Anthony_NYC

The website said that performances go on "rain or shine". I decided to pass tonight - I'm not willing to sit in the rain! Maybe the weather will be better tomorrow.

Good God, I can't imagine anybody could dance in this amazing torrent of rain and thunder (unless they're reviving The Flood). What a storm! It's been years since I've been to anything at Summerstage, but I don't believe the stage is even covered, is it? I also don't remember there being any kind of shelter for the audience, so even if they dance, it'll be for an audience of ducks. What a shame, I was really looking forward to it.

One of the things that makes Swan Lake so haunting for me is that it doesn't have the perfect, balanced ballet score that Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker do, and somehow that very imperfection magnifies its yearning quality--my mind has to fill in the blanks, so to speak, which means it appeals to a more personal kind of fantasy. For that reason, my perfect production probably exists only in my imagination. In the final minutes, Tchaikovsky's music is just soaring, crying out for something something something--probably something that can't be choreographed--but on stage you always get a bunch of ballerinas running around flapping their arms, earthbound. In anything less than a really great performance, I always want to laugh. It's only afterwards, as I walk home, that the moment is moving to me.

I agree completely about Orpheus. I'm sure it's a great ballet, but I've never seen a really compelling performance. Why does Martins always cast Nilas Martins in this ballet??

I've also never seen a really great performance of Les Sylphides--especially not at ABT, where they must pass out Sominex to the cast and conductor before every performance. (Those of us in the audience don't need it.)

If I'm not mistaken, Martins has elsewhere spoken of how, during the final illness, he visited Balanchine in the hospital and tried to get him to say outright that he wanted him to take over as ballet master. Balanchine just wouldn't do it. It was all implied. Which seems like another example of Balanchine's endless wisdom. Martins had to want the job enough to just take it, without Balanchine's approval. And if it didn't work out, nobody could say that Martins was the great man's own holy appointment.

Washington Ballet revived this about 15 years ago.  It seemed very dated to me, one of those dramatic ballets that needs Huge Personalities to carry off.

That's what it used to get, I think, with dancers like Hayden and--I think--Alonso(?). Anyway, thanks to all, I'm glad to know it hasn't completely vanished. I have only a foggy memory of dancers in crazy headresses mimicking simultaneously both horse and rider, a pas de deux between Tancredi and the dying Clorinda, the latter's dead body suddenly carried away melodramatically--all-in-all, a sort of blessedly brief potboiler, like Spartacus or something, over-the-top fun with a style all its own.

I was just listening to the enjoyable score for William Dollar's The Duel (or The Combat), a ballet I haven't seen in many, many years and had all but forgotten even though I used to find it entertaining. If I'm not mistaken, at one time or another it has been in the repertoires of NYCB, ABT, and DTH. Does anybody remember when it was last done by one of those companies in New York? (I see from the archives here that it was done by New Jersey Ballet earlier this year.) Has it dated too badly to revive?

Mention some other companies, folks!

For some reason, my mind keeps gravitating towards modern dance, especially Paul Taylor's company. Cathy McCann, for instance, with that beautiful, open face of hers and her dancing similarly open and lovely and completely devoid of artifice or affectation, always stuck me as quintessentially American. Gosh, I miss her...

Finally, I think I will stick by my assertion that US audiences for the arts are rather conservative.  A few years back, I was listening to a BBC Radio 3 opera broadcast from the Met in New York.  In the interval, there was an enjoyable quiz for the  rather high-brow all-American  panel  of invited guests, and one of the questions involved  coming up with the name of a contemporary American opera composer (it may have been more complicated than that, but that was the nub of it).  Well, after a lot of humming and hawing, the only name the distinguished bunch could come up with, despite heavy promptings from the quiz-master, was - Leonard Bernstein.  The correct  answer was John Adam, but his name hadn’t occurred to a single one of the panel, presumably because they simply didn’t take him seriously as an opera composer.  That’s what I mean by conservatism.

Well, yes, after all, the Metropolitan Opera is THE bastion of musical conservatism in this country. That's one side of the coin. On the other side, Nixon in China was composed here, premiered here, and embraced here. I remember when it played at BAM in the 1980's. People around me in the balcony were smoking pot. Perhaps NOT the folks you're likely to run into at the Met.

I don't have anything to add to all the wonderfully intelligent and interesting comments about the Eifman, except to say that I didn't care for it not because it was too new, but because it was so o-l-d.

Was the character wheeling Tewsley around supposed to be just a nurse, or was there some larger symbolism that I missed?

I'm not aware of Balanchine's having changed the ending at any time before 1978, when he did so for the videotaping of the ballet for PBS (the performance in "Choreography by Balanchine" that is available on video and DVD).  He said at the time that he'd always wanted to change it but had never had the time.  Personally, I've always preferred the original ending, though it didn't look to me like a fountain.

For the life of me I can't even remember where I read about the fountain thing, but it stuck with me. Maybe the writer just didn't describe it well. Or maybe I fantasized the whole thing! Anyway, I'd love to hear your description of the pre-1978 ending. Is there a film, I wonder?

Interesting point, Sveiglar -- how about "The Four Temperaments" (which they did during the Baryshnikov era) for the same reason?

With the original ending, which I've always wanted to see, apparently a kind of fountain effect. I understand Balanchine only changed it after the move to Lincoln Center to make better use of the State Theater's wider stage.

Thanks, Carbro, for the information on the lecture/demonstration.  Does anyone have any information on the symposium to be held in September at the Manhattan School of Music?  I think it might be a similar presentation of Stravinsky Violin Concerto and maybe Concerto Barocco.

It's later than September, I believe. What I've heard is that there will be a screening of "Music Dances" in October, and then a lecture/demonstration of Stravinsky Violin Concerto and possibly Agon (not Concerto Barocco as originally announced) in November. No idea who, exactly, will be involved in all this.