Helene

The first week of casting is posted to the SFB website. This Saturday night the principal roles are: Sylvia Conductor: Andrew Mogrelia Sylvia: Vanessa Zahorian* Aminta: Joan Boada* Orion : Peter Brandenhoff* Diana: Lorena Feijoo* Eros/Sorcerer: TBD *=first time in role I hope you have a wonderful time and post about it!

There is more info on the SFB website about Morris' Sylvia: Program Notes and Sylvia Comes to America. Some quotes from the former: Also from the notes four dancers have been cast as Sylvia: Yuan Yuan Tan, Vanessa Zahorian, Megan Low, and Elizabeth Miner. Casting isn't up yet for this program, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Low. A quote from the latter:

Thank you for the information; I'll check their website and hope for a repeat visit. A college an hour south of Seattle sounds like Evergreen in Olympia. I wonder whether the publicity in Seattle was low-key, or I missed the ads because I was away for part of the month.

It was called "Lynn" and subtitled, "the autobiography of Lynn Seymour." It was very candid, and I loved it. I remember trying to order one from the ballet bookstore on Broadway, right around the corner from Lincoln Center, soon after it was published in the 80's by a British publisher. After months of hearing nothing, I walked into the shop one day, and there was a copy on the shelf. I took it up to the cash register, only to have the bookstore owner snatch it out of my hands, hug it close to himself, and tell me, "This copy is reserved for someone else." Luckily, it's available through Alibris, and you don't have to be favored by a territorial bookstore owner

I envy you for being able to see Miami City Ballet. Since Edward Vilella is there, I expect good ballet from Miami I hope to be able to travel to Miami to see them someday. I'm afraid that for most ballet companies that tour, the Western US has a northern limit of San Francisco.

Meg Tilly is also in her early 40's, and I remember her putting her leg behind her ear in The Big Chill.

Dance is such a contrast to figure skating, where many pairs and dance teams are married or romantically involved. I once saw Denis Petrov partner Elena Bechke (his regular pairs partner) and Ekaterina Gordeeva in one Stars on Ice number, but on the whole, skating couples practice day in/day out with the same person for years on end. One of my travel group commented on watching some of the dance practices at this year's World Championships; she said that there were a lot of visible differences in the way different skaters treated their spouses/significant others in the pressure-filled run-up to the championships. The question in skating is also the opposite: while watching couples who are not/are not known to be involved is "how could they perform like that if they're not?" While for dancers, it's pretty much the norm for the majority of partnerships.

I saw the Serenade/Carmina Burana program on Saturday afternoon. My general experience of Serenade over several dozen performances has been that the opening tableau and slow intro are where the corps show unison, and if there is a problem, it appears later on. It may have been partly the (unusual for me) vantage point in the back of the Orchestra, but in this performance, not only were the body types contrasting -- one of the shortest and thinnest girls was in the downstage right point directly in front of one of the tallest and fullest girls -- but the angles of the arms, necks, heads, and shoulders didn't look uniform as the curtain rose and the corps began its initial movement. Even Patricia Barker's entrance as Waltz Girl seemed heavy, and I wondered if she was okay, or if the grand jete exit wasn't part of this version. Not the most auspicious beginning, but once the corps started to move, the differences between its members blended into unison. Kaori Nakamura made a splendid entrance as Russian Girl, and her dancing showed a beautiful contrast between soft arms and shoulders and clear and quicksilver leg and footwork. During the quick circle of jetes in the first movement, she had a slight hestitation at the top of each jump, like a little grace note. This version emphasized the diagonals, including some hip thrusts in Nakamura's role, and she danced it as if she was inventing the role. It seemed to me that Russian Girl was the center of the ballet, or at least the protagonist, because of the way she seemed to ignite the swirling corps, and got them to follow. Kylee Kitchens danced Dark Angel. In the opening movement, she was lush, yet vibrant, and a wonderful contrast to Nakamura. I think the roles she danced in the Balanchine Centennial programs must have given her confidence, because she is so much more vivid than earlier in the season. Once Barker re-entered at the end of the first movement, her performance was right on track, with a sunny sweep to the second movement waltz, and a driving sweep in the third movement. She was partnered by Stanko Milov. I think this version has a few changes for the man, because I was more aware of his role. I remember that when the Waltz Man enters at the end of the first movement, he moves at a diagonal towards the Waltz Girl. Milov seemed to take much the same angle, looking into the wings, that Fate Man takes in the last movement, and it was a chilling moment. The way that the fourth movement was danced was the biggest change I've seen in the ballet, and I think it starts with something superficial: the women leave their hair up. (And I've always loved the hair.) Just before that, at the end of the third movement, Barker didn't have the "get the hair down" struggle, and her turns and arms were softer as she fell to the ground. When Kitchens emerged with Christophe Maraval, it was as if she was the younger version of Barker's Waltz Girl, resembling her physically more with her hair up, a more severe look. She started with a mission, more like Justice than Mercy. (Or like a dancer on an upward course before experience has a chance to knock her around a bit.) When the Waltz Girl and Dark Angel alternately embrace Fate Man and chaine to side, the turns weren't about the swirling hair -- or getting it down in the first place, as the SFB ballerinas I saw a couple of weeks ago had to do -- they were so much softer, as if there was a force pulling them back slightly as they moved away, not rushing towards and away. The entire movement was softer and by avoiding any semblance of melodrama, it was that much more tragic. For the first time, I understood why Serenade is a desert island ballet. There were two corps members who were standouts: The first was the tiny blond dancer who opened the ballet in the stage right front point; I don't recognize her from the program, and she may be one of the professional division students who supplemented the corps. While her arms tended to be a bit angular, she had lovely epaulement throughout, and her opening pose was wonderful. The second was Tempe Ostergren, who was also wonderful in Carmina Burana, and who caught my eye partly because of her resemblance to figure skater Susanna Poykio, both literally and in the clear, free, complete quality of her movement. There was a lot of superb dancing in Carmina Burana. The three couples in the opening movement -- Kitchens/Ade, Rausch/Gorboulev, and Lowenberg/Herd -- made the most out of the differences in the choreography, which doesn't seem that easy given the rather low lighting and identical unitards. Jordan Pacitti, Josh Spell, and Lucien Postlewaite are as interesting a set of three young men dancing together that I've seen since Martins cast the young Boal, Byars, and Edwards together. Somehow the differences in the way they look and move are unified in the tension they bring to their interactions with each other. Nakamura and Yin were delightful in the "Primo Vere" movement, but I can't help cringing when she has to change from ballet slippers to pointe shoes in what seems like seconds. I think the choreography for the woman in slippers is stronger than the choreography on pointe, which doesn't look as differentiated from the rest. "In Taberna" is a powerful piece of music, and while Carrie Imler was striking as the harlot -- I kept thinking that she'd make a great Gamzatti -- it was Olivier Wevers' Guy and Christophe Maraval's Monk who brought down the house. Wevers' performance was not as much of a surprise, because I've seen him dance with the same energy, drama, and vividness before, but Maraval, who is usually cast as Mr. Elegant (which he is), or at least The Grown Up, was a revelation, because this was the first time I've ever seen his Dark Side, and he's really, really, really good at being bad My problem with "Cour d'Amours" is that right after the powerful music and debauchery of "In Taberna," the music becomes childlike on both sides of a soprano/baritone duet, and Stowell has choreographed a dance for a medieval princess, complete with tiara. I think the music and the choreography are tepid by comparison to what preceeded it, and even Louise Nadeau's and Jeffrey Stanton's lovely dancing couldn't make an impact. I think that either the music should be cut until the soprano solo, or that the stage should be left to the singers, (already in character and in costume) during the first half of the movement. Because the "Adam and Eve" pas de deux (as it's usually described here) to the soprano solo can stand up to "In Taberna," and Nadeau was ravishing in it. Kudos too to the Seattle Choral Company, soprano Catherine Haight, tenor Paul Karaitis, and, especially baritone Erich Parce, who has a beautiful voice of great range, has terrific stage presence, and who looks at home on a stage full of dancers.

The NYCB casts that I have listed for performances from 1984-1989 are: Adams/Carter: Farrell/Lavery von Aroldingen/Lüders Calegari/Neubert and Lüders Kistler/Proia Fugate/Lüders Verdy/Magallanes: Nichols/Joseph Duell, Neubert, and Ziemiench (sp?) Kozlova/Crabtree and Neubert* *Some sort of gala where only four songs for two couples were danced. Hayden/Watts: McBride/Cook Watts/Moore, Cook, and Soto Melinda Roy/Soto Jillana/Ludlow: Saland/Andersen Fugate/Kozlov Lopez/Fischer

Thank you so much for the info on Lewitze and Coutereel, and "Stephen" rings a bell. I bet I wrote Lewitze down for the wrong role, and that she danced the Adams, not the Verdy part, in the performance I saw. HF

I also loved the Liebeslieder performance by SFB I saw in March, 1998. The cast was mostly different: I noted Allemann/Poussakov in the Adams/Carter roles, Berman/Faulls in the Hayden (later McBride)/Watts roles, Diana/Diaz in the Jillana/Ludlow roles, and, unfortunately, names I don't recognize, and I'm not sure I can read my writing in the Verdy/Magallanes roles: "Lewitzke/Contereel" is what they look like. I'm sure Diana danced Jillana's, and I was pretty certain at the time that it was Berman who was so moving in the forward falls into her partners arms during the deep, burnished cords of the third-to-last song. I must not be very good at matching faces in the program to dancers!

I agree with Ari's point about getting as much exposure as possible. It was only after several years of seeing every Balanchine ballet NYCB performed during that time, and reading everything I could get my hands on, that I could look at the next new-for-me ballet and recognize why the choreography was a Tanaquil LeClerq part or a Jaques d'Amboise part. Today, if, for example, The Figure in the Carpet were revived, I would look at it through the lens of the original cast. That doesn't work for every choreographer, especially Petipa's work which has gone through over a century of changes and revisions, but it works for me for the ones who were inspired by particular dancers. For Liebeslieder, I think of Adams and Verdy, and after seeing Jillana in a short clip of the ballet, of her too. Unless a dancer is marring the phrase with tricks, ignoring the music, or just doing his/her schtick regardless of the ballet, usually there is something in the performance that is right on the mark, or even revelatory.

I read Joy Goodwin's The Second Mark, in which the author describes the lives of the top three pairs in the 2002 Olympics, including Shen and Zhao, and Mao's Last Dancer, Li Cunxin's memoir, back to back. Common to the experience of all three people from China were the brutal poverty under which they were raised and the extreme training conditions under which they worked. In one way Li was the luckiest of the three in that he trained indoors and found sympathetic and wise teachers who showed interest in him as a person, but he was also born early enough to have experienced the Cultural Revolution, and political studies took up a lot of time during his early training. I was already strange for me as a child in the early sixties witnessing the sexual, political, and drug revolutions of the late sixties and early seventies; even if I was a little too young to experience them at the time, they had drastic ramifications for the society in which I became an adult. What is nearly impossible for me to imagine is what it must have been like for Li to have been isolated from all things Western pursuing a single-minded discipline, and then to have been thrown into a new culture in which personal and political freedom were equally extreme from all that he knew. Has anyone else read this book?

I hardly agree with Clement Crisp all the time. I wish I had seen the same performances that Edwin Denby did, because I think that would explain the very rare "huh?" I've had when reading him. Sometimes I wondered if Arlene Croce and I were in the same theater. Same with Tobi Tobias, Jennifer Dunning, Joan Acolella, and a number of other critics. Not to mention countless posters here whose opinions I respect and trust, even when I disagree. I respect their points of view because I've seen the context which they criticize, regardless of whether they like or admire a choreographer, dancer, or work, or whether their opinion, preferences, or taste match mine.

The "don't get its" I referred to in my post about Liebeslieder were believing that there's no difference between the Brahms Love Song Waltzes -- two song cycles written five years apart to poems of the same writer -- and that "emotionally drenched" performances are positive or even appropriate in dancing the ballet. Perhaps the latter attribute, which wasn't seen by others on this post who saw the POB production, was what made it difficult to see the development in the choreography and the character of the different couples. But if I saw, for example, Heather Watts approach La Fille Mal Gardee like Calcium Light Night, whether I liked it or disliked it, I wouldn't decide whether Ashton's choreography was good or bad or too long or too short based on it, just as I wouldn't confuse NYCB's Bournonville Divertissements with Bournonville, as much as I loved watching Suzanne Farrell, Kyra Nichols, and Merrill Ashley in it. The part that I find long about Liebeslieder is the break between the two parts, mainly because the audiences I've been part of have tended to treat this as the seventh inning stretch, literally in the case of the mid 1980's performances at NYCB, when full-voiced conversations of, "So how 'bout those Mets?" were coming from all sides.

Ms. Brown, First, I would like to apologize for attributing Zoe Anderson's review of Return to you, which was careless. (I did, however, read this review. Perhaps "ropey" is a common term in criticism.) I will correct this in the original post. I never said you disliked the Balanchine ballets that Dance Theater of Harlem performed. I questioned whether you "got" them, particularly because of the criticism you gave of Rasta Thomas' performance: "but this sun god was giving off rays of self-love in his quest for wisdom; he's an Apollo for the Oprah age," "I found him unbearably unmusical and undignified," and "his idea of the god Apollo was just one big, attention-seeking baby." I saw his performance in the ballet a few months before you did, and perhaps he's added "smirks" to his portrayal. If you thought he was "unmusical," and I didn't, that isn't the issue. In the full-length Apollo, for the first half of the ballet Apollo is a baby, he is supposed to be undignified -- ex: Balanchine's famous retort to the person who asked him how he could portray Apollo on his knees -- and he loves himself enough to reject two perfectly fine, if not perfect muses, in a rather arrogant and dismissive fashion. Since Balanchine used and saw his dancers so clearly, it is not inconceivable that he used some of the arrogance that Lifar shows in his interviews with Nancy Reynolds in Striking a Balance in the original. You did not say that Thomas started in character and never grew the portrayal any farther, or that he missed the tone of immaturity and arrogance appropriate for the various stages of the ballet, which would have suggested to me that you "got" the intention. Hence my question. Helene Kaplan

Quiggin and Leigh Witchel, Thank you both very much for the recommendation.

Agon has two terrific ones, too.

I was thinking more of Dieter, Mike Meyers' character on Saturday Night Live, who only thought something was Art if it was very serious, very grave, and dressed in black. I think Dieter would like Agon, but would hate Ballet Imperial.

I guess I find that scary, because people are getting paid to say that Gosh, and think of what they're missing!Do all discussion topics eventually lead to the "high" and "low" art discussion?

In NYC, on the East Coast in general, and from what I've gleaned from San Francisco with its $7500 minimum donation for access to the opera donor lounge, the big arts positions are appointed by Big Arts Boards, are part of the social milieu, and are exclusive and exclusionary in nature. The sheer dollar amount needed to make any kind of splash in NYC is huge. $25,000 will get your name in 2-point type in disappearing ink in a program for a nano-second or two, while in Seattle, for example, it will get your name in big, permanent type on the Symphony or opera house wall. NYC tends to be immune to everything but the big investment bank kind of money, not the run-of-the-mill temporary Microsoft millionaire kind of money, especially when the donor is more interested in where the money is going than in being on the gala committee. My observation, and the anecdotal evidence from my fundraising friends, is that most donors want the most recognition for their contribution, whether it be accolades or business connections or being happy that they can name an auditorium after their parents. (Hence, the cynical saying among fundraisers that they like their donors "rich and dead.") For corporations community involvement is important too, and one can make a greater impact by being the proverbial big fish in the small pond, rather than a drop in the bucket.

Wow, I don't consider Kylian and Neumeier all that similar, even though to me they co-inhabit the same general universe, but I'd never think of putting Forsythe in the same bucket as the other two, or with McMillan for that matter

I thought Jane Simpson was a poster here; I didn't realize she was a critic, critic too.

I read the following in Emma Manning's review of the Paris Opera Ballet in the February 2004 issue (#71) of Dance Europe: My opinion that any performance of Liebeslieder Waltzer that is "emotionally-drenched" and "pack half of War and Peace in every gesture" smells more like Eternity than L'Heure Bleue and is missing the point of the ballet. (Could this be a reason that French critics and audiences didn't like it?) [Edited to attribute this to the correct critic] Zoe Anderson in The Telegraph lambasted Dance Theater of Harlem's Balanchine program, but liked their performance of Return, which I think, having seen it on the same DTH program as Serenade and Apollo, is a fun way to spend 20 minutes, but hardly much to contemplate the moment it ends. In [Edited to attribute this to the correct critic] Ismene Brown's review of Apollo especially, I thought of Balanchine's comment about how he couldn't remain in England, because it's vulgar to be awake. Or perhaps she thinks that the detached "blond god" performances are the only legitimate interpretation of Apollo? I know this is a very small sample, but these three [Edited] made me realize that I almost always discount the British press take on Balanchine, and I wonder whether British critics, apart from Clement Crisp, "get" Balanchine now any more than they did during NYCB's early tours to London. Or are there critics I should read that I've been missing? [Edited to attribute the reviews to the correct critics, with my apologies to both]

I'll be traveling to London in September, and I'd appreciate any recommendations for book shops where I could find dance books and for any new dance books worth having that have been published by British publishers and are unavailable in the US.