Quiggin

Thanks ... I somehow thought that given it was Balzac and a model for Proust, it was a POB production.No, I understand the anxiety about losing the company identity and the history of loss of the Ashton rep in England - but can Millepied's tastes and choreography have the impact in Paris that MacMillan's had at the Royal? etc

added: Ratmansky already has an ongoing working relationship with Paris Opera Ballet with "Psyche" and "Lost Illusions" (which you don't really think of being performed anywhere else) – so Millepied is not introducing a new element there. Under the Choreographic Trends thread Sandik comments that there have always been a small group of dominating choreographers in ballet. And narrow reactions – the post WWI Diaghilev ballets had a Massine look, no more Fokine – Danilova said that for the dancers Fokine was the past. And with Apollo Stravinsky purged his music of all the pre-war orchestral color. Willl they be doing Cunningham? – they did once before I believe.

I think Sandik makes good points about clusters of artists and styles dominating the scene for a while, reacting against what went before - in music for example the astringency of the minimalism of Glass and Reich, in opera the motel rooms of Sellars, in art the recent return of Abstract painterliness. I welcome the 90s cobweb clearing of Ratmansky and Peck (Wheeldon is harder for me to read - except for "Carousel" I can never find my place in his work). So I don't mind that everyone's getting on board. I especially appreciate Ratmansky's and Peck's deemphasis of the pas de deux and building instead on groups of threes and fives. You could say they begin where Balanchine left off in Kammermusik #2: http://www.nycballet.com/ballets/k/kammermusik-no-2.aspx

I just don't see how Milliepied can create a New York City Ballet aesthetic in Paris, miliosr. Edward Villella even with the help of former NYCB principals was just barely able to do that in Miami over a twenty year period. And it took what seventy years to build and complete that look and idiom at City Ballet itself, with occassional half decades of lapses. You can see no one else really comes close if you look at all the new video clips posted on the website - it surely didnt take in San Francisco, except for Symphony in Three Movements. The French seem to have always nicely put their own stamp of refinement on whatever they've imported. Their Dances at a Gathering are French DsAG, Sol Le Witt translates as Daniel Burren, rock and roll becomes a kind of chanson ... But Bejart! (Balanchine's nightmare)

Don't know if this ha been mentioned befoe but Steifel got some press when he first started at City Ballet as a motocycle driving dancer, joining Villella for being a regular athletc guy, Maria Tallchief for being a Native American, Allegra Kent the wife of Bert Stern, etc. The formula was ballet times [stabilizing factor] = story. (Defection of course is a home run.)Social media is the new instument that bypasses the criteria of the press. If as one poet said "life is propositions about life" you become propositions about yourself in tweets. In Instagrams you photograph youself with people you truly emulate, but the photo can act as a sort of slight career lift or alternate route to authentication. With Copeland it seems the complicating factor seems to be eclipsing her artistry so you can no longer see her as just a dancer.

Thanks so much for the report and the detailed comparisons.

For some reason I thought it was full length, therefore the new Neumeier Mahler or maybe Lost Illusions. Justin Peck's not a superstar in either case and it does sound superficial, but he does seem to be making clear, intelligent, completely contemporary work. Taylor Stanley in his new NYCB interview says that the audience's reaction of Peck's Everywhere We Go was "the craziest" he's ever heard. Here's a clip of Stanley in a group of five from Peck's Rodeo. http://www.nycballet.com/ballets/r/rodeo-four-dance-episodes-new-copland-peck.aspx

Did the "American premiere of a work by a living legend that has only ever been performed by the Paris Opera Ballet" fall through? Would love it if the Peck, Ratmansky premieres and maybe Wheeldon "Carousel" or his short NYCB verson of "American in Paris" were on one program. Or else the first two with "Rubies." Overall the season prospectus doesn't seem to break any new ground or bring back deserving classics – as with Shostakovich Triology last season or Liebeslieder a few years back.

I thought this review by Joan Acocella at the New Yorker reflected some of the earlier discussion on translating the film into stage production, Kelly into Fairchild. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/20/love-and-war-dance-joan-acocella Here's the summary paragraph:

The original story, which if I remember correctly, elegantly sticks to one idea - you learn the Swimmer's story through the reactions of the people whose backyards he swims through (some from other Cheever stories, like Mrs Hammer). The ballet starts there but becomes a pastiche of other stories. There's a even a section for Lolita and HH (Maria Kochetkova and Tiit Helimets). And a Catcher in the Rye scene. It ends with a Jack London story of a failed sailor/writer who, after reading a stanza of a Swinburne poem to himself, swims until he swims no more – like Red Shoes, or Giselle with an even less happy ending. So it's strange that even though it's a tragedy for the Swimmer, you come out like you've just seen An American in Paris or Gigi. A kind of parody of tragedy.

I agree with you, PeggyR, about Davit Karapetyan in Chamber Symphony – it's his heaviness and the way he breaks his phrases and how he's pulled forward by some saturn-like mood. I imagine Alexei Ratmansky thinking of Denis Savin when he created it – who played the spoiler "Denis"in The Bolt, a kind of lumbering Gene Kelly. I liked Mathilde Froustey and Carlo Di Lanno a lot as the sad couple. They seemed to play their roles more dramatically and opened them a bit more than the excellent Van Patten and Quenedit couple last year who were pure Ratmansky forces, always on the move, always setting up shop somewhere else. Froutsey and Di Lanno are in R&J rehearsals (on Froustey's Instagram) so maybe they brought some of that over. I'll miss seeing Taras Domitro as the Melancholic Pierrot in 4 Temperaments this year. That was his debut role at San Francisco Ballet seven years ago and I've always been amazed by it – really the best I've seen outside of New York City Ballet, up there almost with Bart Cook's but of a slightly different density. He disappeared into the part. Domitro is also great as the punctuation marker in Shastokovich 9th Symphony, who accents and dances madly through through the ballet and yet holds everything in place. No one else quite nails it as dryly and succinctly.

I saw "Swimmer" Friday night and you could say it is indeed a romp, almost a musical, in the first scenes like How to Succeed in Business by way of La Dolce Vita. For me the handsome multi-media visuals don’t match up in style. The first section looks like David Hockney Los Angeles with Alex Katz cut-outs, then UPA “limited animation” cartoons (early Mr Magoo) where the scenery moves and the characters don’t, then rear projection of Alfred Hitchcock. The Hopper Nighthawks quote seemed weak. Hard to judge the dancing but Taras Domitro did an admirable job of sustaining the Swimmer throughout the ballet, perfect measures (where measures there were) in his swimming and crumpling up to the floor and upright anguishing gestures – always in character, all very clean and sharp. But dramatically it was difficult to tell why the character goes from family man and party goer to existential swimmer – what pushes or pulls him into his man on the run life. There are a couple of false endings, one was greated with full applause, but in a last glimpse you see the Swimmer suspended on or just behing a big empty scrim. It almost looks like projected image, but then you realize it’s real theater, not filmed. He’s very small and looks like a tadpole or salamander, or like the colophon at the end of a book. In a way the Melancholic part in The Four Temperaments on the same program covers much of the same ground, but the razzle dazzle and Glass Pieces relentlessness of “Swimmer” did have its over the top charms.

The POB Neumeier ballet could be Mahler Third Symphony or Song of the Earth (just premeired), and there's Dame aux Camelias. Or, less likely, it could be Ratmansky's Lost Illusions, but Ratmansky isn't really a living legend. Coppelia sounds more "best-loved" than Sleeping Beauty and it might be hard to cast all the character roles & divertissements in SB – though I think they did do a version a few years ago. Thanks for posting the teaser.

choriamb, I don't remember the Chamber Symphony not cohering as much as the last two parts being especially strong and memorable. Maybe that's saying the same thing, but I don't remember being bored or impatient at any point. Simone Messmer was in one of the Chamber casts, though more often she was in Symphony #9, in the role I assume that was set on her at ABT. She will be missed in this year's run. Already there are some casting changes – Carlos Quenedit who perfectly shadowed Sarah Van Patten's movements last year in Symphony #9 (or perhaps she prefectly shadowed his) is no longer listed for the first two performances. Also there is a premiere of a ballet version of John Cheever's The Swimmer (!) on the concurrent Program #7 which also includes The Four Temperaments. Along with the demands of Shostakovitch Trilogy, especially for corps members, I imagine resources will be stretched.

Like Sandik I remember college film festivals, memorably a Girard Philipe festival at UCLA set up by two political science majors who later ended up in DC. After college there was a great series Tom Luddy curated in SF, based on studio's than a director's work, very radical then. The Columbia studios series included the Bitter Tea of General Yen, She Married her Boss, and Gilda which I saw there or at he Los Feliz idouble billed with Lady From Shanghai, a most satisfying evening. You became aware of the production values of the studio, the lighting (dull at MGM, brilliant at Paramount), costumers, general ambience. Peeping Tom was shown one afternoon at college by someone who was good at digging up prints of obscure films -we were warned that it was strange, the first time I remember such a warning. Also at another college series we were shown, completely unannounced, Genet's Un Chant d'Amour. Dead silence for a few minutes, then many, many cigarettes lit up all at once. Yes there's something about seeing movies in a personal series where you know the programmer - or even now in specific movie theaters (as opposed to on your tv) like seeing Ballet 442 a month ago at the Embarcadero theater and hearing bits of dancer talk in the row behind afterwards.

You're right dirac - I overreacted a bit and it's not a genre I'm fond of. Psycho is interesting in that it's two films, the first half hour might be the better one. Peeping Tom seemed like a Rod Serling or early tv half hour but without the neat closure. It was an orphan film for years until the "slasher film" era.

It's funny but my impression is that the Powell/Pressburger films had little influence among filmmakers in the US until it was retroactively conferred on them by Martin Scorsese – and George A. Romero. Godard/Breathless, Penn/Bonnie & Clyde, and Cimino/Days of Heaven were more likely to be the key influences that young filmmakers would cite in the old days. Except for Red Shoes, the Powell/Pressburger films had little distribution in the US where they were considered filmmic oddities, overwrought and creepy in way that even Psycho wasn't. Did it never occur to Michael Powell that he could suggest something rather than trying to control every inch of screen space and time (at least in Tales of Hoffmann)? Even Joseph von Sternberg left some room over for the imagination to relax in. Sorry for being a grouch on this – Scorsese's a good filmmaker but he is a bit of a stage mother to film history.

Unlike PeggyR’s Saturday afternooners, the audience on Sunday seemed (almost) as appreciative of Dances at a Gathering as of Hummingbird. They laughed in the right places and there were collective “ahs” at certain moments, such as when Davit Karapetyan made a difficult but perfectly soft landing – the sounds of good audiences are always nice in that their prompting draws your attention to something special you might otherwise have missed or it lets you look through others' eyes when you’re feeling a bit jaded. It was interesting to see the difference between Joseph Walsh and Taras Domitro in the Brown part (Helgi Tomasson’s old role). With Walsh you notice his upper body which is so quick and articulate – it’s as if he’s listening to, concentrating on what his hands are doing, if his fingers are ruffling out with the right accent (Tomasson’s sometimes would flutter around his waist as if they were birds). Whereas with Domitro it’s his feet he’s listening for or thinking with – it’s the snip-snap of his calves and ankles (or beats, like a trill), and their perfect angles, that completes his thought. With Sofiane Sylve you feel you have an index of City Ballet style, the way dancers in New York stretch a phrase, are continuing revising a movement so you never quite know how it’s going to end. I agree with Josette that Steven Morse looked more mature, that he looked serious and was dancing in character. Though all the dancers were fine (but I would have been happier with a six o’clock extension from Maria Kochetkova for the seven o’clock one which unnecessarily complicated the silhouette of a couple of lifts). I saw lots of Balanchine in Dances at a Gathering: skimming lifts from Sanguinic, groupings from Apollo, and Liebeslieder Waltzes overall of course. (And a little of deMille, too.) Violette Verdy who originated parts in Dances and Liebeslieder, said, not without a bit of sharpness within the sweet, that Robbins absorbed Balanchine’s ideas and made them more accessible to audiences. As Dances gets older I’m not sure how well touching the ground and collectively watching the clouds (from Our Town?) works. The full effect seems to have faded. (Ratmansky does some similar things but they’re so quick they’re like throwaways.) Hummingbird is athletic and demanding, looks sometimes like Glass Pieces (naturally), sometimes like Company B; like Streetcar Named Desire or the Honeymooners in the second part, like a jitterbugging contest in the third. The set, which was greeted by a sigh from the audience, could be a Gerhard Richter painting in gray and green and almost a sharp blue – a huge tubular sky stained with moss, lit coldly from within. It rolls slowly, shortens and lengthens throughout the ballet. The dancers work in half shadow beneath the grim light. There is a raked stage which culminates in an embankment off which corps members now and then drop or tiptoe down. At one point six or eight dancers lie completely flattened on the upper portion, evenly spaced out – as if they had been drugged by opium poppies or suddenly asphyxiated.

This was a full and rewarding program to see. On opening night almost all of the choreographers bounded out onto stage: William Forsythe's presence seemed to catch Sofiane Sylve completely off guard - there was a spirited interchange between them; next was bright young Myles Thatcher catching up with his colleagues, and then, if not Petipa, lovely Natalia Makarova in red crocheted Chanelish jacket, in great contrast to all the white Shades around her. Of the program proper I liked the waltz-ish latter part of the van Manen Variations better than the first. And after a pause came the breakneck Vertinginous Thrill which seemed to be taken at much faster tempos than at the Gala. Never had I seen Sylve dance with such fire and speed - usually she seems to take all the time in the world to have her say. Carlo Di Lanno, among his other charms, is interesting in the way his arms describe solid and articulate Leonardo-like arcs of movement. Kingdom of the Shades with Froustey, Tan and Domitro was a pleasure to watch, though the entrance of the Shades was a bit rickety and the ramps looked like leftovers from Suite in Blanc. Perhaps Manifesto should have been shorter, less ambitious, more brightly lit and merely a set of variations of basic movements set on five or so dancers - less a manifesto than a few interesting axioms. Just as the Golberg Variations which figured in the piece are embellishments of a simple banal tune. And the dances you see from Alexei Ratmansky and Justin Peck seem to be going in another direction from the well appointed San Francisco school of dark voluptuous velvetness. They're bright, bare boned, all structure, full of wit and a nice shock to the system. It might not be such a bad sort of trendiness to be accused of.

The Joffrey did the reconstructed original Square Dance with Caller in 2005. John Rockwell liked it more than San Francisco's abstract version he saw on the same trip around the country: "The original's juxtaposition of country-and-western accents, Baroque violin concertos and academic ballet made Balanchine's jokey premise more pungent." I remember Helgi Tomasson saying in a pre-performance talk that they had tried to do it with the Caller, but they couldn't get it all the elements to mesh.

I liked the Nakokov version of Eugene Onegin and the notes, at least the shorter "Structure & Genesis of Eugene Onegin", were very helpful. Nabokov's translation is more relaxed and accurate than other, rhymed versions. I also read the James Falon Oxford Classics translation alongside it, more sparkling but you may miss some important details due to formal contraints. The novel is different from the ballet, which was a very controversial abridgement. Its tone is different – more like Jane Austen, and it's generally more complex. Pushkin himself is a character (maybe three times over). Tatiana's letter has a different fate and Tatiana's dream is much more wide ranging than that in the ballet. Nabokov's long notes are also interesting if you can get beyond the petty score settling. (And that Nabokov is almost erasing Pushkin as he's rescuing him.) But they're invaluable for some of the nuances – as when he discusses all the Russian words for silence, for different sounds of water moving in rivers, rivulets etc, and the Russian words for langorousness. I think there may be another discussion somewhere else about this.

They should also put the "c" back in Franz Schubert's name. This is the second program on which it has been missing.

Parma, yes it absolutely does look like Fred Astaire is doing a Gene Kelly routine in Silk Stockings. And there's a sly reference to English ballet. I do like the Ritz Roll & Rock number best, the space, the use of the men and women who keep popping up. And Peter Lorre in Sweet Siberia is great, upstages the whole number – you just want to keep watching what he'll do next with his hands. I originally saw this movie in a film school summer class with Albert Johnson and Rouben Mamoulian who was very keen on technical details in the film. I keep remembering a tilting stage but can't find the clips. Yes, the Cover Girl Alter Ego goes beyond the conceit ... and creates something abstract. It's been pointed out that the Kelly persona is more comfortable with Comden and Green as writers (Singin in the Rain) than Lerner. Someone on Imdb says that one of the intentions of American in Paris was to get Kelly in a role closer to his early Pal Joey character, but if so, it doesn't seemed to have happened. (I can't find an in print source confirming ths.) Don't (bad) dream ballets go back to Kurt Weill's Lady in the Dark with Ginger Rogers in the Gertrude Lawrence role?

Leslie Caron in her memoir says that it was difficult to dance on hard cement floors and she had to sand down the points of her shoes to keep from slipping on the slick surfaces. (Also that in an act of rebellion she cut her hair short and the film had to be postponed for three weeks while everyone waited for it to grow out.) As you say, the answer to what Balanchine might think is in the scene he did for the Goldwyn Follies of 1938, which like American in Paris was also directed by Vincent Minnelli and in Technicolor. A complex set but the dancing is clean and clear. He probably would immediately begin trimming away the excesses of the dream scene if he were called in as a script doctor. The problem with the Minnelli ballet is that it has no problem nothing to solve other than how many famous paintings can Minnelli and the MGM art department duplicate. The "upmarket" sets fight with Kelly's "low brow" dancing, especially the sculptures in the fountain scene where Raoul Dufy-style flat paper cutouts may have been better. Anyway isnt Kelly at his best with only a few humble props, like the umbrella in Singin in the Rain and the newspaper in Summer Stock? Corrected per dirac's comment below. Added: Gregg Toland who did Citizen Kane was the cameraman on Goldwyn Follies. Also Technicolor gets a bad rap but is capable of subtle and accurate hues like the blue-gray and green-gray jackets at the beginning of the dream sequence. Minnelli tends to load the palette with reds.

I saw Ballet 422 last night and liked it very much – it seemed very much its own thing. I would have liked less of the costume designing process, and seeing more of Peck working on some small scale choreographic figures. But I didn't miss seeing the whole filmed ballet – which would have looked flat, or not quite fit with the fragmentary nature of the rest of the film. The world of City Ballet it portrayed seemed almost monastic – the film was like an ethnographical observation of the social structures of a monastery. Justin Peck, from the lowest rung of the ballet, the corps – as the opening title informs us – is selected to choreograph a ballet, does just that, and then immediately after the premiere sheds his suit and tie, returns to being a corps member and joins the cast of the third ballet on the same bill. The scene where Cameron Grant takes Peck aside and suggests he take time out to talk to the orchestras is good. And also Albert Evans having to be an advocate for the dancers. Curious that the name of the piece was not mentioned until the end – only that it had been written in 1935 (at first I thought it might be RodeO). The addition of music of the adagio movement of Symphony in C was technically ok, but perhaps too rich for the images, like a last minute spoonful of Devonshire cream, and ran against the the dry tone of the film. It might have worked with no sound – the short excerpt of the Ratmansky ballet that Peck has rejoined, then the high shots of Lincoln Center fountains, all in silence or the natural sounds of the plaza.