Kathleen O'Connell

I will be moderating the October New Dance Commissions program; I hope to see some of you there!

This one?

NEW DANCE COMMISSIONS

The Music of Elliott Carter Interpreted

New Choreography by Emery LeCrone and Avi Scher

October 2, 3

Yay! Elliott Carter! He'll be just a couple of months shy of 103 in October, so I suppose the great man himself won't show up, but it would be wonderful if he did ... he was still composing stuff as recently as 2010.

Leigh -- do you know which pieces LeCrone and Sher are setting their dances to?

I like Lilac Fairy in heels. It sets her apart from the other fairies. When she's on pointe, her dancing is compared to the Aurora's, and that's often to her great disadvantage.

I've never seen one live, but I do very much like the effect of the Lilac Fairy in heels in the Dutch National Ballet's 2004 Sleeping Beauty DVD (the one with Sofiane Sylve as Aurora). I wouldn't have expected this, but I think that she actually has more authority, not less, which is at least partly due to the very grand gown and headdress she gets to wear since she's not on pointe. The match up with Carabosse--who is also a beautiful (and beautifully gowned) woman in this version--is very interesting theatrically, too. They really do seem like rival queens. I wouldn't want to see the Lilac Fairy danced that way every time, but I'd definitely like to see it that way some of the time. One of the DVD's extras is a lovely film in which the ins-and-outs of the mime is carefully explained to some lucky schoolchildren.

One thing that really struck me while watching one the RDB's recent performances of La Sylphide in NY is just how powerful pointe work is as a dramatic and expressive device when it's used (relatively) sparingly. I don't know why it blew me away so much this time, but Bournonville's reserving pointe work for the Sylph and her sisters made the woodland scenes seem super-duper magical, and made James' and the Sylph's relationship all the more weird, wonderful, and tragic. I liked the textural and dramatic effects of pointe / not pointe so much, I started fantasizing about a Swan Lake in which only Odette, Odile, and the Swan Maidens dance on pointe. The Princesses would look just as lovely -- and more appropriately mundane -- in heels.

Didn't Joaquin De Luz rise up through the ranks of ABT before switching to NYCB?

DeLuz entered ABT corps from Pennsylvania Ballet, which is why I didn't consider him home-grown, in the sense of those I mentioned above who at least came through ABT's junior company. He already had experience as a professional by the time he arrived at ABT.

It's very true about the nature of ABT's rep vs. NYCB's giving dancers opportunities. And that won't change as long as ABT continues to shorten its more interesting fall programming at City Center. Well, it's now down to a single week. Not likely to get much shorter than that!

I'm wondering (hoping?) if the single work isn't a function of the City Center renovation schedule. The grand re-opening of the main auditorium is scheduled for October 25, 2011 so it may be that a week was all they could get.

If I recall correctly -- and it's been way, way over a decade since I sat there (for a Nutcracker)-- the 5th ring is a small tier of side-only seats situated above the 4th ring's tier of side seats. I think there's something like 34 or 36 seats up there in total. No center section, just the sides of the horseshoe.

That's what Fifth Ring is. They would be, at best, very limited view seats. I think they were meant to be akin to the score desks at the Metropolitan Opera, to hear the opera and not see the production, although I don't think Fifth Ring seats have lamps for score following.

Actually, they weren't too bad for observing the patterns if you happened to be seated in the seats furthest away from the stage..

[One question - isn't the 5th ring just the upper most portion of the 4th ring?

If I recall correctly -- and it's been way, way over a decade since I sat there (for a Nutcracker)-- the 5th ring is a small tier of side-only seats situated above the 4th ring's tier of side seats. I think there's something like 34 or 36 seats up there in total. No center section, just the sides of the horseshoe.

According to Rosie Gaynor's blog entry on the eight dancers who are leaving PNB at season's end, Peter Boal plans to hire eight dancers.

The first hiring confirmation we've had is the Matthew Renko will join PNB next season:

From Time Out Chicago

Renko was a member of New York City Ballet, Ballet Chicago, and Suzanne Farrell Ballet. In a NYCB thread, mira attested to his skill as a choreographer:

http://balletalert.i...post__p__256041

I hope he choreographs for next year's "Next Step", a performance in which PNB dancers choreograph for Professional Division students. I'd love to see his work.

Matthew Renko! Good for him, and good for you!

The fourth ring has a vast number of seats (considerably more than the third ring, and perhaps even more than the orchestra section).

For what it's worth, I just did a quick count. There are about:

873 seats in the orchestra

676 seats in the 4th ring (87 A&B center| 551 C-O center | 38 sides)

306 in the 3rd ring (260 center | 46 sides)

308 in the 2nd ring (274 center | 34 sides)

333 in the 1st ring (277 center | 56 sides)

Which is 2,496 in total. per the NYCB website, there are 2,544 seats in total, so I'm guessing the balance is in the 5th ring.

Shutting the 3rd and 4th rings down completely would reduce the house size from 2,496 to 1,514, or by about 39%

Well, the Koch has its first new dance company as tenant, Paul Taylor. I guess there is no such thing as loyalty when it comes to business. Paul Taylor has performed at City Center for so many years.

http://www.nytimes.c...r.html?ref=arts

Bad timing for City Center, indeed, given that they've tried to do what they can to fix the theater's various infelicities. It has always been a dreadful place to see dance. Some things, like the sight lines and the lack of leg room, could be tweaked. But others - the size of the stage, the shallowness of the hall, and the steepness of the view of the stage from any of the rings, for example -- could probably only be addressed with a wrecking ball.

Taylor doesn't come anywhere near to filling City Center -- the top ring is always closed off and the sides of the mezzanine are often empty as well. I wonder how they'll fare at NYST? I normally try to catch about three Taylor performance during their NYCC season, and while I probably won't see any more just because they're at NYST, I'm not going to attend fewer performances either. Even if it costs more -- the guy's not gonna live forever and the fate of Cunningham's company has focused my mind powerfully on seeing as much as I can while I can.

I am wondering why Taylor mentioned NYST's acoustics, however, since his troupe rarely can afford to perform to live music anymore ...

What a difference a day makes! I really enjoyed "The Little Humpbacked Horse"! It's not quite "The Bright Stream," but after last night's desolate "Anna Karenina," it was quite a relief. Really, I would not have guessed it was the same composer at all.

I absolutely, loved, loved Vladimir Shkylarov as Ivan! So winsome and charming. All the lightning-fast beats of the legs he did and center split leaps at the end of Act II were phenomenal! I cannot wait to see him again tomorrow!! (Can we borrow him for ABT???)

I just got back from the Wed matinee performance of "The Little Humpbacked Horse" : Shklyarov was delightful -- a beautiful dancer with charm to burn. If I were an AD in need of an imported male principal, I sure would be running around behind him waving a pen and a contract. The guy would be total box office catnip. Loved Obraztsova's Tsar Maiden, too. Vasily Tkachenko danced the Humpbacked Horse instead of Grigory Popov, and was very winning -- TLHH is often asked to match Ivan step-for-step, and while Tkachenko isn't quite the dancer Shklyarov is, he held his own, even when Shklyarov had the charm dialed up to 11.

The costumes are awful and the sets look like they were slapped together in a middle school shop class. I suspect the production was intended to look whimsical, but it just looks bargain basement. The decision to screen-print cartoonish gypsy faces onto the gypsy dancers' overly baggy t-shirt style tops is only one of several bad ideas. The Princess of the Sea's sea-weed skirt was nice, though.

I wouldn't necessarily want to cut Shchedrin's score, but the ballet as it stands could either use some tightening or a bit more invention. (Sometimes it looks as if Ratmansky is at a loss as to how to fill up the sixteen bars of music he has left before the next transition.) But there's great stuff in it, too. The scene with the Tsar and the Wet Nurses and the underwater scene definitely put me in mind of "Namouna," however, which has become my favorite Ratmansky to date.

I particularly liked the patterns in the Prologue: while the corps was often in lines, horizontal and on the diagonal, there were a lot of circular, protective patterns for the Fairies and their Cavaliers. I found this very pleasing. I also thought it was a good touch to have the Lilac Fairy enter across from the royal bassinet to do her variation, which made sense of how she didn't give her blessing before she danced. I also loved how Catalabutte remains kneeling for a long time until the King decides to re-enter his state of denial after the Lilac Fairy mitigates Carabosse's curse and to forgive Catalabutte.

Alas, none of these patterns were very visible from where I was sitting in the orchestra (Row 0, Seat 20) -- it looked like one big melee. Worse, I couldn't see the cradle clearly -- it was blocked by the line of the corps. I only knew where it was from its (dinky) purple canopy. Seat 20 in that row is only ten seats in off the right aisle and there are 8 seats more to the right of it, so it's not an extreme side seat, or at least shouldn't be. I wonder if the folks sitting three or seats to my right even knew there was a cradle there at all. Don't they sort the views out when they make the model sets? It shouldn't be hard to do.

I don't know what they were thinking in using the Fairies for the divertissement music for Act III. If they all did a group dance, I suppose it might be a stretch to think their qualities blended into the perfect whole, but to have three dance in unison and two be featured, when only the Fairy of Joy had any dancing that suggested her virtue, made little sense. The music doesn't have enough gravitas for the Lilac Fairy's solo, which isn't a cherry on top or a summation and is followed not long after by Aurora's great variation, and it looks like an excuse for more dancing, rather than explaining the Lilac Fairy's stewardship of this whole adventure.

All I could think of was that they decided to make the fairies do double duty so as to avoid having to cast additional divertissement roles. Is that too cynical?

The orchestra did not help: the tempi in the Prologue were sluggish and slow, and only picked up with the intro music to Act I. For the rest of the performance they were inconsistent, at best.

The overture and the entr'actes started out promising, but yes, the tempos sure did get pulled all over the place once the dancing started.

Edited to add: I was positively SHOCKED at the amount of talking going on during the entr'actes -- talking out loud, for heaven's sake, not even whispering. Lots of phone checking , too. Because it's boring to sit in the dark and listen to Tchaikovsky, I guess ...

By contrast, Cojocaru and Kobborg brought It. They have the type of comfortable partnership, that the ease characterizes the parts they dance. It's not just that when Cojocaru danced the Rose Adagio, it felt like it happened in a minute, and there was not even a glancing thought or worry that she might go off balance, it's that she developed the character throughout the three acts, and that she imbued her performance with so much detail and reaction that she almost made me believe everyone around her caused her to react. (Now that's a pro.) I would prefer lower extensions from her, but I give her great credit that every one of them is controlled on the way up, and that she gives them a little grace note breath at the top before she lowers them, again with complete control. It was quite beautiful when, during the Rose Adagio, she looked back over her extended leg and shoulder to acknowledge and thank the last Prince before going on to the next. The most visceral characteristic of her dancing is the invisible transition from quicksilver to slow and blossoming and back. Her Act III variation was exactly as it was meant to be in the drama: a seamless integration of the virtues with which she was blessed at her baptism. It doesn't get any better than that.

I saw them Wednesday night and thought they were pretty wonderful. I walked out thinking that I might someday see a more brilliant Aurora than Cojocaru, but not one I loved more. I too was especially taken with the way she smiled at the departing cavaliers! It was such a lovely touch -- and a lady always says "thank you" to her dance partner before moving on to dance with another

That's exactly what dancers said about Balanchine!

And what dancers Cunningham formed out of those classes and those steps

Indeed, but it does make me wonder what would happen to the Cunningham rep if they were to follow the NYCB model of keeping the company doors open long past the death of the founder.

That's an easy one to answer, look to the remnants of the Martha Graham Company. That's where they'd be in five years tops.

Well, not necessarily. The Graham company went through hell and back with the whole Protas debacle -- I'm not surprised that they didn't come through unscathed.

I'm afraid that a lot of the Cunningham rep will be lost forever without a company dedicated to its preservation. I was in tears when I saw them perform CRDSPCR at the Joyce knowing I'd probably never see that wonderful work ever again.

I received a letter from NYCB directed to Fourth Ring Society. They say that the "new program will give you similar but broader access throughout the house." If by "broader access throughout the house" they mean those seats over on the extreme sides, NO THANKS!! Why not just close the 4th ring and make 3rd ring the new 4th ring?

This.

From Daniel Watkins' New York Times article:

The move is part of a strategy of changing ticket prices and limiting access to certain parts of the theater to help consolidate its audience in the orchestra and lower rings for less-than-full performances. This move will eliminate scattered pockets of people and create a more "vibrant performance atmosphere," the company said. [emphasis mine]

I think it speaks volumes about NYCB's artistic bankruptcy that someone in the company's administration is actually arguing with a straight face that eliminating a huge block of good seats so that they can force more of the audience to sit in poor seats (and that's what those far side seats are) will somehow "create a more vibrant performance atmosphere." What marketing consultant came up with that one?

I could see them raising the prices of the good seats in the 3rd and 4th rings by some reasonable amount and at the same time dropping the prices of the poor seats in the orchestra and lower rings by a greater percentage in the hopes of squeezing a little more revenue out of ticket sales and perhaps persuading some folks to move further down in the house. And better seats should cost more than poorer seats, But arguing that this will somehow enhance the audience's performance experience? That's about the most self-serving argument I've heard this week.

mathematics on the water:

3000 people x $0.25 = $750 per performance x 206 performances = $150,000 per year (plus or minus a few people not buying water)

not going to solve a $6million budget. There have been many times when I needed a quick fix of water, and it was lovely to have it for free, because I was either broke, or didn't have any cash - or change - on me at the moment.

$2.50 to use the ladies room?

I love the idea of the top ring being for students... But I suppose there need to be chaperones too or things will be damaged? Would be a great use of the top rings and certainly help fill the lower rings with audience 10 years from now

Well, I was assuming that they would attend in supervised groups, and arrive prepped in advance via some decent curriculum materials like the ones put together by the University of Michigan for their UMS Youth Performance Series.

Maybe I'm naive, but rather than let those rings sit empty I'd fill them with students (of all ages) and build the audience of tomorrow. Surely there's a foundation or two somewhere who could be persuaded to throw a few bucks NYCB's way for the opportunity. Have a conversation with City Center of Music and Drama (Koch Theater sublessee), Lincoln Center (Koch Theater lessee), or New York City (Koch Theater Lessor) about a break in facility fees in exchange for making those seats available to the Board of Ed.

To me, throwing away those empty seats is like throwing away good food. There are a ton of kids in the metropolitan area who will never see the inside of a performing arts venue but need to. The powers that be -- the NYCB Board, the big donors and foundations who support the company, our elected officials -- could make that happen if they really wanted to.

More Martins ballet productions, by no means exhaustive, in addition to "Swan Lake" at RDB:

San Francisco Ballet did "The Waltz Project" in 1996.

Oregon Ballet Theatre did "Ash" in 2007 and 2009.

Pennsylvania Ballet did "Fearful Symmetries" in 2009.

Pacific Northwest Ballet did "Valse Triste" in 2006.

That's really not much, though, when you consider he's been making pieces regularly for the last 35 years. And, if you look at the companies, most of them are "in the family," so to speak.

I think he's been making the same 2 or 3 pieces regularly for the last 35 years. They just get different music, costumes, lighting, and titles.

I always assumed that there are no royalties or commission fees for works Martins makes for NYCB and SAB, and that any royalties, if charged, are for stagings outside the company. If he receives commission fees for works he creates for other companies, that is fair.

Just curious...have any other companies asked him to create works for them or restage works he originally did for NYCB? I can't think of any. Telling...

I think Martins' Swan Lake and Octet were originally done for the RDB, no?

Edited to add this from Wikipedia:

"He also did the choreography for the Barbie movies Barbie in the Nutcracker and Barbie of Swan Lake."

Regarding the Met: There may still be 'cheap' seats at the Met but I believe they are substantially further away (and I would say worse) than even the 4th ring at NYCB...much worse than the 3rd ring.

The Met's a peculiar place. The acoustics in the Family Circle (the uppermost ring) are actually splendid -- better, I think than in the front of the orchestra -- but the action on stage does look like it's taking place in a galaxy far, far away. It's not exactly an immersive theatrical experience, but I've enjoyed opera from up there. I can't imagine sitting there for the ballet, however.

I have no idea what NYCB is thinking. Do they save any money by closing down the top of the house? If not, why not let folks sit there? (I know I'd vastly prefer the front of the third ring to the back or sides of the second. But then I prefer the mid-back of the orchestra to the front, so I my seating preferences may be unusual.) A half-full house is a half-full house no matter how the audience is distributed.

The follow up subscription brochure I got does show pricing by section up through the second ring, but states that "new subscriptions are not currently available in Orchestra E or the 3rd and 4rth rings" and shows no pricing for those sections. Do they perhaps plan on transitioning subscribers further down into the house so that they can free up the top of the house for sales of much cheaper single tickets? In other words, if you want good cheap seats you have to take your chances with single ticket purchases -- you can't lock them in with a subscription.

During the recent contract negotiations, the dancers' representatives kept mentioning "the broken subscription model," but didn't say much about how it was broken. I'd love to know what they meant. Perhaps this latest tactic is a way of grappling with whatever the perceived problem is.

Well, the Yanks may be the exception -- they sell out every game at home and often do on the road as well.

My own favorite wayward pitch came from an upscale coffee roaster in San Francisco (they also have a store in Brooklyn):

A blend of organic Costa Rican and Mexican coffees, Alma Viva excels as a drip or French press. You don't have to be a Flaubert scholar to realize that the Alma Viva is the Emma Bovary of our blends: snappy and forthright, with echoes of orange peel and toasted almonds when no dairy is added, but demure to the point of passivity with milk or cream. Medium to light roast level.

I've been told that I excel as a drip, too

It worked for me, sort of. I got a box inviting me to generate something.

Did you click on the box? (I know that sounds obvious ... but I thought I'd mention it just in case -- it's a pretty plain looking screen.)

Hmm, I couldn't get it to work?

Browser issue, maybe? (I had to enable java scripts to get it to work in mine.)

Let's see. Premium orchestra seats at the Met can go for more than $200-300 depending on location. Lower box seats at a Yankees game go for more than that. Top tickets to Wicked are over $300 at the box office. Other top broadway show orchestra seats run $150-175. So the most expensive ticket at City Ballet goes for $119 for a subscriber, or $149 for single sale. Considering all that, I feel City Ballet is a good investment for seeing a world-renown performing arts company.

Most of NYCB's audience, I believe, is repeat customers who have been attending for years or decades. There are only a few Yankees games per season in New York, whereas NYCB has 16 weeks of rep tickets to sell, 7 performances per week. That's a whole lot of tickets to unload to customers who have seen most of these ballets numerous times in the past.

The Yankees, like all major league baseball teams, play 162 games in a regular season, half of which are at home and all of which are televised. Yankee Stadium seats 50,000 (52,000 if you count standing room), so I don't think scarcity really explains the ticket prices at Yankee stadium. Even a seat at the tip-top of the grandstand will set you back $30.

The sad fact is, live events are expensive -- even when a lucrative television contract provides a substantial subsidy!

Although ... you can see some mighty fine dance (and bona-fide downtown dance stars) for next-to-nothing at venues like Dance Theater Workshop or, for a little bit more than next-to-nothing, at venues like the Joyce. You'll likely get recorded music and minimal sets and costumes, and yes, sometimes the choreography is just plain awful. But it can be just plain awful at Lincoln Center too ...

I'm pretty sure that the perpetrators of some of the program notes I've been subjected to recently have used this handy tool:

Arty Bollocks Generator

Try it for yourself!

Here's what I got:

My work explores the relationship between the tyranny of ageing and life as perfomance.

With influences as diverse as Camus and Andy Warhol, new tensions are crafted from both explicit and implicit textures.

Ever since I was a student I have been fascinated by the traditional understanding of the human condition. What starts out as vision soon becomes corroded into a cacophony of greed, leaving only a sense of nihilism and the prospect of a new reality.

As spatial forms become frozen through emergent and critical practice, the viewer is left with an insight into the possibilities of our era.

After you've given the generator a few spins, it's pretty clear what the basic template is, but it's fun anyway.

They only raised 10 percent of their operating costs through ticket sales? This was very surprising to me, I am surprised they are not doing more joint ventures with other innovative companies, sharing expenses, etc.

I past seasons NYCO regularly shared productions with other companies -- Houston's production of Handel's "Ariodante," e.g.-- and each season almost always included a production or two from the Glimmerglass festival. Some of their own productions might have been shared or hired out to other companies as well, but I haven't checked.

They threw their money at some real clunkers, though. They replaced a lovely and perfectly serviceable production of "Don Giovanni" with a dodo they abandoned after just one season.