Herman Stevens

I would keep in mind that apart from this Neumeier / POB version a dvd of the splendid Ashton / RoyalB version as recently shown on the BBC will be released later this year.

At the first night I had the distinct feeling I had seen Sylve doing this piece with more passion, particularly in the Act I duet. Predictably however the Act II PDD was dynamite. This is one of the toughest PDDs in the DNB repertory. It's long (the celesta variation is part of this piece) and it is duper-virtuoso, the way Eagling's stuff usually is. Sylve's and Gomes' adagio with the two hop-on-his-shoulder jumps and all the other great stuff brought the house down, as it should. And yet I left with the feeling that this Nutcracker should be about more than just working your way towards the grand PDD. I know Sylve can do this; I have vivid memories of a 2002 Nutcracker when she did connect all the dots; this night however she was "Sofiane Sylve in The Nutcracker". (It may well be she grew into the part the second or third performance.) Anu Viheriäranta is in some ways Sylve's antithesis. She is one of those tiny waferthin dancers who do not seem to have any bones in their arms. Her upper body is just totally fluid - the arms, the neck the back: it's all soft and supple, and there are about a thousand different shades she can express with her limbs. The fearful pas de bourrees during the mouse - toy war, and the flowing turns in the duet with the wounded Nutcracker were unsurpassed, as were her little mime-and-dance interventions during the divertissements. I have never seen better. The only probem was the final pas de deux. The opening adagio was beautiful: not athletic in the way Sylve and Gomes did it, but soft and tenderly, which arguably makes a lot of sense if you look at the big picture. But on the other hand one might argue Eagling did intend this PDD as the big blast for the balletomanes enduring all the mouse stuff. In the celesta variation the softness of the adagio turned into anxious and insecure pointe work. Gremillet's variation wasn't completely confident either. Viheriäranta has danced the same role with the Finnish National Ballet too, recently, but this Viheriäranta - Gremillet Nut was a single show at the end of two weeks' worth of other casts and perhaps they just weren't as well-rehearsed as they should. As I recall the Clara part was created on Larissa Lezhnina who'd joined the company in 1994, and obviously she has all the elements needed, combining little-girl softness and a steely virtuoso technique. And yet, despite the flaws towards the end, I'll remember the Viheriäranta performance as one of the most powerful ones I have seen. This dancer is one of the best things that happened to the DNB in 2005 (another wonderful thing is, obviously, Sylve rejoining the company on a shared basis with the NYCB). However it looks like Viheriäranta needs some solid and rigorous training in pointe work to become the great dancer she can be. I should also mention Altin Kaftira who was Mouse King on both nights. I doubt this is a role one dreams of as a kid, dancing with a mouse helmet on one's head all night. Nonetheless it is a big role and Kaftira manages to endow it with lots of pathos through the expressive use of his hands and legs.

I should perhaps preface my impressions of the DNB 2005 Nutcracker run by telling what the Amsterdam Nutcracker and Mouse King looks like. Like many continental Nutcracker versions it does not have a Sugar Plum Fairy. The second act Clara / Masha dances the big PDD with her prince, and of course the prince is the nutcracker transformed. The first act Clara is an early teenage student of the Ballet Academy, but as the clock strikes midnight and Clara slips in the deserted living room to become an accidental witness to the battle of mice and toys the regular dancer takes over. The highlight of the first act is her duet with the injured Nutcracker when the mice have fled, to the lofty music opening Scene 2, used for the moving bed in Balanchine's version. Clara comforts the Nutcracker and eventually puts him in bed to recover. All good Nutcrackers are about a young woman discovering love, but the beauty of the Toer van Schayk / Wayne Eagling version is not just that Clara gets to do the discovering herself, rather than by the Sugar Plum Fairy's example. The other beautiful thing is this is not just about girl-meets-prince love but about the exercise of pity and loving care. (It's after all only a dream the young Clara turns out to be dreaming.) During the folk divertissements she also manages to save her little brother Fritz who'd been abducted by the Arabians. It looks like the DNB is recycling this 1996 Nutcracker on a biannual basis, and I was at two performances this year. The premiere was with Sofiane Sylve and ABT-guest soloist Marcelo Gomes. The other performance was the penultimate one with Anu Viheriäranta, a brand new arival from Finland whom I had noticed before, partnered by Matthieu Gremillet. In both cases the overall performance was not flawless. The Dec 31 corps was occassionally really sloppy, displaying end-of-the-run blues, I guess, but let's talk about the soloists.

As I recall all three productions have been amply discussed on BTalk, and you should be able to find those discussions with the search engine. Here, for instance, is the Amsterdam Sleeping Beauty. MND Anyway, I'd recommend getting each and every one, and I'd at least add the Bolshoi's Raymonda (Bessmertnova) and the RB's Coppélia.

Wherever there's a ballet company, there's problems. The piece is indeed horribly written and organized, although I suspect some of the disorganization is intentional. Martins' playboy past has nothing to do with the current problem, but part of Horowitz strategy seems to be to suggest there wouldn't have been a problem if Ms Bass had gotten her share of Martins' underwear. Otherwise why talk about the string of lovers Martins had? Horowitz and Bass seem to have forgotten that no one will ever be able to beat holy Balanchine at that particular game. What Horowitz does not realize is that Ms Bass does not come out very well with these stories about fledgling dancers she "sponsored" i.e. pushed. Just as the final image of this fourteen-year old dancer imitating Dew Drop is, I assume, to make us feel Martins is cold and mean, whereas in reality this girl was maybe just getting in the way. (And the reporter, too, I guess.) It is wonderful Ms Bass supported the school and the company for so many years. However one of the problems seems to be that over time she wanted more say not just in what happened to her money, but also with dancers she liked. That is a recipe for disaster (though a very common one).

A little side-issue reharding the Nutcracker music and its extraordinary scoring. About Stravinsky's Sacre we're always told that no one had ever heard the kind of sounds the bassoon is making in the opening bars. Never before had the instrument been required to produce such high notes. Well, maybe it's just me but Stravinsky's top note in the opening bars is a C, whereas the bassoon tune in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, as the guests are leaving the christmas party (Act I, Scene 6), reaches up to the G. That's considerably higher; traditionally that tune would have been handled by a flute.

I'm intrigued by the question when the Nutcracker became a kiddie show. Of course we're adults here and we go to see the Nutcracker, too, but nonetheless today the Nutcracker's intended audience is children first and their parents second. This may vary from country to country with their different productions, but this certainly applies to the Balanchine and American branch of the tradition. However I don't think this was the case with the original production. The Nutcracker was part of a double bill with the short opera Iolantha, and Nutcracker was the lighter part of the evening. I think it was intended to appeal to the child within the adult, and I'm not so sure many Mariinsky patrons brought their children to the theatre. I suspect cases like Alexandre Benois were really exceptional - and the young Benois was taken to the adult shows: he idolized Zucchi. Petipa in his later years liked to use children extras from the Academy, like the pages in Sleeping Beauty, but that didn't make these shows kiddie shows either. So my hypothesis is the Nutcracker's intended audience changed at some point during the move West, and I wonder when and where. Any ideas?

Sofiane Sylve has been dancing the Eagling / Van Schayk Nutcracker and Mouse King in Amsterdam on Dec 15, 18 and 20, with Marcelo Gomes guesting as her Cavalier.

May I add my impressions this late in the day, having watched the DVD? First of all, I didn't mind the swamp thing as much as many people here seemed to do. It's a bit puzzling why one would want to split up the Rothbart role in two. But let's face it: Marcello Gomes' big boots dance is one of the highlights of the entire show. Not bad for an interpolation. The other highlight is (as per usual) the Act I pas de trois. Reyes, Cornejo and Cornejo. Now that is dancing. The cuts are bad but worst IMO is the cut in Act IV. If you cut the mournful swans the end is just a meaningless pop. In general I thought the corps work was good, but rather good in the sense of "correct" than in the "great" sense. The big ensemble dances are supposed to be magic. They are not. I liked Corella a lot better than Murphy, though his big Act I solo, where he's supposed to decide he's splitting didn't really express the despair he's experiencing. But that's what happens when you replace the mime by jumps and turns. I'm puzzled by the praise Murphy gets. I thought she was the nightmare Odette - Odile. In the final analysis it's all about the clean and perfect execution of the steps, such as the 32 fouettes, which are extra-spectacular indeed. Huzza! However I never for a minute felt she was doing anything but executing the steps to the utter best of her abilities - which are fab. But expressing the romance and the tragedy? Forget it. Like Alexandra suggested, maybe she'll get to that after she's figured out every technical nuance of her toe nails first. I'm not holding my breath for that. I think it's a real pity Murphy was chosen for the broadcast & DVD, as this may well turn into the top choice for many years for people who want to have a Swan Lake in their home theatre. At best she's not ready for the role yet - so why record her now? Let me give one detail. Look at the hand she folds over Correla's head in their final Act IV embrace. It's supposed to be a hand of love and pity. It is however hard and straight as a rule. No wonder he's not sure about jumping to his death after her. Unfairly perhaps I kept thinking of Petipa telling a dancer who wanted to do Esmeralda: "but have you lived and suffered?" It's unfair because great dancers do not necessarily have to "live and suffer" so as to express tragedy. And some have "lived" and yet do not express a scintilla of it. However in Murphy's case I kept hearing a resounding NO to Petipa's question. That's why Gomes' Act 3 dance is such a succes. It's the first time in perhaps an hour that we've seen anything resembling all-out dancing. I am looking forward to the Ananiashvili / Perm Swan Lake that's about to be rereleased soon.

Hi Harry, I hope you don't mind my responding in this place. Of course it's kind of quiet in this spot; there aren't that many members located in The Netherlands. But I have reason to believe people abroad are checking this out just the same. So if you have been at a HNB / DNB show this (almost) past year, I'm sure many of us would be delighted if you'd share your impressions. I'll contribute. Last night I was at the Nutcracker's opening night, with Sofiane Sylve and ABT's Marcelo Gomes, who executed Wayne Eagling's fiendishly difficult 2nd Act PDD brilliantly. Every time I get to see Sylve dance I'm mesmerized by her push-pull timing. Her recent Tchaikovsky PDD, with Dragos Mihalcea, was a exquisitely breathtaking instance of this. Two new HNB dancers fascinated me, as they did on previous occasions: quicksilver slender Anu Viheriaranta as one of the lead Snowflakes (a version I find marginally more thrilling than the classic Balanchine take) and Asta Bazeviciute (formerly at Birmingham) in Waltz of Flowers. Most likely Bazeviciute will not pass the Robert Gottlieb No-Smiling-Please Test, but I'm falling in love with her long lines and radiant stage presence fast. BTW, speaking of Eagling: last night's program notes mentioned he was appointed AD at the English National Ballet a month ago. Good for him, and good for them.

Hi Harry, there are several other versions of The Firebird available on DVD - the Royal Ballet has one, and so does the Kirov-Mariinsky - that are both more affordable and closer to the Fokine original. You are right many people in the Netherlands are into modern dance - this is Europe after all - however Ballet Talk has a place to discuss ballet performances in Amsterdam etc here. Maybe you have been at a couple things discussed here, and you'd like to participate.

Bonelli used to dance in Amsterdam. Physically he's one of these amazing men who look as light as a feather (and he isn't tall either) but there's enormous power concealed in that body. His jumps will not impress you with their muscularity, but with their lightness. It's really thrilling to see how well he's doing at the RB, being - if I'm not mistaken - the third ever to land the Armand rôle, with Rojo as Marguerite, and partnering Ansanelli now. Speaking of Ansanelli, where did this hostile comment of Robert Gottlieb's come from? He rarely ever goes for the cheap shot like this. Some kind of resentment over her leaving NYCB for the RB?

The irony of this genre of critique "Oh, these ballet folks need to get with it; Nutcracker with skateboarding kids would be much more exciting" is it is so passé. I have heard this kind of I'm-hipper-than-thou stuff for so many years (most of my life actually) that one thing is for sure: this is not hip. However I have no doubt some people at NPR thought it was reall racy. Other than that it is pretty obvious US ballet companies have made themselves much too dependent on the Nut. Imagine how much more exciting it would be if companies put on a Nut every two or three years. In that case it wouldn't be such a grind.

Try this

Sergeyev compiled those notes (more than twenty ballets) as an employee of the Mariinsky; that's why they would be regarded as Mariinsky property. (If you are fired from a job, somebody will "escort" you to the door, just to make sure you don't take any company files, including the rolodex with addresses.) The Mariinsky was in principle a lifetime employer. And as I recall Sergeyev got a grant from the MT to study in Paris to become the Stepanov guy, so without the support of the MT he couldn't even have made those notes. As for the other point of view: valuable things tend to leave the country when you do a Revolution, kill the Tzar's family and let failed artists commissar it over the ones with talent for a couple of generations... BTW I think the Scholl book is great, and sufficiently well-written. The only thing that bothers me is this dissertation habit of summing up the content at the end of a chapter - as if the reader is braindead. And I think he tries to get more mileage from the Wagner - Brunnhilde parallel than is warranted.

Another reason why a lot of MT dancers may prefer the Sergeyev version - apart from loyalty to what they perceive as their heritage (i.e. the version they watched as they fell in love with ballet and which they were taught - is that there is a lot more steps per minute in the Sergeyev. In my view the little pdd Lilac and Desire are having before he gets to check out Aurora is 100% inappropiate, dramatically; every time I see it I think, too, Lilac's coming on to him. However, I suspect a lot of dancers just think, "hey, people come to watch us dance rather than pace about and mime". I have not seen the Vikharev reconstruction yet (and if Natalia is acurate in saying it's rolled out only once or twice a year chances I'll get to see it are pretty slimbo), but the pictures do give one the sense there is an awful lot of heavy costumes - not just for the extras and corps members (as in Wright's RB version) but also for the protagonists, such as Lilac and Desire, who seems to be wearing a giant wig and a major hat. Dancers don't like that, obviously. (Scholl mentions a Desire who says he's going to lose the hat as soon as he's out of the wings - excellent indispenable book btw.) Of course it's weird when Dudinskaya says her husband was faithful to the Petipa choreography and added more material for the male dancers. However I'm prepared to believe she's really sincere in that this was good and honest, rather than double talk. The expansion of male dancing, call it Nijinsky's revolution, is one of the biggest things in 20th century Russian ballet, and had Petipa lived he'd made more stuff for this new generation of men - I guess that's what the thinking is. I believe it's the Grigorovitch (rather than the Sergeyev) version in which Desire enters the hunter parting with a whole string of huge jumps and tours, and only when he's received the first applause he remembers his heart is really empty? In both the Sergeyev and the Grigorovitch you really have to juggle mentally between what you know the story is, and the dancing that goes on. Sometimes this can be quite satisfying when the added steps are good, but in the case of Lilac's non-stop bourreeing you don't get a lot of interesting steps in return for the killed mime. I do, however, love Lilac's variation in the Prologue pas de six - and I don't even know whose it is. Lopukhov, Sergeyev? Does anybody know?

Thanks, indeed, for your impressions, Helene. Having recently watched the Kolpakova video of Sergeyev's SB I couldn't agree more: the Carabosse / Lilac stuff in the Prologue and Act I doesn't make any sense unless you've seen a full staging first, so as to accept the Sergeev as a kind of shorthand version. The court doesn't even fall asleep!

The Kent book is wonderful; it's one of the few dancer memoirs that in its way is a work of art in itself. It's a great read. Her zany personality shines right through*. Another remarkable thing about Once a Dancer is it was AFAIK not written "with" a professional writer, like Villella's and Farrell's memoirs. * As it does in the NPR interview: Q: I have heard you have read tons and tons of books, and not just any books AK: Now when you say "tons" - a ton is 2000 pounds. So I don't know. I have actually cut books into segments because I couldn't carry those books and practice clothes, toe shoes, you know what I mean...

"Dansen doe je met je ogen." Nice iambic rhythm. The lay-out man put those words over a great photo of Van Manen.

Part of a dancer's performance emanates from the eyes - the critical part IMO. As Hans van Manen said in an interview "Dance is something you do with your eyes." (It sounds better in Dutch.)

I don't do this usually, but since there are most likely going to be very few press reviews of this show (the Dutch generally only review premiere shows), I will give some of my impressions, having watched a Apollo and Sym in C rehearsal in the studio and the The Hague stop of the Balanchine tour. It was a very good night. I had fairly low expectations of the Symphony in C, for two reasons. Nathalie Caris had been absolute magic in the previous season's performances - basically her valedictory victory lap as a DNB dancer - bringing an stunning intensity to the slow mvt, beautifully partnered by Altin Kaftira (one of the best partners in DNB). And this happened two or three times. How could those performances be equalled? Plus, on the down side, I had seen some really sloppy corps work before, particularly in the finale. However the corps was excellent last week, and Larissa Lezhnina's performance, whom I can't recall having seen before in the slow mvt, was riveting. How should I put the difference between these two interpretations? While Caris seemed to be saying "please lift me, the air is crushing me", Lezhnina's partner (the excellent new Rumanian soloist Dragos Mihalcea) needed to keep her from floating upwards, as it were. In the 3d mvt Marisa Lopez was partnered by Cedric Ygnace. The previous season Gael Lambiotte made a terrific impression (and he's no true Balanchine dancer), together with Julie Gardette, the company's natural comédienne. Ygnace has a rather low center of gravity and an uniquely fluid way of moving. Suddenly you realize a low jump, if well executed, can be more beautiful than straining for a high one - making you marvel, how can he jetée so close to the ground ? In mime roles (Petrushka) Ygnace is no success; I'm sorry to say he can't act his way out of a paper bag. However when the moves are the entire drama, as in Balanchine, you're truly seeing the music with Ygnace. Apollo was a debut performance for Raphael Coumes-Marquet, a dancer who, on a good night, can make the classics look as new, being a favorite with some of the company's choreographers (notably David Dawson). I'd have to say in this first performance I didn't quite see the lethal menace integral to Apollo yet, but he had to jump schedule for an absent Boris de Leeuw. The muses were wonderful: Sarah Fontaine's Calliope; Sofiane's powerful Polyhymnia, and a stellar Terpsichore by Igone de Jongh (I recall the studio pianist said she was going to get in trouble for taking it so slow - there was no trouble; just a spellbinding performance). Who Cares? was premiered one and a half year back in Amsterdam. I recall the show kind of fell apart in subsequent performances, and the best thing I remember was a thrilling "The Man I love" with husband and wife Gael Lambiotte and Sabine Chaland. However last week's The Hague perfomance easily topped the best show in the first run. Everything felt natural, fun and great. Marisa Lopez in "Stairway", Yumiko Takeshima's fouettees in "Embraceable" and Kaftira in a moving "Who Cares?" solo. For me there were two stars this night: Igone de Jongh who has definitely shed the introvertedness that sometimes, formerly, prevented her from being as big, bold and beautiful as she is. Sarah Fontaine was the other star. She was in every piece, danced more miles than anyone else, and she has this fantastic wit. Even when there are twenty people on stage, as in Who Cares?, Fontaine's eyes are saying "you'd better watch me, 'cause I'm where the fun's going on." She does this every single time. It's never just steps with Fontaine. I love this dancer. (In case you've got the Sleeping Beauty dvd: she's Lilac. She was an amazingly intense Les Sylphides Waltz nr 7. And she's great in contemporary.) And I have the feeling the new ballet master Eve Lawson should be mentioned. When I visited the studio she was working like a demon (a demon with a smile), and I think the results showed, in Symphony in C and Who Cares?

The good news for you, Mireille, is that one of the Dutch National's best male dancers, Gael Lambiotte (for whom the Van Manen Schumann Pieces were revived), has joined the Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal. Some Americans may be familiar with Lambiotte as the prince in the Dutch Sleeping Beauty DVD. Apparently the good news for the Dutch would be that Sofiane Sylve intends to do quite a bunch of guest appearances in Amsterdam this year.

Recently I hit upon a copy of this 55 minute condensation of Esmeralda by the Maly / Mussorgsky Ballet on an "Immortal" DVD. I wouldn't call it the greatest of shakes, but nonetheless I'm happy to have it. It's not a live performance on stage; at times the camera work is really attempting to imitate a movie, with close ups of Elvira Khabibullina's Esmeralda looking happy, puzzled, anxious etc. Not my cup of tea. The space seems strangely constricted at times, even in the crowd scenes. Obviously there are a lot of non-dance crowd scenes, and not all corps dancing is exquisite Petipa. One cannot help but notice these are not Russia's best dancers. I'd say in this cruelly condensated version there are three big moments: a nice ebullient variation for Esmeralda when she meets Gringoire with a lot of romantic little jumps; the pdd when Gringoire seeks her out in her cell ("this baby loves me!") and she persuades him to drop poetry and serve as her dancing partner, and, of course, the grand pas de six at Phoebus' impending wedding. That's really what this version is all about. Of course we know the pas de six from, for instance, the Komleva tape, but the funny thing is Khabibullina doesn't do bad at all in comparison. She is softer and younger and that doesn't hurt. It does help, dramatically, to see Phoebus and Fleur sitting close by as Esmeralda performs desperately (even though the fact that Phoebus is no feast for the eye takes away some of that drama); you really want her to whack that guy over the head with her little tambourine. For the sake of brevity, I suppose, Esmeralda dies in the end. No Phoebus ex machina There's a tiny little documentary at the start, with Maly's director Nikolai Boyarchikov saying a couple things about the history of the ballet. One cannot help but think a greater service would have been done to Esmeralda had a full version been taped, in a real theatre.

Forgive my ignorance, but is this Ardoin book one in the endless line of boosterist items praising the current boss - Gergiev the (excuse me) savior of the Mariinsky? If it's any good I'd love to order it, but if it's anything like one of those Hail to the (new) Chief books I guess I'll skip it.

I may get the Neumeier DVD, but I really would have been much more interested had the Royal Ballet or the ABT been taped (and taped well) with their recent Ashton Sylvias It's not like there are dozens of companies performing Sylvia, or three different versions on DVD, so that's why I think starting from the centre would have been a better idea. But hey, any good ballet DVD is a plus.