liebs

Paul, the third movement Scherzo is for jumpers. Think thrid movement Bizet. The girl does entrechats six and huit.

Beauty is in the eye og the beholder but as they used to say about Streisand - talent is beauty! I do find it interesting that he puts Farrell and Kent in a "personality" category with Nureyev. To me, it is not at all the same.

And just call me "terpichorean hamster" - slaving away raising funds. OY!

They are all ppd, but there may be an opening and finale that is a group dance - don't remember that. Each ppd is about an aspect of love or the male female relationship. My favorite has always been "That's Life" - a kind of apache dance that ends in an unbelievable catch. It has to be seen to be believed. It was always spectacularly performed by Tom Rawe in the early. You leave the theatre happy after this piece and I love the de la Renta cocktail dress costumes.

Raymonda at ABT was the longest bore of the season, at least the Eifman was shorter. Corrella and Ricetto in Mozartiana at City Center seemed to be in different ballet than the one that Balanchine created. ABT's underuse of Part and Meunier is the scandal of the year. ANd I didn't much care for the redesign of Pillar of Fire.

Fulfilling a long held dream by actually seeing Two Pigeons and Enigma Variations. And the performances were lovely. The Danes in a pick up group in Brooklyn were a mere taste of Bournonville but I enjoyed it inspite of a horrible theater, and a freezing schlep out to Brooklyn. Meunier is Piano Concerto #2 and Tuttle in Mozartiana were the only saving graces in ABT's Balanchine program.

Jenny Somoygi, who has everything technique, grandeur and musicality. Van Kipnis who danced with such unaffected joy and Bouder is on her way to being the epitome of her generation.

Per Crains NY Business, the school is opening 12/4 and with the company to follow in Jan. DTH got $1.6 million from a variety of sources including the City of NY. They have a strategic plan and an exec. director for the company and the school. A side note, Michael Bloomberg has always been very generous in supporting the arts with his personal money. Additionally, he has directed public funds to public arts projects more than any recent mayor.

What I'd like to see is some good, new choreography for Cornejo that further reveals his gifts or shows us something in him we haven't seen before.

For me it is usually the choreography not the dancer. Halberg is a terrific dancer but I would not cross the street to see him in a piece by Trey McIntyre. I am of the opinion that you can not really judge a dancer in bad choreography - give me Petipa or Balanchine and then I can see the dancer. In theatre, we say that you can always get something from a Shakespeare play not matter how bad the performances. I think that is true in dance as well, the better the choreography the more you see the dancer.

And I was not as impressed as some by the company in the pieces I saw. The problem I have at ABT now is their casting - with no regard for emploi. Ricietto, for all her gifts, is not right for Mozartiana. She's a small, careful soloist in a part created for a tallish, daring ballerina. Her performance was a shadow of what we've seen from Farrell, Calegari, etc. But how could she be great - she's miscast and with Corella this is like Mozartiana for midgets. Corella is a great virtuoso but his Mozartiana was danced without regard for the small steps and transitions, which make this choreography great. I enjoyed him much more in Corsaire when it did not matter that he wasn't really on the music. The corps ladies looked good, I agree. And I thought they looked fine in Les Sylphides as well. But this production is kind of dead, the dancers don't really seem to be connected to the work. I enjoy Cornejo and I'll even buy him in Spectre but I can not see him as a prince. Although, I'm sure his Albrecht and Siegfried (with Reyes) as his partner are in our future. There are plenty of roles for him like Prodigal and Mercutio that don't completely destroy all of the tradition of emploi that has been the foundation of classical ballet for centuries. Not that ABT cares, a company that casts Nina A in Fille and Irina as Giselle has given up on this concept long ago.

I saw the same program last night and found it very uneven, A Very Good Year is a very bad ballet. I could not understand the relation of the dance to the music, what is McIntyre hearing in Dvorak? I just see steps strung together with some Tharpisms attached. Well danced I guess but who cares. Spectre was lovely and convincingly danced by Cornejo and Reyes. I'm sure it is difficult to work up much emotion in an isolated, last minute White Swan ppd but I found Wiles just plain boring. She has all the physical and technical gifts to make a good Odette. But no dance imagination, no soul. Le Corsaire was full of fabulous tricks by Corella and woke the audience up but I thougtt Herrara was sluggish in her solos. These two are not a convincing couple, to me their body types do not ook well together. T&V was much better than when I saw it at the Met last spring with the female corps much improved. I would still like them to close their fifths in sou sou - that tight fifth is the essence of Balanchine. Last night, Murphy gave a very strong performance and it was the first time, I saw her as a balleriina taking command of her kingdom. Gomes was fine but needs to work on the double tour, pirouette combination. The piece held together pretty well but there were moments when I felt that the dancers were not really on the music. The quick foot work in the finale was messy, although the tempo was not particularly fast by NYCB standards. I was left with the feeling that the quick, precise use of the feet was not important to ABT or that the dancers did not have enough opportunity to cultivate this kind of movement, which is certainly not needed in much of the ABT rep.

No, the current Fiddler was significantly rechoreographer particularly "Tevye's Dream." To Life and the bottle dance in the wedding are the Robbins' choreography.

Well, for one thing she is the grand daughter of Loyce Houlton and the daughter of Lisa Houlton, so it is a ballet dynasty.

Dybbuk hasn't been in years. It is one of the those ballets with which Robbins frequently tinkered and there are several versions. I assume that since SFB is doing Dybbuk (not Dybbuk Variations), it is the narrative version. Dybbuk Variations eliminated most of the plot but kept the music (by Leonard Bernstein, I think and some of the atmosphere. In other incarnation, it was a very weak piece. I think Tomassen did the lead in the premiere of Dybbuk Variations.

I raised a glass at dinner tonight with DD - bravo Sir Fred!

Having recently seen de Keersmaker's piece to Mozart, I wonder if there is an avante garde left. It was modern dance but nothing in movement we haven't seen before in the choreorgraphy of Childs, Taylor, Cunningham and maybe Tharp and to a very classical, traditional score. It left me wondering whether an avante garde exists at all - if we define it as creating something really new or previously unseen. Duate does not meet that criteria, his work just looks like recycled ideas of better choreographers.

My DD saw her at UBA this summer and says the extension is still there. Apparently, she is an inspiring teacher.

Danses Concertante. which Denby describes so beautifully. The two performances I've seen seemed pale by comparison. And Symphonie Concertante, which in the 80's ABT could not cast appropriately.

The current Ballet Review has pictures from Forsythe's ballet's where the women's tops are sheer enough to see their breasts. Very common in hs work I think.

It would be interesting to see Illuminations again at NYCB. I saw it once, I think with Castelli as Rimbaud. Leland has danced Profane Love, so it is probably revivable. Millepied or Hubbe might be interesting in the lean role.

My DD (15) adores Jane Austen and they are shorter. Or how about Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre? Or Three Museketeers or the Count of Monte Cristo? Camile by Dumas fils. I loved Les Miserable but it is at least 1,000 pages. I also love Balzac's novels, mayeb Cousin Bette? This summer, DD is reading In the Name of the Rose byt Umberto Ecco, set in the middle ages but written in the 80s.

But the ballet masters now, were all trained by GB. Leland, Von Arnoldigan, Tanner, Hendl, Dunleavy, Lavery, Ashely and for the Robbins rep - Castelli, Redpath and Frolich. Maybe these aren't the ones you meant or would have chosen. but they all meet your criteria. I see a lot of personality; The romanticsm of Ringer Fayette, who can be exotic one moment and the all American male the next The creaturliness of Kowrowski and Whelan The intelligence of Weese and Millepied Bouder is a PA cheerleader recast as a ballet virtuoso The openeness and joy of Carmena Reichlen and Lowry - the sexiest high school girls around Jon Stafford who has grown up this season from a boy to a man right before our eyes Abi Stafford is the quintessential "good girl" and I love her for it Jared Angle, everybody's best friend and the guy all the girls want to dance with Elizabeth Walker, the prettiest girl at the prom And who knows what is coming. I'm happy when I see talents like Jessica Flynn and Tyler Angle and know that probably I'll get to watch them grow up into unique dancers in their own right.

I also disagreed with her assesment of ABT's Balanchine evening. I did not see the casts she saw but the evening I saw was not encouraging. ABT female corps was weak in T & V. Nina A left steps out of Piano Concerto #2 and took it at an intlerably slow tempo. Halberg did not succeed in the turning sequence that she describes as a fiasco for Tewsley.

It seems to me that at one point may years ago, a reconstruction of sins was talked about with Bette Midler in the Lenya role. But from what I remember, no one could reconsturct the ballet. Does anyone rembers this?