drb

Isn't it important to cast apprentices, so that they have a chance to earn a position in the company? Members of the corps are already in. Also, Mr. B. cast dancers who would interest him in a role, not according to rank. Isn't this a tradition which, by and large, helps make the company more interesting to many of us when compared to the totally stagnant casting at that other local company? One reason why we wish so many corps dancers might have a chance to play Juliet is that we've been given plenty of chances to see each of them!

Merde, Kathryn!

Wiles/Hallberg/Carreno Corsaire July 8 Matinee

...When I saw this ballet in Cleveland, Carreno was announced before the curtain went up as Ali(guess someone got hurt as he wasn't cast). You couldn't hear the other subsitition for all the screaming for Jose... .

Well, today he was listed, and danced a flawless Ali. Bravo! Jose!

This afternoon's Corsaire was simply wonderful. Michele's first two performances were as a sub for Irina Dvorovenko a few years ago and it is a role that she's owned from the start.

Act 1. Two subs for the Odalisques: Melanie Hamrick (a first Odalisque with legs looking like she'd come slumming from across the plaza, a delight!) for Erica Cornejo (so sad we didn't get one last look at her classical style) and Anna Liceica for Renata Pavam (as the third O). Misty Copeland scored again as the second O, what a breakthrough season for this open, whole-body dancer. Come on, Mr. McKenzie, show some of that Peter Martins courage and give her a lead next season; she'll sell seats and you can be a hero! Maria Riccetto (Gulnare) and Sascha Radetsky (Lankendem) were both on in the big PdD. Her dancing seemed a continuation of Hamrick's first O, and, while noone can surpass Malakhov and his backbends, Sascha landed with a couple of dazzling deep plies in his first variation and had even greater jumps in his second. Michele looked beautiful and very much at home in the role and with David, who sub'd for Marcelo Gomes.

Act 2. The PdT was dynamite. Michele's fouttes included singles, doubles, triples with very little wandering given the variety, ending with a triple so easily that she might have been able to do another flurry of them! Whatever the concerns not long ago, Jose Manuel was sensational. Both he and David had no problems lifting either. And Hallberg, despite you would think being exhausted (he'd just danced Conrad last night and has really been a workhorse this season--with two killer Romeos (ask Bocca!) to go) also dazzled with full-prince charisma. The bed adagio, long the private domain of Nina Ananiashvili and Julio Bocca, was also impressive. These two dancers obviously like each other and lyricism flowed. At adagio's end David celebrated with astonishingly high leaps for joy!

Act 3. The Jardin Animee was all beauty, and Michele, as always, tossed off those Italian fouettes as if they were as easy as simple pirouettes.

I was sitting next to a mom with two very young girls. They were very actively enjoying the show, looking for every opportunity to shout "brava!" (including for Jose!) and whatever else. Yet everyone around them loved them. THIS is THE proper ballet to take the youngsters to.

Just received the Spring Edition of SAB's newsletter. On July 3, the latest crop of national audition tour winners arrived at SAB for five weeks of training. A number of current NYCB dancers recalled their auditions. A very short summary of each:

Wendy Whelan. "Suzanne Farrell gave my first audition for SAB in Cincinatti when I was 13. It was a long and really difficult class with a lot of pointe work.... One day after school recess I came back to the classroom to find my mom had taped the acceptance letter to my desk..."

Jared Angle. "I was 14...Miriam Mahdaviani gave the class..... I thought I wasn't going to get in because we did a tendu side plie combination and she stopped when she got to me and told me, 'do it again, but this time with your knees turned out.'"

Janie Taylor. "I auditioned in New Orleans when I was 14 with Garielle Whittle and then again at 15 with Nichol Hlinka. I remember being nervous... I hoped for the best the second time around and luckily I was accepted. I had the time of my life that summer..."

Tom Gold. "Kay Mazzo gave the audition in Chicago in 1986 when I was 15. The audition...was a very abbreviated class--plies to one side and tendus to the other with only a few combinations in the center....I would be going to the most pretigious institution where I could see how I fit in with the big guns."

Maria Kowroski. "I was 14...when my mom drove me 3 hours to Detroit... Violette Verdy gave my audition class and I liked her bubbly and fun energy. I was so shy back then that if we hadn't had numbers on us that the auditioners used to line us up, I would have been hiding in the back the whole time."

Christian Tworzyanski. "...I was 13 and we drove four hours from South Carolina to get to the North Carolina School of the Arts...Stacey Calvert, Elizabeth Walker and Ashley Tuttle had all come from my school and gone to SAB... It was really scary... (but) Garielle was straight-forward and to the point the way people are in New York..."

Jenifer Ringer. "Susan Hendl gave my audition class at the Kennedy Center when I was 14.... We were doing grand battements and Susie came over to correct me. She wanted more energy and sharper movements, so she would clap her hands each time I moved my leg. She still gives me the same correction 20 years later, and she says she still remembers me and everyone else she has accepted into the School!"

Dancer alums recently promoted (other than the ones already posted at NYCB):

Boston Ballet: Misa Kuranaga to Second Soloist.

Miami City Ballet: Jeremy Cox to Principal Soloist.

Pacific Northwest Ballet: Jonathan Poretta and Jeffrey Stanton to Principals; Maria Chapman to Soloist.

Saint Louis Ballet: Jennifer Cudnik to Principal.

There is a photo of guest teacher Francia Russell teaching D pointe class. She and Kent Stowell were guest teachers at the School in January.

The newletter is edited by Dena Abergel. You may see the new mom, with dad Ronan and baby Odelia on the Winger:

http://www.phontographer.com/winger/archiv...7/dsc00089.html

Roddy Doble...Anyone know if he has joined ABT? or ABT II?

He is one of the current National Training Scholars at the Jacqueline Onassis School at ABT.

http://www.abt.org/education/summerintensive.asp

Thanks a million for the casting!

Without asking "Who's better?", can experienced viewers from The City state particular features of individual dancers that we should look for?

Interestingly, the audiences I've been in recently seem to have appreciated our lyrical favorites. .

So too, Joan Acocella. In her outstanding New Yorker article, she calls attention to Caity (Caitlin) Seither:

In the Vishneva/Corella Giselle

... you look down the line of Giselle’s “friends,” basically her backup crew, and suddenly your eye stops. There is a new young person, Caity Seither—I had to ask someone her name—dancing as if this were her last night on earth. It is to see such performances that one goes to A.B.T.

In a Times review back in 2003 when she danced in Tudor's Continuo for ABT's Studio Company, Jennifer Dunning wrote of Ms. Seither

...easy perfection of body line and the liquid arms...

Another name to add to that list of lyric dancers still in ABT's Corps ('though only for a little over two years, so far)?

For those wishing to spot her (frequently one of the four small swans) in the corps, Gene Schiavone provides a perhaps more useful photo than ABT's site:

http://www.geneschiavone.com/gallery/Indiv...l-Dancers/140_G

Caitlins, or Kaitlyns, seem to get noticed quicker by Mr. Martins than by Mr. McKenzie.

There's currently a 4+ minute video on Ailey's A.D. Judith Jamison on the New York Times site, under Arts. She is interviewed and rehearses dancers.

http://nytimes.com/pages/arts/index.html

With this highly anticipated season just three weeks away, tickets seem to be selling very well. Generally, the Lincoln Center site, which was offering A-center seats in the Rings, is down to E-off-center. For the August Mozart Fest's Morris programs, which had the advantage of earlier subs sales, it is even better (for us worse); some of the Rings are already sold out for the first of the three performances.

Re: Acocella's comments on the Vishneva/Corella Giselle.

As expected, a perceptive and great read. A minor correction: Diana is not yet 30. Her birthday is July 13.

Her description of Diana's need to transcend beauty by finding her own "secret" in a ballet is nicely integrated into Acocella's view of what made the performance both original and great. Responses to questions on the prima ballerina's site may help to amplify Acocella's remarks.

When asked what her favorite ballet was, she answered "I receive the greater pleasure from dramatic ballets, good partners and sensual spectators." (And her performances do often make us feel that we count! As has been emphasized on another recent thread, audience responses do matter to dancers.). A few months ago she responded more specifically "Manon." As to Acocella's question whether Vishneva reads to research ballets, Diana responded recently, regarding Manon, that yes, she'd read Prevost, "but the dramatic ballet should reflect our life today, I think." In both her two Giselles and two Manons, each performance of each was a vibrantly different, living story. Joan Acocella's article helps explain why.

As to ABT's fetish for new full-lengthers for the Met, and their greater success with one act revivals at City Center, who can disagree with her assessment? Her favorable reviews for David Hallberg (Green Table) and Michele Wiles (Dark Elegies) are also illuminating.

... but even at the Met does Part's lyricism garner as much enthusiasm as Herrera's technical power?

Oh yes, Part sells tickets. Last year the Met even had a good-sized audience for her 4th of July Swan Lake. And this season the generally quieter, elderly Wednesday matinee crowd roared for her lyric Odette, and gave six curtain calls. In seasons where I've attended both Part and Herrera Swans, I'd say Part's reception was even the wilder of the two, and Paloma is getting to be quite a good O/O.

..this push away from artistic emphasis and toward technical emphasis.

The push to virtuosity can start at an early age, and not only in our time. Maria Tallchief, in her autobigraphy, writes:

[at the age of 5]

In 1930 Mrs. Sabin, an itinerant ballet teacher from Tulsa, visited Fairfax looking for students. Before long, Mrs. Sabin had me dancing on pointe and giving recitals...

But I don't look back on her with gratitude. She was a wretched instructor who never taught the basics, and it's a miracle I wasn't permanently harmed. And my frugal mother was no help. She always bought my toe shoes a size too big so she wouldn't have to buy them too often. Then she'd stuff them with cloth pads so they'd fit and I'd be able to perform the double and triple turns on pointe that seemed to thrill everybody. Of course, Mother didn't really understand the finer points of ballet technique, and I simply did what she asked. I showed an aptitude for dancing and wanted to please. It never occurred to me to say, "It hurts to do that."

Fortunately she, and artistry, were saved by Mme. Nijinska. The whole story, up to her arrival at Ballet Russe and Ballet Theatre, a great read, courtesy of the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/t/kapla...r=1&oref=slogin

But as Carbro pointed out, the help is there at ABT to perform Nijinska's role for their current dancers

. . especially when you consider who the artistic staff and ballet masters are: McKenzie, Barbee, Kolpakova, Parkinson, Susan Jones & Kirk Peterson. Not a one of them famous for sacrificing content for form.

... And I've been counting more than I like these days.

I didn't count Ms. Part's, though....

I did count Veronika's rotations, as that confident look suggested she was going to vanquish that demon. Alas, if she'd finished with a quad instead of floating that seductive double feather, she might have been upped to two matinees next year. And a quint might have alerted the Times, and then maybe an evening... Also did Irina's, to see if her prior change toward holding place and form, in Corsaire, would continue. It was so again in Swan. Not so long ago there was an arena football score in a City Center season PdD battle: 50-48. The math mind slows with age, score-keeping fatigues. I hope there will be a turn toward artistry. Across the plaza the divine Sara Mearns bothered with 12 in a youthful O/O all in beauty, and the crowd roared. Perhaps our cutting edge company is signalling a turn toward poetics.

...Given the recent pattern of promotions, I have to wonder if Julie Kent would ever have been promoted to principal under McKenzie, despite her beautiful line and wonderful lyricism. She has never been a powerhouse dancer, but she offers something that many of those powerhouses don't.

Point well taken, yet given that in recent years she has so often been first-casted by McKenzie in so many ballets, I kind of think he would have promoted her.

Edited to add: Whoops! He became AD in 1992 and she was promoted in 1993...

...Julie Kent to Celebrate 20th Anniversary with ABT on Friday, July 14...

The performance on Friday, July 14, will be led by Julie Kent and Marcelo Gomes and will honor Ms. Kent as she celebrates her 20th anniversary with the Company...

Thur. Eve., July 6, 8 P.M. SYLVIA – Kent, Saveliev, Lopez, Radetsky...

Fri. Eve., July 14, 8 P.M. ROMEO AND JULIET – Kent, Gomes, Salstein...

She entered the company as an apprentice in 1985. Here is what it looked like at the time, courtesy of Gilles Larrain who did the souvenir photobook for that year:

http://www.gilleslarrain.com/html/themes/dance/

Of course her photo isn't included (her husband Victor Barbee's is), but dancers from Kudo/Baryshnikov in Sinatra Suite to the beautiful Lise Houlton (mother of the Gilliland sisters, Kaitlyn (NYCB) and Raina (MDT)) are. Matinee Idol Kevin McKenzie was on the cover (and included in the set). Memory Lane!

Has anyone seen Lise Houlton's Minnesota Dance Theatre? Lise Houlton is the mother of NYCB's young sensation Kaitlyn Gilliland, and now Kaitlyn's younger sister Raina dances with the company. Here's her photo:

http://www.mndance.org/gallery/Current/Raina_Gilliland

If you click on the name of the company, upper left, you'll find more about the company.

Moderator's Note:

This post and beck hen's (directly below), were broken from the Swan Lake thread, deserving a separate discussion.

My contention is that an emphasis on bravura technique at the higher ranks means we are not developing as many naturally lyrical dancers, though some of our favorites at the lower ranks do have this quality, like Fang, Lane or Hamrick. ... and our dancers are not immune to the temper of the times, so it seems to take them longer to access certain emotions... Amanda McKerrow reached a quiet, yet sublime depth that often went unappreciated.

Thank you Beck Hen for this very thoughtful post. While it was all interesting, the portion quoted brought back to mind a Washington Post interview with Amanda McKerrow just before her retirement Giselle, and they've kindly kept it available on line:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...71201561_4.html

It would seem "the temper of the times" is also the temper of the Company's leadership. That may explain why those corps dancers we love that you mention, with the courage to be lyric, are still in the corps. After ABT's Baryshnikov and MacMillan years, to quote the article:

...when tastes changed at ABT and McKerrow's nuanced, dramatically sensitive dancing lost points to a more dynamic, extroverted, all-purpose style that had always been popular in the company but grew increasingly evident under current ABT Director Kevin McKenzie.

Altynai Asylmuratova heads the most important school in the world, the Vaganova Academy. Judith Jamison runs Ailey, probably the most popular modern dance company in the world. Nina Ananiashvili has resurrected ballet in Balanchine's hometown. Still, at a time when the number of great women dancers dwarfs that for men (except, perhaps, at one local ballet company), I'd agree with Barnard that there's an extreme imbalance of power.

Wiles/Hallberg Swan Swamp July 1, matinee

Agree, '85, there was much to like this afternoon.

Act 1 opened with a warm welcome for Tutor (in more ways than one) Frederic Franklin. This noble dancer was not to be alone today, as that noble young star David Hallberg was his pupil and prince. Hallberg began happy, totally at ease among his subjects, until his mother laid it on the line. Dissociation was to be his theme. It began as he danced with Benno's (Lopez) girlfriend, and was not helped at all by tutor's disapproval. Franklin had a Siegfried who paid attention to him, and the great dancer was able to help the young one grow his interpretation. Before the soliloquy began, Hallberg circulated among the young villagers, but their earlier warm interaction with him was gone, it was as if he couldn't focus his sight on any of them, his eyes darting not just aimlessly but with an underlying panic. By the time of the soliloquy proper, his fabulous line and stretch aside, they were pretty much couples oblivious to him, just as his own possibility for being part of a couple had been taken from him by his obligations. It was as if he were invisible, not there, and the young Hamlet ran off in fear and to find some other there. The PdT was what it should be, two young dancers Misty Copeland (she seems in a different role every night, but here she was a delight, lots of warmth radiating, as if a budding, dare one hope, Giselle) and Renata Pavam (pointed feet, exemplary turnout, needing only some of that open-hearted epaulement Misty has), both flawless, and nicely partnered by Carlos Lopez.

Act 2. Siegfried is so lost Benno has to explain to him how to hunt birds with a crossbow. Somewhat dazed, he comes upon Odette, Michele Wiles, his partner since he was in the corps (this young Bruhn actually partnered her to her win of the Eric Bruhn competition). She was startled. He believes her mime, her story something concrete to hang on. The adagio begins, although Michele is still affraid to look at him. As confidence comes, eyes meet and there is a modulation in her shoulders as her human body awakens within. She leans, her back against him, and luxuriates in a physicality probably half forgotten. And something so needed by the dissociated prince. Her petit battements seemed less about emotions than about themselves, that she'd had feet when free of wings. During this adagio Hallberg reminded of Igor Zelensky, that kind of tall majesty. Michele's second variation lacked only the needed flexible upper back early on, but ended with virtuosity. Her moment of recapture into the swan body was different. Facing the audience, her arms suddenly each shot out, straight and parallel with the stage, with a jolt that would dislocate some people's shoulders! Locked in, the wings took her off stage.

( Edited to add: David Hallberg in his July 2 entry in The Winger shows his costume worn to this point of the ballet and discusses what he goes through during this intermission. "It seems whenever I am at the ballet the intermissions are always too long, waiting for the second act to start, but when you are the one dancing you need more than 20 minutes, easily 30.")

Act 3. While Hallberg didn't use the time seated on the throne to forward the story as Gomes does, once off his Hamlet reemerged. He partnered each princess as if she'd just appeared in his path and guided him a while. And by the time he had to walk by the princess line to chose a bride, he just looked ahead (or somewhere...), not seeing them at all. When Odette arrived he wakened and darted off stage with her. As they reentered for the Black Swan PdD his eyes were glued onto her, not to where he was going. The balance Siegfried places Odile into was attained immediately and the arabesque held longer than I can remember it ever being held, surely comparable to Cynthia Gregory's best! Before she was to convince him she was Odette by demonstrating choreography leading up to the start of Act 2's adagio, she'd pretty much convinced him with another leaning on him with her back, that especially iconic move from their earlier pas. In her fouettes there was an early triple and some more multiples, with the turns finishing out with a number of singles.

Act 4. One felt sad, despite the silly early hopfrogs and cheapening glitsy final ascension.

http://www.tulsaballet.org/inside_tulsa_ballet/gallery.htm

When you go to this gallery you'll find over 300 photos of Chris Wheeldon's Midsummer Night's Dream, attributed to Jean Richard. Wow! What a goldmine, thanks Mississippi Queen.

And of course there were those "of their time" that must have been wonderful then but which he didn't keep based upon changing taste (his and ours), and those could well get his batting average over Ty Cobb's best! Thanks Helene for bringing us back, in this time of World Cup distraction, to America's national passtime, so appropriate to this most American choreographer!

I assume it is OK to discuss the actual (newspaper) article. It featured a three column color photo of Part(as Odette)/Gomes, calling her "White Goddess." Part's performance was said to seem "a rebuke" to those who've complained of "her alleged technical weakness", and finding (in her Odette) "a palpable vibrato to her movement that seemed capable of sustaining a story line all by herself." Gomes was praised for supporting any interpretive direction she chose, and overall for giving a "gloriously committed, intense performance, technically assured at every point on the dynamic spectrum." Part's Odile was compared to that of her teacher Inna Zubkovskaya, and he loved her variation and her fouettes.

Vishneva/Carreno: Her Swan was preferred to her Giselle earlier this season, maintaining that the arch of her back and her arabesque were much better in Swan Lake, and calling her O/O "schismatic...also riveting and electric." (I'm not sure I saw the same performances Mr. Lobenthal saw, though I have seen all of them.) He also felt she has been fatigued by too many recent performances at too many different places, and that this was visible "at odd moments when her epaulement became careless." He was quite moved by their lakeside act, toward the end of the adagio finding that "she soared into moments of baroque abandon" and feeling her arms in the coda "became wings beating frantically against the bars of an invisible cage." He also liked Odile, and noted that in the variation she "interjected two jetes into her manege of pique turns...that were so startlingly powerful." Carreno's dancing and partnering were also praised.

Well, 425 - 80 = 345, minus the distinctly counted earlier versions that were also masterpieces. But that's the flaw in my "math": Balanchine's non-duds are masterpieces, or near. Other than Ashton, who else even reaches double digits?

Peace?

According to the ABT spokesperson I spoke to, Erica Cornejo’s last performance with ABT will be as a Harlot in Romeo and Juliet on Monday, July 10.

That will be a tough ticket, what with Diana, Angel and also Herman as Mercutio. The site says Dress Circle is sold out, but still tix in Balcony row B ($32) and Family Circle row B (about $10 less). If you want orchestra, for ease in tossing flowers, both $88 and $68 get you row W. I wonder if she'll get a solo bow. Perhaps if there are enough people who want to toss flowers, and management is somehow so informed (how?).

...

I called the ABT press office about casting for tomorrow's pas de trois, as well as Erica Cornejo's upcoming performances. Is that "legal" to post?

Well, there are higher-ups at BT who can. Hopefully one will replicate your call! It would be nice if her fans, as well as just immediate friends and family, could be part of her ABT Farewell.

It's interesting for me to see Ratmansky being spoken of as ballet's great hope, since I found the pieces he did here in Copenhagen for the Royal Danish Ballet to be major duds....

Guess we've been lucky in NYC. He's two-for-two here, the wonderful The Bright Stream last summer with The Bolshoi and now Russian Seasons. While admiration of the former plus familiarities with Robbins ballets may have primed the audience's welcome of the latter, the two do share an impressive trait. In both the story ballet and the (sort of) abstract one, each dancer is a very distinct individual. You know them quickly, and remember who they are throughout each ballet. This was an immense help in following The Bright Stream's story, and in making the viewer care about each person, since they were so real. It also added a completing dimension that gave special coherence and continuity to Russian Seasons. One wants to see it again, in part, because we like and care about the dancers. The rave reviews are creating quite a buzz on Russian Forums. This great success is, I believe, quite helpful to Mr. Ratmansky. I hope he will continue to choreograph for NYCB.

Sure, we are lucky. Even Balanchine had more duds than hits!