Klavier

Equally sad I would imagine is the financial compensation dancers receive. I cannot imagine it being a particularly remunerative occupation. But that is perhaps a subject for another thread. (Has there been one?) Regarding letters to dancers, would anyone care to estimate how often dancers hear from their public? Are they deluged with fan mail, or is it usually a sporadic thing? And do dancers tend to treat a thoughtful letter as something special to them, or do they just toss most of their letters aside thinking, "Oh, God no, not another annoying fan!"

I don’t pretend to perceive some of the finer points that those of you with more experience bring to the forum. As I’ll always say, unless the dancing is just plain bad I’m likely to perceive it as being pretty good. And so yes, I can see that Sylve is a bit on the regal side compared to someone like Whelan, that Evans is a bit soft-looking (but to tell the truth, I found Jock Soto’s thick-waisted physique even less appealing). I got to the evening Mozartiana-In Vento-TP2 performance on 1/18 and the Stravinsky matinee on 1/20. For what it’s worth, my purely untrained reactions: Thursday: Mozartiana – mostly beautifully done. By coincidence, choice, or luck, I seem to see Wendy Whelan more than any other principal at NYCB, and I thought her Preghiera was simply and movingly done, and overcome the cringe factor I feel at Tchaikovsky’s overly sweet orchestration. Daniel Ulbricht appeared more elegant and restrained than I had ever seen him; whether this was due to better coaching or greater maturity I can’t say. Both Wendy and Nikolai Hübbe carried off their variations with aplomb. In the finale, Ulbricht’s height did put him at a disadvantage. This was not bothersome in the Gigue or when he brought out the little children, but against the two other adults the stage picture looked off. Maybe he’d be better set against a pairing like DeLuz and Fairchild. In Vento – I came looking forward to the other ballets but was more affected by this one. So I think was the audience, which seemed comparatively tepid in its reaction to Mozartiana. This was a strange, moving work, and I haven’t the slightest idea what it means. But it is one I’d see again. Millepied, Liang, and Kowroski were all splendid. The music had its weak spots as well as some beautiful ones. Tchaikovsky – Musically speaking, I have problems with this concerto, which I don’t consider anywhere near the level of the more popular first in Bb minor. The lengthy first movement in particular seems like a series of introductions to an event that never happens. And having a stronger background in music than dance, I was not thrilled by Susan Walters’s version of the solo part. She got most of the notes, but there was none of the Russian bravura I’d expect from a first-class virtuoso. It was a weak, dull performance, and I wonder how the dancers would have reacted to a more dominant pianist. I can’t fault any of the dancing I saw, but as I say I tend to see with my ears as much as my eyes. As for the conducting, the perhaps unfortunately named Mr. Briskin took tempos that really weren’t too brisk at all. I have played the Mozart variations in its original piano version for many years, and some of my tempos are faster than those I heard at NYCB. Saturday: Agon – To my mind, this score is an utter miracle, eternally inventive especially in rhythm and instrumentation, and a totally unified experience despite the fact it took Stravinsky three years off and on to write, and mixes tonal and serial elements. I’ve known it from score and recordings for at least 30 years (I particularly recommend David Atherton’s version if you can find it), but this was only the second time I’ve seen it danced. And miraculous as the music is, the counterpoint of Balanchine’s choreography only enhances the experience. In a strong cast, Wendy Whelan and Albert Evans stood out, but Theresa Reichlen and Sean Suozzi were both very good. In Sean’s Sarabande-Step solo, I sensed he might not have the sheer physical strength to carry this off 100%. But visually it was all very satisfying nonetheless. Mr. Karoui and his orchestra were okay but no more. Maybe more tomorrow on the other works as I’m running out of steam. Or maybe not. On the whole, though, this was one of the best afternoons I’ve spent at NYCB.

Is there a video of any kind available for either of these ballets? Thanks.

Other than that, what literary source do you have to support your interpretation? (I just found another thread on this topic under the "Sleeping Beauty" heading, and there are a couple of versions of the story given, but none suggesting the bluebird is "controlling" Florine or "menacing" her.)

I don't know about "all manner of concerti." There are a few - Stravinsky Violin, Prokofiev Violin 1, Tchaikovsky 2 (which I'll see for the first time later this week), the Mozart Symphonie Concertante, the three Mozarts used by Mark Morris come to mind. Are there many others, given the rich concerto repertoire? Nonetheless, there's a qualitative difference in my mind between even the instrumental soloist and the expressive power of the human voice. And I emphasize that my "theory" about operatic arias is nothing but speculation. I saw Morris's Dido on a double bill with his version of Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts recently, and while I thought the latter was appealingly done, the Purcell struck me as just odd, and not very satisfying.

I'm not trying to be contentious either (or rather, no more than usual), but some of the musical information offered above seems to me questionable. Like Helene, I can think of few 20-minute arias, but that could well be because an aria is often equivalent to a soliloquy in a play; it expresses a character's reactions to the action but doesn't as a rule advance the action. (Exceptions everywhere, of course: Eboli's O don fatale from Don Carlo comes immediately to mind.) Song cycles are indeed often unified in theme and some aspects of musical treatment, but they are not necessarily plotted works with clear beginnings, middles, and ends; again an exception would be Schumann's Frauen-Liebe und Leben. Nor do I necessarily accept the explanation that "the dancers simply cannot sustain motion for as long as the singer can sustain his voice, with the result that the dancer has to perform four different steps in the time that the singer holds a single note." Many arias are of course slow with long sustained vocal lines, but by no means all, and even while the singer is holding a high note there can be a lot of subsidiary activity in the orchestra. My surmise for why opera arias are not usually set to ballet is different, and comes simply to the fact that both the ballerina and the diva create powerful holds on audience members. When a great dancer is doing the Rose Adagio or second movement of Symphony in C, she holds the spectators' attentions undividedly. Likewise when a great soprano is singing Un bel di or Casta diva. There can be no competition or distractions; both aria and dance are too powerful emotionally to hold the stage simultaneously. I did read that last year Nilas Martins did something with a set of Puccini arias. Did anyone see it? Oh - and by the way, I love Erwartung. Not to mention Meistersinger and Götterdämmerung, all four hours of each of them. You guys don't know what you're missing.

You're bringing back memories of my New Jersey commutes, and a tangential reminder of how if I missed the 10:10pm train to Freeport on Sunday night, it was nearly an hour wait in Penn Station back in the day when the entire building was a smoking section, and there was no place to sit. What we do to see great art! This provides a very good explanation for why so many people from the suburbs drive into the city.

Unless there's a wholly different version of the story, I have to question that synopsis. In the version I know, the Bluebird is a young king in love with Florine; the evil queen her stepmother has had him transformed into a bluebird for seven years in revenge for his refusal to marry the queen's ugly daughter, and has had Florine imprisoned in a tower. The "little hand to the ear gestures" by Florine are more likely her listening to his song as they lament her imprisonment and his metamorphosis. When the queen finds out the lovers have been communicating, she has the bird's tree festooned with daggers and razors for him to cut his feet. Needless to say, after unimaginable tribulations for all concerned good triumphs at the end and Truitonne, the ugly daughter who looks like a trout (truite) is permanently transformed into a sow (truie). The same review quoted by Dale continues: "Ulbricht's Bluebird was certainly on the right track and he caught a certain inhuman menace in the choreography... the emphasis was on the power downwards, which gave his dancing an unusual and powerful character." Again, unless an entirely different story from the one I know is being used, this sounds like a mischaracterization of the story's elegant young king. You may read the entire story here; it is a masterly French tale by Mme. D'Aulnoy: http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors...2/bluebird.html

Of course I'm reading this after having paid full price for Jan. 18 and 20M at the box office!

Aurora: First of all, don't despair. You will get into that performance. I guarantee it, or my name's not Klavier. (Well, actually my name is not Klavier, that's just my nom de poste. What parents would name their kid Klavier. But you get the picture.) Here's what you do. You go to the theater about two hours early, and bring as much cash as you intend to spend for a ticket. You first go to the box office and ask what's available for today. People quite often return tickets - this one is sick, the other one doesn't feel like going, there was an unexpected emergency, whatever - and if the tickets are returned to the box office, they're back in the available pool. If there's nothing just now, you tell the nice person at the box office that you'll try again a little later. And you do so in about 45 minutes. Your other hope, and your best hope, is to buy from someone selling at the door. Again, someone is sick, someone doesn't feel like going, whatever. Don't be surprised if there's no action until about 30-40 minutes before curtain. It's a waiting game, and you have to be patient. But look for someone holding up a ticket, and see if it's where you want to sit and if it's in your price range. If they seem to want list price, ask if they'll take $10 less. The old "Oh, that's too bad; I really can't afford that much" strategy sometimes works wonders. I have literally seen people give extra tickets away under those circumstances. If the seller is offering a discount from the start, of course take it. Whatever you do, don't deal with the scalpers. They're easy to recognize. There are always a couple working the outsides of the theaters and you'll hear them asking softly, "Any extra tickets?" They're trying to buy low and sell high, and it's illegal. Buy only from a private person who won't ask for more than face value. I can't guarantee you'll get in (remember my name's not Klavier), but unless it's a hot sold-out event your chances are usually good. Last Saturday I wanted to see Nutcracker and didn't have a ticket on going into the city. Nothing at the box office except partial view. So I kept an eye on the scalper and saw a guy trying to sell, but he wouldn't take the $30 the scalper offered. Klavier moves in, asks if the man was selling, it's a family of tourists and one of the kids doesn't want to go, tourist asks $70 for a seat in center orchestra row R, and I get a $110 ticket for less than face value for 3rd Ring. Perfect. (By the way, regarding the Sticky about tickets returned to the volunteer table: didn't work for me. Don't know if this practice has been discontinued, but the volunteer I spoke to had no clue about returned tickets. Of course my ultimate fantasy is to wait by the stage door two hours before curtain and throw myself at Jenifer Ringer's feet, saying "Dear Jenifer, I so wanted to see you today but the show is sold out!" - at which she will reply, "Dearest Klavier, I just happen to have a wonderful house seat I can't possibly use myself, because I'm dancing! Won't you please take it as my gift?" Well, it could happen.)

This was the performance I saw, too, and I by and large agree with Balanchinomane. I had never seen this work performed before by any company, and since Peter Martins's name was listed as the choreographer, I was a bit skeptical based on my previous experience with NYCB's rather marginal Swan Lake. I had nothing to fear, maybe because a lot of the choreography was still based on Petipa. The costumes and settings were thoroughly splendid, with the projections of the castle looking just like some of the chateaux one sees in the Loire Valley in France, and the backdrop for the final scene looking like the gardens at Versailles. Costumes were just dazzling, the silver suits in the finale being as gorgeous as the costumes for the fairies, garland dancers, and more were thoroughly lovely and the getups for Carabosse and her vermin were suitably vile without being over the top. A real contrast to the frankly terrible mise en scène of the first act to Martins's Swan Lake. I know there have been complaints about the cuts, but large-scale works like this (operas as well) were routinely cut in past decades, and I did not think the pacing on the whole injurious. The one exception was the Awakening Scene, which lacked amplitude. I don't need something as lengthy as the Awakening Scene from Wagner's Siegfried, but a bit more sense of struggle on the Prince's part before getting to the girl would have been more convincing. But I also have a full score of the ballet, and as far as I can tell, I don't see that there has been much left out of this episode. The mistake, I think, might have been in placing the intermission point after the Vision Scene rather than the Spell. Considering the present timings - 1.20 and .50 - it could have gone either way, and the Spell ends on a much more dramatic note, just right for a break. My interest flagged only during the Vision Scene, where I feel Tchaikovsky is dozing a bit too. (No doubt I'm in a minority about that. But I suppose my reason may be that the central adagio in this scene, with the cello solo, is melodically very close to an important theme in the slow movement of the 5th symphony which was written roughly about this time, and I find the treatment in the symphony far more interesting.) On to the performers. Almost everyone seemed just first-rate to me. I have seen Wendy Whelan often (I actually would have preferred Jenifer Ringer, but Saturday matinee better suited my schedule), and she is beyond superlative as a dancer. It is amazing how she keeps her balance during the Rose Adagio (Ringer's article in the past Playbill makes it clear this is every bit as hard as it looks). Yet no one would take Whelan for a girl of 16. Hübbe was fine in a rather thankless part. Jennie Somogyi, Merrill Ashley - both superb. Virtually all the secondary roles were done well - Sean Suozzi's lecherous cat (I would have never expected he could pull off something that comic), the jesters' trio led by Daniel Ulbricht in the kind of acrobatic romp he does with such panache, Stephen Hanna (whom I had never seen before) powerful as Gold, and the little tyke playing Red Riding Hood. No wolf had better cross this little lady! My only reservation was with Andrew Veyette's Bluebird. He looked a little wobbly at times, not as secure in his footwork as Megan Fairchild or Daniel Ulbricht. But the audience was certainly with him. Kaplow's tempos were mainly reasonable, but I felt he raced through the Diamond variation too roughly for Teresa Reichlin to keep up, and the Polonaise that introduces the wedding scene would have had greater gravity at a slower pace. Of the upcoming performances, the one I'd most want to see is Sterling Hyltin's debut on Thursday. Surely she would bring the girlish innocence that Wendy Whelan didn't quite capture. But as someone who lives in central Long Island and can't get to the city any time, I may have to skip this. Besides, tickets aren't exactly cheap, and seeing this more than once in close proximity may diminish some of the magic.

Stop right there, Damian! that's all you needed to say. :mellow:

We can already, carbro. The only problem is that it won't have the slightest effect on what happens at the State Theatre.

Both young women are very impressive, to my mind Scheller especially. Her dynamic Hippolyta at a Saturday matinee of MND this past May was one of the few elements that woke up an otherwise sleepy performance. NYCB has however promoted more than two soloists a year in past seasons. Are there likely to be more promotions in the near future, or is this it? And for whom would you vote if you could promote someone else? Speaking for myself, my votes would go to Sean Suozzi and Georgina Pazgoquin.

Or you can just Google "Damian Woetzel" and select "Images." I played parts of the NYCB Nutcracker DVD tonight, and I wouldn't say DW has a "large head." He's not the most attractive man, having a somewhat long neck and pointed chin, and he doesn't have the good looks and graceful build of (say) Philip Neal, but he looks decently proportioned and he partners Darci Kistler beautifully. Very good performances elsewhere on that DVD as well (I don't even mind Macaulay Culkin, who is young enough to still be cute), with Nilas Martins in Hot Chocolate better than I've seen him recently and Wendy Whelan a slinky Coffee. Tom Gold as CC then is no match for Danny today, but Gen Horiuchi is definitely my cup of Tea. Zinman's tempo for Waltz of the Flowers is too fast even back then in 1993. But seeing the DVD costs a lot less than going to the theater. (I haven't seen it live this season, but I'll try for this Saturday's matinee, as I'd like to see Wendy and Damian together, as well as Suehara as CC and sultry Gina Pazcoguin's Coffee.) One question about the DVD and NYCB's use of the music: I see they have moved the Sugarplum Fairy's solo with the celesta close to the start of Act Two, whereas in the original score it is the ballerina's solo variation following the PDD. This re-arrangement also means a brief variation for the danseur is omitted just after the PDD. Is this the way NYCB has always done it, and is this re-ordering typical in other companies?

When I wrote this -- -- I wasn't implying Woetzel should contemplate a second career as a basketball player. I was using the word "taller" in relative terms, in contrast to a smaller guy like Cornejo or DeLuz. By all means substitute Askegard for Woetzel if you prefer; it was just an example.

SZ, Thanks for your detailed and interesting reply. If indeed Martins favors conductors who move things along like a high-speed train and has hired MDs like Quinn and Karoui on such a basis, and if the rank-and-file dancers feel (understandably) unwilling to challenge the speeds set by these directors, this goes a long way towards explaining the current situation. I don't know enough about the internal politics at NYCB to know whether the dancers as a group have much say in artistic matters such as tempo; perhaps they do not. But some organizations are ruled more autocratically than others, and some organizations function more by consensus. From everything I've heard Balanchine was a benevolent dictator who generally made good artistic choices, and perhaps the company even today adheres more to the former of these two models whether or not good artistic choices are still being made. Is there, however, a correlation between a dancer's height and the speed at which he or she moves? I gather you prefer the taller dancer of the David Hallberg or Damian Woetzel type, but I take it from your post that you would not dismiss an artist of the caliber of Herman Cornejo. And yet not every dancer at NYCB is short; to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "some dancers are tall, some dancers are not tall. That is a matter that surely a dancer may be allowed to decide for him or herself." In fact I remember being amused last year at seeing young Ulbricht in the corps for Union Jack and thinking, he's so tiny compared to all the other guys. So the presence or not of short dancers per se in the company does not seem to me to explain or justify the prevalence of fast tempos. Wasn't the original Apollo, Serge Lifar, on the short side too, and wasn't Baryshnikov only about 5'7"? If Martins is indeed behind the tendency to hyperfast tempos, that would seem to relate more to some artistic insensitivity on his part than to a tendency to use shorter dancers.

In reading this discussion as well as some others concerning the present state of NYCB, I can't help thinking that to some here: 1) The conductors are unmusical speed freaks. "However, the newest guest conductor, Arturo Delmoni, at last night's perf..... should be spanked!!! Talk about hyper speed, hyper insanity! The entire ballet was conducted as if there was a fire quickly approaching... Much, much too fast, the entire night. Peter Martins, that's just cruel to your dancers and a painful strain on the musicians and audience. " "Karoui...ugh. Too fast, too fast, too punchy. " "And what a difference a day made.... partly because the conductor, Fletcher, who was an out of control speed freak the night before, was obviously told by somebody to tone it down so the dancers this afternoon could actually dance their parts instead of chasing after some run away train." (But why should a conductor of a major ballet company need to be told this at all?) 2) Some of the dancers aren't all that hot either: "But a few of the featured dancers seemed to think that their job was to “push the envelope,” alternately speeding up and stretching out the choreography so that it bent the musical phrasing nearly to the breaking point. This used to be the property of second-rate club singers trying to put their personal stamp on standards." "The level of a Student Performance is what I'd compare it to. I thought I was suddenly back at the Youth America Grand Prix and not watching the winning couple either." 3) Balanchine is no longer alive, which leads directly to 2) and probably to 1) as well. "NYCB is certainly not the same company it was in its hey days. Without Balanchine around.... how could it be as great and as exciting as it once was?.... " Of course, this could just be the reactions of a few posters and not all. But before you all gang up on me for exaggerating, is the present state of the company that bad? Or is some of this in the eye of the beholder? Compare: "Candy Cane Daniel Ulbricht didn’t need to jerk himself around so fast in those twisting turns inside the hoop. Tchaikovsky had the rhythm right" [implying a hard-sell approach without musicality, as I read the comment] "Daniel Ulbricht was also extremely impressive in Hoops on 11/29/06. He's toned down his hard-sell style, and what remains is the incredible talent, joy, musicality and charming youthful style with which he handles any challenging choreography." Well, it's one or the other, unless the dancer's behavior was radically different on two nights. As for the conductor issue, on which there seems even greater agreement than the state of the dancing, why are problems like this even tolerated in a company of this reputation? Are the dancers totally at the mercy of the speed demon du jour in the pit? Is there no overall control? I raised this issue on the Valery Gergiev thread, but received no direct answer to any of these questions: Comments, anyone? (as if there won't be )

Now, now. I lived for quite a while in the Hamptons. For us, Patchogue was the Big Apple. Seconded, Bart. Patchogue is only 20 minutes east of my home, and I do not consider it quite the boonies. I have occasionally travelled to Boston and back for a performance, 10 hours round trip, but I rarely travel long distances solely for performances. Coincidentally, I'm planning to do just that this Friday, and will report back about the experience unless I decide to skip it after all. I'm glad NYSusan enjoyed the Italian restaurant next to the Patchogue Theater, but if you head 3 miles south on Ocean Avenue, you'll find the Louis XVI, a restaurant I'd rank with virtually any temple de haute cuisine in Manhattan: http://www.louisxvi.org/ I've only eaten there once, but if Nilas Martins returns to Patchogue some day and any one from this forum wants to join me for dinner before or after, I'd go back there in a heartbeat. Boonies my rear end!

This was the same performance I got to! I can't add much except to say the whole afternoon was just thrilling. I was kind of hoping they'd do an encore for Revelations, but that wasn't to be. Maybe our audience wasn't enthusiastic enough? I thought we were cheering pretty well.

Agreed, they are. I certainly do. Some 20 years ago, when I was invited as musical director for a college production of a Broadway show, a few issues arose between the choreographer and me concerning tempos, and the director unhesitatingly sided with the choreographer, saying that it was she who set the tempos. (In this case, nothing was ever fast enough. Five shows into the limited run, she still complained about my tempos, and when I sped them up, the dancers complained to me that they couldn't keep up.) But I'm sure there have been discussions of conductors and tempos in the past on the forum, and I have to keep wondering why NYCB conductors keep taking tempos that are considered absurdly fast. Don't the dancers have any say as to what tempo they can keep up with, don't the artistic directors - former dancers themselves - take steps to ensure the dancers are not being overtaxed, and shouldn't a conductor for ballet have a sixth sense as to what speeds are going to keep the dancers moving comfortably along without busting their guts? I would think that would be among the first requisites for a ballet conductor, musical ability notwithstanding - just as among the first requisites for an accompanist to a singer is to breathe along with the singer and adopt tempos they can manage. As for Gergiev, I saw him a couple of years back conducting the Stravinsky Triple Bill at the Met, and his tempos for Sacre du Printemps were often absurdly fast. So are some of his tempos on his 1-CD Nutcracker recording. The playing on that recording is beautifully articulated and balanced, with all lines in the texture clearly audible, but some of the speeds are impossible. The Candy Cane/Dance Russe, for instance, speeds up to breakneck by the end. It is true that this dance ought to accelerate in the last 30 seconds or so - Tchaikovsky explicitly asks for this in the score - but Gergiev's tempo at the start is so rapid there's hardly anywhere to go from there. In any case, I'm in no hurry to buy a ticket to the City Ballet performance he is conducting.

I just got home, and felt much the same as carbro did about S+S, as if finally something was happening after a generally miscellaneous set of tidbits. For all the use of a theme, the evening had no shape or coherence, and was less satisfying than I had hoped for. I'm not entirely sure why, because recent galas I've attended at Boston and from San Francisco this past summer in NYC were both more exhilarating, even if both were considerably longer. It may be that I was frustrated by all the little excerpts, or that I was sitting farther from the stage than usual, or that most of the dancers were known quantities and I got little in the way of surprise. Or even the sense I got that the dancing was secondary to all the schmoozing going on among the deep-pocketed denizens of the First Ring. High points - Carousel, Purple, Stars and Stripes. Each had its very cool aspects: in Carousel Ms. Morgan, whose name I can't even find on the company website, and some of the choreography for the ensemble, especially the part where the boys shoulder the girls who are holding poles to become a human carousel. In Purple, which I had never seen before, more stimulating choreography than I would have expected from Peter Martins, and Janie Taylor, who has an almost otherworldly character and long blonde tresses that took a starring role in themselves. And Woetzel, Bouder, Hendrickson, Sousa, Balanchine, and the stars and stripes themselves to end the evening. Not so hot - the rest. Slicing up Slice to Sharp, Friandises, and NY Export didn't help; they all felt like incomplete snippets. Why not instead just perform several self-contained excerpts or short ballets? I've seen all three of these before complete and they all worked better. Still, I have to admit that NY Export struck me as dated and not top-drawer Robbins; he did better with West Side Story to a much better score. I felt neutral on Slice to Sharp tonight, though last year it seemed stronger than Glow-Stop did at ABT last month. Having seen Friandises complete twice, I felt more than before how clichéd the Christopher Rouse score was; as for the dancing, I'd rather see the finale that was danced tonight than most of the rest of it, and I'm pleased carbro had something good to say about Danny Ulbricht's performance. I have a soft spot for this dynamic young guy even though I've recognized his tendency to try harder than he needs to; in this respect he's the total opposite to Damien Woetzel. (In fact, Damien's performance at the Boston gala to a Robbins ballet of four Bach cello suite movements - sorry, I forget the name - was a highpoint of that evening because of its insouciance and understatement. I didn't know how the audience would react because there were a number of real hard hitters in the company, but it got a huge ovation.) Which leaves me with Walpurgisnacht, which struck me as instantly forgettable even though it's by Balanchine, and the new Middle Duet by Ratmansky. Between the low lighting that prevented me from seeing much of anything, and the incredibly monotonous music, this one just bored me. Too bad. Better programming above all might have made this a less tepid experience.

And I thought we were all supposed to be loud and obnoxious!

I share some of your feelings, but Romeo and Juliet is a universally beloved love story, having nothing to do with fairy queens, pirates, or bluebirds. It's a story that's very much in Americans' blood, being often taught in high schools and familiar to many Americans if only through West Side Story. I think it's fair to say that few other Shakespearean plots are as well-known in this country. And the Romeo I saw at ABT last season was danced, with no signs of vague embarrassment, by the very American David Hallberg. Certainly too NYCB has experience with story ballets like MND which also has its fairy king and queen, and it has done this work very well on the three occasions I've seen it there; not to mention George Balanchine's The Nutcracker , which is NYCB's bread and butter and as much a fairy tale as you can imagine. As for Romeo, I think NYCB could supply appropriate dancers for the character roles - like Mercutio, Tybalt, Benvolio - and could have some very convincing Juliets in dancers like Jenifer Ringer, Janie Taylor, Sterling Hyltin, or (based on what I've heard) Sara Mearns. I think they'd have more problems casting a dashing, young, romantic Romeo. Who could do it? maybe one of the Angle brothers? But I certainly agree with your "greater doubts" about Martins. It's not only that the Swan Lake was so bad, with those dreary sets and the overpreponderance of the Jester. (ABT's Swan Lake has its unconvincing moments, but its first act is a triumph next to NYCB's.) But what bothers me more is the way Martins seems always to be abusing his power by taking on such large choreographic responsibilities. Had he invited a guest choreographer or used/adapted an established version, I don't think there would be so many negative feelings here. Just my $.02. I also love the Prokofiev music.

First of all Center stage was several years ago now, he has grown alot since them. Secondly most of the dancers you mentioned above (except maybe Hallberg) are a fair bit older than Sasha. Hopefully he will mature into a soulful dancer because he certainly has the skill. I think that another young dancer to watch out for in the future is Jared Matthews. Though still in the corps he always stands out. I think he is a thinking dancer with alot of potential. Jared is terrific too. The issue raised by the original poster, however, was whether Sascha is ready at this point to move up to principal.