vendangeuse

6 minutes ago, DC Export said:

 

I've looked for the music to In Vento extensively and have always come up short. It was a commissioned score, so I don't believe it's been recorded and released.

Argh—what a shame. It really is lovely. 

I was at last night's program, and it was the most exciting evening I've had at NYCB in awhile.

17 hours ago, canbelto said:

My thoughts on the new combinations program, including Justin Peck's Principia and Kyle Abraham's The Runaway:

https://humbledandoverwhelmed.blogspot.com/2019/02/nycb-winter-diaries-justin-pecks.html

I've never been able to pinpoint specifically what it is I find unsatisfying about much of Peck's work, but your review described it so succinctly and clearly—thank you!

Thank you @liebs and @howpureisivory! Yes, that is the moment in the video—although if I remember correctly Stanley and Peck were both on their heels like Khoreva.

Maybe that’s why I found it so jarring, since the video would suggest Parish may have performed it differently in November. 

Can I ask what may come across as a somewhat foolish question? Opening night was the only the second time I'd seen Apollo. The first time I saw it was during the Balanchine programs at City Center, with Xander Parish. I much preferred the cast at NYCB, and I felt I enjoyed and understood the ballet a lot more... with one exception.

What is with the shuffle that Apollo does with Terpsichore, where they are both on their heels with their toes lifted off the ground? I'm less interested in the technical aspects of the movement (what it's called) and more curious as to how other, more experienced people interpret that part of the piece? It kind of took me out of it a bit... I don't mean to come across as blasphemous but it struck me as a little silly.

1 minute ago, Mashinka said:

The Friends of Covent Garden get priority booking usually, I'm not sure what is on sale when booking opens for the general public.  Standing in the Stalls Circle is very good if you can get the central places.  I've only stood in the amphi once and the view was non existent.

Wow, I didn't even see the standing seats all the way up in the amphi. I was looking at the ones in the orchestra. Thank you for the tip about the Stalls Circle!

I was wondering about this. I'm hoping to catch one or two performances, but this will be my first time seeing the Bolshoi in London (or elsewhere.) I honestly don't mind sitting all the way in the upper reaches of the theater if that's all I can afford, but I worry about what will be left up there once all the numerous presales end. Also, I'm seeing what looks like standing row seats for £21 but I can't imagine they go on sale when the other seats do... do they?

2 hours ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

WNYC & the Metropolitan Opera have started jointly producing a new podcast called Aria Code, hosted by Rhiannon Gibbons of Carolina Chocolate Drops fame. Each episode examines a different (famous) aria in detail. The January 2 episode is about “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila. I've started listening, and it's pretty good.

I love that podcast. I much prefer it to the one put out by the MetOpera guild. Even if it's an aria I'm already familiar with, Rhiannon Giddens always makes me think about it in a new way, or from another angle.

2 hours ago, NinaFan said:

When buying a subscription I get “Early access to additional single tickets”.  I’ve always resisted, as I prefer to select my own seats.  However I’m thinking about ordering single tickets for a couple of performances.  Has anyone had recent experience ordering early access tickets, and does the MET charge the usual online per ticket fees as they do during the season?   If so, I may be better off just adding a “create your own series” as I’ve often done in the past.  Thanks!

Last year I ordered a pair of single tickets and I paid no fees. (I checked my email to verify this.)

This year I’m holding out for the “create-your-own” subscription though, so I don’t know if the fee policy is still the same. 

On 12/18/2018 at 5:28 PM, nanushka said:

As for Hammoudi — been there, done that, no more please! He's gotten enough Met chances, and has never (to my knowledge, in my opinion) risen to the occasion.

Nanushka, I have never seen any of his "Met chances," but I will take your word for it. That's disheartening to hear, though.

Also, I'm noticing today that Tyler Maloney has been given two Harlequins, and one 'Boy' in Whipped Cream. (Perhaps this was always the case and I am only noticing now... but I think some of these were formerly scheduled as Lendorf performances?) Has anyone noticed him especially in the past?

Maybe they'll bring in some male guest artists for the Spring? I'd love to see Kimin Kim again.

I do hope this translates into more opportunities for Forster, Hoven, Royal though. Maybe Hammoudi? I don't remember noticing him in particular in ABT productions, but I saw him in a non-ABT work at BAM this fall and thought he was very striking (albeit from a much closer vantage point than I normally sit in the Met Opera.)

Well, that's disappointing. I thought he was also supposed to dance SB on July 1, but now the ABT site is showing Whiteside dancing instead. I wonder what's going on with Lendorf.

And this is all adding up to a lot of dancing for Whiteside, no? I enjoy his dancing (I realize that may be a minority opinion here) and I really hope all of this doesn't end with him injuring himself because the ranks of ABT men are stretched so thin. Then again, I've never been a dancer myself—maybe the load is manageable? It just looks like he's taking on a lot.

I am looking forward to Gonzalez in Corsaire, though!

29 minutes ago, mille-feuille said:

1. Congratulations to Gillian and Ethan! What happy news! 😍

2. NO!!! I was planning on seeing her O/O for the first time this spring! 😩

I feel exactly the same, as I was also planning to see her in Swan Lake for the first time! Though I suppose I should know better by now than to expect casting not to change. But I am happy to lose the chance to see her dance O/O for a reason like this, instead of (for example) an injury.

She was scheduled to dance O/O with Hallberg... and so I kind of expect either Boylston or Seo to take her place, since those are the two principals Hallberg seems to be paired with most often. Shevchenko would be my preference though—fingers crossed!

(I am also experiencing the same problem posting in the earlier topic)

I will be going to the NYC performance of Sleeping Beauty Dreams on December 14th. I actually did some work in university on new, aesthetic, performance related possibilities of VR/AR, so I'm mostly going for the projected elements. I'm curious to see how they are integrated into the performance. In the past, dance performances I've seen that use projection/AR/VR fail to integrate them into a performance in a meaningful way. (Barak Ballet's E/SPACE comes to mind. It was lovely, but the projections really felt like a gimmick.) I'm curious to see what approach SPD takes.

But the main reason I'm posting in advance of the performance is because the Beacon Theatre is currently running a promotion on Sleeping Beauty Dreams tickets that I wanted to share. Code "BEAUTY" will apparently get you 25% off select tickets/seating sections on Ticketmaster, for anyone else who is curious.

The Traveling Ballerina review (which I found via your website; the link posted just brings me back to this page) mentioned Vishneva performing to a "partially full" house in Miami. Perhaps the performance isn't selling much better here in New York....

Wow, what a disappointment. I was looking forward to Taming of the Shrew. More than that I had really hoped to see the Bright Stream, but it’s going to be hard for me to make those dates work....

As unimpressed as I had been with Swan Lake, I was very pleasantly surprised by Don Quixote, so much so that I would have been tempted to see it again on Saturday had they not cancelled the second date.

The energy level on stage seemed much higher... but, this could be because over the course of 3 hours, Don Q appeared to have more actual dancing (instead of mime/gesture) than all 4 hours of SL. I really thought the dancing was terrific, from Basil, Mercedes, Espada, Cupid, the gypsy soloists... and I thought Tatiana Melnik’s Kitri was more enjoyable than her O/O.

Kind of a shame, since from where I sat it looked like this show sold more poorly than SL. (The theater was still pretty full, but I thought I saw more empty seats than usual down in the orchestra.) I did wonder if people who had tickets maybe saw the NYT review and decided not to come.

Reporting back on an underwhelming performance last night. Unfortunately I have to agree with Dreamer—I don’t know that they really “pulled off” SL for me.

I have no classical dance training, and have only become interested in ballet in the last few years. Sometimes the technical discussions on this board go over my head, but even to my eyes some of the dancing looked a little sloppy last night. The "swan" scenes were generally better, but some of the dancing in Act I and III was, IMO, pretty mediocre. Also, the orchestra played a fair bit of the score at a slower tempo than I have come to expect; I couldn't help but wonder, based on what I saw, if it was because the dancers could not have performed the choreography at the usual speed. The principals were the exception, but I did not find their dancing particularly exciting, even if it was a better performance from a technical standpoint.

I was also put off by some of the elements of the van Dantzig production; some of the choices struck me as very bizarre. For example, the prologue opens with Siegfried’s mother—maybe grieving? I couldn’t quite tell, it seemed like maybe it was supposed to depict her remembering the events of the ballet after Siegfried has “drowned”? (Which he does offstage, and not clearly; had it not been for the synopsis I would have no idea that was how he died, or even that he had died, until his friend carried his body out from behind a set piece.) But it struck me as odd to center her in the prologue when she has such a small role in the rest of the ballet. Nor did I find the choreography particularly exciting. During some of the my favorite moments in the score, there was no dancing on stage at all: just people crossing from one end of the stage to another, making empty gestures.

Which is more or less my general criticism of the performance, generally: I love the Tchaikovsky score, but I don’t think the performance ever really came near to marching the intensity or the beauty of the music.

I have tickets to see Don Q on Friday, and trying to be cautiously optimistic about it. It looks like Tsvirko is still set to dance Basil. I know he is not everyone's cup of tea, but I think the role will suit him well. I have never seen him dance live, and I am really looking forward to it. Maybe he will be able to bring to Don Q some of the personality and excitement that was lacking in SL.

One thing I am very pleased to report back about—no nationalistic speeches! It seems that was unique to the gala.

I was on the Met Opera's website perusing Spring performances today, and curiously, though ABT has said nothing about it (as far as I know) Olga Smirnova is listed dancing with the company in the spring: two performances of Le Corsaire (as Guinare), Manon (as Lescaut's Mistress), Harlequinade (as Pierette) and Whipped Cream (as Princess Tea Flower.)

https://www.metopera.org/season/2019-abt/le-corsaire/

Is this perhaps a mistake on the Met's part? (There are other mistakes—Hee Seo is listed as dancing Prince Desire, for example.) I would be surprised if the Met let slip a Guest Artist before it was officially announced by ABT, but it seems like a difficult error to make accidentally on the Met's part.

I'll chime in with some general impressions from last night:

I actually specifically attended this program for "Le Jeune." I saw "Not Our Fate" at NYCB last spring, and was interested in seeing more of Lovette's work, so I went out of my way to attend the program last night for that reason. I find myself agreeing with nysusan—not great, but enjoyable.

I was so excited about the Dorrance piece, but I also found it felt a little underwhelming. I think for me it looked like the dancers really needed another two weeks to tighten it up. In fact, while waiting for the program to start, I actually could hear the thudding of the dancers practicing backstage... a lot of the dancing looked either tepid or hesitant, and I found this to be more of an issue than the style of movement. There were a couple of moments that I thought would have had a lot more "oomph" (thinking of the women tapping out rhythms with their pointes) if they had been a little tighter.

That being said, I thought Murphy, Whiteside & Royal all danced wonderfully. If I am remembering correctly Whiteside actually started out (very young) as a jazz dancer, and more than the others he looked like was actually having fun with the choreography. I've thought about seeing the piece again later in the season, but I don't think my schedule will permit it.

I loved In the Upper Room, but it was my first time seeing the piece, so I can't compare it to other performances/casts.

Also, I didn't listen too closely to the speeches, but Netflix was apparently one of the sponsors of the Gala. Knowing absolutely nothing about how these things work—I wonder if Netflix and ABT are also working on some kind of deal for Netflix to distribute recordings of their performances? Others on this board have lamented the lack of ABT DVDs available. Now that streaming services like Marquee Arts and Medici seem to be gaining some kind of foothold, I wonder if ABT is looking at digital/online distribution? I imagine it must be cheaper than having all those discs printed, labeled, shipped, etc.

Not sure if this is the right forum to ask this, but looking for a little help. I have a ticket to the performance the night of the Gala—which seemed like a good idea at the time, as there were several ballets I was avoiding on other programs, and juggling some other commitments for October—but I'm not really sure what to expect tomorrow. I know the Gala is a "black tie" event, but as I am not staying for dinner, I assume I can dress a little more casually than that?

That's fair, abatt. (Although I thought last Spring he got pulled from a bunch of his shows because of his injury?)

This does make the questions raised in the 'Roster in Review' thread all the more interesting though, doesn't it, if even Hallberg is only scheduled to perform a handful of times?

19 minutes ago, Barbara said:

abatt, I don't choose Boylston in the tragic romantic roles but she did get very good reviews in Swan Lake or Giselle (can't remember which) last spring season. I'm still skeptical though, and frustrated that she'd be cast with Hallberg who is a much better fit with Stella imo.

Especially if Hallberg is only dancing two ballets! I'm excited to see Manon, but can't help but be a little salty that his participation in the Spring season will be minimal. And this after skipping out on the Fall season entirely (though with the ballets they've chosen, I can't really blame him.)

Even in NYC, I don't see any theaters offering Mayerling. The only thing I can find is a cinema in Queens broadcasting a previously recorded performance of Swan Lake on September 30th.

K'Arts Dance Company will perform their original 'fantasy ballet' Song of the Mermaid October 20 + 21 at NYCC, with Kimin Kim (Principal at the Mariisnky) set to dance as the Prince.

https://www.nycitycenter.org/pdps/2018-2019/Song-of-the-Mermaid/

As far as I can tell, Song of the Mermaid has only been performed in Korea, so it has been a little difficult for me to find any reviews. The tone of some of publicity makes it seem like it is geared mostly towards families with children... but even with so little to go on, I plan to get a pair of tickets in the cheap seats. Kim danced so beautifully last spring with ABT that I would not pass up another chance to see him so soon.

On 8/23/2018 at 12:25 AM, sappho said:

Don't have definitive recommendations on the non-fiction front (so much historiographical controversy!), but definitely recommend Julian Barnes' novel on Shostakovitch, The Noise of Time. A compact, melancholy reflection on the relationship between art and politics, and on the moral, political, and personal compromises required of artists working under totalitarian regimes.

Sappho, I got my hands on The Noise of Time last week and just finished it—I tore through it. It was a fantastic book, one I expect I'll return to again in the future. Many thanks for the recommendation.

On 8/28/2018 at 5:23 PM, dirac said:

I know "Testimony: the Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich" by Solomon Volkov caused some controversy back when.

If you live near a good library, it may have some of those books on its shelves, or maintain physical or digital copies of book reviews and magazines that contain articles with Shostakovich as a subject.

The Volkov book is one of the ones Barnes references in his author's note. I think I will take your suggestion, and try to find available copies at the library or the bookstore, of both this book and Elizabeth Wilson's biography (which seems much less contentious) before I make my next selection.