nysusan

I enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed it more if there had been more traditional ballet dancing and less gestural dancing/plot/characters (as absolutely everyone has said) - especially in the first act. The 2nd and 3rd acts weren't more than 1/2 an hour each but the first act was almost an hour long. I very muck liked the music and scenery and the way they handled the scene changes. Although I enjoyed it I look at this as a missed opportunity for both Wheeldon and ABT - if he cut 15 minutes of exposition from the first act and added maybe 5 minutes of ballet divertissment or expanded on some of the Tita/Pedro pdd (with actual ballet) I think they would have a huge hit on their hands. As it is, the conversations I heard between acts were totally positive, I didn't hear any negative comments. And I heard a ton of Spanish being spoken all around me so ABT may have succeeded in bringing in a new audience, though not necessarily a Broadway audience. I saw the Park/Camargo and Trenary/Cornejo casts and thought that with a few exceptions the Trenary/Cornejo cast was far superior. For me Camargo & Cornejo were both wonderful. Camargo is the better actor with warmer stage presence, but Cornejo's acting was good enough and he & Trenary had wonderful rapport. Camargo's dancing was more lyrical, though he still executed what little ballet there was very well. Cornejo, despite his advancing age, is still a great dancer with bravura technique but there was so little opportunity for him to use it that I'm not sure it mattered. I thought Park was a fine Tita but Trenary was exceptional. Having seen her recently in the Tharp City Center program I think this is her wheelhouse - dramatic dance. I preferred Shevchenko to Davison as Mama Elena, she was much sterner and more dominating but I loved Davison and Tristan Brosnan as young Elena and Jose. They were just wonderful in their pdd in the second act fantasy scene at Mama Elena's wake. In fact the second act was definitely my favorite as it contained a lot of dancing! I loved, loved loved Bell as Juan Alexandrez in the second act. My goodness - pirouettes, tours, jetes and blazingly done! Carlos Gonzalez was much more subdued in the same role. I liked both Hurlin and Brandt as Gertrudis and in fact, that was my favorite female role. While Dr Brown may be a small role it has as much or more ballet dancing as any of the other male roles. Royal was ok but Forster was beautiful, and very sympathetic. Tita & Pedro had a great intense & sensual pdd in the last act and I thought the ending was spectacular. FYI - both performances I saw started at 7:35 and ended at 10:15

You are very welcome. I feel its important for anyone contemplating going to this production to know that it is NOT a traditional staging. On the other hand, I would go if the opportunity arises to see them in anything else. They are a very good company.

Yes, I traveled to Houston last weekend to see Sarah Lane in the Sunday matinee performance of their production of Swan Lake. I wish her well and hope she's doing better - I don't blame her for canceling but naturally I was super disappointed when she did not perform. Fortunately I also bought a ticket to the Saturday evening show with Beckanne Sisk and Chase O'Connell. Sisk was absolutely wonderful with strong technique - fast chaines & pirouettes and strong fouettes. She had some beautiful long balances - lyrical in the first lakeside scene and striking in her black swan solo. Her epaulement in the white swan acts was exceptional, with long, yearning stretches of the neck, head and shoulders. Her arms were sometimes a little too swanny for me but that is understandable in this production. As expected, she and O'Connell had great rapport and he partnered her very well. He certainly looks the part of a danseur noble - tall & dark haired with long limbs but his first act solos had hard, brittle landings and in the ballroom scene it looked to me like he couldn't land a tour, leap or pirouette sequence facing the audience squarely. Soo Youn Cho subbed for Sarah in the Sunday matinee. She was fine, delicate & sad but kind of generic. She had a really strange ecstatic look on her face in the first white swan scene. She held a balance for a super long time in the black swan pas, but she didn't hold it strongly, her arabesque leg kept moving up and down. Still, it was impressive. I liked Ryo Kato as Siegfried, he danced it very well. There are a lot of soloist roles in this Swan Lake and I thought all of the dancers at the corps and soloist level were really strong. At least as strong as we have in NY at ABT. Houston should be proud of them. Now, about their production - I hated it. There are so many things i disliked , these are some of the things that annoyed me most: The complete evisceration of the first act castle scene (here 1st act scene 2 at an encampment in the forest) and the 3rd act (here act 2) national dances. The national dances were completely re-choreographed by Welch and lost all of their folk dance character. Instead of being danced in heeled slippers each is danced by the princess herself, on pointe and with 1-4 of her male companions ( Ambassadors and Guards). In the 1st act they have eliminated the pas de trois, again replacing the Petipa with Welch's choreography for the 4 would be brides and the prince's 2 sisters. They use most of the pdt music along with music from other parts of the ballet as well as music from the Tchai pdd. This production gave us far too much of the princesses/brides for my taste, although all of the dancers danced very well. I read what I could about this production before making the trip and learned that it was inspired by John William Waterhouse's painting The Lady of Shallott and "takes its aesthetic from the fairy tale valence of pre-Raphaelite painting". Let me start by saying that I did not care for the court's costumes, they were not elegant enough for a royal court and seemed very inappropriate for a tale set in medieval Germany (although he certainly could have changed the time & place). The painting also inspired the look of Welch's Odette, who we see in the first scene of the first act (when VR captures her) in a long white dress with bell sleeves and long beautifully arranged hair. OK, I am not a fan of preludes where we see how Odette was captured and cursed by VR, but it is becoming more common and not so out of left field here. It also says that Siegfried first meets Odette "as a maiden". I wasn't sure how this was going to work but it turns out that this "maiden" Odette in a long white dress shows up at the beginning of the first and second lakeside scenes. And VR initially shows up at the ballroom in the 3rd act with Odile in a black version of the maiden dress. In the first lakeside scene Siegfried & maiden Odette dance a pdd set to either the valse bluette or pas de neuf music (not sure which) which then segues into the climatic music from the last white act. I can't tell you how jarring it was to hear this music here. Then she goes off with VR and comes back in a white tutu and dances pretty much the normal 1st act meeting scene & pdd. This trend continues - in the black swan act VR comes to the ballroom with a "maiden Odile" in her black dress. She goes off with Siegfried, then when she comes back to do the Back Swan pdd she is in a tutu. When Siegfried goes back to the lakeside to find Odette she and several of her companions are in the maiden dresses, then they exit the stage and come back in tutus. This was incredibly distracting and muddled. In traditional versions of SL we see Odette transform from a swan back into a woman through her dancing and then being transformed back into a swan at daybreak, all the while in a tutu. So here's an interesting question. If she is a maiden when in her white dress and a swan when she's in a tutu is Siegfried not dancing with a woman but with a swan in the pdd & pretty much the whole first lakeside scene? In the black swan pdd? And in the last scene when she drowns herself she has changed from her maiden dress into a tutu so already a swan - so at that point she really can't drown! I apologize to any Houston Ballet fans I may be offending but I just found this production to be a muddled hot mess. But I do think the Houston dancers were wonderful and I'm glad I got to see Sisk.

Well, having flown to Houston specifically to see Lane I was very disappointed when she canceled. However I knew when I booked that this can happen and I certainly don't blame her. I finally had time to gather my thoughts about the production and since it no longer has anything to do with Lane I am posting them in the Houston Ballet forum

LOL! That should be the Teuscher/Bell Giselle but you are right - it is most definitely the Bell/Teuscher Giselle! Re: LWFC I am one of those people who were stumped at ABT giving it 2 weeks out of a 5 week season however I hope they do well with it. I love a lot of what Wheekdon has done and am looking forward to it.

Yup, it was a real bummer to see that substitution sheet. The guy sitting behind me also came out from NY to see her - he spoke to the house manager who said they didn't know she'd be out till the morning of the performance. Thankfully, Beckanne Sisk gave a great performance Sat night otherwise the weekend would have been a total bust as I hated the staging.

This is not new, they've been doing the 30/30 promotion for at lest the last 10 years, probably longer.

Is anyone surprised? Its insane for them to think they could sell 12 performances of a brand new ballet. Especially in a shortened 5 week season!

Just took a look at the calendar and it looks like Stearns has been removed from all performances of LWFC - Forster, Royal and Curley now alternate as Dr.John Brown. Stearns is still listed as Albrecht in the first performance of Giselle on 7/3.

So from prior postings in this thread it looks like Etudes, The Dream, Petit Morte and now Symphony #9 are likely for the fall season. That would be the core of a better fall season than we have seen in a long time. Kyle Abraham and Gemma Bond are doing new works for them for their Segerstrom performances 4//24, and they will have a new production of Ballet Imperial. Would be ice if that made it into their fall season too!.

Of course!

I agree 100% but I must say that Phelan was much better yesterday afternoon than she was last weekend. She seemed to have settled in and found her center. This was the first time I've seen O. MacKinnon in the Valse Bluette and she was very good. Gordan and LeCrone (in the pas de neuf) were good, too. I was hoping I'd like Pictures more each time I saw it but unfortunately it has been the opposite. I don't hate it, but I would never seek it out.

Well I took another look and found acceptable tickets and a return flight that gets me in at 12:30 AM on Sun night/Mon morning. Decided to do it so I'll be seeing Beckanne Sisk and Chase O'Connell on Saturday night and Sarah Lane and Ryo Kato at the Sunday matinee

Fancy Free is undoubtedly a masterpiece, but it's a masterpiece I first saw as a kid and have now seen probably 50 times or more. I don't need to see it ever again unless some company can field a cast equal to the great golden age ABT casts (for example Carreno/Stiefel/DeLuz, Gomes/Hallberg/Cornejo). I am seeing multiple performances of this program for Agon & Brandenburg and am going to try to skip the next FF. That said, Ulbricht was wonderful, absolutely wonderful and I loved Maxwell in the first cast. And what fun to see Veyette sub as the bartender! That was indeed Miriam Miller in Agon and she was great. What a pleasure to see true 6 o'clock penchees - is she the only current NYCB ballerina who can do them now? Phelan's in the first cast were no more than 5:55. Miller had a couple of very tiny balance checks at the beginning of the pdd but after that she wielded those long legs like weapons. I loved the way she and Janzen maintained the tension and a cool yet intense connection. LaFreniere was also great but I agree that the overall cast was not as sharp as the first cast and the amazing Taylor Stanley. I also loved von Enck & Mejia in Brandenburg. This was the second time I'd seen it and I liked it much more than the first time. I thought it was pretty good the first time but I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about. Maybe it was the cast or maybe this is just the kind of ballet that reveals more with each viewing, but this time it was great. Breezy, charming and lots of fun.

Thanks for this. Unfortunately I think its too late for me. Not many good tickets left and the only Sunday return flights I see now are overnights.

Back in the day my Grandmother bought cheap 5th ring tickets and took me and sometimes my brothers and cousins. The minute any one of us started acting up she ushered us right out the door into the hallway till we calmed down. Then we would go back to our seats. I think the 5th ring may have been the only area where you can do that cause their were no ushers to stop re-entry (the ushers are always down on the 4th ring and you have to walk up a staircase to get to the 5th ring).

I also noticed that. I don't recall whether they usually both come out at the beginning of that section but it looked really strange with just LeCrone, so I think they must. Phelan has a beautiful instrument and there have been times she has used it to give some truly memorable performances. Saturday night was not one of them. Her Odette was a beautiful blank, both in terms of her characterization and her dancing. It seemed that she was just ticking off steps. Here were the arabesques, here the pirouettes but none of her movements were fully stretched or expressive and there really wasn't much in terms of phrasing. While never off the music she didn't display much musicality either. Gordon, on the other hand, was great. Maxwell was very good in Pictures but she danced the same role that Phelan did on Friday and this is one role where I thought Phelan was fabulous. The way she deployed those beautiful limbs and arms was quite compelling.

Mearns was magnificent in Swan Lake last night. There were no signs of rust, or confidence problems. Just legs of steel, that endless arabesque and that epaulment! The way she uses her back, shoulders, neck and head is very reminiscent of V Part and the old time Vaganova school, yet completely her own. I seem to recall a cool, abstract Odette in the Balanchine version but Mearns was very emotional and tragic. I am not crazy about Pictures at an Exhibition. Don't hate it but don't love it either. Still it was fun to watch all of those beautiful dancers. Phelan and Nadon were standouts and O MacKinnon looked right at home mixed in with all of those outstanding principal women.

Hi Drew! I sit in those seats often, in fact I will be in box 8 for one LWFC. You don't miss much as long as you are in the front row (seats 1,2 or3). Just the extreme slice of the near side. For instance, I wouldn't sit in box 8 for R&J cause it cuts off some of the balcony, and I wouldn't sit in box 7 for Giselle cause it cuts off some of her hut so you miss some of her entrance. For Swan Lake you miss the Queen & VR on the thrones in the ballroom scene if you are in box 7.

If only! One can always hope for change, but nothing in any of Jaffe's interviews indicates to me that she would move in that direction. And don't get me started on her vision of future rep. I'm already earmarking $s I used to spend on ABT on travel to see other companies. Wherever ABT's dancers are coming from, with a very few exceptions their current principal dancers are nowhere near the talent level of their past dancers. Lets exempt Cornejo, who is truly a great dancer, albeit at the end of his career. Even dancers I like, like Brandt, Shevchenko and Forster are nowhere near the level of Ferri, Annalishvili, Vishneva, Cojocaru, Simkin, Gomes, Stiefel, Carreno, Corella etc. I saw Brandt give one truly great Giselle (at the State) but none of her performances that I've seen since have been at the same level. Camargo is great, Bell has been wonderful and looks like he may have the potential to develop into a great dancer. Hurlin, Misseldine and Curley also show potential. But the rest of ABT's principals? No. The current dancers may be happy that ABT no longer hires international stars but the ABT audience is not. I base this on my feelings & those of my many ballet going friends as well as the rows and rows of empty seats at the Met. Attendance was down last year and in the last couple of pre-pandemic years. Sales are very sluggish so far for this season not just for LWFC but for all of their programs.

Agreed. Looking back on the great seasons and incredible dancers I saw at ABT from the early seventies through maybe 5 years ago - its really sad how far ABT has fallen

ABT website has been updated. Its Brandt/Gonzalez on the 26th and I am buying a ticket!

My mistake. Looks like they only replaced her in 5/16 - 21 and in the last performance of SL (5/28)

NYCB updated the casting sheets for the last 2 weeks of the season. Miller & Chan are both out for the rest of the season. Looks like Kitka, too.

Now that Simkin has left the Staats Ballet Berlin ABT should really do whatever they have to do - absolutely ANYTHING to GET HIM BACK!!! Although I honestly believe that they are more in need of top level ballerinas, they desperately need a star like Simkin. Bring him back!