Helene

I know we had an older thread somewhere on this subject, but I can't find it now. If I come across it, I'll link to it. Balanchine had the reputation of liking falls, because they showed that the dancer was going full out. In one of the Balanchine Celebration DVD's, there is a mini-interview with Melinda Roy, who described that in a rehearsal, Balanchine asked her to repeat a jump -- and she was a jumper -- a big assemble if I remember correctly. She went back, did it again, and still, he asked her to repeat, with "More!" She said she was getting aggrevated at that point, went back to the corner and did a giant assemble, fell, landed at his feet, looked up, and asked him if that was what he wanted. He told her that was it, what he wanted.

One thing that is very different between the press treatment of dancers/administrators in the Mariinsky and Bolshoi in the Russian press, and similar treatment of ballet in the US: the practical dearth of interest by tabloids in anything ballet. There are exceptions, like the columnist in Chicago who asked after performances of Don Quixote whether Farrell would become Balanchine's wife #5 -- which, according to Farrell in her memoir, caused her to dig in her heels, as she wasn't "# anything -- and the interest in Baryshnikov, but even that was mainly Hollywood-centric: his long relationship with Jessica Lange and the speculation over him and Kirkland when they were cast in the Turning Point movie. On the whole, tabloid-like coverage is almost unheard of in the US; look at the mini-war that erupted because Alastair Macaulay brought up Martin's arrest for domestic violence in a review. In the Russian press, this may have been the nicest thing they said about him, and it might have been brought up every time his name was mentioned. I wish the lack of interest was caused by civility and respect, but in my opinion, it's because ballet doesn't matter enough to the general readership, the same reason why reviews and articles about ballet get such little space.

Thank you for your impressions, cahill! Don't even begin to worry about the technical; we appreciate your observations. The link to Howard's review will appear in today's links, but just as impressive is Howard's refutation of the standard MCB story, and her conclusion:

Wow... There are worse images I could think of

Thank you for your impressions, ggobob! Sadly, I couldn't make it down to Berkeley for this one.

I saw the Gold Cast last night, which was the closing night of the run. After silence (except for a few coughers) throughout the first act, through the final fade out on the faces of Iphigenia and Orestes, the audience burst out with applause and yells as if it were a Mariners game (baseball). Same after Act II. It was a bigger ovation than I've heard at many of the standards. Who'd have thought that Iphigenia in Tauris would have elicited such a response? Nuccia Focile has a sweeter and softer voice than Marie Plette, but I thought the two interpretations were equally valid. Both Burden and Polegato sounded a little more raw than last Sunday afternoon, but each had sung every performance, and they pulled out all of the stops in the last one. It certainly fit with the emotional and physical states of their two characters. I saw the opera from the Gallery Upper, and my seat is, essentially, the far right of the front of the first level up. The staging is more impressive from up close; many of the details were unintelligible from the back third of the Second Tier. The stillness in contrast to the intensity of the music came through; from the top of the house, it was impossible for me to see the concentrated, theater-like energy the singers used to react to one another, which made it virtually indistinguishable from "park and bark" ["and lurch"]. Up closer, the tension came through. I've never seen any opera in which there is some type of pagan ritual or religious service set to dance -- Aida, Sampson and Delilah, Tannhauser, etc. -- and where the choreography was successful. Iphigenia in Tauris was no exception. bart, the dancing and gymnastics you gleaned from the video was for the Scythian men, which wasn't even integral to the plot, unlike the faux pounding by the priestesses. It moved some people around the stage and mixed it up a bit. I am even less convinced of the pantomime that Wadsworth imposed on the final dance music than I was last week. Everything up to the last scene in the score and libretto suggests that Iphigenia does not harbor negative feelings towards her brother: even after Orestes, whose identity is unknown to her, tells her that Clytemnestra has killed Agammemnon, and in return, Orestes killed Klytemnestra, she is horrified that the only living member of her family is Electra, not that Orestes killed her mother. Towards the end, after Orestes reveals himself as her brother, he asks her, how can she bear him after he's killed their mother, and she replies, pretty much, "let's put that all behind us and be glad we're together." Iphigenia has had no hesitation until this point to hide (sing) her true feelings, yet there's no "I'm torn" aria. There's not even an aria about how much she loves her mother, who tried to intervene when her father agreed to sacrifice her. At the end of the opera, while the final dance music plays, Iphigenia retreats and sinks against the side temple wall, holding the green scarf tat represents Clytemnestra. Orestes tries to console her, and she lashed out physically against him, until he subdues her, she embraces him, and she drops the scarf in acceptance. (The end of this scene is shown on the last part of the video.) There's nothing in the score or libretto to suggest that she lashes out against her brother. Psychologically, I agree that after her father tries to murder her as a sacrifice, Diana "rescues" her only to be dropped on enemy soil, whose king forces her to murder for him, and she learns that everyone in her family but her sister, Electra, has been murdered, she'd be due for post traumatic stress syndrome, but as in the first scene, staged before the overture, where she is having a nightmare, I'd expect her to be alone in her grief for her mother, until she put it aside and acccepted that she was no longer alone. I'd expect her to reject Orestes' attempt to comfort her as she comes to terms with the death of the mother she loved -- a simple gesture like an outstretched arm to say emphatically "don't come near!" would have done the trick -- but I thought the physical fight rang especially false. One of the miracles of this production was how Gary Thor Wedow got a completely different period-like sound from the same orchestra that plays Wagner, Puccini, and Strauss. Hopefully Langree will be able to perform and similar one at the Met.

I'm not sure how I missed this when it was first posted. My belated thanks for the translation, delibes.

October 27, 2007 Crytal Pite's Kidd Pivot company will perform in Montreal this week. Marc Shulgold previews David Taylor Dance Theatre 's "Medusa" and Frequent Flyer's "Theatre of the Vampires" for the Rocky Mountain News. Gia Kourlas writes about the Japan Society's Butoh Festival. A Quest to Put Butoh on the U.S. Map Jennifer Dunning reviews "stolen." Eating a Fish Head, and Other Rites Claudia La Rocca writes about the relationship between modern dance and modern art. Back to the Days of Painting with Dancing Feet Paula Citron previews Les 7 doigts de la main/The 7 Fingers who will perform in Toronto this Wednesday. Paul Taylor Dance Company " “De Sueños Que Se Repiten” (“Of Recurring Dreams”)" will be performed in Kansas City this Friday, on the Day of the Dead.

I don't hate 'em if I can't see 'em on stage.

The set is broken into three parts: about 60% is the temple of Diana, where the dancing you saw took place. (The last scene shows dancing through the open doors of that set.) A little more than half of what's left is an antechamber, and to stage right of that is the alley outside the building. With a fair large set piece taking up at least a quarter of the width of the temple, a large statue of Diana, and a number of choir people, there wasn't a lot of space on stage for the dancing to take place, even the more "set" pieces, which weren't shown on the video. I didn't think much of the choreography, and didn't think the other pieces were any more effective than what you saw.

I would have assumed that like piercings, dancers can do whatever they want to their bodies, but that they'd be required, at least in classical or neoclassical ballets, to cover them up with makeup (or remove visible studs). I think it would be ironic if after all of the discussions around how the corps of Swan Lake must look uniform, that some dancers could have visible tatoos under their pink or white tights, but that other dancers would be disqualfied because their skin is too dark to fit into the whole.

The Furies in this production don't really show up. I wouldn't say that Brett Polegato made him likeable, but he did make us sympathize. (He was great.) Louis Langree will conduct. (Thanks to zerbinetta for that info.)

Yes -- and Domingo will be singing Orestes, the baritone role. Paul, the production in San Francisco was a different one. Physically, it was much starker than the Lynch sets and Pakledinaz costumes for Seattle/Met: http://theoperacritic.com/reviewsa.php?schedid=sfoiphtau0607 The Robert Carsen staging was shared between San Francisco Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera. I wish I had been able to see that production last June, but I was travelling for work.

When I read the obituary in tThe Globe and Mail, I really wondered what David Adams was like. Thank you, volcanohunter, for writing a tribute that sounds like one he himself would have enjoyed reading.

It's all come home to roost. I've slowly been reading Birgit Nilsson's autobiography, and when I got home today, in addition to the latest Dance View -- yay! -- there were the following packages from amazon.com: Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise Alexander Meinertz's Vera Volkova Irene Nemirovsky's Daniel Golder Julie Kavanagh's Nureyev: The Story When it rains, it pours. This should keep me busy until the Vancouver Olympics...

So was Tessa Virtue. (I don't think she's there anymore.)

I saw Iphigenia last Sunday with the Silver Cast, and was supposed to see it last night, too, with Nuccia Focile in the title role, but I got swamped by work and will have to see that cast on Saturday night. Last night I had to make do with listening to the Minkowski recording on the car ride home. I found the opera to be a frighteningly powerful and, despite the godly and royal character, intensely personal work. Gluck was a master of creating almost unbearable tension, and releasing to an island of peace, such as in a phrase that could have come from "Dance of the Blessed Spirits." In this take on the story, Iphigenia is whisked away instead of being sacrificed by Agamemnon, but the price is that she is under the rule of Thaos, the Scythian, and must murder strangers to the realm on demand. In comes the newest lot, Pylades and Orestes, the brother who was a small child when she was abducted, and in whom she recognizes kinship. The analogy of Gluck to Wagner is apt in a couple of ways: Orestes, being driven mad by the Furies and wanting nothing more than peace, could be Tristan in Act III, trying to rip off his bandages to die at last. Even though there are clear places where arias begin and end, if there was any interruption for applause, it was once at the begining of the first act, and I don't even remember that. It is rare that outside of Wagner (at least for works written until the 30's), an audience will listen intensely for an entire act, and you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. I mentioned the Minkowski recording. In it Simon Keenleyside sings a powerful and beautifully sung Orestes, but it did not prepare me for the tormented psychogical portrait sung by Brett Polegato. While never distorting the vocal line, he stretched it to the breaking point to portray Orestes torment and imprisonment, and then retreated into softly sung, temporarily cathartic lines. I love Marie Plette, a wonderful Wagnerian singer, who filled McCaw Hall with a brilliant, dramatic voice that portrayed the full range of Iphigenia's emotions. William Burden has one of the most beautiful tenor voices I've heard live, and while his character, Pylades, isn't close to being as developed as the two siblings, he made the most of what drama he was given, and he sounded divine. Michele Losier, a Merola graduate, was a coup in the role of Diana, dynamically charged in her lone aria at the end. The orchestra was brilliant under the direction of Gary Thor Wedow, and the chorus was superb. I was less impressed with the staging. I thought the choreography (by former Boston Ballet choreographer Daniel Pelzig) stilted and cramped on the set. The drama, for me, was in the ways the lead singers portrayed it in their voices and in their encounters with each other. There is a short preview video on the Seattle Opera website that is well worth watching: http://www.seattleopera.org/tickets/2007-2...hts_sounds.aspx The singers and conductor will be different at the Met.

I don't think they needed to pull any strings for Healy's return to the pro world after I think it was seven years away from skating at Vienna State Opera Ballet. The pro ranks always had at least one skater whose was there mostly for style points, and if s/he had Curry choreography, that was a shoe-in. The pro producers also liked the "skater coming back from something else" story. For Healy it was ballet. For Janet Lynn, it was having three young boys and skating to the gorgeous Blue Danube program, also by Curry, with Toller Cranston's commentary. I dislike leg wraps intensely, but I'd seen her much less stiff than when she made that comeback, which isn't surprising after the number of years in which she hadn't skated at all. Healy was also in an awful movie in which she gets her dying dream of dancing Marie in the Nutcracker. I think Mary Tyler Moore was her mother, and maybe Dudley Moore fixed it for her to perform. Curry had skaters in his company who were professional ballet dancers. Most notable was Cathy Foulkes, who was the woman in Curry's exquisite Afternoon of a Faun, and who danced for Boston Ballet.

Dance on a Shoestring October 26 7pm October 27 7pm The Dance Gallery 30 East 31st Street, 5th Floor New Work Choreography: Benoit-Swan Pouffer and Alexandra Damiani Performed by Alexandra Damiani Excerpt from Summer Rambo Choreography: Dan Waggoner The intimate Dance Gallery offers a unique performance experience where the audience not only sees the dance, but can observe the behind the scenes elements of an informal, theatrical experience. BSNY, the official training school of NYTB, is one of the few schools in the city, that features special performance experiences for its students. Performances are one hour and will be followed by a wine reception, compliments of Vino Wine and Spirits. Ticket Info Call 212.679.0401 or email cpaolucci@nytb.org to make reservations. Tickets are $10.

I don't know of any commercial DVD with the complete Stars and Stripes, but the Pas de Deux and variations are available on the "Balanchine Celebration -- Part Two" DVD. I think they did the finale, too, but my mind may be playing tricks on me. Damien Woetzel and Margaret Tracey were El Capitan and Liberty Bell.

Many thanks, sandik! The "PNB Fridays" program for Contemporary Classics on Friday, 26 October, is sold out, but there are still the following events before the program opens next Thursday: CONVERSATIONS WITH PNB — FREE Sunday, October 28, 2007 ~ 2:00–3:00 p.m. Elliott Bay Bookstore, 101 S. Main Street, Seattle. Join PNB Principal Dancer Jonathan Porretta for an informal discussion of PNB’s Contemporary Classics program. Grab a cup of coffee and bring your questions. All Conversations with PNB are FREE of charge. BALLET PREVIEW — FREE Rep II: Contemporary Classics - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 ~ 12:00–1:00 p.m. Microsoft Auditorium, Central Seattle Public Library, 1100 Fourth Ave, Seattle Join PNB for a lunchtime preview lecture at the Central Seattle Public Library. Education Programs Manager Doug Fullington will offer insights about PNB’s Contemporary Classics program, complete with video excerpts. All lectures are FREE of charge. PNB LECTURE SERIES Stacy Caddell on Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room - Wednesday, October 31, 2007 Lecture 6:00–6:50 p.m., The Phelps Center Dress Rehearsal 7:00–9:30 p.m., McCaw Hall Join us for an engaging interview with Tharp repetiteur Stacy Caddell during the hour preceding the dress rehearsal. Attend the lecture only or stay for the dress rehearsal. Tickets are $10 for the lecture only, or $20 for the lecture and dress rehearsal. Tickets may be purchased by calling the PNB box office at (206) 441-2424, online at www.pnb.org or in person at the PNB Box Office at 301 Mercer Street.

The site is moderated where it pertains to copyright, but Mashinka is right: comments are a free-for-all -- which I'm sure is what appeals to its core audience -- and many are either straight gushes or not to be read on an empty stomach. For those who've just had their breakfast, it's best to watch the videos and treat the comments as if they are in a foreign character set that one can not read.

October 14-20 Tom Phillips reviews Butoh at the Japan Society. Butoh on Parade Lisa Traiger reviews Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Company .

Thank you so much for your review Treefrog!