Jack Reed
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The remaining preview is at 5:00 tomorrow in their studios at 17 N. State Street in Chicago; the shows are on Saturday May 11 at 2:00 and 7:30 in the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph Street, in Millennium Park. Here's a link to a little bit about the show:
https://www.harristheaterchicago.org/tickets/2018-2019-season/ballet-chicago
I've written a little here previously about B.C. and in the forums devoted to single companies farther down the board. Technically, they are a Balanchine-oriented school drawing students from across the country and placing them in companies across the country (and the oceans) which has a top echelon of "pre-professional" students, dancers who appear in a few shows a year; others argue they look "young professional".
On some occasions, they will include a guest, either as performer or teacher or both; though this is the exception among their performers, it's a fact worth mentioning this Spring, although I can't say who she is.
The preview is free, but it's best to RSVP:
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On 3/7/2019 at 12:16 PM, Drew said:
Acocella wrote so little on dance in the New Yorker—whether by choice or editorial policy— I am mildly surprised she said she was concerned about repeating herself.
Maybe it was her concern about repetition that inhibited her from writing - "I haven't anything new to say." Her last New Yorker article - "What Went Wrong at New York City Ballet" (February 18 & 25, 2019) - had little new in it, and several of us have been trying to figure out - one friend with an enviable way with words said kremlinizing - why it appeared when it did, what was the hidden significance of that? Living in Chicago, farther from the center of things dance, I found it a useful summing up, as its title implied, and we came to think that it was as much for the more generally-cultured public who reads The New Yorker as for the dance specialists, though I agree with those here who would have like more dance writing from her. She has had a lot to offer lots of people with a range of sophistication.
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Just relying on memory for the moment, I think that Homans expressed the worry that ballet might die. I interpreted this to mean that the ballet she cared for, cared about, might die; the sort of music-inspired ballet Balanchine especially, and some of his predecessors, had made. Macaulay promptly answered, as I remember, that "there will always be ballet"; and I thought and still think, for what it's worth, that they're both right, because they're talking about different things. (Not that Macaulay is musically insensitive or unappreciative of Balanchine's art, far from it.)
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I'm with Helene here. I think I should say that I saw hundreds of performances of Balanchine's company from January 1973 until Spring 1986, because I had to. No, I was not paid to "cover" the performances for a publication - I had discovered around then that if I didn't see some dancing like that, something was missing from my life. I needed a good dose of good dance, and pretty often.
But the way the ballets were danced at NYCB changed in the mid-80's, and watching NYCB didn't do anything for me anymore, and so I mostly stopped watching, along with a lot of the rest of Balanchine's "Old Audience," a term used by the company's marketers at the time. They had to find a New Audience, and, with some success, they did. (The last times I visited the theater, there were no familiar faces huddled in conversation around the Promenade at intermission, but hordes of strangers swirled about, avoiding eye contact.) After a while it came out that Martins opposed the tradition commonly practiced elsewhere of having older dancers coach younger dancers in their old roles. Not entirely. But of course Martins himself was the prime example of someone who "danced for Balanchine" but - apparently, when we saw the performances - did not coach the dancers as Mr. B. had asked.
We began to fear for Balanchine's legacy, or at least for our own satisfaction. Most of the steps and gestures were there, but the dancers had looked as though they knew why they were moving that way, but now they were going through the movements as though to display their developed ability to move - developed to the point of great virtuosity, yes, but something had gone "poof."
Before, the virtuosity had been in the service of something beyond it; now, it was the whole show. It satisfies some people - a lot of people - but I had been spoiled by Balanchine's company, and it wasn't until I caught on to Villella's Miami City Ballet that I was - more than satisfied - again. As well as staging new ballets, Villella brought Balanchine's old dancers to Florida to to help him coach the old roles. There was the good Balanchine I needed!
If Jonathan Stafford has been bringing in some originators at NYCB and has cast some of the dancers who were coached by older dancers in the Balanchine Foundation sessions, as people who I think know say, he has made some good moves in the right direction, I think, and shows the right attitude toward maintaining the Balanchine repertory.
(The word "preserve" connotes the odor of formaldehyde to me; Martins used to say he didn't want a museum, but it looked to some of us like he wound up with one where the Balanchine repertory was concerned. We wanted a garden, a living garden, like the one we used to be charmed by.)
So the announcement was a nice surprise to me, about the best I could imagine, based on what little I know of what Stafford and his group have been doing. What really matters is what the Gang of Four (appointed by Martins, to give due credit) achieves on stage. That's what counts, to me. The bottom line, the proof of the pudding. Has the Board decided, "When ya' got a good thing goin', ya don't mess with it"? Encouraging, but we will see what we will see.
I'm not sure whether Helene's remark that the Foundation sessions are not enough to restore the dancing means that watching the films is not enough or having been coached this way is not enough, but either way, I think that the pessimists among some of my Old Audience friends has some justification. Strengthened by Hyltin's remark, some think it's gone too far, and that it's hopeless that we will see any authentic Balanchine on stage anywhere much longer. We will see.
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This news seems like a "death knell" to you? I have a hunch you're right, but I don't know. Maybe you could elaborate a little. A death knell for the art of dance? Or mainly for ballet as we know it and love it? How so?
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They seem to have given up for today, Thursday, so I'm not sure what the "live" part of the term "livestream" means if it's a day old, but never mind, let's see what we can see. (I doubt they sent their audience home, not to mention their dancers, just because of "technical difficulties", so the actual event must already have taken place by now.)
There's a statement of intentions in the live-chat thread on the relevant Instagram page:
pacificnorthwestballet
@annae.wgn yes, it will be available on YouTube for one month afterwards.
That's one month from tomorrow, the 25th, as far as I can tell.
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Ballet - a little of it - returns to PBS' Great Performances. How long has it been? Or have there been other PBS opera broadcasts with ballet inserted? At any rate, the 30-seond tease might give a better idea of the ballet part than the 3-minute excerpt; both linked on this page:
Choreography by John Neumier, who directs the production; TV direction by Matthew Diamond. (Neither of these gentlemen are among my personal favorites, but I've set my recorder anyway for the 9:00 PM broadcast on Friday the 18th. Here in Chicago, there is a rebroadcast scheduled the following Sunday, the 20th (at 3:00 AM).)
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I'm with the Balanchine fans here, not least because his respects the story, but mostly because I most enjoy dancing when I see what I hear - and Mr. B. gave us more of that than anybody whose choreography I've seen. I think it's one of his greatest ballets, because you can see right along how he hears Tchaikovsky's instructions.
Unfortunately, the last time I saw a really good realization of it was in 2011, when Villella's MCB danced it Ft. Lauderdale, just a week after the NYCB broadcast on PBS, which did no one much credit - neither NYCB nor PBS. (By contrast, the 1993 Warner Brothers video of NYCB is worth having for Kyra Nichols' Dewdrop alone, not to mention Emile Ardolino's excellent directing, which lets us see the performance unusually well.)
A couple of years ago I saw three productions - the new Wheeldon one for the Joffrey Ballet, which was another disappointment for someone who remembers how well Wheeldon heard Ligetti's music in Polyphonia. (Alastair Macaulay's review in the Times says most of what I think abut that one better than I can.) But the old Joffrey one - which I thought was by Joffrey himself, although someone here credits Gerald Arpino - which I saw only in a one-hour version on our local PBS station, frustrated me for looking "deaf" - it told the story, but in movement unaware of most the specific and enlivening guidance Tchaikovsky provides.
And then PNB's new production of the Balanchine choreography, with costumes and other effects, like a projected animation on the curtain to give the audience something mundane to think about - a comic herd of large mice galloping across the yard and up the steps through the open front doors - instead of letting Tchaikovsky transport them to the world of Balanchine's ballet, which subtracted from the potential. Not to mention some tired-looking principals in a few of the five casts I saw late in the season, though some, like Noelani Pantastico, Lindsi Dec, and their partners, brought their parts to transcendent life. But listening as I watched, the choreography was always magnificent. I heard better for watching closely. You thought they moved according to what they heard.
Back home, the Ballet Chicago production turned out to provide the most satisfaction, even though B.C. is "only" a very good school, with enough top students now not to include guests (although Simone Messmer was welcomed a few years ago, on her way to San Francisco, apparently).
The Sugar Plum pas de deux is the surviving Balanchine one, a serviceable Cavalier variation having been made by Artistic Director Daniel Duell, and placed as the penultimate number; a lovely, musically aware Snow scene - including a pas de deux adagio to the Pine Forest music - having been choreographed by his partner in running the school and in life, Patricia Blair; and the other numbers also choreographed with musical sensitivity by Duell and also, in the new, dancey Battle scene, partly by Ted Seymour.
Not only that, the look of the costumes, including the way they move, enhanced the dancing too - I had issues with the other two productions on this point. And the dancers generally look like they were still exploring how their moves fit the sounds we all heard - naturally for them, students that they are, not so common elsewhere, where the emphasis is more on polish and perfection - B.C.'s dancing often has some of that immediacy I enjoy.
These two, really, are my favorite "Nuts"; they easily displace the two Joffrey ones in my affections. I do remember positively a Ballet West production, by one of the Christensen brothers, which I saw on television. Other than that fact, I can't remember much about it, but I mention it because it was on television, and therefor there may be a record of it lurking somewhere.
And then there's Mark Morris's "The Hard Nut". Usually I enjoy watching how Morris hears, but I can't gt anywhere with this one.
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On 9/29/2018 at 1:29 PM, Quiggin said:
... I think Jack Reed has pointed out how the PBS City Ballet DVD reissues of City Ballet performances are less reliable in syncing sound to picture than the earlier video tape offerings. ...
I'm looking forward to when I can explore this thread in detail, because what I enjoy seeing most is dancing where the dancer is still exploring how the moves fit the sounds, whether it's her third performance of the role or her thirtieth. This has long been part of my concept of "musicality".
But in the meantime, running across my name here in connection with the problem of synchronization of audio to video made me want to remind you of that thread Quiggin recalls (thank you, Quiggin!) where we had a discussion of that which included some steps you can take about the problem, in particular the posts where cantdance and I offer some specific steps for playing "desynchronized" DVDs (and, along the way, emilienne offers an elaborate procedure for permanently correcting the problem in a video saved in your computer!).
(I couldn't agree more with those here who point out the difficulty of appreciating a dancer's musicality if the relation in time between her moves and her music has become implausible through technological causes.)
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15 hours ago, Quiggin said:
... Stravinsky and Schoenberg were around ...
Indeed, Stravinsky conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but not only in his own music, as we would expect, but in that of another Russian, the one he referred to as "The most Russian of us all." Does everyone know of the 1953 recording, from the years Alfred Wallenstein was principal conductor, of Stravinsky's performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 2? You can hear the first movement here:
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A look at the forum shows I've been commenting on this production for thirteen years now. It's a little different each time, and I won't know what changes to report about this year's until I catch up with it, which I surely will.
Long story short, I was underwhelmed by the complicated and fussy new Wheeldon version for the Joffrey Ballet last season, and I looked forward to B.C.'s more dancey, more musical approach as an antidote - although to be fair it must be said that as B.C. is primarily a school, one of the best Balanchine-oriented ballet schools in the country, as far as I know, with slightly younger dancers than Joffrey, the seasoned strength in excellence of the professional Joffrey performers - from the top of the large cast right down to the smallest role (and on down into the orchestra pit) is not likely fully matched - B.C.'s values are considerable: This Nutcracker is about dance and music! (It's value for money, too, at $30 a ticket, for adults. They can do this because the dancers are the school's better students and alumni, and the music is from carefully-selected recordings.) And when they dance, they reveal that the line between student and professional can be pretty fuzzy.
So check it out: Evening shows are on December 7, 8, 14, and 15 at 7:00, matinees on December 8, 9, 15 and 16 at 2:00, and the Athenaeum Theater is at the intersection of Lincoln, Wellington, and Southport Avenues in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood.
Want more preview? Helene kindly posted some images here a few years ago, maybe even better, there are some clips up on Vimeo, and the whole first act is up on YouTube:
The Party guests arrive:The KIngdom of Snow:
Mirlitons:
Waltz of the Flowers:
On Ballet Chicago's Nutcracker page there are yet more images (in no particular order). (If you want to control the slide show, click on an image.)
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On 11/17/2018 at 8:43 AM, Mashinka said:
... Am I a dinosaur?
Yes, but not in the way you may think. You're another person with taste - evolving or not, as may be - and so you and the people you know keep the old media around because you value what it stores. You think independently of conforming to the principle that what's new is good or desirable because it's new. (And we're dying out, like the dinosaurs did.)
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Hello from another Chicagoan, Paulina!
On 8/1/2018 at 9:58 PM, Paulina said:...
Balancing schedules for school and dance is much more challenging than I ever could have realized, but I am so thankful every time I see her perform. ...
Behind every young dancer there's a family! A friend and her dancing daughter, also a Joffrey student, and I will also be at MCB Friday night.
There's a lot of dance to see in Chicago, and with two series already, you're obviously up on it.
I'm mostly classical ballet myself, but Sunday I will be watching Ballet Folklorico de Mexico with a former member, and the following weekend we'll see the Joffrey Academy Fall Program, where my friend's daughter will dance.
May I suggest as an addition to your busy calendar a personal favorite I feel is under-appreciated, our alternate, pre-professional ballet school, Ballet Chicago? More "Balanchine oriented," they put on their home-grown Nutcracker the second and third weekends in December in the Athenaeum theater (as well as mixed repertory in the Harris Theater in mid-May).
The musicality of the choreography really suits my sensibilities. It's mostly by Dan Duell and his wife, Patricia Blair, former Balanchine dancers, and there's Balanchine's "Sugar Plum" pas de deux toward the end. Beautifully costumed by a small army of volunteer seamstresses, and at $30 and down - seniors and children pay less - value for money, too. (Helene kindly posted some images of those costumes a few years ago.)
Try a different Nutcracker and see how you like it? Sometimes comparing things brings out something you wouldn't have noticed in each of them otherwise.
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I wasn't there, but I gather these were a stumble or two and little more. I can not only take some of this in stride, it points up a conundrum about dance I too actually enjoy: We know the people up there on stage are made of the same kind of bone and muscle as we are, sitting out in the dark, watching, but they don't move like anyone else on this planet. Maybe they came from another planet, not like space invaders come to destroy our cities; they came to show us something that makes us happy.
As for Mr. B., he was said to take some satisfaction - and give one of his famous sniffs of approval - in a dancer who fell as she exited the stage into the wings next to him, having given her all, and turning her exit into something resembling a baseball player running on a baseline sliding into home plate, rather than holding back and making her whole sequence more pretty. (Don't some of the old videos - I was looking at the Jewels excerpts from Dance in America last night - have more of a go-for-broke quality then we see today?)
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One thing that has concerned me right along is the idea that the Board would choose prematurely - how have the results been with the Gang of Four - led by Stafford? "When ya got a good thing goin', don't mess with it," right?
I've heard good things, for example, inviting originators of the Balanchine roles to come and coach and having those invitations accepted. (Not always the case.) And some of the dancers who were coached by originators in Nancy Reynolds' Balanchine Foundation's series have made their debuts, I understand.
Still the Chicagoan I was when I saw hundreds of performances of Balanchine's NYCB from 1973 into 1986 (because I had to), I haven't seen these, nor have I seen much of Peter Martins's NYCB, because, ironically in the light of his expressed desires, the Balanchine repertory has looked more like a museum when I have seen it: Better than most companies, but still, it has danced Balanchine's steps but not his ballets. With Mr. B. there reviving and freshening his older repertory, it was a garden, never a museum.
(A garden I had to see because if I didn't get a good dose of good dance once in a while, something was missing from my life. Since 1986 or so the old rewards of watching NYCB have been absent, and so have I, mostly, finding them from Villella's MCB and TSFB - not to mention our fine "Balanchine-oriented" school, Ballet Chicago.)
I would like to think that that garden might wake up and come back to life, having emerged from its hundred-years' sleep. But beware of formulas, even the idea that it has to be one person, one "Prince Desire'," to do that.
Although I would embrace the formula that the artistic side and the fund-raising and administrative side might best be separated: Early in this thread, there was some discussion of this under the guise of a discussion of job names; NYCB flourished with a General Director (Lincoln Kirstein) and three Ballet Masters, listed alphabetically in the program, which suited us Old Audience just fine: George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, John Taras.
("Ballet-Master-in-Chief"? Clunky. No style. For something which is all about style? A bad sign.)
The AD - or the "AG" - the Artistic Gang - needs space and freedom to attend to the artistic side, and in the day, dear Lincoln's job, we heard, was to go to the skeptics among his stable of contributors, upset sometimes by Mr. B.'s ambitions, and tell them, "Let's keep the guy happy!" Let's give him (them) resources, and freedom.
But I don't want to give the impression that I'm against new choreography! Nothing could become classic if no one had done it the first time.
Meanwhile, if the current "AG" is tending the garden, if there are green shoots to be seen, leave 'em alone for a while. After all, hasn't the company come through a period when it was directed by some one who thought he was a choreographer? That's harsh, and I want to add right away, that Martins, troubled man, did keep the whole thing going, trying to do both jobs - AD and fund raiser. Good for him!
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On 10/24/2018 at 5:05 PM, Helene said:
There was a short segment of Diana Adams in it in the Balanchine bio produced by PBS.
There's about 1:10 of it on Youtube currently, after a still image of Balanchine rehearsing Union Jack, where, the narrator tells us, Balanchine put some of what he made to that Handel music:
And here's an interesting discussion some of us had here about Figure, and what's left of it:
It appears there's much too little left of that one to revive it. Only the treat of the way NYCB danced then, especially Adams!
But there is that entire preview film of the premiere of Don Quixote; if no one fronts the money while Farrell (and some of the dancers she trained in Don Q, like Magnicaballi and Ogden and Mladenov) is still among us, that may be our only source for what we need if we would better comprehend this unique work of Balanchine's art.
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How far did you get, kbarber? Before you walked out. I'm just curious, because the first Act, in those days especially, was certainly trying. It picked up considerably in Act II, especially the Divertissements, and the first Scene of Act III, even without Farrell - there's a glimpse of her in the "Elusive Muse" documentary - where the "Dream" turns into a nightmare is, for some of us, a cumulation of much of what has gone before. As Rock points out, above. But the Divertissements needn't have the Spanish court; aren't we good enough? Stage them for us. TSFB staged Mauresque alone; I liked it, like the lady behind me one night in Edinburgh said she did, and it has some of the best music. (Some like the Dream music too.)
Here's some discussion provoked by the Edinburgh performances - I trust you are thinking of the Toronto ones a year later - and I'm embarrassed so much of it is from me, but there are some ideas from my betters, some of which, like the idea that IIIi is dependent on previous action, show how unfair extracting a suite would be: https://balletalert.invisionzone.com/topic/21161-sfb-to-perform-don-quixote-at-edinburgh-festival/?do=findComment&comment=189776
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"Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto Number Two"? What are they trying to do, get the classical-music crowd interested in ballet? Here I thought ballet marketing was all about getting people to like what nice kids dancers are in their private lives, or not so private... Like, they go on the beach like ordinary young people. Will wonders never cease?
But the reason Villella gave - I think someone asked him about that at one of his pre-performance talks - was that "Ballet Imperial" was an easier name to sell.
But this is a nice bit of programming, on paper, better than the one announced for here in Chicago next month.
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Well put. The sad thing about this reaction against art is how it impoverishes the spectator's experience. I feel for those who may recoil from some art - Paul Taylor's Big Bertha has scared the daylights out of me, for example, to give a poor example in our context here - for whatever reason. But art is not literal, like the everyday world; what we see and hear or whatever is representational. It represents a world of the artist's conception, and our experience is enlarged - we are changed, maybe permanently - by our encounter. I wish people could leave their socio-political formulas at the door and have some fresh experiences. Yes, I care that the game goes a little far, and feel some relief when the girl finally gets her purse back. That's part of what I came in for. Thank you, Jerry and Lenny, for showing us these kids - imaginary but believable. If a show won't let us suspend disbelief, it's not much of a trip anywhere. But we have to be willing to go.
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I agree that he did, Mashinka. IIRC, Bejart said of her, in that documentary Helene mentions, "I knew she was from Balanchine and would go to Balanchine, but I could see the music in that body," or words to that effect. I think some indication of what he saw in that body may be seen in the 1966 video, pretty well shot by Italian television, of Bejart's Romeo et Juiliette (to the Berlioz score); just now, there are 10 or 15 minutes of excerpts of it on Youtube, and the whole thing has been for sale on Amazon. Personally, I have a good time with that video, the first two acts of the music long having been a favorite, although the third act, not so much. (Similarly, Bejart, as you may hear on that sound track.)
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This really does deserve a new topic, Rock. Look in the upper right corner of this page for the phrase "Start new topic" in faint gray print - easy to miss - just left of the bold, dark "Reply to this topic" button. Don't worry about repeating yourself there. Go ahead, get people's attention!
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Gottlieb may be right - he usually is - but my casual consultation of Taylor's company's tour-stop list over the years, just checking to see whether my provincial city, Chicago, were mentioned, brought up more French cities than American, some seasons. So I'm surprised by his claim.
This season, there seems to be about as many stops in China (this November) as in America, and there are a few in Germany and Italy. That's more important to me than an isolated Taylor work or two performed by dancers to whom - or "on" whom - may look a little alien. (Edward Villella's MCB performed a couple, but they were like that. Nothing like so fully realized as by his own dancers.)
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Significantly, to judge from the publication dates in 2011 and 2008, these three clips (five posts above) are of MCB while Villella was still running it! And I would say, having seen hundreds of performances of NYCB while Balanchine was still running it, and just beyond, from 1973 into 1986, that your use of the word "probably" is well advised, Buddy. To my eyes, both these "Balanchine" companies are less likable recently than when they danced for their respective founders. Villella's company gave me much the same satisfactions as Balanchine's had; and these clips of it are very satisfying too. Like the videos of Balanchine's company made when he was supervising it, and shortly after his death.
Many other good points here too. It's good to try to catch experience in words that fit - you get the experience stronger when they do fit - and important to keep Balanchine's words in context - sometimes the context of a particular dancer, yes, and sometimes more in general. I don't think he wanted theatricality - usually - but he wanted the dance to be inhabited. That's partly why he chose who he chose to dance in the first place and to revive a ballet later.
But this thread is mainly about the Mariinsky's Balanchine, and, to be truthful, right now I can't remember seeing any, on screen or, here in Chicago where I still live, on stage. (My limited experience leads me to think that authenticity in Balanchine performance is in decline.)
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The old link above didn't work for me, but this one does:
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/dance/not-a-kyra-in-the-world
Ballet Chicago with Simone Messmer preview 4/27/19 & Harris Theater 5/11/19
in Heads up!
Posted · Edited by Jack Reed
Simone Messmer and Jordan Nelson to perform in Concerto Barocco
In this year's performances, guest dancer Simone Messmer will reprise her performance in Balanchine's Concerto Barocco seen here when she danced as a principal with MCB in the Harris Theater on November 9, 2018. Messmer has previously been a soloist with ABT and then with SFB before moving on to MCB as a principal dancer.
Not only does Ballet Chicago occasionally cast a guest or two, it also casts alumni. Messmer's partner will be an alumnus of Ballet Chicago, Jordan Nelson, currently with St. Louis Ballet (which does not list its twenty-one dancers by rank). I had considerable pleasure watching this pair perform in BC's "Sneak Previews" on April 26 and 27 : Well matched, they dance to large effect, clear and strong, without affectation or exaggeration. And as far as I can tell, he gives her everything she needs.
What attracts me about the dancing I see when I watch the Ballet Chicago Studio Company is their engagement. Their dancers are secure in their moves, but beyond that, they are continuing to explore how their moves fit their sounds, their music.
Ballet Chicago being a school, an exceptional Balanchine-oriented one, drawing students from outside the area and outside the country sometimes, this is almost guaranteed among the dancers, for whom the ballets are new, but it's true among the faculty, too: At the second of these previews, artistic director Dan Duell, speaking of this program's repertory, all revivals - or nearly - from different past programs, said that they are showing revivals rather than all new repertory this year because they continually make discoveries in these ballets.