Andre Yew

I received the Dutch National Ballet's production of Giselle on Kultur BluRay yesterday, and have skimmed through it. Highs: - Excellent picture quality, though it is interlaced, so YMMV depending on your deinterlacer. - Really clean, very refined classical technique, especially the peasant pas. - Lots of attention paid to really small details in the performance --- a head turn here, a slight hesitation there all add up to satisfying effect. - Bonus interviews with the leads and the stagers. - The orchestra plays very well. Lows: - Sound is actually quite good, but is available only in Dolby Digital (448 kbps) in 5.1 and 2.0. I know there's little difference to be had between lossless and lossy, but it would have been nice to have lossless. - The dancing, while clean, is a bit reserved. I would have preferred a bit more feeling. - I don't like the Myrtha as she doesn't seem to be strong enough, but this is a very tough role, and it's rare to see a good one. - The set is a bit drab, and the design and costumes can seem anachronistic. - Silly Kultur endless beginning title screens. Argh. Don't they realize we paid $30 to see the main feature, not ugly logos? Put them at the end if you have to. --Andre

I saw the Sunday show too, and it was phenomenal --- it's what a classical company and ballet should look like. Osipova and Vasiliev are fantastic, especially the way Osipova can light up the stage. Never mind their ridiculous technique: the way they take the stage is pretty rare. There were lots of cool tricks too: triple tour, triple saut de basque, and the act 1 one-armed lift had Vasiliev go up in arabesque demi-pointe once he had Osipova up there. They could be more refined (I agree about the arms, and a few other quibbles), but they are so young, and have so much talent, I can't even imagine what they could look like in a few years. The various soloists (sorry, I don't have their names) were all very good, and one or two were exceptional (the street dancer and Mercedes), but sometimes I felt sorry for them as they seemed almost a letdown after O/V left the stage. --Andre

I think there are three important things any emerging choreographer needs: 1. Patronage: not only to pay for the usual stuff (dancers, space, production), but also the stability to let the choreographer make dances consistently. They ought to be able to make and present (very important --- dances not presented to an audience don't count!) many dances so they can learn and progress. 2. Support: emotional support, encouragement, kicks in the butt. It's easy to make klunkers, but if you truly believe someone is talented, you won't let them get discouraged or give up when the going gets tough. 3. Push: making the choreographer work hard and be a little uncomfortable even. Make them work with dancers of varying abilities, with variable rehearsal time, and other constraints (some of which may not be under your control). Give them good constructive criticism (and make sure they listen), but always push to make the choreographer push their boundaries in some aspect for their next piece. Sometimes the same person does all three things, and other times, it's 3 different people. None of this will make a great or even competent choreographer out of anyone: you still need to find someone with the raw talent to start out. My personal benchmark is seeing how they handle large-ish groups (between 12 and 20 dancers). Are their ideas for the group clear? It's easy to do something complicated and muddled, or simple and boring, but having a large group of people move around effortlessly while being interesting is hard and rare. There are companies now with in-house choreographic development programs that present new work in smaller programs with smaller financial risk, but they aren't administered very consistently or they aren't giving them good feedback or they aren't given enough time to grow as a choreographer. I've seen choreographers do good things on school kids, too, but they have to careful not to be pigeonholed as a school choreographer. For the audience, I think many of these programs are not marketed as well as they could be as they're often not too distinguishable from a school recital or they get too pretentious. --Andre

Hyperextension of the joint (as opposed to really high extension like lifting your leg to your ear) can be really beautiful, if the dancer knows how to use it well and at the right times. For me, it can really complement nice feet. I remember seeing a performance by Patricia Barker where the curves of her leg in hyperextension fit the curve of her instep in a really beautiful way. She's another example of a dancer with really beautiful feet (and legs and body and ...). Teacher friends tell me they teach kids with hyperextended joints differently. For example, in a developpe a la seconde, the standing leg that supports the body cannot be hyperextended (knees not pushed back) in order to create stability, while the gesturing leg that's in the air is hyperextended for the best visual effect. Another striking example for me: hyperextended dancers have to think very much about how they do rondes de jambe a terre, releasing and engaging their hyperextension at the right times to balance stability with aesthetics. I think men's legs and feet can be judged on the same general qualities as women's, but I don't like it when men are too Gumby-like and appear (emphasis on appear!) to be weaker. Tsiskaridze is an example of this for me, and I don't like how he looks. --Andre

One of the hallmarks of a well-trained ballet dancer is how he or she uses her feet --- in transitions from one step to another, or in preparation for some step, for example. Even before we talk about who has good feet and who doesn't, ballet dancers as a class use their feet in a different way than other dancers. For example, watching So You Think You Can Dance, as a ballet fan, it's kind of striking how many of those dancers don't use their feet effectively at all. It's not that they aren't pointing their feet or anything like that, but how they initiate their movements and transfer force into the floor. Klunky is the best word I can think of to describe the look. Also, wasn't there an interview with Darcey Bussell right after her retirement where she lamented the fact that dancers have to get over their box so much these days leading to injuries but they had to do it because that was the look everyone wanted? For a nice example of foot articulation, look for "Misericordes 2" on Youtube, and look around 9:26 when Michael Nunn points his foot. He has very nice feet, too. I'm not sure about posting the link here as I'm not sure of its copyright status --- it's the Ballet Boyz film that follows Christopher Wheeldon to the Bolshoi. Well worth seeing the whole thing, BTW. --Andre

Haha --- the lunch discussion syndrome! I have not heard good things about Carlos's performance last night, but I'll leave that to someone who was actually there. --Andre

I'm not sure --- it's very close to the Foggy Bottom Metro stop if that helps narrow it down. It's the smallest 7-11 I've ever seen. Thanks too for the late night dining suggestions. --Andre

I was lucky enough to see the mixed bill almost 3 times --- the open rehearsal on Tuesday afternoon (for only $10!!) was a dress rehearsal, and it looked like the dancers only marked things in DGV. It was also a nice surprise to run into Leigh and Hans, though I did not put 2 and 2 together until later and realized that Hans was our Hans! Though I liked Chroma (as well as Infra and Eden/Eden) a lot, it faded a bit over 3 consecutive viewings. What makes it interesting for me is not only its facility-on-sleeve kind of choreography, showing off the extreme facility of the dancers, but the different kind of energy and movement quality it asks from the dancers. As a piece of choreography, it may not last the ages, but it works very well as an exciting essay on movement. As such, I thought the contrast to the much subtler, softer Ashton that followed it (after an interminable 25-minute intermission) was very interesting, and only served to highlight Ashton's particular brand of classical port de bras. The contrast between the abstraction of Chroma, and the clear story and drama of Month was also very interesting. DGV for me was kind of synthesis of the two: it has clearly more classical port de bras, though Wheeldon does distort classical lines everywhere, has a more classical use of the corps, and it calls for the kind of extreme facility shown in Chroma. At the same time, DGV's rhythms and pacing was more varied and subtle than Chroma, which seemed to run with the knob stuck at 11. I thought the program was a great way to introduce the company to the public. Things I liked: Edward Watson and Leanne Benjamin in DGV, and Edward in Chroma. They had perhaps the most idiomatic movement quality for those two pieces: sharp, discontinuous, and a little disturbing. Eric Underwood was similarly nice in Chroma (but not so much in DGV). Marianella was also very nice in DGV (but admittedly, she's my favorite RB dancer), but I would gladly watch Watson and Benjamin again. Sarah Lamb looked great for having just come back from injury not too long ago, and I would never have guessed that Chroma would fit her so well. Rupert was a great surprise in Month, and I loved how Ashtonian his dancing style was --- the port de bras, the attack of his gestures all looked very right for Ashton: I loved his solo. Ivan Putrov the next night had a more anonymous, homogeneous execution. Alexandra won me over in a lovely, touching pas with Putrov, but her style did not fit in with the company at all. This was really apparent in her first solo with the fast footwork, when she was followed by the very idiomatic Iona Loots. Her attack was homogeneous, whereas Ashton has a way of emphasizing or punctuating the end of his phrases and steps, while going just as fast. A friend of mine was distracted by Alexandra's sickled foot at the beginning of the pas, but I was too distracted by other things to notice that. The audience received her very warmly, and it was really nice to see that. Both Kolias were good, and handled the virtuosic part well, but I preferred Paul Kay for his greater ease, and his better-fitted wig! I did not like the seams in the set of Chroma or the wrinkles in the colored rectangular backdrop --- it seemed to go against the minimalist design, and made it look cheap. The sets for Month were beautiful, DGV looked well executed except for a couple of minor lighting issues (they looked like fluorescent lamps flickering a bit as they initially lit up instead of coming on full strength). After the Tuesday night performance, some friends and I went to the nearest 7-11 for some late-night food (the program was 3 hours long), and one of them caught someone humming the tune to DGV! --Andre

The package marking only tells you which DVD players are allowed to play the DVD --- it's a licensing thing, not a video quality thing. It's really too bad about the POB Jewels, because it's definitely a performance worth preserving. --Andre

I discussed this on an A/V forum with the mastering engineer for the BluRay version (which has the same blurring problems as the DVD), and the motion blur is unfortunately inherent in the material given to Opus Arte. The original video was shot in a particular frame rate, and the conversion process they (whomever supplied the video material to Opus Arte) used for converting that frame rate to one suitable for our TVs introduces that blurring problem. OA does not have access to the original video, and therefore cannot correct that problem. I believe the problem has since been fixed, since the POB Swan Lake has none of these problems. --Andre

Oddly enough, I did see the credits. They didn't mention the company, only individual names. Role titles were things like "Ballet dancer #5". There was an audition process for the roles, and the auditions happened right after a matinee, so they went from Balanchine to House! It was interesting how they contacted prospects, too --- it wasn't through the dance company but through individual dancers' agents, and then word spread from there. --Andre

I missed the episode, but it should be on Hulu soon I hope. Some of the dancers were from Los Angeles Ballet, including the sylph from their upcoming La Sylphide performances later this month. --Andre

Opus Arte has released quite a number of dance titles in BluRay, and they're all mastered to the highest quality possible for both video and audio. They are pretty fantastically detailed, but you also see every single flaw from features on dancers' skin to seams in the sets to costume construction details to focus issues on the camera to lens quality of the camera: everything. Sometimes the detail can be good: like recognizing faces in the corps, but other times it can be distracting. Because the delivery media is now so high quality, other parts of the chain above it become important, so unless you have a really high quality production chain from the stage design all the way through the cameras and direction, HD's going to reveal a lot of things. Sadly, you do get used to it very quickly, so after a while, it sort of becomes normal, and normal DVDs end up looking blurry. Comparing Blu Ray (AKA "BD") quality to over-the-air HD or cable HD is like night and day. Because of transmission bandwidth limits, broadcast HD is usually worse than hard media HD like BD. --Andre

Opus Arte just announced the Blu-Ray version of the Nunez/Acosta Fille for February 2009. Hope it won't be too long before it's available in the US. --Andre

Motion blur is not an issue with plasma, and is becoming less of an issue with LCD. For the best picture quality, you should get plasma, but they are heavier, use more power, and have some image burn-in issues (which are really only an issue if you abuse the set). By comparison, LCDs have a narrower viewing angle, worst contrast, and their blacks aren't as black. It's not well-known that LCDs also have image burn-in issues, BTW. You should be able to find plenty of sets under your price. If you're looking at plasmas, Panasonics are the best value in terms of the picture quality you get for the money paid. The absolute best picture quality comes from Pioneer, but they are pricey. --Andre

The thing I love most about this Giselle, and I miss in almost every performance I've seen is the connection between Cojocaru and Kobborg. It makes their act 2 pas very human and warm. The thing that always gets me is when and how she makes eye contact with him, and how that's so seamlessly integrated into the choreography. By comparison, every other Giselle I've seen seems cold in comparison. --Andre

I got the BDs yesterday, and had a quick look through them. It's definitely HD, but not the sharpest HD around, compared to many of the Opus Arte releases, so you may not see every stubble on Gergiev's face! As has been mentioned before, with HD you get to see set seams and lots of other things you don't see in SD, including the errors in the camera work. From watching PNB's Midsummer Night's Dream, and now this, I think whatever HD cameras the English use don't have very good lenses. There are many shots which are pretty soft off center. Going off-topic slightly, the Tchaikovsky gala is worth it (and it's quite expensive at $38) for Semionova's Black Swan variation, in the Burmester staging. The rest of it is pretty cheesy, in that they kind of mashed up all the act 3 ballet parties into one big scene: Swan Lake intro with some national dances, and then Aurora comes out and does the Rose Adage, another national dance, the Sugar plum pas, another national dance, the Bluebird pas, and then the rest of the Swan Lake party scene. Weird. --Andre P.S. I do have a very good video setup, and it's good to see ballet videos coming out now that can exploit it.

If you can only see one, see Tina Leblanc. I am intrigued by Vanessa Zahorian's Giselle, but I've never seen her dance the role. --Andre

I just saw this comment after a whole year! Osmalkina has danced Aurora, as we saw her in the role in Los Angeles a few years ago. She is good, and one of the rising stars. I've seen her in other roles ranging from Giselle to Balanchine (Serenade as Russian Girl ... wow!) to Forsythe, and she has very nice classical technique and musicality. We're getting her (as well as Obratseva and Golub, the dark haired girl in the pas de trois) in the Kirov's Nutcracker next month. Sacto, my copy of the BD Kirov Swan Lake (along with the Bolle Tchaikovsky spectacular and the Acosta Spartacus) should be arriving next week from Amazon, so I hope to post some impressions of it. --Andre

Bart, Thanks for your kind wishes for the victims of the fires here in California. It's kind of unbelievable how quickly those houses were all destroyed. Thank goodness there haven't been very many injuries or deaths. About SFB, I admit that I am not Mark Morris's biggest fan, and have yet to see a piece of his that I actually like. My problem is the apparent musical slavishness of his choreography where the movement apes the gross surface details of the music, and doesn't seem to say anything deeper than that. Compare his abstract dances to Balanchine's abstract pieces, and Balanchine either brings something new to the music, or has such density of inventiveness in his movement that the music ends up illustrating the dance. Either way, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Joyride was more of the same. There were intermittently clever bits, especially how he moved groups around and how they changed formations in surprising ways, but in the end, he didn't really tell me anything about the music or anything else. --Andre

My memory is fuzzy, but for Fusion, the pas was Sarah van Patten and probably Damian Smith, or maybe Gennadi Nedvigin. Within the Golden Hour was Sarah and Pierre-Francois Vilanoba. In the pas, at the end, he sat down with his legs straight in front of him, and held one of her legs while she leaned forward and down, almost touching the ground as she curled back up. The foot of her other leg, which acted like a pivot, was held in the crook of his two feet which were in a V, like first position in ballet. --Andre

I saw both Saturday programs yesterday, and felt fortunate that the fires didn't affect my plans. It was odd to go out at intermission and see smoke turn the sky gray-orange. Anyway, for the program itself, I was disappointed. The dancers are beautiful (OMG Nutnaree's feet!), but the choreography didn't live up to them. Short, probably unfair impressions: Helgi's 5th season: cheesy, insipid music (by Karl Jenkins of diamond music fame ie. Palladio) with mechanically soulless movement. Totally forgettable, except for a nice pas in the middle for Katita and Davit. Morris's Joyride: loved the Adams score, and Pascal Molat had a scorching solo as the guy in the short gold unitard, and clever and occasionally musical choreography, but it didn't hang together, and seemed entirely pointless. Elo's Double Evil: goofy piece with the guys doing commercial jazz dance in jazz outfits, and the girls in classical tutus occasionally doing jazz isolations along with ballet. It reminds me of expensive restaurants trying to spiff up comfort foods, like high-end mac-n-cheese. Elo's piece looked like expensive competition dance. Possokhov's Fusion: it's like a modern version of those jingoistic czarist ballets about the far east with stereotypes that appeal to the contemporaneous views (eg. La Bayadere). There was a really nice pas, and the lighting and set design were beautiful and worked well together, but his fusion of the dervish dancers with contemporary ballet didn't work, and felt forced at times. For example, at the end, the ballet dancers adopt the dervish vocab (basically jazz torso isolations), and that felt trite since there was no buildup to it. Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour: clever, beautiful, soulless. He has this trick of showing us his cleverest move right at the end as the curtains come down or the lights go dark, making me wish he'd started with that trick, and expanded on it. The loden green couple's pas that ended in the woman being manipulated as a kite was breathtaking, but isolated as a trick. He has a lot of talent, but doesn't seem to have anything to say. Balanchine's 4Ts: it was remarkable watching this last, as none of the preceding pieces had advanced the art beyond (or even approached) this 62-year old piece. However, I didn't like SFB's dancing of it: too legato, smooth, and lacking in personality or a point-of-view. Everything was weighted the same. In many ways I preferred LA Ballet's performance of it, even if it was done with more modest technical means, which had more dirt, more roughness, and more physicality.

You can see some of the Tristan Project's videos here, including my favorite scene (and music) of all, the Liebestod, with its reverse rainfall: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9506273 There were very few cuts, and the scenes were fairly long in length, and sometimes felt like time had stood still. I'm thinking specifically of one scene with a person walking towards the camera through a wall of fire, and for a long time, it looked like he wasn't getting any closer. Of course, you have to imagine it projected on a 36-foot vertical screen with hi-def video, not unlike Slow Dancing. The scale adds so much to it, and I think in general if you're going to mix video with performance, the video has to be done to the highest possible quality and the biggest possible conceptual (and sometimes physical) scale. Otherwise it looks like random patchwork. I think the Ballet Boyz also do a good job with video, but their videos serve a very different purpose. --Andre

I agree, which is why my favorite recent stagings of Giselle have been the Royal Ballet's, which seem to bring the drama of any story ballet they do to the forefront. Yes, this is definitely the couple to see! They had great chemistry (the number of times they made eye contact!), a chilling mad scene, and all the technical ability to pull off their parts. Even more remarkable was their physically committed dancing: people were actually being pushed around, there was real physical contact and force, and I think Osmolkina's head bounced off the floor when Sarafanov (purposely) dropped her after she died. Speaking of Sarafanov, he has improved tremendously as a partner, and is now a pleasure to watch when partnering. There were so many good things to savor in this performance, but my favorite was Albrecht's renewal of his vows to Giselle by raising his arm and two fingers for the shortest moment right before he collapsed at the end of Act 2. It not only answers the question of what Albrecht's intentions were, but also brings to fore the parallel structure of acts 1 and 2 in the Kirov's staging. Act 1 and 2 are mirrors of each other divided by the line of life and death. I believe Myrtha was Tkachenko. Not my favorite as her dancing was a bit small scale and coltish, leading one to ask, "Who is this girl dancing in the cemetery late at night, and do her parents know where she is?" instead of trembling in fear. But it was small flaw in this wonderful performance. --Andre

I just saw Vishneva/Fadyeev in Giselle tonight, and am disappointed. With one exception, everyone else was pretty close to sleepwalking it. There were technical problems, including the principals, all over the place, and the corps only looked like its legendary self during the Wili chug. Everywhere else, it was inconsistent, and in some cases they couldn't even keep a straight line or consistent spacing. That one exception was Kondaurova as Myrtha. Though not the iciest Myrtha one would desire, her magnificent stature, powerful stage presence, and clean technique made up for it all. Tonight's ballet should have been named "Myrtha" instead of "Giselle." --Andre