Helene

I just read Leigh Witchel's review of Musagete in DanceViewTimes, and in one perceptive, concise sentence that I wish I could have written, has summed up the piece in what is, in my opinion, its appropriate context:

I went back and read the descriptions of the ballet, both here and by critics. I saw Busoni's Doktor Faust at the San Francisco Opera last weekend, and if there hadn't been any references to Balanchine, LeClerq, Mourka, and Farrell in them, and just a description of the stage action, I would have thought that the ballet was about Faust, at least Busoni's Faust, who was based on Faust puppet plays, not Goethe's version. Not that this would have made it a better ballet, it seems like a better fit.

Perhaps NYCB could rent the sets and costumes back to Eifman's company, and depending on the performance rights, license the ballet back as well. It sounds like it fits right into his repertoire -- unless it's too tame. Most audiences wouldn't know that it's an insult to anyone and would take the whole thing as a metaphor For Something Important.

And I was hoping Rawling wouldn't do the obvious and would leave Hermione and Krum together.

Okay, three-way tie: Kronstam, Vasiliev, and Martins.

The Danes have decided to bring the mountain to Mohammed:

I would argue that US audiences might be more compartmentalized than UK audiences, not more conservative. There are no national companies or theaters, like the Royal Ballet or Royal Opera or Monnaie Dance Theater, which get a proportionally high public subsidy and are meant to embody some set of national, representative aesthetic values. We have specific expectations of specific companies, but that doesn't mean that the an intersection of the same audience who is appalled by Eifman at NYCB wouldn't travel to Brooklyn to see Morris' Dido and Aeneas, Decoufle's Shazzam, or the latest piece by Trisha Brown -- or even go to see Eifman's company -- as long as we could go in with our eyes open. I wouldn't assume that the "high-brow all-American" panel members couldn't identify John Adams because they didn't consider him a "real" opera composer. There have been a number of high-profile contemporary American operas produced at the Metropolitan Opera during the last forty years -- among them Vanessa, Mourning Becomes Electra, Antony and Cleopatra, Susannah, The Ghost of Versailles, Einstein on the Beach -- as well as next door at the New York City Opera -- Ballad of Baby Doe, Ahknaten, for example -- and an opera person would have had to have been living under a rock to not to have acknowledged John Adams' Nixon in China, which is even listed in Metropolitan Opera Stories of the Great Operas, Volume II . Again, many people go to the Met expecting opulence and conservative productions on the whole and never go any farther, but there are also audience members who expect the new and obscure at Glimmerglass Opera, and something in between at New York City Opera.

Eifman is not experimental choreography, though; it's choreography that we got ad nauseum in the 70's and 80's. What I found compelling about Eifman's Red Giselle was seeing it danced by his own company, a group of exceptional dancers who believe in it like the religious faithful. (I had read enough about Spessivtzeva to know that what I was seeing wasn't remotely related to her, so I didn't take it personally.) Balanchine was never the only choreographer at NYCB; during the earlier years and incarnations, there were ballets that didn't even seem to meet his aesthetic. The early festivals, while dominated by Balanchine, consisted of "26 ballets by 8 choreographers" programming. And some non-Robbins, non-Balanchine even stayed in the rep. I think that the early American Dance Festival and Diamond Festivals were more experimental than any Eifman and gave a lot of choreographers, including company members, a great chance. (Much more money was spent on a series of experimental multi-media failures like Bart Cook's Into the Hopper.) One of the advantages of acquiring ballets from other companies is that you get to see them ahead of time -- you can choose in the middle somewhat elevated instead of Herman Schmerman -- but NYCB seems to have gotten the worst of both worlds: a ballet choreographed on someone else's dancers, sight unseen. What's laughable is that Eifman and Martins thought of this as a tribute to Balanchine, when the content is what Balanchine repeatedly disparaged -- not story, but this kind of story -- and where the aesthetic, apart from having dancers on pointe, doesn't seem to intersect with any of Balanchine's multitude of visions.

I think it depends on the definition of "something Mr. B would have approved of." If it's the relationship between men and women, I think today's audiences are more in tune with Martins', Forsythes' (based on the limited number of his I've seen), and Wheeldon's than Balanchine's. Or Morris' or Taylor's or MacMillans' or Bill T. Jones'. (Although there were forshadowings of this viewpoint in Ivesiana.) I wouldn't have been remotely impressed by Peter Martins' Schubertiad if it was a shadow of Liebeslieder; I thought the ballet was a breakout ballet for Martins because the relationships in it and the inherent tensions were quite the opposite of Balanchine's ballet. However, if its the relationship between the music and choregraphy, the crafting of steps, the embodiment of the dancers abilities in the choreography, and structure that maintains technique, I'm of the camp that good choreography should include them, until someone else comes along who can create a movement vocabulary so compelling that they're no longer necessary. I certainly haven't seen that in late Martins or Eifman, although I occasionally have the urge for a Big Mac and enjoy Eifman the way I enjoy soap operas and Troy. I particularly like the Forsythe I've seen because, with judicious selection and prudent programming, these are the kinds of ballets that dancers dance full out, and I see that energy and clarity and bigness transferred to other things they dance. At PNB, in the middle somewhat elevated made a few deserving careers. Even Balanchine used to see dancers differently when other choregraphers showcased them. (In her memoir Merrill Ashley thanked Jacques d'Amboise for creating a ballet for her that did just that. And I've never seen anything by d'Amboise that was better than second rate as a stand-alone piece.) By contrast, Ronald Hynd's Merry Widow provided roles -- and steps and the fusion of movement and music -- for the dancers that brought out a more subdued palate, and made a few more deserving careers, and NYCB has done worse than this ballet. I don't even mind the third-rate failures if they are reasonable attempts to do something new -- Balanchine and Robbins had their share of these, albeit small shares -- if it isn't clear before the project starts that they are going to be same-old, same-old.

The seeds of the NYCB audience began with Ballet Society, in which members subscribed to an unannounced list of performances and shows -- ballet, art, music. That audience embraced The Four Temperaments, which was as new, modern, contemporary as they come, written to a commissioned score by a living composer. A conservative businessman and City Center board member, Morton Baum, invited Ballet Society to become the residence dance company of the organization, after he saw Orpheus and was blown away by it, not by Symphony in C, which also appeared on the opening program. Balanchine choreographed to music by Hindemith, Stravinsky, Webern, Ravel, Henry, and other contemporary composers. Many of these ballets -- Four Temperaments, Agon, Apollo, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Symphony in Three Movements, Episodes, Rubies -- not only appear on the top 10 "greats" lists of critics, but also on the "desert island" lists of NYCB fans, with Movements for Orchestra, Monumentum pro Gesualdo, Tombeau de Couperin, La Valse considered in the next echelon. For truisms about ballet audiences, the Metropolitan Opera's audience that didn't embrace Balanchine's early ideas, like the danced Orpheo ed Euridyce with the singers on the side. The ABT audience tended to take to old and new modern classics with a storyline (Tudor, deMille, etc.), and that divide exists today as well. Balanchine's style was hardly orthodox in his time: he emphasized off-center, jutted hips, and jazz, which appear in all of his leotard ballets, not just Who Cares?. In my experience on the boards, most of the people who choose Gordeeva and Grinkov as their favorites choose Mishkutienok and Dmitriev, a rather unorthodox, non-classical pair, as their co-favorites or a close second. (The "fairy tale" seems to be more about their lives than their skating -- aided and abetted by US TV commentators -- given the vitriol on the boards when she remarried.) The great pairs divide seems to be between the classical style of Berezhnaia/Sikuharlidze and the showy style of Sale/Pelletier, and that was several years before the dual golds in Salt Lake City. In some of his ballets, but rarely in the leotard ballets -- the exceptions being the second Aria in Stravinsky Violin Concerto and the pas de deux in Concerto Barocco. My experience as a member of NYCB ballet audience -- now alas, as a long-distance member -- is that many of us were there for years as new work after new work was unveiled. Not every work by Balanchine was hailed as a masterwork. With Balanchine's last illness was lost was the experience of wonder when a new work of genius is unveiled, and if a new choreographer comes along to do the same with works of top quality and, maybe genius, I can't see the audience rejecting his/her work because it's new. But "new" doesn't make the work any more important or good, and new is always compared to the old, for better or worse. Once you've tasted a steak in Sydney, McDonald's will always be McDonalds: good for an occasional pig-fest, but a Big Mac none the same.

While our NYC crowd was out watching Musagete and, with rare exception, feeling what sounds like well-deserved outrage, I was in Berkeley hoping that Chad Jones' review of Forbidden Christmas: The Doctor and the Patient was as off-target as it sounds like Anna Kisselgoff's review of Musagete was. Alas, Mr. Jones was close to target. (As cited in Links.) I should start with the disclaimer that I don't much like standard theater acting, with rare exceptions, so this colored my view of the piece, which I expected to be a bit more experimental. There were also a mismash of acting styles, with Pilar Witherspoon's and Jon DeVries' in the Tenessee Williams melodrama mode, Luis Perez' in a fanciful one -- it could have been Like Water for Chocolate --, and Baryshnikov's in a noticeably restrained mode. Also, a spoiler warning: I'm going to disclose plot twists. DeVries' performance embodied both the highs and the lows: while he had a very controlled, affecting speech to the wife of 20 years he deserted and a bit of mime that was superb, he spent most of his part overacting a blustery boor. The mime scene, in which he settles into his chair to get much needed sleep after making non-stop house calls on foot in the Russian winter, was so controlled and realistic and showed such great comic timing, that I couldn't believe I was seeing the was the same performer who was stomping and yelling so tediously throughout the play. Perez' main role as an angel had more movement than speech, although he had several speaking roles, one pretty thankless. At first I was shocked that an actor would step foot on the same stage as Baryshnikov in what started out to be primarily a moving role, but when it was over I read the cast bios to find that Luis Perez had been a Joffrey principal for a number of years, and it showed, both in his movement and in the choreography, for which he is credited. In the first 20-25 minutes of this 95-minute play, exactly one word is spoken: "Tzusanna," the name of the woman who betrays the sailor Chito as he returns from WWII. Forbidden Christman opened with an extended non-verbal sequence: Upstage right were three long, horizontal (10-15 foot) de-barked tree branches in which the ends were inserted into metal "loops" on vertical poles. The three branches were laid out so that the one most upstage was highest (about 3 feet high), and there was a crank at one end of each. Baryshnikov appeared behind three branches, which as three of the actors turned the cranks slowly turned into waves. His love, Tzuzanna, stood downstage left, facing the audience, but it was clear that she was slowly waving her little semaphore flags to him, as he waved his to her. Along came Perez as the man who seduces her, which he did by handing her a pink flower, which she accepted, while dropping her flags. Chito (Baryshnikov) then stepped over the branches to come to shore, and waited on his suitcase, until he saw the flags, and realized she had left him. He then crawled under the waves, in an attempt to drown himself. Enter the Angel from downstage right; he sported a single wing and pushed/danced an old sewing machine across the stage. He then fancifully took measurements for his second wing, and proceeded to sew himself another wing with quite a flourish. He noticed Chito trying to drown himself, and saved Chito, leaving him alone onstage. At the same time, the traditional (I'm assuming Georgian) music in the sound design started to be drowned out by traffic noises, and a 10-foot long picture of a fancy guy in a fancy car -- representing the big money guy who seduces Tzuzanna -- was pulled across the stage across 12-15 foot wires that hang end to end. At that point, he broke and decided that he was a car. All of this unfolded slowly through extended mime so clear that most of us would wish see in the classics, where mime rarely lasts more than a minute or two at a time, and except for Pilar Witherspoon's rather actressy rendition of Tzuzanna -- the tragic face, etc. -- it was masterfully performed and mesmerizing. (She has a lovely voice, though, and did quite well in her monologue at the end of the play.) And while the car thing started to feel a little bit like schtick after a while, Baryshnikov's Chito, who was, mercifully spared the long speech, kept that control in his acting, even when, towards the end, after being beaten and told by the Doctor that he wasn't a car, his resentment and pain could have turned into a maudlin Big Moment. When he turns back into a car at the end without muss or fuss or a knowing glance or wink to the audience, it's a rather poignant moment, as he becomes what the people around him need him to be. Perez was saddled with a role as the voice of a puppet in the form of a telegraph worker who is making an illegal phone call over the wires on Christmas, but tries to wheedle his way out of committing to anything. The sequence seemed rather put on. In his other speaking parts, Perez also kept his style toned down, but it was really in the mime sequences in which he excelled. If only the entire play had been silent, it would have been a stronger one: the strongest actors were the two dance mimes.

I respectfully disagree, HF, because long, long after Heather had left the scene, when PM turned to Darci as his chief Muse, we still got Heather. I think Heather was simply an effective conveyor of the Martins (pardon the term) aesthetic. Darci, so pink and fresh and open in everything she did during her early career (and finally returning to a mature version of that persona, thank you very much!) brought other qualities into the studio, and these were not exploited, explored, or even given an opportunity for expression in the works made on her. A Muse cannot draw from the Master what the Master doesn't have. Actually, that was the point that I was trying to make. The truism is that Balanchine thought the choreography supreme, but you can see his dancers in his choreography. Even after Farrell left NYCB, and he was devastated, he choreographed Who Cares?, with three distinct roles for the ballerinas he featured. The only dancer I've ever seen in Martins' modern ballets is Watts; the rest of the ballets seem made for Watts surrogates, among whom were the greatest ballerinas of our time, or feel generic, as if the steps and partnering in his ballets are the only things that matter, not the dancers who bring them to life. I'm sorry I wasn't clear.

Schubertiad was a bit of a hybrid, with two trios who, if I recall, eventually paired off in the end, along with stable couples. From Martins' earlier output there were a number of examples, all driven by the traditional, classical style of music: The Magic Flute, Songs of the Auvergne, Rossini Quartets, Delibes Divertissement, and Balanchine Romance (which I thought looked better on TV than on the huge New York State Theater Stage.) There was nice partnering in later gala-type pieces like Sophisticated Lady, and Tango/Tango was rather playful. Valse Triste was more in the Meditation category, and Ashley was paired with both Luders and Parsons in Barber Violin Concerto, but neither were marked by the detachment or emotional brutality of Martins' later work. I think the ballets started to go south for two connected reasons: Martins' extensive use of Heather Watts as his muse and use of minimalist scores by Torke, Adams, etc. (Robbins, a pas de deux master, used this type of music brilliantly in the first two movements of Glass Pieces, so it can be done.) Watts was a unique dancer, and two of her most marked characteristics were her detachment and her indestructibility: she could be tossed, turned over, lifted, thrown, stretched, spun, turned into a pretzel, and she always emerged at the end as if she were bulletproof, with a flat, unaffected expression, almost like a movie cyborg. Those qualities were clear enough in Calcium Light Night and Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, where there were Ives and Stravinsky scores to dictate phrases. But when Martins started to choose scores in which the musical phasing is repetitive and for ballet is rather arbitrary, I think the phrasing of the ballets lost meaning and became arch and pretentious, particularly in the Torke "Colors" scores. Mark Morris was able to take repetitive music and give it meaning, like in the folk-based line dance in L'Allegro, so again, it can be done. Martins' ballets in this genre seem to be me to be about an absence of meaning through superficiality. As Martins expanded the size and structure of his ballets to include other principal dancers, I started to see Darci Kistler and Kyra Nichols, starting around Echo, Merrill Ashley in ballets like Fearful Symmetries, and even Suzanne Farrell (Echo again) reduced to looking like clones of Heather Watts, and that's when I stopped liking Martins' choreography. The only other parts of his opus that I've seen since I moved to Seattle nearly ten years ago have been televised and of the slash and burn variety to contemporary scores. Watching them, I don't see what they say about the dancers on whom he created the ballets, the way I can look at La Valse or the fourth movement of Western Symphony and "see" Tanaquil LeClerq dancing Balanchine. The ballets and the dancers look rather generic to me.

The question I usually ask is, are they learning and striving to learn and master the style and technique? If I see a bunch of primas happy with imposing their own style and mannerisms on the ballets, I'm not going to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they look like they're striving for the wrong thing -- something other than native their technique, but totally off -- then I start to stew against their coaches/stagers. If they look like they're trying, and this is the case for a lot of smaller US companies which get their first Balanchine ballets, then it's like watching a journey. Balanchine himself would tell dancers that "in X years" they would get it, and most of them were hand-picked and trained in his school.

Peripheral to this topic I read an AP article published on the andante.com website entitled At Their First Joint Convention, U.S. Arts Leaders Trade Ideas for Attracting New Crowds by Charles Sheehan. It made me think that there is a divide between two types of contemporary ballet, because I don't think the audiences that will be drawn to rock ballets, which are usually rather energetic and upbeat, are the ones who would be drawn to the pseudo depth of many contemporary rape and pillage ballets or to most of Peter Martins' choreographic output. However, if they'd be brought into the World of Balanchine as a result -- the Seattle audience that shrieked for Return also gave a hearty ovation for Serenade, even if it didn't "get" Apollo -- then maybe the situation isn't as dire... Given my druthers, if I was between a rock and a hard place, I'd rather see vapid than pseudo-intellectual psycho-sexual dramas, even if I find Boris Eifman's choreography to be an occasional guilty pleasure. (Although I doubt that the reaction he'd want to Red Giselle is an audience member with a big smile on her facing, thinking, "what a hoot!") I think that where Artistic Directors are not choreographers fall into the "who is my pal" category more than those who are. And those who run companies like ABT, which are still dependent on a variation of the Star System -- balletomanes say "I've got tickets to Aniashivilli's Swan Lake" versus "I'm going to see Stars and Stripes" -- must put up with dancers who are good box office. Ironically, the casting seems less arbitrary: most of the principals get paired up for a performance or two. It's getting to that level that seems to be tied to cronyism, as those of us who are fans of Monique Meunier could attest Choreographers on the whole seem to be more selfish beasts. I was taken by comments by Kent Stowell about choosing dancers who are willing to try what he asks. Balanchine seemed to choose dancers that he liked and wanted to spend a lot of time with, as well as those whose movement quality he liked. But even he could go overboard and be just as hormone-driven as the next bear, as during the period where he cast Farrell in everything, when he had other brilliant dancers all around him, their pointe shoes idle. I've always been struck by this quote from Violette Verdy in Robert Tracy's Balanchine's Ballerinas:

It's funny about the father's arms, because as I was watching Arizona Ballet's production of Prodigal Son a couple of weekends ago, I thought they seemed unusually fussy, and, as a result, overbearing. It was one of the details that made me feel empathy with Prodigal. Paul Boos was a stager (with Ib Andersen) of the AB production as well. In Mozartiana there's a gesture in the opening movement where the ballerina frames her face with her arms with her wrists crossed slightly to the side. Farrell said that Balanchine pointed out a painting at the church where Farrell worshipped and told her he based a gesture in the ballet on the painting, and I think it was this one. I thought that one of the gestures the father used was similar, so I'm wondering if it is iconic.

I would be crushed if I never got to see Divertimento No. 15 again. I'd trade Jewels for it, if I couldn't dump Diamonds, replace it with Divert, and keep Emeralds and Rubies.

Wasn't the apartment next to the El (or is it "L"?) with trains rattling by all the time? I assumed that was the reason it was a bigger space.

This afternoon's performance marked the end of Francia Russell's and Kent Stowell's penultimate PNB season and farewell performances by Alexandra Dickson , Melanie Skinner , and Paul Gibson . (If there was a crying icon, I'd use it instead.) All but five dancers -- all principals -- were onstage as Dickson and Skinner and Gibson took their final bows and received flowers from real-life partners and Francia Russell. (Timothy Lynch brought out his and Dickson's little son as well.) There were many flowers thrown onstage, and at the very end, one single flower practically dropped into Alexandra Dickson's hand -- what a catch! I think that Hermia is one of Dickson's best roles, and Skinner did the role of Helena proud. The Artistic Directors' essay in the program for A Midsummer Night's Dream was dedicated to the three dancers, lauding their careers and speaking of what they will do next: Dickson will receive Pilates certification in the fall and join the Conditioning staff at the company, Skinner will pursue a BA at Seattle University, at which she had participated in a joint program with the school, and Gibson becomes Assistant Ballet Master for PNB, for which he will choreograph. including a premiere during next year's New American Choreographer's program. Watching him partner Louise Nadeau in the Act II pas de deux, it felt unreal that he would never dance again. Stanton danced Demetrius, and Maraval switched roles to Lysander, to which he gave a different twist: aside from the part in the overture where he wrests Hermia from Demetrius' grasp, he was a gentle, rather than hot-blooded Lysander, but once he became enamoured of Helena, he turned into a total goofball, so singlemindedly declaring his love for her with a big, goofy smile, that he was oblivious to the fact that she was rejecting him. (He was a heartbreakingly courtly partner to Dickson in the wedding procession and coda.) And at the end of the act, when the lovers are paired off, Maraval and Stanton had two little mime sequences around the handshake: first, they had a little "conversation" that seemed to suggest, "Things got out of hand" and then the smallest gesture of "I don't know what I was thinking." Most of the time, Lysanders and Demetrius' don't acknowledge that anything has happened, as if the flower erased the men's memory. I love to see details like that fill out the characterization. Josh Spell did a great one as Bottom: after Titania gives him the grass, instead of chomping on it immediately, he turned his donkey head towards her and paused first, a very sweet gesture. Le Yin, Jonathan Poretta, Noelani Pantastico, and Carrie Imler were superb again as Oberon, Puck, Butterfly, and Hippolyta. Batkhurel Bold danced Theseus; besides the mime skills from Russian training, he also has the essence of "ta-da" factor: in the wedding coda, he had so much charisma, that even though he does almost no dancing and just a couple of minutes of partnering, from his aura, I was almost convinced that he had danced a virtuoso solo just minutes before. There were a ton of little girls in the audience, and Poretta's Puck had them howling, but sometimes it was hard to hear their laughs over the grown-ups'. So an off-topic tirade: where were the little boys? Jock Soto said he wanted to dance when, as a child, he saw Edward Villella dance on Bell Telephone Hour. I can't think of anything that would make a boy want to dance more than seeing Puck, Oberon, and Bottom and his friends! Oh, I think I answered my own question. Kylee Kitchens made a very impressive debut as Titania. She's a rather interior dancer -- Drama Queen is not on her menu -- but she has long, tapered legs and leg line to die for. I had read somewhere that Titania was another role Balanchine originally conceived for Diana Adams, and from the film clips I've seen of Adams, Kitchens' line reminds me of hers, especially in Agon, where Adam's positions were precise and never exaggerated. And while I can't always explain exactly why two dancers mesh, she looked great with both Casey Herd's Cavaliere and especially Le Yin's Oberon. (Maybe there is a Mozartiana in their future. ) Talk about a trial by fire though. This performance was at once the farewell of three great dancers and a declaration of the new, homegrown (or at least home-finished) talent from the school: Kitchens, Imler, Pantastico, all of the women and all but one of the men among the six Divertissement couples, and students from the Professional Division who blended seamlessly into the corps. A note for anyone who might attend a performance at McCaw Hall: the architects made a very interesting design choice: instead of extending the sections of the Main Floor (orchestra) all the way out to the sides, they separated a small section (3-6 seats) on both far sides by an aisle, and while the first couple of rows are ground level with the Main Floor, the remaining rows in this section ramp up to where they meet the Dress Circle, the first level off the floor. While the seats are on the far sides, they have the advantage of elevation. The ramped seats are called Gallery Lower and Gallery Upper (I'm not sure at what row the break is.) The last three rows of Gallery Upper are actually the side extensions of the first few rows of the Dress Circle, and they are labeled "Gallery Upper" but are rows A, B, and C. (And maybe D.) I sat in row V, and was in seat 5, which was one from the far side. I lost a little bit of upstage right. I felt very close to the stage, and could see faces very clearly. The ticket cost $35, while the tickets I had in the First Tier -- the section behind the Dress Circle, on the first level -- and in the Second Tier cost $62. I think the Gallery Upper seats are a bargain, and next year, I'm planning to change my subscription seat from the back of the Main Floor to the Gallery Upper. This might not be the first choice for a single performance, but if anyone's making a weekend of it and wants to see multiple performances without breaking the budget, Gallery Upper is a great alternative.

Tonight (Saturday), some of the dancers reprised their roles, but some with different partners; others danced different roles. Patricia Barker's luminous Titania was matched with Maraval's elegant, attentive Cavalier again, but later with Ade's superb Bottom. Among the lovers Maria Chapman's Helena was paired with Oleg Gorboulev's Demetrius, while Jodie Thomas danced Hermia with Jordan Pacitti's Lysander, fresh off of last night's Puck. Imler danced Hippolyta coming from last night's Titania, and Nakamura and Wevers led the Act II Divertissement. A Midsummer Night's Dream not only means casting from the school, but also double-casting school dancers for the four members of Titania's retinue who hold her cape at the end of the ballet, because the original four are needed in the Divertissement. From my perspective as an audience member, given the short runs of each program, I would rather see the forty or so Company members in multiple parts and kids from the school getting stage experience than have more dancers with fewer opportunities, but I'm not the one who has to figure out the casting chart or rehearsal schedule. There was some shifting around of the cast list from what is published on the website: Poretta, originally cast for Oberon, danced Puck, and Le Yin danced Oberon, the same casting that is listed for tomorrow. I really like Le Yin's dancing, and he was wonderful in the role; he is technically capable of its virtuoso demands. There was just a little bit of visible preparation, and a tiny bend from the waist to propel him in the big sissones with beats on the diagonal, that made me aware that I was watching a dancer, not a character; but except for sadness at not being able to see Poretta's Oberon again this year, I will be happy to see Le again in the role tomorrow. Poretta's Puck was the broadest of the three dancers' characterizations, but his mime was the most developed and clear. An example is when he captured Lysander and was about to wave the magic flower over him. Poretta's Puck looked quizically at Lysander as if asking, "is he the right one?," paused, shrugged his shoulders as if saying, "he'll do," and enchanted Lysander. Since Puck hasn't been watching the lovers interact, and Oberon's instructions to him in mime are vague, in most performances Oberon comes across as the King/Boss who blames his subjects/subordinates for his own mistakes. (Because he can.) With this little injection of mime, Puck became the co-worker who knew s/he should find out whether s/he'd gotten it right before proceeding, but decided not to bother, which caused a big mess down the road. Poretta, too, must know his cartoons; his physical characterization incorporated the improbable contrasts of acceleration and stillness that are found in the best animation. If last night's quartet was temperamentally from Naples, most of tonight's were from Greenwich, with Chapman playing a visiting Italian cousin. Gorboulev's Demetrius is a like well-mannered preppie; it's only when this crazy-woman who keeps throwing herself at him distracts him from his yearning for Hermia that he finally gets angry. Chapman danced Helena's solo of despair with drama and conviction, and was moving in her surprise that Demetrius was now in love with her. Jodie Thomas and Jordan Pacitti began as the most genuinely sweet Hermia and Lysander that I've ever seen. When Pacitti's Lysander was bewitched, he not only fell in love with someone else, he acted like a regular guy who'd been seduced by a temptress and became someone else: cunning, tempetuous, and a little ridiculous. Pacitti showed the latter when he was pursuing Hermia; while she'd eluded him temporarily, he'd spied her: Pacitti physicalized sneaking up on her as if there was actually a set of trees in the middle of the stage behind which they were both hiding. Imler ruled her forest through huge, sweeping leaps and fast, centered turns. The role of Hippolyta looks like it was made for her. In the only role in which I've seen him in this production, Stanko Milov was an authoritative Theseus. A mime and partnering role, it's not often played to its fullest, but Milov made the most of the mime by taking up space, as if he had been dancing. For example, when he walked away from Hippolyta after blessing the two couples, he went rather far downstage, and while he didn't quite mimic Oberon's "I have an idea" gesture, his expression brightened, and his return to propose to Hippolyta had a lot of panache. This was Alexandra Dickson's and Melanie Skinner's last performance in the Divertissement. Sniff. (In their final performance tomorrow, Dickson will dance Hermia and Skinner, Helena.) Kaori Nakamura and Olivier Wevers danced the principal roles. With Nakamura's combination of softness, elegance, and precision, she reminded me of Verdy, and it took her dancing to remind me that the role was choreographed for Verdy. Only Poretta's Puck got an equal ovation, and on my way out, I overheard several groups of people who were clearly moved by their performance. In the wedding coda, two moments stood out for me: Maria Chapman's beautiful feet in the supported beats, and the way in which Stanko Milov's stature anchored the three couples. A third great night in a row at the ballet. Sadly only one more to go, and with Dickson, Skinner, and Gibson retiring after tomorrow's performance, it's sure to be a teary afternoon at McCaw Hall.

Another great night at the ballet. I for one wish that Stowell's dream for a summer stage came true, because I would go see A Midsummer Night's Dream every year, like The Nutcracker. In tonight's performance, Carrie Imler danced Titania. The overture scene set the tone of her performance as a generally happy, loving Fairy Queen, who was upset at a particular incident. In her major scene with her retinue and Cavalier, Imler started unusually conservatively, but that didn't last long. (Usually when paired with Batkhurel Bold she dances with abandon from the get-go.) Soon into the pas de deux she not only started to move big, but she took over half the balances a la Farrell, at an angle. It was remarkable to see her repeatedly on the full diagonal, from the angle of her foot and standing leg to the working leg extended up and away, her entire body fully extended. In her pas de deux with Nicholas Ade's superb Bottom, she was a young woman who fell madly in love. (Ade's Bottom is so fully realized, that by the end of his pas de deux, he doesn't seem like that much of an ass after all, despite the ears and a penchant for grass.) What was most striking was the scene in which she realizes that she's fallen in love with an ass, and then returns to Oberon, not as a humbled Queen having been brought down a notch, but as a wife who's fallen back in love with her husband. Usually the performers convey that the Oberon/Titania relationship depicted is just another round in an never-ending battle of two duelling personalities, like Zeus and Hera, but in this case, although I wouldn't expect a Happily Ever After ending, I felt from this interpretation that they would fight again because of the nature of relationships, not because they are deliberately trying to one-up one another. A different, striking interpretation, and wonderful, full-bodied dancing. Tonight I was sitting a lot closer, and Jonathan Porretta was just as magnificent as Oberon as he was last night. What a beautiful performance and such a privilege to see him dance this role. Maybe there will be a few more Princes in his future... Olivier Wevers reprised the role of Lysander, again as an impassioned lover of both Helena and Hermia. Christophe Maraval was equally passionate, and between the two men, Kaori Nakamura's tigress of a Hermia, and the Maria Chapman's physicalization of despair, there were sparks flying all over the stage among this beautifully matched quartet. Nakamura's solo was pierced by whipping turns and razor-sharp but light jumps. Hers was a Hermia that might have been feeling despair, but I was certain that she was going to do something about it, which she did with a fury during the Forest scene. Helena was a great role for Chapman, and she looked gorgeous with Maraval. Maraval had a wonderful characterization as well, as the energy and focus of his single-minded pursuit of Hermia blossomed into a more gentle and courtly love for Helena at the end of Act I. What a treat to see newly appointed Principal Dancer Noelani Pantastico dance Butterfly. Even in the Scherzo, at full extension or multiple turns, she always looked like she had extra time to smell a flower or two, and she lofted her jumps. Jordan Pacitti, a muscular dancer with a pliant plie and wonderful pop and hang to his grand allegro and jumps, danced Puck. His style of humor is definitely on the broader and exuberant side, but it showed in the timing and physical humor, not mugging; I think a saw a little bit of Wylie Coyote and Road Runner tossed in. Stacy Lowenburg jumped and turned and filled up the stage as Hippolyta in the Act I forest scene, but she was even more impressive in the wedding party coda after the Divertissement in Act II, where she danced all-out, partnered by the elegant Karel Cruz. The six Divertissement couples were again splendid, this time comprising over half of last night's featured dancers: Reid, Thomas, Vinson, Gaines, Gorboulev, Herd and Spell. Tempe Ostergren was a standout: she's one of the shortest dancers onstage, but when she points her foot and stretches in arabesque, her legs look two feet longer, and she dances with energy. Patricia Barker and Jeffrey Stanton danced the Divertissement couple, and tonight Barker showed why she owns this role, too: her command began from the moment she first entered the stage. The pas de deux is such a masterpiece and the centerpiece in Act II, and it's easy for the principal roles in the public movements to recede by comparison, especially the way the six couples are featured. When Barker dances it, it's easy to think of the entire Divertissement as a major ballet on its own. Although the energy and style is different in the first/third compared to the pas de deux, she contrasts the public and the private moments while retaining a stylistic unity and core temperament. She dances with such ease and mastery. I think this is also one of Stanton's best roles in recent years, not only as a partner, but for clarity of the images he creates during the short, intermittent solo parts. By the end of this performance, everyone was in love and happy, except for Puck and the Butterflies. A much more optimistic sense in the air, and a very welcome one.

Thursday, 10 June Kent Stowell opened the Q&A, and he was later joined by Patricia Barker and Brittany Reid, who had just performed Titania and Hippolyta. Stowell opened with a description of how and why PNB produced their first A Midsummer Night's Dream. He said that the Company had just put on its first production of his Nutcracker and were looking for another full-length ballet. He called Michael Smuin, then directing San Francisco Ballet, and told Smuin that he had 150K, and that if Smuin could raise 150K, they could afford to produce Dream together. (Back in the day "when 300K was real money.") Smuin went to his Board, and reported back that they approved the proposal, and then Stowell went to the PNB Board and told them that Smuin had 150K for a co-production and asked them to raise PNB's share! Luckily, they agreed. The first production was like the original NYCB production. Stowell described how the sets and costumes went back and forth between SFB and PNB, and how they were lent out; eventually they became shabby. When Russell and Stowell wanted to produce the ballet again, they asked the Trust for permission to redesign the costumes and sets to the scale of the Opera House stage. Stowell explained how the original sets were built for City Center, a much smaller space, and described how there was two feet for cross-overs between the backdrop and the back wall of City Center. Russell and Stowell were given permission, and Martin Pakeldinaz designed much more opulent sets and costumes. (My favorites of these are the dresses worn by Titania's retinue: the bottom of the silky dress flow beautifully, and are shaped and colored like rose petals.) Because of the limitations, he felt that the traditional sets didn't provide continuity between the two acts, while he feels the new sets do. Stowell performed with NYCB when the Company performed at the Seattle Opera House during the 1962 World's Fair. The Company then went to Europe and Russia, to which Balanchine had not returned since he left. Which just happened to be during the Cuban missile crisis. He mentioned that Balanchine did not want to bring A Midsummer Night's Dream to London, fearing the British critics, because he thought that the critics didn't believe that Shakespeare could be produced by anyone who wasn't British. Stowell said that Balanchine thought that Shakespeare was Russian. According to the NYCB website timeline, the Company did not travel to London between the premiere of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Ashton's The Dream (1964). Someone in the audience asked the dancers how they avoided being upstaged by "animals and children." I think it was in this context that Stowell said that after Ashton's Cinderella, in which Ashton and Helpmann played the stepsisters, productions of the ballet followed suit and made the stepsisters more outlandish. As a result, he said that people left the theater remembering "the clowns," not the main story, so that when he choreographed the ballet, he wanted to avoid it. He then brought up the The Dream, in which he felt that the donkey's prominence dominated the action, and that the strength of Balanchine's version was the balance that brought the focus back to the principal characters. When PNB brought the ballet to London, they knew that the BBC was going to telecast it, and Stowell said that if the performance was going to be preserved, he didn't want to hire local children, but to showcase the children from the PNB school. The Board balked at the expense of sending 34 kids to London, but Stowell started the "Send Our Bugs to London" campaign, and they were able to bring the kids with them. Stowell said that the children were the most professional of the dancers, that "they danced every rehearsal to perfection," and that "the TV crew marveled at their discipline and hard work." He also said that two little boys in the group knew where the cameras were going to be, and in the scene where they all fall asleep downstage right, they scooted into position to be filmed. Barker told a story of performing the ballet in which before the scene in which she is awakened by Oberon with Bottom at her feet, Puck was backstage talking and he didn't place the shell onstage. She had to improvise, and she lay on the floor. The dancer playing Oberon came out laughing, and she had to ask him to hold out his hand, so that she could get up! Brittany Reid made her debut as Hippolyta and said that she was nervous, but it didn't show at all. In a question about pointe shoes, Barker said that her shoes last 10 minutes to an hour, and that she used four pairs for Swan Lake, with an extra left shoe ready, in case she needed it for the fouettes in the third act. Reid said that she could reuse her shoes sometimes; she said that when the pair that she used for her fouettes during the scene in the forest worked well, she used them again and again. (She did two abridged school performances during the day before the full evening performance.) Someone asked what were their most embarrassing moments onstage. Stowell answered and said that he was on tour in Istanbul, where he played a scared student who was being seduced by the woman of the house -- I think he said the ballet's name was Con Amore -- when after his first entrance, he sat down backstage and fell asleep, only to be awoken by someone yelling at him that he missed his second entrance. Another person asked how much talking the dancers do onstage. Barker was very funny, describing a conversation that went, "Sorry, sorry, sorry, oops, sorry." Stowell talked about a dancer being injured just before the company was to perform a pas de deux, and someone sent him onstage to perform in a ballet he didn't know, with Violette Verdy talking him through it the entire time. When asked what they do if they forget the steps, Barker said that it inevitably happened in a ballet that they know very well, and they make something up until they get back on track. Someone asked Stowell what he wanted for PNB over the next ten years. Earlier there had been a discussion about performing outdoors, which the Company did at the Hollywood Bowl on tour, and which in previous years they have at the Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery. (Unfortunately, summer conditions in Seattle caused rain-outs, and in one performance I saw, it was so cold that the dancers had to wear legwarmers for the last ballet, which I remember as Fanfare.) He said that his dream would be to have an outdoor theater for the summer, in which the Company could perform Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream among other ballets, to build the audiences for the regular season rep. He also talked about choosing the new Artistic Director. He said that this was the first major decision that the Board had to make in 27 years. What was most interesting was when he described PNB as a "big institution with a culture" that was "set in its ways." He said that if a new AD tried to change the direction of the Company, it would be hard on the Company, but it would also be hard on the person. He hoped the new AD would enhance and extend and help the company go to another level, rather than trying to "change the flavor." I think he was right in saying that the audience would rebel if PNB became as jazz company for example. (We actually have one of those in town.) That covers my notes from last night's Q&A.

Tonight's performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream had so many wonderful performances, it's hard to know where to begin. The characteristic that was consistent and most striking was the clarity of movement that so many dancers showed. So I'll start with Patricia Barker, who showed why she owns the part of Titania, with her beautiful extension, creamy phrasing, and ability to meld into the Mendelssohn score. I find her pas de deux with Bottom (Kiyon Gaines) a supremely moving love story: she shows not only affection, but the generosity of heart and spirit that she doesn't show to the boy toy Cavalier -- too bad, since he was the wonderful, attentive Maraval -- and Bottom is so much nicer to her than Oberon. Josh Spell was a charming Puck, from the elegance of his arms to the sweet way he scratched Bottom's fur before leaving him at Titania's feet. In temperament, he reminded me a bit of Jean-Pierre Frohlich in the way that he was funny without milking the laughs, and his dancing was as memorable as his characterization. In most performances I've seen, Hermia and Lysander are the light, cheerful couple, while Hermia and Demetrius are the dramatic ones; when Lysander is under the flower's spell and becomes aggressive and possessive, it's a complete turn-around. In this cast the pairs had opposite temperaments: after their cute entrance, Noelani Pantastico's Hermia and especially Olivier Wevers were very dramatic, while Stacy Lowenberg's Helena and especially Oleg Gorboulev were rather placid. When Lowenberg twice walked the diagonal, once offered a leaf to dry her tears by Puck -- which due to strange lighting she did in near darkness -- and the second time surrounded by the bugs, she seemed sad, but not she didn't convey the world-ending melancholy that Stephanie Saland and Lisa Apple, for example, have portrayed. Gorboulev's Demetrius was a rather mellow guy who was yearning for and seeking Hermia out in the distance; he only pushed Helena away because she kept getting in his way, and he didn't seem to enjoy the small rush of sadism. Pantastico and Wevers were so vivid and live: she was impassioned, and when she showed great sorrow in her solo, and when Wevers, who could have been playing Romeo, turned his attention to Helena, it was right in character. The Divertissement demis were a feast for the eyes and a real treat. Two of my favorites, Nicholas Ade and Rebecca Johnston were paired, but the piece wasn't long enough to get my fill of Cruz and Kitchens and Postlewaite and Pacitti and...all twelve were worth watching individually. The main couple, Jody Thomas and Le Yin are a beautifully matched pair, and the central pas de deux they performed was stunning. Thomas' dancing was so clear, it was like crystal raindrops on a warm spring day, when the sudden, intermittent coolness enlivens the senses. Brittany Reid made her debut as Hippolyta, and in the post-performance Q&A, Stowell said that she had performed twice that afternoon in the hour-long school performance version. I suppose that was an attempt to exhaust her from being nervous, but although she said after the performance that she was nervous, it didn't show: her movement is big, and she filled the stage. The fouettes were a marvel: they had authority and sweep and built to a wonderful climax. Never did they seem like a trick, and I think the reason is that she stood so tall with her head high and her center was so quiet. The quiet center was what Jonathan Poretta had in common with Reid, and together with deep, pliant plie, it made his performance. He walked on during the overture with such authority, from his head held high on his shoulders to the point of back toe, but emanating from his sternum, and he maintained this authority through all the mime. If he had only performed this much of the ballet, it would have been a great performance. He followed it with a Scherzo that was magnificent: technically brilliant without once showing preparation or breaking the authority of the character. He gave a clinic of jumps and beats with beautiful turnout, placement, landings and impeccable phrasing. He did a series of split jumps -- they end in Russian jump position, but approached from the side -- that came out of nowhere, and got bigger as he crossed the stage, but they comprised one set of details in a bounty of dancing. I had always seen him cast before in energetic soloist roles -- typecasting, he would have danced only Puck -- but this performance was a revelation. I hope he gets to dance Prodigal and Apollo next year.

I saw a very different side of Barker in tonight's post-performance Q&A: she was sharp, funny, irreverent, and much more live than I had seen her before. She was also a bit maternal and very supportive of Brittany Reid, who made her debut as Hippolyta tonight. Those still waters run deep.

I'm so happy to hear about Whelan's performance in The Cage. I saw her in it the first season in which she danced the ballet, and I was blown away by her performance. That was the day she became a Ballerina in my eyes. Nice, too, to hear that Borree has another fine role.