Helene

I'm at the evening student performance, and the program notes that Angeli Mamon, a Dance Chance and PNBS graduate will join PNB! Congratulations to her

The Next Step program was presented last night. Originally a loosely assembled program of company dancer-choreographers who had to enlist their fellow dancers for a program presented during the PNB season, Next Step transitioned to a program of new work by company dancers made on PNBS Professional Division (PD) students performed during Student Performance weekend, giving PD dancers the opportunity to work in the studio with choreographers who are making work directly on them. Dancer (until last weekend)-choreographer Kiyon Gaines became the formal coordinator of the project, and he has grown the scope of mentoring, analysis, and breadth of what is offered to the choreographers in the program. As he said in Q&A's, he wanted the dancer-choreographers to access what he didn't have when he first started to choreograph through the program, from the art and structure of choreography to costumes and lighting to writing program descriptions and bios. This year there were six company choreographers, from first-timers Steven Loch and Charles McCall to fifth-timer Ezra Thomson. The Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra (SYSO), conducted by Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, played for Steven Loch's, Charles McCall's, and Kyle Davis' works. The program opened with Chelsea Adomaitis' "film muet" set to songs sung by Edith Piaf for three women and a couple. The women wore black, knee-length dresses and soft-heeled shoes. Abby Callahan, Abigail Diedrich, and Jessica Pelluer were the trio, each of whom had a short solo establishing her individual style, followed by a pas de deux with Madison Abeo and Kyle L. Davis that captured their elegance. They were later joined by the trio. There was a lilt and lightness to the work. Asked in the Q&A what it was like to be the only woman among the five choreographers and coordinator Gaines, she replied, "Getting asked that question!" She later said that she had plenty of support from her fellow choreographers, and after Peter Boal said that one possible explanation is that the women have a harder schedule than the men, Adomaitis said she did not do any rehearsal during "Swan Lake" (April 2015). Next was Steven Loch's 14-minute pas de deux to excerpts from "Scheherezade." Daena Bortnick wore a thin-strapped below-the knee dress in light apricot with gold trim, and Joshua Shutkind a white short jacket and pants and small turban with a feather; they were designed and made by Loch's mother, Nancy Loch, with costume fittings done via FaceTime and delivery services between Seattle and Texas. In the Q&A Loch said that he first heard the music in 2002 when Michelle Kwan used it for her Olympic free skate, and that many skaters have used it, including Meryl Davis and Charlie White, 2014 Olympic Ice Dance champions. (Going back before he was born, the brilliant team of Judy Blumberg and Michael Seibert used "Scheherezade" for their 1984 Olympic free dance; after being coached by a member of the ABT staff and ended their program with the Siren's slide down the Prodigal's legs from "Prodigal Son," they lost the Olympic bronze medal because one judge decided it wasn't the right kind of dance. But I digress.) The figure skating influence Loch described in the Q&A was included in what was a traditional, conventional piece of choreography that was beautifully danced by the long-limbed Bortnick and Shutkind. It featured a combination lift that started upstage right as a grand lift after which Shutkind carried Bortnick downstage left and she "dropped" quite daringly into a lower lift that brought a spontaneous mini-ovations. Loch gave these dancers the greatest challenge of the night: there were several times in the pas de deux where the dancers had to pose for 5-10 seconds while the grand music washed over them and remain convincingly in character, which is a challenge for seasoned professionals who are more schooled in neoclassical ballet and who perform mainly neoclassical and contemporary ballet. Loch said that conductor Radcliffe was happy he chose this music, as the SYSO performed the complete work recently. Kudos to the violin soloist for his or her brilliant playing. The last piece in part 1 was Charles McCall's "Descendant Inklings," set to Bach's Fourth Brandenburg Concerto. It was costumed from the shop selection; I'm not sure any of the costumes were made for the same work, but with each dancer wearing a different one, they all worked well together. A work for six dancers, it opened with two women and three men and went from a strictly neoclassical idiom to one that fractured into others. The opening section of five showed a remarkable talent for moving and grouping people onstage, which is often the last structural piece a new choreographer absorbs. The women, Abby Callahan and Brittany Rand danced big, with energy and lushness, and the men, who were more different in style, were vivid performers, but that was the rub, the peril of live music: the energy of the playing in the first and third movements didn't match the dynamism and pulse of the performers. I've heard the music played with the kind of energy that matched the dancing, but this sounded more like background music to a lovely garden wedding. The playing was more successful in the second movement, where the strong adagio dancing of the two women in the first part of the movement rode the music beautifully rather than being constrained by it. Partway through this movement the style changed, which was more intellectually than kin-esthetically engaging, although well-danced. Price Suddarth said that last year he had created a role for Kyle L. Davis, but Davis was injured. This year, inspired by an exercise that Ezra Thomson did with his dancers, Suddarth created a solo-ish work for Davis called "Duet?" to a recording of first movement of Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto. (For those who relish bad movies, it was the great, driving piece that Amy Irving's character played in "The Competition," after the piano string broke during her Mozart attempt.) The "ish" is that about halfway through this long solo -- oh to have that kind of stamina! -- Davis spotted his partner, a tennis ball, which he handled expertly before and after each attempt to rid himself of it. It was wonderfully performed and delightfully funny without getting close to being over-the-top. Davis, a standout in corps roles this Spring, was the most completely formed dancer in the program -- elegant, musical, clear, clean, quick, with fast, seamless transitions and acceleration and wonderfully controlled changes of speed, and able to launch movement from nowhere and to end with grace -- but next season, he'll lose the "L." -- PNB already has a "Kyle Davis" -- and we'll lose him to Ballet West II, along with Brittany Rand and Joshua Shutkind. (Is Adam Sklute smarter than Peter Boal? Discuss.) The original Kyle Davis choreographed the long-titled, "A Hundred Ways to Paint the Portion of a Plane Bounded by Such a Curve, Part Two" to the melodic second movement of Charles Ives' Symphony No. 1, beautifully played by the SYSO. This was another greatly challenging piece, a pas de deux for an exceptional Angeli Mamon (in a corset-back leotard) and Jesse Newman, in which he used stillness and required patience and presence from his dancers. There wasn't a lot of momentum with which to express the movement or overt emotion, even though there was a lot built into the music, and Davis made several interesting, quiet choices during the swelling themes. Davis has a voice that comes through strongly, and his dancers expressed it as strongly. The last work was Ezra Thomson's "There are no rules" set to music by Craig Chaquico (Jefferson Starship). It was a group work for the first and last parts, with an (overly) long solo in the middle. Thomson knows how to move dancers around very, very well, and this was the strongest aspect of the work. The central solo was not successful: it didn't bring out the strengths of his dancer, and there was little about the choreography that made it look like it would impress if danced by someone else. It was a sharp contrast to some of the group work he did in which his dancers, especially his female dancers, looked masterful and dynamic, in particular the shortest, dark-haired dancer, which was quite remarkable, given the numbing nature of the music. (The dancers were grouped in the program as six women and four men, and apart from a few I recognized from other pieces in the program, I couldn't identify her by process of elimination.) In the Q&A Thomson said that his costumes, which were sleek leotards and skirts for the women, were designed by PNB soloist Elizabeth Murphy, who is starting a line of leotards, and that she dyed the men's costumes to match the women's. When that line comes out, I hope she does brisk sales, because the dancers look great in them. Randall G. Chiarelli did the lighting for all of the pieces, and his work enhanced all of them. He seemed to be having a great time with Scheherazade, especially.

Most programs at the Seattle International Dance Festival claim to be curated by someone. "Curate" has become a drinking game buzzword.

On Tuesday, June 16, works by Price Suddarth, who has created a piece for Jahna Frantziskonis, Leta Biasucci, and Elle Macy, and Ezra Thomson, who has created a piece for dancers from Spectrum Dance Company, will be presented at the Seattle International Dance Festival in the "Spotlight on Contemporary Ballet" program, along with works by Natascha Greenwalt and Kim Lusk. http://www.seattleidf.org/event/spotlight-on-contemporary-ballet-2015/?instance_id=165 On Sunday, June 21 (7:30pm), SIDF will present Ezra Thomson's and Jerome Aparis' ballet-hip hop work with music by William Lin-Yee in the Inter | National Series Weekend 2 Program B program. http://www.seattleidf.org/event/international-series-weekend-2-program-b-2015/?instance_id=147 Both are at Raisbeck Hall, 2015 Boren (between Denny and Virginia).

Today is Student Performance Day. Dancers in Levels I-IV, Levels I-VIII Men, and DanceChance will perform at 2pm with their classes, and there will be performance of Doug Fullington's reconstruction of excerpts from "Le Corsaire," danced by Level II-Professional Division Students. At 7pm, PNB students in Levels V-VIII perform original works by PNB School faculty and Company dancer Matthew Renko, and present an encore performance of Le Corsaire, accompanied by the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. http://www.pnb.org/PNBSchool/Performance.aspx There's a celebration dinner at 4:30, between performances. For anyone going to either or both, please be aware that it's graduation weekend for many area schools, and Seattle Center has been packed with graduates and people trying to park. There's also a Sounders game at 7pm -- the Mariners are in Houston -- which is farther downtown, but can block up Aurora and I-5. In the "Carmina" program, Peter Boal wrote that four PD's are heading to Salt Lake City. Three PD dancers from last night's "Next Step" program are on the Ballet West II roster (scroll): Brittany Rand, Kyle Davis, and Joshua Shutkind. I'm not sure which of the two women in Charles McCall's "Descendent Inklings" was Brittany Rand, but both women were big and lush movers. Kyle Davis as been in all of the big ballet corps this season and has been a standout. He was featured last night in Chelsea Adomaitis' "film muet" (set to Edith Piaf's singing) and in a long solo by Price Suddarth called "Duet?" set to the first movement of Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto. He's on the shorter side; despite this I was hoping against hope he'd be chosen for PNB, but that's filed along with the pony I want, and I hope he gets the career he wants. Joshua Shutkind has also been dancing strongly in corps roles this season, and he was a lovely partner in Steven Loch's "Scheherezade" (pas de deux). I don't see a fourth name from last night's program on the Ballet West website. I don't know if Boal was counting former PD Enrico Hipolito, who spent the year at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, where former PNB standout Nicholas Ade is CEO. He's also a Ballet West II member now.

That is interesting, because there's been a Gomes documentary in the works for several years, initially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, and it has not yet been released. Perhaps this one from Brazil will end up being released earlier. As far as dancing big or small, I disagree that roles like Peasant PDD, Swan Läke PDT, and Amour encourage soloists to dance small. Those are pace-eating roles with demanding technical challenges, and they can be danced as big and make their sections as commanding as any of the lead roles. Smaller solo roles are the same, and I've seen quite extraordinary performances where a dancer has a lesser lead, like April Ball in "Divertimento No. 15" in Berkeley with Suzanne Farrell Ballet or becomes a first among equals, like Simone Messmer as one of the Fairies in the last ABT "Sleeping Beauty" and Carrie Imler and Jonathan Porretta in the closing Handel in Forsythe's "New Suite" for PNB, where it was a if suddenly I was looking at the stage through a giant magnifying glass compared to what came before and after, where there was dancing that followed. What those roles do not do is prepare a dancer to carry a full-length ballet, even a role as abbreviated as Desire in "Sleeping Beauty," in terms of dramatic arc, pacing, and stamina, as many a soloist or inexperienced Principal has shown in his or her first attempts at a role.

Considering that Petipa, whose brother was the original Albrecht, and Bournonville share the same ballet DNA, it should come as no surprise that their choreography reflects this.

From Joan Acocella's article (June 8) in "The New Yorker," http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/ratmanskys-beauty-wakes-up I had forgotten that in the original musical score for "Giselle" there were mime and stage directions.

Ratmansky also uses descriptions of the choreography, drawings from the time, and descriptions of the upper body in other notations to inform his choices.

macnell, do you have an adblocker, antu-redirector, or pop-up blocker installed? These can interfere with a lot of ordering sites. The opera people don't sound very happy with the website, either. Wait until they start ordering tickets.

It happens all over. I was at a concert version of an opera in Ghent, and a woman, after realizing that I didn't speak Flemish, asked me in English if the seat next to me had been taken for the first act. She then told me what was wrong with her original seat, and we had a nice chat. She was ready to get up if the person who had the ticket showed up during intermission.

I don't see how using a dancing double would have affected whether Aaronofsky or Millepied would win an Academy Award. It was Portman who didn't dance, and that didn't stop her from winning one.

The "Black Swan" controversy was an issue for the movie, not ABT.

You may not have, but others have seen growth lately, and they've described it here. It's not a right vs. wrong, ie, that anyone should like a dancer they don't, but she has received much more praise recently than in the past couple of years.

Peter Martins rarely has guests. If someone is injured, he substitutes another company dancer in the role, and that could be a dancer that someone was trying to avoid. He wasn't sounding like a genius after Erika Perrera's first "Raymonda," but the needle took a jump in the other direction after her second. It sounds like having to dance a lot of very difficult roles in a short period of time has been great for Hee Seo.

Yes, it is a "slide" on which the dancer goes on point and is pulled. A hole would be rather dangerous.

Not at all: he was scheduled for the performance, and I've been reading descriptions here by people who were taken by Abrera's excerpt during the Works & Process ABT presentations and who have described the full performance with Shkylarov very differently. There is rarely consensus on any dancer.

This sounds very plausible. As one old manager used to say, "You can test before you go live, or you can test after you go live. But you're going to test." ABT customers are the guinea pigs.

It would get the Royal Ballet sympathy and goodwill and maybe sell a few extra tickets were the company to lend a hand.

If they do, they should make it clear from what seat the photo is taken. It is misleading unless they make this clear, if they are using a photo or a couple of photos that are either prime or average and displayed when seats with obscured views are selected.

The old system had an absence of info: ie that views are obscured and difficult from seats. If the view in the new site isn't accurate, that's even worse, since people will count on information provided actively.

From everything I've read here and from the handful of performances I've seen over the last five years, in terms of stars and up-and-coming stars, NYCB is an embarrassment of riches.

It wasn't meant to be a full evening work. We just saw the amazing "Concerto DSCH," which clocks in at 19 minutes, paired with the 70-minute "Carmina Burana," and "Concerto Barocco" is listed at 18 minutes. I know those dancers very well and love them all, but I can't say I learned much about them from this piece.

As seattle_dancer posted above, we got to see traders and footage of the shoot in a studio presentation last summer. Season Encore was the first time we saw it as close to envisioned (since McCaw Hall is an indoor venue). It's not on the roster for next season, unlike "The Calling." PNB was the first ballet company asked to do a work for this series. Boal asked Bartee, whose choreography style is well within the range of expectations set by the modern dance choreographers in earlier works.

PA Ballet just tweeted: