Kathleen O'Connell

1 hour ago, abatt said:

Corti debuting as Tall Girl.

Based on what I've seen her do this season, I think she's a good candidate for the Rubies Tall Girl. 

11 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said:

I agree with the assessment that the woman is carried around a lot and doesn't LOOK like she has agency, but the woman works plenty in partnering.

Oh, I didn't think for a moment that the ballerina isn't working hard to create the illusion that she's being swept across the stage without any impetus of her own! It's the illusion itself—that everything she does is initiated and controlled by her partner—I find irksome. The fact that her partner is something of a cipher himself complicates things for me even further. 

6 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

I'm at a loss to understand why a ballerina would want to dance this (or the After the Rain duet or DGV)

In fairness, there can—and should—be differences of opinion regarding the artistic merit of a given ballet or a choreographer's entire oeuvre. I find much of Wheeldon's work to be pretty hooey at best (e.g. Liturgy), and in certain cases (e.g., Estancia) rotten at its core, but people whose judgment I respect view it much more positively. Where I see a choreographer learning all the wrong things from the Agon pas de deus (and nothing at all from the Brasnle Gay), they see a thoughtful artist ringing changes on a "House of Balanchine" neoclassicism that had grown sterile. 

Judging from the thunderous applause This Bitter Earth received both times I saw it last week, the audience responds to Wheeldon's work with enthusiasm, and that must be very gratifying to the dancers who perform it. And, as @deanofdance pointed out earlier in this thread, Phelan looked at her best in it. (Wheeldon's men are always ciphers, but Veyette did his best to be more than a porteur.) Perhaps she found something in the choreography to spark her own imagination and reveal it through her dancing. 

I think @deanofdance and I will have to (respectfully!) agree to disagree re Law of Mosaics, which I've seen four times and absolutely adore, and This Bitter Earth which I've seen four times too many and definitely don't adore. I'd have preferred to have ditched This Bitter Earth in exchange for ALL of Herman Schmerman, but of course one's mileage may vary ...

This Bitter Earth irks me for the same reason that much of Wheeldon's work irks me: he seems determined to strip ballerinas of their agency. The female lead is variously swirled across the stage, toted hither and thither, or held in a vice grip. When she's released to dance on her own, she invariably mirrors the male lead's steps. Worst of all, there's a moment when he rather forcibly grabs her arms and choreographs them for her. (It occurs at about 4:55 in the video here.) IMO, it's pretty, but only on the surface. 

By contrast, the other three ballets on the program (Law of Mosaics, Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux, and Love Letter on Shuffle) all cut their women loose. 

Anyway, here's Tiler and Tyler in Herman Schmerman and here's Ruby Lister in Law of Mosaics. I wish there were a video of Miriam Miller's long solo, danced to silence, during which she gets to thwack the stage as loud as she might like with her toe shoes or Sara Mearns' beautiful barefoot solo during which she cycles through many of the mime gestures from (I think) Sleeping Beauty. Or Gilbert Bolden's rock solid, sky high pencheés. (Sign him up for the Rubies Tall Girl! 😉)

19 hours ago, bellawood said:

Alec Knight’s hair is now full on ‘70s Peter Martins,

And it looks great! (If you squint, he looks like Ib Anderson.) I'm ready for a revival of 70s danseur hair—time to ditch those shellacked pompadours we've endured for too many decades.

I think Gilbert Bolden III is more than ready for a promotion to principal, not the least because he takes center stage like he was born to be there.

Congrats to Emma Von Enck! She absolutely lights up the stage and her dancing is just a sheer delight to witness—it's a welcome and well deserved promotion.

12 hours ago, deanofdance said:

Love Letter — so much depends on casting

Just comparing the cast lists for this season's performances of Love Letter (on shuffle) with those from its premiere to its March performances in London, it looks as if two male roles have been dropped or combined. There were 16 dancers cast in the work up until this season, nine women and seven men. The cast for this week's performances has nine women, but only five men. I have no idea what got changed or swapped around, but it certainly didn't seem like there were too few dancers on stage. 😉 And ... I'm going to guess that Abraham had planned on casting Stanley from the get-go. 

Here's the original cast for the ballet's 2022 premiere:

1. Harrison Ball
2. Jacqueline Bologna
3. Naomi Corti
4. Jonathan Fahoury
5. Christopher Grant
6. Emily Kikta
7. Claire Kretzschmar
8. Ruby Lister
9. Malorie Lundgren
10. Alexa Maxwell
11. Tiler Peck
12. Mckenzie Bernardino Soares
13. Quinn Starner
14. Sebastián Villarini-Vélez
15. Peter Walker
16. Cainan Weber

Here's the cast for the London performances in 2022:

1. Olivia Boisson
2. Jacqueline Bologna
3. Naomi Corti
4. Christopher Grant
5. Emily Kikta
6. Ruby Lister
7. Malorie Lundgren
8. Jules Mabie
9. Alexa Maxwell
10. Roman Mejia
11. Tiler Peck,
12. Mckenzie Bernardino Soares
13. Taylor Stanley
14. Quinn Starner
15. Peter Walker
16. Cainan Weber

Here's last night's cast:

1. Olivia Bell
2. Olivia Boisson
3. Jacqueline Bologna
4. Naomi Corti
5. Emily Kikta
6. Ruby Lister
7. Malorie Lundgren
8. Jules Mabie
9. Mckenzie Bernardino Soares
10. Taylor Stanley
11. Quinn Starner
12. KJ Takahashi
13. Kennedy Targosz
14. Peter Walker

Twelve high-definition videos of prior years' Summerscape Opera performances at Bard College's Fischer Center are now available to stream on demand here. 

Summerscape Opera programs lesser-known works by both well-known and out-of-the-mainstream composers, and the production values are uniformly high. Here's what's on offer:

Die Liebe der Danae
Richard Strauss (2011)

Le roi malgré lui (The King in Spite of Himself)
Emmanuel Chabrier (2012)

Oresteia
Sergey Taneyev (2013)

Euryanthe
Carl Maria Von Weber (2014)

The Wreckers
Ethel Smyth (2015)

Iris
Pietro Mascagni (2016)

Dimitrij
Antonín Dvořák (2017)

Demon
Anton Rubinstein (2018)

The Miracle of Heliane (Das Wunder der Heliane)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (2019)

King Arthur (Le roi Arthus)
Ernest Chausson (2021)

The Silent Woman (Die Schweigsame Frau)
Richard Strauss (2022)

Henri VIII
Camille Saint-Saëns (2023)
 

7 minutes ago, cobweb said:

I will really, REALLY miss Harrison Ball's Puck. 😔

I miss Ball in everything, but especially in Midsummer as Puck. His Puck is not some jolly sprite you'd like to have a beer with: he's genuinely otherworldly. 

2 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

The crayola Per Kirkeby sets and costumes could be sent to the New Jersey landfill.

Never has Renaissance Italy looked more dinky. 

34 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said:

I was thinking of Unframed! Choreography by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.

Here's a video about the creation of the costumes—which are very different at the beginning of the ballet—featuring designer Rosie Assoulin, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and Marc Happel. 

The costumes for Paul Taylor's Brief Encounters have a similar vibe, although the dancers are dressed that way right from the start. The Taylor dancers really do look like they're dancing in their (very utilitarian) underwear. Assoulin's costumes, with their white waistbands, look a bit more like athletic attire to me—especially the women's, which aren't all that dissimilar from what elite marathon runners wear. I'm less troubled by them than by the babydoll is-it-a-nightie-or-is-it-a-slip that Martins' Juliet has to skitter around in while everyone else remains fully clothed. 

Hmmm ... now that I think about it, I may need to add Martins' Swan Lake and Romeo+Juliet to the list of NYCB art crimes. 

1 hour ago, BalanchineFan said:

Which ballet was it where they wore Calvin Klein underwear and all the women had their hair down?

I don't remember an actual ballet like that, but there was a video campaign featuring Calvin Klein designs that I might classify as athleisure wear.

8 hours ago, mille-feuille said:

Call Me Ben was truly terrible. My top City Ballet stinker is definitely Bartok Ballet.

 I think I'll reserve the top honor for Boris Eifman's Musagète . Call Me Ben was bad, but misguided bad, not diseased-at-its-core bad.

I happen to like all of the Tanowitz works in NYCB's rep and buy tickets to see them whenever they're programed. I vastly prefer them to any Peter Martins ballet, all of which could be scrubbed from the rep without undue effect, IMO. 

11 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

I didn’t think Boisson’s role in Underneath was particularly big, however.

Even though everyone in the cast did a lot of dancing—and there was definitely a lot of dancing—and quite a few dancers got their moment in the spotlight, it's not the kind of ballet that has "big" roles in, say, the Symphony in C sense of a big role. Since I'm a longtime Boisson fan I was watching her closely; she was indeed assured, elegant (as is her wont), and lovely, but it didn't seem like a role that was made on Woodward. I'm not saying just anyone could dance it, but it certainly doesn't require Woodward.

I don't really remember anything about Von Enck's role either! And, to be clear, this is not a knock on Von Enck: the standout dancers were standouts more for the opportunities they were given rather than their dancing per se, because everyone danced very, very well. I think Corti, M. T. MacKinnon, and Sheffel among the women and Bolden and Chan among the men got particularly memorable stage time. 

An aside: M. T. MacKinnon has really impressed me this season; she looked great in In Creases too. I hope we get to see more of her. And more of Boisson, too.

5 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

Bald men?

Judging from Wednesday's performance of DAAG it looks like Tyler Angle might be adding a goatee to his current look, which is just fine by me. His shaved head looked better than fine in DAAG, although I'll admit to finding it a bit jarring when paired with a jeweled tunic.

I'd love to see NYCB's men drop the shellacked pompadour altogether, and I don't think some facial hair would be out-of-place in more than a few ballets either. A few of the younger corps men have appeared onstage sporting absolutely glorious untamed mops, and I'm here for it.

7 hours ago, deanofdance said:

DAAG - I forgot how long this ballet seems to go on — it’s the never ending ballet!

Arlene Croce observed that she'd like DAAG to be 15 minutes shorter, but not the same 15 minutes every time.

1 hour ago, BalanchineFan said:

My reaction would have been different if it said, factually, “Martins ran NYCB for 35 years.”

Yes! Thirty five years running a world-renowned arts organization is nothing to sneeze at! It's an accomplishment in its own right. I don't have much enthusiasm for Martins' choreography nor for some of his choices as AD, but there's no gainsaying that the company continued to be a great one under his leadership.

5 minutes ago, NinaFan said:

It is a fact that Martins ran the company for 35 years which just happens to be the same amount of time as Mr. B

I think "just happens to be" is the key point: while there's surely something meaningful in the fact that Martins ran the company for 35 years, there is nothing particularly meaningful in it's being the same amount of time that Balanchine ran the company. It could have been more; it could have been less. What matters is what happened during Martins' tenure, what impact it had on the legacy Balanchine left him, and what his own legacy is. 

To my ears, the statement suggests that Martins is somehow equivalent to Balanchine because both men ran NYCB for the same number of years, hence my eye roll, at least. 

On 4/4/2024 at 6:57 PM, BalanchineFan said:

“Peter Martins ran NYCB for 35 years, the same tenure as Balanchine.”

🙄

Millard Fillmore* James Buchanan was US President for four years, the same tenure as John Adams.

*OOPS. Although he is listed as a one-term president, Fillmore did not serve a full four-year term. James Buchanan did complete a full four year term; he ranked as the worst US President in a 2021 survey of historians conducted by C-SPAN.

On 3/10/2024 at 12:20 PM, Fleurfairy said:

And it’s very anti-Balanchine who was all about giving young dancers big chances and fast promotions.

But Balanchine did slow promotions,too—Merrill Ashley's, for example. And, as Ashley points out in her memoir, he let his ballerinas keep their roles even when an up-and-comer—which Ashley was at the time—demonstrated that they could more than handle a role a senior dancer had lain claim to. (In this particular case, Square Dance. "Is Kay's ballet" Balanchine told Ashley when she asked if she could dance it again after subbing for Mazzo.)

32 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said:

Do you realize that you can exchange subscription tickets for other dates? I believe we have up until 24 hour prior to the original performance. You could even choose a spring performance or take a credit for next year. 

I exchange my subscription tickets so often I think I've sat in my subscribed seats at the subscription program about three times in the past decade. 

14 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

I wonder if Daniel Ulbricht will do Rotunda. He was so fabulous!

He was! At the performance I saw he poured everything and more into the role, and, kudos to Peck, it was capacious enough to hold it all. He danced De Luz's role in Odesa at the same performance, and was magnificent. I hope the company will give us more of this Ulbricht and lets him hand the jester roles off to the next generation. Not that he can't do those roles justice, but the current level of artistry in his dancing is too rich to be limited to them.

22 hours ago, vipa said:

What are they thinking? 

Probably budget.

That being said, I happen to like every single work on the program and would cheerfully trot on uptown to The Theater Formerly Known as State to see it. 

6 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said:

no one dips as low as Patricia McBride in Nein Geliebter

I cried every time I saw Whelan and Hübbe dance Nein Geliebter. No one has matched them since.