Jack Reed

Thanks for your "few quick comments", kfw! I read them with a smile and a tear. It read like you saw My Gang all right, maybe except for your remarks about Kronenberg, but I wasn't there (*sniff*). (Well, at 68, I don't have the bones of a real groupie.) I think you got a real treat seeing Seay and Shimizu in Sonatine, or in anything, for that matter. carbro, so far from finding just two dancers for Sonatine, I saw MCB's second and third casts in that when they premiered it a year or two ago, and much of the time there was just a little lump in my throat, partly because except for a couple of blank spots it looked more like the Golden Age (when I was watching NYCB under Balanchine's supervision) than anything I had seen in years, and also because it is, as kfw says, a quiet stunner. Leave it to the old magician! It doesn't have to hit you in the eye or on the chin to take your breath away! Anyway, I'm not surprised by the idea that they have four or more casts for it. (It would be interesting to know whether Verdy and Bonnefous came back this time to coach it. Maybe leibling can tell us. But Seay, especially, can take a role that's been handed down a few times and make it look like it was made on her last week.) I assume the pianist was the very able company pianist, Francisco Renno. Following Sonatine with "Tchai Pas" looks like good programming, too, and I'm sure Catoya and Penteado ate it up. *sigh* I wish I'd been there. As for Kronenberg, kfw, you read as though she were not entirely within her role but maybe mocking it, not taking it entirely seriously. Was that it? I've never seen her or anyone at MCB do that, and I'm surprised. Part of her knowingness and power in realizing a role is to work entirely from within it. (Another memory of Balanchine's company is that there were several women in it who were prone to the giggles, especially if anything went wrong, but sometimes for no reason we had noticed. Maybe something had just happened that she carried on stage with her.) But presence, yes, MCB has that. They're not just doing a job, oh, no! And they do deserve more applause! Yes, at least in Fort Lauderdale, also, curtain calls are rare.

I don't like dance photography much, because for me the through-line is very important in dance, and still photography eliminates this entirely when it shows us a bit of the world as though frozen in a lightning-flash, as it usually does; in other words it uses dance as material for something else, some striking images. Sometimes I find these are more or less rewarding in themselves, but they're not pictures of dance anymore, not for me. For example, there are a lot of very handsome images on Marc Haegeman's generous website, but I don't see much dance in many of them (sure, maybe it's me), even in some of the ones in the "Color and Motion" gallery there, where it looks like he's made some longer exposures, so that the dancers' images are blurry because they were moving. This can also be another kind of strangely striking and beautiful image, but dance doesn't look like that to me either. There was a time though when I saw photographs by Paul Kolnik which did show dancing to me: They were performance photographs, not posed, and they looked, superficially, like his timing was just a little "off," like he had made the exposure when a dancer was just coming into or just going out of a pose, and sometimes there was just the slightest blur due to motion, and I felt I was seeing dancing when I was looking at a still image! When I met him, I blurted out what I thought of his miraculous pictures, including my description of their looking like his timing was a tiny bit "off," and I don't think I ever saw any more like that. (There aren't any up on his website, either.) I've thought ever since that he took my remarks the wrong way and got real careful about his timing! *! *! *! *! (That's the sound of me banging my head against the wall.) But of course there are moments when dancers are motionless in the same characteristic ways they move. I didn't post in the discussion of the recent Costas book, mainly because of my aversion to this subject (but also because of the frequently garish colors and somewhat repetitious poses remarked on there by some others), but I do remember from perusing a library copy of the book a small photo Costas had taken of Patricia McBride, in Who Cares?. She's standing on one point, with one arm straight up and her index finger pointing forward, and her eyebrows are raised. Having seen (and loved to have seen) her dancing, this still image evoked for me the sparkling quality her dancing often had in a way no one else's had. Sometimes you see miracles, not just on stage, but even on paper.

Almost exactly coinciding with my years of seeing Balanchine's company intensively, 1973-1986, I believe that the programs were arranged by Robert Gottlieb, although there have been some who don't find this story credible. (I think he was only too happy to leave to others work they could do to his satisfaction.) I would guess that Mr. B. looked over the results of Gottlieb's work, and might have made some changes, and of course circumstances forced changes - I well remember arriving in New York to find five performances in a row of Divertimento No. 15 cancelled, the remainder of the weekend being only moderately sensational in their absence, as we reflected on with laughter at our good fortune to be alive in that place and time - but I wasn't privy to the decision-making, or -makers, myself. As to theme marketing, why, no, except maybe for the Stravinsky, Ravel, and Tchaikovsky Festivals. Only since NYCB has become Martins's company has there been much of that - "All Balanchine" evenings, and the like. (Imagine that, "Balanchine's company" presenting an all-Balanchine program? I think that's another demonstration of the emperor's nakedness, but that's another story, for another thread.) I loath theme programs myself, wherever I find them, for example in concert and recital schedules as well as ballet evenings - they show a brutish, mechanical insensitivity to what goes well with what. What kind of a Chinese restaurant makes you choose one from Column A, one from Column B, and so on? And who eats in a place like that? I hestitate to use the metaphor of the bouquet, because I prefer my ballet-flowers uncut and living, rather than arranged in a still-life, but even there there may be a clue to an answer to the question: Yes, the triple-bill is dead artistically in the hands of those who can't arrange one attractively. Yes, there is the ignorant, fearful public to contend with. Educating them to find their own satisfactions is the job of the press, isn't it? *sigh* No wonder they're ignorant and fearful...

Years ago, between 1973 and 1986, when I saw Balanchine's company regularly, Dances at a Gathering bothered me. Another "regular" in the audience tried to help me by offering that while Balanchine's ballets were about the music, "Jerry's" were about the dancers. I was reminded of this idea recently when, looking for something else, I ran across a review by Joan Acocella in which she said that Balanchine's dancers come out and dance, and Robbins's dancers come out and have feelings and then they dance the feelings. Okay, but it was the way the two choreographers hear their music, or don't hear it, that was bothering me, too. This time, Dances bothered me a lot less. People change over the years, sometimes, and a lot that used to bother me doesn't bother me so much any more. Still, there were bits I didn't like which I remembered from the old days. Early on, for example, a boy lifts a girl horizontally, and in a vertical "split," she extends one leg straight up and the other down, pauses in this unusual pose, and then bends her knees to bring her toes together. Much of the detail in Dances still doesn't answer very well to the music for me, but this moment looks like the choreographer didn't know what to do with her once she was up there like that and made something that pokes us in the eye: Looka that, will ya! And a recurring "pinup" pose for the boys (one hand behind his head, the other on his hip) seems arbitrary too, rather than music-derived, although I never noticed anywhere that Robbins's sense of rhythm ever deserted him. And in the Apricot - Brick duet, the boy steps away from the girl and does a cartwheel. These things, and things like them, seemed to me gratuitous, and they still do. So I used to wonder why Balanchine wanted Robbins working for his company, considering their different styles, especially their different responses to music. This time I managed to look up some material in "Repertory in Review" and "Balanchine's Complete Stories of the Great Ballets" in preparation for seeing the program, and I found the same anecdote about Dances in both places: Robbins had been working on this for some time, and had made a lot of what went into the final ballet, and invited Balanchine to look. Afterward, he turned to Balanchine and ventured, "It's a little long, isn't it?" "More!" said Balanchine, "Make more!" So, why? Why was the great lover of the ephemeral so excited by what he saw? I think it has to do with a related quality of Dances, which is made clearer by its contrast on this program with what some call, with justification, the greatest classical ballet ever made, here called Ballet Imperial, although (as Dale describes in the preceding post in connection with other companies) it's really the later version , which Balanchine called Tchaikovsly Piano Conerto No. 2, without the pantomime, or the Nevsky Prospect on the backdrop, which omissions maybe make it just that much more classical, and with chiffon dresses instead of tutus: Dances is a somewhat private ballet, it's about the feelings of these people, who (Acocella again, and brilliantly, I think) may even seem of a certain age; in Balanchine's ballets (she says) we see gods, who have no age. (Don't think Apollo.) I think the classic, enduring and universal, available anytime, anywhere, to anyone (if they will pay attention), is therefore out in the open, very public. For example, there's a dance where three women come in across the back, one clearly being consoled by the other two. We might wonder what her problem is. Soon, this one dances across the stage with a boy who enters from the right but abandons her at the left wing. A flashback? Another unsatisfying episode of the kind she's prone to? Then she is consoled again by her two sisters, and they move on. In another example, the Girl in Green comes on dancing happily by herself, has three encounters with boys who pay her some attention but (or and) disappear, when she continues happily by herself. "Like a fish without a bicycle"? What's it all about? When you see the ballet several times, you can be pretty sure there are no unambiguous signs which answer that question definitely, just as there often are none in Balanchine's ballets, only suggestions of situations or elements of a story but no more, and I think this had a lot to do with why Mr. B. liked it; it certainly has a lot to do with why I like Dances more now, but it's taken time for me to develop this taste for, and delight in, the ephemeral, the story that's not there, or, rather, the not-story that is there. Another way I suppose I've changed is that I've become more interested in dancers dancing, somewhat as Robbins was, which is not to say less interested in their dance - I think I get more of both now, my dance-watching is... larger. These dancers in particular, MCB's dancers. What grew on me over the weekend as I watched the four performances was these dancers doing these dances, right here, right now, and that's the "story" - all the story there is - of Dances at a Gathering, which it's taken me a long time to get, but with the help of this superb company, I got it, and so I am grateful to them. I didn't always love Dances, but I nearly always loved these dancers in it. And some were particularly outstanding: On Friday and Saturday evenings, Jennifer Kronenberg (In Mauve), as she so often does, just knew what this role is. I don't mean there was any attitude about her, like over-confidence; she was merely at her ease at home in it. Kenta Shimizu (In Green) was her able partner. On the afternoons, though, these roles were taken over by Haiyan Wu and Mikhail Ilyin, who were a large, classically clear, dancing unit, and watching them, the idea came to me of a single role for two bodies. I'm not sure which pair I liked better, and it was another occasion when I was glad to have both. (MCB is like that.) Michelle Merrell as the Girl in Green showed us her lively dances appeallingly, flowing and open, and she made me happy, but when Deanna Seay took over the role at the matinee performances they were so uttterly organic. Each and every slightest detail sprang from a center within her (like a plant springs from a seed), a place which heard her music, so that it all was coordinated and infused with the same energy, making it all of a piece, yet everything seemed made freshly for us right now, like improvisation (except without any of the hesitancy of improvisation) and with both the inevitability and unpredictability of natural growth; "as fresh and glistening as creation itself." (Carol Pardo, writing about a different role in the Winter 2006 Dance View, says Seay occupies a phrase; I'd say she inhabits it.) Isn't the chance of having this kind of experience why we go to the ballet? In her second solo - the one where three boys pass by in succession, but none get much involved - Seay's dancing added, for me, a whiff of high tragedy, that such a wonderful dancer can't get herself a partner! But, more than merely in control of the situation, Seay is true to the part, and, far from becoming a tragic figure, she adapts to her lot, and goes out happily enough, as she came in. Renato Penteado (In Brown) enlarged the ground-touching business that happens a couple of times in this ballet - Robbins went on record after the premiere that this was about his return to NYCB territory, and one evening Villella, who had the first variation made on him, quoted Robbins as saying it's "about how this is a place you've been before, a place you have memories of" - with his superb classic clarity and neatness; and in their duet, Carlos Guerra (In Purple) looked a bit of a "heavy" next to him, as most anyone would (a little like Gene Kelly next to Fred Astaire), and I enjoyed the contrast; it made this dance even more flavorful. And also in the evening performances, Jeremy Cox (In Brick) didn't add character touches to the last mazurka, he brought them forth from within the part. Giving me such mixed feelings beforehand, Dances at a Gathering wasn't what drew me back to Florida this time; I wanted - I needed - to see Ballet Imperial again, after seeing it last season. (In a better world, there would be videos of many of MCB's performances available, unsatisfactory as videos of ballet are.) I thought I might even get one more performance from Mary Carmen Catoya and Renato Penteado. Well, I got three! Wow! Even after last season, it was wow all over again! And on Saturday evening the fourth performance was led by Tricia Albertson, superbly partnered by Mikhail Ilyin; they gave a distinguished performance of Imperial which did nothing to obscure or diminish its greatness, but IMO Albertson's performance suffered some by contrast with the brilliant ones by Catoya. Which reminds me: Around the time I saw Program II there, a friend told me a comment made by a professional critic he had invited to watch some performances of MCB. The critic said, "I don't understand why it isn't more widely known that this is the best ballet company in America."

liebs,I'm in general agreement with what you had to say (about the March 11 Saturday evening performance, I believe) - one of my occasional disappointments at MCB are slow tempos. (I don't have the current NYCB point of comparison, although I've agonized through some slow tempos there, too, since the mid 80's.) In particular, your remarks about the second movement of Symphony in C. Not to be unkind, but for the record it was Haiyan Wu, a fairly new dancer I've been finding more interesting lately as she develops in diverse roles, but although I think she was technically quite secure in C there were better ones on view that weekend by Kronenberg (with Guerra) and especially by Seay (with Nikitine), IMO. As to Funny Papers, ballet dancers don't generally do Taylor nearly as well as Taylor's dancers do for me either, they're too light weight and make it look watery and - comparatively - ineffective, to my eyes. That said, I thought Tricia Albertson and Mikhail Nikitine brought plastic continuity - tensile strength and flow - to the first number, "Alley Oop," making it even more effective than Charlene Cohen and Didier Bramaz had on Friday night (and would again Sunday afternoon). On the other hand, Jeremy Cox, who had given a wonderful performance of the title role in Prodigal Son, in "Popeye" complicated the part, I thought, putting me in mind of what someone said about a performance conducted by Leonard Bernstein: "He gives it everything he's got, and that's too much." This part is really a simple character, a comic strip character at that, and Luis Serrano's simple, direct realization of it seemed to me more successful. bart, you're going to find out that the music, or rather the lyrics, is where much of the fun is to be had in this diversion. Yes, the Balanchines supply the real substance of the program. I'd still say Villella's programming things like this is defensible for the sake of variety, on the grounds that Taylor's company doesn't get to Miami; and he himself, in one of his pre-performance talks, said, IIRC, that Taylor and Tharp help to make MCB a company "without an accent" even though the dancers come from many places. I don't follow his logic here, but most of the time I like his results. A lot. liebs, isn't MCB touring in your general vicinity this Spring? I'd like to read more of what you have to say about them...

I wish we could as easily straighten out what seems to me unfortunate about a picture in the second article about MCB in Dance View, the interview with Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg. The first picture is a good one of her performing on the speak-easy stage in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, the second, which crops her image across the hips, is a fine portrait of her in costume (for Western Symphony), but the third, cropped through her thighs yet with lots of blank space over her head, doesn't convey very well, to the extent a still photograph can, her powerful performance as The Siren in Prodigal. But I'm glad to have the interview. There was a time when I didn't want to know much about a dancer, fearing that that personal knowledge would distract me from their performances when I saw them (I'm still impatient with people rifling the page of their programs during performances to learn the dancers' names, because I think the main thing is to see as much as you can of what they do as the ballet unfolds and put names to the roles later, if you haven't read the program beforehand), but over the years I've learned not to worry so much especially in the case of dancers like Kronenberg who have such strong effect, sometimes even standing still, that that effect crowds other thoughts right out of my mind.

koskoff, did you miss Post #6, on the previous page?

I don't dispute the truth of Farrell's remark - of course, the meaning and consequent truth of any statement depends on context, and hers was a large class of youngsters, whom I gather she wanted to nudge in the right direction - but it's been my pleasant observation that, while many people use their hands effectively to augment their conversation, dancers generally have more articulate feet than anyone's hands I can recall. That's why I choose my seating distance, when I can, to be able to see a dancer's figure entirely. (Hmm. I'm just imagining now the sort of talker I just refered to using hands strapped into mitts, with wood blocks in the ends, no less! It puts me the more in awe of what dancers do: But the gesticulators generally have no line to speak of. There's much of the difference...)

Thanks, bart, I'm off to the magazine shop! And thanks for the correction, Justdoit. I don't think I'd fail to recognise Cohen straight on, but I obviously haven't learned her profile. Speaking of dancers' faces straight on, I wonder if you dance yourself? I have a theory that we have all been learning to "read" people's faces since we could focus our eyes but dancers have learned in addition to see dancing so much better than mere mortals like myself that people like me are more distracted by expressions far from neutral. At any rate, I've sometimes thought a dancer actually undermines her effect on me when she makes too much with the face, rather than giving me more as she may think. Seay is one of the ones who are faultless in this regard though, in my book, FWIW.

Bart, what you say at the end of your first post makes it look like the Kent-Villella discussion was in the Winter 2006 issue of Dance View but it's not in mine, even though the page numbers run consecutively (i.e., nothing appears to have been omitted). This item must be pretty tasty. Would you tell us where you saw it, please? I hugely enjoyed Pardo's review - or, actually, enjoyed what she brought back of what I saw of Programs I and II, which says a lot about her powers of evocation, which sometimes need very few words: "Seay occupies a phrase fully and musically." She's writing about Seay in Source, but her phrase applies more widely, I think. Yes, yes, she does, she does! And when I read something liike that, I put down the magazine until all the fragmentary flash-backs have subsided, and I can read on without being deprived of them. So, unlike Pardo, I'm never surprised when I see Deay's name on the cast sheet, but I certainly do perk up. On the other hand, some gremlin saw fit to repeat the caption for the picture on p. 19 under the one on p. 21, which is not of Catoya and Penteado in La Source, obviously, but of Catoya - and who else? - in The Quick-Step. Can we fill in the names of the other four dancers clearly seen here?

Shakespeare Festival. So. What will it be? Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream? Or Bejart's Romeo and Juliet, which she had previously announced for last Fall. I'm not a betting man, but I'd bet on the latter. But this is OT.

I just wanted to confirm, if that were needed, something carbro said in Post #14 about digital tempo changes without pitch changes: When I was in Fort Lauderdale for Program IV, I had a chance to ask MCB's sound engineer about that, and he grinned and said, "I've been doing that for fifteen years!" I was too shocked to ask him about La Source specifically, although I may remember to in the future. So, now I'm curious, whose tempos were those in La Source? Verdy's, I suppose, but from the beginning or when she saw how it looked on this dancer or that?

Thanks for posting this, bart. The USPS hasn't delivered my season brochure yet, and considering what it did with my Program III tickets, which probably doesn't bear description here, I wonder if I can hope to see it before next season starts! But: four performances in Miami? It's been three at the Jackie Gleason Theatre in Miami Beach for so long, this is a very good sign and a welcome development! As to posting casts, it's another burden for a website they're not spending heavily on keeping current as you note, and it could give rise to disappointment and complaint when, as happens in ballet-land, the promised cast doesn't appear. It's a company with such depth, as you've remarked yourself! Potluck chez Villella is usually pretty scrumptous, don't you think?

"See for yourself!" *sigh* If I ever have occasion to visit New York again, yeah. bart, some of us talked about MCB's Giselle a few years ago in this forum. Maybe that was before your time in south Florida. Anyway, here's the link (posts #4 and 5 talk about Catoya in the title role, which you asked about, and the rest adds context to that discussion, and more): http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=16348

That's the spirit, folks, keep it up! Those who've been there, what's there? Where did you stay? How did you get there? How did you get around? Where did you eat? Sure, there are lots of links from the Jacob's Pillow page, but "user reviews" are most welcome! For example, the weather in Saratoga when I was there about the same time of year in the 60's was quite muggy by day and verged on the chilly by midnight, when a breeze always came up. But that was then, a long time ago.

By the way, flipsy, please tell us more about that video of La Source. Where can it be seen? Only at some place like the Dance Collection? Or maybe it's in something that has or had commercial circulation?

flipsy! Thank you, thank you for that wonderful and concise report! What evocative language! You brought so much of the weekend back! For one example, "cross-wired bursts of combustion"! Ever seen amateur auto mechanics try to straighten out mixed-up spark-plug wiring? If the motor runs at all, it's like having a nervous breakdown! What potent metaphors! But the best remark on Tharp came from the master of what to leave out: "Twyla makes everyone look like her; I make everyone look like themselves." Dancing his choreography is not a thankless task. You become yourself.

Here's my last "diary" entry on the weekend. I've written these independently, without as much opportunity as I'd like to have had to make them comments on yours, bart, because of problems with my ISP while I was in south Florida, and now that I'm back home and things are working better (same ISP; passage of time? different server? argh, it's the digital age, ya love and ya hate it!) and I can read through what you've written, I've found it interesting, as I often do, that we say much the same things, sometimes in slightly different language, as different people will: Sunday, 5th February 2006: The first surprise on this program made me happy and sad, because Deanna Seay and Kenta Shimizu led La Source, which made me happy, but because Jennifer Kronenberg, originally cast, was ill, I was saddened, of course, but at least she's not injured, I'm told, and very probably will be back soon. (Not soon enough for this fan, but, nevertheless... back.) As I've said, I have problems with the slow tempos this ballet is being performed in, and it looked to me as though Catoya wouldn't mind faster tempos, but Seay had no problems! I think she could hold anything together, even in slower tempos than these, although neither Delibes nor Balanchine deserve that. Seay's way with whatever she dances suited this pretty well; she made this luminously luxurious, creamy, flowing along without effort. Kenta Shimizu was her fine partner, and Charlene Cohen was the very nice demi. (Does "nice" seem faint praise? I consider this pink ballet a "nice" ballet, delicate, perfumed and restrained in virtuosity, to choose to repeat some of Villella's apt words for it in his pre-performance remarks, and Cohen's "nice" dancing was just right for it.) Push Comes to Shove was performed by Cox, Wu, and Spiridonakos again, and I found it more fascinating than before. Among other things, Cox seems to be host or m.c. at times. With this and her other roles just this weekend, Wu is showing a wide range, giving strong, effective performances of roles as diverse as this one and La Source. And Carlos Guerra, Spiridonakos's partner in the third movemement, has his customary nobility coming and going in accordance with the zany changes in this choreography. So I was very glad to see this again, and I regret it'll probably be some time before I get another chance at it. I continue to think that the Sherzo of Western Symphony is weak and needs a little help, and this afternoon it got that and more from Catoya and Mikhail Ilyin. Wow! The way she tosses this off! (She even makes the point: Dancing in an easy-looking sequence downstage, she then does something more with an inflection and a look back over her shoulder at her watching partner as though to say, "Huh? That was nothin'!" This is not heavy acting, but I think she has it in her, bart, and I seem to recall a Giselle in which she was differently effective, more bouyant, than, say, Seay, who felt more deeply, IIRC.) Does she have as much fun doing it as I had watching it? I hope so. I think so! And Ilyin was excellent. So this was an exceptional Western right there, and Katia Carranza and Luis Serrano contributed a fine, clear Adagio, besides. Kristen Kramer's appearance in the corps of the Scherzo reminds me to correct what I said about her above. I meant that that was her final solo appearance; she did a few more corps roles after that.

(from Fort Lauderdale, Florida) Thanks for that, Helene. So it's not exactly just coincidence at work here. Now here's my latest installment, and then I'm on the run to today's matinee: Saturday, 4th February 2006, Matinee and Evening The event of the afternoon for me was Push Comes to Shove with Jeremy Cox, Andrea Spiridonakos in the tall-girl role originated, I think by Martine van Hamel, and Haiyan Wu, not short, but in the short-girl role. In contrat to Luis Serrrano's fine etching of detail, Cox, losing nothing of detail - actually, making it more visible through execution less clipped, extended the role by strong chracterisation from first to last; Serrano had given a superb but subdued performance of the role, while Cox, in the Baryshnikov role gave us, not Baryshnikov being Baryshnikov, hardly that, only Baryshnikov is Baryshnikov, but Cox being Cox in Push: He was just there, without reference to anything else, sometimes, just for example, turning his head to register surprise at something someone else did, while Serrano had shown the look, but Cox was surprised. And Andrea Spiridonakos was the perfect match, lovely and utterly at ease in her part and, at some moments, out of her part, and then back in it again; Push is like that. Jennifer Kronenberg had made more of these "shifts," more like I remember van Hamel (from the video, which I saw more often than on stage), and I think Spiridonakos's way was a little more effective for letting us discover what was going on, although for me, these "discoveries" were the more vivid for having seen Kronenberg in the previous performance. In other words, she had contributed to my getting more from Spiridonakos's version. Wu was also superb, especially when working with Cox, as for example when he wraps his arms around her from behind and shakes her up. Yes, indeed, Push Comes to Shove is like that - it shakes us all up and puts us down somewhere else! What fun it was! In the evening, Push had the special benefit of Mary Carmen Catoya's unfailingly crystal-clear dancing in the "short" part, and Michelle Merrell came into the "tall" part, not articulating the changes in it so clearly as Spiridonakos and Kronenberg had, along with Serrano. In the afternoon, La Source was distinguished by Kristen Kramer's excellent realiztion of the demi role, after which she did a double-take as Edward Villella brought her a bouquet. Sad to report, this turned out to be Kramer's retirement preformance with MCB, after only five years! Patricia Delgado was very good in the lead, although hardly Catoya's equal, and presenting what I now take to be the family smile, with Kenta Shimizu, whose superbly crisp dancing did not quite match Penteado's easy but clear flow. In the evening, this ballet got a really lovely performance of the lead from Haiyan Wu, again, not matching Catoya, but can anybody? And Mikhail Ilyin gave a performance of the sole male part with, for my money, the best "flavor" so far. Western Symphony got a really excellent perfomance of the Allegro first movement from Katia Caranza, modest, unassuming, clear, nailing everything; all you hadto do was take it in as she showed it to you. And Penteado was her perfect match. In the evening, she took on the Adagio, and was even better. (Well, it is, and so all she has to do is do it well, and she did.) And finally, in the evening, Deanna Seay! I thought I wsn't going to see her, although I hadn't heard any bad news. And then there she was, inhabiting her character in the first movemnt Allegro, giving it life we don't always see. (We had seen some characterisation with Kronenberg on Friday, actually.) And the concluding Rondo had Luis Serrano getting the details right and so, giving the jokes point.

(from Fort Lauderdale, Florida) Friday evening, 3rd February 2006, at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale: Friday's performance featured Mary Carmen Catoya leading a beatifully danced La Source, with principal coaching by Violette Verdy, according to the program, which seemed to me to cry out for better tempos. It cried out because of the high level of excellence of the performance otherwise: when something is really good generally, some aspect not on that level sticks out the more, and there was nothing else amiss. (Well, maybe Jeannette Delgado in the demi role was a tad "smiley" to my taste, but her dancing was so fine she had every reason to show pride in it, nor would I deny her the joy she evidently takes in performing.) The one man among the ten women in pink, Renato Penteado danced with classical purity and clarity which was, along with the others, just right for this ballet, and evidently he gave Catoya everything she needed. When such a light ballet as this is slowed down, it becomes something of a demonstration and by that amount less of a realization. The fine detail needs more to flicker delicately before our eyes, hardly there before it is gone. Only toward the end of Catoya's second variation, where she has a little circle, did the tempo of the (recorded) music seem to me sufficiently fast; and it was good again in the last movement, once the "Naila" waltz got underway after the slow introduction. Probably there are not a lot of recordings of this music available, so that this may have been the reason. I have not the slightest doubt, based on my happy experience watching Catoya's dancing in recent years, that she can perform it in faster tempos; not only that, I even suspect she too would like such tempos, because there were a couple of places where she slightly anticipated the music. I fervently hope that when the promised "live" orchestra is heard again in the next few seasons, this piece will be performed in more lively tempos, because it - and the dancers, all of whom performed it so well, greatly to their credit and Verdy's - deserves it. I'm sorry I didn't get to see it in Naples, where I think the Naples Philharmonic plays for the company. La Source is "a hard act to follow," and it was followed by a different kind of fun, Twyla Tharp's witty Push Comes to Shove, staged by Elaine Pardo of the original 1976 cast. I thought this was perhaps less completely realized (or demonstrated!), but I enjoyed it, too; Jennifer Kronenberg in particular in the principal trio seemed at home in the "un-organic" choreography ("un-organic" in that things do not always seem to follow naturally from what has gone before, or even from the music, for that matter; indeed, some of it is danced in silence) remarkably much of the time, and although she is not unusually tall, she is by virtue - and I do mean virtue - of her long limbs, and the way she moves - good line - very easy to see on stage, a little easier than Luis Serrano in the Baryshnikov role, for that matter, whose very quickness in movement seemed to me to contribute to subduing his role's effect. But Baryshnikov in this role was a very hard act to follow. Last came the four-movement version of Western Symphony, which is, of course, not danced to a symphony at all, but to a suite of arrangements of traditional "Western" tunes. The third or scherzo movement is the weakest of the four, and I see again why Balanchine omitted it after a time. I think he was right to do so, and at the same time I don't much mind Villella's putting it back, for the simple selfish reason that I enjoy watching his dancers, and this way I get to see a few more of them! And I believe they are glad to get some more pieces of the action, even if sometimes they are lesser pieces. Kronenberg appeared here again, apparently having a great time in a role different from Push Comes to Shove, the first, allegro, movement. Haiyan Wu effectively parodied the changing styles of the various quotes from repertory in the Adagio second movement, especially in matters like her abrupt deadpan change from rippling, extended-back "Swan Lake" port de bra back to the crossed-in-front "Giselle" style she had entered with, as she bouree'd off. It upsets me some that in November the Suzanne Farrell Ballet would perform La Source with an orchestra in the pit playing the music in right tempos but with dancers not generally of the caliber of MCB's and then this month we see such fine dancing needing only the better tempos we heard in the Kennedy Center to realize the ballet more fully. I'd like to have the best of both worlds, of course. Couldn't somebody have loaned someone a tape of the Kennedy Center's orchestra? I did learn that MCB began rehearsals of Source in August; maybe that was too early for my little (retrospective) dream to have become reality, even if there were no other obstacles. Another oddity of recent seasons: Last season MCB presented superb performances of La Valse, with Deanna Seay unforgettable in the "Girl in White" role, and last fall the Farrell company gave theirs. Is there something about keeping up with the Joneses or "I'll show you" or "There's a good idea" among ballet ADs? Or is it just coincidence that the same ballets turn up at nearly the same time? With a repertory as large as Balanchine's to draw on? I'm not exactly complaining, but I certainly am curious.

I have little doubt that Verdy's presence was Balanchine's inspiration. I saw several performances of Source by V. & V. in my NYCB days, although I never saw Prinz in it The use of two composers for the original ballet certainly was unusual, and I remember reading somewhere that it was a kind of debut for Delibes, whose music was liked so well he later got to write whole ballets all by himself, like Coppelia and Sylvia. (It's easy for us to laugh today at the odd combination of Delibes's inspiringly lilting and piquant music with Minkus's conventionally serviceable but plodding, oom-pah-pah music in the same ballet back then. Why couldn't the powers-that-be or that-were in those days tell the difference and get it right the first time?)

I plan to see this program in Ft. Lauderdale. Meanwhile, you've all got me salivating with anticipation. Paul, I saw Jewels in south Florida in February 2000, when the program book carried these credits for "Emeralds": "Originally staged for Miami City Ballet by Karin von Aroldingen." and "Restaged by Eve Lawson." Jewels was so good the first weekend in Miami Beach I went back the last weekend and saw it again near Ft. Lauderdale. By then, I wrote in my notes that Mary Carmen Catoya was "fine & light," "[the] best [one] in this [Verdy's] role, understands [the] plot in [the first movement]" and Deanna Seay, in the Paul role, was "superb," "makes us see everything, to great effect." I have great regard for Verdy's staging; she and Jean-Pierre Bonnefous staged a Sonatine for MCB that was, except for a couple of blank spots, the real thing, as done by all three casts. But this thread is about Source, Push, and Western! Jordan Levin's fine review in the Miami Herald, "A Splendid Romp, Brimming with Fun," is mostly about Push Comes to Shove, but she touches on La Source for a paragraph, too, and I think her title applies to the whole program. Here's a link: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/13642909.htm Consider, for contrast, that their next program consists of Dances at a Gathering and Ballet Imperial. bart, I'd be glad to see an outline of MCB's Source, which went through some changes in its first year. B. H. Haggin's account of them, reprinted from his reviews in the quarterly Hudson Review in the book Ballet Chronicle, is consistent with Nancy Reynolds's in Repertory in Review. but differently detailed: "Spring 1969... The new La Source pas de deux was unusual in structure: instead of the customary sequence of initial supported adagio, brilliant solo for each dancer, and brilliant coda for the two, it offered first solos for [John] Prinz and Verdy, then their supported adagio, again a solo by each, and then a final waltz by the two. Even with a couple of brief musical interludes (which broke continuity) the sequence was so taxing that at the third performance Balanchine made a cut in the final waltz... "Summer 1969... [W]hen the piece was given again a few weeks later it was combined with three numbers from the earlier Pas de deux and Divertissement danced by Schorer and a group of girls. [eight: Reynolds] One of these gave Verdy and Prinz a rest before their second solos and waltz; but this wasn't enough to enable them to do the entire waltz and then the finale of the earlier ballet; and so the waltz still had the damaging cut. "1970 footnote: Balanchine finally omitted the entire waltz." With that kind of putting together and taking out going on, no wonder this little ballet "just doesn't feel whole," carbro! (Reynolds quotes Verdy herself about the ensembles: "These parts are like French operetta, very light, frolicky, a little bit of a take-off on French dancing; the pas de deux is more serious, refined, and tender.") The answer to that is a cast which makes you not notice such things by keeping you occupied on another plane, like V & V, right, Helene? Helene, dear, please say little more about that film (which I didn't know existed! Holy smokes!), like how we might also see it! In November, Farrell's troupe presented an eight-movement La Source: Entree (as I call it in my notes, like the beginning of a pas de deux) or Adagio; Male Variation I; Female Variation I; Ensemble for demi-soloist and corps; Adagio II; Male Variation II, Female Variation II; Ensemble (Company; to the well-known "Naila" Waltz). I expect this is what MCB is doing. Haggin wrote about La Source again in the January 1984 issue of The Yale Review, where his music criticism appeared, in the course of marking Balanchine's death a few months before: "One such session... is a rehearsal of La Source, which he made to teach John Prinz skill and style in partnering a ballerina in a classical pas de deux. When Prinz was to turn Verdy on point, Balanchine said, 'Take her hand - only with the fingers - and show her off.' When Prinz was turning her Balanchine said, 'You work too hard at it,' and taking her hand, showed how easy it was to turn her as he walked around her. Discovering that she was trying to balance herself as he turned her, he said to her: 'You must do nothing - just stand on one point: he must balance you and turn you.' Later, when Prinz lifted Verdy and set her down, Balanchine said to him: 'Let her go and back away, to show her off.' And turning to me he said: 'I'm the only one who knows all this. I learned it myself, by watching dancers when I was young.'"

Actually, from reading the 27th December Washington Post story you posted a link to in post #53, kfw, I could easily guess that George Stevens Jr. had a hand in choosing what would be danced. But I have little doubt that Farrell rehearsed it. As to the reaction shots during the dancing, they could be from some other moment, ViolinConcerto, yes, but Juliet, why must they be? In them she looks to me like following something intently, so, they seem to me to belong to that moment, if not to the best way to show off the choreography. With regard to reruns, the Honors program with Tallchief reappeared about nine months later on A&E. That's a long time to keep querying the search functions on zap2it.com and TVGuide.com, but it might work.

I would particularly recommend Robert Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze, which was on LD and VHS. But what a good group! Everything I was going to say has been said! It's a pleasure to be among you. Well, almost everything. Does anyone want to know who's who, among the principals, anyway? I've had fun working it out from my S-VHS tape of the broadcast (not the sharpest image): Shannon Parsley and Matthew Prescott enter first and dance; she exits and Bonnie Pickard enters and dances with Prescott. Where all three dance side by side before exiting ahead of the next entrances, Pickard is (our) left and Parsley is right. Then Alexandra Ansanelli enters alone, dances, and Momchil Mladenov enters and they dance. Finally Erin Mahoney-Du, Runqiao Du, and Natalia Magnicaballi enter in that order; they keep that left-to-right order until the other principals start to re-enter. (It may be worth pointing out that in the fine, brief Dance View Times review which I posted a link to above, George Jackson, for all his intelligent perspective and so on, pairs Ansanelli with Du instead of Mladenov and misspells Pickard's last name.) Speaking of saying what I was going to say, Arthur Mitchell, off mike, said, when Tallchief had finished, "Maria said everything I was going to say." I was sorry they were excluded from the broadcast program; I think d'Amboise's - performance is the right word for it, I think - may have been trimmed; and the television audience was denied the opportunity we had in the theatre to compare Farrell's costume in Tzigane with Byonce's at the end when this clip was eliminated from the documentary part. But the whole performance ran about two hours and forty minutes; maybe someone who has edited out the commercials, as I understand you can do with some DVD recorders now, will tell us just how long the performance content of the broadcast is, but it's much less than two hours. A lot was cut. Speaking of cuts, isn't the beginning of the Divertimento Finale a little odd? I haven't been able to find my recording of the music, so I haven't worked out whether something's missing. But never mind! What dancing there is there! To add a little perspective to the dancers' accomplishment, remember what the repertory was Thanksgiving week? La Source, Clarinade, Duo Concertant, and La Valse. I had thought one reason they performed just a week before the Honors was so that they would be secure in whatever was selected from that repertory. And so they worked up this piece instead, and were secure in it! As I sometimes tell others, never underestimate dancers! (BTW, redesigning the medal might run into a problem when previous honorees turn up wearing theirs; for example, IIRC, Edward Villella wore his to the dinner afterward. At least when watching television, you can reduce the garishness by turning down the Color control a little; I always look for natural skin tones when I adjust my TV.)

There's been some discussion on another thread http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...st=45&p=172187& about the choice of the Divertimento No. 15 Finale versus the predelictions of the television people for making it hard to see the dancing. We'll know in a couple of days what they did this time, but in the meantime I'd like to suggest that the Finale is a choice with considerable potential in that it is already fast-moving, if that is what it takes to hold an audience tuned in for the pop content: There is an active medium-sized corps, and couples appear and disappear quickly for brief duets. This can be shown in relatively short takes, broader for the corps, somewhat narrower for the principals, broader again for the corps. If the televising doesn't obscure, some members of a public which sees a lot of TV and knows how to place themselves in relation to the place they are being shown - in this case a dance space - may actually relate to what they see happening and like it, to everyone's benefit. While a pas de deux is easier to televise to our satisfaction, the core of it is adagio, and to the uninititated it might seem something of a let-down. In other words, I think the choice of the Finale may make it possible to reconcile the desire to interest an audience who wants it fast and lively with a faithful rendering of the dancing. It all depends, IMO, on whether they aim at letting the audience see through the television medium to the dancing, or whether they use the dancing as material to make something else for the audience to look at.