canbelto

Actually I've been so lucky with my Giselles. I've seen Diana Vishneva, Nina Ananiashvilli, and Natalia Osipova. What a great trio of Giselles.

Diana Vishneva with Vladimir Malakhov. Still maybe one of the most memorable nights of ballet in my life.

I was at tonight's Osipova/Carreno performance. I thought Osipova was an absolute phenom. This role really showcases all her strengths -- her elevation, her ballon, her incredible jumps, her lightness on her feet, her buoyant stage personality, and of course her ability to turn like a top. I saw her in Giselle last year and while I thought it was a memorable performance for all the above mentioned reasons, I thought that missing ingredient of real tragedy was missing. Her Giselle was too buoyant, too happy almost, as she bounced all over the stage like a sprite. But no such reservations with her Kitri. She was a delight from start to finish, and her fouettes of course brought the house down. Some cherished memories: the way her bourees literally seemed to twinkle in her fan variation. The way she kicked the back of her head, Maya-style, in Act 1. Her playfulness in the Dream Sequence -- she moved across the stage with such energy it was just fun to watch. Her grand pas de deux with Carreno was the expected highlight, as she held long balances and teased the audience shamelessly. And her fouettes! Doubles, triples, quadruples, I lost count. Carreno I thought seemed energized by his dancing partner, and gave a better performance than I've seen him give in ... well, a long time. He did occasionally just not dance parts he was supposed to dance. Oh welll, he;s pushing 40. Kristi Boone was very fine as both the street dancer and the Queen of the Dryads. Daniel Simkin I thought gave a great performance as a the Gypsy as well. But as much as I enjoyed Osipova's triumph, I have to admit that there;s this sluggishness that I've seen this year with the ABT in their warhorses. It's not a problem with the principals, but the corps de ballet. It was this way in the Bayadere a few weeks ago. I just wish the ABT could somehow revitalize their warhorses. But anyway, the point is ;... bravo Natalia!

And ... what does this have to do with whether she dabbled in the questionable politics of her playboy husband?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8PJGXvZ4u8...feature=recentf I had never seen this brief clip before! But it's definitely not from the film they made in 1966, which I've never liked. Watch and enjoy.

Another thing about Vishneva's Nikya that I saw last night that is not what I usually see from this dancer is a lot of careful posing. She made some beautiful and striking shapes, but I always loved her hyperkineticism and her willingness to take risks, even if it resulted in a mistake or a fall. The kind of "I will lift my leg up in developpe and it will look perfect and I will hold it for a long time so everyone will see how perfect it looks" thing is not why i buy a ticket to see Diana, and maybe this explains my disappointment.

I went to tonight's performance with Vishneva, Gomes, and Murphy. I had to leave after the Shades act but I think I caught the flavor of the performance. I have to admit I was disappointed. Both Vishneva and Gomes seemed to be phoning it in, and i've NEVER seen them do that before. I've seen them together and separately several times, and I always appreciate the energy and passion they bring to every performance. Maybe they're tired? Marcelo was visibly tired during the Shades scene. (I guess his third Solor in so many days will do that.) Diana made some obvious technical mistakes. She had trouble sustaining the arabesque turns in the Scarf duet, and overall her performance seemed rather careful. She still has a very Oriental face, lovely physique and the back flexibility, plus a natural affinity for this kind of role, but this wasn't the same Diana that made me literally tremble during her Giselle. Gillian Murphy also ran out of steam. She has a nice haughteur for the role of Gamzatti, but her grand pas de deux with disappointing. Her Italian fouettes were marred by her inability to straighten her free leg. She threw in some nice doubles but her turns lacked speed, and she never seemed very into the performance either. The ABT Shades really suffer when you've seen companies like the Kirov (live) or POB (video). I particularly love the way the Mariinsky ballerinas stretch their leg upwards in the arabesques, not overly so, but enough to give a feeling of reaching for the heavens. They also stretch their free arm upwards in that same kind of heavenly motion. The ABT ballerinas on the other hand looked well drilled, but nothing more. And their lack of uniform schooling shows in the developpes that weren't at the same height. I think another issue is I'm over the Makarova production. It scales down Bayadere in a way that I find more and more annoying. Nikya isn't even allowed to dance her "dance of joy" with the flower basket. With such a small-scale production, you need big personalities to make it work, and I thought two years ago Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes made it work. But alas it can't always happen.

One thing about Jacobs' writing is that I think she spends too much time talking about what a dancer looks like, and not enough on how the dancer actually dances. Her descriptions on Part for example. It's a mistake Arlene Croce, for instance, never made. Good dance critics I think always give you an idea of how a dancer moved.

The tambourine of Esmeralda. Personally I love the scarf that connects Solor and Nikya in La Bayadere.

I would recommend that fans of Beverly Sills NOT read the book. It really does show her as very bitter, not a kind word to say about anyone. You wonder why the editor never told her to tone it down a bit.

He wasn't a movie character, but I'd have to include Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos. His struggles as a screenwriter made for one of the best running jokes during the whole series, and added a lot of dark humor to what could have been a one-note villain.

Anne Heche also, surprisingly, is one of the actresses who speaks warmly of her days on Another World. (She was fantastic too -- a wonderfully sexy Vicky and innocent Marly.) I also read that she remained friends with some of the AW cast long after she left the show. Kind of surprising, given her wacky and out-there reputation. Lovely of Julianne Moore to return to ATWT for a farewell.

Especially since so many actors who got their start on soap operas have acted like it's an embarrassment. Robin Penn Wagner and Meg Ryan are two who will talk of just about anything except for their stints as soap opera actressesa.

I haven't seen "Come Fly With Me" but I think that maybe it's better to see the show without thinking of any of the Tharp's work for modern dance and ballet companies. If you do, you're probably likely to find the show recycled and trite.

My favorite scene in Psycho is actually the creepy heart-to-heart Norman has with Janet Leigh before the shower scene.

See, different strokes for different folks. I thought one of the movie's charms was the fact that Hildy wore an ill-fitting suit, kind of mannish hat, and clunky pumps that look believable when she runs down the street. I thought to have Hildy be such a ball-buster, and Cary Grant kind of the dandy (first seen shaving, and always impeccably tailored) was a nice gender bending running joke.

Good April Fools Joke.

I like Leigh's performance as Blanche too, but I think it definitely was aided by Kazan sticking so closely to the unit set. It wasn't a "filmed stage play," but he didn't try to open up the play at all. Leigh's Blanche definitely is on the surreal/kooky side, and the contrast between Blanche's behavior and the earthy Kowalski apartment added to the film's appeal a lot. Another stage to screen adaptation that I thought worked well without much "opening up" was His Girl Friday. I knew before watching the movie that it was an adaptation of a play (The Front Page), but again, the crowded, frantic environment of the newspaper room was necessary for the film's success. But the fluid direction of Howard Hawks (as well as the acting) never made me feel that the film was stagey. On the other hand I do think there is a danger of a director refusing to open up a play AT ALL. A Raisin in the Sun is a good example; I might as well have watched a film of the staged work.

I guess my point is ... do you think Mme. Alonso would have been able to build such a great ARTISTIC company if she hadn't also cozied up to a tyrant? Do you think that other voices of dance in Cuba deserve or deserved to be heard and seen, but were not because of Alonso's symbiotic relationship with the Castro regime? Now if Mme. Alonso can sit back and say that she did this all to create a great ballet company, then more power to her, but I'm just pointing out that in the past (and probably in the present) dancers haven't hesitated to use foul political connections to get ahead. They haven't hesitated to sleep their way to the top, or wield an iron fist behind the scenes. All this is documented, and it's part of the ballet world. If Bouder is using twitter to build a larger fanbase, then I'd say that she is not being dirty or underhanded, just media and tech savvy. So I fail to see how she's defaming her art or her profession.

Of course Twitter didn't exist back then. But ... Mme. Alonso has allowed herself to be a representative of a tyrannical, intolerant regime that is still living the Cold War about 20 years after the rest of the world stopped. The Cuban ballet dancers who defect (god, what an awful term that is) do so with the knowledge that they won't be welcome back, and that they have no job security whatsoever in their new country. Still, they do it, and why? I believe it's because their quality of life in Mme. Alonso's company is so poor that they'd rather take the risk. Where's the mystique, where's the magic in that? I am not saying Mme. Alonso didn't achieve great things with her company (she has), but really, let's not idealize the indefensible.

Which is why I think Elia Kazan was so smart in not "opening up" Streetcar Named Desire. The crowded, squalid New Orleans apartment set really heightened the claustrophobia and tension that builds up during the play. I also think not "opening up" Streetcar made Leigh's performance more effective. It had a certain staginess to it, and being constantly reminded that this was originally based on a play I think made Leigh's mannerisms less irritating.

I too am shocked by the venom leveled at Bouder. And for those who don't regularly attend NYCB performances, I'd just like to say: Bouder onstage is really special. She's a technical dynamo, a ballerina who wasn't born with either the best face or the best body but who nevertheless is a star because of her dancing. She takes huge chances onstage, which can result in her falling flat on her butt, but her spontaneity and spunk onstage are just part of her appeal. Now if you're going to think less of her and not attend her performances because she twitters between the Rose Adagio and Vision Scene, and because she had the temerity to express her annoyance at a cab driver (not to HIM, but in a tweet), then I'd just say it's your loss that you're missing out on one of the most exciting ballerinas of our generation.

Ok ... I just have to go here. But these are men and women who wouldn't be allowed to twitter, unless they defected to the U.S., because they lived in a regime with no regard to free speech or human rights. I don't see how this is better. As for Ashley Bouder's tweet, anyone read facebook updates of, say, anyone? I've written much worse. and maybe here's where I differ in my approach to artists. I don't hold them on a pedestal, and imagine them to have any kind of mystique, or glamor, or be on a higher plane. I recognize that it is all, in many ways, an illusion, and that offstage, to be crude, their farts still smell. If Ashley's tweets showed her off to be arrogant, dismissive, haughty, and conceited, then I have a simple solution: don't follow her tweet, and just enjoy what she has to offer onstage. As it is I think she just shows herself to be a very normal young lady with normal interests, and she has a good sense of humor, so I check in on her tweets. And as for tweeting in between performances, I remember Natalia Osipova saying that she text messaged between her acts of Giselle. I saw her give a Giselle for the ages. So keep on texting Natalia!

Live in NYC long enough and you'll chuckle at that tweet. I think you're kind of making a mountain out of a molehill. Can you really not watch Clark Gable films if you knew that in real life his leading ladies dreaded kissing him because of his foul-smelling dentures? Are Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers less magical if you knew that offscreen they could barely stand each other? Can you not watch Erik Bruhn and Carla Fracci if you knew that Erik Bruhn was gay? Are you really not that able to separate what happens onstage with what happens in real life? Ashley Bouder onstage is a dynamo, a force of nature. I don't expect her to be the same intense person offstage. It's enough to know that when she's onstage she's thrilling.

Because Kirkland with her drug addictions and various personal problems was so much preferable to a nice young lady who gets excited about seeing Come Fly With Me and loves her dog.