Kathleen O'Connell

A plea to anyone who attended on opening night: I appear to have misplaced my program -- can someone who did attend and still has their program supply the names of the Varese pieces used for Byzantium? I liked Byzantium a lot more than I remember liking it when it was new ...

And the vibe was kind of weird, too -- no sense of opening night buzz or enthusiasm. Granted the gala was a couple of nights later, but still ... there was a NY premiere on the program and the return of a genuinely intriguing work (Byzantium) after a too, too long absence. The audience finally woke up for Arden Court.

Whew! Last week, I shoehorned in an extra program that I otherwise couldn't have cared less about just to see Russian Seasons one more time (my fifth since the premiere). I mean, I love Russian Seasons, but I'm gonna need some fresh Ratmansky in the rotation soon. Middle Duet is fine, of course, but tearing open a season brochure to find just Middle Duet for the Ratmansky offering would be like finding just one sip of champagne left in the bottle.

When I first started attending regularly in the mid-to-late 70’s, NYCB definitely seemed like a company of glamazons at every rank. The principal women do currently trend short, although some – such as Somogyi (and the much-missed Weese, sigh) – punch above their weight, so to speak. (I never realized Somogyi wasn’t tall until I saw her standing next to Peter Boal. My jaw dropped when I saw Weese comfortably partnered by De Luz in the “Voices of Spring” section of Vienna Waltzes a season or two ago. I had always thought of her as at least a “medium.” I agree with Leigh's point about Ballo looking different when she danced it, but I somehow never chalked that difference up to height so much as to the special sparkling-crystal-on-lustrous-silk quality of her way of moving.) But there are a greater proportion of taller women amongst the soloists – Bar, Lowery, and Mearns for instance, and some up-and-coming taller men to partner them as well. Garnetta (fka Coco) Gonzalez seems a genuine throwback to the glamazon era -- I hope we see more of her soon. (I was lucky enough to catch her SAB workshop performance in Union Jack. Most. Glamorous. Wren. Ever.) And if K. Gilliland isnt' tall, her long, willowy limbs (and her nicely deployed rubato) certainly create the impression that she is.

* http://www.observer.com/2007/bloggerina Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that Kristin Sloan won't be coming back! I missed her. The last time I saw her was in Songs of the Auvergne a couple of seasons ago -- her dancing was lovely and luminous and I very much hoped to see more of her. But I am very glad that NYCB had the smarts to give her a media gig. IMO, her R+J webisodes were more engaging than the actual ballet. They need her.

Sigh ... You're probably right. I suspect that despite my wildest fantasies, most guys would probably look a bit too much like the goons in Prodigal Son. But closely cropped might work just fine ...

Oh no! I was so startled by Radetsky's deltoids that I completely missed the tatoo! I voted "love 'em" by the way, because I do. I suppose I would find it a little disconcerting if Odette emerged from the wings with tattoos from wrist to shoulder, but at the end of the day I probably wouldn't find them as irritating and distracting as those feather earmuffs she always seems to sport. They make everyone look 50. And speaking of making everyone look 50, I wish male dancers could ditch those shellacked back quasi-pompadours that I gather are de rigeur. Yeah, I know it gets their hair out of their eyes, but nobody looks good in them, whereas everyone looks great in bed-head hair, even Prince Siegfried and especially Apollo. And if it's thinning a bit more on top than one would ideally like, just shave it off and be done with it. It's fiercely sexy in a way that a comb-over just never will be and is less distracting than wondering if the carefully arranged remnant of a formerly glorious head of hair is going to fly out of place with the next tour de basque. And can we have some facial hair too, please, while we're updating everyone's look -- De Luz looked great in his R+J goatee (fake or not) and I kind of hoped he could keep it for the rest of the season. The older I get the younger I want everyone else to look.

That's pretty standard for opera criticism: It's fine, but it's no Bayreuth. (It's fine, but it's no Bayreuth in the 1950's.) You needed to hear Corelli live. Back in the day, the Met had Bjoerling, Tucker, Bergonzi, etc. etc. every night vs. the No Tenors of today. Of course the version you heard was terribly inauthentic, with cuts, the wrong instrumentation, etc. That high note she sang was not only in the worst taste, but it was flat as well. Critics, professional and otherwise, constantly tell us how stupid we are for liking anything. There is so much more information to know in opera. Not only have commercial recordings been around and extensive for over a century -- you mean you can't discuss in detail the differences between the 1952 and 1953 Keilberth Rings? -- the number of pirated recordings that are readily available is astonishing. (Don't even open your mouth if you haven't True indeed. A colleague once asked a mutual acquaintance if a particular recording of an opera featuring some well-known stars was worth getting. "Oh, I suppose it's a good enough version for a beginner" was the reply. The withering scorn opera fanatics can heap upon those with insufficient respect for a long-dead, cherished diva or the temerity to prefer a living one with a major recording contract and a crossover album does give one pause. Ballet has at least escaped the curse of having to explain why Andrea Boccelli shouldn't sing Werther -- I don't think ballet has anything quite equivalent to him. Still, I think the nuances of ballet may be harder to explain than the nuances of opera, which may make it seem like coded smoke and mirrors.

Yes, my point exactly. I think it takes a certain level of interest and expertise to grok all the hand wringing about the Balanchine legacy. (It’s bitching at a very high level, if I may steal from Mr. Gorey ) It must be very disheartening to someone who was enthralled by their first performance of Jewels to read that what they saw was trash and that they’re really going to have to go to Miami or St Petersburg to see the genuine article. And yeah, the hand wringing over how no one’s been able to sing a note since 1966 can get pretty tedious too, but somehow it sounds more like our grandparents harkening back to their salad days in the old country than snobbery per se. In any event, a Callas - Tebaldi throwdown doesn't necessary challenge the validity of one's enjoyment of last night's HD simulcast from the Met -- you can just bring some popcorn and watch the fur fly. "There were never any good old days There is today, there is tomorrow It’s a stupid thing we say Cursing tomorrow with sorrow" Gogol Bordello

Exactly. It's the inside baseballerishness that makes us both laugh and cringe in self-recognition when we read the The Lavender Leotard. What opera is clad in is fanatacism. Two guys duking it out over Maria Callas forty years after her death is entertaining; two crtics squabbling over who dances Balanchine better twenty years after his undoubtedly looks pointlessly arcane to the unitiated.

I attended the 10/21/07 performance of Program Two – for those of you who may be keeping track, Sterling Hyltin replaced Ashley Bouder in the program opener, Morphoses. No white slip in the program, and no announcement before the curtain either. I found this odd, since Wheeldon came out and spoke briefly before the program began and presumably could have mentioned the casting change then. In any event, Hyltin was a more than able substitute and a lovely, lively presence -- I for one was pleased to get a chance to see her in this role.

Haglund's -- almost exactly my response, although I did stay for Fool's Paradise (which I did mostly like and parts of which I loved -- more later today or tomorrow). "Get them in the air!" I wanted to shout, "Move their feet!" It was hard for me to tell if my frustration was a function of the choreography, poor programing choices, or the limitations of the hall. The steep rake of the rings combined with their being way too close to the stage puts everything in an oddly foreshortened perspective, no matter where one sits. (The steep rake does nothing to improve the sightlines: I was in row B of the grand tier and had my view partly obstructed by the head of the rather petite woman sitting in front of me.) So, I couldn't tell if the choreography seemed earthbound because it was or because of my angle of view. Based on Slingerland and Dance of the Hours -- where the dancers actually did move their feet -- I'm inclined to think the former, but dreary City Center didn't help. If Wheeldon has any fundraising mojo at all, he needs to use it to extract a better venue from someone pronto. Look, I like Wheeldon's choreography well enough and appreciate the scale of the show he's managed to pull together in a relatively short time, but the evening was hardly a grand eclat. There was a lot of the same-old same old and nothing suggested that Wheeldon needed to start Morphoses to put on the program that he did. (And in fairness, these initial evenings may be more about just getting the damn thing up and running to create the growing medium for what is to come next.) My big take-aways from the evening: 1) this isn't Cunningham, Cage, Rauschenberg and six dancers in a VW bus taking challenging art to the heartland and 2) ballet in Wheeldon's hands really isn't particularly sexy, although it can be very tender when he gets more than two dancers on the stage, and that's a pretty special thing. More later. I'm going again Sunday and a second look may help me see more.

An aside: Actually, the audience for opera is growing, is growing in the younger age brackets especially, and new works are increasing in popularity. From the Opera America website: “OPERA America serves the field of professional opera and related organizations. In the United States, it counts 116 professional companies in 44 states in its membership. It also serves 19 professional companies in 5 provinces in Canada, which are members of Opera.ca. Over half of these companies were established after 1970, and one quarter of the total were established since 1980, making the growth of opera throughout North America a relatively new phenomenon.” “Opera attendance rose steadily from 1982 to 2002. The U.S. opera audience grew by 35% between 1982 and 1992. This trend continued through 2002, when the opera audience grew by an additional 8.2%, representing the largest increase of all performing arts disciplines. (Source: National Endowment for the Arts)” “In 2002, 25.3% of the U.S. opera audience was under the age of 35 years old. (Source: National Endowment for the Arts)” And, while the familiar old warhorses (e.g., Carmen, La Boheme, Nozze di Figaro, etc) remain the most popular (or at least the most frequently staged) operas in US theaters, newly commissioned and composed operas are hardly rare events: “In 2006-07, North American opera companies will produce 10 world premieres. Since 1990, almost 200 new operatic works have been produced by professional opera companies in North America.” A quote from Marc Scorca, president of Opera America: "What is unique about the years since 1990 is the ubiquity of new works across the country at companies large and small. New works have become a part of the way we do business. It's wonderful these days to go to a new work and stand in the lobby at intermission and hear informed comparative discussion about other new American works." (From a Detroit Free Press article around the time of Margaret Garner's premiere there in 2005. Margaret Garner was composed by Richard Danielpour to a libretto by Toni Morrison.) New York City Opera generally mounts a NY or US premiere each year – this year’s Margaret Garner being an example – and they usually sell out. Mark Adamo, John Adams, William Bolcom, Richard Danielpour, Anthony Davis, Deborah Drattel, John Harbison, Jake Heggie, Peter Lieberson, Tobias Picker, Charles Wuorinen have all seen at least one newly-composed opera staged within the last decade. Philip Glass is currently composing ”The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five” with a libretto by Doris Lessing based on her novel. (good timing, given yesterday’s Nobel announcement!) Even Stuart Copeland (yes, the Police drummer) has composed an opera. My guess is that if NYCO had simulcast its season-operning performance of Margaret Garner on a big screen, Lincoln Center Plaza would have been full just as it was for the Met’s Butterfly last year and Lucia this year.

From the first I thought she looked like what you'd get if you atom smashed a ballerina with Myrna Loy, Irene Dunn and the Barbara Stanwyck of "All About Eve" -- "knowing" is exactly it, but maybe not "tough" ...

Didn't Balanchine himself observe that "You have to make the bad ballets to make the good ballets"? And of course, he also said "slower is faster"! Both apply in this case, I think -- Wheeldon will need a fund of patience as well as money.

I second Jack Reed's observation that Mozart Dances live is a very different animal than the broadcast, which I have only just now begun to watch on tape. I was lucky enough to catch performances at State Theater both this year and last and was stunned at how reduced the work seems in the broadcast -- more so than Dance in America's video of Four Temperaments or Stravinsky Violin Concerto does, by way of comparison. It's akin to looking at a postcard of a painting you've actually stood in front of: it's a nice enough reminder of what you saw, but has nothing of the impact of the real thing and the colors are all off somehow. If I hadn't seen Mozart Dances in the theatre and had to rely on the broadcast, I just may well have been wondering what all the fuss was about. Part of the problem, I think, was the camera work. So much of this particular dance's impact arises from the cumulative effect of seeing gestures and phrases echoed between individual dancers and the group across all three of its sections, and the cutaways to the musicians or to isolated parts of the stage undermine that. (In at least one instance I swear the camera seemed to be locked on a corner of stage with not a single dancer in view!) If, as reported, the camera quickly cuts away from Noah Vinson's flying leap to embrace (I think) Charlton Boyd in Twenty-Seven, it must surely undo some of the work's emotional logic: in the second movement of Double, Vinson is never wholly integrated into group. In fact, at one point he appears to dis-integrate the group by his presence: the circling men drop hands -- separate themselves from each other as well as Vinson -- when he moves into their midst. They continue to perform the same steps as they did before, but without being physically connected to each other. So I think it means something that it is Vinson who flys out of the group to embrace the outsider who has just entered the stage alone; to dimish one of the work's most affecting moments to cut to the musicians seems just plain boneheaded. Something about video seems to have "flattened" the quality of the dancers' movement, too. The beautiful, swirling dervish turns with the slightly out of sync rolls of the head (the dancers appear to spotting on the sky if they are spotting at all) are just mesmerising live, but barely register on tape. Lauren Grant is, what, all of five feet tall but looked positively monumental whirling through them in the theater. Perhaps ballet's heightened line and dimensionality help it translate better to the small screen. (And for whatever reason -- maybe scale, maybe lighting -- the back drops are much more effective in the theater than they are on the screen. The women's costumes for Eleven look much more chic in the theater, too.) The goofy stuff looks goofy live, too, but Morris' goofiness has never troubled me much in any event. I found much to be delighted by and to enjoy, and found some things utterly fascinating. I was surprised, for instance, when I noticed just how much and how fast the individual dancers were moving in some of the slower passages, because the overall shape that the group was making -- and which was the center of attention -- was evolving at at tempo much more in keeping with the pulse of the music. I'm glad I have the tape, but I feel privileged to have seen Mozart Dances live.

Interesting. I don’t think of Morris as a particularly “abstract” choreographer – no more “abstract” than Balanchine, for instance. I find his work to be emotionally legible in the much the same way that Balanchine’s is – there’s no narrative that one can really articulate in words, but there’s definitely a “story.” In contrast, I find Forsythe and Elo, for example, to be very abstract – no stories there at all, really, just states-of-being. (Wheeldon has it both ways in After the Rain.) I like Morris’ work a lot, and find it plenty formal in its overall structure, but I did find the bodies very difficult to “read” at first since my previous dance watching experience consisted primarily of Balanchine, Robbins, Cunningham, Taylor, and Graham – and to my eyes those choreographers (and ballet in general) deploy the body in very clearly delineated shapes that hew closely to an ideal armature or grid, whether in motion or in stasis. Morris’ dancers’ bodies don’t quite do that – I’m not suggesting that it is actually so, but in motion at least, their placement looks somehow “approximate” – i.e., not working to an ideal plane: they’re not exactly turned out, but they’re not exactly not turned out either. (Interestingly enough, the shapes Morris’ dancers make look much more clearly delineated and carefully placed in still photos than they do live or in video.) It took me a while to get my head wrapped around this. I find Morris’ choreography for soloists relatively (and I stress relatively) uninteresting. But his work for two or more dancers – now that I find thoroughly engaging and affecting. To me, these larger shapes seem to resonate more and carry more meaning than the solo work does, and his vocabulary for groups seems richer than his vocabulary for soloists. Personally, I like the goofy stuff too. The second section of Mozart Dances is high on my list of favorite Morris, but my absolute favorite Morris is when the deliriously joyful Hard Nut Snowflakes explode handfuls of glitter skyward as they hurtle full tilt across the stage – it makes me laugh out loud from sheer delight every single time. The mix of bodies and genders in the same tutus-n-snowcone crown costumes is just wonderful – as if Morris decided to take the inverse of Balanchine and put “everybody -- the world” on stage to get sixteen girls ... Anyway, I'm heading off to see Mozart Dances again tonight and I'm really looking forward to it!

For my money, the only really successful Jane Austen Novel - to - Movie effort was Clueless. Others have been "truer" to dialogue and period detail, but Clueless was somehow truer to the novel's moral center (the novel in this case being Emma). It's an example of "updating" really working for once. Edited to add this quote from a Barnes and Noble interview with Edward Gorey: Edward Gorey: There are all sorts of classics I could possibly illustrate if asked, but as I have over the years accumulated too many of my own texts to have any chance of doing drawings for but a few of them, I would only do something by someone else if I was offered an outrageous sum of money, and maybe not then. barnesandnoble.com: Any classics you would refuse to do? Edward Gorey: For example, Jane Austen and the Marquis de Sade, although for different reasons. perhaps Eifman will go where Gorey feared to tread ...

More the Iggy Pop type of vulgar. He's one of my role models. Ha! I'll see your Iggy Pop and raise you Rammstein!

I attend at least one music, opera, or dance performance per week in NY, and honestly, full-house standing ovations seem pretty rare here. (Broadway may be different.) Sometimes a contingent of friends, family and associated well-wishers will stand and applaud, but rarely the whole audience. I’ve experienced a handful of occasions when the whole house stood and applauded with enthusiasm – usually these have been farewell performances or something genuinely knock-you-down awe-inspiring. (Then there are those inadvertent SOs where we’re all putting on our coats and packing up to go and the artists just keep coming out and coming out and coming out for the three people who are still clapping...) What NY audiences will do when moved is clap for a very, very long time. Earlier this year, I attended a concert at which the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard played a piece newly composed for him by Eliot Carter. Carter, who is 98, was in the audience (it was his birthday, too). When Aimard finished playing the piece (which was really wonderful, by the way) he literally jumped off the stage and raced over to Carter’s seat to say thank you and pay his respects. We clapped wildly for what seemed like an hour (as much for Carter as for Aimard, of course). Then Aimard played the piece again (!) and we clapped wildly some more. Aimard did get a standing ovation when he played Messiaen’s Vignt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus – which is very long and very hard -- at Zankel Hall a few years back. He played it beautifully, but I think the SO was as much in recognition of his having gotten through it in one piece as for his playing. I think Bart may be on to something with his hypothesis that live performances are rarer and more exciting for audiences saturated with less immediate forms of entertainment. A few years ago I was talking with some musicians in a chamber orchestra who had recently returned from a tour through some small rural towns that rarely had the opportunity to hear much live music. They told me that the audiences clapped enthusiastically for everything whenever and wherever they could – including between movements. The musicians (who didn’t mind the between-movements clapping one bit) decided it was a reflection not of the audience’s lack of discrimination, but rather, of their great pleasure at hearing beautiful music played live, right there, just for them. Anyway, I leap to my feet when moved to do so and stay seated when I’m not. And irrespective of how much I’ve paid for my ticket, I leave at intermission if it stinks. Life is just too short to squander on bad art – no need to compound having wasted one’s money by wasting one’s time.

Oh I will miss them both! Indeed, I’ve already missed Sarah since her departure from NYCB a couple of seasons ago. She was one of the dancers that made corps-watching so rewarding, especially when she began to take on more senior corps roles. She always struck me as being fully engaged with the choreography and with her fellow dancers; her warm, gracious, lively presence added a special luster the ensemble. (I remember some of her ensemble work more vividly than I do some other dancers’ solo efforts!) I’ve enjoyed many of Seth’s performances, but I’ll remember him best as the male lead in Evenfall. I thought that ballet finally came together and lived up to its initial promise when he replaced Woetzel. There could hardly be two more different dancers: Orza has none of Woetzel’s quicksilver élan (few do, of course); he’s more deliberate in his attack (to the point of sometimes seeming willing to wrestle a phrase to the ground by dint sheer brute force if that’s what it’s going take to get to the other side) and more earnest in demeanor. Yet despite these differences – or perhaps because of them – Orza really inhabited the ballet and eliminated a vacuum at its center that Woetzel for whatever reason could not fill. He just looked terrific in it and I’m sorry that I won’t get to see him (and Weese) dance it again. I wish them both every success!

Yes! I forgot that one, and it is different, if not "startlingly" so.

Hmmm ... I missed this while I was out of town. OK, I'll bite: Three “startlingly different” full-length ballets? There aren’t that many in the rep to choose from to begin with and I would be hard pressed to find three I could characterize as “startlingly different,” either from each other or from “full length” ballets (whatever that means) in general. Let’s see: Coppelia, Don Q, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Nutcracker, R+J, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake ... that’s about it unless you throw in Harliquinade and Jewels ... Are they counting Nutcracker? Could one of the premieres be another full-lenghth ballet? (But wouldn't that get a special mention?) “ ... and one unique, celebratory send-off” – any guesses? Hübbe? Kistler? A gang retirement? (The list of dancers who might be toying with the idea of moving on is long and distinguished.) “ ... two world premiere ballets” – OK, there will be the inevitable Martins effort, but what’s the other? Ratmansky? Evans? (The Nightingale and the Rose was Wheeldon’s last for NYCB, right?) And "many new theme series" -- Well, I've already proposed "For the Birds" (The Nightingale and the Rose, Firebird, and Balanchine's Swan Lake). How about "Simply Schoenberg!" (Schoenberg Variations, Schoenberg/Wuorinen Variations, and Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet) An aside: WHO writes their copy? It reads like the mindless brochures for destination wedding venues. "A splendid time filled with dance" -- well, what else would a ballet company's winter season be filled with? "10 diverting programs" -- as opposed to, you know, the bore-you-out-of-your-skull tedious programs that a major performing arts organization might otherwise put on for a paying audience. (Or, is that 10 programs that will divert patrons to the other side of the plaza?) OK - this blurb isn't as bad as the the descriptions of last year's theme programs (the encomium for Episodes read like a sophomore's attempt at Jacques Derrida ...) But still.

I chose no. 5 without a moment's hesitation. I gather I am in the minority in actually preferring block programming to the alternative. Yes, the program titles are lamer than lame. And yes, the company sometimes elects to drop a clunker smack dab in the middle of an otherwise delightful program. But, after 30 years of regular attendance, I can attest to the fact that this has ever been the case and that “non-block” programming is unfortunately not a reliable solution: clunkers wander through the rep like malign planets and one finds oneself trying to dodge several in a single season in an effort to catch a program not marred by their baleful influence. Just when you think you've ducked "Dybbuk," "Irish Fantasy" swims into view. Here’s what I like about block programming, more or less in order of importance: 1) It presents the company with the opportunity to craft programs designed to amplify the resonances between ballets – resonances of style, of vision, of subject matter. Whether the company elects to make consistent use of that opportunity is another matter, but I believe it will grow more thoughtful and skilled at exploiting these opportunities as it gains experience in building seasons this way. 2) I would be very shocked if it did not make things simpler and more straightforward administratively. A single conductor can be assigned an entire evening, for instance. Life must be less complicated for the musicians, stagehands, costume people, etc. Living life and doing art is hard enough; something that makes it simpler without undermining the truly important things – that may make the truly important things easier to achieve -- is worth embracing. 3) I have limited opportunities to attend performances outside of my regular subscription. As much as I might like to juggle my attendance to catch multiple performances of a favorite ballet while avoiding the ones I hate, it’s just not going to happen. Block programming makes it easier for me to select which programs to see and to see more of what’s on offer during a given season. 4) Once I stopped weeping, wailing, and gnashing my teeth over being forced to endure “Vienna Waltzes” twice in order to catch a second performance “Episodes” and just relaxed about it, I found things to like about “Vienna Waltzes” that I’d missed before, even though I will never rush over to State Theater just to see it again. Sometimes we dislike things for the wrong reasons. (Yeah, I’m probably the only person on the planet who both likes block programming and finds “Vienna Waltzes” a total yawner.) Thumbs up! (But work on the titles, please ...)

Don't rely on my assessment of Acocella's comments or of the rest of the discussion -- I was put off by much of what was said and was frankly stunned by her exclaiming "Who reads reviews on line!" (I admire her writing) -- but others may respond more favorably. It is a subject on which reasonable people may disagree. I'm not adept enough to post a link, but you can find the discussion in WNYC's archives for the Leonard Lopate show. Look for the May 8 broadcast.