Jack Reed

(from Fort Lauderdale, Florida) Words seem especially inadequate to me as I remember as best I can Mary Carmen Catoya's dancing in Raymonda Variations last night. I would like to remember it better, but I understand she will do it again this afternoon, so I may witness the miracle a second time. The rest of the cast was of differing quality, generally bringing off the variations with enough ease, but they all suffered by contrast with the sailing, modestly smiling Catoya, who might have been thinking, "Whee! This is fun!" Fun for us, that's for sure! (She told Pointe magazine she loves to dance. That was for the benefit of those who haven't seen it with their own eyes, of course.) What particularly struck me was that she had the ability (and used it) to give each sequence its own tone, its own aroma as it were, and then to turn a corner, tonally, I mean, though there are many actual changes of direction in these variations - and bring another sequence into existence with its flavor. Joining them together at the corners? No, for she never separated them, while at the same time clearly articulating them. Outstandingly effective for me in this way was her slightly relaxing her energy or momentum late in her second variation only to unleash it again in a long series of a step I should know the name of, small jumps where one leg is extended down in the direction of travel and the other is drawn up underneath her*. Crystalline clarity! And a crystal is all of a piece too, as her dancing is, and it has corners and facets; but Catoya lives and breathes in it all as her dance flashes by before us - while she is dancing you cannot tell the dancer from the dance - and no crystal (mere rock) does that! Her dancing smiles more than she does. "A hard act to follow" all right, and Lilac Garden didn't really try of course, it radically changed the subject, so to speak. Speak was what Jennifer Kronenberg did: We've remarked here on her changing roles two or three times in the course of an evening, but here in her first appearance onstage she showed us two such different sides of Caroline's character in the blink of an eye - warmly animated toward Her Lover (Carlos Guerra), dutifully burdened toward The Man She Must Marry (Daymel Sanchez, a relative newcomer, stalwart and remote here) - they might as well have been different characters. In these few seconds, she spoke volumes. If you dare blink, you risk missing something. Deanna Seay, as The Woman from His Past, made the part look as though made for her (I should say I've never seen this ballet before, not even in the commercial video "American Ballet Theatre in San Francisco") even though I'm not sure she and Tudor were even alive at the same time, and anyway he made this before I was born. At first I thought the feather she wore was comically long; I hadn't completely entered into the constraining little world of this ballet, but Seay's steadiness of purpose (not of her dancing, which was vividly modulated) soon drew me in the rest of the way, and her whole costume, and the whole scene, for that matter, seemed in its tragic way, inevitable. It was good to see Symphony in Three Movemements again. I had begun to see it when it was less than a year old, and those memories led me to some quibbles about this performance - it needed a more mature hardness from these younger-seeming dancers, and more power from the orchestra in the pit** - but it still has its wallop. (I think another BTer I met, sitting in the second row, felt endangered by it.) Katia Carranza had the right open brightness as the pas de deux girl, but her partner Jeremy Cox, the very memorable Prodigal Son of a few seasons ago, spent some of the potential force of his presence somewhat prodigally in supple nuance, this time at least. I don't think "Symphony 3" is about nuance. This was a fine program, if not, for me, quite on the level of the one that combined Dances at a Gathering and Ballet Imperial last season; Catoya's astonishing dancing made it her evening, though if Lilac Garden was not my glass of tea, Kronenberg, certainly, and Seay made it their meat; and finally the light and energy of "Symphony 3" swept everything before it. *Three to the left, one to the right, fast, then another set, and another! **Not the musicians' fault, but the architect's; see in Post #4, below.

Actually, bart, if I got the identifications right, Manning took over Kronenberg's role; she/they are "stompers". On the other hand I think your description of Manning fits Kronenberg pretty well too as far as it goes, and there's more room for dry wit in Room than in a lot of ballet. I agree that Perez's remarks in the review you link to are telling, but don't you think Jordan Levin's writing in the Herald generally stands up under comparison with what you see?

(from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) A few more random comments: On Saturday afternoon, the 27th, Allynne Noelle, listed as a corps member in the printed program, gave the Agon pas de deux, no less, some of the glow of creation I've wanted in the whole ballet, a lovely debut; that it was a debut may have accounted for the glow of freshness, and her superb partner, Daymel Sanchez, also officially a corps member, undoubtedly contributed. (As I remember Guerra from Friday evening, he was on that occasion a little tense by comparison.) They were fully prepared, nothing tentative or partially indicated here, and although loveliness is maybe not exactly right for Agon, the ballet got a boost from this, not to imply that Jennifer Kronenberg had left a lot of room for improvement, because she hadn't. So it was a nice surprise to see, not to mention what we can infer about its contribution to Noelle's and Sanchez's growth. Katia Carranza turned up in Liturgy, and part of the viewing seats flanking the tech man in the middle of the main floor turned into a cheering section at the end. Carranza deserved every bit of it! I thought it might have been a debut but it was her third performance of this, and she infused it with dimension. If the piece still seems to me to lack its own motivation, such dancing rewards my paying attention to it anyway. (I have no quarrel with Villella's pre-performance comment that Wheeldon is the best ballet choreographer working today; but I take it as a comment on the sad state of affairs we have there, and I haven't seen, or heard about, anything of his to compare with what Merce, Taylor, or Tharp can still do, but of course they're old enough to be Wheeldon's parents, or grandparents.) In the Upper Room was given by a mostly different cast in which Callie Manning happily caught my eye. She's one of those dancers who goes about the stage as though there were nothing special about dancing while making it all especially clear with the crispness of her flowing movement. Saturday evening, Agon seemed to me nearly to come back to itself, and even the orchestra, which has been having some difficulty playing parts of this, such as right after the pas de deux, got its act pretty well together, and tempos were better, which helped a lot. Or am I adapting to these performances? Anyway, I was well impressed with Patricia Delgado's performance of the pas de deux with Guerra; compared with what I can remember of her past roles, this was a step or two up, if not yet quite to the level of cool dispatch starting to simmer with energy in places at the same time, that Kronenberg achieves with this. And so it went: Faun featured the estimable Carranza, whom I thought made more of the many moments than Wu's merely light and delicate performance, even if, again, she didn't reach Kronenberg's level in this. (Kronenberg seems to be able completely to inhabit several dissimilar roles in the course of an evening as easily as I might change shirts.) The evening concluded with repeat performances of Liturgy and in the Upper Room with Friday night's casts. At least I think it was a repeat of Room, because there was a whole section in it I thought I hadn't seen before, which another part of my mind tells me is, um, very unlikely. With its faults and weaknesses, In the Upper Room nevertheless fascinates that way.

(from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) Having just come back from seeing Room for the third time in two days, I offer a couple of little thoughts, as the hour is late: I asked the MCB sound man this evening whether they were using a commercial CD of the music, and he said no. He didn't think there was one, but then he uses what he's given, I suppose, and doesn't have the same reason some here do to seek one out, but I add this note of caution at the risk of annoying 4mrdncr, which is not my purpose, of course. I'm having a pretty good time with this, but I think Glass's music is why it's not better. The music doesn't go anywhere, or, as Arlene Croce pointed out at the time of Room's premiere, "He sets a properly frenetic pace but builds no momentum; each dance is pinned in its own gridlike cage of sound. Compared with David Byrne's score for The Catherine Wheel, the Glass makes almost no rhythmic or textural demands on Tharp." I think it has its moments, though a lot of it is whizz-bang effect, not the least of which is the emergence of much of the cast from the fog bank in front of you. (Balanchine wanted to have upstage entrances for something - Vienna Waltzes? - but wasn't satisfied with what he could achieve. Fog was not his thing, I believe, although water was.) But then, as Croce said, "it would veer back to being genuine," although she doesn't say where so I don't know whether we're really in agreement. Not that I never enjoy whizz-bang effect, but it's not so memorable. And these performances, MCB being the company it is, have an awful lot of bang; they really pump this one up.

Thoughts after watching the opening night's performance in the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Friday, 26th January: This company can be relied on to bring life to anything it performs, but, that said, I've seen more vital performances of Agon than this one, which struck me as a little more soft and smooth than it can be. A few years ago, I saw a performance of the central pas de deux by some of Suzanne Farrell's dancers at the Kennedy Center which had the luminousity of fresh creation; Farrell is credited in the program with the original staging of MCB's Agon, but I wonder how long it's been since she's seen this. (This current staging is credited to Joan Latham.) Nothing really egregious here - this is MCB after all - but a more or less continual oddness of emphasis, or absence of convincingly "right" emphasis, although Jennifer Kronenberg brought her own intelligence to enlarging her role in the pas de deux, ably partnered by Carlos Guerra, and there were also, along the way, many fine moments to admire, such as the balances in arabesque (facing front) in the second pas de trois Deanna Seay took in such quiet while her two partners busily switched sides in front of her that you thought she could stay like that all evening. And I suppose it was actually the same Jennifer Kronenberg whom we saw right after intermission, again with Guerra, in Afternoon of a Faun, but - as bart points out, what a transformation! Here the reduction of the stage space by the original set - originally described in the program at NYCB as "A Room With A Mirror," I believe, letting the audience have the joy of discovering that we are looking into the room through the mirror, but not this time - was partly responsible for Kronenberg's apparent largeness (largeness with lightness), but mostly it was the calmly expansive dancing she brings to this. But here too I thought the effect was a bit subdued, even by comparison with memories of Kronenberg's performances of Faun in previous seasons. (Sure, maybe it was me.) Liturgy I thought looked fine, and Wu and Sanchez looked very fine in it, all the way through, which is more than I can say for some recent choreography I've seen in the last several years, but although this pas de deux lacks any big mistake like putting a big obstacle in the performance space, like Mr. Wheeldon did in Scenes de Ballet, which I saw again last June, it also seems to me vacant of musical motivation, again in contrast to Scenes de Ballet, although I didn't sense any real conflict with Part's score either. Okay, so Part was a less happy choice than Stravinsky; almost everything Stravinsky wrote seems choreographable to me, until some of the last works, and with Scenes he was obviously thinking of that application. Consistent with its musical near irrelevance, the dancing looks like it goes on after the music stops and the curtain comes down. Watching it, I was reminded of the criticisms I've read of the pointlessness of much new choreography to be seen in the House of Martins (hardly the House of Balanchine any more, on the evidence) in New York, where Wheeldon was until lately house choreographer. In the Upper Room, oh my, didn't quite transport me to that exalted state, although it was, the first time through, a very short forty minutes, I'm happy to say. With a separate discussion thread for this ballet, I'll just say here that where to look was initially (and again finally) a problem for me until Catoya's presence on stage materialized in my consciousness, and then the problem was solved. For about forty seconds, anyway. And much later, Seay, in her solo entrance in silence downstage audience right, in her red leotard with matching pleated skirt, and then in her dancing well into the music, where we hear a piano for the first time, looked so just right to me, I thought that that part had been made on her. And finally, it looked to me as though the physical difficulty of this ballet, like the report of the death of Mark Twain, might have been exaggerated. After taking applause at the end, the unflagging Jennifer Kronenberg loped offstage in a big, slow-motion run, as though she were ready for more.

The questioner for most of it was Maura Keefe, on the staff at Jacob's Pillow, although I think the last couple of responses may have been to members of the audience. I'm sorry so much time has elapsed to compromise my memory, but on the other hand I recall someone official-looking there with a video camera on a tripod etc., so the whole thing was likely archived, and since Jacob's Pillow and the Dance Collection exchange some material, the video may surface there in New York.

You're welcome, Farrell Fan. You might also like think about the implication I find for her writing in her public speaking: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...0&gopid=195065&

I agree about the need for, let me say, different collaboration, if not a different collaborator, for the reason you have given, but also for a different reason: I've heard Farrell talk several times now, and I've noticed that she knows when she's got a compact phrase, an epigram or a metaphor for putting her meaning in a nutshell, because sometimes she goes on just a bit until she finds it. In other words, I don't think she needs a lot of someone else's participation. Maybe just someone to talk to or run it by, a transcriber and/or an editor, rather than a co-author. It's a lean, powerful style, another example of "more is less." I've just posted some of her remarks at Jacob's Pillow last summer, which include some examples of what I mean and which also touch on the subjects perky mentioned: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...pic=22748&st=0&

My note-taking isn't what it was when I was in school, and it's been so long since I took these I had a hard time filling them in when I ran across them recently, but here's a little more of what Farrell said last summer: Suzanne Farrell speaking at Jacob's Pillow, 2006 post-performance talk in the Ted Shawn Theatre, 6th July If I could have danced forever, I would have. Staging all over the world, I couldn't take the performance to another level, it was too short a time. I wanted to continue with my own dancers, to give them the environment I had. Shannon Parsley: After dancing with other companies, coming back to Suzanne Farrell puts it all together, I get the whole picture. [Runqiao Du spoke too, but I didn't get his remarks into my notes. Sorry.] SF: We're small, we know each other, everyone dances who wants to. What you learn in the morning may not be what you dance in the evening: Learn everything... Spontaneity. ... Q: Is there only one way to dance Balanchine? SF: Balanchine gave me freedom. I give my dancers freedom... I'm comfortable with adaptation, he would expect that of me. I want a ballet to be memorable and not a memory. You only have one now. PillowTalk in Sommerspace, 4:00 pm on 8th July. "Suzanne Farrell's Balanchine Lineage" [sommerspace is a large balcony on the north side of Blake's Barn, the museum and archive building; it overlooks a frog pond. Farrell was (very briefly) introduced and then questioned by Maura Keefe, who also gave excellent, concentrated 15-minute pre-show "briefings."] Nothing prepares you to be an ex-ballerina... There's a need for structure, but I waited to see what would fulfill a plan. I enjoy staging Balanchine's ballets. ... The body doesn't lie. You can say something and mean something else... I'd be remiss as a teacher if I didn't give them everything, even if they can't implement it all at once... Don't perform an opinion, perform options. Q: These dancers can experiment? SF: The steps are in their body, they can think about covering space, the eyes... Balanchine started me teaching before I was finished dancing. I love teaching. He said, "Some of you are going to have companies." Q: Talk about technique vs. nuance. SF: From the legs on down, brilliance, jump. From the waist up comes later. But you don't just send your legs out onstage. Balanchine divided us into left and right... Your body is an instrument. Don't rehearse unnecessarily, using up your body. Extremes of speed open up the range of music, you can do more with less. You must be fascinating when you enter. Q: Talk about perpetuating Balanchine. SF: I wish you could all take a Balanchine class. It's wonderful... It's scary. Some dancers weren't even born when I retired, but they can live Balanchine by dancing him. Q: How would you compare Balanchine with Bejart and Robbins? SF: They're somewhat theatrical. The dancers will enjoy Bejart's Rite of Spring at the Kennedy Center. It's not an unconquerable reach. Q: What's it like to pass on Tzigane? SF: The farther I get from my career, the more I wonder, Who is that? I like Natalia Magnicaballi better than me. I want to know my dancers but not to control them... The way he put the steps together is the story. Q: Why stage Don Quixote now? SF: Because it's personal and close. It's one he gave to me. There aren't that many balletic archeological digs. It's part of my Balanchine rescue program. Now everything is videotaped. ... Watching him work showed me how to work. ... I don't remember performing here, I remember the beautiful natural setting. My dancers are happy here. The stage feels good. Q: Would you tour Don Quixote in the USA? SF: Yes. Maybe Texas, Mexico, California. Los Angeles? Are you offering? I'd love to. ... Touring is one of our missions. Don Quixote requires 52, including local children and extras. Our repertory includes 32 ballets. Q: I saw Mozartiana in New York. There's a sense of prayer, in the midst of children. SF: The movement with the children is a church motet, I sang it in Catholic church, and I'm happy it re-entered my life. In Meditation, with Jacques, we felt it was heavenly. Q: Talk about the paradox of "discovering yourself" versus teaching it the way Balanchine wanted it. SF: I have to give them something, and I give them a lot of lattitude, but I have to see if it is appropriate... If they don't look good, he doesn't look good. The world of the ballet must remain intact. SF: I never expected to come back to NYCB; [after I left] I practiced a Balanchine barre. I always believed in him. SF: I've choreographed. I'm looking forward to having time. This program was prepared in a week.

How could I have forgotten the first principle of Nutcracker planning? Put lots of kids on stage, and you put lots of family members in the seats. With 25 or so additional tots onstage Sunday afternoon, the main floor and the front half of the balcony were pretty full.

I caught up with Ballet Chicago Studio Company's annual Nutcracker at Saturday evening's performance. One thing to say right away is that while Daniel Duell's choreography may not be as brilliant as Balanchine's, whose is? Duell obviously takes his instructions from the same source, accomodating to his different resources, in superior contrast to another version to be seen in these parts (and sometimes in Washington). Watching that one, I can imagine myself telling that choreographer, through my clenched teeth, "Listen! For God's sake, listen!" as his dancing and Tchaikovsky's music go along parallel but separate paths. Not so Duell; Duell hears well, and continously. This came to mind long before the Athenaeum theatre's CD player disgraced itself late in the adagio of the Sugar Plum pas de deux, which, being (mostly) Balanchine's, was brilliant, and brilliantly danced by Charlotte Speranza and her able cavalier, faculty member Ted Seymour, fittingly brilliant for the end of the evening, but in it the dancers had to follow their own path after a while while the drunken-sounding machine replayed long sections of the intoxicating music as though not willing to come to the end of it. (After a longish pause, we got a cavalier's variation and the rest of the pas and then the ensemble Finale in good order.) But before this ending, marked by the performer's triumph over adversity in addition to their doing justice to Mr. B., we had had an evening of dancing well worth seeing not least because of its musical integrity and some drama too. Along with a new backdrop for the Act II Land of Sweets, we had a Drosselmeyer in Act I this year who heightened the role in more ways than one. The tallest person on stage, Kevin Iega Jeff could have dominated the first scene with his large, clear movements, but he's better than that, and played his role for its sinister mystery (rather than the differently-effective dotty eccentricity we have seen here other years), merely influencing events in the well-lit center by some well-chosen gestures in the dimmer background, aided by his African-American coloring. In that center, Diana Cisneros was a lovely Marie, leading the March with her fine corps of six small girls; there must be an acute shortage of suitable boys in Ballet Chicago, essentially a school, and so Duell has set Tchaikovsky's delicate march as a miniature ballet-within-a-ballet, with unison ensembles, solo circle, and so on. Cisneros, as Marie, also leads the "Polichinelles" divertissement in Act II, with a corps of tiny ones, in new choreography by Seymour. Rebecca Bruch and then Tony Peyla brought just the right balance between doll stiffness and dancer fluidity to the Doll dances in Act I, and Ashley Ferguson and Jake Laub brought the right mixture of ease and growing intensity - matching the music here - to the Snow pas de deux, a unique feature of this production, as far as I know. Rachel Jambois and Speranza led the Waltz of the Snowflakes, with a corps of eight big girls who could have used more room on stage, and Rachel Jambois and her corps of fourteen (some of the same ones) certainly could have in the Waltz of the Flowers. Alicia Pugh's "Arabian Coffee" solo was remarkable for its sustained sinuousity, a nice contrast to the doll dances of Act I. Indeed, all of this is such a good show, with scarcely anyone attempting what they cannot do with clarity and grace and some dramatic effectiveness, that I'm going back this afternoon for some cast changes (and a near-riot of extra little white mice, if previous seasons' matinees are a guide). The last of the three performances is at 3:00 at 2936 N. Southport. Sid Smith, in the Tribune for 26th November, considers the case for Chicago having become a dance town, but this charming, taking little production still seems to be a well-kept secret, and the theatre's hardly been full, if you'd like to have a look yourself.

Robert Weiss's Carolina Ballet got its second repertory program of the season underway Thursday evening, 16th November, in Raliegh Memorial Auditorium, in Raliegh, NC. The program consisted of Balanchine's Divertimento No. 15, followed by three varied pas de deux, Balanchine's The Steadfast Tin Soldier and Agon pas de deux, with The Visitation, a new dance by Weiss between them, and then Balanchine's Who Cares? to conclude. I had decided to visit Raleigh to see the "Balanchine and Mozart" program partly after reading some favorable comments about the company by a critic I'd come to respect, Jennifer Homans, in The New Republic for September 11 and 18, and also because Alicia Fabry, a dancer I'd come to admire in shows put on by the Ballet Chicago Studio Company, had joined the company. For a long time, her dancing had looked professional to me, so that whenever I saw her in those school exhibitions, I thought, "Won't somebody hire this girl?" Now somebody has, and I wanted to see it happen, even though she would have only minor roles at first. (You can see my posts about BCSC for some of her principal roles with them.) And of the seven programs Carolina Ballet is presenting this year, this one had the greatest proportion of Balanchine choreography, my usual favorite. So there are my prejudices and my caveats. Margaret Severin-Hansen (First Variation) and Hong Yang (Third) were my favorites in Divertimento, so the variations didn't quite build up as they can. These two were so brilliant, especially Severin-Hansen, I would have liked to have seen her essay Sixth. (I gathered later that the original plan was along those lines, but last-minute cast shuffling was necessitated by injuries and resulted in some of the printed cast lists listing Randi Osetek in both principal and corps rank in this ballet.) Lilyan Vigo danced Sixth with clarity and control, but without much brilliance, Attila Bongar stood out as one of the Theme boys, and Timour Bourtasenkov managed the Fifth Variation with larger clarity than Alain Molina, who considerately tried to direct our attention to Vigo's entrance, which Bourtasenkov did not, as he made his exit. (The audiences were enthusiastic through every program, with reason.) Severin-Hansen and Pablo Perez were the ones to see in Soldier, her part clearly and continuously visible and thus very effective, while Erica Sabatini's performance with Nikolai Smirnov came into focus and went out again; and Perez's jumps and impressively light barrel-turns were sensational. The tragic conclusion to this little ballet needed more point, though: Instead of just reaching down to recover his tin heart (which he had given to the Doll and which is now all that remains after she blows into the fire) because he knows it's there, the Soldier might more effectively have taken a moment to look slowly down and discover it for us. Weiss's new pas de deux for Melissa Podcasy and Bongar, to the sighing, poignantly affecting slow movement of Mozart's A Major piano concerto (K. 488), has to do with her efforts to rouse and animate him; the choreography plays him for his size and, some of the time, weight, in interesting contrast with his other roles on this program. Rather smaller, she nonetheless does her womanly and athletic best, manipulating his arms, turning him on one of his feet (I saw from a closer seat that he actually supports her, showing Weiss to be not only musically sensitive but ingenious, too), embraces him, implores him, partners him, only to limited success, however, and at the end, he sinks back onto the chair in the middle of the stage, and she disappears behind him where she sprang up at first. This dance, with its apparent overt physicality on the woman's part, has some contemporary flavor as well as the traditional qualities of grace, flow and aerial existence. Yang and Bourtasenkov danced the first three Agon pas pretty effectively, but without much of the intensity it can and really should have (they're shown in it on the program cover); but when Lara O'Brien (another Ballet Chicago alumna) and Molina danced the last two, it was gleaming and fresh while still remaining a little low-key. This and Divertimento were staged by Victoria Simon; their clarity of detail in the flow of movement, without exggeration, are very much to her and the dancers' credit. Saturday evening's performance of Who Cares? brought a performance of "The Man I Love" by Vigo and Molina that was even more effective than their opening-night one, as though it had been worked on, and deepened. Severin-Hansen continued to connect everything she did very effectively without submerging detail or streamlining in "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise", while O'Brien, in the second cast, sometimes fared less well. Molina held "Liza" together a little better than the generally superb Bongar, who danced it larger, in the second cast. In that alternate cast, Bongar partnered Severin-Hansen in "The Man I Love", and here this little dancer (five foot two, I'm told) showed yet another side of her large talent, although in "Fascinatin' Rhythm" she looked a little blurry in the accelerating conclusion and didn't really bring it to a stop before running off. I have some quibbles about this program, though. (I can always quibble. Well, almost always.) Mainly, I found Ross Kolman's lighting design and Jeff A. R. Jones's set for Who Cares? too complicated and drawing attention to themselves and away from the dancing when they changed, even during numbers, especially the lighting. I'm much happier with designs which make a space for the dancers and then let them be the show. Nor did Jones's set put me in mind of a Broadway musical in line with the Gershwin Songbook used for the score, like the original one did. On the other hand, given the arctic blue backdrop for Divertimento, putting warm light on the corps while keeping diffuse white follow-spots on the principals, giving them high visibility, was, arguably, a way to warm up the stage picture. Steven Ruben's black slacks and white shirts, with untied bow ties, for the boys were a little disappointing to someone who knew the original costumes for Who Cares?, but I believe those were by Chanel, and permission to use them may not have been obtained. The three pas de deux in the middle of the evening were well lit, and although the Christmas tree for Soldier looked hurriedly painted, someone remembered to show the choreographer's initials on the alphabet blocks under it. (The tree is in the center upstage and the fireplace, central to the outcome, is at the left in this production. Maybe the stage was too shallow for the Doll to make her exit toward the back.) There were a few details in the choreography that bothered me, the main one being in the Agon pas de deux. Early on, there's a ghostly-sounding downward glissando played by open strings where I remember in the past seeing the girl bend down from her waist (often to the amusement of the audience), but both girls this time merely swept their left arms down and out to the side while remaining erect. Following Balanchine's own later practice, the penultimate number in Who Cares?, "Clap Yo' Hands," for the three principal women, was omitted again this time. As for that Gershwin score, we had listened all evening to pretty well-amplified orchestral recordings, which sounded better as the weekend rolled on, or as I got more used to the sound system, and then we got the Gershwin played on a piano, with some verve I must say, by Karl Moraski, one of the company's rehearsal pianists; I like "live" music as well as anyone, but I thought that an orchestral conclusion, even a recorded one, would have made a grander finale to the evening. But never mind. What matters is the dancing, and this dancing mattered. By the way, Raleigh Memorial Auditorium's balcony turns out to be behind the main floor seats, so the place to sit is the front of section H or, if you are tall, even better would be the back of section C. Of course, I mention this for those who would consider paying a visit to see this company. If you like your ballet "vibrant and full-bodied" (Homans) and "richly deserving of praise" (tempusfugit's impressively analytical 2004 review in this forum), you should.

Treefrog, having seen these strange, unrealized performances, I think I can understand your bewilderment. When the ballet is well performed, there is much less of those problems, not that everything is "explained" in capital letters; we are content that maybe two people with tender feelings for one another have gone to a concert and after a while, caring as they do for each other, they begin to share their responses to what they hear with each other (and with us). But there is more to what they have together than that, hence the misunderstanding? Parting, anyway, and reunion, maybe stronger, on a deeper basis, in the last movement. Or maybe this is just me. I think Balanchine would have it that way, I mean, each to his own response, although what we saw at the Harris just lacked enough presence to respond to. (In other words, one of Balanchine's delicate balances, between clarity and ambiguity, was destroyed.) I think that may be why you were, perhaps, feeling "left out," if that's a fair way of describing your state? But I agree with the statements about distance; sometimes I was a bit far, and I felt I was "outside" what was going on - except for those performers whose dancing nevertheless did reach me.

The latter. (I see I could have been more careful with terms.) I believe Dan and Patricia have been doing shows like this for about 18 years.

The Chicago Cultural Center was originally the central public library, and Preston Bradley Hall was originally a large reading room, flanked by smaller ones and reached by a stairway all separated from it only by arcades, and not a performance hall at all. There was no stage and no wings, just a partition at the back, around which performers could appear from another room, maybe a kitchen, and return to it. Ballet Chicago, Dan Duell and Patricia Blair's students, mostly, with Ted Seymour, a former student who teaches at their school, performed on a 25 by 40 foot Marly floor on Masonite panels on carpet on the original terrazzo floor; the audience of grade-school children and their teachers was seated on three sides of this floor, right up to the edge of it. The dancers used every foot of their space and looked a little held-in at times. They had to be, otherwise someone could have been hurt, maybe a member of the audience, even. And in line with this, some of the tempos of the recorded music used for the performances were a little easier than usual. I saw the second performance of the day, at noon. Watching from such close range, I found the dancers a little huge, and while on other occasions in the past that has sometimes diminished the effect of the dancing, I found the simple purity of these dancers'movements stood up well to such scrutiny, and things like the moment in the first movement of Serenade where the front end of the diagonal of girls progressively flows away to the left even more thrilling than from a distant location. The program had opened with some demonstrations and calls by Duell for volunteers from the audience for some movement examples, and then the performances led off with variations 1 through 5 from Divertimento No. 15, and here there were some apparently effortful moments as there often are (though not with NYCB the previous week IIRC, but their dancers are of course years older and supposedly the pick of the country, if not the world). Then there was another call for volunteers to try out some simple floor patterns, with the children arranged with the taller ones toward the back, and when one of these excercises immediately ran into obvious trouble, it was an occasion for the unflappable Duell to remind us all what rehearsals were for, and pretty soon things went obviously right, to applause. (These kids were a well-behaved and responsive audience.) This was an introduction to a performance of the second movement of Concerto Barocco, with its elaborate floor patterns, and this was realized on a more exalted, if somewhat matter of fact, level, owing to the constraints of the circumstances, with smooth lifts by Seymour looking, even at this close range, much easier than they must have been. To see this choreography danced this well to this music in such inauspicious surroundings brought some tears to my eyes. I like to say great art exists outside its time and place, although I didn't exactly have in mind a phenomenon like this. But there it was. The Serenade movement which closed the program looked the best, I thought, scarcely compromised by the circumstances, with the dancers re-costumed, and dancing beautifully to the point of exciting.

When the material on the "Choreography by Balanchine" DVD's was first broadcast on PBS in the late 70's, I was delighted by how well they captured the choreography I was seeing in the New York State Theatre at the time, when I saw about 40 NYCB programs a year. They provided much the same experience at home (only a little attenuated by the soft television image compared to the presence of a performance in the theatre) when the company wasn't performing. (And I could repeat any part at will on my VCR, and get to know a little of the repertory really well that way, as I had done with some of the classical-music repertory with my record player, so that when I did see something on stage again, I saw still more than before by using the video as a point of reference.) So I still consider these particular videos authentic representations, although I would hasten to add that I do not look onstage for imitation of them. I don't want to see an imitation of anything, I would say I want to see something real happen, but it must preserve, if I may say so, the world of the ballet (I know that's a vague way of putting it; as I said before, it's hard to express my idea about this), and because some of these performances so distorted the original relation of movement qualities to music qualities (so important in Balanchine) as in the example I tried to give about the opening of The Four Temperaments that I consider the performances incomplete realizations of them, okay as introductions, maybe. It's because their performances diverge so far from the worlds NYCB showed us in Balanchine's day (and for a few years after his death, remarkably) that I and some others, like Farrell Fan, I think, refer to it as Martins's company. That's the way it looks onstage, regardless of whether it's the same legal entity or whatever. I don't fault the dancers exclusively, although it may read that way, because of how we refer to the performances of each role. Doesn't it go without saying that we are seeing and commenting on a combination I think we can't exactly know of what they're taught and coached to do and what they bring to it themselves in the moment? (P.S. Thank you, Amy! FWIW, I heard at the time that Mr. B. taught Adam Luders the role for the taping in Nashville.)

Amy, which video are you talking about having to see on site? One with Bolender in Phlegmatic? Reading over these posts, I'm reminded again that, because we are all different, we will respond differently to the same thing, and so we will disagree sometimes; and also, that it's only possible to disagree with those who care about the same thing. In this instance, we seem to disagree the most about Wendy Whelan and much less about relative differences among other dancers. When I had a chance to check part of the 1977 Nonesuch video of The Four Temperaments, I found that I had remembered the quiet, even flow of the dancers' first gestures to the quiet, evenly flowing music although I hadn't remembered exactly what the movement was; what I saw again Thursday evening in the Harris Theatre was the jarringly exaggerated gesture I described above, the first of many, many such which made it look to me like this ballet was alien to this company. I've been posting under considerable time restraint, and maybe Treefrog had the better idea, to wait and take more time, because as I see more performances I realize that what I wrote sometimes doesn't match what I think so well as I'd like. On the other hand, having thought about what I saw in order to write about it helps me to see more the next time, especially where it diverges from what I said, but I think I owe it to our community to try again. Watching Program I again last (Friday) night, I was reminded that for most of Serenade the girls' arms were fine; it was the brief scene in the first movement where the girl is on the floor and the corps is ranged around her in three terraced lines where their arms move stiffly and mechanically; I've seen this in other productions, too, and it's one of the things I wonder about, but in this production it looked extreme. And at the end of this movement, the boy taps the girl on the shoulder with a big flourish which looks totally out of place, like the distortions in The Four Temperaments. (Steven Hanna subbed for Nilas Martins both times I was there, but - sorry - I didn't get sorted out who was in which role. Help us out, Treefrog? Anybody?) I've been including the comments of people with much keener perceptions than I have to try to make my posts more valuable to read, and I got another take on Sterling Hyltin's Second Variation in Divertimento No. 15 from a dancer taking up teaching, who liked her head movements in particular and her all-out dancing in general, in contrast to that of most of the others in the cast; this person liked Scheller, too. I certainly agree that Hyltin did not hold back. And watching the last movement of Concerto Barocco Friday evening it seemed to me again that Wendy Whelan just did not have what it took to keep up, and in the second movement, although she was not a lot thinner than Rachel Rutherford, her dancing seemed "thin," as though she lacked physical strength and energy. (I don't know her story, but I hope she is only going through a bad patch, and my heart goes out to her.) The exaggerated details in some ballets, not to mention the brute-strength approach Hubbe brought to his role in Duo Concertant, disturb me as distortions verging on caricature, when I see them some more. Does NYCB claim to be maintaining or preserving the Balanchine repertory? It doesn't look like it onstage. Is there only one way to dance Balanchine, then? Yes, and it was different every night; and you don't dance each ballet the same always. So it's not easy to catch that way in so many words, but there is one, and it was rarely to be seen here this week. So was this run a wash, IMO? Hardly, although it depends some on your point of view. Certainly anyone who hasn't seen these ballets before got pretty good introductions to Divertimento No. 15, In the Night, and Symphony in C, especially with Sylve, and a fairly good one to Serenade. And I'm glad for the enjoyment many of you got, even though I didn't fully share it. (In this conection I remember a typically self-deprecating crack by Woody Allen I heard repeated recently by a pianist I admire when he was asked why he only played certain composers and not more. Allen said, "Sometimes I wish I were some one else," and the pianist went on to say, "I wish I could hear in other music what some people hear in it. But I don't, so I leave it alone.") By the way, Balanchine - some of the same Balanchine, too - another way may be glimpsed in the Chicago Cultural Center next Thursday; here's a link to my post about that: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...id=191347&st=0& We've commented on another thread on some apparent emotional vacuum in Martins's own dancing, still to be seen in some videos, and I remember the idea Robert Gottlieb recently expressed (in the New York Observer for 7th August) that most companies reflect the characteristics of their leaders. And so at the end, for me, the "soul" problem remains. With the exception of some individual dancers noted, generally younger ones too, there's not a lot of joy to be seen in this company's dancing. I don't mean big smiles all around; anyway, you can put on a smile, just as you can say something and mean something else. When I look at MCB and especially the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, I have a sense that those dancers are moving with some pleasure, with some gladness to be there doing that. With brio. That's part of what makes them thrilling to watch. There's joy in their movement, in their bodies. The body doesn't lie.

Treefrog, would you like to talk a little about the mystery in Duo Concertant? Is it all in the last movement, the one mostly in the dark? Is it about why the boy and girl part, and so on? Or about who they are, anyway? Meanwhile, I went again this evening (Thursday, 19th October) and saw Program I from a few rows closer to the stage, which helped everything to be more effective for me, and even allowing for that, I thought Ask la Cour was better in "Phlegmatic" than Albert Evans had been, while Ellen Bar was different - more intense - in "Choleric" than Reichlen had been. But the exaggeration of minor movement still continued. For example, about the second thing that happens is that the First Theme girl brings her right arm up, over and down to her left; Faye Arthurs held it up there for an instant, opening her fingers wide (like the famous "flashing lights" bit in Apollo) and then moving it on rather than sweeping it through the space*. This sort of thing gave the performance a kind of creaky stop-start aspect alien to the ballet, an element of self-parody. In "Divert", Scheller delighted me even more in Third Variation, and by the way, I noticed that NYCB's tempo for the Finale was rather easier, that is to say, slower, than the Suzanne Farrell Ballet's had been last December and July (which was by no means rushed, just quite lively). Jonathan Stafford's silent landings were impressive again for that, but Sterling Hyltin's Second Variation looked just as uncontrolled, and she spoils her line to move her head about unnecessarily, compared to the others**. *Not exactly. See below in Post #17. **Later on I thought that the comparison would be better the other way, in other words, it would have been better if the others had "done more" rather than if Hyltin had done less. She was one of the (few) good standouts.

It's the rep, all right. While I think the greatness of the rep in the first two programs was seldom obscured, neither was it always fully revealed. Briefly: Program I, Thursday, October 17 Serenade is a great ballet, all right, before they even start to move, but when they did, it looked brittle. My companion thought she lacked my eye, because of short experience relative to my years watching Balanchine's company (I say this NYCB is Peter Martins's company); but she's a former graphic designer interested in computer animation as well as natural body movement, and a current amateur musician, and generally cultured: "They raise their arms and then they lower them. They open them to the sides and then they close them. They're mechanical, like robots." Another friend, a young dancer: "They have no soul, but I liked Russian Girl." Maria Kowroski (Dark Angel) was "exquisite" according to a retired dancer, now teaching, and Ashley Bouder (Russian Girl) was "fearless"; and these two were generally liked by all of us. Concerto Barocco was lacking in nuance, and the great second movement had the slowest tempos of my experience. The third movement was satisfying from a listening standpoint, but this is not a concert, it's a ballet, and if someone (Wendy Whelan, I believe) can't keep up, something needs to be adjusted, either cast or tempo. Duo Concertant suffered the most this evening. Nikolaj Hubbe's first solo in the Gigue was unrecognisable to someone who had seen Kay Mazzo and Peter Martins (there's irony) perform it many times, not to mention the "Three by Balanchine" video material, and his second was little better; he was clearer with his partner, Yvonne Borree, who was much better herself, and the last movement went well enough. My young dancer friend had not seen Duo Concertant before, and she complained that watching Hubbe, she couldn't even tell what the role was suppsed to be. Symphony in C was clouded, uneven, but Sofiane Sylve was "wonderful" in the adagio in all accounts, with the fine Charles Askegard; and Tiler Peck led off the fourth movement with an appropriate amount of her characteristic panache. "I can't believe she's sixteen," says my dancer friend. Program II, Wednesday, October 18 Divertimento No. 15 was generally satisfactory, even if the variations sometimes looked a bit labored. Recalling Serenade, I thought, "This is more like it! This one's alive." Notably, corps girl Ana Sophia Scheller, subbing for Borree (Third Variation Girl) acquitted herself very admirably: For example, there is a passage toward the end of her variation where she alternates quick little steps to the right with stopping, sliding her right foot around to the back, and then repeating; Scheller gave all of this with great clarity and a luscious kind of soft sensuality at the same time. Nothing cold and brittle about her! And the following variations built and built, as they should. And then the Andante, in easy tempos, but beautiful. In the Night looked maybe a little underpowered in the first movement, but the rest was very fine, if not so strong as in, excuse me, The Good Old Days; and there were some more instances of exaggerated minor gestures and movement which tends I think slightly to trivialize what's going on; but this ballet, too, was satisfactory and then some, very effective, and very good to see again. (I used to be annoyed that Robbins makes less of Chopin than another Balanchine would have, but I've changed, as well as adjusted to the fact that there's only one Balanchine.) The Four Temperaments we found less satisfactory, afflicted in ways I don't find it easy to describe so far, except that the exaggeration of small detail was more prevalent here, clicking the head to the side and then clicking it back again, etc. But Teresa Reichlen's Choleric, while not as agitated as some I've seen over the years, was energetically, openly presented, without mannerism or clouding complication.

I'm with those who often found Martins a bland dancer - most recently in July when I had another look at his Tzigane video after seeing Natalia Magnicaballi and Momchil Mladenov dance it a few times in Suzanne Farrell's troupe. While Martins had shown the choreography large and clear, Mladenov, not quite so strong a classicist, had brought some welcome heat to it, as had Magnicaballi. And Martins's remark about his Apollo with Farrell reminded me of something Farrell said at a talk one afternoon after we had seen her troupe perform a few times last summer. In response to a question about what it was like to pass on roles like, for example, Tzigane, she said, "I like Natalia Magnicaballi better than me." But this belongs on another thread; for now, I'll just say that there are lots worse things than blandness: Last night, in the Harris Theatre here, Nikolaj Hubbe's first solo in the Gigue movement of Duo Concertant was unrecognisable to me, having seen Dancer Peter Martins show it so many times I can just about see it when I hear the music without the video running, and a young dancer friend I ran into at intermission, who had never seen the ballet before, said that watching Hubbe she had no idea what the role was supposed to be. But more of this on another thread, too, although, not to leave the wrong impression here, the rest was better than that. Meanwhile, in line with Farrell Fan's speculation, watching Hubbe, I couldn't help but wonder what is in AD Peter Martins's mind?

It's Prokofiev's early work I enjoy, things like the "Classical" Symphony and the Violin Concerto No. 1; the later products of his highly developed craftsmanship sound synthetic to me, and so I think it's greatly to Frederick Ashton's credit that he could fit so much attractive choreography to the stream of infernal sounds he had chosen as he did in Cinderella, performances of which I've been looking at the past few days: The 1957 Royal Ballet video, with Margo Fonteyn, Michael Somes, and Ashton himself as the shy stepsister, and this (Saturday October 14) afternoon's performance in the Auditorium Theatre by the Joffrey Ballet, with Suzanne Lopez, Temur Suluashvili, David Gombert (as the shy sister), and Brian McSween (as the bold one). While fitted to the music, the choreography nevertheless, or maybe because of that, seems to me more than a little arbitrary and short-spanned, rather than looking like it develops out of what just went before, as Balanchine's does, so that this Cinderella was not my cup of tea, but the Joffrey's production of it was a heck of a good show all the same, and I had a good time with it. As it happened, Gombert and McSween were so feminine, in the sense that their movement had the quick, large clarity and lightness I associate with women's dancing, compared to Ashton and Kenneth Macmillan in the video, not to mention the perfectly matched timing many of the gags require, so that the gags carried to the back of the large house to the delight of the audience, that I preferred McSween to Macmillan, who doesn't look fully present to me, even though there were some gross novelties today I thought out of keeping with Ashton's decorous mildness, the worst of which was McSween's groping of Gombert's - uh - bustle, at one point. But beyond vividness, there's characterization, and in this Ashton himself is hard to beat. As are Fonteyn and Somes in their roles. In the forum here devoted to discussion of the 1969 video with Sibley and Dowell (and Ashton and Helpmann), which I haven't seen, the question is raised whether the sisters dominate the ballet, over the pair of lovers, to the ballet's detriment. In the video, they finally do not, for me, although at first we do begin to get quite enough of them, thank you; this effectively sets us up for contrast with Fonteyn's strong dance characterisation of Cinderella: She is so lovely and light and pure and fine, she convinces us she is the deserving one, and we want her happiness to happen. But the Joffrey's pair wasn't a match for the Royal's - sorry if it seems unfair even to make the comparison - although Lopez was technically clean most of the time, Fonteyn usually looked like she could do with something more challenging - and it had some disadvantage in distance, versus the camera's close range (too often too close), for this observer in row U. (I picked the performance I could get the best seat for, unaware Gary Chryst and Christian Holder were not dancing the sisters at every performance.) That said, I thought Maia Wilkins as "The Fairy Summer" was quite lovely, beautifully nuanced and shaded, my favorite of the afternoon. (Is this the plum among the Seasons roles, or did she just make it look that way?) Willy Shives was effective in the small role of the Father, and John Gluckman as the Jester could turn nearly as well to the left as to the right, and seemed to prefer to, and had fine, easy elevation in jumps, just right for the role and another audience favorite. Part of the Joffrey's advantage was that, of course, I was seeing a production in full color high-resolution (a.k.a. real life) instead of a fuzzy black-and-white video; and another was that it was - had to be - realized on stage, while the director of the Producer's Showcase video could move his camera and edit, and this freedom was enough rope that he nearly hung himself. On stage for example, Cinderella's frantic midnight exit became a true nightmare scene - have you ever had that one where you must get there and something holds you back, people just keep getting in your way, and then it happens again exactly the same way? Floor patterns! No cuts! We see the whole crowd she and then the Prince must penetrate. Much more effective than on television, with its closeups. And then her costume change - she ducks down behind the corps for a moment and then, in her rags again, runs back up the steps she entered down - or somebody does, maybe there's a substitution; on television, there's a cut to another shot. Too easy! Nothing to wonder at. No suspension of disbelief. Oh. That entrance, by the way, Lopez had made on pointe, down four steps to a landing, then three more steps to the stage; I'd heard of this entrance, and it's pretty impressive and commanding, right off the bat, if I may use the expression. Neither Fonteyn, who has two steps, nor Sibley, in her video, I'm told, enter this way, FWIW. For the record, David Walker is credited with the set and costume designs, which were very fine; direction and supervision are credited to Wendy Ellis Somes, with "additional staging" by Christopher Carr; lighting is credited to Scott Kepley "with Wendy Ellis Somes", so that I don't know who's responsible for one of the more perverse ideas I can remember experiencing in the theatre: Twice a lavender spotlight shines in the eyes of the main-floor audience on the left side of the house; how are we to see the action on stage? So I didn't see the beggar woman's transformation into the Fairy Godmother, for instance, having been transformed into a blind man myself for a moment. Fortunately, these occurrences were brief, not at the most important times, and I hope they were unintentional. But except for that, and some dim light along the front of the stage, this production rolls happily along (in spite of Prokofiev), right to the drizzle of golden glitter on the happy couple as they walk to the back at the end - that says "Happily ever after" as clearly as anything could.

The more I see of this the better I like it. All the dancing is very fine, not least d'Amboise's, but I still think the most of LeClercq's; I began to see Hayden on stage about a dozen years after these performances, and she's better here. A real treat. And then to hear from d'Amboise, in his interview, that they had no place to warm up and danced on slippery cement studio floors! (I'd choose this before the POB Jewels if I had to; more apt dancing and more straight-forward directing.) The social and ballet parodies in Filling Station are still fresh and fun, and the blackout scene is much more effective than the Ballet West staging I saw here years ago. The Stars pas is cut, too, as well as the Finale, but what tempos! I don't think I ever heard it that fast in the theatre! Will any other old-timers comment on that?

Part of the UK critics' problem with this, aside from preconceptions about Balanchine, may be that the production was somewhat attenuated from the Washington premiere, because, I suppose, of the limitations of the smaller stage in the Edinburgh Playhouse compared to the Kennedy Center Opera House; besides what I mentioned already, the dragon was omitted from the Prologue, and, more importantly, the landing and stairs at the right the Don and Sancho enter Act II on was also missing. As the Washington run went on, Mladenov and Ragan began to get chuckles from the audience when they came on like the oddballs they are at court, because they were so incongruous with the courtiers, who had danced for a minute or two first; without this part of the set, their entrance was much less visible and less effective, and so we are less set up to be so appalled by the way the Don is treated toward the end of the act, and so the effectiveness of that was reduced. I think the more that happens to us earlier in the course of this ballet, the more potential for resonance there is toward the end. Joan Acocella's characterisation, in her review in the July 25, 2005 New Yorker of the Washington premiere, though, catches for me most of the extent of the resonance: "Neither [Rodriguez or Ogden] was able to do what Farrell did with the great Act III solo. They made it psychological. ('Get up, Don Quixote! We've got to get out of here!') She made it spiritual. ('Get up, Don Quixote! Life is hell. Heaven is waiting. Get up, so you can die at home.') ... It wasn't Farrell, but it was a lot." Acocella saw Farrell, I didn't, except in the clips in Elusive Muse, but I think I can say Ogden still wasn't Farrell (no surprise), nor should she try to be; that would defeat anybody, and besides, it's not worthy. When I said "throw it all away" I did mean abandon (and more than a hint); but it was among those interior states made visible we could empathise with: psychological. Spiritual is another level. Psychological is still a lot, though, and all three dancers' performances supply part of the answer to the question, Is this worth putting on? Not that I intend the question seriously. (Sometimes I get some "juice" out of an "experimental" approach to art appreciation, like, looking at a Dutch Master, how would the composition be affected if the man in the red cap had been omitted? Or, looking at one of my favorite American "masters," How would this dance "work" all by itself? Or if it preceded what it follows, instead?) And of course I'm not in charge. Some one else is, and she seems to me to have a sure sense of what to do and how to do it, and I continue to marvel at what her dancers show us onstage when I don't take into consideration how little time they all have together, and when I do take that into consideration, I marvel all over again. I suppose that's a large part of why I went to Edinburgh, rather than wait until June. For me, another part of the answer is in Robert Gottlieb's review of the same premiere, where he makes the right comparison: "You need King Lear all the time, but every decade or so you also need Timon of Athens. Otherwise your understanding of a genius like Shakespeare - or Balanchine - is diminished, and so are you." (I take understanding in the large sense, in the sense of comprehension, not in the smaller sense of analysis, which is just a part.)

That's an interesting idea. In response to the question above, I do think both Apllo and Faun are "complete," although there are some small changes. Does everyone realize these are all studio performances? Sometimes the camera angles change the effect of things. The great stage set for Faun is missing. And Leto, Apollo's mother, doesn't put her legs up in a "V" as I remember from the theatre; her labor is differently conveyed. (Maybe this detail also harks back?) Not the whole Stars and Stripes Finale is here, by a long shot. But I think this DVD is a bargain, FWIW.

Alexandra, I think the NBoC has scheduled a run for next June, actually. I'm sorry not to respond sooner, Farrell Fan, but have you noticed how things pile up when you're away, and then sometimes when you come back, the pile falls over on you? The audience sounded appreciative of the dancing, mostly, including at the end of the first ensemble in the Act III scene i pas d'action, which is a "wrong place" for applause, and in all the right places, especially after the Mauresque, but they also laugh in two places (where I can't blame them much, although I don't join in), when the dummy "Don" falls from the windmill arm to the stage, and when a platform rises from the Don's bed to raise the standing Don. I don't remember any details from the old NYCB production, which I saw a few times (with Leland and Bonnefous, I think), so I don't remember how these bits were done then, but I wish there were better ways to do these moments. (There's a Fehl photograph of the raising business where the platform is so small you don't see it under the Don's gown, so that he may then have seemed to rise "in ecstacy, as mystics are by levitation," as Edwin Denby put it in 1965.) I spoke with a few audience members. At the matinee, the nearest to me of four older women there together told me they'd chosen Don Quixote because it was a chance to see "something different"; one evening I sat next to a Canadian woman who said she was there because "I adore the ballet" and she didn't seem disappointed; and one evening, trying to sell a friend's ticket in front of the theatre, I was asked jokingly by one man, "Can't even give it away? Did you read The Scotsman?" I explained that I had seen previous performances and was back for more, but that a friend couldn't make it, and not to be discouraged by the first act. He and his companion brightened and went in. And the reviews weren't all negative; Thom Dibdin's brief review in the Evening News for the 28th of August was upbeat, ending with "This is great to watch," although I'll have to admit someone posted a comment after Dibdin's review that she liked the Mauresque, but that was it. Anyway, on Tuesday evening, at the last performance, we had the opening night's cast again, and I saw the performance from the center of row N in the Stalls, and several things were different from that close range. Mainly, I got much more out of Ogden's performance, especially in the tremendous Variation IV in the Act III scene i pas d'action. Have you ever seen a film where, typically late in it, an actor makes visible, and so, accessible to us, a sequence of interior states, by a sequence of slight changes of expression, for example showing a series of realizations about what has gone before, passing through his mind? Not a lot of action, but as we empathise with the character, a lot of effect. This needs film (as well as a first-rate actor), rather than a theatre stage, for it really to work, because the director can bring us close to the performer, and when we see it, we may get a sense of how the character is carried along and even buffeted by events and the situation, and so, of how vulnerable he is to them. From the closer seat, Ogden's performance of this "Variation" (a misleading title, like an understatement) was like this for me; her classical clarity and reticent purity understating the action but clearly differentiating and articulating the details in the flow, so that we empathise with Dulcinea's internal process and sequence, and the experience is vivid; Magnicaballi's eloquence, by its power, which had carried better in the large theatre, makes the character perhaps seem a little less vulnerable. (I hope I don't make it seem that the two dancers were completely different or even opposite when they weren't.) This is the dance to dwell upon in that it grows out of all that's gone before, and would be diminished in effect if it were performed as an excerpt: We would wonder, What's she on about? (In continual agitation, she stretches her arms imploringly toward the wings, sometimes she looks as though she'd taken it into her head to throw it all away and fall on her ear, only to get on top of it again, and she repeatedly puts her face in her hands.) We need to have absorbed the preceding events for this to resonate. On the other hand, Balanchine inserted a short classic ballet, a Spanish dance, into Act I for a time, apparently in response to complaints about insufficient dancing in that act; Dr. Poesio mentioned that Farrell said she had this ballet and would like to stage it by itself, so maybe we will see it one of these days. Meanwhile, as narrative, Act I moves right along, and this is doubtless her purpose in leaving it out this time. As the Dead Poet's Friend in Act I, Runqiao Du has a very small role, but his response to Don Quixote's threatening him with a dagger - for accusing the Shepherdess Marcela of complicity in the Poet's death - was sharply etched with his usual clarity but on a smaller scale, and I was glad to see this from closer range than from where his vivid high-energy performance in the pas d'action was effective - a little frightening, actually, as the story calls for at that point - every time. About Goh's performances in the pas de deux Mauresque my only complaint is that it was the only thing she did! Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are supposed to make our sense of each the stronger because of contrast with the other, and when I read one of the critics' complaint that Mladenov gave us a sketch of the Don, I thought, an ink-and-wash-on-paper sketch, not all there (like the Don's mental state), silvery-gray makeup and costume (beard, armor, and ashen face) and much of his action on stage, nearly monochrome, compared to Eric Ragan's Sancho, a colorful stock character done as though in oils, and amply costumed in oversize peasant garments in earth tones. So the two were more effective than either could have been separately, but I wondered about something else. One of the things Don Quixote is "about" is the series of visions of Dulcinea or Marcela which appear to the Don. When Marcela the Shepherdess appears, the villagers freeze in everyday poses, some even facing away from the action in center stage: They don't see her; she's a vision only he sees. Or is she? Ragan also reacts, and I wasn't clear whether it was to the vision of Marcela or to the Don's involvement with it. In the next scene, the one with the puppet show, the villagers imitate to each other some of the puppets' movements, so we know they see what we see. Part of the interest for me was the way we were "told" what was public and "real" and what was in the Don's mind only. Watching the last few performances, I was surprised by how I began to like the music! Parts of it, like the pas d'action and the divertissements, but not just that; but by no means all, either. I suppose what happened there is that I associated the values of the dancing with the music at each point, like I did years ago, when Balanchine choreographed Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, a piece I never much cared for on its own. Now if I play a record of that music, I see some of the dancing in memory, but even where I don't I respond to that. Hmmm. And I've also been struck by the quotations from Le Baiser de la Fee and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the choreography at the end of Act II. I don't know what to make of it, that is, whether we're to recognise it or not. I assume we're not, but I do anyway. This was only my third Atlantic crossing. May I say I had a fine time in Edinburgh? The changing sky sometimes showering the city, making brighter and deeper the colors of the huge rock with the castle on top dominating the scene, not to mention keeping the greenery lush. And the Scots themselves: All the ones I met were full of smart energy and good spirits. Goodbye, Scotland! It was lovely, really.