by this accompaniment, disappointingly unlike the Balanchine on the program.  (I gather this fragment was presented partly because some Forsythe choreography is included in the SAB curriculum.)  

Our favorite of all the leads in Bourree Fantasque was Savannah Durham in Bourree Fantasque, the first danced number after the brief Marche joyeux which introduces the ballet, for the way she inhabited her role and in particular the flirtatious relationship of her persona with her partner Dylan Callahan.   

I was a little disappointed that the conductor, Daniel Capps, didn't get the "Workshop Orchestra" to play the faster movements of the Chabrier score for Bouree Fantasque in clearer texture.  There was nothing muzzy about the  dancing!  Credit to Susan Pilarre, who staged it.   

What we hear here of Engelbert Humperdinck's music for Hansel and Gretel turns out to have pretty good substance - he seems to have picked up from his teacher Richard Wagner some of Wagner's prodigious musical powers while leaving behind Wagner's habit of unendurable bombastic proclamation - so that this score is quite listenable.  

Dan Duell, Ballet Chicago's AD, told us from the stage that we were not only going to hear a shortened version, about 35 minutes, of the 85-minute orchestration of Humperdinck's opera commissioned by Ballet Chicago in 1993, we would hear it played by an orchestra of members of the Chicago Symphony and the Lyric Opera orchestras hired and recorded by Ballet Chicago.  Ballet Chicago's standards of musical performance have always been high; I gather Duell is a musician himself.

In Duell's choreography, Humperdinck's music sometimes advances the plot line but more often expands on the mood or tone of a situation, whether lighter or lyrical, as when the two siblings give up their work of making brooms and play - or dance, this being ballet - or heavy and threatening, as when Hansel confronts the Wolf in defense of his sister, or when Gretel picks up the Witch's broom, which we have seen is the instrument of the Witch's power, and turns it on the Witch herself, triumphing over the evil woman and altering the mood and character of the whole forest population, celebrated in dances by creatures large and small.     

Something happened between the matinee and evening performances which made more vivid and clear the menacing role of the Witch at the later performance  - it's part balletic and part dramatic:  With her upper body Katherine Alvarado was sinister or exultant meanwhile stepping boldly about on her pointes with great clarity and maintaining strong line, making her bizarre role more formidable and hair-raising than she had in the earlier one, and with that, the whole scene, including the other roles surrounding and following hers, had more point.

With Vivaldi and Bach both represented on the program, you might think this company was leaning Baroque-Classical oriented.  Think again.  

Partly to a Vivaldi oboe concerto, the second dance, Ted Seymour's LongLivingLine, tells you it's another world far from Balanchine's famous Concerto Barocco - itself concluding the program - when it begins, allegro, with the female cast extending across the stage in a double line, you know where you are, not just because the girls are all facing upstage, some supporting themselves a little casually on their right leg with their left foot to the side, but because a few also have their right forearms draped over the tops of their heads.  

Some "found" casual elements, like those arms, recur; at one point, two girls bend out of formation to look into each others' grinning faces as though to share some secret amusement.

In the second movement, to Vivaldi's adagio, the line - or most of it - moves upstage into dimmer light to form a corps backing downstage solo dancing.  In the third movement, to Aphex Twin, the double line dissolves and reforms into groups and reforms again across the stage.  

Originally, there were half as many in the cast, when the ballet premiered on the smaller stage of the Athenaeum Theater, which I saw in a publicity-video montage, and I'd say it benefits by the greater numbers and space and new costumes.

Seymour's Danzon! opens with the small cast - three girls and two boys - spread across the stage space, seen in profile against a sunset backdrop.  The lights come up, and we see some social interaction as though in the street or a plaza, in rapidly changing groups or solos; a girl may dance with two boys for a few moments, then put both of them away from her and dance alone.  Credit to Dana Coons, Nina Montalbano, Emma Wittig, Paris Stigger and Elliott Nunez populating the large stage with movement. 

With Seymour's perceptive choreography, Arturo Marquez's "Danzon No. 2," plainly intended for dancing, or at least inspired by it, seems to intend these passing developments, these associations and separations, with its many passages for solo instruments.  Very listenable, this music is said in Wikipedia to be among the most popular contemporary classical compositions in Mexico.  I wasn't surprised by that. 

In Concerto Barocco, what made guest artist Simone Messmer's performance powerful and gave it great effect is not any showy exaggeration but on the contrary its greater fullness within phrase shape; Nina Montalbano's phrasing is only a little simpler, and only a little diminished by that, but of the same essentially modest kind; a close pair, these two, as suits this ballet.  (Messmer is credited in the program as Principal with Miami City Ballet as well as summer faculty with Ballet Chicago.) 

In the great adagio, guest and Ballet Chicago alum Jordan Nelson, Messmer's partner, continued to provide everything she needed, as he had in the preview.  (Nelson is credited with St. Louis Ballet.)  And the eight girls were as lively, sharp and luminous as required.  Staged by Patricia Blair, Dan Duell's wife, an alumna of SAB and of the Eglevsky Ballet when the AD was Edward Villella, among other distinctions.  Superb performances:  After the evening show, a man behind me asked, "Is this intermission?"  "Do you want more?" I asked.  He nodded, smiling, saying, "I want more!"  

Back in Chicago, I'm still enjoying these performances, glad for them to linger in memory.

Regarding Square Dance, Nayon Iovino did not move quite so smoothly and effortlessly as Lima in this, and Jillian Barrell's dancing was a little less satisfying when compared to Amber Lewis in the first cast, but both casts made this generally light, bouncy, and high-spirited ballet, an excellent opener, look like fun to dance. 

"Fun" was the word Lima used in the pre-performance chat with Alexandra Papazian, BAZ's Education and Community Engagement Manager, who promptly followed his true remark with the puzzling claim that this ballet was "technical". 

("Technical"?  I'm sorry, but these dancers are so accomplished, their technique didn't show, the fun did - the fun in the music showed.  She seemed to me to be selling them short, unless maybe she was trying to refer to the exceptionally open and clear patterns in this little ballet of fewer than twenty dancers.) 

Messmer-trackers may like to know she is to appear in  Ballet Chicago 's (actually, Ballet Chicago Studio Company's)  May 11 mixed-repertory performances in the Harris Theater in Chicago, where she will reprise her recent performance in Concerto Barocco with MCB in that theater, but this time partnered by B.C. alum Jordan Nelson of St. Louis Ballet*.  She already has participated in the April "Sneak Preview" performances I talk about on the linked page.

*I had this as "Ballet St.Louis" originally; I regret the error.

I've seen all four performances so far, so if you don't recognize them in my description, it may be that my descriptions are worse than usual!

Agree that von Aroldingen took over Paul's variation, but that happened while Verdy was still in it.  I saw Verdy in it a lot - sometimes replaced by Christine Redpath, her alternate, a pretty redhead but not a great dancer - but I never saw Paul, who left early for ABT, I think.

But I stick to my interpretation of why Verdy came back on to dance The Spinner variation - translating Faure's title there, but you hear the spinning in the music just as you begin to see it - it was because, on her especially, it was the greater number.  You know that old show-biz phrase, "a hard act to follow"?  Verdy's Spinner was a hard number to follow, and so Balanchine put Paul ahead of it (and also gave Verdy a chance to rest).

But I really agree this beautiful ballet is getting the presentation it deserves.

May 2 - 5  "All Balanchine" in Phoenix Symphony Hall

No posts?  Am I the only BA!-er who's going?  

I got into Balanchine watching his company supervised by him in the 70's, and with that perspective, I'm finding a lot to enjoy with these shows.  Many companies show Balanchine's steps and gestures, but few perform them with "the reasons".  As we learned from a pre-performance "chat", AD Ib Andersen may say, as he did in the case of Emeralds, "There's no story here, so make one up."  

The result of encouraging dancers to intuit from what they are trained and hearing is pretty remarkable.  For a major example, I seem to be getting as much or more out of "seeing the music" in the male solo near the end of Square Dance, from the way Helio Lima moves, as I did from Bart Cook, on whom this dance was made decades ago, when I watched him dance it. 

And in Emeralds, Arianni Martin was so effective in the variation made for the great Violette Verdy that it could go back into third place in the sequence of numbers in this ballet where it had been with Verdy.  As it is, Mimi Tompkins's rendition of the Mimi Paul variation, originally the second number, was just a little bit of a letdown - no fault of Tompkins, quite the contrary, but it's a lesser dance and originally served, not only for its own considerable beauties, which Tompkins showed us very well, but also as a build-up to the Verdy variation.

(Not that I would ever tell Ib Andersen what to do.)

This is a company premiere, and what a beautiful thing it is!  And in the right place in this well-planned three-part program.

Then a rousing finale, Theme and Variations, large cast and energetic music, with some tempos faster than I have ever heard them, too fast in places for Vladimir Jurowski's Russian National Orchestra (by recording, as is all the music in this program) but not for Ib Andersen's dancers.

There's one more performance to go at 1:00 today, and I'm off to see it.