Jack Reed

I'm not a moderator, but having noticed that this thread has veered off from discussion of the mixed-repertory program of Thanksgiving week into anticipation of the Kennedy Center Honors broadcast, I'm wondering whether it might be more appropriate to continue that on another thread where some of us are already discussing the Honors show: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...d=171353&st=15& As for the Thanksgiving-week peformances, I agree that La Source was a good choice for the reason Bill gives; if I felt the ballet was a little under-realized in the main roles, especially as early in the run as Tuesday, it's probably because - I'm sorry if this comes across as boastful, when I only intend to say where I'm coming from - I saw several performances of it under the choreographer's supervison, with Violete Verdy in the principal woman's role. The ballet was, and remains, one of my favorites. And similarly for the principal roles in La Valse. Thanks for your post, Bill, it's the kind of thing that helps me to believe what I saw really happened, although you put things a little differently, from your different perspective.

Would anyone seeing this company's current run of Nutcracker please report what they see? Especially with regard to specific dancers and whose choreography.

Last Saturday a couple of friends and I went out to near suburban Park Ridge to see Ballet Chicago Studio Company dance their "Nutcracker highlights" program, which I've written about here before. The Pickwick Theatre stage proved to be small enough that the dancers looked a little tentative, apparently not having quite enough space to let themselves out fully, but there were some pluses: The 28-piece Park Ridge Civic Orchestra, including a few Chicago Symphony Orchestra players and including a harp and celeste, was in the pit, instead of having recorded music, and Alicia Fabry was in the cast. Her dancing this time was among the best I've seen her do, clear, flowing, finished, detailed and light, in spite of the circumstances, every angle of every limb and finger, even, seemingly arranged to give us a rich and lively experience as she went along. "She's the best one up there" and "She's a real ballerina" were my friends' enthusiastic comments. Fabry danced only the Dewdrop or, here, the "Dew Fairy" role, choreographed by Daniel Duell, as was most of the of the performance, owing to lack of time to rehearse with a partner; she is becoming a kind of alumna of Ballet Chicago and was here only briefly during a break in the schedule of Carolina Ballet's performances of their Nutcracker in which she has been dancing. (Please, God, make somebody there post about that.) So the evening ended on a plateau, with Fabry's superb solos in the "Waltz of the Flowers" followed by greater choreography, Balanchine's "Sugar Plum" adagio, two variations by Duell, and then Balanchine's coda, danced by Megan Wright and Jake Laub more simply, though with many virtures, but not on Fabry's level, before the Finale. (I also want to mention Margo Ruter's sumptuously seductive rendition of "Arabian Coffee" as the standout, for us, among the divertissements.) (Someone reading this next season might like to know that the Pickwick seats by general admission, so if you go, get there at 6:00 PM.) The following evening we three watched the 1993 NYCB Nutcracker video. My friends were suitably impressed with Kistler's precision and agreed that Nichols was comparably excellent in a different way not so easy to find the right words for; I think this is consistent with my feeling that Nichols is the better of the two in this performance: The more excellent the art the harder it is to catch in words. My friends also enjoyed the greater musical sensitivity of the Balanchine version, along with the generally spectacular ability of the dancers, and one volunteered the idea that Duell's troupe demonstrated that musically aware choreography suited to his dancer's abilities can also provide a very satisfying experience. I expect somewhat different satisfactions when BCSC repeats the program in the Athenaeum Theatre this weekend, Saturday at 2 and 7:30 and Sunday at 3: Without Fabry and the orchestra, but with their accustomed space to move through. And the matinees will probably feature some very small performers among the mice, as I've noted in the past.

I'd just like to recommend George Jackson's brief account of the evening on Dance View Times for his usual excellence beyond mere professionalism: http://www.danceviewtimes.com/2005/Autumn/10/honors.html Not the least of it, he gets the cast right, and he stuck around until 2 AM, too, not having booked a flight out at 11:46 AM, evidently (bad planning, Jack).

Now that you mention it, Farrell Fan, I can't recall mention or sight, for that matter, of Peter Martins. Because the performance clips were alll things I had seen before - the b & w one I mentioned above was from Balanchine's Don Quixote, I think - I didn't try to note what they were, expecting that they will all show up in the broadcast. For me, the Divertimento Finale was the high point, and d'Amboise's animated remarks as well as Tallchief's and Mitchell's comments were heart-warming. I hope and pray the editing of the ballet is clear and simple, so everyone can see it. It is, after all, excitingly fast already, and so maybe this time no one will think it needs to be made "interesting" by rapid switching among cameras scattered about or "up close and personal" by showing partial views of performers instead of letting us see them fully and effectively, and all that.

That was the only ballet dancing; the only other stepping I can remember at the moment was combined with singing in the more pop-oriented part of the program. But I think there is a strong intention to include all of that short movement in the broadcast. As those who have seen previous broadcasts know, there is first a documentary feature before the live performing, and the ones I saw in the theatre this time (my first) looked a lot like those. Much of the material for Farrell was familiar from Dance in America; a bit of Tzigane, for example, and a b & w clip I think is from Elusive Muse. More when I can.

I'm still high from the experience of attending the Kennedy Center Honors Gala last night and meeting the honoree I went there especially to honor and the one I think most of us here care the most about, but I thought I'd try to share a few impressions before the inevitable effect of high-caused sleeplessness makes my thoughts fade away into complete confusion: Lead by Alexandra Ansanelli in the "first among equals" role, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet danced only the last movement of Divertimento No. 15, but they danced it beautifully, and in good, brisk tempos. What this will look like on TV in three weeks is anyone's guess. Jacques d'Amboise was the main narrator for Farrell's segment, although Maria Tallchief and Arthur Mitchell made a brief appearance, during which Tallchief apparently ad-libbed praise for Farrell's dancers, whom Tallchief had seen that morning. d'Amboise was notable not only for his energetic motion across the stage (no jete', actually, contrary to Teresa Wiltz's article in this morning's Washington Post), but for his speaking entirely without notes. (Someone else may also have done this, but I didn't notice.) Of course he would be exceptional even among exceptional people: d'Amboise is a dancer. As for the rest of the evening, Wiltz's article gives the flavor and substance very well. I particularly enjoyed Glenn Close's impersonation of Robert Redford, which I had a good view of, having been seated at her feet (as I was at d'Amboise's, when he used the lectern). And I was touched by Julie Harris's admission, quoted during the documentary about her, that she was shy except when playing a role onstage.

Or corrections to my posts, for that matter? I'm not certain about the terminology I used to try to characterize the complexity of the sequences in Donizetti Variations and to be specific in describing what I saw (and what I can, happily, still remember), so I invite anyone who knows this ballet and the terminology please to correct me here so we may all benefit (and so BT's standards for accuracy are maintained!).

OKOK, I'm not a Washingtonian, so I don't know if the Washington Ballet's rehearsals are ever open, but it might be worth a try to see one and then see one of the later performances, as the dancers become seasoned in their roles. Another experiment you might try if you can is to see different casts in the same program (when I did this, it quickly sensitized me to qualities of performance) even though it might seem a little extravagant in comparison with seeing two different programs once each. I notice you're quite engaged, I mean involved, with what you see, and that's good. I'd say, experiment as you can, whatever way seems promising at the time, and something will come of that engagement. I was at the Tuesday rehearsal, too, and noticed quite a lot of "marking"; sometimes a sequence danced full would be followed by one "marked" and then another one full, or one dancer would mark while their partner danced full. You didn't say whether you'd seen many rehearsals, so maybe part of it was not adjusting to all these changes and differences. Getting the right distance from the stage matters, too. (Now I'm going to indulge myself a little more and relive seeing the last performances while seated at my computer.) What a difference five rows can make! From this much closer to the stage the program seemed so much better on Sunday night. The biggest improvement for me came in Duo Concertant; it's not a ballet I expect to be ravished in, but Magnicaballi's deliciously clear and supple dancing made it that, and I enjoyed Du's admirable combination of articulation and flow in La Source much more than on Tuesday, too, not to mention his quiet landings. I think the subtle virtues of these two dancers just don't carry well. Shannon Parsley was triumphant - large, full, gleaming - in the principal role in La Source, with Pickard's superb demi. (There was nothing tentative about Pickard in the principal role at the matinee.) I enjoyed the fun of Clarinade yet again, and noticed that Matson, not Mahoney-Du, cues the musicians, contrary to what I thought I had noticed. (Oops!) And La Valse just seemed more present, for the most part, as it would be from the right distance; as for Ansanelli, her tendency to draw attention to herself and her little novelties (and away from what she is dancing) was the more visible, too. Cheryl Sladkin note: In a display case in the foyer of the Eisenhower Theatre, along with Holly Hynes's costume for the principal woman in Tzigane were some small photos of Farrell's company, including one of Sladkin in "The Unanswered Question" from Ivesiana. Back home now, I don't find her name on the MCB roster. (Another oops.) But remember Google.

Thanks for your comments, kfw. You caught a few details I missed, but we seem to agree on many things, like Ansanelli being some of this and some of that. Maybe she has a sense of that herself, a sense of needing to pull together into something, and that led her to seeing whether the nurture she seeks is available at the RB. Martins doesn't have much of a reputation for developing dancers, I believe. And that would explain at least her stopover with Farrell. Speaking of details, Mladenov did one back flip and one cartwheel this afternoon. Is this a contest, I wonder? And in La Valse today, Ansanelli turned away from Death toward us to react after being offered the necklace and then turned back to him to accept it. I don't remember this part clearly enough from MCB last season to know whether it's her own novelty, as it now looks, or belongs to the part. Anyway, my memory tricked me when I wrote my last post. One little question occured to me today about Clarinade. The dancers are already "out" when the curtain goes up, Matson, the conductor, is at the back with his back to them, so who cues the musicians? I think Mahoney-Du raises one hand, and the sax players start to play. A nice little expression of Balanchine's regard for Farrell's powers? She started the whole thing. Yes, I feel thankful, too. Good program, good dancing. People came, and they liked it, too, especially La Valse, judging from the comments I've overheard. Farrell deserves her Honor. She deserves more than that, IMO, but she deserves that.

Watching this little season is one thing, very pleasant as the ballets come into better states of realization and as the dancers progress in their ability to realize them, but trying to write about it while it's going on is like trying to nail jelly to a tree, because everything changes as it goes along. Friday night, Shannon Parsley's second time in La Source as principal was so lovely she had good reason to show the joy she evidently feels in dancing, and Erin Mahoney-Du's second appearance in the demi role, on Saturday afternoon, was similarly improved, with arms - indeed all her movement - usually more supple, as this ballet requires, although she was not Pickard's equal in this part. In the principal role both times Saturday, however, there were some tentative sequences in Pickard's second variation, flanked by dancing which was full and beautiful. In the afternoon, Pickard's partner was Jared Redick, compact but a little idiosyncratic, but I liked him the best of the four men because he articulated the most clearly the alternating details of his part - like quick turns with limbs held in, then slower ones with limbs extended - within its flow; and Saturday evening, there came the first change from the printed program when Pickard had Momchil Mladenov instead of Alexander Ritter with her. I was interested to see him get a second chance at this, because his first and only scheduled one, Friday evening with Parsley, was often vague, especially in his variations, but this evening there was much clarification and with it enlarged effect, he was again everything his partner needed (as the men nearly always are in this troupe), and dour fellow he often appears to be, he lightened up here, too. Clarinade continued to be danced with Farrell-like phrasing and bold extensions by Erin Mahoney-Du with Mladenov. Another member of the NYCB Old Audience I met at intermission said, "When you look at her [dance it] you can see Suzanne" although I would add she didn't appear to be imitating, she just danced, large though contained. Magnicaballi gave a very satisfying if more modest account of it, whether with Mladenov onWednesday or with Matthew Prescott Friday and Saturday evening, but she has the disadvantage, for some of us, of the comparison. (In the last of the four sections I perceive in this little ballet, the place where the music cools down and becomes especially "blue" and where the references to marathon dancing appear, Prescott does back flips, landing noisily, behind Mahoney-Du where Mladenov does cartwheels.) This is not a substantial, deep, or intense ballet; Morton Gould's music mostly noodles along fluently without giving Balanchine much instruction or inspiration, and so it's a record of a fun time with his fascinating new star dancer, as Farrell was then. It goes nicely before Duo Concertant, which is a substantial ballet to a substantial score, although a little short by itself. Fortuitously, while the setup across the back of the stage for the 15-piece band (clarinet, saxophones, brass, percussion, and bass) for Clarinade can be accomplished during intermission, only a pause is needed evidently to take it out and set up for the onstage piano-and-violin accompaniment to Duo Concertant. In Duo Concertant, I have liked best so far Shannon Parsley and Runqiao Du's performance on Saturday afternoon; it was simple, unaffected, clear, and true. Ansanelli's two performances, with Redick, were complicated by character touches added to dancing which projected well by virtue of consistently clear, strong line; Redick completed this matched couple with similar characterisation. (Remarkable how with such a small troupe Farrell consistently presents one matched set after another.) "Characterisation" was not added in the other two couples; it appeared there inherently. Friday night I prefered Ansanelli and Redick overall because of their strength of projection and clarity of articulation even if Redick hadn't quite matched Du's first one, but then Parsley and Du's second, more fully realized one won me over, and is the one I cherish having seen at this point (two more to go, with Magnicaballi and Prescott returning to it). La Valse continued to come to itself; there are no cast changes, but the cast changes the way it infuses the ballet with its life. In the early waltzes, the couples are Pickard with Redick, Parsley with Prescott, and Magnicaballi with Du; this is low-key climactic casting, that is, each is more satisfying than the one before and benefits from who have preceded them. Magnicaballi, in the third couple, and who then does Sixth Waltz solo, was ravishing. Sometimes, the girls - Erin Ackert, Amy Brandt, and Erin Mahoney-Du - of Second Waltz get a good hand. This has looked quite good, and better and better with each performance, up through Seventh Waltz, and by Saturday afternoon I found it very satisfying ideed. With The Girl in White's entrance in Eighth Waltz, things get tricky, and by Saturday afternoon, Ansanelli seemed to me to be phrasing so we could see a little better what she does, instead of, say, bending down and up in a blink, which had left me thinking about her abs of steel or maybe titanium instead of how The Girl feels about entering this place made eerie by the foregoing dances. By Saturday evening, though, I noticed that Ansanelli's way of showing character through specific detail was combining well with the choreography: Although she still threw a grin at us from one of her sequences of big jumps before Death's arrival, things like the little start she made when he put his hands on her waist, as though those hands were very cold, and the shy grin which flitted across her lowered face which told us how his offer of the black necklace had registered even though she was turned partly away from him seemed now to be things which arose from within her role and served to enliven it rather than looking added onto and detracting from it. (The hands diving into the gloves noted above came back Friday evening; hmm - I wonder how they all spent Thanksgiving?) Alexander Ritter nobly expressed consideration for her in life and, at the back, with her body draped over his knee, anguish at losing her in death. Death was another big role for Mladenov - well, not as big as Don Quixote last July - and having seen a formless early stage of it at the open rehearsal Tuesday afternoon, I was even more impressed already that evening by the fullness and chillingly ominous power he brought to it. He begins, of course, to manipulate and control The Girl in White from the back of the stage by his slow, sweeping gestures, making her go from side to side at the front; and later closing in on her, not so much dancing with her as making her dance with him; putting his face into hers, he seems not so much looking at her as into and through her; this was part of the way he conveyed that Death is coldly disinterested in his victim.

(from Washington, DC) I forgot to mention that she is also doing two Duo Concertants here. The first one went tonight, the second is scheduled for Saturday night, and I'll try to say something about them on the Suzanne Farrell Ballet thread.

I'm coming back just for a moment to say that I recommend both Sarah Kaufman's review in the Washington Post and John Rockwell's in The New York Times. With their different emphases (although, in hard copy, with the same picture of Clarinade, one which I might not have chosen), they compliment each other, and both reflect the performances well. And yes, Rockwell's attending Farrell's opening instead of NYCB's may well be an apt implied criticism of that company. So those interested in what's going on here, read 'em both. (Where I referred to "previous comments" up above, I meant to include these two reviews as well as kfw's and others.) The other thing on my mind is J. Russell Sandifer's lighting designs, which show considerable skill along with some overkill. In particular, they keep changing, in the contemporary manner, so that, in La Source, we see the principal woman's variations least well, the male's best, and the ensemble's more than adequately. This seems a pity, because we need to get what we can from the principal women (Parsley or Pickard, depending on the date), and we need to see them. In fact, in Balanchine, if there's a rule, it's that what the woman does is the most important. It looks as though Sandifer might think that, here at least, soft, delicate dancing needs soft, delicate lighting, with areas of slight shadow, while bold, male dancing needs bold, bright light. With all respect to his ability to produce different not inappropriate lighting schemes, I would disagree, and sugggest that the first thing is to define and show the space in such a way that we can see the dancers dance, without the distraction of frequent changes, sometimes within numbers or movements or to underline things we get already, for example in the big crescendo in Clarinade, when the whole stage, up till then nicely lit by four big overlapping pools of white light, goes bright green until the music subsides again. At least, the dancers remain well illuminated through this. La Valse became more episodic by this changing, and I'd be happier if one or two schemes could be chosen among the many used here, all of which reveal the dancing; it's the changing that distracts. Sandifer is from Florida State, not the Kennedy Center, which suggests to me that he and Farrell have had opportunity to collaborate, and that she has approved what he has done, so in disagreeing with Herself, I feel I'm out on a limb, but these are the ways the productions strike me. Anyway, it's only possible to disagree with someone who cares about the same thing as you do, right?

May I suggest that the knowledge the two of you have about these videos both as to content and reissue quality is so valuable it really would be a good thing to post on Amazon, as Chris suggests. Why not say both parts clearly - these are great performances but the image quality is worse than VHS, or whatever - and let people decide for themselves whether to spring for the discs now as stop-gaps or wait for better transfrers. (It reminds me of the reissue problem in classical recording; I've always been a picker and chooser there.) Whatever you do, thank you for posting here about it. You've saved me some considerable anger and frustration, I'm sure, and for others too.

(from Washington, DC) It appears she has indeed stopped off in Washington on her way to London in order to dance The Girl in White in La Valse with Alexander Ritter and Momchil Mladenov in the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and some of us are talking about that in that thread. After having seen her sometimes look as though the Eisenhower Theatre stage is too small for her - she can go like a house afire - I was interested to read here of her dramatic gifts and hope to see them manifested in deepening the role in her remaining five performances of it this weekend.

Cheryl Sladkin's name rings a distant bell. Miami? Anyway, here's the current cast list, from the program: Principals Alexandra Ansanelli Chan Han Goh (On Leave of Absence) Natalia Magnicaballi Runqiao Du Soloists Erin Mahoney-Du Shannon Parsley Bonnie Pickard Momchil Mladenov Matthew Prescott Jared Redick Alexander Ritter Corps de Ballet Erin Ackert Gina Artese Amy Brandt Kristen Gallagher Elisabeth Holowchuk Ashley Hubbard Sara Ivan Evelyn Kocak Katelyn Prominski Lisa Reneau Parise Sellitti Lydia Walker Ilona Wall Brett Emmons Ken Guan James Reed Hague Andrew Kaminski Benjamin Lester Neil Marshall Eric Ragan Alfiero Supan Apprentices Lauren Fitzpatrick Kristin Ottestad Joseph Bunn

Wednesday evening, Bonnie Pickard brougt her greater delicacy and nuanced dancing to La Source, although she is not the soubrette Kaufman correctly said the part needs, and Alexander Ritter brought more frequent plastic continuity to his part, and so the ballet benefitted. Being cast against type in the demi role may benefit Erin Mahoney-Du; with her l-o-n-g limbs, we see her well even from the balcony when she does make this go, but it was her dancing Tuesday night in the six-minute show-stopper, Clarinade, that was her great success and nearly worth the price of admission by itself, and I thought Natalia Magnicaballi less effective in that. Shannon Parsley and Runqiao Du were a different, more forcefull and abstract couple in Duo Concertante than Magnicaballi and Prescott had been, with Du in particular clarifying positions which Prescott had left softer, such as the arm sweeps right when they begin to dance in the second number, which originally had the slightest pauses as though suggesting the motion of a clock hand; and the rest of Du's performance was "stretched" and more vivid, which suited his partner's more emphatic execution. La Valse has the same cast throughout the run, so I will just say I agree with some previous comments and say that Ansanelli doesn't raise the level of the drama in this to the heights of, to cite a favorite example, Deanna Seay with MCB, whatever Ansanelli's other powers - and they are considerable - may be: Judging from this, she doesn't have the powers of dramatic imagination Seay does.

Just got home from seeing it. When a film opens in only one theatre in this town (the Renaissance Place showing listed above has not eventuated), large as it is, you go before it vanishes again. And I recommend everyone else do likewise. Not that I'm that big on history. History, shmistory, I say! Go for the entertainment! They were entertaining when they were young and they still are, too, each in their own way (good examples above, I don't need to add). You're interested in history? Fine, then you have two reasons to see it! And the DVD will make it possible to re-see favorite parts, or the part where the person who came in half an hour late was standing in front of me. (Danilova was dancing. How could he?) Agreed, the right music wouldn't have been so hard to add in many places, I think, never having done it, though. Glazunov subbed for Tchaikovsky, too, etc. Maybe even orchestral music, as I understand it's not so hard today to change the tempo some without changing the pitch at all. And I could quibble about so much frenetic jumping and turning; I suppose the available clips - and I think that's all there is, not films of whole ballets, at least, when Ms. Barzell gave showings many years ago here, fragments were all she seemed to have - distort somewhat the Ballets Russes repertory. But for me that made the other fragments all the more enjoyable: Several of Cotillon, including the ending, at the end of the film, appropriately, and of Les Sylphides, and others. And the warmth of spirit of the dancers now was very taking. I felt I'd spent the evening in wonderfully charming company.

Sunday afternoon brought Penteado and Jeanette Delgado into Donizetti; he was, as my notes have it, "fine, just fine!" Fine-ness, or being fine, is just what this delicately detailed ballet needs, and I was very happy to see him do it again. Delgado's dancing was larger but less clear and delicate than Seay's had been. For example, in passe', Delgado brings her working ankle in front of her supporting leg, so that her foot is beyond it, while Seay brings her foot less far; I don't know which is "correct," but I liked Seay's delicacy in this and so many other details of her performance because it seemed more appropriate, among other reasons. Delgado was always in charge, though, in contrast to Carranza, whose variation had looked like it might get away from her at a couple of moments. An excellent debut, yes, debut, in the role, and I thought I could empathize with the couple I took to be her proud parents who came out to give her a bouquet. When I looked at my cast sheet and saw Jeremy Cox as The Prodigal Son I wondered. With his fresh face and short, light hair, which looks like a crew cut from where I sit, he has only to step onstage to look the young innocent. As it happened, the energy - in the famous jumps and turns and other fast movement - with which he attacked his first scene seemed to me carried to the point of making it a little clipped or snapped and may have slightly obscured his portrayal of the Prodigal's conflicted character at first, although it was physically pretty impressive in itself, but at the moment he confronts his entering father, and draws back slowly, Cox's movement conveys well the Prodigal's embarrassment. As it turned out, this moment was a harbinger of a powerfully effective performance to come, really well acted and danced large: When he first walked in in scene two, every moment conveyed clearly, without being overdone, the Prodigal's changing feelings about his experiences there, culminating with the long, slow last sequence. This was, if I may say so, something like Kronenberg's becoming The Siren in Friday's performance (Manning's strong performance didn't seem to me to quite reach Kronenberg's standard in that role). And when he crawled back in in the last scene, I noticed that his considerable dramatic intelligence extended to the most effective body makeup of the four dancers who took the role, in that Cox had "bloodied" his knees and elbows, as we might see on some one who had to crawl around. And then that final sequence across the stage, with his joy at having returned home, his fear of his father's rejection, his expression of self-denial as he crawls on his knees toward his father all made quite vivid and moving; made real before us. And all Cox needed apparently was the intermission to catch his breath and change costumes - into a pink dress! Now there's a transition - and show us again his talent for light farce as one of the Two Young Women in The Quick Step. Fresh-faced kid? A real comer, I think! So I'm glad to agree, bart, that there is great depth in this company, and while I find joy and excitement in remembering the actual on-stage evidence of that fact, it's a little tinged with regret that more people don't know about and appreciate this company. I think there are some reasons for that, but imagining what might be done about it, I wonder how feasible it would be for MCB to make and sell DVD's of their programs, advertised by video clips on their website. On other forums here on BT I've read of individual dancers (elsewhere) posting such material, although I haven't actually checked it out, so I'm curious about what's involved. Let us know what you see!

Regarding the ranks of this company, I thought I'd mention as a footnote to bart's remark about casting (which I certainly agree with) especially for the benefit of those not familiar with MCB, that there are mainly just two: "Principal Dancers and Principal Soloists" (7 women and 4 men) and "Soloists and Corps de Ballet" (20 women and 8 men); plus two "Apprentices," both men. Cox, both Delgado girls, Fouilloux, Manning, and Shimizu are all in the lower rank. It doesn't mean too much, I guess, in terms of casting. Maybe it means more in terms of pay. There was a time when Balanchine listed the entire NYCB in one alphabetical sequence, I think. And yes, Deanna Seay's performances are something to watch out for, if you can.

This source slightly outside the company agrees strongly with Justdoit, bart. I think you may be surprised! I'll try to find a few words to do justice to Cox's superb Prodigal after I deal with real life for a while, but I did want to post what I have about the earlier performances in the meantime: Saturday afternoon's high point for me was the appearance of Deanna Seay and Kenta Shimizu in Donizetti Variations. I found Seay's dancing delicious all the way through, showing us in her usual luxurious way - I mean her glowing combination of softness and clarity, not slowing anything, which she couldn't do anyway, dancing to the same recording as everyone else - for example, held by her partner in the adagio, the series of turns alternating passe' with little plie' hops, or near the end of her variation she comes down a diagonal from the center alternating pas de chat with little beats. I'm not completely sure I have the terms right here, but seeing her do the steps again in memory, I feel I can use with certainty words like delicate, subtle, and - well - tasty! So, Bart, I hope you get this confection served by these two - Shimizu was very, very fine, and evidently everything Seay needed; as usual with MCB, the partnering always looked perfect to me - and the first cast. I wouldn't choose between them. The joke beginning the trumpet-solo part was done this time by Allyne Noelle but still lacked the set-up it needed. I don't mean to make a big thing of this, because it isn't a big thing, but in a performance on such a high level as this one - this looks like the same company that gave the sensational performances of Ballet Imperial there last Spring - any flaw will stick out more than in a performance with major or continual problems. Prodigal needed some seasoning. Mikhail Ilyin began larger, higher, and wowed the matinee audience, but there were many times he seemed to go a little blank, as though wondering how to do the next thing. Maybe this was a debut, or an early performance. His Siren was Emilie Fouilloux, a little wobbly most of the way through I'm sorry to say, though otherwise looking under control, but I learned later this was a debut, and considering the size of the role, not a terrible one at all. And I want to mention this time Mikhail Nikitine, who performed The Father on all four programs with quietly powerful dignity, and gravity, not to mention looking the part exactly. And I think this production returns some dances for The Servants which Balanchine omitted for the 1978 or 1979 "Dance in America" video. In The Quick Step, Katia Carranza took over the role of Kiki and Haiyan Wu took over half the Speakeasy couple, to lesser effect than Catoya and Kronenberg, respectively, but still very effective; in particular, this was the warmest dancing I have seen by Wu, who usually impresses me as a cool, accomplished perfectionist. Actually, everybody lets the energy flow in this one. Saturday evening brought Carranza's lovely, fully achieved perfomance in Donizetti with Ilyin, who was appropriately contained most of the time, giving his partner elevation this time, but I think this still needs some seasoning. The trumpet joke got a setup which seemed to me so wrong-headed - she acted annoyed and impatient - that I didn't bother to determine who did it. Never mind, this was a superb performance of a wonderful little ballet, and even if it was just discernably less effective than the two preceding ones, it was still a joy to watch. Renato Penteado took over the title role in Prodigal with cumulative flow and effect; Andrea Spiridonakos gave her second performance as The Siren, an assured one, but not so much so as Kronenberg's had been: When we watch theatre, we're sometimes aware of our suspension of disbelief - we can see both the performer and the role, especially if the performer is struggling or not comfortable in the role, and we go for the role, a kind of magical presence invoked by an effective performer, but watching Kronenberg's Siren, we just sense how she - the Siren - takes over the place - there's not two parts to it any more. It's like tired hype to say it, but when Kronenberg dances it, she is the Siren, like it's not a performance of something any more. (Like you say, bart.) I got my favorite cast in The Quick-Step, Catoya and Kronenberg, although there was that problem of which one do you watch when they're both on view (I wish all life's problems were so nice!), but in what became my favorite number, "Ain't She Sweet?" I realized how well some of the missing words (the arrangements are instrumental) could be applied to Catoya's dancing there: Just cast an eye/ in her direc-tion/ oh me, oh my/ ain't she perfec-tion? Am I getting really to like this slight, busy ballet? Nah! Couldn't be! But I do have fun watching the dancers have fun with it.

Bart (and everyone), I would have posted this Saturday morning (12th November) when I finished writing it, but I couldn't connect to the Internet from my motel suite in Fort Lauderdale Beach. Now that I'm back in Chicago, here's that much, with some follow-up on the Saturday and Sunday performances when I can get to the writing: Ordinarily I try to be a little more analytical, but when someone asked me whether I liked Friday evening's performance of Donizetti Variations, what came to mind was, Oh, wow! Oh, wow! Oh, wow! This performance of this ballet was such a high! Like a souffle'. Except for the girl's "impromptu" solo beginning the trumpt-solo part, and, seeing the Villellas unengaged at intermission, I went over to find out who had had the role: Charlene Cohen. "It's the hardest part to get right," Villella said. "When you tell a joke, you have to set it up." Marjorie Spohn (in the seventies or eighties) had first gone around the stage waving her hand in front of several of the frozen dancers with their faces in their elbows to verify that none of them could see anything, before she came downstage and showed off, "hurting" her foot at the the end before taking her place in the group again. "I tell them, but they rush into it." They're all go, I offered. "This ballet can be such a mess," Linda Villella said. A souffle' can be a hot pudding, I ventured. She smiled, and Villella slumped, pantomiming a falling souffle'. She turned to her husband. "I never liked it until I saw you guys do it last weekend [in Miami Beach]." Now what can I add to that? Well, I can add that this sensational performance - in good, quick tempos, too - was led by Mary Carmen Catoya and Renato Penteado, as light, clear and quick and as joy-inducing as one could wish. The whole cast was like that, really, that's what kept this souffle' up, but these two... What exhiliration! What a high! Then, something not a high at all: Prodigal Son, with Luis Serrano in the title role and Jennifer Kronenberg realizing the role of the Siren with such consistentely cool command, carried right through the applause afterward, that some of us thought the ballet could have been called The Siren. Of course, with her beautiful long legs clad in white, Kronenberg would command attention as soon as she appeared, but it was her cool efficiency in her role, not to mention her largeness of gesture which must have reached the back of the house, that held our attention, and also helped us to empathize with the Prodigal's fascination with her, poor guy: Not until too late did he begin to grasp what had hit him, and after performing earlier in a way that seemed to me a little "lite" compared to Villella himself and certainly to Baryshnikov on the video, while nevertheless faithfully showing the myriad details in this huge role which not only carry the story but make the Prodigal's internal conflicts and energies external so we can see them and be involved, Serrano produced a sequence of movement at the end of his despoliation which made his character genuinely pitiable, so that the subdued applause after he crawls off stage could be taken as an expression of our pity: Again the word wow came to me, but just once, slowly, and much lower on the pitch scale: This innocent guy has really been brought low, and witnesses to that can hardly celebrate it. The Drinking Companions were very effective too, in their really repulsive way, earning the characterizations of them in Balanchine's remarks in his Complete Stories as eels and insects. A really creepy crew, although for the record I will report that their last apearance in back-to-back pairs, skittering across the stage with legs nearly straight, was less effective than I have seen with legs bent to bring thighs horizontal. Harder, I guess, but underlining the strangeness of these icky creatures. Otherwise, superbly realized. Then, to provide the evening with an upbeat ending (much needed by some sitting near me), Villella's own "The Quick-Step: Unspeakable Jazz Must Go!" To a score based on popular dance tunes of the twenties, Villella has made what seems like mostly an ensemble ballet, layering the stage with action while keeping it all clearly visible and never once making his dancers look bad, which is more than I can say for some better-known contemporary choreographers. But the duets and so on which take place downstage against this swarming backdrop alternate brilliant sequences with uninspired ones, as far as I can see. But what dancing! When you recognise the dances of the twenties, you see them performed by these dancers with an enlarging clarity and sharpness social dancers of that era might have dreamed of, and then you see things they probably never even dreamed of, and then you see things you don't believe and think maybe you're dreaming - or halucinating - right now! Most of the large cast is already on stage, in a speakeasy, when the curtain rises, and "Kiki, a Jazz Age Flapper" is downstage center. Is that Mary Carmen Catoya? In a black wig with bangs? When she starts to move, she eliminates all uncertainty. Her "Suitor" is Luis Serrano, magically recovered from his tragedy. Their best number for me was "Ain't She Sweet?" "Two Young Women" were Marc Spielberger and Jeremy Cox. Aha! (Speaking of maintaining roles through the applause, one of these "gals" delightedly accepts two bouquets to the foot-stamping frustration of the other: "That one's mine! You...") The piece ends with a rousing rendition of Black Bottom by the entire ensemble; with both Catoya and Kronenberg onstage at the same time, I had trouble deciding where to look.

Last night I attended the first of two programs of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Harris Theatre, preceding it by listening to a talk by Bonnie Brooks, chair of the Dance Center of Columbia College, which brought Merce's company here. Brooks stressed, as she has before, the random element in Merce's art, exemplified most strongly by Split Sides on the evening's program, in which the order of five of the elements of the performance were decided by rolling a die on stage in front of us just minutes before it began while Merce presided at a lectern. (We could see the die via projected video.) Indeed, there was a certain element of the unintended early in the history of Split Sides, before Merce had made any choreography and before the title was chosen: The company's executive director had suggested using a rock-band accompaniment for a dance, and both the bands Radiohead and Sigur Ros were contacted at the same time, rather than asking one and then, if they declined, asking the other. As it happened, both accepted. What to do? Use them both. One would play, and then the other. Why not make two of everything, for that matter? And so Merce made two twenty-minute dances instead of the intended forty-minute one, two designers (Robert Heishman and Catherine Yass) were engaged for decor, James Hall made two sets of costumes, and James F. Ingalls prepared two lighting plans for the two sections, and the sequence of the alternate parts of these five elements were to be determined before each performance, making thirty-two possiblities. The one we saw last night began with Sigur Ros, the Yass decor (cool colors in vertical softly outlined strips), and black-and-white costumes, followed by Radiohead, the Heishman decor (pale green tones, soft lines outlining shapes like crumpled paper, punctuated by a black off-center disc, echoed by a disc hanging from the flies at the front), and colorful costumes mainly in rose and blue tones. This worked out quite well, the transformation from less to more color being very pleasant, although, being ignorant of rock music because the driving, monotonous beat of what I think of as rock music repels me, I wondered at times why what we heard was called rock, because that hard beat was conspicuous by its absence throughout, and what we got was (for me) easy-to-take gradually ebbing and flowing electronic and concrete sounds which never built up to ear-splitting volumes, either. The program opened with Suite for Five, a spare piece from Merce's early years ("1956-1958") restaged in 2002 by Carolyn Brown, Merce, and Robert Swinston. John Cage's piano music for it was spare, too, and Robert Rauschenberg's unitards in appealing solid colors were the same. In its seven little sections it combined the five dancers differently, and charmed in itself as well as served as a crystalline introduction to the more elaborate productions to follow. It closed with Sounddance, dating from 1975, restaged in 2003 by Meg Harper. I thought the name was familiar; sure enough, I recognised long stretches of it: It - or much of it - is included in the late-70s PBS Dance in America program "Event for Television" which had a commercial release on VHS a few years ago (and in which, if memory serves, Meg Harper - by chance - kicks an aluminum pillow in Rain Forest). I remembered the movement, but not Mark Lancaster's sumptuous designs - golden swags of heavy cloth hung over a rod about ten feet above the stage formed the background, and the dancers wore featureless tops of the same color and gray tights. Sounddance is about eighteen minutes long, all at a pretty fast clip; the dancers appear and disappear through a gap in the center of the background, which is closed by hanging strips, and perform in solos or small groups which assemble and dissolve in strategic places. I remember one moment when three dancers, all upright, holding hands in a line across the back of the space are led by a fourth, Robert Swinston, who interacts with the line, leads it further, and then the same business is repeated, while two groups of partly bent-over dancers dance in front. This was the trickiest dance to take in, I think, and so being in the concluding spot on the program it benefitted from our experience of what went before as well as having the grand excitement of the tempo and the gorgeous color of the design to make it suitable as a finale. I haven't said more about the quality of the movement because, perhaps inevitably, it's the hardest to write about adequately. But I can say the degree of virtuosity here is generally high, most satisfyingly with Robert Swinston ("Assistant to Choreographer"), whose clearly nuanced dancing, as well as his long legs, made him stand out. I get a sense of sharper clarity from this company, compared to Paul Taylor's, whose dancers can be powerfully effective nevertheless; and this reminds me that in the pre-performance talk someone remarked that "Merce loves to rehearse." Nothing left to chance here. In Suite for Five, the boy in green looked, as a friend remarked, a little out of shape, but the boy in blue compensated us with some quietly and modestly presented but spectacularly impossible-looking moves and changes of balance. (As both appeared in all three dances, I had no way to work out who was who; Swinston I have seen conduct an introductory class.) Grateful as I am to Brooks for her role in bringing Merce & Co. here, I think the emphasis in her approach to watching his dances, as she presented it before the program, is a little off. Her remarks were essentially analytical, though to her credit, she quoted Croce with approval, to the effect that the thing to do is not to analyze, just to enjoy. So I suppose the best thing about what she said was that it was self-contradictory! She barely touched on what I think is an essential consequence of the chance procedures she stressed, namely, coincidence, and I don't remember that she even used the word, though she encouraged us to put together what we see and hear ourselves, that is, to notice, or not, when elements seem to coincide, or to synchronize (another word she didn't use). Why then such emphasis on randomness in the process of making the stuff we are going to work with? To me, this was distractingly or even misleadingly analytic. Actually, I thought there were remarkably long stretches of synchrony between music and bodily movement; this is an important part of how I look at dance (and other art), that is, to see if - or whether - and how the parts fit or relate. I remember that Balanchine reportedly often replied when asked for explanation of his choreography, "What did you see?" It was up to us. Or, "Tchaikovsky told me to." It was up to us to listen while we watched. In that TV program, Merce steps into the frame and says a few words, while the dancing goes on behind him. I think he mentions that we may be out walking and see a bird fly at the same time as we hear a whistle blow, and notice the coincidence. He remembers talking with some audience members after a performance, and one person told him how he had seen it. "And there was a Chinese man there, who said it looked Chinese to him." Merce looks satisfied, and steps back out of the frame. Sometimes, when I saw stretches of movement of a certain range and scale and tempo taking place while the accompaniment also corresponded in these ways, it looked Balanchinian to me.

Hmm, I think I had the wrong Balanchine metaphor above. Farrell's company is maybe not so much a garden as a restaurant, the way the menu keeps changing day-by-day. I was glad to know she's interested in presenting Bejart's Rite, and maybe we'll get it another time soon. B. H. Haggin wrote in 1964 of Clarinade that "though not one of his great works... the blues movement [brought] the amazing new ingenuities that each new supported adagio elicits from Balanchine." My mouth is watering...

I agree about Lopez, she was a very fine dancer, and I got a little choked up at her retirement; it was her Terpsichore with her husband's equally good Apollo at Ravinia here years ago that made me remember MCB and eventually start visiting Florida to see the company. But, Justdoit, which Gamonet ballets did you like? Two which come immediately to my mind are ones which didn't please me at all: La Casa de Bernarda Alba, after the Garcia Lorca story, in which someone gets struck by a cane, someone breaks the cane, and someone hangs herself, too brutally outshocked Tudor for me, and the only MCB ballet I ever sat out on further visits to the theatre (for the rest of the program); and something Espagnole, in which the main Spanish ingredient seemed to be the red and black costumes, and in which the girls looked awkward most of the time, a cardinal sin for a choreographer, as far as I'm concerned. (Tudor's dancers never looked awkward or clumsy that I remember.) I did see a Grand pas Classique, which Deanna Seay made look like good choreography, but I wonder what you thought of these and maybe what favorites you had I didn't see. I don't begin to know enough about the ballet world to guess what these off-stage movements will mean until something changes on stage, and someone explains it to me. But I have enormous faith in Edward Villella to use whatever resources he has to make MCB continue to improve. Thinking back over the performances of Ballet Imperial I saw this past season is enough to make me excited about that, and then I think of what I heard about that ballet's preparation - the people who said, No, don't try it, they're not ready, and the fact that rehearsals began early last Fall and continued on and off until the Spring season, by which time the company was ready. And how!