Kathleen O'Connell

5 hours ago, dirac said:

That’s been the case for years, alas. As Joan Acocella has said, most recently to Ballet Review, for a long time she couldn't find much to engage her in what was going on. While I understand that some dance eras are less inspiriting than others, I often wished that if such were the case, the magazine might consider making room for a dance critic who was actually interested in the dance beat. 

Acocella needs to get out more. 

23 hours ago, Drew said:

 

 Still I can understand finding that pas de deux in particular unbalances the ballet as a narrative. Especially since those dancers don't appear elsewhere as part of the divertissement celebration. It may sort of feel as if it springs up out of nowhere. (It's not as if we see the lovers watching the pas de deux qua divertissement either: it just sort of "is.") But I wouldn't exactly prefer the ballet without it!

 

In the 1966 film version, the Divertissement pas takes place in front of Theseus' whole court.

I prefer it as we see it at NYCB now, with the Divertissement couple dancing alone in whatever Empyrean realm is their true home. I'd lose all of the rest of Balanchine just to keep the Divertissement pas-de-deux, frankly.

I have never been able to warm to Ashton's version, but I think that's mostly because I hate how he sliced and diced Mendelssohn's score up into leitmotifs.

Here's a quote from the chapter on the Judson school and allied movements in Deborah Jowitt's (excellent!) "Time and the Dancing Image" that makes a similar point, but without the loaded "corny":

"[Carolee] Schneemann was deprecating what many in the dance world praised: that by the fifties, modern dance had built conventions as elaborate as those of ballet. The most popular and most copied styles tended to present the dancer as tragic hero, suffering victim, pawn of passion, celestial acrobat." [p. 310]

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear this! Brown was one of my favorite choreographers. I was saddened to learn in 2012 that she would no longer be making dances due to illness and that her company would stop performing, and further saddened to learn that her company would cease performing her "proscenium" works in 2016. Now I'm even sadder. 

13 hours ago, abatt said:

 

Hi cobweb. I agree with you about Troy.  He's been in the corps for over a decade, and I'm having trouble remembering a single role he performed.   

Schumacher is a very winning Puck, and my personal favorite among the current crop. (Although I will add that Harrison Ball's debut made me see the role with new eyes. I do want to see him in the role again ...) 

Congrats, and well deserved all around! 

NYCB's Carabosse is young, beautiful, larger-than-life, and, most important of all, very glamorous. I'd be shocked if Mearns didn't shine in the role. 

And the role hasn't been reserved for dancers near the end of their careers with diminishing technical resources. Merrill Ashley, the role's originator, retired seven years after the ballet's 1991 premiere; she may have been in the afternoon of her career, but she was hardly on her way out the door. By way of a recent example, Marika Anderson took on the role a few seasons ago (and was wonderful).

In a drug-free society, which substances are OK and which aren't? Who decides and on what basis? Is a zero-tolerance drug testing regime the best way to address the real problems of abuse and addiction? 

Ideally, anyone who was drug-dependent would have access to effective treatment programs and would be both encouraged to use them and supported while they did. 

An aside: anti-doping programs are not the same as anti-drug programs. 

Let's leave aside fascism and police states for the moment and focus on more practical matters. In sports, drug testing and enforcement regimes are generally designed, administered, adjudicated, and funded by private or semi-private organizational bodies such as the IOC, professional sports leagues, etc. that have effective control over sport or athletic even in question. The stakeholders — league officials, player's unions, team owners — have a say in the program's structure, what happens in the event of a violation, and the avenues for appeal. 

What international body could design, establish, run, and enforce a drug testing or anti-doping regime for dance? The professional ballroom competition body mentioned in the article is akin to a sports league and can offer up the same kind of carrots and sticks. What would induce a dance company to sign up for an anti-doping regime? What are the carrots? What are the sticks? Who will pay for it? Who will run it?

Yes, resources should be directed towards artists' health and wellbeing. As in universal, affordable health care, including mental health and substance abuse programs. 

Drug testing alone will do nothing to address dancers' health. 

And, keep in mind that a number of states prohibit employee drug testing without cause. 

Fair and effective drug testing regimes are expensive to design, implement, and maintain, both in terms of blood and treasure. The arts have better things to do with their scarce resources.

Educate by all means — and that means ADs, administrators, and board members as well as the dancers. 

Sigh. I still miss the Orzas. 

21 hours ago, Dale said:

 

I think the most telling line of the NYCB letter is not that Alberda is a distraction by taking these photos (as the executive claims) but that by doing so he's "amassed an immense archive of photographs of NYCB." Very interesting.

 

"Amassed an immense archive" does sound like someone in management been in consultation with their intellectual property rights attorneys. I'd be interested to know the financial and rights-related terms under which other photographers* are given access to the company and its dancers. For instance, does the company have final say over which images can and cannot be sold, exhibited, or otherwise made available to the public? Does it retain any financial interest in the images themselves? (Henry Leutwyler's work with the company had the air of a joint project, for instance.) The issue may not be the immensity of the archive so much as the fact that the company doesn't have much if any control over it.

The shame of it is, Alberda's photos are immensely flattering to both the company and its dancers. Maybe they should just hire him already.  (But he shouldn't stop dancing! He's a delight to watch, always.)

* By which I mean photographers who have not been hired to produce marketing and promotional materials or archival images.

No worries! 

And I can see why the people who have gone above and beyond to help those fleeing horrors most of us can't even imagine would be deemed worthy of an award (although giving them some concrete assistance with their efforts would be a good thing, too). 

I was pleased to see Santos' efforts recognized, although less for his sake than for Colombia's generally. I've been there; it's a gorgeous place and the people I met and worked with there couldn't have been more welcoming. It broke my heart to see what decades of violence can do to a country.

I believe Santos was awarded the prize for his efforts to negotiate a peace deal with the FARC, rather than for a struggle against them. I'm not sure I understand why the award would be controversial, although it would certainly have seemed more on point had the referendum to authorize the peace agreement had gone the other way. 

1 hour ago, canbelto said:

I can't decide whether I like Reichlen better in Rubies as Tall Girl or as Diamonds. I loved the purity and elegance of her line in Diamonds, but I also love her iconic Tall Girls. 

Here's how I think about it: I'm a big fan of Reichlen's Diamonds ballerina, but I fully expect to see other dancers shine as brightly in the role, both now and in the future. I don't expect to ever see Reichlen's equal in Rubies, however: she's practically the Platonic ideal of the Tall Girl. 

Now that I've sorted out how to use the "My Activity Streams" options on the content tab, I'm actually pretty happy with the upgraded version. I've set up a custom "New Content" stream with the parameters of my choosing, bookmarked it, plunked it down on my "Favorites" page and am good to go. 

And again, many thanks to Helene for both handling the upgrade and fielding our concerns.

2 hours ago, Ashton Fan said:

 I do not think that Valses Nobles would benefit from having new designs. So far every attempt to redesign  Ashton's ballets has proved to be a complete and unmitigated disaster. Rather than refreshing them the redesigns have left the redesigned ballets in a state far worse than they were with the original designs.

As far the performances at the Joyce are concerned it could be that you saw the wrong cast or part cast. In some of the ballets on show, the company is fielding three casts for some roles. People who know what Ashton's ballets should look like in performance were pretty impressed by the company's revival of Valses Nobles in 2014 so it does not sound as if it is the choreography or the designs which are the problem.

 

 

If not new designs, then perhaps better-executed versions of the originals. It is both a blessing and a curse that one can see EVERYTHING at the Joyce, including less than ideal production elements. By way of an example specific to Valse Nobles: the women's long white gloves were ill-fitting, which to my eye shouted "second-tier" even though I found the dancers very respectable, both as dancers qua dancers and as ambassadors of a specific style. (I'm no Ashton expert, but it seemed clear to me that the dancers were being particularly attentive to his way of using the upper body.)

I agree that honoring a ballet's original production designs has its merits, but surely we don't need to freeze ballets in amber to be true to them. I liked Valse Nobles just fine. Yes, it looks its age, but so does a lot of Balanchine, frankly. (Heck, so does a lot of art in general.) That being said, to my eye Sarasota's production didn't translate well to the Joyce: it looked fussy and airless there, and that rubbed off on the performance as a whole, despite the choreography and the dancers' evident commitment to it. 

Evening got off with" Valses Nobles and Sentimentales," which for me looked a bit fussy and cramped. The costumes were overpowering to the work and denied us the ability to see some of the details of the choreography. Perhaps if performed on a larger stage than that of the Joyce the dancers could have moved out a bit more.

I was there Wednesday as well. The Joyce has the unfortunate effect of making certain flavors of choreography look dinky, and I think "Valse Nobles and Sentimentales"—or at least this particular production of it—is a prime example. (The pas de deux from Balanchine's "Diamonds," presented at the Joyce by the Suzanne Farrell Ballet a few years ago, is another.) I don't know if it's the low proscenium or the relative shallowness and steepness of the auditorium itself, but I think it's more than just the tight confines of the stage—something there wrecks works with a particular sort of "perfume." Some works look absolutely splendid there, though. For whatever reason, the Trocks manage to make everything they perform at the Joyce look big as life and twice as natural, but theirs is a carefully and cannily crafted theatricality.

I actually found the Sarasota men more interesting and individual than the women.

PS: I would actually like to see the Trocks perform "Valse Nobles and Sentimentales." All joking aside (and I'm not exactly joking about the Trocks) I saw a lot in the ballet that I liked and I liked a lot of what Sarasota's dancers were doing with it, but I'd like to see them do it in a better theater with better costumes and sets, and, of course, live music.

Thank you for the link, balletomane!

Helene, many, many thanks for the work you do to keep Ballet Alert up and running!

... and please take however much time you need to toggle the switches. (I'm imagining the html version of the space shuttle's flight deck.)

The only dancer in current memory that defies all that I just said was Marianela Nunez from the Royal. She seemed to be a nice fit for ABT when she guested here. And Cojocuru. Well, it's an endless argument.

Well on this point you'll get no argument from me. Nuñez and Cojocaru both seemed to fit into the overall proceedings nicely.

Pretty much any leading ballerina from the Kirov, Bolshoi, POB, Royal, etc. would be better than the incessant parade of Boylston, Seo, Copland, etc. Maybe it's just me, I don't know, but financially the season was a disaster, and that's not an personal opinion, but a fact. And my feeling is that it will get much worse before it gets any better.

Our tastes differ, which is fine, of course. I much prefer Boylston to Somova or Zakharova, for instance. I find that the latter two ballerinas seem focussed on presenting the audience with extreme extensions and hypercurved geometries at the expense of musicality and line. (And in fairness to them, perhaps they have been coached to do so.) Although Boylston's legs and feet have a bit more of an "S" curve to them than I personally find ideal (I like a straight leg and don't get me started on winged feet), I like the way she phrases her dancing and very much appreciate the sureness and musicality her attack. Her dancing isn't conventionally pretty, but I don't much care about prettiness.

Also, repertory matters. I certainly wouldn't want to see ABT fly a Somova over to perform any of its Balanchine, Ashton, or Tharp ballets. (Semionova makes shapes to die for, but she was as dull as dishwater in Theme and Variations.)

ETA: As far as I'm concerned, the fact that ABT won't be able to easily airlift in some random Russian to dance Aurora in Ratmansky's version of Sleeping Beauty is a feature, not a bug.

For the record, I want to see Boylston, who I rather like.

Forgive my bluntness, but there's no Ulanova, no Guillem, no Maximova, no Fonteyn, not even Makarova in sight.

Hmmm ... I don't think any of those ballerinas are available, even if McKenzie were of a mind to fly them over.

Who would you like to see him import?