YouOverThere

I should have mentioned that the 19-tone piece was a "serial" piece. Neil Haverstick said that he was trying to follow the model laid out by Shoenberg and Webern.

Yes, you could theoretically serialize any number of pitches. Was your impression that it sounded out-of-tune? because you're hearing 19 tones per octave rather than 12?

If I hadn't known that they were playing a 19-tone work, I would have thought that they were a little sharp on some notes. Unfortunately, during the concert Haverstick's statement about serial music didn't sink in, so I wasn't listening for what I should have been listening for.

Haverstick is apparently pretty well-known, and here is another article in which he's shown to have been interested in the 34-tone scale, which this explains is 'less natural' than 19-tone and others. Very esoteric, but these things probably have their devoted followings, even though very out of the mainstream:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/34_equal_temperament

Haverstick has been experimenting with a number of different tunings, as evidenced by his guitar collection:

http://www.microstick.net (and click on "Guitars").

My only quibble with the reviews is that they didn't give adequate props to the corps. The corps was very impressive tonight (Oct. 19). Overall, I feel that this was the most complete performance by the Colorado Ballet that I've seen so far. Every part was danced well.

Those are important observations from a long-time company watcher. It's great to hear about how a company looks over time and after regime change.

While I felt that the corps danced especially well in Swan Lake, I wouldn't say that they have become consistently better in the Gil Boggs era than they were in the Martin Fredman era.

With all my opinions it is necessary to take into account my limited knowledge of any of the performing arts. For example, I wrote to my friend in the Colorado Chamber Orchestra about how much I enjoyed their performance of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste and her response was that "it felt really rough" to her.

I should have mentioned that the 19-tone piece was a "serial" piece. Neil Haverstick said that he was trying to follow the model laid out by Shoenberg and Webern.

I don't feel capable of writing a review of the Colorado Ballet's production of Swan Lake, and I would basically repeat the reviewers in the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post (Oct. 13 thread in the Links forums) anyway. My only quibble with the reviews is that they didn't give adequate props to the corps. The corps was very impressive tonight (Oct. 17). Overall, I feel that this was the most complete performance by the Colorado Ballet that I've seen so far. Every part was danced well.

I went, I listened, and I didn't understand. The piece was an orchestrated version of a piece written by blues guitarist Neil Haverstick, and was organized as a sort of guitar concerto. Since I don't listen to blues, I didn't have any point of reference to compare this piece against, so I didn't gain any understanding of what the advantage of using the 19-tone system for the piece was (not that I likely would have comprehended the piece in a single listening anyway - my listening skills are not that sophisticated). I was impressed by the orchestra (Colorado Chamber Orchestra), as they didn't, at least by my ear, have any problems with playing the 19-tone piece in tune. (I was even more impressed by their rendition of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste.)

I unfortunately didn't get a chance to talk to my violinist/violist (she played both in the concert) friend afterwards. She is also a music historian (she was largely responsible for the orchestration used in the Opera Lafayette/New York Baroque Dance Company production of Zelindor last fall) and so I would have loved to get her take.

This thread reminded me that it's been way too long since I listened to Prokofiev's 6th symphony. When I first got it on CD, I had to listen to it 5 or 6 times before I could get into it. Now, it's one of my favorites. The "austere theme" that appears in both the first and last movements carries a lot of meaning for me. Unfortunately, no one in Denver will perform it .

Have a look in wikipedia under Microtonal music and !9 equal temperament. Does that help?

Thanks! The article sort of helps. The orchestra believes that this will be the first ever performance of a 19-tone piece written for a string orchestra. My chance to witness music history?

An acquaintance who's a violinist told me that one of her orchestras is playing "a new 19-tone piece" in their upcoming concert. Can someone explain to me what 19-tone music is?

If this guy had been writing in the 1740's, how would he have classified Bach? Maybe as an "anachronism"? Bach's music certainly wasn't popular during his lifetime.

Personally, I think that there is a lot of great modern music. And sure, there is a lot of junk. But there always has been lots of junk. It's just that the junk from the past has been filtered out and only the good stuff gets performed any more. The junk from today will eventually be forgotten about, and future generations will only hear the good stuff.

Music is a creative enterprise, and sometimes the creativity isn't properly focused. But that's the nature of progress. Artists need to take chances, and when people take chances there will be failures. That's not a good reason to want to roll back the clock. Many compositions that are held in high regard today were slammed when they were first performed.

In his column in the Colorado Ballet's e-newsletter that was mailed on July 8, Artistic Director Gil Boggs announced that Koichi Kubo will be returning to the Colorado Ballet after a one-year absence (though he did perform in Dracula). Another dancer who left last year, Cara Cooper, is also returning.

http://view.exacttarget.com/?j=fe581576766...97066067e711d76

I did end up going, or at least going to 75 percent of the performance. The dancers were amazingly athletic. Beyond that, however, the show didn't do anything for me. For my taste, it was too repetitious and mechanical. There seemed to be a lot of "filler". I felt no emotion at any point in the performance; in fact, I found myself entertaining thoughts of a futuristic society in which all emotion has been eliminated.

ODC Dance (apparently also know as the Oberlin Dance Collective) will be in Boulder on Saturday (Apr. 12). Has anyone seen a performance by this group? Does anyone know anyone who has seen a performance by this group?

P.S. It's good news that such a high percentage of the Q&A audience had seen the ballet itself.

I'm guessing that the percentage in the total audience would have been much lower.

An interesting side note: Peter Oundjian is a cousin of Monty Pythoner Eric Idle.

My favorite orchestra conductor, Peter Oundjian (music director of the Toronto Symphony and former first violinist for the Tokyo String Quartet), was in Denver this past weekend to guest conduct the Colorado Symphony. The centerpiece of the concert was his own abridged version of Prokofiev's score for Romeo and Juliet. The suites that Prokofiev created from the ballet score were designed to highlight what he felt was the best music in the score and were not intended to be a musical telling of the story. Oundjian's goal was to create a version of Romeo and Juliet that contained the music necessary to tell the story while keeping the length suitable for an orchestral concert (the piece lasted about 55 minutes - and never got tedious). It went over really well with the audience (at least a third of the people who stayed afterwards for the Q&A session had seen the ballet). I'm hoping that they will record it (there were some hints that they want to).

I'm curious to know what you think -- if you don't like modern dance, why?

My uneducated opinion is that because modern dance is less demanding than ballet, it doesn't "filter" mediocrity as well as ballet.

I would caution against stating categorically that all modern dance is less demanding than ballet. Some of it is just as demanding, but in different ways--it depends on the technique.

You are correct. I wasn't intending to claim that ballet is more difficult than all modern dance, but rather that the minimum standards are lower in modern dance; however, that probably wasn't clear in my post. And even this could be a reflection of the particular ballet companies that I've seen being more talented than the modern dance companies that I've seen rather than an overall truth (I've seen modern dance programs that I thought could have been done by a proficient amateur recruited out of a disco).

From the 4th paragraph of the article:

Watching ballerinas pretend to be peasants, happy in their village, and visited by the local prince on a hunting trip, well, it all smacks too obviously of Marie Antoinette dressing up as a shepherdess.

Anybody who writes a sentence like this should not be taken seriously.

Traiger asks how modern dance can keep its audiences (educate audiences) and keep the balance between being personal work, and reaching audiences.

My attitude is probably elitist and unrealistic, but I don't think one can do great art if one is concerned about popularity. I like my artists to be starving. Easy to say when I'm not an artist.

I'm curious to know what you think -- if you don't like modern dance, why?

My uneducated opinion is that because modern dance is less demanding than ballet, it doesn't "filter" mediocrity as well as ballet. There doesn't seem to be a consensus as to exactly where the boundary between ballet and modern dance lies, but I've seen performances of what I would consider to be modern dance that were moving and meaningful and I've also seen performances that were about as intellectually stimulating as a Christina Aguilera concert. Modern dance, IMHO, too often falls back on cliches.

I always roll my eyes when I read something about different dance forms developing to break free from the confines of ballet. To me, ballet is capable of expressing a greater range of emotions than other dance forms that I've seen.

An incredibly innovative performance of a new contemporary Cinderella was performed October 19, 20, and 21 at the Veteran's Memorial Auditorium in Providence by Festival Ballet Providence, artistic director Mihailo (Misha) Djuric.

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This was a modern Cinderella the likes of which no one has seen before. The music was indeed Sergei Prokofiev's Op. 87, there were an evil stepmother (although this one was more like an upper east side New York modern mom who treats her nanny like a slave) and two evil stepsisters (again, not so evil .... more a spacey sister and a wannabe young socialite sister), an adorably loyal cat, a fairy godmother, handsome prince and lots of dancers at the ball, but there was also Cinderella's father (after all, where does a "step"mother come from?) who softened the poor girl's soliltary existence and longed to spend more time with his daughter (whenever he could get away from the stepfamily).

Do I correctly understand that this version was set in the 21st century, as opposed to the 16th-17th century as in the traditional version?

Halloween is approaching, which means that it's time for Dracula in Denver. The fifth time around, it still hasn't lost its bite. There was a large crowd by Denver weeknight standards. I lucked out and got the 'A' cast at opening night: Igor Vassine as Dracula, Sharon Wehner as Mina Harker, Chandra Kuydendall as Lucy, and, returning for one last production in Denver, Koichi Kubo as Jonathan Harker. The strength of last night's show was, IMHO, the performance of Sharon Wehner. Her depiction of Mina gets deeper and deeper every year. The climatic dance between Mina and Dracula was awesome (I can't Count high enough to give it a proper rating). And I still can't figure out how that manage to do the hotel scene differently every time (or is my memory that bad?) and do it flawlessly with so many dancers on stage. This program takes a lot of dancing from the corps, and they've always been up to the task.

There were a few items that drove me batty. They used less lighting for the train station and peasant village scenes than in the past, presumably to emphasize that these scenes took place at night. However, since the peasant women were dressed from head to toe in dark blue (OK, with red plaid skirts), it was very difficult, even from near the front, to get a clear view of their feet while they were dancing. I overheard people complaining about this during the first intermission. The tempo of the music seemed to drag a bit (the Denver Post critic had the same complaint about Le Corsaire). And the intermissions (as during Le Corsaire) seemed overly long. The program lasted about 2.5 hours, which by my recollection was about 15-20 minutes longer than in previous years.

The program might eventually become over-done (does that imply overbite?), but I'll see it at least once more this year. I am a little surprised, given its popularity here, that more dance companies haven't presented it.

Thursday, October 18 (+ or - a day)

John Wall reviews the opera-ballet Zelindor on his website dedicated to Baroque cultural items.

The dances in Zélindor were performed brilliantly by seven costumed dancers with the New York Baroque Dance Company. They wore distinctive masks, as was customary in the early 18th Century, together with the higher heels and larger hoops of the era. In Scene 3, the four women dancers appeared in shepardess dresses with garlands of flowers in their hair. In Scene 4, the three male dancers entered, dressed as a gnome and two "fire salamanders". The latter wore reptilian heads with protruding forked tongues and crests of flames, long formal coats and contrasting vests of red and gold. Caroline Copeland changed to an aristocratic dress as an Air Slyph, perhaps miming Zirphé. I missed the costume change of Catherine Turocy to Ondine, noted in the program. The finale joined all forces, as the dancers alternated with the chorus and soloists, with dances including a gigue, minuets, and a bourée.

Well, if you're talking about the classic property that was a great play and film, 'You Can't Take It with You', it doesn't really make too much sense to review it as though it were other than a revival of a classic. The way you've written it, one might think it was a new play, rather than something from 1936 (the play) and 1938 (the film). 'Hairspray' and 'Light in the Piazza' are different, being only a few years old. However you may not care for it, 'You Can't Take It With You' has been done by hundreds, if not thousands of 'professional theater companies.'

I might have been a little too subtle. I'm not just interested in the specifics of this particular play; I wonder why I find myself so often in disagreement with the critics and if others here have the same experience. This isn't is limited just to theatre; the Rocky Mountain News reviewer gave a very good review to the Colorado Ballet's recent production of Le Corsaire, a production that I thought was one of the weaker efforts in the 8 or so years that I've been attending the CB (and I'm not alone in that opinion).

It's deja vu all over again. My latest sojourn to the theatre was to see You Can't Take It With You, which won a Pullitzer Prize and got great reviews in both Denver newspapers. Once again, I was tremendously underwhelmed by a critics' favorite. It actually wasn't as bad as Hairspray or The Light In The Piazza, which is probably why it didn't win as many awards. A few of the gags even were funny. But still it was a waste of money. The play was overly long and had characters that didn't seem to serve any purpose other than to cram in a few more opportunities for jokes, most of which were predictable and therefore not terribly funny. It was more appropriate for a community theatre group than for a professional theatre company.

On the other hand, Third, Wendy Wasserstein's final play, which I found far more interesting and challenging, only got "pretty good" reviews locally. I'm developing a theory about critics: they prefer simplistic things over complex things because it's easier to sound intelligent talking about the simplistic.

Denver's best amateur chorus finished this weekend's concert with a choral arrangement of a folk song titled Requiem by a singer named Eliza Gilkyson. The song was written after the 2004 Asian tsunami. Despite its simplicity, it was so moving that no one in the audience thought it appropriate to do something joyful, such as applauding. I'm sure that others have had similar experiences, but it was the first time that I've ever experienced something like that.

Thank you for posting this -- I look forward to regular reports about Colorado Ballet all season!

Hopefully, others will take up the "responsibility", since I think that most of the other Denver area members have had a least a few dance classes, or at least have had a family member take some ballet lessons. I've had to eat my words a few times, but I hate to make it seem like nobody cares about the Colorado Ballet.

I think your view of "Le Corsaire" would be shared by many. It's been "enhanced" and changed by so many hands that even when the Kirov does it, it looks, to me, like an old Romantic ballet constantly interrupted with bravura numbers. And the audience always loves it!

The after-individual dance applause was about as enthusiastic as it ever gets in Denver.

I was curious if the company has changed -- often with a change of director, the look of the company, or its attitude or orientation, can change. Did you have any feeling of that?

This season is the first one where Gil Boggs got to choose the programs (last season's line-up was set before he was hired), and one year doesn't make a trend. So we really can't determine whether his decision to do Le Corsaire and Coppelia indicates a more classical orientation or if he was being cautious or if these were 2 that he just couldn't wait to stage. My concern is that 3 principals (4 if Maria Mosina doesn't return from her maternity leave) and a soloist have left the past 2 summers.

I attended the Colorado Ballet's production of Le Corsaire twice, and my impression was exactly the same as the Denver Post's reviewer (found in the "Friday, October 12" thread in the "Links" forum). The best summation from that review was "choreographer Eldar Aliev has put together what feels more like a series of well-choreographed dance highlights than a full-fledged story ballet." This production was all about dancing, with only periodic references to the plot. And I think that most of the audience was quite content with that; the audience response was very enthusiastic. I enjoyed the dancing, especially by Igor Vassine (Conrad) and was impressed by how comfortable Chandra Kuykendall (Medora) is becoming with lead roles, but I was never really "drawn in". (Hopefully, someone knowledgeable about dancing will comment on the quality of the dancing.)

I came very close to only seeing it once. Once again, problems at the ticket window nearly derailed my venture. When I got into line, the woman in front of me said that she had been in line for 20 minutes and they were still helping the same customer. Probably an exaggeration, but when the usher (I'm sure there's a fancier title) yelled "Curtain time!", they were still helping the same customer as when the usher yelled "Five minutes to curtain time!". When my turn finally came, I had time to have a conversation with the person behind me between the time I selected my seat and the time I actually got my ticket. I don't know if the problem is a poorly trained staff or a bad computer system, but the result was a lot of angry people; not exactly the best way to increase the customer base.