Manhattnik

Call me hopelessly old-fashioned but Von R's spell should be broken when Odette and Siegfried take their plunge off the cliff. That's one thing Kevin McKenzie did get right, although at the wrong moment. I think the old David Blair Act IV that ABT used to do is just perfect, and I wish they'd blow the dust off it and bring it back.

There's also the specialty item recently introduced by the management of NYCB: Ballerina Vanishing Creme.

I think we need some help from contributors to flesh this idea out, but after enjoying the way over-the-top confrontation between Nikiya and Gamzatti in this production (I still have fond memories of Markarava's Nikiya vs the Gamzatti of Cynthia Gregory, who was born to the role), Leigh and I realized it was just like something straight out of Dynasty, or Dallas. So was born the Texas Bayadere. I'd thought that instead of Shades we'd have row after row of line dancers, but there's nothing particularly special or sancrosanct about line dancers, even in Texas. Our Nikki could only be -- a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader! Think of the visual impact of Cowgirl after Cowgirl high-kicking her way down the tiers of a heavenly Cowboys Stadium, waving their pom-poms in glorious synchronization..... Of course, Gammy is the daughter of an oil-magnate-turned-President, and Billy-Jo Solor is the Cowboy's quarterback (he'll make his Act II entrance astride a mechanical bull instead of an elephant). Haven't figured out what the parrot girls would translate to....

Of all the swans in Martins' "full-length" Swan Lake, I liked Meunier the best. I'm sure I would've also loved Whelan's, if Andrea Quinn hadn't rushed her through all of Odette's best moments. Whelan was gorgeous in the one-act Swan Lake this spring in NYC. There's certainly precedent for big gals dancing Odette/Odile -- my all-time favorite is Martine van Hamel, who was certainly not a little slip of a thing. While Van Hamel and Meunier are very, very different dancers, they both gave Odette a power and authority, despite her sadness, which makes her quite different from other classical ballet heroines (except, come to think of it, Raymonda, another role in which they've both excelled, in various incarnations). Another Saratoga highlight I'd be remiss in not mentioning was Benjamin Millepied's debut (I think) in the lead in Ballo de la Regina at Saturday night's gala, with Abi Stafford. While I'd always admired Millepied's exuberence and elan, I'd also always found his style to be overpowering, unsubtle and often lacking in polish. What can one say about a French dancer who does not get the point of La Source? However, he did finish the Spring season with a gorgeous, pull-out-all-the-stops performance of Oberon at the State Theater (his Sherzo was nothing short of spectacular). I wasn't as impressed with his debut in Fall in The Four Season (flashy and unpolished, I sniffed), but he was like a man transformed in Ballo. Not only was his dancing on an appropriately grand scale, but it was clean and sculpted, and he resisted the easy temptation to simply blast his way through the tricky bits (there are a lot of tricky bits). I don't think I've ever seen the male role here danced better. Would that I could say the same about Stafford's two performances in Saratoga. The first time she seemed to be having an off night all-around, but in the gala with Millepied she also seemed ill-at-ease, unexpectedly fudging some of the trickier technical bits, like the fast pirouettes into arabesque, or, more distressingly, those three big, signature "Balanchine" saute de chats (sometimes dubbed, I think, "pas de Verdy"). As far as Yvonne Borree, I found her performances in Saratoga, particularly in the first solo of Divertimento No. 15, to be beyond distressing. She's clearly well capable of dancing anything, technically. But her dancing gets sketchier and sketchier as a solo progresses, her shoulders and arms grow tighter and more wild (it was painful to see in Divert) and her face seems to barely mask some sort of terror or dread, which turns to panting relief when she's finally survived. (No more relief than I feel in the audience.) I don't know what the answer is here, but surely putting her out there night after night is only reinforcing whatever the problem is -- it seems to be getting worse. I am beginning to think I'll just maintain a discrete silence about Borree in the future.

I've been meaning to do a "wrap-up" of my Saratoga visit. I might even get around to it. It was interesting rummaging through programs my folks had saved of NYCB's first season at SPAC. Hippolyta that season was Gloria Govrin. I wonder if Meunier gets tired of being compared to her? Anyway, the two performances of Cortege I saw were heavenly. Yes, it's a bit of a large and messy ballet in some ways, but the music is divine, and the Karinska costumes (white and green like the Hungarian flag) are delights. Notice the coins sewn into the bodices and headpieces of the "classical" ballerinas? For a corps with a reputation of being sloppy, NYCB's corps was not only remarkably together here, but did a fine job with the folk-dancing steps. Clearly they've benefited from some serious coaching. It's hard to single out individual corps dancers, but I found myself appreciating Darius Crenshaw (a fine and underrated dancer) more than ever before. Leading the folk-dancing contingent in the czardas, Kathleen Tracey and Albert Evans were wonderful, high-kicking, high-flying and looking as if they were having the times of their lives. Tracey continues to look rejuvenated and energized here -- just give her boots, bells and ribbons and get out of the way! Evans, as always, threw himself into his part with joy and passion, especially in those killer drops to the knee. I'm not sure I'd rather see Monique Meunier in the character part here. We already know she's dynamite in this sort of thing (she rather owns the last movement of Brahms-Schoenberg these days). What I loved here was just how grandly she made this grandest of all ballerina roles. I don't think any other City Ballet ballerina uses her upper body as well as Meunier, as shown in her regal carriage, especially the dramatic "I-am-a-princess" poses, and revolving, circular bourrees with arms outstretched before her. It's interesting how Balanchine first shows us a wealth of character steps in the czardas, then uses them as the building blocks for Meunier's brilliant classical solo. The leg-kicks, heel-clicks, grand posturing and pacing, it's all there. It's part exposition, part playfulness, part boasting, as if he's saying "Look what I can make of this!" Again, Charles Askegard partnered Meunier magnificently, and was equally sensational in his own solos, especially a combination where he must repeatedly complete a big cabriole to the front by landing in a deep plie with his working leg remaining raised far above horizontal, and holding the pose for a beat, in perfect time to the music (it's that czardas leg-kick, transformed yet again). I also loved the way, in one of the fast bits near the end (this ballet has about a half-dozen codas, it seems) he finished a brilliant serious of pirouettes a la seconde by immediately rocketing offstage with a big, booming glissade-assemble combination. No time to pose prettily, as the corps guys were thundering down on him, and it was either lead or get trampled (you gotta love the way Balanchine tossed masses of dancers around the stage). More later, if I can.

Uh oh. I'd better buy the cheap seats while there are some left.....

Saratoga, Part I Sitting here in beautiful, sunny (when it's not raining) downtown Saratoga, and observing the endless pedestrian and automobile traffic up and down Broadway, I can't help but remember when this was a sleepy former resort town, quietly going to seed and collectively dreaming of long-lost glory days. Now, sitting here on the terrace of the Border's, and feeling unutterably cool typing on my PowerBook, I can't shake the intense feeling that I'm sitting in a shopping mall with a really, really big skylight and a quaint historic theme, watching processions of mall-walkers, riders and drivers. Of course, such commercial quaintification isn't the unique province of a place with a colorful name like "Queen of the Spas," as a stroll around the enormous Disneyland that was once Times Square is enough to make one long for the return of the hookers, crack dealers and druggies. Well, almost. While I'm not old enough to remember the late, lamented Grand Union Hotel, it's still a shock to see the enormous retail building that's going up on the parking lot/shopping strip that took the hotel's place. (For years, this spot was long occupied by a Grand Union supermarket. It wasn't until years after I left town -- yes, I grew up here -- that I realized that the supermarket chain hadn't, in fact, been named after the hotel. So now Saratoga will have a Gap and a Banana Republic. Whoopee.) Almost as much of a shock as it is to realize that every square inch of the downtown area that can house a bar and a loud, crummy band at night seems now to do so. Perhaps next time I return, in the name of efficiency, they'll just cordon off the entire downtown area at night and collect a cover charge from anyone who enters. Surely that would be more efficient than the various and sundry (yet ubiquitous) cover charges inflicted by every lounge, bar and restaurant whose owners get the bright idea of deafening customers (as well as passersby) with overmiked renditions of top twenty hits of the past few decades. Certainly the zombie-like throngs of kiddies lurching from fleshpot to fleshpot look as if they'd hardly notice (I was never so young -- honest). Heck, you can ride all day for one price at Astroland, why not at Saratogaland? I seem to have digressed a bit, and in the first paragraph yet, from what I meant to write about, which is yes, NYCB is up here, and yes, Virginia, there is a Monique Meunier, in case any constant readers were wondering whether she'd vanished altogether. City Ballet was doing A Midsummer Night's Dream up here, and how could I resist? With apologies to the State Theater, there really is no better venue for this ballet than the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, that beautiful semi-outdoors theater that was one of Nelson Rockefeller's gifts to the Capital District. (SPAC and the Northway are probably responsible, for better or worse, for the reawakening of Saratoga.) It had been a long time since I saw Dream at SPAC -- my parents took me to one of the very first NYCB performances in 1966. (They conveniently saved the program: Titania, Suzanne Farrell; Oberon, Eddie Villella; Puck, Arthur Mitchell; Butterfly, Suki Schorer; Divertissment, Melissa Hayden and Conrad Ludlow.) Of course, I had no idea what I was seeing at the time (I remember Villella seeming to hover in the air -- there had to be wires for him just as there were for Mitchell's hovering as Puck -- and Titania's cute pink seashell), and it wasn't until 1975, with a few years of artsy stuff under my belt, NYCB returned to SPAC with Dream, and Farrell. I went back for old time's sake, and I was hooked on ballet as I hadn't been when I was a child. But that's another story. Anyway, seeing that City Ballet would be doing Dream at SPAC again, I arranged my vacation schedule so that I could catch a train up the Hudson from NYC, and get into town in time for the last Dream on Friday (the 13th, of course). I was hardly dissappointed. It was hard for me not to smile, well, grin like a fool, as the houselights dimmed, but not the beautiful summer evening around the theater. I was sitting close to the stage and orchestra pit, and I'm willing to forgive Andrea Quinn for all her quick tempi after the sparkling manner in which she conducted the overture. It was a rare and lovely treat for me to listen to that heavenly Mendelssohn, gaze out at the glowing sky, clouds and pine trees, and wax nostalgic. My eyes kept returning to Quinn, though, and the show she was putting on in the pit. She looked to be practically singing and bouncing along with the orchestra, and I'd like to think that the delight I saw wasn't just a projection of my own feelings. Whatever the reason, she certainly coaxed more brightness and charm from the NYCB orchestra than has been their wont. Now she just needs realize that dancers need a chance to inhabit the music, not just heroically keep pace with it. Perhaps she is already realizing this -- although this Dream was appropriately sprightly (and spritely), it wasn't quite as neurotically fast as her first Dream at the State Theater. I think the tempi could've been twice as fast, and Ashley Bouder would've still gambolled through the tricky Butterfly role just as easily as she did Friday. When I saw her debut the previous week at the State Theater, she seemed too much in her grand ballerina mode, which she used so exquisitely in Firebird. At SPAC she was more relaxed and playful, especially, and appropriately, with Albert Evans' magnificent Puck. But playful doesn't mean slapdash, and there was nothing casual about Bouder's large and powerfully shaped dancing. As much as her happy smile I'll remember the perfect diamond her legs and feet made, hovering for a second or an eternity in a pas de chat. Another interesting difference between SPAC and the State Theater (besides the pine trees, fireflies, barn swallows and citronella candles) is in the effect all that evening sunlight has on the staging of Dream -- the many blackouts aren't quite so black, so we get to see Titania and Oberon and their entourages posing quite prettily with their backs turned to Bottom and friends in the first scene, and all the entrances, exits and scenery changes we'd otherwise. Well, losing some magic to gain other magic is a fair trade, in my book. Although I'm always saddened to miss an opportunity to see The Divine Wendy, it's hard to be terribly disappointed when she's replaced with Maria Kowroski, she of the mile-long legs. I didn't have a chance to see Kowroski much this past season at the State Theater, and it is gratifying to see how strongly she's pulled herself together as a dancer, both technically and psychologically. Blessed with a magnificently long and dramatically shaped physique (you'd probably need two French Curves to draw her legs, and sometimes I think even her fingernails must be hyperextended), Kowroski's center, at last, holds it all together. You don't see only the amazing extremities, but their strong and steady center in her spine and back. Kowroski certainly knows her strengths -- her legs are loaded for bear, and she's not afraid to use them. Her fearless plunges into arabesque penchee are among the Seven Wonders of the ballet world, much as were Suzanne Farrell's before her, and perhaps this is one reason she's often accused of imitating Farrell, a charge I always answer with, "So what?" Frankly, I don't think she consciously mimics Farrell -- she just has some, and only some, of the gifts Farrell had, and an ability to aquit herself well in Farrell's inimitable repertory. And if she is, or was, imitating Farrell, well, God bless her. She could have chosen a lot worse as an ideal, and her very success shows the wisdom of her choice. Besides, she's well on her way to being the first Maria Kowroski. I would very much like to see some of the drama and excitement of her dancing reflected in her visage -- she tried mightily, and commendably, to act as Titania, but mobility of limb comes much more readily to her. Regardless of such quibbles, Kowroski was appropriately grand in her long adagio with her Cavalier, Charles Askegard, a Jolly Green Giant if ever there was one. I've called this pair NYCB's Twin Towers before; they're each quite wonderful alone, but together they're just plain gorgeous. (Of course, any NYCB pairing which includes Askegard will always be more than the sum of its parts.) Kowroski was also quite appropriately grand and loving in what has become my favorite part of the ballet, after the Sherzo (well, after the Scherzo and the Divertissement pas de deux), Titania's love duet with Bottom (James Fayette) and his donkey head. What I find more and more moving about this duet is how Titania, rather than being diminished by her magic-induced love for Bottom, becomes ennobled by it. It would have been so easy for Balanchine to turn this duet into a cruel slapstick, but while the duet's not without humor, the jokes are quite gentle. I'm always struck by Titania's kindness and radiance here, and, while her love is clearly misguided, it's no less genuine for being so. A well-danced Titania really glows here (I remember Kyra Nichols glowing up a storm in this duet at NYCB's opening night gala last November). And, again, here Kowroski used her gifts with appropriate grandeur, particularly in her backwards flutters on pointe while leading Bottom with a handful of grass, or in the utterly unreserved way she threw herself against him in that beautiful, comic fall backwards that prompts Bottom to favor the audience with his bemused donkey-glance. Having seen Damian Woeztel phone in many performances over the past few years (usually a very long-distance call), it's hard for me to give him the benefit of the doubt when he turns in a flat performance, as he did Friday. Is he having an off night? Is his heart just not in it? Am I just seeing what I expect to see with him? His acting was acceptable, but he didn't take over the role the way Peter Boal or even Benjamin Millepied does. Moreover, in the Scherzo Woetzel's batterie seemed sketchy, almost an afterthought. I'm used to Woetzel's anomie affect his acting and partnering, but never before his solo dancing. Sure, Woetzel is one of the best turners of our time, and he was appropriately brilliant in his pirouettes, but those magnificent, skimming solos left me cold. I was happier watching Bouder's indefatigable Butterfly share the stage with him, or should I say, steal it? Albert Evans' Puck was, as usual, brilliant, and he certainly owns this role -- it's hard to see anyone else do it these days. Unlike Woetzel (and Nilas Martins, for that matter), Evans looks thrilled to be onstage. Am I the only viewer who cringes at the fact that the most important role in the repertory of this wonderful black dancer has him grimacing and popping his eyes at his foolish, if amusing, mistake with the magic flower, and then being helped offstage with a kick in the derriere by Oberon? It's not that Evans' Puck is a Step'n Fetchit minstrel-show character (although there are certainly echoes there), and it's not the role, or Evans' performance I find offensive, but the fact that Evans could be an equally brilliant Apollo, and he'll certainly never get the chance (but we'll get to see Nilas Martins sleepwalk through it forever, it seems). The high point of the evening was getting to see Monique Meunier again, in all her glory. She's a natural Hippolyta -- a big gal with a big jump, and a strong and compelling attack. I found her grand jetes breathtaking as watching a 747 take off over one's head. But I also saw here a certain tightness that sometimes sneaks into her dancing (it wasn't there at all in the amazing Walpurgisnacht Ballet I saw her dance in New York), particularly in her otherwise commendable double fouettes. Meunier is a hungry dancer (no, I'm not talking about her physique here!). She devours the stage, and even the distance to the audience. It's not just that she is large, but that she dances large, and she just seems closer to us than many others, and, I think, she craves that connection. It's no wonder audiences adore her. Would that the Powers That Be at NYCB felt the same way. I will say that I've seen Meunier more svelte, and her Hippolyta costumes didn't help (especially the Smurf hat and "armor"). Perhaps Martins has been sitting her down because of this. I do think there's nothing wrong with Meunier's dancing, either her physique or the occasional nervous tightness, that couldn't be cured by a vote of confidence, and a lot of performing. Dear God, we get to see Yvonne Bourree attempting to exorcise her own personal demons night after night at the State Theater, why not let Meunier set herself to rights onstage? Audiences love her, and, for that matter, I do, too. There was a time when I thought Kathleen Tracey the more interesting of the Tracey sisters, particularly after her dreamy and poetic performances in Emeralds years ago. Perhaps it was after recovering from the freak accident in which she broke her arm here at SPAC in that ever-risky ballet, Union Jack, that she seemd to subsume herself into a kind of aggressive competence. She was strong, versatile and possesed of the highest-voltage stage smile since Eleanor d'Antuono, yet she often seemed to be phoning it in, albeit from not quite as long a distance as Woetzal. Yet since Christopher Wheeldon used Tracey for the wonderful stage-manager role in Variations Serieuses (her impromptu dance with the four broom-wielding stagehands is a gem), she seems to have woken from her slumber. In Dream, her Helena is a delight, a gal who's spent so much of her life weeping and pining away one suspects that, on some level, she actually enjoys it. I've written before about the roseate glow which seems to surround Pascale van Kipnis, who danced Hermia whenever she sets foot onstage. Doubtless the only reason we didn't see robins and swallows alight on her shoulders at SPAC, and squirrels, rabbits and other woodland creatures emerge from the shadows to bask in her presence is because, shy creatures that they are, the preferred to confine their attentions to the wings. Either that, or they couldn't get their union cards. In any event, she and Kipling Houston as Lysander (it is great he has this gig to supplement his Social Security) were delightfully sappy in their first scenes, with so much mimed billing and cooing I, for one, began to look forward to their imminent discomfiture with more than a little evil delight. The growing horror and misery on Van Kipnis' face, as her Hermia realized that Lysander was now in love with Helena, was both moving and comic, and she turned her solo into a small masterpiece, a vignette of a woman who can't quite believe that her world has crumbled in front of her eyes. It was so clear that this Hermia was desperately certain that if only she reached out in the right direction she could touch her former life and bring it back, and her grief at the solo's end, when this was clearly not the case, became all the more poignant. There are some women whom the camera simply loves. Clearly, the stage loves Van Kipnis, if, currently, the same can't be said about NYCB's management. It's a tribute to Van Kipnis' grace and professionalism that, unlike Hermia, she never gives less than her all, and never gives way to despair. Last, but certainly not least, Darci Kistler danced the second-act divertissment she'd been scheduled to give a week previously in New York, but had cancelled. Although Wendy Whelan is indeed heart-stoppingly magnificent in this role, Kistler brought her own brand of, yes, radiance (there was a lot to go around on Friday, it seems). Like City Ballet's other senior ballerina, Kyra Nichols, Kistler has the gift of living in the interstices of steps and music. I loved the many subtle nuances of movement and hints of meaning in her performance, as well as her marked joy. This is a dance with many seemingly-endless promenades and balances, and Kistler was always perfectly centered and still, even at the breathtaking teeter-totter conclusion. She was ably partnered by Nilas Martins who, I believe, smiled once. Such things are worth noting.

When I was a kid I collected comic books because I was enthralled by the exploits of men and women in tights who could defy gravity. Clearly, for me, little has changed.

Real chaos is simply when the power fails on the hottest day in summer and you're in the subway -- no air, no light, no escalators -- or on the street -- no traffic lights, honking horns, cars making U-turns in the middle of a street or going onto the sidewalk because the cops are all on strike. C'mon, Alexandra. You can't blame all of that on Peter Martins. We all know it was all Lindsay's fault, anyway.

Four weeks at SPAC HAS disappeared for 20 years now. But we have three weeks. I'll take it. Unfortunately, it's not Martins' fault that City Ballet is only at Saratoga for three weeks, but a Saratoga Performing Arts Center management that couldn't sell ice in the Sahara. I was gratified to see decent-sized crowds on Friday and Saturday night, though, and perhaps the tide is turning.

There could be worse models than the Joffrey when Robert Joffrey was running it. Joffrey collected interesting, historical ballets just as others might collect Old Masters. Arpino created the modern, with-it stuff. It made for a company with a distinctly split personality, yet I think it was very successful at what it did. NYCB is fortunate in that it already has several wings of Old Masters in its repertory.

One of my wishes is to see "Sylphides" performed as a leotard ballet. You do know that NYCB did that in the early seventies, I think. It wasn't a great success, I believe, at least with the critics. I remember this used to be a "signature" ABT ballet, and they used to do a lovely job with it. I would be a little apprehensive about seeing them do it today.

Oh, how could I have forgotten? Bathilde: Helene Alexopolous Hilarion: Sebastien Marcovicci Marcovicci would also play Hilarion with the alternate leads: Giselle: Yvonne Borree Albrecht: Nikolaj Hubbe [ 07-10-2001: Message edited by: Manhattnik ]

Oh, let's cast an NYCB Giselle, shall we? Giselle: Miranda Weese Albrecht: Damian Woetzel Wilfred: Jared Angle Berthe: Deanna McBrearty Duke of Courland: Albert Evans Peasant Pas: Tom Gold and Janie Taylor Myrtha: Monique Meunier Moyna: Pascal van Kipnis Zulma: Jennifer Tinsley I'm sorry, I just had to....

As your writings on Bournonville show so well, Alexandra, it's awfully hard to get a ballet "back" once its tradition of being performed is broken. I am glad that NYCB's roots are so strong and deep in this city (Balanchine was very smart indeed to want a school before a company!), but ballet roots are always fragile. I shudder to think of a board that decides it needs to prove that it can dance Giselle as well as anyone!

What an interesting, and scary, topic. Despite what one might think of some of his decisions, Martins has done a commendable job of shepherding and husbanding the company. I'd like to think the board would appoint a director who understands the company's roots, and who won't try to turn it upside down. If this was a horserace, I'd put my money on Wheeldon right now. If he doesn't get the Royal Ballet instead. [ 07-09-2001: Message edited by: Manhattnik ]

It's interesting that NYCB makes it possible for people of limited means to attend frequently with the Fourth Ring Society, yet ABT decided to jack up the price of standing room from $14 or 15 to $20 last year. That's way more than even the Metropolitan Opera. I think someone at ABT decided it was horrible that standees in the orchestra might actually sneak into empty orchestra seats at the first intermission. Rather than trying to present more-intersting programs to sell out said empty seats, the ABT management seems to have decided to crack down on standees. A few years ago the Met ushers, doubtless on orders from On High, started getting very nasty about standees grabbing empty seats, when they'd been quite casual about it. Then last year the price jumped to, as Dale noted, the same as Family Circle seats. Clearly ABT doesn't want to encourage standees, who are the epitome of the dedicated but not rich ballet fan. Some audience-building effort!

Speaking of Denby, he also wrote in the beautiful and seminal "A Letter on New York City's Ballet," in the early fifties, after years abroad in Europe. I think it's important he didn't call it "A Letter on the New York City Ballet." Certainly in the sixties they were very much one and the same, and they remain so today, if perhaps to a lesser degree. It is one of the beauties of ballet, one which Denby always recognized, that in the hands of a proper genius, it can be adapted to the particular qualities of a given nationality. That's one reason I admire his essay on national styles -- he loves human diversity. I've never read any other writer compare how people walk with how they dance as well as Denby did, or even tackle the subject at all. I'm sure we've all pondered how balletic style and technique changed over the decades, how from Italian origins it became uniquely French, from French origins it became uniquely Danish and Russian, and from Russian origins, American. Of course this process wasn't as inevitable and pre-determined as the drift of continents or the historical dialectic, but rather nurtured and directed by artists of great genius like Bournonville, Petipa and Balanchine, who saw what was beautiful in their native or adopted lands, and made ballets that gloried in that beauty. It's no mere trick of style that he starts this essay with a long description of the energy and grandeur of the Manhattan landscape, and the traffic on Second Avenue, "where herds of vehicles go charging one way all day long disappearing into the sky like like on a prarie...." It is very hard to separate the city from the ballet, at least for this particular company. He defines the NYC style: Handsome the NYC way of dancing certainly is. Limpid, easy, large, open, bounding; calm in temper and steady in pulse; virtuoso in precision, in stamina, in rapidity. So honest, so fresh and modest the company looks in action. The company's stance, the bearing of the dancer's whole body in action is the most straightforward, the clearest I ever saw; it is the company's physical approach to the grand style -- not to the noble carriage but to the grand one. Simple and clear the look of shoulder and hip, the head, the elbow and the instep; unnervous the bodies deploy in the step, hold its shape in the air, return to balance with no strain, and redeploy without effort. Never was there so little mannerism in a company, or extravagance. None either of the becks and nods, the spurts and lags, the breathless stops and almost-didn't-make-it starts they cultivate in Paris, and cultivate so prettily. (On the analogy of painting the French go for texture, the Americans for drawing.) As clear as the shape of the step in the NYC style is its timing, its synchronization to the score at the start, at any powerful thrust it has, at its close. So the dancers dance unhurried, assured and ample. They achieve a continuity of line and a steadiness of impetus that is unique, and can brilliantly increase the power of it and the exhilirating speed to the point where it glitters like cut glass. The rhythmic power of the company is its real style. Some people claim that such dancing is mechanical. It seems quite the opposite to me, like a voluntary, a purely human attentiveness. I couldn't have said it better myself, or even a tenth as well. In a forum in which posters are frequently admonished to be positive, not intimidate others and to refrain from stepping on each other's toes, I've found certain elements of this thread to be quite distressingly negative, condescending and laced with anti-New-York bias, and I've stayed out of it until now. I find the very phrasing in which this "discussion" was initiated, with an admonition to New Yorkers to understand that the rest of the world isn't "monotheistic," clearly implying that New Yorkers are. (It's only back-pedalling, not clarification, to say , in effect, "I didn't mean all New Yorkers are monotheistic about Balanchine. I just meant that there is a perception that some New Yorkers are." Which is a bit like asking a man to address the perception that he's stopped beating his wife.) It is very easy to put words in the mouth of a straw man, but it does little to forward informed or even meaningful discourse. I am heartily sorry I contributed to starting this tread by innocently mentioning that I liked Daria Pavlenko's dancing a great deal. I find it quite unfortunate that Marc replied with a totally superfluous and unnecessary dig at Balanchine. Why on earth would anyone want to define a "true" dancer in terms of what he or she hates? Or a company? Or a human being? I imagine a "true" Kirov dancer would love Petipa and Vaganova. Must one hate something to be "true?" I think it's safe to say a "true" NYCB dancer loves Balanchine and Robbins, and maybe even Martins. Can it be said that "true" British dancers love Ashton these days, or "true" Danish dancers love Bournonville? Come to think of it, I suspect that if Ms. Pavlenko were to ever read the comment that was attributed to her by Marc, she'd be much, much happier to read that as a true Kirov dancer, she prefers Petipa. No less true than saying she "hates" Balanchine, but far less inflammatory and far less damaging both to civilized discourse here and, quite possibly, to Ms. Pavlenko's career. I also don't know why the writings of a writer like Denby should be labelled "partisan," any more or less than the writings of a Yuri Slonimsky, Erik Aschengreen, Clement Crisp, John Martin or Anna Kisselgoff. Critics, like other viewers, like what they like, and dislike what they dislike. As with defining "true believers" in terms of what they hate, calling a critic like Denby "partisan" yields far more heat than light, and, ultimately, isn't very useful. Every critic is "partisan," or none are. Either way, the term isn't very helpful. And I'd just like to say that however partisan, monotheistic, Balanchine-blinkered, provincial and close-minded New York audiences (or some percentage of the New York audience) may be, at least it has supported and cherished the works of its own local genius. It is thanks to the dedication and love of these much-maligned ballet-goers that we can even be having this discussion. However one might feel about the staging or casting of this ballet or that, the Balanchine repertory is extant, and likely to remain so for quite some time, thanks to the support of its audience. Can the same be said of the Bournonville repertory? The Ashton? I think the New Yorkers who go to City Ballet night after night, who know what they like and support it, should be praised to the heavens. The only group in ballet more unfairly maligned is ballet mothers.

I had no idea that Gary Chryst is black. I always thought he was hispanic. Whatever, he was a brilliant character dancer. I remember Lydia Abarca fondly, and I'll never forget a spectacular Corsaire pdd she did with Paul Russell (who hasn't been mentioned here yet) at one of DTH's mid-Seventies seasons at the State Theater. She often reminded me of Suzanne Farrell.

And never saccharine....

I've fixed it now. I think.

Since the Blair production was supposed to be after the Sergeyev production, which was after (some distance or other) the Petipa/Ivanov Swan Lake, I always assumed that pdd was Ivanov's. I really do miss that Blair/Ivanov fourth act.

OK, I know Coppelia's time has come and gone, and we've moved on to bigger and better things, but I hope I'll be forgiven for sharing with you all my very favorite production of Coppelia [sic], which has been playing every day this summer (and many summers before) at the corner of 9th Avenue and 48th Street. [ 07-07-2001: Message edited by: Manhattnik ]

Yeah, can you imagine if there were a King around? "Sonny, say hi to the new Mrs. Siegfried!"

I recall reading that there is a revisionist theory that Ivanov didn't, in fact, choreograph the "white acts" of Swan Lake, and that his contribution to the ballet was greatly exaggerated during the Soviet years to give more credit to a native Russian artist, rather than the effete French import, Petipa. I recall reading in Beaumont's Swan Lake book of contemporary newspaper accounts explaining that Ivanov had choreographed these acts because Petipa was indisposed at the time. It certainly sounds like a pretty well-documented historical fact to me. I would love to hear some details from anyone familiar with any attempts to downplay Ivanov's contribution to the ballet in recent years.