liebs

I think Fairchild is charming and a demon technician but very much the soubrette. And there are not a lot of roles for soubrettes in Balanchine's ballets. It is hard to imagine her in the "moon goddess" roles at the center of ther repertoire.

I just came across a new book, Elephant House by Kevin McDermott, that has photos and a text about Gorey's house in Cape Cod. It is available from A Common Reader via their website or phone order. Sounds like an interesting read.

Seymour's performance in this was unforgettable, it made the ballet. I subsequently saw it with Marguerite Porter as Natalya and it lost much of its impact. But with the first cast, it was one of the high points of my ballet viewing. One of my favorites.

I almost always choke up when the curtain rises. It is so beautiful. One of the great "Dark Angels" to me was Maria Calegari, her arabesque was iconic.

Interesting, lots of ballerina roles to fill but very few ballerinas. Balance of casting should be interesting - maybe we will get to see more of Meunier and Part at last.

Victoria, I rember Ellen Everett. So I guess I saw you as well - how wonderful. I also remember Lucia Chase as the Elder Sister - showing my age.

Gorey Stories opened on Broadway in the midst of a newspaper strike - no reviews. Closed after a few performances but it had previously had a very successful run Off-Broadway at the WPA Theare.

I used to see him, unmistakable in his racoon coat. I believe he used to attend every performance of the Nutcracker each season. He also worte several books on ballet such as Lavender Leotard, that were for sael in the NYCb gift shop. By the mid-80's, he was already quite old and subsequently retired to Maine or Vermont - I think. I don't remember seeing him at that many of the repertory performances.

My apologies to Ms. Parsley. The performer dancing Leto looked embarassed by what she was required to do. It is difficult to do this role, I imagine. Small but crucilal and probably not first on the list for rehearsal time, whihc is always limited. And you are up on that platform.

I've taken class a few times with Gavin Larsen and she was such a pleasure to watch. Not just beautiful technique but great expressiveness as well. Also a lovely person. You are lucky to get to see her often.

I saw some consistency among the dancers last night but it wasn't to the good. Divert was marred by flapping arms and broken wrists, blurred or left out steps and a failure to get into a the tight sousou position that is a foundation of Balanchine's work. There was also a consistent look of tightness or tension among the dancers, which I found distressing. That said, I enjoyed Tzigane and thought Natalie's performance much improved over the one I saw at the New Victory. Apollo was good, Boal giving a terrific performance with adequate performances by the Muses. Parsley just looked embarassed as Leto. It was a pleasure to see Ritter dancing so beautifully. He had the elegance Du lacked. Du seemed to think he was in some bus and truck performance of Coppelia, dancing a rather crude rendition of Franz. Variations should be retired. It was well suited to Farrell's gifts, which included an ability to be on and off balance at the same time as well as an ability to link vastly differing steps into a coherent phrase. Variations is built around these talents and Parsley doesn't have them. Nor is she a very interesting dancers. She gave it her all in the fifth variation of Divert but was hopelessly outclassed - blurring or leaving out steps. One of the great things about Farrell as a dancer, and I saw her many times from her return to NYCB in the 70s to her retirement, was her acute theatrical sense. But I didn't see that last night either in her direction of the program or in her coaching of the dancers. It was a nice evening with a decent regional company but certainly didn't offer any revelations either in the setting of the ballets or the performances of the dancers.

I'd like to see Ringer as Columbine with Millepied as Harlequin. De Luz and Bouder as Pierrot and Pierette. It would be interesting to see Bill Irwin's Harlequin Studies and compare it to Harlequinade. Both derive from Comedia del Arte.

No one has replaced her in Who Cares?, she could really jump and cover the ground in Stairway to Paradise;

Actually, Carbro, at NYCB, there is an endowment fund for Balanchine and one for Robbins.

I've seen both I and II, done by the Royal and by the Joffrey. They are both exercises in pure classicsm. Ahston has pared away anything tyhat would distract from the essence of the dance and the music. Like the ppd in Balanchine's Midsummer, any false step or mistake by the dancers breaks the mood and spoils the flow of the ballet. This makes these peices very tricky to perform. I'd love to see either ballet again, its been years.

On a trip to London as a child, I saw Nerina and Blair in Giselle. I remember it as a perfect partnership. I had never seen dacing of that caliber before.

And AIDS claimed the lives of many modern dancers and choreographers as well - Arnie Zane, Chris Gillis and Jeff Waddlington - to name just a few. Alexandra, I can never watch that ABT Nutcracker without mourning Ward, Tippet and the others.

I believe that there were 75 Balanchine ballets in 93. Although Balanchine choreographed 400+ works, it is generally considered that the canon is 75-90 pieces. Among the 400+ works are pieces done for movies, Broadway and a ballet for circus elephants as well as many pieces, which are considered to be lost.

Hans, the ABT corps men look less precise to me than NYCB's but I can not really comment on the principals - I haven't seen all (or even many of them recently) (This season, I saw Gomes twice and Stiefel twice in leading roles.) Interestingly, I can imagine Woetzel, Neal, Millepied, Boal and Askegard in Swan Lake or Giselle or as Romeo more easily than I can imagine Carreno, Corella, Malakhov, Belotserkovsky or Gomes in ballet like Four T's, or Agon or as Oberon or in Divertimento from Baiser de la Fee.

I think the men in NYCB are asked to do different things than the men at ABT and do them well. There is less call for bravura, which in many of ABT's men seem like just tricks, but the men of NYCB show much greater speed than I see at ABT. I also feel that at NYCB we generally see men working higher in demi-pointe than at ABT. And I prefer that look. I also find that NYCB's men are smoother in their transitional steps and pay more attention to them than do the guys at ABT. I don't find either Stiefel or Corella to be convincing in the "prince" roles at ABT. And although, they have bravura technique their acting is rudimentary at best. In a recent Romeo, Stiefel could have been hanging at the mall just as well as in the square in Verona. Last year in Onegin, Corella seemed more concerned with the number of turns he could do with no sense that he was about fight a duel to the death. I like Gomes but don't think he is superior in technique to Woetzel or Boal. Many of the other ABT principals I haven't seen and cann't comment. But it is nice to be living in an era where we can have this kind of discussion.

Colleen, I always find Glass Pieces to be fun to watch. But I find it funny when people praise Robbins for doing minimalism a decade after and not as well as choreographers such as Lucinda Childs, David Gordon and Laura Dean. The piece is so derivative of their work that it is almost an homage to postmodernism. But audiences who would be caught downtown seem to love it.

Balanchine's Ivesiana gets revived every decade or so. A very strange ballet - the most notable section was choreographed on Kent. She's born aloft by a number of men anf followed by one man who is continually trying to reach her. She never touches the ground, although at one point her bearers slide her body near her pursuer. I also remember a jazzy little section called "In the Inn" (I think). I saw Farrell dance it with Jay Jolley, she had her hair in pigtails. The final section is simply dancers crawling on their knees and ending in a heap at the center of the stage. Very strange and unsettling. Like Ives's music, the ballet is almost normal and ordinary but it is not. This work isn't an audience favorite but the choreographic range it suggests is part of Balanchine's greatness.

I saw Davids at both the Sat and Sun matinees and agree with the comments on Somoygi. Ringer and Boal were also wonderful as were Askegard and Nichols. He really conveys the feeling of a man who is loosing himself. Askegard's eyes would unfocus for a moment and then as he refocused there was a sense that he was lost. I think he has darkened and deepened his performance. Nichols is now incomparable in the "Clara" role, her dancing is still strong and her emotional focus holds the ballet together. Her last moment with the outstretched arm braught tears to my eyes both times. Kistler danced better than I have seen her recently but seems to me to be wrong for the part. If you believe, and I do, that her role represents "Clara the Muse" and Nichols is "Clara the Wife" then one needs to see some connection in the two dancers performing the role. As performed originally by Farrell, this role was powerful and strange, very changeable but womanly. Kistler is simply too girlish to make it work. As Leigh said to me about another dancer, "there are no contralto colors in her dancing." This darkness and depth is also missing from Kistler's performance here and it robs the ballet of some of the depth it should have. I admired Taylor's dancing in Who Cares? but felt nothing from her, either in this part or several weeks ago when she did the "Stairway to Paradise" role. Taylor is like a forced hot house flower - its beautiful and you admire the technique required to create it but its not real. I never feel that Taylor is showing me something of herself or a that she understands that different roles might require her to be a different character. She doesn't have to act but I want to know who that woman in love is - something Weese showed us with great depth in her rendition a few weeks ago. I enjoyed Stafford, she is slowly losening up a little and it is a pleasure to see.

One of my favorites was "The World in His Arms," Peck is a pirate and Ann Blythe is the heroine. Pure trash! and I adore it.

Michael, I so agree with your comments about Rutherford. She seems to think being the prettiest girl on the block is enough - no projection whatsoever. It is interesting that over the years, the first section of Vienna Waltzes has been danced by so many different types of dancers. I was made on Von Arnoldigen and Lavery, and there was always a feeling that the older woman might be abandoned by the younger in that moment when all the men come on except the principal. It gave this section a great poignancy. I've also seen Nichols and Meunier dance it. Explosion Polka was been a real let down since Leland left the part. She's the only one who was both funny and dirty. Merry Widow was weakly cast in its early years with Mazzo but got good performances from Calegair and Alexopolus. Ringer is glamorous without being mysterious and the role needs both qualities. Vienna Waltzes is probably a more difficult ballet to pull off then it appears to be. It is not just pretty - the casting is crucial to making it work. As is a sense of storytelling, there is not necessarily a plot but the dancers need to have decided what their relationship is to their partner and the people around them - an element sadly missing from Rutherford's performance.