chiapuris

17-4-07 Mariinsky Festival Bolshoi company mixed program Tuesday night's Festival program featured and hosted an entire company as guest, The Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow. The program was a mixed bill of Stravinsky/Ratmansky: Jeu de Cartes, Part/Wheeldon: Misericordes, and Glass/Tharp: In the Upper Room. What a program! And what dancers! It was like seeing a company re-inventing itself for a new century. Jeu de Cartes, a neoclassical work by the company's director, Alexei Ratmansky, with a cast of seven women and eight men, is fresh and handsomely mounted by Igor Chapurin. The work is plotless, tracing with care the spirit and wit of Stravinsky's score. The outstanding cast consisted of Alexandrova, Krysanova, Kurkova, Leonova, Lunkina, Osipova, Yatsenko; Godovsky, Golovin, Ivata, Lopatin, Medvedev, Savin, Savichev and Khromushin, My personal favorite remains the upcoming Krysanova, bubbling over with joy for dancing. Wheeldon's new work for the Bolshoi, Misericordes, is a stately essay to Arvo Part's Third Symphony. It consists of variations for a melancholy-Dane-kind of-figure, Dimitri Gudanov, and four couples performing in various permutations. The set design by Adrienne Lobel and the costumes by Paul Gregory Tazewell suggest an historic, medieval court environment. Gudanov and the couples, Alexandrova with Klevtsov, Lunkina with Skvortsov, Yatsenko with Lopatin, and Rebetskaya with Godovsky were exemplary. The work bears repeated viewings. The final work is the endorphin-raising In the Upper Room. A good choice for the Bolshoi, in that it permits us to appreciate unknown facets of its dancers' talents. The sneaker-wearing Natalia Osipova and Ekaterina Shipulina and the trio of Anton Savichev, Denis Savin, and Alexander Smol'yaninov were outstanding. Osipova looked like she was born in sneakers and was loving it. What a bright light she is on stage! The red-point-shoe women were Elena Andrienko and Ekaterina Krysanova, partnered by Andrei Merkuriev and Denis Medvedev. The ebullient Krysanova tore over the stage and took off in the air with an irresistible zest and verve. Other participants included Anna Nikulina, Nuriya Nagimova, Morikhiro Ivata and Marianna Ryzhkina. (Hope i didn't leave anyone out). The work ended an evening of new and refreshing dance. Enormous applause and many curtain calls for the company. It was a brilliant stroke on the part of the Mariinsky direction to invite the Bolshoi Company to the Festival. I, for one, am grateful.

Mariinsky Festival 15-4-07 Giselle It was a pleasure to see the Mariinsky production of Giselle in its own theatre and with a truly first-rate cast. The production is a model of direct, efficient storytelling with stylistic integrity. The cast featured Olesia Novikova as the protagonist, Victoria Tershkina as the Queen of the Wilis, and guest artist from the Paris Opera, Mathieu Ganio, as Albert. This was a performance to remember. Novikova and Ganio are well-matched as a pair. In last year's Festival they performed together in Don Quixote. Ganio is an ideal Albert. His portrayal includes elegance, poise, and a bit of caddishness --easily forgiven as youthful folly, all at the same time. His mime is very good. Novikova, a long necked beauty, was very good in the first act: delicate in expression and musical in her physical responses. Her 'mad' scene was convincing, inward in focus and profound in its spareness of gesture and expression. The 'classical duet' in the first act, as it is called in the program, had interesting choreography and was given superb execution by Ekaterina Osmolkina and Vladimir Shkliarov. Shkliarov, in his variation, performed double tours /double tours en l'air, twice, with good finishes and spectacular effect. The second act was a marvel of jumps-by all the leads. Tereshkina as Myrtha was a force of contained fury in her maneges and diagonals. Giselle, in contrast, seemed a misfit in this group of vengeful spirits, as she sought reprieve and redemption for her love's life. In Novikova's first appearance by the gravesite, she assumes the long-necked pose memorialized in the O. Spessitseva photograph. When Myrtha commands her to dance,her grande pirouette en arabesque looks like a whirlwind. I don't recall having ever seen it executed faster or cleaner. Novikova's command of the style and the technical demands of the second act are astonishing. Ganio, for his part, seems to match her in his part. His double tours en l'air with arms en couronne, his series of entrechat-six with arms starting en bas and slowly rising to open 5th remain strong in memory as do Novikova's entrechat-quatre series and what looked like the cleanest, fastest double ronds de jambe en l'air sauté I've ever seen. The corps of Wilis were exemplary in synchrony, precision, and classic deportment. The Mariinsky's Giselle maintains its historic integrity as an artwork, yet breathes freely in the 21st century. Boris Gruzin conducted.

Mariinsky Festival 14-4-07 Romeo and Juliette Romeo and Juliette remains a star-driven production the world over. The Mariinsky Festival's production certainly had internationally recognized stars in Alina Cojocaru and Johann Kobborg, both of the Royal Ballet, London. The 14-4-07 performance had a third star up its sleeve: Leonid Sarafanov as Mercutio. Leonid Lavrovsky's1940 production is rich in detail: an opening scene with a stageful of swordfighting, a Capulet ball scene with dances of pomp and ceremony (servants picking up pillows dropped for the knees of the dancing noblemen), in the Act II, scene 8, Verona square a brass band and a troop of acrobats, the dramatic ceremonial mourning of the Juliet's mother (the indispensable Elena Bazhenova) over the body of Tybalt, and, lastly, the funeral procession at the Verona cemetery bringing Juliet's body to the vault. Cojocaru and Kobborg have all the attributes to make them ideal interpreters of the roles. She is a dancer modest in demeanor but moves with a full-scale, three dimensional projection that etches lines of action clearly as after-images. Her jump is buoyant, its peak defined and clearly shaped. Physically the two are well matched. The lifts are secure and have an effortless look. Kobborg's technical prowess is amazing. He accomplishes aerial revolutions with seemingly no preparations. He tosses off technical feats as easily as breathing. It seems to me, that the two eased into the Lavrovsky choreography smoothly. One nit-picky detail: Cojocaru's point shoes looked dirty to the point that they marred the complete look in costume. Perhaps she likes well-broken in shoes-fine, she could at least do what dancers in small companies resort to---using pancake makeup to give old shoes a clean look. The ace in the sleeve of this production was Sarafanov as Mercutio. What verve! What youth! What superb characterization and what dancing! Boris Gruzin conducted. Curtain calls were endless.

13-4-07 Mariinsky Festival: Apollo, The Ring, Le Reveil de Flore Andrian Fadeyev had double duty this evening, as Apollo and as Zephyr in “The Awakening..”. With the same cast of Muses as the first night, Fadeyev was an Apollo in the mold of Martins and others of the type: godly by virtue of proportions and looks. What shone for me was the strength of his movements and the careful shaping of his phrases. The muses were, as on the first night, distinct in their projection, and wonderfully coherent in the linear designs of the ballet. Victoria Tereshkina's grand jete en avant is breathtaking in its purity of line and effortless lift. Tatiana Tkachenko has a natural ease of movement that gives flow to whatever technical challenge comes her way. Sofia Gumerova has a delicacy and refinement in her stage demeanor and seems more an adage dancer. Together the cast were outstanding in this great work. Mikhail Agrest conducted. The buzz of the evening was the premiere of The Ring, a work featuring the music of '2H Company', a rap group, presumably popular in St. Petersburg (or all of Russia?), guessing by the applause accorded to them at the curtain calls. The music was, well, rap in Russian. It was composed especially for this ballet, whose choreographer is Alexei Miroshnichenko, dancer of the Mariinsky. The cast was spectacular: Daria Pavlenko, Victoria Tereshkina, Mikhail Lobukhin, Alexander Sergeyev with Anton Pimonov as the Referee. Referee of what, you ask. I don't know. Also eight other dancers joined, making the ring, at the end, very full. The set looked like a boxing ring, only it was rectangular. The dancers were inside the ring. The choreographer himself referred to his choreography as neoclassical. Was it a contest (in the classical greek sense of agon?). I can't answer that. The ladies were on point. The work started slowly and became more and more energetic. At one point I saw the principal ladies doing two retires passes, entre-chat six, forward and back. The work and the dancers were loudly acclaimed. The second viewing of Petipa's The Awakening of Flora has led me to reassess. I think it is a work of art, perfectly expressing its purpose: that of reflecting Romanoff imperial concerns through roman mythology on the occasion of a family marriage. It is contained in scope, measured in its ambition (it is subtitled an Anacreontic ballet), and perfect in scale. What is grand about it, is its visual canvas, rich in colors, decorative in design, and with costumes that reflect its society's hierarchy. The deity-protagonists are in tutus, the rest in body-covering tunics. Its choregraphic concerns seem to be the unfolding of order. Its pace is unhurried, never a step too many. The variations reveal Petipa's gifts in making the simplest elements of the classic vocabulary revelatory. The opening variation of Diana (well-performed by Maria Shirikina) had as its center a series of three promenades en arabesque, en fondu, with a change of arm positions after each complete revolution. In Flora's first appearance (the luminous Ekaterina Osmolkina), she dances with a white scarf, the climax of the variation a grande pirouette en arabesque. Another choreographic highlight is the double variation of Flora and Aurora (Yana Selina) in the Grand Valse Brilliante, danced side by side, first a series of three ballones en avant (a thematic step) then stretching the front leg and landing on it, repeated on the other side, and followed by a sequence ending en pointe with one leg retire front, and, on its repeat, bringing the retire leg to the back of the supporting leg. Petipa refinement. The pace of the variations overall was leisurely, and by today's standards, luxuriously slow. Lovely sustained landings and impressive holds of extensions en fondu. In the pas de deux of Flora and Zephyr (Andrian Fadeyev), lifts were limited to the 'shoulder' lift and to supported vertical lifting to allow the woman to execute an entre-chat six. Zephyr's variation included double front cabrioles and single back. Altogether a spectacular evening. Pavel Bubelnikov, who is part of the Revival team, conducted both evenings. My revised view after the second viewing is that the reconstuction project is a most worthy effort to bring back a lost work of Petipa. Congratulations to all the participants.

12 April 2007 First night of Mariinsky Ballet Festival VII The opening night began with Balanchine's Apollo (short version); the center work was a premiere of a pas de deux of Mariinsky's own dancer/choreographer Alexei Miroshichenko to two Russian songs of Leonid Desyatnikov and third Desyatnikov piece for violin and piano (titled Wie der Alte Leiermann..') and closed with a revival of Petipa's Le Reveil de Flore of 1894 with a Drigo score, reconstructed by Sergei Vikharev. The publicity calls it The Russian Project. To me it seemed like a summary statement of academic dance (or classicism): where it's been, where it is, and maybe where it's going. Maybe. 'Reveil..' is classicism in its Petipa period, 'Apollo' is classicism today, and Miroshichenko's 'Wie der Alte Leiermann…' is a use of the academic canon in this postmodern period. In Wie der Alte Leiermann, Daria Pavlenko, the female half of the duet, appears in point shoes, and when not walking her legs assume a closed fourth position, while the one arm in front is, most always, in a beautiful curved first position. The same uses of classical vocabulary are reflected in arm and leg positions in the dance of Anton Pimonov. After her first solo mostly of walks and shifts of direction, she leaves the stage and Pimonov has a long energetic solo but altogether inward looking. When Pavlenko returns she is barefoot and although they connect by touching, there is no dancing per se, at least nothing to suggest classicism, and the two end in fetal positions on the center of the stage floor. Apollo received a beautiful and strong interpretation in this performance, the debut of Igor Kolb. Kolb, who starts as a rascal bad-boy, grows into the deity of measure, by his tender and loving care of the three muses before the ascent to Olympus. His performance had energy, range, a deep connection with his muses, and a sensitive musicality that I found impressive. The muses were the incandescent Victoria Tereshkina as Terpsichore, the expressively radiant Tatiana Tkachenko as Polyhimnia and the delicate Sofia Gumerova as Calliope. A perfomance to remember. I wish the Mariinsky would obtain the complete Apollo for their repertory. The revival of 'Le Reveil de Flore' is clearly a labor of love and the details of completing each stage picture with the period's elaborate costumes and decors and childrens' dances shows the enormous effort expended to bring it all together. I wish I could say the effort was worth it in order to revive the choreography of Petipa (and according to the program that of Lev Ivanov also). The problem may be the Riccardo Drigo score, which is for me the likely reason the ballet received early retirement. Petipa didn't seem (to me) inspired or challenged by the music, relying heavily on pose sauté arabesque and endless series of ballones to fill both soloist and corps dances. For me it's music made by the yard for court spectacles. I'm seeing it again tomorrow night, and maybe I'll fall in love with it. Evgenia Obraztosva and Vladimir Shkliarov were both delightful in their roles as Flore and Zephyr. I look forward to seeing them again tomorrow. Apollo appears in 'Le Reveil..' in baroque full court costume and elaborate wig for a central part carried out by mime. Between 1894 and 1928…….

I find more classical features in the works of Mark Morris than in the works of any current ‘ballet’ choreographers. Foremost, his love for the selected music shines through. Of the ‘ballet’ choreographers, Ratmansky’s Bright Stream is a refreshing work combining traditional pas de deux, demi-caractere, great ballabiles, and a silly story with an outstanding 20th c. musical score. The Bright Stream may have staying power. I’m not sure about his Cinderella. Martins, Kylian and other contemporary big-output choreographers may be first-order craftsmen, but with little to tell us about the future of the classical canon. Maybe Wheeldon, but not yet, at least for me.

Having seen her as Aurora in SB and Queen of the Dryads in DQ has been enough to leave me totally puzzled as to what qualities the artistic direction sees and seeks to nourish in her development, that I for one can't seem to appreciate. Maybe someone who appreciates her artistry can help me better understand. At the upcoming Festival I noticed her name does not appear in any night's cast. BUT.... the casting for the first and second nights' Apollo is yet to be announced!

The Mariinsky site has finally posted casting for Festival VII. http://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill?pbmy=200704

Other than gleaning from other sites that Obraztsova may dance Flora, Tsiskaridze may dance Solor with Lopatkina and Alexandrova, and Letestu and Martinez may appear in the Gala on the 22nd in Delibes Suite, is there STILL no casting information available? At least I can't find any on the Mariinsky site. Can contracts and arrangements still be pending with 20 days to go before performances?

sz,I didn't perfs. of the 17th, but I saw the 18th [the performance that was originally listed as Veronika Part's] The pas de trois on Sunday comprised Misty Copeland, Sarah Lane, and Carlos Lopez. Top drawer. Copeland elegant and expressive, Lane all precision and exquisite phrasing, Lopez buoyant and a reliable and elegant partner. I really enjoyed them.

Translations in English of the Paris articles (on theatre performances and nightclub acts) now exist. Some of my first dance readings were the original Andre Levinson Paris articles (in French).

ABT's Swan Lake of 16 March in Detroit had Paloma Herrera and Gennadi Saveliev as Odette/Odile and Siegfried. Benno was Jared Matthews, subbing for the listed Sascha Radetsky. Radetsky danced the 'human' Rothbart with Jesus Pastor as the 'sorcerer'Rothbart (I think I'm right on this last dancer). The Pas de trois was led by Jared Matthews with Melissa Thomas and Hee Seo. Altogether a wonderful cast. Ms Herrera, in the appearances I've seen the last few years, has offered a solid technical foundation in her dancing, but sometimes with deficiencies in port de bras or in upper body plasticity, that would exclude her from the rarefied and elite category of a 'ballerina'. No longer. In my view, she has emerged as an artist with a refined style. The lakeside pas de deux with Saveliev flowed as a seamless, compelling and inevitable whole, without excesses or embellishments. An astonishing performance. Both leads exhibited a musicality without an emphatic rubato, lending their movements a purity of style. In this, my first viewing of Mr. Saveliev's artistry, I found him a focused dancer with total command of his time on stage, whether in the exhibition of technical feats, in mime passages, or as a presence. The motto of Ms Herrera's dancing seems to be 'nothing in excess'. In her variation, in the series of entrechats-quatre and retirés passé, one of the jumps (and one only) was so high as to be breathtaking. Like playing with the golden mean. Her Odile reminded me of an enchanted enchantress. There was playfulness, smiles, and bravura display but none of vulgar excesses (such as the supported a la seconde split lift done across the stage in the pdd --that one sees everywhere nowadays, and leads one to wondering what it is supposed to mean in a Petipa ballet). Her lifted legs in second looked more like 45 degrees than 90. A touch of classic sanity. For the record: Her fouettes started with a double-single sequence in the first half, and thereafter singles that, yes, traveled but in a straight line downstage and with an elegant 4th position finish. A joy to watch. McKenzie's production grows more likeable for me with repeated viewings. The costumes of Zack Brown are sumptuous and gorgeously decorated. (Even Odette's tutu has red/pink stones in the midriff.) In the first scene, the double pirouettes of the corps ladies in the long gowns of the 'aristocrats were phenomenal-an altogether different experience from the pirouette of a leotarded body. The ABT corps is absolutely top-rate. Only time prevents me from praising their many virtues. Actually they deserve a review of their own. Of the soloists I particularly enjoyed the performers of the pas de trois and the Neapolitan dance of Aaron Scott and Craig Salstein. It was good to see rivoltades and other character steps well-danced. McKenzie's choice for the ending, the double suicide of the couple and their union in the afterworld, was supported convincingly by the climactic Tschaikovsky score, eloquently conducted by Ormsby Wilkins.

I decided that too. So I initiated ticket purchase. Today I received an e-mail from Alexander Mussorgsky: Tickets for Raymonda on the 14th are sold out.

Haven't quite made up my mind yet, but I agree with you. Raymonda, for me, is such a rare, rarely seen, treat.

Natalia, I had hoped for Raymonda this year, but I guess that's not going to happen. There's always the Mussorgsky/Mikhailovsky Raymonda...is it on the 14th?

I was just informed by the Mariinsky Box Office of changes in the Festival program. On the 20th, instead of Swan Lake will be Don Quixote. On the 14th, instead of Don Quixote will be Romeo and Juliette. On the 19th, ballets of W. Forsythe, as originally planned.

Performances of 1-4-07 and 1-5-07 The evenings of the 4th and 5th were my first view of Peter Martins' Sleeping Beauty, the acme of 19th century classicism, performed in the formal seat of neoclassicism-the NYCBallet. Martins' musical abridgements, to bring the work to a reasonable length, means that sometimes less is less. Classicism needs framing. The vision scene loses some of its dream quality with efficiency in time. The hunting scene before it seems like a pointless parenthesis. The awakening scene is so abbreviated it carries little import. Martins' enhancements were welcome. One example is the chance for the male pages in the prologue to show off their dancing prowess as well as to serve as the retinue for the fairies. As for the dancing, the evening of the 4th featured the luminous dancing of J. Ringer. She excelled in the Rose Adagio, and was very good in the Vision scene partnered by the gallant Philip Neal. The wedding pdd was faultless, even though not always reaching the scope and splendor of the musical score. Neal's solo seemed underpowered, lacking buoyancy. The prologue fairies were, overall, fine. My personal favorites were Ana Sophia Scheller as Vivacity, and the elegant Melissa Barak as Courage. The major fairies were the sparkling Teresa Reichlen as Lilac, and Maria Kowroski as the evil Carabosse; both of them excellent. The Court Jesters, Hendrickson, Severini, and Villalobos, were dashing. Martins' stroke of genius was choosing the smallest child as Red Riding Hood (Gorokhov) and pairing her with a tall Wolf (R. Fairchild). Gorokhov also danced the mazurka splendidly in the ballabile that ends the work. Friday's performance (1-5-07) featured Y. Borree as Aurora and N. Hubbe as Desire, dancing in the place of Jared Angle. (I watched the rehearsal with Angle on the 4th). Sara Mearns made her debut as the Lilac Fairy. Mearns' seemingly instinctive sensitivity to classicism brought an aura of cohesion to the work. The evening gained a sense of grandeur with her every appearance as Lilac Fairy. A very auspicious debut. Hubbe was a gracious and virile prince, enlivening every scene he was in. Borree was technically refined, but not always reaching a depth of conviction that traced and suggested a young girl's journey to maturity. Melissa Barak made a fine showing in her debut as Carabosse. Her every gesture and physical expression was clearly etched as if in black ink. A wonderful performance. Tiler Peck's Florine had energy, definition, but no indication of a princess. Also, she had a strange, upper-body, mannered movement in the opening that she repeated later. It seemed out of character. (The result of coaching or of its absence?) Carmena's Bluebird was very dashing, but with some peculiar notion of facial makeup. (The formula I read is: Neoclassical=severe, classical=glitzy?) The evening belonged to Mearns' Lilac Fairy.

b) support education in, and exposure, to the classical arts in schools and in the media; I concur with leonid's and barts eloquent posts. For me the term 'classical' in dance has to do with two canonic aspects: 1) the 'dehors' opening of the body on either side, generally encapsulated in the term 'turnout', and 2) the port de bras from low 1st to mid 1st (extending the arms to the midpoint of a hemisphere) to high 1st (also en couronne or 5th position)-the top point of the hemisphere-, with the extension to the sides of the hemisphere, which is 2nd position. I would like very much to hear what others think of 'classical' in dance. Has Segal been enough of a thorn to revitalize the discussion on BT? bart's point b) about supporting education is crucial. How can one promote it in the U.S. today? I tend to be pessimistic about this. But we need to find ways.

Kathleen, of posts #2 and #4, I feel I need to apologize for posting #12. When I posted #12 (with the explanation that you had already offered), I had not read your posts. I started reading backwards to about post #9 before posting. My sincere apologies. I should have read everything from the beginning. John Chiapuris

One linguistic explanation (from my dictionary): The use of the word CORN for any of various cereal plants or grains, such as wheat in England, or oats in Scotland.

Thanks Robert for the Giselle alert. My interest was piqued enough, to timidly put a toe in e-bay water (first timer).

Geier has it right. Lopatkina offers the epitome of Mariinsky's aesthetic of purity in classical dance. Somova, a coryphee (the upper rank of the corps de ballet), is being promoted by the Mariinsky powers-that- be as principal dancer potential. Many people, including me, scratch their heads over this. But they may be right. Who knows? The other lead choices between these two offer many many riches. For me the future is Pavlenko.

The Mariinsky Theatre website has announced the dates for the 2007 festival: April 12 - 22. No program given yet.

My vote went (against the grain) to Rubies because of the performances of Dupont and Gillot. I was prepared not to like Dupont in Balanchine choreography, but in fact I found her dancing very much 'in tune' with Stravinsky's music, even though she may not have had the 'accents' that Balanchine dancers have given his choreography in earlier performances. I thought her interpretation was valid. I know, I know she did not dance like McBride, or any other NYCB dancer. Is that a surprise? She is not a NYCB dancer. She danced cleanly, unaffectedly, and I thought she gave a wonderful, honest rendition of the choreography. One comment in this thread (which led me to defend Dupont's performance) stated that her legs -as well as those of all the other female dancers in Rubies- looked... soft. How do you call 'soft' the legs of a dancer who executed three and four unsupported pirouettes flawlessly? How do you call soft a performance that delineated steps with such precision that I felt I hadn't seen some of the choreography before? Would she have been good with…. hard legs? Some performers leave such strong memories that, you could say, they ruin it for others who follow. I feel that way about Villella in Rubies. Everyone who's followed him, in the role, seems lacking. (Villella had, aside from virtuosic technique, a strong charismatic personality). But I thought Dupont (and Gillot) gave vibrant, convincing performances of the choreography.

My heartfelt congratulations to both dancers, for their well-deserved promotions!