Drew

A long interview with Alina Cojocaru from January of this year--

https://www.thewonderfulworldofdance.com/alina-cojocaru-principal-ballerina-creating-new-show-love-dance-unexpected-words-wisdom

For good measure, video of a Liam Scarlett pas de deux danced with Isaac Hernández at a festival in Mexico in (I believe) 2019:

ABT's cancelled season actually looked to me to be one of their more interesting in recent years--with a number of promising-looking debuts and at least one important premier.  I don't know what the answer is to the "digital" issue...that is, I don't know how much the problem is ABT's leadership--people here have persuaded me that some large portion of it must be--and how much is problems that go back to their seemingly constant financial precarity, their (non) relation to Lincoln Center etc.

Missed this but was very pleased to catch Initials R.B.M.E. which was something of a blast from the past for me. Many of us old enough to remember performances by Richard, Birgit, Marcia, and Egon remember them as some of the most remarkable artists we ever had the good fortune to see. (I will mention Heinz Klaus too.)

I find the choreography uneven as a whole—or at least not always in synch with how I personally hear the Brahms—but better and even much better in many ways than I remember from when I saw it live oh so many decades ago.

In terms of risk to performers and audiences I think not enough is said about the fact that even survivors may be left with long term organ damage. I do worry about the fate of many arts organizations.....

I watched some and fast forwarded through much but what struck me was that some dance-video bits were enjoyable to me (including the Tony Bennett/Catherine Hurlin/Aran Bell featurette--especially charming when he and the dancers waved to each other, they in the park and he in his apartment). I think several others might have been enjoyable or moving to me as video-dance or video "bits" in the context of at least one or two substantive excerpts. The absence of anything like that was very disappointing. And the music-video approach even when charming (as many bits were to me) is not charming for an hour... But perhaps the target audience for this fundraiser is not hard-core balletomanes (though some balletomanes, like @balletfan enjoyed it which is great). 

Let's hope they are saving substantive material up for later....(I did think the opening montage was good, maybe some of that footage at greater length?)

I do like the company's plan to have a feature with dancers who were preparing debuts for this spring--I hope they are able to include better rehearsal footage than we saw this evening.  I do feel great love for ABT and want them to make it through this crisis more or less intact....

I was intrigued by the "new" La Sylphide too. I rather hope they opt for a more "romantic"--ie traditional--approach. There is a reason that ballet has lasted and it's not all luck-of-the-draw....

Reading about this with distress--though I guess it saves me time watching it--Perhaps they remain convinced (as I think some still are) that seeing substantive ballet online keeps people from being willing to to see it live. But NOW??!!?? I would also understand if Ratmansky wanted to work more on Of Love and Rage before it gets seen by wider audiences, but is there really no 10-15 minute -- or even 5 minute -- clip they can show? Oh well. I still hope they get a lot of donations. And perhaps the second half will be better....

Edited to add: This should not have gone in this thread. Apologies...and I see @imspear posted something about this under a discussion of fundraising--moderators can delete if they wish.

Dancers from all over the world...I quite liked this:

"American Ballet Theatre's Misty Copeland and her former colleague Joseph Phillips have launched the most recent fundraiser: Swans for Relief. They corralled 32 ballet dancers from 14 countries to film themselves performing Mikhail Fokine's Le Cygne (often referred to as 'The Dying Swan') from wherever they're isolating right now. The resulting film strings their movements together one after the other:"

https://www.pointemagazine.com/ballet-dancer-relief-fund-2645934191.html?utm_campaign=RebelMouse&socialux=facebook&share_id=5523904&utm_medium=social&utm_content=Pointe&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0rvVZLU_tgOQJDdyQtNn1p_8c3gUtjVqLdkUjza6pNvu8aLy58VpPA59s

13 minutes ago, nanushka said:

 

I do agree about Ratmansky — and of course, yes, the company has done artistically substantive work. I should clarify that when I used the term "visionary leadership" I was primarily referring to matters related to what I had identified as the topic I was addressing: the need to come to grips with modern technological realities. And again, I don't just mean recorded performances.

Aaahh...This makes sense...I see Mckenzie heavily criticized so often (and in ways that I, personally, find unbalanced) that I took your comment more generally...

20 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

I can't argue with anything you've written. But I actually feel for McKenzie on this, because ABT is paying Ratmansky's regular salary, while it's the neighbors across the plaza who seem to get Ratmansky's strongest work.

Yes--part of the 'cost' of getting Ratmansky was giving him complete freedom -- including letting him continue to choreograph for NYCB even if less frequently. I'd be surprised they didn't do something to limit that in his contract, but my memory is that he opted for ABT over NYCB precisely because they would let him choreograph where he liked as long as he fulfilled his obligations to them.

I'm also a bit of an outlier in some of my admiration for Ratmansky's ABT ballets. I loved Seven Sonatas (which I saw danced by Atlanta Ballet); I loved Whipped Cream (even after attending three performances in two days); I was intrigued enough by  Serenade After Plato's Symposium to want to see it again and actually know of two people who argue IT is actually his strongest work. And...extreme outlier opinion here...I prefer the ballet he created at ABT for Shostakovitch's Piano Concerto no. 1 to Concerto DSCH. But I realize the consensus is that he does his best work for NYCB and I do think several of those ballets--I haven't seen all of them--are absolutely wonderful.

45 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

Perhaps relevant among critics and "ballet nerds" (among whom I count myself), but we have to be honest and admit that most of Ratmansky's projects peter out quickly at the box office, and not only at ABT. I think of how unceremoniously his Paquita was dumped when leadership changed at the Bavarian State Ballet, or how La Scala, which co-produced his Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, pretty quickly reverted to Nureyev's productions of those ballets. (And Manuel Legris' arrival will only cement their presence.) Ratmansky seems to produce hits consistently only for City Ballet, which is no help to ABT.

As I know you know, the Ratmansky landscape has a little more variety than that suggests (productions that continue to be performed at the Bolshoi, ballets that have been taken into the repertory of more than one company--even the Shostakovich Trilogy, which was created for ABT, was reported by fans on this site, to be a box office success when danced by the San Francisco Ballet... But in any case, "visionary leadership" partly means supporting things that may not have immediate box office appeal or things that divide opinion or piss people off....I think ABT's leadership, criticized for so much (perhaps rightly at times) should get credit for its support of Ratmansky. Also for maintaining some kind of limited connection to the Ashton repertory which otherwise would scarcely be seen in New York at all--except for the occasional visit by Sarasota or (even rarer) the Royal. Ashton, too, has not always been good box office for ABT--Fille, for example, doesn't seem to draw audiences. And Ashton is one of ballet's greatest choreographers. (Project plié should get a mention here as well...though one could wish it had happened sooner.)

Like most ballet fans I can find plenty to criticize in my favorite companies including ABT....and, in fact, it's been a couple of years since I made a special trip just to see them, so take that as a strong criticism in itself--but they have done some things that to my mind qualify as artistically substantive. That's really all I wanted to say.

8 hours ago, nanushka said:

I don’t think it would be a problem at all if they were to bill it as a new release of historical material, featuring great dancers from their past. I really can’t imagine that would be the reason they don’t. Even audiences used to HD today bring very different expectations to videos from the past.

They need to come to grips with modern technological realities. (And I don’t just mean in terms of recording performances.) They’ve been behind on this for decades now. It’s really not a surprise they’re flailing now. They’ve had no visionary leadership for far too long.

Do they have --or have they had- access to anything comparable to NYCB's media suite when they dance at the Met?  (I had been assuming not...)

Re ABT's leadership. I have always thought that hiring Ratmansky, at any rate, and giving him support for a wide variety of projects was an example of serious artistic leadership and has kept ABT 'relevant' to the ballet world at large. 

7 minutes ago, nanushka said:

Many of the videos on YouTube are VHS transfers. Surely they could (technologically, at least) stream better quality versions of some of the older non-DVD material.

It still wouldn't look like the high quality streams being put out by other top companies, and I think that's a problem for them in terms of the image it conveys etc.

I feel for ABT--over the years they have done such wonderful things with substantially fewer resources than NYCB and I worry about whether they can make it through the storm....

2 hours ago, Longtimelurker said:

I received this too and was confused as to what it is as well. I really hope that they start streaming some of their performances soon.

It would be lovely to see streamed ABT performances. I suspect they would very much like to offer some, and if they aren't it's because they can't -- possibly they don't have much to stream and are wary of streaming rehearsal footage...or, say, material from decades ago that, in many cases, is available on youtube anyway and often not of the highest video quality.

15 hours ago, pherank said:

Why only the After the Rain PDD? Why not the complete ballet?

I can’t say what the company is thinking, but the pas de deux has often been programmed on its own. It wouldn’t surprise me if some people judge it most effective as a stand alone piece.

Mr. Drew falls into more than one category that might be especially vulnerable to complications from Covid-19 and I fall into at least one, and we live in a state where the Governor seems to be indifferent to human life —at least in comparison to his concern for the state budget. (And that’s not the worse thing I could say about him in this crisis.)  You can bet I don’t anticipate attending any ballet performances until there is a vaccine that has proven itself to the medical community.  

Thank you for posting...

Atlanta Ballet has posted a short excerpt from the Maillot Romeo and Juliet with Alessa Rogers' Juliet; she is currently with the Royal Swedish Ballet and has danced the lead in their Nutcracker:

I remember Alizade too--I liked her very much the two or so times I saw her dance--admittedly in relatively minor roles. I had always thought she left the Bolshoi under her own steam and certainly it's wonderful she is getting to dance the ballerina repertory.  Sorry i missed the video....

1 hour ago, California said:

PNB just posted this on Twitter. I can't find it on their web site yet, but WOW! Now all we need is  the Bolshoi's Ratmansky Giselle to be streamed so we can get a closer look at both reconstructions.

On Friday 05/8, we're premiering PNB's House Party 2.0 - everything you need for an evening at home, including a full performance of Giselle from 2014 with Kaori Nakamura & Jerome Tisserand. Donate your tix or make a gift of any size to our Relief Fund: http://bit.ly/PNBReliefFund

 

.

 

 

0:33

164 views

 

 

 

2

 

19

 

 

That is a wow!

11 hours ago, angelica said:

At the risk of repeating myself, I think that the Met Opera House is a terrible venue for ballet. The rings are much too deep. IMHO, every seat is a compromise.

It bears repeating....

Today Atlanta Ballet posted video of a pas de deux from Yuri Possokhov's Firebird (in this version the Princess is on pointe and gets a pas de deux with Ivan)--I'm posting because it features Alessa Rogers who was, until her departure, my favorite Atlanta Ballet ballerina. She left the company a few years ago and now dances for the Royal Swedish Ballet. 

Rogers also has a blog (The Expat Ballerina) that she updates now and then and which mostly documents her travels (most recently a hiking trip through the alps).  I wish I could post footage of her in the Maillot Romeo and Juliet or Tharp's Princess and the Goblin, but this will have to do. She is dancing with Christian Clark who is also no longer with the company. I expect they are posting this because they plan to bring back the Possokhov Firebird in September: 

3 hours ago, On Pointe said:

The rest of the time I'm holed up in my apartment.  Making masks helps give me back a feeling of control over these terrible circumstances,  and I'm sure I'm not alone.

That's great....

5 minutes ago, pherank said:

We've been talking about those very things over in the Covid-19 thread. The U.S. in particular is engaged in a huge tug-of-war between local needs and powers, and federal needs and powers. There's no fix in sight given the competing value sets. And that's why it's so important to be actively doing something positive to help things along.

Just a note to say that the very second you posted, I had just finished editing my post to moderate the tone a little. However, the content is the same...and your post responds to it....while...uh....preserving my earlier words....

2 hours ago, pherank said:

Many would agree with you. But I like the fact that there are still plenty of people immediately willing to help out in a bad situation. We're not yet that country of 'couch potatoes' waiting around to be taken care of. So that's one good thing to be reminded of.

But finally this has nothing to do with being a couch potato or waiting to be taking care of — i can’t help but reject that way of framing the matter even if I think you are making a generously optimistic point. This (the need for protective gear for medical workers) concerns competent public health policy and competent political leadership. Nor do I imagine health workers prefer not to have the most sophisticated and secure protection—however grateful they (and we) may be for these efforts by the costume departments of ballet companies and others. Which are—yes, of course—altogether admirable. But what they are is not a replacement for what the country needs. And to ignore that while admiring what they do risks leading to other kinds of passivity....