Manhattnik

I think Makarova was wonderful, particularly in the second act, where she used her incomparable balances to create a truly weightless and ethereal Giselle -- great technique at the service of great artistry. I've seen a few Giselles over the years I'd consider great, too, or at least touched with greatness. In recent years, Viviana Durante and Diana Vishneva have been stunning, particularly in the second act (let's face it, the second act is the heart of this ballet). Alonso was well past her prime when I saw her dance it with ABT and the National Ballet of Cuba, but even so she gave a fascinating look into an earlier interpretation. But of all the Giselles I've seen, Gelsey Kirkland's, when she was at the top of her form, was simply incomparable. And, yes, there's a film of her Giselle, blurry, hacked together and with a piano score dubbed in decades later. You can see it at the Dance Collection in NYC, and it's well worth a look or three.

I will have More to Say about the performances I saw this past week tonight (now that it's already the next week), but I just wanted to say, for those readers who missed the discussion last season of the hopping turns a la seconde in Fall, that Robbins originally had Baryshnikov doing them at the ballet's premiere (he led Fall with Patricia McBride -- now that was a balletic Odd Couple). In the second cast, Peter Martins left them out (Martins and Farrell the "second" cast? Those were the days!). So there's ample precedent for doing the turns, or not doing them. I always thought they looked pretty silly. [ 05-08-2001: Message edited by: Manhattnik ]

I think this is a case of "in ballet, as in life." There are lots of girlish women and womanly girls in real life, not just the ballet. I do think that there is something about ballet that tends to reward women for acting "girlish," rather than mature.

Most of the times I've left the theater early have more to do with fear or boredom with what's to come rather than delight at what's just past. I remember this Bejart concert, ages ago....

Well, if the first thing on the program was, say, Mozartiana with, say, Kyra, and the second was, say, Stabat Mater, and the third, say, Moves, well....

I think it could be like one of those dumb immunity challenges on "Survivor." The last ballerina still holding a balance wins a bye into the next week, or whatever.

I see there have been some changes made here lately. Sorry I've been away so long, but I'll try to make up for it. ABT's opening-night gala at the Met started at the Ungodly hour of 6:30 pm (well, more like 6:45), but at least it let out at a decent hour -- 8:30. So it was short and mostly sweet, although the programming was bizarre, even for a gala. Started with the corps dancing Ben Stevenson's choreography for the big ballroom waltz in Prokofiev's Cinderella. If there's a better soporific in this world than Stevenson's choreography, I'd sure like to know about it. Then came the NY premiere of Paul Taylor's Black Tuesday. I particularly liked this, and thought the dancers all looked great, especially Erica Cornejo in a long, despairing solo. It's one of Taylor's cheery overlays on a rather morbid theme. We have ragged and filthily clad ragamuffins gamely prancing away to some of Tin Pan Alley's more inane ditties about the Depression, said dancing only occasinally breaking into a true and realistic despair until Ethan Steifel's wonderful solo to the not-at-all cheery "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" After a brief intermission, we had a rather dismembered Tchaikovsky section, with various solos ripped bodily out of, not just their ballets, but even the pas de deux where they belong. We had three, count 'em three, Auroras! The section started with the coda from the prologue to Sleeping Beauty. Not much to see here, except Shelkanova looked lovelier than ever, the new soloist whose name escapes me looks petite, gamine and promising, and Gillian Murphy was a very affectless Lilac (for all of the 3 seconds she danced). Then we had (I may get the order confused -- forgive me), Carreno dancing the solo from the Black Swan pdd. He looked noble and romantic, as usual. He didn't finish his double tours with quite the precision he often shows (double-tours were iffy all night long, I thought), but made up for it with some beautiful double revoltades to the knee. Then Amanda McKerrow danced the solo from Balanchine's Tchaikovsky pdd. She's a lovely dancer in many ways, but she HAS to stop the mugging, already. Corella was his usual self (that is, bouyant, exuberant and flashy) in Desire's solo from the Sleeping Beauty pdd. Paloma Herrera tried mightily to invoke the image of a court surrounding her dancing Aurora's Act I SB solo, and it was nice to see her really inside of a role, rather than off in the limbo she often seems to inhabit. Maxim Belotserkovsky did a decent job with the man's solo from Tchai Pas, but seemed to have caught Carreno's iffy landings from double tours (even Corella wasn't immune). Ashley Tuttle was perfectly cast in the Sugar Plum Fairy's solo from Nutcracker, as she often seems to aspire to being a ballerina on a music box. Susan Jaffe smiled a lot at every corner of the state, it seemed in Aurora's Act III solo, and Irina Dvorovenko glared and simmered her way through a Black Swan solo that wasn't quite up to her best standards (she had a Moment recovering from a renverse that didn't quite end up as she'd planned, I think). Julie Kent was ravishing, ravishing, ravishing in the White Swan pdd with Robert Hill. I think she's entering her stride as a ballerina, except I don't undertand why she reduces the battus at the end to near-invisibility. Nina Ananiashvili was, as one might expect, a lovely Aurora in the Rose Adagio, and seemed to remember at the end why she gets the big bucks, and pulled out an appropriately long balance, which, not surprisingly, brought the house down. Then we had Julio Bocca looking rather coarse in the man's solo from, I think, Nutcracker, and, of all things, the Act 1 waltz from Swan Lake, complete with Maypole (I guess it was almost the right day for it). All the leads returned for bows to the Apotheosis from Sleeping Beauty, and then we could go home. All those Tchaikovsky solos out of context really didn't work, although it was interesting to see which dancers just went out and danced, and which gamely tried to invoke a full-length ballet around themselves. I thought Black Tuesday bodes well for the season. It may not go down in the Taylor canon as a great work, but it's clear the company's dancers responded well to it.

The Royal thinks its hot stuff for this Bond tie-in? Let's not forget that NYCB has Barbie! Anyway... As a related topic, can anyone think up a good James Bond ballet? Think of it. Sex, violence and special effects. This should be his moment, balletically speaking. This is clearly the ballet James Canfield was born for. As for casting, who would be a good Bond? Maybe Sebastien Marcovicci. Or maybe I'd go back in time and cast George de la Pena. It is too early in the day to consider Pussy Galore.... [This message has been edited by Manhattnik (edited April 01, 2001).]

Why stop with animals? Ballet portrays any number of social/ethnic groups in inflattering manners, and it's high time it cleaned up its act. Wiccans everywhere must be horrendously offended at the unflattering portrayal of Madge as a "witch." Not to mention the nasty stereotype of "evil" sorcerers like Von Rothbart. I could go on about all those embarassing and uncorrect ethnic dances which must be cleansed from the repertory, but I'll just mention the most oppressed group of all -- aristocrats. When did you ever see a ballet which didn't portray nobles as a bunch of overprivileged, overdressed fops with nothing better to do than leer at peasant girls and drink interminable toasts to each other?

The documentary on Isabel Fokine, "Fighting over Fokine," (I think that's the name) which was recently shown several times on Bravo (and resurfaces from time to time) shows a performance by Alicia Markova from the fifties. Well worth a look, or several.

Interesting to read others' takes on these dancers. When the Kirov was at the Met in 99, I thought that while Dumchenko was a very fine Giselle, Vishneva was very special, especially her second act. I'm happy to read that Zhelonkina is doing so well lately -- her Peasant Pas during that visit were rough around the edges, to put it mildly.

Nice to know somebody still does the third movement of Western....

I never saw Danilova, but Van Hamel will always own Myrtha, as far as I'm concerned. The first time I saw Irina Dvorovenko she was dancing Myrtha, a couple of years ago, and I thought she was tremendous -- the epitome of the short, jumpy, angry Myrtha as opposed to the tall, queenly and angry Myrtha of Van Hamel.

I never saw Danilova, but Van Hamel will always own Myrtha, as far as I'm concerned. The first time I saw Irina Dvorovenko she was dancing Myrtha, a couple of years ago, and I thought she was tremendous -- the epitome of the short, jumpy, angry Myrtha as opposed to the tall, queenly and angry Myrtha of Van Hamel.

I hate to say it, but anything that happens in front of the footlights really is fair game. Stating opinions without reasons is bad form, but "unfair?" It's just bad expository writing. As for dancers' physiques, while I've come to agree that discussing such matters should be handled with a certain degree of sensitivity (I personally think now that I went over the top with some comments I made here ages ago about a wonderful Kirov dancer who never should've been cast as Aurora), I don't agree that subject is "unfair," or "off-limits." Of course, I recently slammed a poster here for a "review" which I found very unfair, so perhaps in the real world I'm not so sanguine in my defense of the First Amendment when it comes to criticism. I think maybe a better term for discussion is "appropriateness." Is it appropriate to review a small local company by the same standards as a bigger national or regional company? I'd say no (and I did so, quite vehemently, awhile back). Is it appropriate to comment on a dancer's physique? Yes, if it's relevant. Does niceness count when commenting? I think so, though I've sometimes crossed this line myself. Is it appropriate to bring things from outside of the performance into the review? It depends. If I were reviewing the opening night of the newly denuded Boston Ballet, I'd have a lot to say about things that happened outside of the footlights. Would it be appropriate to add a comment about a choreographer's marital difficulties to a review of a premiere? Probably not, but I can imagine circumstances where it might be.

I'm rather fond of the Elegie, and Suite No. 3, schizoid as it may be. A critic friend once suggested the Suite tells a story, and I tend to think that, in typical illusive and allusive Balanchine fashion, it does. I remember reading in Gelsey Kirkland's Dancing on My Grave that she refused to do the "Alonso" version of Theme, but insisted upon the version Balanchine had set on her, with the gargouillades. So I was quite surprised to see the video of one of her 1975 performances at the Dance Collection. No gargouillades. I recall seeing her do them back when, so perhaps she had a change of heart on the matter. Of course, these days the NYCB gals are so sketchy with them, they might as well not bother. Now when Merrill Ashley did it, that was another story.

How interesting that I should find this thread after posting about Gregory on the "who do you miss" thread. And McBride! What a strong, appealing and versatile artist. I should've mentioned her in that thread, too. McBride certainly owns Swanilda for me -- I've never seen another dancer come close. It was interesting to get so many takes on Gregory. I think she certainly did get lost in the shuffle of the Seventies and Eighties, as did Marianna Tcherkassky, another beautiful and gifted ABT ballerina. I don't recall Gregory and Godunov together, but I did think he looked smashing with Martine van Hamel. While tidying up a closet, I found a program from an old gala at the Met which lists Gregory as dancing the Corsaire pas with Peter Martins. I must've been there, yet I remember nothing of it. Oh well. Grizzled veterans of BA and aab will forgive me for bringing this up again, but since we're on the subject, I have to say I've never seen any other woman dance the killer solo from Grand Pas Classique while smoking a cigarette with quite the panache of Gregory.

Lavery was a very special dancer, wasn't he? I'll add a dancer who wasn't one of my favorites at the time -- Cynthia Gregory. I remember enjoying her technical strengths and almost pugnacious attitude, while thinking she was perhaps wanting in subtlety. Then a year or so ago I saw a fuzzy video of her dancing Aurora in ABT's Sleeping Beauty from the late Seventies (I think I never actually bothered to see her dance Aurora at the time), and I was absolutely blown away. She was great, probably the greatest Aurora I've seen, and with not a six o'clock penchee in sight. What had been thinking back then?

Leigh, regarding Mozartiana/Baiser, I was referring to their current incarnations, where Baiser predates Mozartiana by several years, maybe even a decade. I'm not familiar with their earlier existences to venture a guess as to how the echoes and reflections which are so striking today originally came about. I am certain it's no accident that both Baiser and Mozartiana use that striking image of the woman and man striking identical poses in 4th and then firing off pirouettes, his a beat after hers, as if they were both halves of the same person. Anyway, back to NYCB. I'd sorely missed Van Kipnis, and it was good to see her that season-ending Dances, although in one of the lesser roles. I hope her scarcity during the season had more to do with the pace of her recovery, rather than Martins' lessening interest in her. It did seem a year ago that Rutherford would certainly be a soloist by now, given her glowing work in ballets like Liebeslider, yet here she is still in the corps, and dancing leads much less frequently. I would not at all be surprised to see Jason Fowler promoted to soloist, and even beyond, if he continues to dance as he's been dancing. It's nice to see an up-and-coming guy at NYCB with Fowler's line and purity.

I think in general the company looked in pretty good shape. True there were the occasional ragged performances, but what do you expect with this behemoth of a season? I was gratified that the dancers could muster the energy to finish the season with Sunday's beautiful matinee. I will doubtless remember many more high points (Organon is certainly the low point!), but here are a few, in no particular order. Liebs, I certainly agree with you about Tracey and Boal in Baiser. It's a beautiful and strange ballet, and I never realized before how much it's a precursor to Mozartiana (there were also echoes of Scotch Symphony in places). Tracey is a generous dancer who strives to "give good weight" to the choreography, and, although I never would've imagined it before, in Baiser the dancer and the role really met. I liked it that she didn't "interpret" the role, but just danced it, and let the movement speak for itself. Boal was, of course, perfectly lyrical -- if anyone could've danced that role as well as Helgi, it's Peter. I found myself increasingly fond of Janie Taylor's dancing. She's obviously a favorite of Peter's -- she's got the kind of attack that Martins clearly seems to favor, and I do admire the way she seldom holds back. I loved her Dewdrop, and thought her performance in La Valse last Tuesday was magnificent. And she's abou the only reason to see Martins' Burleske. I don't think she can dance this way for an entire career, but I'm also looking forward to seeing how she'll mature. More when I'm a bit more awake.

Cargill, didn't Berman's lost, lamented costumes for Giselle have each of the Wilis in her own "national" folk-dance attire?

Cargill, didn't Berman's lost, lamented costumes for Giselle have each of the Wilis in her own "national" folk-dance attire?

I remember years ago being struck by Edwards while watching him in class, and later when he danced the lead in Opus 19. I thought he was tremendously gifted. What did happen to him?

Then Albrecht returns, teary-eyed, to Wilfred....

Then Albrecht returns, teary-eyed, to Wilfred....