Helene

I guess my question is really when the "old" is replaced by the "new," how much damage is done so that the "old" can't be recaptured?

I think that sometimes "old" art gets replaced by "new" when the training for and dancing to the "new" art changes the technique or impetus, and the "old" art can't be danced the same way. Thinking pessimistically, I've read endless references to the change of training during MacMillan's rule at Royal Ballet, and how dancers trained to do his ballets could no longer dance Ashton properly. I also compare a lot of NYCB performances I've seen since Martins took over, where there is sharp technique, but where the movement impetus doesn't seem to be universally grounded, to the performances I recently saw of Suzanne Farrell Ballet. I wouldn't go so far as to call them a troupe of random pick-up dancers, but they gave me a sense of dancing from the root that I rarely see at NYCB, especially now when my visits to NYC are limited to 3-4 times a year, and I can't compare several performances. I'm not sure how many differences are based in conflicting approaches as well. For example, when NYCB performed Bournonville Divertissements, coached by Stanley Williams, are the dancers unable to grasp the Bournonville style and technique -- certainly RDB men have joined NYCB and picked up Balanchine technique like sponges -- or are they trained to dance it like another performance of Balanchine? I'm thinking of Arlene Croce's review from 21 Feb 77: and Croce seems to suggest "both." (These quotes are from Afterimages.) I also wonder if dancers have the technique or disinclination or direction to perform Cechetti-based ballet with the proper "square" alignment; for example, is it impossible to perform a square arabesque without opening the hip, and without the energy and attack that's standard now?

In this week's The New Yorker (8 Dec 03) dance critic Joan Acocella reviews Joyce scholar Carol Loeb Shloss' book, "Lucia Joyce" To Dance in the Wake," a biography of James Joyce's daughter. Most of the dance Shloss talks about in the book is modern: studies at Dalcroze Institute and with Isadora Duncan's older brother, Raymond; professional appearances with a small troupe; the author's contention that Lucia's dancing was the inspiration for the themes in Finnegan's Wake. However, Acocella also mentions that Lucia Joyce, at the age of 22, began to study ballet seriously with Lubov Egorova, for six hours a day, and that her failure at it caused her to give up dance. It was very interesting to read Acocella's dissection of the dance history in the book. For example, the author implies that a diary entry by one of Joyce's friends was a description of one of Lucia Joyce's performances, while Acocella identifies it as a description of Balanchine's Prodigal Son ! The links to individual reviews expire each week -- this one probably on 8 Dec -- but to find the complete review, go to The New Yorker website, and from the left menu scroll over "THE CRITICS" and select "BOOKS."

What would you have wished for in a Balanchine/Martins triple-bill, if you could have chosen: 1) Among what's currently in the rep? 2) Among all ballets?

That's terrific that they'll be able to expand their season. It would be great if a lot more dancers were given the opportunity to learn and to perform new roles

In the 1 December issue of The New Yorker on page 19 in the "DANCE" section, the first entry was for "NEW YORK CITY BALLET" and the listing was for The Nutcracker. Here's a quote: I don't see this quartet together on the cast list from 1 December through the 14 December performances.

Assuming everyone is healthy, the top two spots are generally conceded to Kwan and Cohen, although there's plenty of debate as to the order in which they will finish this year. The fight is expected to be for third place and the third spot on the World team, between Jenny Kirk, AP McDonough, and Ye Bin Mok, with Beatrisa Liang, Angela Nikodinov, and Amber Corwin as dark horse candidates. 2005 US Nationals will be held in Portland, OR

I didn't know that they were for sale -- I thought they were a Marketing ploy to sell tickets. (And I thought I'd have to mug a small child in the Ladies' Room to get one.)

It was Taub's closing line, that made me nearly fall off of my chair laughing

We'd have to include "Carmen," "Don Quixote," and "Spartacus," "Concerto de Arunjuez," "Malaguena," and Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" and 2nd Piano Concerto in the moratorium as well. Otherwise, all of the swans will just migrate to that music. With Shen/Zhao joining Petrova/Tikhonov (Short Program '02) using the Act II pas de deux from The Nutcracker, we many need a preemptive ban. (Off topic, there's a beautiful photo of Yamaguchi and her new daughter Keara in this week's People Magazine.)

I just read an AP article about the naming of a new opera house in Copenhagen that is being built across from the downtown Royal Palace. It's scheduled to open in spring 2005. It was just named (in translation) "The Opera -- Copenhagen." Will RDB move to the new house, too, or will the Company remain at the Royal Theater? If RDB stays in the Royal Theater, will this mean an expanded season for the Company?

My favorite essay of Denby's was the one on Balanchine's Nutcracker. He described how a mother at the performance said something like, "oh, look, she's lost her shoe" at the end of Act I, and her daughter replied that Marie lost it when she threw it at the Mouse King to save the Nutcracker. I don't remember Denby's exact comment, but it was something like, "she saw, and she understood." Which always seemed to me to sum up Denby. At my best, I could say, "he wrote, and I finally understood."

According to an AP article published on andante.com, the Metropolitan Opera is taking a 2.5 week performance break in January 2005, thus pushing out its season to 22 May; this will affect ABT's Spring '05 schedule:

I'm sorry -- I just saw your question. Treefrog describes the Spanish Riding School perfectly. It is a very intimate arena. The galleries aren't that high over the "rink," and the riders take many of the laps relatively close to the walls, so that they are pretty close to the spectators. But even when they rode down the middle they were still pretty close, and you could see the horses feet very clearly. I don't remember much more than natural light. It wasn't really packed for daily practice -- I assume because there wasn't any jumping, just dressage -- so I was able to sit in the front row each time. If I remember correctly, there weren't many rows behind me.

During a trip to Vienna as a college student, I couldn't get tickets for the show itself, but for a couple of dollars, I was able to attend the dressage drills in the mornings. It was amazing to see what intricate and accurate steps and patterns they could do.

Today's first "link" was a review of the Four Temperaments/Polyphonia/Sinfonetta triple bill performed by the Royal Ballet, and Eva Natanya was mentioned in the second-to-last paragraph: "The Four Temperaments, with two casts (matinee and evening), looked more variable. I thought the matinee cast had the edge, from the opening Theme of an Apollo-like Thiago Soares and Eva Natanya, through Kevin Thomas's touching Melancholic, the brilliantly complicit Sanguinic of Jaimie Tapper and Inaku Urlezaga, to the interestingly mannered Ivan Putrov as Phlegmatic." (Edited to correct typo)

The two ballets that I disliked most the first time I saw them, but came to love are strangely related. When I was in Jr. High and early High School, my best friend loved the ballet. Her father was happy to drive us to Lincoln Center, drop us off, go crosstown, and work in his lab for a couple of hours before picking us up. Since she was related to the "wheels," when choosing performances, we followed her two strict rules: 1. Makarova was better than Fracci, so we went to performances with Makarova, and shunned those with Fracci, even though this meant we never saw Fracci's constant partner Erik Bruhn and 2. Because she was unable to guess which night Fonteyn and Nureyev were to perform with the Royal Ballet (and probably was "stuck" with Seymour or Beriosova, poor girl), we could never buy tickets where the casts weren't announced well in advance, in a full page ad in The New York Times. Hence, no City Ballet, and if ABT performed Balanchine in the early '70's, we never went. In my junior year of high school, after my friend moved back to Japan, I went to a summer program, where the directors decided -- rightly -- to expose the group to some culture, but -- wrongly -- decided that the boys would be bored by the ABT triple bill. (Hello -- girls in tights?) So off to Philharmonic Hall we went. It turned out that this was the Saturday night in July '74 when Baryshnikov made his debut in Giselle, and it was 15 years before I could hear Bach's 5th Brandenburg Concerto without feeling a pit in my stomach. I'm not really certain what was on the original triple bill, but I remember this as the first time I missed Jardin aux Lilacs. I did my post-college pilgrimage to the Boston area, where I was a Marketing Director's dream -- someone who heard an advertisement for the Boston Ballet, and because of the theme from La Sonnambula playing in the background, bought a ticket. Just on that turn of music, I had great expectations. But I turned into the Marketing Director's nightmare: I hated La Sonnambula, I hated the Bruce Wells piece to music by Ginastera, and I thought the classical showpiece (can't remember which) badly performed. In the meantime, I had missed Jardin aux Lilacs twice more, once when it was dropped from the program, another time because my bus from Boston was very late. When I moved back to New York, I bought tickets to an ABT triple bill. Finally I was going to see Jardin aux Lilacs. Martine van Hamel came onstage, danced a little, and suddenly, her partner was carrying her into the wings in his arms. At first I thought, "how atmospheric," but then the stage was empty with the music playing, and the curtain came down. I read in the paper the next day that van Hamel had broken her foot on stage. There was an intermission, and the curtain rose on Bouree Fantastique. After some cast switching Harriet Clark stepped into Tanaquil LeClerq's role, and she was witty and delightful, like champagne. By the end of the ballet, I was in love with Balanchine's choreography -- probably the biggest DUH of my life. I started attending NYCB constantly, waited years for La Sonnambula to be revived, and I've loved it ever since. Jardin aux Lilacs was harder, because by the time I saw it, and with Pillar of Fire being one of my favorites, my expectations were so high, that I was bound to be let down. It took two more tries for me to appreciate the ballet, but now I look forward to it. I keep trying to like Giselle, but I like neither the music nor the characters and don't love the style. So I see the ballet only if there's an angle: Dance Theater of Harlem's Bayou version, the Alonso-coached National Ballet of Cuba, ABT, because I was starved to see the company, and that's the only thing they brought to Seattle. I guess I don't hate it as much as I used to, because I do keep going. Not exactly a conversion. I really did like Peter Martins A Shubertiade only after the third time I saw it in one week. Whether I like Dances at a Gathering depends on whether I found it a bore the last time (then I'm pleasantly surprised) or surprisingly good the last time (then I'm bored.) But seeing it so many times made me appreciate Jerry Zimmerman as a great Chopin interpreter.

I just received an email from PNB to announce the following marketing offers besides the standard discounts for low-demand Nutcracker performances: *For $100 per ticket for most Nutcracker performances, up to two people can sit in the orchestra pit *A new restaurant is opening, and for $20, patrons get entree samples and drinks, with proceeds going to the ballet. (It's on a Sunday night, when many Seattle restaurants are closed or hosting private parties.) *A local TV host and his wife will play the grandparents in one Nutcracker performance *Before two Nutcracker performances the first 1,000 children will receive Nutcracker bobbleheads *Using the PNB link to amazon, PNB earns 5% of purchases. Yikes, bobbleheads.

Wasn't this supposed to be one of the retroactive ironies of the movie The Turning Point, where Adelaide -- supposedly the Lucia Chase character -- asks Anne Bancroft's character to coach Lesley Browne's character in one of the major ballets (Sleeping Beauty maybe?), and then comments something about everyone getting old and having to move on?

Correction to my earlier post: On Friday night, Mladenov danced the waltz and Ritter danced the Elegy guy. On Saturday night, Ritter danced the waltz and Du danced the Elegy guy.

I think those two things are related. It's been my experience that unless the curtain is up and there's both music and stage action, too many audience members at the ballet and opera think that it's perfectly fine to talk over the overtures and musical interludes. The "action" over the overture may be to pre-empt the chatting. Unfortunately, nothing stops the "How about those Mets?" discussions between the two parts of Liebeslieder Walzer.

If this is true, then Divertimento No. 15 has to be an exception, because it requires five principal female parts. Since the original choreography was for Kent, Hayden, Adams, LeClercq (Fourth Variation), and Wilde, those are formidable footsteps in which to follow. (I'm not counting Caracole, because the [/i]Choreography by George Balanchine catalogue said the choreography for it was forgotten, and Divertimento was created anew.) Looking at the repertoire for this season's tour, only Divertimento (5) and Serenade (3) have more than one female principal, and only Chaconne has extended soloist work. Has anyone seen Program C, the "Balanchine Couple" program? If so, what was the casting like in that program?

I traveled to Berkeley this weekend to see Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and was the only Seattlite in my hotel there to see the ballet, not to see Cal trounce the Huskies in the football game Saturday afternoon. It took seven hours to get to Zellerbach; unfortunately that made me half hour late to the opening ballet, Divertiment No. 15, one of my all time favorite ballets But I did get to see The Waltz of the Flowers, named "Tempo de Valse" on the program, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, and Serenade on Friday, and the whole program on Saturday. I was surprised when the ushers let me in to see the end of Divertimento No. 15; I came in as the second-to-last pas de deux was ending. I did manage to see Shannon Parsley and Runqiao Du dance the final pas de deux. My general impression was the Zellerbach stage was much smaller than I remembered, and that the performance felt cramped and tight. However, since I was so crabby about my late plane, getting lost on the way from the Ashby BART station, etc., that I tried to get that out of my head and watch the performance of that ballet on Saturday with fresh eyes. "Tempo de Valse" was performed in dresses that are cut and styled like the standard Serenade dresses, except with soft chiffon instead of several layers of tulle. The corps was in medium pink, the soloist flowers were in pale blue, and Dewdrop was in a very light pink, with her skirt cropped to mid-thigh. At first I thought, "Yay, gone are those awful Karinska Flower dresses and that corset for Dewdrop," yet while Dewdrop's costume was an improvement, what I missed was the volume of skirts for the corps and soloists, especially the way they expanded in the arabesques and went "poof," "poof," "poof," "poof" during the pas du chats. Both Bonnie Pickard (Friday) and Shannon Parsley (Saturday) danced expansively as Dewdrop. They were similar in their lightness and precision, with long legs making very clear images without being sharp. I was happy to see that Farrell has chosen some big dancers -- tall, with wide, muscular backs, legs, and even breasts -- and they moved big. The corps and soloists filled up the stage. The soloists stood out a bit more in their blue costumes -- the Karinska lilac isn't that big a contrast to the Flowers' pink -- and I was aware for the first time that the soloists end up in the corners at several points. It was disconcerting to hear Nutcracker music when it was nearly 60 degrees outside, a true Southern Hemisphere Christmas experience. Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux followed. Peter Boal performed both nights, and except for a bit of showing off in some very high cabrioles, which knocked him a bit off line, he was strong and elegant throughout. On Friday he partnered Jennifer Fournier. From the start it looked like a bit of a struggle between them, and her performance looked to me like it got smaller in each section in which she was partnered. I don't think she smiled more than once or twice or looked up, eyes or body, to the Balcony. While I didn't think Fournier was doing anything mannered or particularly unusual, there was something missing, and it took me until Saturday to figure out what it was. Serenade was danced by Chan Hon Goh as the Waltz Girl (with Alexander Ritter), Shannon Parsely in "Scherzo a la Russe," and Natalia Magniacaballi and Momchil Mladenov as the Dark Angel and Elegy Guy. I knew I was in for trouble when Goh started to act; I found it very jarring and put on. I wondered if I was seeing a different version from which I was used to, but Saturday's performance confirmed that I was seeing a distortion of the choreographic line. By contrast, Parsely's performance was a reprise of her Dewdrop: light and clear, with fine, sweeping energy in the first movements and suitable gravity in the Elegy. She reminded me of Kyra Nichols in the part. Natalia Magniacaballi danced with beautiful carriage and legs that never seem to stop stretching in arabesque, even when she was being turned at the thigh, and the way she expanded in all directions when the turning stopped was, in my experience, unsurpassed, without being mannered. Saturday's performance of Divertimento No. 15 unfortunately confirmed my first impression on Friday, which is that half the dancers -- corps and principals -- tightened up from the waist up when performing it. One dancer who didn't was Alexander Ritter, who in the short role of the Theme gave the most fully shaped and musically danced performance of any of the men both nights; surprisingly I found his dancing more pleasing than Boal's. Ritter took up the right amount of space for each move and phrase, not only in this ballet, but in two performances of the first man in Senerade. Frances Katzen, who was quite lovely as one of the Flowers soloists, and Bonnie Pickard were hard to watch in the First and Second Variations because their upper bodies were so tight; I started to watch only legs. The same was true during their pas de deux. That changed when Cheryl Sladkin took the stage in the Third Variation. While she doesn't have the extension of the first two, she was the first soloist to be fully lifted from her waist and to dance from her sternum. What a difference it made, because while it looks like she takes tension in her lower arms, her arms motions flowed from her open chest and shoulders. Her legwork was very clear, and the steps and shapes really projected. She also drew my eye consistently in the Serenade ensemble. I'm not sure what Momchil Mladevov's particular draw is: he has very long legs that seem separated from his relatively short torse, his legs seemed a little gangly, like a newborn colt, and he didn't point his feet. His Fifth Variation looked blurred to me. Dancing the Sixth Variation and the lead was Jennifer Fournier. She looked happiest and most expansive when dancing this solo, but seemed to clam up again when being partnered in the centerpiece pas de deux. I skipped over the Fourth Variation woman deliberately, because April Ball entered and blew me away. She's one of the bigger woman in the company, and she ate up the stage. It was like an infusion of energy from another planet, and, yet, there wasn't a movement she did that looked out of place or proportion or strained. It was as if she there was a magnifying glass in front of her. When she was partnered by Ritter in brief passages in the last movement, it was a match made in heaven, because the were so perfectly modulated and in tune. Chan Hon Goh danced the Saturday performance of Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. I was dreading it a bit, expecting more acting. It wasn't as bad as I expected, although I felt she marred it again with an occasional mannerism. For example, one of my favorite moments in the opening partnered turns down to one knee, repeated, where, usually, the woman looks up with open shoulders. Goh looked down and gave what seemed to be a little bow to her partner. In general she seemed more preoccupied with him than I'm used to in Balanchine ballets. But, on the whole, she seemed happy to be dancing, and was lighter and quicker than Fournier had been on Friday. Serenade was danced beautifully by all the principals. I think that Parsley swapped roles and danced the Waltz Girl, and that Bonnie Pickard did the Scherzo a la Russe, but I could be mistaken. Both were quite lovely. And it may be shallow, but I love it in the Elegy when their hair is loose, and there's a blonde, redhead, and brunette. In some of the reviews there's been criticism of the corps. I found the corps to be pretty disciplined. What I didn't expect was that the pairings of corps in the Menuet in Divertimento No. 15 would be so far off; at least two of the pairs were dancing to different tempos. But that was an anomaly. I finally realized what it was about the Company that made some performances, like Fournier's and Goh's, not fit: Farrell has chosen a group of dancers who ride the wave of the music, and when that happens, the ballets look so right. The dancers in the Company dance as if they need to dance, and even after a long tour, there was life and little fatigue, even in the warhorse, Serenade.

There's a Pacific Northwest Ballet version that stars a young Patricia Barker. The sets are by Maurice Sendak, and the overture and ballerina doll scenes were among those that were adapted to the screen in a very charming way. I was living in NYC at the time I first saw this, and it was my introduction to the Company.

I just received an email from the Royal Ballet. They have a special ticket offer through 20 November for a triple bill including Wheeldon's Polyphonia, Balanchine's The Four Temperaments, and Kylian's Sinfonetta: "When you book a top-price seat for the evening performances on 18, 21 or 25 November you will pay £39.60 (usual price £66), and for the matinee performance on 15 November you will pay £31.20 (usual price £52).When booking for this special offer, choose Orchestra Stalls, Stalls Circle or Grand Tier and enter your preferred number of seats next to the 'email offer' concession." Here is the link to the Royal Ballet ticket site in the email. I just checked the website. They may have assigned a certain number of seats to "email" offer, because I didn't see any available in Orchestra Stalls for the 18 November performance. (If available, they are displayed on a separate line with the special price.) To see availability after selecting a specific performance of "Polyphonia Triple Bill," click on the picture of the section on the left side of the screen. I hope someone will see this, take advantage of the offer, and post about the performance(s). I'm jealous that I won't be able to see this program