Jack Reed

Ari, that's an interesting observation about the chronological order of the ballet excerpts on Program II even if it's not quite strict (tsk, tsk!). Here are the premiere dates of the ballets in order of performance, from the program book: Apollo 1928 La Sonnambula 1946 Ivesiana 1954 La Valse 1951 Agon 1957 Meditation 1963 Don Quixote 1963 Chaconne 1976 Stars and Stripes 1958 But your observation does point to one of Farrell's themes in her remarks, Balanchine's development, and especially the idea of elimination.

(from Washington, D.C.) This afternoon that bit went even better: There was no technical glitch, and when the curtain went up, she turned to the wing, raised her right hand to scoop a semicircle of the air as though to say, "Let's go!" (Maybe we should say, scoop, for those who weren't there, that she wore matching salmon-pink coat and skirt with those red stilettos.)

(from Washington, D.C.) Saturday night it was last but not least, for Program 1. Goh's performance of "Mozartiana" was her best, differentiating the sections within the variations, showing them with such gorgeous clarity and flow it came to me how glad I was to live now to see this masterwork revealed again. And Ritter, in Gigue, brought to that much better flow-through without any loss of the "corners", the quirky details, and so the role became a connected whole, and you could see it entire. It must still be said that Redick's role is too much for him (I think it challenged Ib Andersen in 1981), but he realized still more of it. And nowhere does he spoil it. Shannon Parsley's luminous and joyful dancing with the lively corps again lit up the brilliant choreography of "Tempo di Valse." (Tuesday evening I had spoken to someone in this who described herself as "only a corps girl" but who said that Balanchine's corps parts not only gave her plenty to do, but unlike some other choreographers - she didn't name them - she never got tired of doing them.) "Meditation" followed immediately again as it had Thursday, because, I heard, Fournier had hurt her foot, though fortunately not so badly as to deprive the "Apollo" pas de deux of her beautiful if small-scaled performance Friday night. Goh's performance was rightly impassioned again, but the surprise, Peter Boal apparently having returned to New York, was Runqiao Du's performance in Boal's place. Remembering some effective details of Jacques d'Amboise's peformance years ago while watching Boal, I had noticed Boal - or somebody - had different ideas about conveying the man's emotional journey to final catharsis, and while these ideas worked also, I thought d'Amboise's way had been more direct and more effective. When I watched Du I saw much of d'Amboise's performance, his way of walking when we first discover him and the different way - chest open, head up - at the end, as well as his crouching expressions of overwhelming grief where Goh joins him to comfort and restrain him (especially one moment downstage left). In the final "Serenade," April Ball took over Magnicaballi's role (Dark Angel) beautifully if not quite with Magnicaballi's presence.

Friday night, my favorites on the "Balanchine Couples" program were the pas de deux from "Agon" with Magnicaballi and Mladenov, the best I've seen in a long, long time, the one from "Chaconne" with Goh and Boal, really otherworldly, so lovely, soft, light, and clear, and "Meditation", with Goh and Boal, in which Goh especially "turned up the volume," to use one of the phrases Farrell quotes herself in the Bomb Magazine interview using in rehearsal, and made her part really passionate. The "Apollo" pas de deux, with Fournier and Boal, was beautiful, and the one from "La Valse", more about arms than I recalled, got a large, very effective performance from Parsley and Ritter. The pas de deux Mauresque from "Don Quixote" was so striking I felt the music it was set to was better than it really was, and Frances Katzen's and Ritter's vivid performance helped a lot. Among the less successful IMO was the pas de deux from "La Sonnambula", where Ritter didn't really take us into the Poet's stunned fascination with his ability to manipulate the Sleepwalker's body while being unable to reach her mind, and the audience sometimes laughed at his difficulties. Saturday afternoon, he was more effective, I felt, and the audience - a different one, of course - didn't laugh, either. Also "The Unanswered Question" from "Ivesiana" suffered by poor lighting on Cheryl Sladkin, carried aloft most of the time by four boys in black. Her "partner", Ryan Kelly, had his own follow spot, as well as a more active role, and was quite effective. Bonnie Pickard's and Jared Redick's "Star and Stripes" pas de deux, with big classical clarity and witty touches, was the last one, and led into the finale of that ballet, with costumes and flag backdrop borrowed from DTH. It's a good, rousing finale, but seeing them all like that without having seen the preceding "campaigns" of that ballet, I felt, for the first and only time, a little deprived, like scoop. As to the format of the program, I had wondered about a program of pas de deux: Would it be like a ballet gala, with Don Quixotes and Black Swans one after another? But this would be a selection from Balanchine's wide-ranging catalog, with plenty of opportunity for interesting contrasts, and selected by one of the most canny people around. (As it happens, I was quite takenwith the results.) The excerpts would be introduced by Farrell one at a time, and although I had heard an extemporaneous example of how very apt, even brilliant, Farrell could be at finding words about Balanchine as long ago as the early eighties, the worrier in me feared it could be too didactic for an audience which had come to be entertained. But she both complimented the audience's intelligence and amused it, although some people near me did say at the first intermission they'd rather have had that in the program; as though anticipating, Farrell gave one introduction to the following three pas de deux. In lesser hands, it could have been deadly dull, but she's Suzanne Farrell, still taking risks, and making them pay off.

(from Washington, D.C.) I'm glad to be in general agreement with what's been posted about Wednesday and Thursday evenings, even including the snowflakes - they looked like white leaves floating gently down - they were an inch and a half across, some of them! But here in Foggy Bottom, there's no accumulation. I felt that "Mozartiana" had cohered better, and tempos were better, too (not so slow in Theme et Variations, for example), and Jared Redick continued to realize his role. Shanon Parsley again radiated love of what she was doing in "Tempo di Valse", and we again radiated back love of what we saw. (Not incidentally, she's head and shoulders taller than Pickard, her alternate.) The big novelty of the evening was, of course, Boal's return to the stage in "Meditation", certainly a good beginning for this ballet, and well described above. But another novelty not mentioned so far was another first appearance in this run, that of the superb April Ball in the "Serenade" role Shannon Parsley has been dancing. No quibbles from me! P.S. The Fall 2003 issue of Bomb magazine, devoted to "in-depth" interviews (hence the name?) with arts people, has a fine one of Farrell by Emily Fragos; it's not included on Bomb's website, however. (Among shops around here, One Stop, 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue, probably has it.) It offers insights into her way of working with dancers and the ways she worked with Balanchine, and gems like this one: "Life is hard, it's meant to be a test, but while you're studying for that test, isn't it nice to be dancing." The Balanchine Couples program starts tonight, and it's to include spoken introductions by Farrell. I can hardly wait.

(from Washington, D.C.) "Wow!" was a New York friend's summary comment as we walked out of the Eisenhower Theatre after Wednesday's performance. I certainly agreed; it was the best of the three performances I'd seen, counting the rehearsal (where I allow for marking, etc.). Goh showed us her dances in "Mozartiana" with powerful delicacy in the large-scale, fully formed continuously changing configurations above and below. (Okay, it's one of those times when adequate words are hard to find.) She was not so playful, compared to her Theme et Variations Tuesday night (when her rendition of Preghiera was also appropriate to an invocation), but superbly fresh and vital, really magnificent right through, I felt. Ritter's crisp, spiky Gigue could still benefit from more flow-through, like his brief part in the Finale has, to give it more cumulative effect, and Jared Redick, Goh's partner in Theme et Variations, was less hesitant and held in and more often in mastery in this, his third day, I believe, with this complicated part, but what he did - maybe what anyone other than Peter Boal, originally scheduled for this performance, could have done - was inevitably put a little in the shade by contrast with Goh's sparkling performance. "Tempo di Valse" (or Waltz of the Flowers) was led this time by Bonnie Pickard in a superb performance, light and clear and nuanced; while Parsley's had been a delight, this was an order of magnitude better, and the audience responded. Do you find that sometimes a performance is so good it seems to mess (pleasantly) with your mind for a little while? During the pause, the absurd thought came to me from nowhere, Oh, that's why Tchaikovsky wrote that - for her! But that's the way she had made it look. And then after the pause came "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux": Fournier's easy flow of Tuesday afternoon came back, and then some: supple inflections (right through the bows for applause) enriched this performance. The same cast as Tuesday performed "Serenade". Although Runqiao Du was credited in the insert, Momchil Mladenov performed in the Elegy movement, adding to his fine partnering and solo dancing the right degree of dramatic involvement, just observing each of his three partners in turn without anything further, while, in the Waltz, Bonnie Pickard added a bit of involvement - smiling into her partner's face - which seemed to me to be something "Serenade" is not about. This is quibbling, but when you have as much to give as Pickard does, giving it your all may sometimes be a little too much. But overall, as my friend from the Golden Age of Balanchine's lifetime put it, "Wow!"

(from Washington, D.C.) This evening's performance confirmed the casting I thought I recognised this afternoon, but more to the point, it was a different one - In what I thought were "easier" tempos than this afternoon, Goh adopted a different approach to "Mozartiana", more playful this evening, which I happen to think less appropriate, than the straightforward "let it happen" way she danced at the rehearsal, while Jared Redick, her partner, substituting on a couple of days' notice for the injured Peter Boal (who is expected to appear soon), made his role more clear and, therefore, satisfying, than at the rehearsal. Alexaner Ritter's Gigue seemed more fully achieved this evening - maybe he was taking it easy at rehearsal. "Tempo di Valse" benefitted from proper costuming, although I could quibble about the brilliant lavender backdrop. Encountering Shannon Parsley later, I found out she enjoys dancing Dewdrop as much as she appears to and as I do watching her. But Fournier's ease and flow in the adagio of "Tchaikovsky pas de Deux" that made me unsure who she was this afternoon seemed less this evening. Opening night tension? I hope what she showed this afternoon she can do reappears later on. "Serenade" was even more beautiful this evening - not the least of this was conductor Ron Mattson's clear balances, good tempos, sensitive phrasing, and dramatically disdended tempo in places like at the end of the pas de trois in the last movement, where Momchil Mladenov laid Bonnie Pickard back on the floor and turned her into her original "fall" positon. That let the audience soak in what's happening, and after he presses her hand to his heart in farewell and moves on, guided again by the Dark Angel (Magnicaballi), she lies there, while the six (eight?) girls come on in double file. In a couple of directions I heard people say, softly, "Hm." Yes. Exactly. And during the applause afterward, many in the audience got to their feet. A moving performance.

(from Washington, DC) I've just seen this afternoon's open rehearsal, and it was very exciting in spite of the marking of some parts etc. Goh danced full in "Mozartiana", animating the role, inhabiting the music, giving a performance that emanated effectively from the stage. "Tempo di Valse" was led with large effect by, I think, Shannon Parsley; any questions about showing this excerpt seem to me more than adequately answered by the quality of performance it got. Not least of the pleasures in watching it was that of seeing again how in every phrase it grows out of the content of that musical phrase, yes, like flowers from seeds... After a neat "Tchaikovsky pas de Deux" by Fournier and Du, there was an unusually beatiful "Serenade" with, I think, Magnicabali as the Dark Angel and Parsley opening Tema Russe and then certainly Bonnie Pickard as the girl who "falls". The clarity of meaningful detail in the flow of movement - this was not an X-ray of a ballet but a revival of it in the best sense - a bringing of it back to vibrant life - was literally wonderful to see. This company - now having performed for weeks - has no trouble dancing large, unlike MCB, which I've seen six times in recent weeks. MCB aims right, but this company hits the target more often, IMHO.

Just a couple of thoughts about amplified music at ballet performances - After the Jackie Gleason Theatre had for years subjected us in the MCB audience to the sort of boom-and-screech amplification we wouldn't want to have in our living rooms - granted, a theatre is a much bigger room to fill with sound than a living room is - the company hired its own sound engineer, who bought along his own amps, speakers, and skill - or sensibilities - and the sound the past two seasons has been so good I'm sometimes fooled into thinking there's an orchestra in the pit. Only the additional acoustic on the record, and some indistinctness in the bass, give a clue. My point, FWIW, is, in this day and age, theatre sound systems don't have to sound like early-50s phonographs. In the meantime, what can audience members do? Besides complain, that is. My way of coping is to use EAR "Grande" ear plugs (available in drug stores), which reduce sound - but do not eliminate it - pretty evenly across the spectrum from low to high, instead of muffling it like many kinds of earplugs do. For example, I used these to great advantage last year at the Joffrey Ballet's performances of "Les Noces" when they actually did have musicians in the pit of the acoustically-excellent Auditorium Theatre but amplified them anyway. (Some people sitting near me remarked that it hurt their ears.)

Yes, Peppermint, do, please, post more about the symposium! I would have been there, but (contrary to the sentiment in my signature line), I went to Florida to watch MCB premiere "Ballo" and "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" instead. (About which, more soon, I hope, but anyone else, go ahead and post about that!) Do you know about transcripts or, in this day and age, DVD's of the proceedings for those of us who weren't there? It's ironic, in this Age of Silver for programs of great interest to some of us Balanchinians, to have a conflict like that! (I mean, the Age of Gold was when he was running his own company and you could just pick some programs by their repertory and go and be delighted and amazed...)

It saddens me to say it, but that sounds like NYCB, all right...

(from Miami Beach, Florida) When we have a forum specifically devoted to a particular company, I'm not clear on where commentary on their performances should go, there or here, so I thought I would (modestly!) draw a little attention here to what I wrote about their Program I there: http://balletalert.ipbhost.com/index.php?s...showtopic=14261

Merrell has certainly been a good dancer if not quite in MCB's top rank as I see it, so I hope for your sake and hers she can resume all her roles by the time you see the company, Dale.

(from Miami Beach, Florida) No reports? Nobody there except the audience? Here are some of my responses - let's see what you think. I found Katia Carranza's spectacularly sharp approach to Balanchine's "Allegro Brilliante" Saturday evening (with Renato Penteado) was radically different from Deanna Seay's elegant and modest, fully developed, clear supple phrasing Friday (with her frequent partner, Carlos Guerra): You had to go to Seay, and when you did, you got this subtle rich flow of detail; but Carranza comes to you; with her the flow is brilliantly vivid and less subtle. Either way works for me, but differently, with what Balanchine heard in Tchaikovsky's score, and I enjoyed both very much. Sunday afternoon, the cast was lead by Ileana Lopez and Franklin Gamero, who may show less energy and elevation than some do but who compensate us with the amplitude and finish of their phrasing. The dancers always look good to me in Edward Villella and Frank Regan's new ballet, "Gismonti Brasil", which is more than I could say about a couple of premieres I saw about a year ago in Cincinnati, but Egberto Gismonti's atmospheric music's constant shifts of complexity, tempo, and volume without obvious motive seemed to me to thwart any sense of inevitability, in contrast to the Balanchine works, while providing it with continuous energy. The two choreographers seem to work pretty seamlessly together, however. That said, I found some tasty bits in it, nevertheless. For example, near the end, the music thinning to a solo guitar plinking a few high notes over a soft background (before the final build-up) had Michelle Merrell, in a low lift by Kenta Shimizu, executing a few neat little beats in synchrony; and Jennifer Kronenberg (with Yann Trividic, the second couple), shorter than Merrell but dancing larger and sharper, made whatever she did effective to the last row of the audience, I would estimate. The first couple we see are a manly duo, Luis Serrano and Jeremy Cox, symmetrical, complementary, confrontational. The colorful hand-painted costumes, by Haydee and Maria Morales, and the lighting by John Hall all mesh well; no matter how the dancers combine, the color scheme is attractive and revealing of the dancing. David Hays's projected palms and hairy ropes hanging overhead remind us the jungle is near. With Balanchine's "Sylvia Pas de Deux" to Delibes we are deep in civilization for cultivated virtuosic display, although Haydee Morales's frosty grey costumes don't seem to me to suit this strawberry-souffle' music. Never mind, on Friday Mary Carmen Catoya danced the faster tempos with great clarity and effect, and marvelously sustained the slow tempos of her variation, emanating, for me, a kind of aura. So this is the speed demon Villella is having "Ballo della Regina" staged for? Pretty fine adagio ability, too! Mikhail Ilyin was her fine partner. Saturday Ileana Lopez brought a smooth and soft approach (and some altered "text", I believe) to this; partnered by Kenta Shimizu, she was lighter than air, right from the first lifts. Sunday afternoon Deanna Seay achieved quite a feat in combining softness and lightness with quickness and clarity, giving her part a kind of largeness and spaciousness, while her generally fine partner, Carlos Guerra, was a little untidy in an "impossible"variations. That brings me to the main reason I traveled to Florida for this weekend, the company premiere of Balanchine's "Symphony in Three Movements", to Stravinsky's explosive score, staged by Bart Cook and Maria Calegari. In his pre-performance remarks, Villella had called this "grand ballet the twentieht century way - no tiaras", the large cast of 32 requiring the addition of six girls from the MCB school to fill out the corps of 16 in white belted leotards who famously open the ballet in a diagonal line as the curtain goes up and who close the first movement with a change of pose that progresses down that line as it re-forms. On Friday and Saturday, in the powerful and vigorous outer movements, Jennifer Kronenberg, in a red leotard, was excellent, with clear, firm phrasing, and Andrea Spiridonakos substituted quite satisfactorily for Michelle Merrell in an orange leotard which amused someone who saw the original production go through several color adjustments to the principal women's red or pink leotards - why is such a simple thing hard to get right? But I regret to say Tricia Albertson's smiling, willowy way with her part - second woman, in pink, which was what the old production settled on, I think - did not seem to me to be the best approach, especially in the long, pacific duet (with Jeremy Cox) which is the second movement. The details were there, but she just didn't look ready, and I suppose Merrell's inability to appear as scheduled (as third woman) may be the explanation. But smiles do happen, and when on Sunday afternoon Katia Carranza as first woman came sailing through the air out of the wing in her second entrance in the first movement, she smiled as though it were as much fun to do as it was to watch. The third couple this time was Patricia Delgado (still in orange), partnered by Kent Shimizu, outstanding among the principal men, whose correct, large clarity in a little solo was exactly what this part needed and earned him the hand he got from us. Best of all, there was Mary Carmen Catoya (with Luis Serrano), in pink, as the second woman: Every movement and pose she invested with powerful continuity and meaning, enlivening the entire second movement while making it all hang together, almost like one large phrase. With with this cast, "Symphony in Three Movements", "that 747 of a ballet", as Arlene Croce called it, took off at an exhiliratingly steep angle, and carried my spirits up with it!

I'd offer that some people conform to carbro's description, and some don't. And some experienced writers seem different people in different works, or different passages, even. Getting back to Farrell, in my limited experience of her speaking, she's been quite simple, direct, idiomatic, graceful, and unaffected. Is her dancing like that? Yes, but, more, there's a certain reckless energy in her dancing I don't notice in "her" writing. (Not that speaking and writing are the same thing, either.) Now if there is this difference, why? Bentley? Or that her dance training was a lot better than her writing training? Or, of course, both. I don't doubt for a minute that what she wanted said went into the book and what she wanted omitted was. But how it was said, the style, could well be different from what we see in her dancing.

I believe what I was told not long after Farrell returned to NYCB, that a lot of the problems the other dancers had had when she was there before were about Balanchine's trying to get them to dance like her, highly unusual for him, and that in her absence he had reverted to developing each dancer's abilities (according to his interests), and had not changed when she returned. I gathered the company had been in something of a slump, including the box office, when her return perked things up, prompting one of the dancers - I remember being told it was Teena McConnell - to comment, "Suzanne's coming back is the nicest thing she's done for us since she left!" But her relationship with Martins was sometimes clouded, as when he took to partnering her without looking at her, which presumably she knew and must have found disconcerting, to say the least. (I understand McConnell called this "Star Wars".) I remember we heaved a collective sigh of relief when this stopped, as mysteriously as it had begun. And his firing of her seemed to have been provoked by something critical about his running of NYCB she said in, I believe, an article by Don Daniels in "The New Yorker", which I have not been able to find, which she refers to in the introduction to the new, paperback edition of "Holding On to the Air", my copy of which I can't find either! So I can't be sure about this. (I tell myself I'm not "losing it", I'm just losing my library!) As to "revelations", I remember some people wanted hints about physical intimacy between her and Balanchine, which I strongly doubted had occured nor would be revealed if it had; nor did I care nearly as much about that sort of thing as about any insights into Balanchine's ways of working, or his thoughts about his ballets, she might include. Having heard her response to a question at a panel discussion soon after his death and still considering it the best statement I know of on the subject of the question ("What was Balanchine's theory of aesthetics?" or some such), I had some expectations, and her autobiography, while very taking on the personal level, exceeded my hopes that it might enliven my perceptions of his art. It does that every couple of pages! For me, then, no "revelations", exactly, but fresh discoveries, even about some things I had thought were familiar.

liebling, was that a commercially-available video, by any chance?

nysusan, I'm afraid my favorite "mom and pop" motels won't help you much, because they're easy walking distance from the beach rather than from the Broward Center, as the Riverside Hotel seemed to be when I finally located it on the map, but they are Robindale Suites, 15 units, 800-342-7109, and the Winterset, 29 units, 800-888-2639. I found them through their membership in the Superior Small Lodging association, which does not seem to have any members nearer the BCPA than the Isle of Venice, which isn't very near. There must be (land) taxis in Ft. Lauderdale; I've not noticed them, in contrast to New York. I usually rent a car for my stay. (Does staying on the Isle of Venice or some similar part of the extensive waterways on the east side of town and getting to the performances by water taxi appeal? I've never tried it myself.) I hope this helps at least some.

What a wealth of information already! What a great bunch you are! I looked at a room in the Abbey in January, and found elegant styling all right, but the top (third) floor at the back (southwest) corner, the furthest from the street corner the building stands on, was afflicted by a prodigious amount of rumble from the central-air-conditioning equipment on the roof, so, glebb and Vicarmac, I'd like to know where and when you stayed there. Certainly the immediate neighborhood seemed pretty quiet, at least at dinner time, when I was there. I especially appreciate comments about neighborhoods, because I am just a little famiiar with Ocean Drive and Collins around First and Second Streets, having stayed at the Century down there. (It's been just acceptable as to quiet, usually.)

BW (and anyone else), would you like to have another look at my post above? It's now more like what it should have been in the first place, and in the meantime I've been able to identify the two dancers as well. In other words, I think it's up to regular BA standards!

Well, I've been straightened out on this one. Paul, would you like to post an email address for those of us interested in your videos to reply to?

Paul, I tried both to e-mail you and to send you a private message about these videos via this board but it looks to me like you need to fill in some information somewhere, in your profile or to enable the PM system. Can you (and perhaps our marvelously indefatigable hostess Alexandra) straighten this - or me - out?

At least some of the MCB fans who post here travel some distance to see the company. Would you like to compare notes on places to stay, for example in South Beach? I've yet to find a place there that's as quiet as the "mom and pop" motels I use in Ft. Lauderdale. Or can you all sleep anywhere, or, worse, are you all like the New Yorker who couldn't sleep in the country because it was too quiet?

If mere anticipation isn't enough fun, here's a promo video clip: Go to http://www.calpolyarts.org/asps/AllPerform...ms.asp#Event659, scroll about 40% of the way down the page until you spot two of Farrell's dancers (Jennifer Chipman and Kirsten Bloom in "Movements for Piano and Orchestra" in Paul Kolnik's photo), and then click on the video link at the left. It runs about 10 or 15 seconds at most. This would be a nice souvenir, but a Mac expert I know tried to save it and could not, so it may be available only at the website and until the performance. If others have better luck saving this, let's hear about it, and about how you did it! [Edited on Sep 6, 2003 to correct the anchor, among other things. (The link now works.) Apologies to readers of my previous hasty, sloppy post, and thanks to BW for getting my attention about it!]

Has anyone else noticed the revised schedule at http://www.miamicityballet.org/mcbdev/ps_s...h_florida.shtml ? "A Midsummer Night's Dream I" has been replaced by "Symphony in C", no less! What do you think of that? Does somebody at MCB read our discussions and take them to heart, or is this another example of how great minds run on the same track? Whatever, I think it's a considerable improvement, not that I don't like MSND I better than II, though I'd like to see the concluding divertissements to fill out the overall form properly. I agree with the discussion of this above. Now, IIRC, "Sinatra Songs" is in black costumes, so we have a black-and-white evening, although it remains to be seen whether they think that's an angle to promote. But there's another aspect, for me: A few years ago, Villella told us before a performance he had wanted to mount "Symphony in C" in celebration of the completion of MCB's new building, the Roca Center, but instead he was being forced to let some dancers go because the company's financial situation was so bad. Now he is getting what he wanted, and I for one am glad for him.