YouOverThere

Don Quixote fans need to get tickets NOW if they don't have them already. Both performances are virtually sold out.

The WB is only slightly smaller than the Colorado Ballet, and the Colorado Ballet has put on some quite credible performances of Sleeping Beauty. The small theater might be an issue, however.

The problem with Serenade is that it's been performed so often here. Both the NYCB and Suzanne Farrell have performed it in the last few years.

Do we need to be concerned that finances played a role? It's my understanding that when a company rents choreography they get the use of it for 3-5 years.

This season was the final one for Sharon Wehner (her 21st season). She was the last remaining dancer who had a significant role in the company when I first started watching.

Programming Serenade 2 seasons in a row seems a little unimaginative.

My suggested theme for a season would be "Making Arabesques Great Again".

OK, I admit that I did attend this (more than once), but I was going to spare everyone from my usual uneducated "review" which generally consists of little more than "I liked this. I didn't like that." I agree that all 3 have their pluses but they all showed the inexperience of the choreographers. Bond in particular might have tried to crowd too many things into her piece, as young choreographers (and composers) often do. But on my first trip, I liked her piece the best (perhaps biased by her choice of music), changing my mind to Gomes' piece the second time. If there was an allusion to homosexuality in Gomes' piece, I missed it. To me, it was about someone who wanted to break away from the safe, comfortable home of his childhood and experience the rest of the world. I do think, however, that Brown's piece is the most "mature" of the 3 and therefore the one likely to be performed again somewhere (at least without revision). One thing that did strike me was the lack of a role for Rolando Sarabia in this production, after he played only a minor role in Romeo and Juliet. As far as I know, he only appeared as a substitute. When he did appear in Brown's piece, he seemed to be the most polished of the men in the performance, though he still might have had some sort of injury that limited what he could do that wasn't noticeable. It was great having live music at least for 2 of the 3 works!

No big works - always 3 or 4 pieces/program.

Mark Morris Dance appears at George Mason University yearly (except this year), so I've seen whatever they've presented since 2015. I never cared to remember what the names of the pieces were.

My arm got twisted into attending the Mark Morris/Silk Road Ensemble production of Layla and Majnun at the Kennedy Center last night (3/23). I simply do not understand the critics' fascination with Mark Morris. I found it, like most of the other Mark Morris works that I've watched, to be a big nothingburger - simplistic, repetitious choreography set to droning, repetitious Middle Eastern music - but a google search found lots of fawning reviews (including in the Washington Post). For the most part, the show consisted of 2 dancers - playing Layla and Majnun (the program had 5 parts, and a different pair of dancers played the lead characters in each part) - dancing at the same time but not together, while 10 other dancers milled about or sat or lounged on the stage (which I found distracting). I didn't see anything particularly challenging - I've seen student productions at local colleges that looked more difficult than this. I found the story impossible to follow without reference to the supertitles (the singing was in Azerbaijani). Even my accomplice, who in general likes Mark Morris, conceded that the program was "20 minutes of dance stretched out to an hour". What don't I get?

Curiosity has motivated me to resurrect this topic. Shen Yun seems to have become something of a phenomenon in the DC area. Three of their 8 performances at the Kennedy Center in mid-April have already sold out, at prices ranging from $85 to $250 and the other 5 performances are more than 80 percent sold. Their 5 performances this week at George Mason University are also largely sold, at prices ranging from $80 to $120 (and the students are on Spring break). I've seen them, and I agree with lmspear's take: somewhat entertaining but not a major artistic triumph, and definitely not the best Chinese dance performance that I've seen (I thought the performance by the Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan that I saw last week was far superior - and with no cheesy MCs). I was wondering if anyone else has seen this group since this thread was created.

I found an email sent out a few days ago announcing that the Washington Ballet is going to do a 1 night only performance of Giselle to open the Wolf Trap's season on May 25.

Hmm, I wonder if Ratmansky could choreograph a ballet about breakfast.

Lee and Perez are both young, so both have the potential to improve. By all accounts. Lee is a very hard worker.

EunWon Lee became my favorite WB dancer the first time that I saw her dance. She is solid at the classical roles (was an excellent Giselle); she just needs to improve in the contemporary dances, and by all accounts she is a very hard worker so I'm sure that she will do it. Unless I mis-read your post, I'm not the only who thinks that the choreography for Romeo was lacking.

I made a second trip yesterday, and still came away with the impression that it's just an OK ballet. There were some really strong sections (balcony scene, bedroom scene, various solos for Mercutio), but they were intermingled with not-so-good sections. In particular, I thought that the ballroom scene just wasn't good at all, with unconvincing encounters between Romeo and Juliet and between Romeo and Tybalt, and this dragged down the rest of the show. The "Dance of the Knights" was lackluster, with the women wearing such massive gowns that it just wouldn't have been possible to expect them to do much. The finale seemed rushed, especially when compared to the length of Juliet's visit to Friar Laurence in which he gave her the feigned death potion. The wigs that Lord Capulet and Lord Montague wore made them look like members of a German heavy metal band - and too young to be the fathers of teenagers. EunWon Lee made the best of it, giving a strong dramatic performance in the 3rd act that made it worthwhile to watch. Julie Kent has seemed to lean towards works that were important in her career (I don't know if anyone besides me didn't know before this week that Cranko's Romeo and Juliet was the first ballet she danced in with a major professional company [as a supernumerary with the Joffrey Ballet]) or works with some sort of ABT connection. Hopefully, she'll eventually move away from this and establish a Washington Ballet identity.

I can understand that a dancer would feel that way. It has lots of opportunities for great solo work (which at the "preview", Oscar Sanchez as Mercutio took full advantage of) and the "Tarantella" section allows lots of others to let loose. I found it to be emotionally a bit flat (I didn't feel romance between Juliet and Romeo) and thought that it was a little deficient at telling the story (maybe it's fair for Cranko to have assumed that the audience knew the story). Wednesday was hardly the best day to enjoy a drama about people killing each other. I might give it another shot over the weekend.

The ABT dancers apparently are not the only ones unhappy with their wages. According to the Washington Post, the Alvin Ailey dancers skipped a reception after their opening night at the Kennedy Center to protest their salaries.

After encountering 3 non-working meters in 1 evening, I came to the conclusion that they have disabled the meters at least in the area south of the GWU campus in favor of pay-by-phone parking.

I've almost always been able to find free parking, but in the past couple of weeks DC has made some of those formerly free spots into Pay By Phone areas. My budget doesn't allow for parking in parking garages, and definitely not the astronomical rate that the Kennedy Center Charges (there are cheaper garages near the shuttle stop).

I loved the Thursday evening performance of Whipped Cream (other than that watching it made me REALLY hungry), but the Saturday matinee wasn't up to the same level. What seems to me to be missed in all the discussion is that Ratmansky is creating ballets that can appeal to people besides hard-core dance fans. Both Whipped Cream and The Little Humped-back Horse are entertaining as theater pieces as well as containing some serious parts for the dancers. How better to attract new fans than to present ballets that don't necessarily require a detailed knowledge of ballet to enjoy? IMHO, a piece of art doesn't have to be academic to be good. Is one of the things that's killing classical music that many contemporary composers are more interested in impressing music professors than in creating works that are meaningful to audiences?

And surprising. I'm a little disappointed that I probably won't get to see EunWon Lee, as Thursday probably isn't available to me and recent changes to on-street parking near the Kennedy Center have made it more difficult (or expensive) to attend Saturday matinee performances.

The WB now has R&J casting listed on their website: 2/14 Maki Onuki/Brooklyn Mack 2/15 EunWon Lee/Gian Carlo Perez 2/16 Venus Villa/Corey Landolt 2/17 EunWon Lee/Gian Carlo Perez (matinee) Maki Onuki/Brooklyn Mack (evening) 2/18 Ayano Kimura/Jonathan Jordan

Millepied's choreography might not have seemed so bland had it been set to better music. But it was Philip Glass at his most monotonous. The wild applause for Misty Copeland must have come from Tier 1 because there was only a slight stir on Tier 2 (less than I expected) when she first appeared on stage.