FPF

The NYT says that Finlay, Catazaro, and Ramasar sent "inappropriate communications" which suggests a different level of behavior than Weiner and Cosby, who are convicted sex offenders. On the bright side, male soloists and corps dancers should be getting new opportunities in the fall and Nutcracker seasons.

Also really shocked. I hope all of the dancers will be very cautious going forward and that the expected standards are very clear. I wonder where Finlay will go.

The Pillow has posted the post-show talk with Daniel Ulbricht:

I totally agree!

Also, I remembered that there was another interesting part of this discussion where the panelists were asked who is the Robbins for today. Justin Peck was mentioned first--I think that the panelist was thinking of his sneaker ballets. Wendy mentioned that she thinks that there's some Robbins in Peck, Wheeldon, and especially Ratmansky, because of their interest in characters and community. There was also a follow-up from the audience asking who might be the up-and-coming Robbins from among women or people of color. Wendy suggested Kyle Abraham, as he is also interested in character and community. There were a few others mentioned, including a woman, but the names have gone out of my head. Hopefully, the Pillow will post this this talk in a few days.

I saw the Stars of American Ballet (Daniel Ulbricht's group of NYCB dancers) today at Jacob's Pillow. It was, I thought, a much more fitting salute to Robbins than the SPAC gala, as all of the ballets were choreographed by Robbins. Even though I've been seeing the NYCB for many years, there were some works that were new to me or that I'd only seen once before. First up was Andantino with Gonzalo Garcia and Indiana Woodward. Although I enjoyed this ballet while I was watching it, I can't really remember much about it, and I'm not sure if I've seen it before. Woodward was charming, as usual. Next was Concertino, with Daniel Applebaum, Teresa Reichlen, and Andrew Scordato. I think this was my first time seeing this ballet. This seemed more minimalist and abstract than what I think of as a typical Robbins ballets. At first it reminded me a bit of Balanchine's Stravinsky ballets, but it became more "Robbinseque" as it progressed. After this, Ulbricht performed "A Suite of Dances" to the cello played by Ann Kim from the NYCB orchestra. I saw this with Baryshnikov when it premiered, and I thought that Ulbricht was great in this role. I could see Baryshnikov in the choreography, but Ulbricht was also still himself. This was a great showpiece for Ulbricht. After the intermission was another rarity that I'd never seen before, although actually quite familiar: Chopin Dances, which consists of outtakes from Dances at a Gathering and Other Dances that Robbins put together himself for two male dancers, in this case, Ulbricht and Anthony Huxley. Both were excellent. The pianist was Susan Walters of NYCB. The program ended with Interplay, with Devin Alberda leading Free Play, Sebastian Villarini-Velez in Horseplay, Unity Phelan and Peter Walker in Byplay, and the whole cast (also including Sara Adams, Kristin Segin, Indiana Woodward, and Lars Nelson) in Team Play. I thought this looked great on the smaller stage and enjoyed all of the dancers. After he made a strongly positive impression on me in his debut in the third movement of Symphony in C at SPAC, I was especially happy to see Villarini-Velez give a great performance here. This was a really enjoyable afternoon at the ballet. Kudos to Daniel and to the Pillow for organizing this program (and also for the Pillow Talk that I posted about under Robbins Centennial).

As part of Jacob's Pillow's observance of the Robbins centennial, there was a Pillow talk today on "Robbins Reconsidered." Maura Keefe (Pillow Scholar-in-Residence) moderated the discussion, which featured Julia Foulkes, Professor of History at the New School and curator of an upcoming exhibition at the New York Public Library (https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/voice-my-city-jerome-robbins-and-new-york), Robbins scholar Hiie Saumaa, and Wendy Whelan. A few interesting points that I remembered: I think Wendy said that Robbins choreographed The King and I shortly before The Cage, and that there are similarities in the arm movements. Wendy mentioned that Robbins first noticed her when she was dancing Symphony in Three Movements. Said that he liked her because she didn't wear make up or dress up, and that Robbins wanted people to be genuine and got angry when they weren't. Her first Robbins role was the Novice in The Cage, and she liked it because she felt that she wasn't beautiful and didn't know how she fit in as a ballerina, and in this role she didn't have to worry about those things. Plus she got to kill. Wendy also mentioned that Bart Cook taught her the role and how great he was at Robbins. He told her to watch Bride of Frankenstein and that the role was like Elsa Lanchester. Wendy also did a brief performance to explain what marking was in response to an audience question. She said that Robbins liked people who marked in the back of the room because it showed that they were thinking about the dance. He wanted dancers to know where they had come from and where they were going--she said that this approach informed all of her dancing. Saumaa mentioned that she had found that although Robbins expressed a lot of anger in his writing, he was also very loving, and had many letters where people thanked him for his thoughtfulness when there was a death or for sending them flowers etc. She mentioned that he wrote short stories, did drawings, and was very emotional. Foulkes mentioned that Robbins had pads where he wrote for pages to try to analyze how he choreographed Dances at a Gathering--why was this ballet so easy for him when others were so difficult. He ultimately concluded that it was due to Chopin and having completely immersed himself in the music. Their favorite Robbins works for today were The Cage for Whelan, Watermill for Saumaa, and NY Export Opus Jazz for Foulkes. O'Keefe also mentioned that the famous story about Robbins falling backwards into the orchestra pit is associated with 4 different productions.

Andersen definitely ticks the boxes of having successfully led both a school and a company. By the way, the full ad is linked to here: https://www.phillipsoppenheim.com/po/arts-media-culture/new-york-city-ballet-and-the-school-of-american-ballet/artistic-director-new-york-ny/53/, and it is much longer than the excerpts in the NY Times article. The various qualities that we all have been discussing are part of a much longer list of ideal qualities, and should probably not all be looked at as absolute requirements. Which of these the search committee will consider the most important may also evolve when they are actually reviewing applications. Studies have shown that women generally will not apply for jobs unless they meet every single qualification, whereas men will apply if they meet only a fraction. If they are serious about considering women, I would expect Phillips Oppenheim to reach out to encourage potential candidates, especially women, to apply.

To answer my own question, the interim team does seem to have done the programming for the upcoming season, including commissioning 2 of the 6 new works by (Kyle Abraham and Emma Partner): https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/arts/dance/new-york-city-ballet-new-season.html.

Given his current position as leader of the interim team, he would have to be considered a strong candidate as he is actually doing much of the job already. I think that the question mark for him would be his vision as an artistic director. The last season was already programmed by Martins (I'm not sure about the upcoming season).

I think as the head of the interim team, Stafford has got to be considered a candidate, and may even have the inside edge, as he is already doing much of the job. Having never seen the Ashley Bouder Project myself, my impression has been that although people like the idea behind it, the choreography hasn't received very positive reviews. And as an audience member, I hope she keeps dancing for a while more (I also enjoy Ulbricht's dancing, but my sense is that he is not used nearly as much). I agree that she could be a good/interesting choice, but the Board may not appreciate her outspokenness, both with respect to Martins as well as politically.

Some late-night thoughts on the AD position and this thread: What about Daniel Ulbricht? In addition to being a principal dancer with the NYCB, he's been the artistic director of the NYS Summer School for the Arts School of Ballet for several years, is the artistic advisor for the Manhattan Youth Ballet, has run his Daniel Ulbricht and Friends/Stars of American Ballet company (at Jacob's Pillow this week) for the past 10 years, and has been co-founder, co-producer and artistic director for Dance Against Cancer. If this is really Woetzel's dream job, he should apply and see what happens, especially as the search committee is likely to try to maintain secrecy until very late in the process. I think that Stiefel having left NYCB for ABT because he was more interested in their rep is problematic for this position. Boal and Lopez are both potentially good choices. I also think Wendy Whelan might be good.

If Ballet Master in Chief is grandiose, is Editor in Chief?

He restaged the Robbins choreography for the current (8/3-9/1) Barrington Stage production of West Side Story.

I went to the Saturday matinee at Jacob's Pillow. This was the first time since 1979 that the Houston Ballet appeared there, and it was also my first time seeing the company or works by two choreographers. There were four ballets on the program. First up was Just, a new Stanton Welch ballet that was commissioned by Jacob's Pillow. The music was by David Lang and costumes were by Holly Hynes There were three movements. The first was a somewhat tempestuous pas de deux for Jessica Collado and Christopher Coomer in character shoes. The costumes looked like street clothes--jeans and t-shirt for him, and I think white shirt and coral capris for her. The second movement also seemed angry, and featured Mackenzie Richter and Brian Waldrep, plus 7 men as backup. The men were in black suits with black shirts and Richter wore black pinstriped pants with a black tunic, black fishnet stockings, and black pointe shoes. The third and final movement featured Nozomi Iijima and Chun Wai Chai plus 10 women. Iijima was in pale coral pajamas, Chai was shirtless with I think pale coral pajama pants, and the women wore slipdresses. All were barefoot. This movement was mournful and . On the whole, I didn't particularly care for this ballet. It wasn't clear to me how the movements related to each other, and although the dancers seemed to be characters, I didn't get what the story was while I was watching. I also didn't really care for the music, especially the third movement (Lang's Just [after Song of Songs]), which was very repetitive and seemed to go on forever (and days later it's still an annoying earworm) to the extent that I started to wonder when it would end. In the post-performance talk that I am linking to below he discusses this ballet as representing three emotional stages in a relationship, but this was not clear to me when I was watching it. The second ballet consisted of excerpts from Welch's Sons de L'ame, featuring Tyler Donatelli and Ian Cassidy in the first excerpt, Chae Eun Yang and Andrew Vesceri in the second, and Mackenzie Richter and Harper Watters in the third. The music here was Chopin and was played live offstage. Costumes were also by Holly Hynes and I think these were white unitards. I like this ballet better than the first one, but also started to feel a bit bored as it went on. Things improved after the intermission with Trey McIntyre's In Dreams. (In her welcoming remarks, Pamela Tatge mentioned that McIntyre was in the audience and he stood up and got a big ovation.) This ballet featured music by Roy Orbison, costumes by the Bisou Consortium (jeans and shirts for the men, matching dresses for the women). The dancers were Alyssa Springer, Chun Wai Chen, Brian Waldrep, Karina Gonzalez, and Melody Mennite. I enjoyed this piece--the choreography was livelier than in the earlier ballets and more inventive. Last was Welch's Clear, which I enjoyed quite a lot. The first two Welch ballets on the program shared some similar motifs (e.g., arms up in right angles), but Clear was more choreographically distinct. The cast I saw was Connor Walsh, Chun Wai Chen, Harper Watters, Jessica Collado, Austen Acevedo, Shu Kinouchi, Hayden Stark, and Chandler Dalton. The dancers were excellent throughout. For some more information on the Houston Ballet at Jacob's Pillow, here are links to a post-performance talks and two reviews (the massive link features a photo gallery😞 https://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/after-a-40-year-absence-houston-ballet-makes-a-formidable-return-to-jacobs-pillow,547899 https://www.masslive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2018/08/houston_ballet_beautiful_at_ja.html

While I was watching this Swan Lake, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about Von Rothbart's motivations/actions (e.g., why is he stalking around in Act 1), rather than just going along with the story. Most of the innovations in the plot try seem to be trying to impose logic/realism on the fairy tale (e.g., Von Rothbart isn't just an evil sorcerer, he wants to take over the kingdom). But this just raises a bunch of other questions that aren't answered. Also, I think that having Von Rothbart in all four acts plus the prologue took some focus away from the Odette/Siegfried romance.

I've seen other productions where the choreography indicates that the corps has been released from the spell. I didn't notice that in this version.

But why would her spirit have the swan queen form, rather than a fully human form? I found a lot of that act confusing--I spent part of the time wondering why Siegfried was laying on the ground--I wondered if he was already dead. Then he got up, and went into the lake, and I thought that he was committing suicide, but then he came back with Odette's body.

And I agree that it doesn't make sense.

Yes, you have it exactly. At the beginning (overture) it shows Odette first in a dress, captured by Von Rothbart and transformed so that she is wearing the white swan tutu. At the very end, Odette in the swan costume is floating overhead while her body, retrieved from the lake by Siegfried, is wearing the dress.

I also saw the new Royal Ballet Swan Lake last week in Albany and I agree pretty much entirely with CharlieH's review. I also thought that several of Scarlett's innovations were misguided (or at least that they didn't work for me). i didn't think the political angle added anything to the story . I also thought that the apotheosis, with Odette's soul in the swan costume while her dead body was in the princess dress was completely misguided. On the whole, although I enjoyed this Swan Lake, I wasn't moved by it.

I also usually buy my SPAC tickets in person when I go to a performance there (and I live ~30 miles/40 min away). After seeing the Cuban National Ballet, I received an email with a coupon code for online purchase only that could be used for the Gala, which normally is not discounted at all. My ticket came with $13 in fees ($3 facility fee and $10 "convenience" fee). The fees ate up more than half the savings, but the overall price was still somewhat less than the original price. I thought the fee was exorbitant compared with what other local-ish venues charge (Jacob's Pillow, Glimmerglass, WTF). I'm also going to see Limon at the Pillow but on Sunday (~1.25 h for me).

Will do.

Thanks Sandik, Jayne, and ABT Fan. You and the video have convinced me to go. I've just bought my ticket.

Thanks for all of this Kathleen--I was trying to look through those financial statements a couple of days ago and couldn't get nearly as much out of them as you have. I'd forgotten about the SB projections. I saw SB at the NYS Theater when it first premiered and probably at least once after, but not for the past ~20 years (except for the Garland Waltz and Aurora's Wedding at SPAC).