YouOverThere

Did you see any Sleeping Beauty influence?

I liked it better the second time (it seems like that's always the case). Knowing who the characters were ahead of time was helpful. And sitting downstairs instead of in the nosebleed seats definitely makes for much better viewing. But I still think that there is plenty of room for improvement (and slimming down - once again, by the time the wedding Grand Pas started my attention was drifting). The story just isn't compelling. It doesn't seem to have a message, other than perhaps if you come from a rich family everything will work out.

I've been wondering if perhaps because the choreographer is also a dancer in the company if he tried too hard to squeeze in as much dancing for as many dancers as he could, with the result that the stage was too cluttered at times. The jail scene is a good example of what I thought was lacking in the work. We should have had sweaty palms worrying whether the heroes would find a way out or if they were destined for the gallows. I didn't feel at all tense or nervous. I will probably go again just to see if it seems better when viewed from the orchestra. I didn't think that the show was terrible, just that it wasn't up to the standards I expect from the elite companies.

Alas, the Kennedy Center has forsaken me - I haven't received discount offers like this for several years. This is unfortunate, because Paquita did not impress when watched from the nosebleed seats. I think that Xiaoyi was right on. The production is quite long (and unfortunately was extended by unusually long intermissions), yet very little time was spent on the plot. I didn't ever see sparks flying between Paquita and Andres; they really didn't spend a lot of time together. I might have enjoyed the wedding Grand Pas, which didn't start until after 10:00, more if I wasn't worried about how late I would be getting home on a work night. Perhaps watching it from a little closer, where it would have been easier to figure out who was who, might have left me with a better impression.

The Kennedy Center belatedly celebrated the 100th anniversary of Merce Cunningham's birth by presenting a completely forgettable performance of 2 of Cunningham's works. The dancing, such as it was, was performed by a company called Compagnie Centre National de Danse Contemporaine - Angers, whose AD, Robert Swinston, re-created the dances. The first work was titled Beach Birds. The object here apparently was mimic birds on a sandy beach. So the piece mainly consisted of dancers standing with the arms extended and occasionally hopping around. It might look cute to see birds hopping around, but having people do it just looked silly. The piece was set to "music" that was "composed" by John Cage. The "music" was only slightly more interesting than Cage's 4 Minutes, 33 Seconds, since the pianist actually did occasionally play a note (perhaps a couple of hundred notes over the course of 25 minutes). The second piece was titled BIPED. This one actually featured dancing and was accompanied by actual music, albeit droning ambient music. The creativity in this piece was limited to the staging, since it including a scrim in front on which light patterns and computer graphics were displayed. Unfortunately, the graphics didn't obscure the fact that the choreography was pretty basic and that there didn't seem to be a point to any of it other than to fill up time, and time it did fill up - dragging on and on for about 55 minutes.

Composer Christopher Rouse passed away on Saturday, September 21, four weeks before the scheduled premiere of his 6th symphony. For those not familiar with him, he won both a Grammy and a Pullitzer, served in several capacities with major symphony orchestras (including the New York Philharmonic), and taught at several top music schools (including Julliard and Eastman). He had been one of my two favorite living composers. https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwclassical/article/Composer-Christopher-Rouse-Dies-At-Age-70-20190921

The Korean Cultural Center brought the Choe Contemporary Dance Company to the Kennedy Center. Fortunately, the Korean Cultural Center also footed the cost of the production so that tickets were free, because this production contained everything that I dislike about modern dance. There were 2 pieces in the performance: Chaos and Liar. Both were basically about nothing at all, consisting of a disconnected hodgepodge of ideas and lack of ideas and seeming to drag on endlessly without purpose or direction. There was way too much milling around, moving around R---E---A---L---L---Y S---L---O---W---L---Y, and, in the case of Chaos, rolling around face down on some sort of motorized skateboards (or something - I was too far back to see what they were actually rolling around the stage on). What little activity there was had a way too high proportion of gymnastic or martial arts derivation. Much of the "music" for Chaos consisted of a single note repeated over and over and over and over again. My accomplice, who in the past has defended modern dance when I've criticized it, declared that in the future she would only attend ballet.

Beirut-based Caracalla Dance Theater made a stop at the Wolf Trap (near DC). OK, this stop was WAY back in June. CDT bills itself as a Middle Eastern arts organization, but a quick glance at a borrowed program (they ran out, so I didn't get one) revealed quite a few Russian-sounding names and a few names that were clearly Chinese (and even without a program it was obvious that some of the dancers were Russian). It is basically a modern dance company, though there were elements of ballet included (but not pointe dancing). The program was titled "1001 Nights", and, yes, it was inspired by that piece of literature. There were three acts. The first loosely told the story of why the Sultan becoming so enraged by women that he had all his wives executed, though it had far more dance than was needed to tell the story. This act was danced to Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade". A significant portion of the dancing used a very large ensemble. The choreography was entertaining, but I kept thinking that a number of opportunities for virtuosic (sp?) dance riffs were missed. The second act was about an evening in a Middle Eastern cafe during the time period that "1001 Nights" was set. This act was danced an unusually arranged and instrumented rendition of Ravel's "Bolero". Here, the choreography was opened up and the dancers were more free to show off their skills, with fewer dancers cluttering up the stage. The final act told of a remote way station, where people from different cultures stop to take a break from their travels. This went still farther in paring down the numbers so that individual dancers could be highlighted. The music apparently was Lebanese folk songs; at least it was some type of folk music that seemed to hold a deep meaning to a segment of the audience. I found it more enjoyable than most of the other modern dance performances that I've attended. At least it consisted mainly of actual dancing. One thing no other modern dance company has come close to matching is the costumes. Actually, I've seen few ballets that could match the costumes.

I wouldn't consider the documentary to be a balanced biography of Pavarotti. I think that Ron Howard was pushing a live big, go for your dreams, ignore the critics angle, and didn't want to spend too much time on the negatives. But I don't think that makes it a bad movie; I certainly enjoyed it enough to watch it more than once.

I was left with a couple lingering questions: - There are 2 people who are still alive who had some importance in Pavarotti's career but did not appear in the documentary: the conductor Richard Bonynge, who was Joan Sutherland's husband, and the soprano Mirella Freni, whom Pavarotti knew as a child and who sang with Pavarotti at several important events, including his La Scala debut. Were they not interested in participating, not in good enough health, edited out for film length reasons, or did their opinions not fit with the narrative? - Pavarotti's eldest daughter played a much smaller role than his 2 other adult daughters. Again, was this to keep the film shorter or was it because she didn't fit in with the narrative?

Having not known anything about Pavarotti's early years, I was massively surprised to learn that he had to choose between a singing career and being a soccer goaltender. Apparently, he was good enough as a youth that a professional soccer career was not an implausible goal.

After seeing this twice, the thing that most stood out for me was that even with Pavarotti there was a bit of good fortune that might well have made a difference in how his career unfolded. When he was 30, he managed to get a gig doing a tour with Joan Sutherland, who wanted a tenor of a specific height, and it was on this tour that Sutherland taught Pavarotti about proper breath control. Pavarotti's career took off after the tour.

Back to the earlier question about Seo: I thought that she was better than she had been at the Kennedy Center - smoother and more confident. Except for the fouettes - she started off with a pattern of 3 doubles, 1 single, and this was working well. Too well. She switched to all doubles and immediately starting veering to the right, finally stopping after around 26. I wasn't as pleased with Stearns. He seemed a little stiff. The rest of the cast was excellent - about as good as I've seen. Though I didn't care for some of the costumes. I thought that the women's skirts in the first act were too long so that they became a distraction when trying to watch the ballerinas' footwork. Perhaps that was a function of the large theater, which left people like me who can't afford the primo seats farther from the stage than they would be in, for example, the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Pavarotti claimed that it was from eating lots of pasta.

Since thunderstorms prevented me from hitting the swimming pool after work yesterday, I found my way to a showing of Ron Howard's recently released documentary on Pavarotti. I had read NPR's review of the film, which heavily criticized it for underplaying Pavarotti's faults and for performing more concerts and recitals and fewer operas as he grew older and for concertizing with rock musicians (he and Bono became very good friends). And, yes, it made only a brief reference to Pavarotti's short-term flings (though his 2 long-term affairs, the second of which became a marriage, were featured prominently) and his penchant for cancelling performances. Given that the film was underwritten by the Pavarotti Foundation, there was no way that the film was going to give a harsh portrayal of Pavarotti. Still, I found it gave some insight into what made Pavarotti Pavarotti, which (some might say unfortunately) included his perpetual boyish outlook as well as the trauma of, as a boy, witnessing suspected spies and resistance fighters hanged during World War II. On the other hand, I was not aware of all of the charity fundraising the Pavarotti did. Nor did I realize that Pavarotti and Placido Domingo were something of friends before the Three Tenors came into being (and the role that Zubin Mehta played in helping to make the Three Tenors happen). But forget about all that. The documentary included some incredible snippets from Pavarotti's performances. I found myself alternately wanting to stand and applaud and nearly crying from the sheer beauty of the singing. That alone made it worth paying to see.