Kathleen O'Connell

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. 

1 minute ago, BalanchineFan said:

I added last week's cast.

Thank you! I'm always interested in how the company casts these roles!

5 hours ago, meunier fan said:

If only they could find singers who were at least adequate.

New York is stuffed full of talented musicians looking for work. I cannot for the life of me understand why NYCB can't find a vocal quartet that can do Liebeslieder justice.  Last night's quartet was uneven at best: if I'd been there for the music alone, I would have walked out because life is just too short.    

(Apologies for sounding harsh: I sing with an amateur chorus; we've performed the first set of Liebeslieder Walzer several times and it's not particularly difficult.)

The dancing, however, was glorious. All the young'uns in 4Ts did themselves and the company proud.

I have a few quibbles about the Liebeslieder casting, but they are only quibbles. (e.g. Chamblee is too tall for Woodward. Both he and Chan need more experience with their respective roles to turn them into theater.) I wasn't sure LaFreniere's particular talents would be suited to Liebeslieder, but she danced a lovely and secure debut. Laracey was born to dance Liebeslieder as far as I'm concerned. Mearns looked much more at home on stage than she did earlier in the season, and I consider her only dialing things up to nine or ten rather than eleven a welcome development: there was lots of nuance where there has sometimes been bombast in the past.  If I hadn't known it was Woodward's debut, I would never have guessed. Finally, Liebeslieder is a wonderful fit for late-career Angle and Vedette: they do know how to turn partnering into drama. 

For those keeping score, here's how the Liebeslieder casting sorted out:

Verdy's role: LaFreniere (w/ T. Angle)

Jillana's role: Laracey (w/ Veyette)

Adams' role: Mearns (w/ Chan)

Hayden's role: Woodward (w/ Chamblee)

12 hours ago, vipa said:

I think they should drop this work.

I gather I am the only person in the greater New York metropolitan area who actually likes Rotunda. I wouldn't move heaven and earth to get to a performance of it, but I'm always happy to see it on the program.

Ulbricht did really shine in the role Peck made for Gonzalo Garcia—I probably would make a trip to the Theater Formerly Known as State to see him in it again. It was a late-career gift for Garcia, and it's now one for Ulbricht, too.

16 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

No doubt I have an inadequate machine, but scanning anything fills me with dread.  It's something I do only when absolutely necessary. Do you keep a file that tells you which ballets you saw on which day? I

It helps to have good tools. I use a fast desktop document scanner with a proper sheet feeder and excellent OCR capabilities, not a phone or a multi-function printer-scanner-fax machine. I archive the scans using a document database application with very powerful search capabilities. I can easily search through my trove of program scans for obvious things like a particular choreographer, ballet, dancer, date, etc. I can also search for combinations like choreographer + dancer + composer. I've even searched for particular costume designers. The program also allows me to attach searchable notes to the scans, so I can add a quick note about anything that seems worth memorializing about a particular program. (I download and archive NYCB's casting sheets as a reference as well.)

I've been regularly attending performances of every kind—music, dance, theater, whatever—for decades. There's no way I could keep track of who I'd seen in what when if I was trying to do so with paper files unless I kept one of those elaborately indexed journals. Plus, I live in a Manhattan apartment without a ready place to store programs numbering in the thousands. For me, digitizing is the way to go.

45 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

There is no longer a printed record of company membership, and it's suddenly impossible to determine who danced in the company in the previous season and at which rank, particularly if performers of a large ensemble in a piece are identified only as "artists of the ballet."

I've gotten into the habit of simply saving a copy of the webpage that list company members at the beginning of each season. I prefer that to keeping copies of the paper programs. I also scan the program pages with the cast lists—and only those pages—and store them on my hard drive for future reference.

16 hours ago, cobweb said:

This was one area where I admired what Martins did.  There was more fluidity in assigning roles to promising young dancers under his tenure than under the current admin.

I think Martins' record on identifying and nurturing promising young dancers is decidedly mixed. For every Sara Mearns who was ready for the challenge of being thrust into a big principal role from the back of the corps, there's three more who were pushed to prominence in haste and abandoned in leisure. I think many of the dancers he did this to were indeed very promising, but were almost set up to fail by being thrown into big roles—sometimes a lot of them—that they didn't really have the technical or artistic chops for.  Martins liked to make a fuss over some new corps member or other every season, but seemed less interested in nurturing their artistry into full bloom afterwards. 

10 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said:

I'm all for new venues. Where would you put yours?

I would ask the good folks at the Regional Plan Association where the optimal location for such a theater might be to best serve the tri-state audience and minimize any negative impact and / or generate a positive impact on the community surrounding it.

(From the RPA website: "RPA is an independent non-profit civic organization that develops and promotes ideas to improve the economic health, environmental resiliency, and quality of life of the New York metropolitan area. RPA conducts research on the environment, land use, and good governance, and advises cities, communities, and public agencies.")

On 1/14/2024 at 5:59 PM, Drew said:

I well remember the days when, as @Helene wrote, "you couldn't see from any seat in City Center" [my italics]--but even after that problem was addressed the sight-lines and comfort of the theater never seemed to me to compare with the State Theater (aka Koch).

As much as I appreciate NYCC as a designated landmark and for its place in performing arts history, I grit my teeth every time I buy tickets for a performance there. The sight lines are suboptimal at best and, because the house is so shallow, the viewing angle is too steep from any seat not in the orchestra. Too many of the seats on the sides are effectively partial view (but aren't billed as such). If I were a billionaire, I'd build NYC the 1800 - 2000 seat performing arts theater that it deserves.

On 12/29/2023 at 12:48 PM, BalanchineFan said:

It was a small thing, but when Kikta ran away from him he would just stand there and look at her until she came back.

I've occasionally seen men in the corps very visibly lock their gaze on their own partner when the men are standing on the sides and back and the women are dancing in a group in the center. It's a lovely piece of theater, and suggests that these are real people dancing with each other, not just cogs in the choreography.

I realized Bolden was more than just the big guy in the back row when he danced the male Sanguinic lead in 4Ts a few seasons back. I had no idea he was that fast and precise—and he is, of course, a total and delightful stage animal.

20 hours ago, California said:

Those unrestricted grants are probably shoring up the operating budget.

Yes. Unrestricted grants are extremely valuable precisely because the organization can use the funds to help cover the operating budget. It is not at all unusual for grantors and donors to place restrictions on what the funds they provide can be used for, which is fine so long as the organization in question actually needs or has the capacity to spend money on that particular thing. But if you've been given a grant to, say, commission a new work you can't use those funds to pay your stage hands for repertory performances even if that's a more pressing need than putting on a new ballet.

47 minutes ago, vipa said:

From what I've read about Balanchine, and what people who worked with him have told me, the thing he hated was phony emoting

Some critic—I think it was Arlene Croce—referred to a certain type of ballerina emoting as the "such sweet agony" affect.

12 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

Regarding the “facial expression” issue, I wish we had a larger word to describe it. To me, it’s a question of performance; how a dancer performs onstage other than doing the steps, other than their musicality. I find it’s much deeper than deciding when to smile.

In some cases, I think it's a sign that the dancer's artistic imagination isn't at the level of their technique—i.e., that they're in the steps, but not in the role. Dance is theater—a performing art—and no matter how abstract the ballet, a dancer can never be nobody.

2 hours ago, deanofdance said:

though I wish her smile didn’t seem so pasted on, but that’s just me

Oh, it's not just you. I think she maybe overthinking her "performance face."

6 hours ago, Belka said:

Is it unusual for a dancer to dance all of the pieces in a mixed bill?

Not at all. I've seen any number of performances where someone in the corps dances in every piece on the program.

9 minutes ago, Peg said:

I suspect that PC2 has been moved at Tiler Peck’s request.

I hadn't been thinking of this specific reason, but my idle speculation is that either someone involved with TP2 has to leave early or someone involved with Apollo his having trouble getting to the theater.

1 hour ago, Fleurfairy said:

I tend to think of Liberty Bell as a soubrette role, so I don't understand the casting of Nadon.

I've enjoyed both Sara Mearns and Teresa Reichlen in the role, and neither are soubrettes. 

On 8/28/2023 at 5:44 PM, matilda said:

Overall I'm a little worried about her [Mearns] lack of size/height-suitable partners moving forward.

IMO the dancer whose sheer physical scale matches Mearns' the best is Gilbert Bolden III. He partnered her in Peck's 2020 ballet Rotunda, and I thought they looked terrific together. Based on what I saw Bolden do as one of the leads in the Sanguinic section of Four Temperaments, he just might be up to the challenge of TPC2.