Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

volcanohunter

Senior Member
  • Posts

    5,626
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by volcanohunter

  1. I imagine that from a logistical point of view NYCB tours have always been easier and less expensive to mount, given that they don't involve transporting big sets and multiple changes of elaborate costumes. (I would also point out that Hughson's current company, the National Ballet of Canada, tours precious little, often just three performances annually in Ottawa, 280 miles from Toronto. I'm not saying he doesn't have experience planning tours, just that he hasn't overseen a lot of them over the past ten years.)
  2. On Tuesday, April 2nd, the Paris Opera Ballet will livestream Don Quixote, starting at 19:30 CET/1:30 pm Eastern. After that it will be available on demand for 7 days. It is scheduled to star Sae Eun Park and Paul Marque. The stream costs €14.90 to rent. It is included in Paris Opera Play subscriptions. https://play.operadeparis.fr/en/p/don-quixote-2024
  3. P.S. Evidently the severely slimmed-down program and QR code from the beginning of the season didn't go down well with audiences. A partial program with synopsis and cast list is back, though without rosters or lists of donors. I still think the full roster of dancers should be included.
  4. I'm sorry to read that this practice has reached the New York Philharmonic. In the provinces orchestras have been playing film scores and backup for aged rockers for decades. I had naively thought that the NYPhil had evaded pops programming.
  5. This run of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been hugely successful: 15 sold-out shows, with only standing room available. This despite the fact that tickets are expensive, and the ballet is on the long side and more dependent on scenic effects than choreography. The first act in particular drags, and, as is not infrequently the case with Christopher Wheeldon’s ballets, depends on the ability of dancers to insert meaning that isn’t always present in the choreography itself. Characters such as the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Duchess and the Cook are clearly drawn, but unfortunately I don’t think that’s true of Alice or the Knave, and in those cases the dancers have to do the work. To my mind, the Act 1 sequence of Alice shrinking and growing is too long, as is her variation in Act 2. The duets for Alice and the Knave are downright formulaic, and inevitably I found myself looking at something else: the nervous White Rabbit at the back of the stage, the flirtation of the Cook and the Executioner in the downstage left corner, even the musicians in the orchestra pit. I think I wasn’t alone, because I could hear the audience laughing in unison with me. Earlier Alices Jillian Vanstone, Sonia Rodriguez and Elena Lobsanova have all left the stage, and Miyoko Koyasu has been demoted to one of Alice’s sisters (and a whole bunch of other corps roles). So this run saw four new Alices, although I saw only Tirion Law on March 10 and 12. Law is an appealing dancer, she moves beautifully and shows real stamina, but at this point her acting looks like a few stock expressions – broad smile, wide-eyed amazement, furrowed brow and pout. This projects well, but there aren’t many nuances and undercurrents of complex feelings. She and Naoya Ebe had little chemistry. But when Law danced briefly with the Caterpillar, performed by her real-life husband Peng-Fei Jiang, then her eyes really sparkled. I thought Donald Thom was superb as the White Rabbit, not as nervy or physically extreme as Edward Watson had been, but an excellent and very detailed characterization with rapid dancing. Spencer Hack as the Duchess was a riot: hugely vivid and theatrical, particularly when lusting after Jiang’s sinuous Caterpillar in the trial scene. Points also to the crazed Cook of Jordana Daumec, Siphesihle November as the Fish Footman and especially Noah Parets as the Frog Footman. However, Ben Rudisin struggled a bit as the Mad Hatter. It was strange to find him more vivid as the Magician in the first scene than at his titular tea party, where he didn’t come across as especially mad, and where his tapping sometimes fell behind the music. During the trial scene he came across as more convincingly crazy, but on the 12th conductor David Briskin had to slow down the music considerably during Rudisin’s manège. Rudisin is very tall, much taller than Steven McRae. During his entrance from under his little proscenium, wearing his tall hat, Rudisin had to stoop down to get from under it. But I don’t believe that tall dancers can’t tap. Rudisin isn’t as tall as Tommy Tune. Svetlana Lunkina as the Queen of Hearts dove into her role with relish. Her character appears only fleetingly in the first two acts, but when she was rolled out on stage in the third act in her enormous red dress/armor, the expression on her face seemed to announce to the audience that now the real fun would begin. I, too, am puzzled by the replacement of one of the Queen’s male flunkies with a female dressed differently, not least because the parody of the Rose Adage becomes less obvious. She was a sort of no-nonsense woman who would volunteer first, while the three men cowered with quaking knees. In other words, they were funny, and she was not. But why was she unafraid of the Queen when the other women of the court were peering fearfully from behind hedges? Lunkina is not as tall as Zenaida Yanowsky, who was too tall ever to have danced Princess Aurora. So there are no height jokes, and Lunkina’s cavaliers were all tall. Nor is she short and dumpy as illustrations of the Queen of Hearts usually depict her. Lunkina is a genuine Princess Aurora, and the comedy of the tart adage stems from her frustration with the ineptitude of her partners and her particular brand of gleeful derangement. Although during the croquet game, she was menacing and elicited vocal sympathy from the audience for the pursued hedgehogs. The central scene of her interpretation comes in the variation at the beginning of the trial scene, which she invests with a wide range of dynamics and mercurial mood shifts, ranging from the way she stomps on pointe and pounds her fists, to her sexy little tango with the executioner. It’s a pity Lunkina doesn’t get to do more comedy, because she’s very game (not least the way she topples backward at the end) and very witty. And of course there was Rex Harrington as her King, hamming it up with obvious satisfaction.
  6. He's in his tenth season with the National Ballet of Canada, and as far as I know, at least up until Covid-19, the company was posting budget surpluses every year.
  7. The triple bill is proving to be a tough sell, especially with two mostly unknown properties on the program and the fact that people just shelled out for expensive tickets to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, often with multiple kids in tow. So the company is offering a 50% [!!!] discount with the code NIGHTOUT . Discount codes were quite common several seasons ago, but I can't recall a discount this steep.
  8. Isn't it true that Simone Messmer had a conversation with Helgi Tomasson about why he couldn't give her a principal contract when she joined the company? After all, Mathilde Froustey had been hired as a principal even though she hadn't held a comparable rank in Paris, so Messmer had hoped for the same. I also remember that Sascha Radetsky left ABT to dance as a principal in Amsterdam, but when he returned to New York it was once again as a soloist, and that's the rank with which he retired. Mukhamedov is now in her early thirties, so the window for moving to another company to dance as a principal is closing. That's not to say that she couldn't dance for another ten years. And there have been dancers promoted to principal in their late thirties. But another company may be wary of hiring a dancer her age with a history of injuries, especially when they have their own up-and-comers rising through the ranks.
  9. Stafford went all in with Mira Nadon, hiring her at 16 and promoting her to principal when she was 21, despite the fact that she had lost a year and a half of her young career to the pandemic shutdown. Of course, Nadon is also a once-in-a-generation dancer.
  10. Batterie isn't something invented by ballet dancers. There are lots of pas de bourrées and basic jetés in traditional dance, and also heel-clicking. I'm sure the cabriole and jeté battu existed before ballet began to codify them. Beated jumps won't always look the way that ballet dancers execute them, but those are differences in performing style, and I don't think ballet should have a monopoly on those steps.
  11. Apart from Eterna Iberia, which "balletic" pieces did the company perform? I am familiar with Eritaña, which includes lots of batterie, and this is native to Spanish dance, not an interpolation from ballet. (I realize it's a flamenco festival, but the artistic mandate of the National Ballet of Spain is broader than that.)
  12. Casting for the mixed bill on 20-24 March, featuring William Yong's UtopiVerse, Emma Portner's Islands and Serge Lifar's Suite en Blanc. UtopiVerse Lotus Koto Ishihara (March 20, 22 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) Tirion Law (March 21, 23 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) Leo Ben Rudisin (March 20, 22 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) Siphesihle November (March 21, 23 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) The Daemon Christopher Gerty (March 20, 22 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) Noah Parets (March 21, 23 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) The Undermined Emma Oulette islands Heather Ogden and Emma Ouellet (March 20, 23 at 7:30 pm) Alexandra MacDonald and Alexander Skinner (March 21 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) Hannah Galway and Jenna Savella (March 22 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) Suite en Blanc La Sieste Chelsy Meiss, Tene Ward, Monika Haczkiewicz (March 20, 23 at 7:30 pm) Chelsy Meiss, Alexandra MacDonald, Calley Skalnik (Mar 21, 23 mat) Clare Peterson, Selene Guerrero-Trujillo, Monika Haczkiewicz (March 22 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) Thème Varié Brenna Flaherty, Donald Thom, Larkin Miller (March 20, 23 at 7:30 pm) Koto Ishihara, Naoya Ebe, Harrison James (March 21 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) Calley Skalnik, Peng-Fei Jiang, Larkin Miller (March 22 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) Sérénade Isabella Kinch (March 20, 21, 22, 23 at 7:30 pm) Brenna Flaherty (March 23, 24 at 2:00 pm) Presto (pas de cinq) Koto Ishihara (March 20, 23 at 7:30 pm) Jeannine Haller (March 21 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) Ayano Haneishi (March 22 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) Isaac Wright, David Preciado, Scott McKenzie, Noah Parets (March 20, 22, 23 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) Keaton Leier, Kota Sato, Josh Hall, Alexander Skinner (March 21 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) La Cigarette Calley Skalnik (March 20, 23 at 7:30 pm) Svetlana Lunkina (March 21, 22 at 7:30 pm/ March 23, 24 at 2:00 pm) Mazurka Spencer Hack (March 20 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) Siphesihle November (March 21 at 7:30 pm) Aidan Tully (March 22 at 7:30 pm) Naoya Ebe (March 23 at 7:30 pm) Harrison James (March 24 at 2:00 pm) Adage Svetlana Lunkina, Harrison James (March 20, 23 at 7:30 pm) Heather Ogden, Ben Rudisin (March 21 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) Emerson Dayton, Spencer Hack (March 22 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) La Flûte Svetlana Lunkina (March 20, 23 at 7:30 pm) Heather Ogden (March 21 at 7:30 pm/ March 23, 24 at 2:00 pm) Emerson Dayton (March 22 at 7:30 pm) Harrison James, Donald Thom, Larkin Miller (March 20, 23 at 7:30 pm) Ben Rudisin, Naoya Ebe, Harrison James (March 21 at 7:30 pm/March 23 at 2:00 pm) Spencer Hack, Peng-Fei Jiang, Larkin Miller (March 22 at 7:30 pm/March 24 at 2:00 pm) https://national.ballet.ca/Productions/New-Yong-Islands-Suite-en-Blanc
  13. I finally relented when the season went past The Nutcracker and Swan Lake and bought access to the final three streams for $120.
  14. Thank you for the explanation. I remember that Boston Ballet has purchased retired Royal Ballet productions in the past, and that these often look terrific decades after they were first used. Personally, I'm very pleased that they don't end up on a scrap heap and are rented by companies far beyond Boston.
  15. On Sunday, March 24th, at 18:30 CET/1:30 pm Eastern, the Vienna State Ballet will livestream the company premiere of John Neumeier's The Lady of the Camellias. The performance should be available on demand for 72 hours. The stream is free of charge, and registration requires only a name and email. The scheduled cast includes Ketevan Papava as Marguerite Gauthier, Timoor Afshar as Armand Duval, Hyo-Jung Kang as Manon Lescaut, Marcos Menha as Des Grieux, Ioanna Avraam as Prudence Duvernoy, Masayu Kimoto as Gaston Rieux and Elena Bottaro as Olympia. https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at/event/4dfb69e2-63b2-4be0-9ded-6af3a9a56fa1
  16. As was pointed out by Marsha Lederman in the Globe and Mail, Marco Goecke’s planned piece for the company is not, despite the advertising, a world premiere, but a retitled adaptation of his duet Nachtmerrie, which was first presented by the Stuttgart Ballet in 2021. https://www.seeingdance.com/stuttgart-ballet-new-works-210701/
  17. It will probably be altered beyond recognition, and not in a good way. Welch seems to like to tinker for the sake of tinkering. Granted, it's not especially recent, but his Bayadère is the most awful I've seen.
  18. Yes, it is, but for me it's curious that the new production of Ashton's Cinderella is a joint effort between the Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada, but Ballet West will show it before the latter.
  19. So far I'm not seeing any signs that the Australian Ballet is planning to stream performances in 2024. It may be that yet another company determined that the audience was too small to make the enterprise viable.
  20. Boosting this on the occasion of Antoinette Sibley's 85th birthday. Wishing her many happy returns of the day!
  21. It's behind a paywall, but Globe and Mail columnist Marsha Lederman has written about the Goecke commission. "The National Ballet of Canada’s winter season will kick off with what it is billing as the world premiere of a work by Mr. Goecke. The piece was originally developed for the Stuttgart Ballet in 2021 and is being adapted for the National Ballet under a new title, Morpheus’ Dream. "Artistic director Hope Muir told The Globe and Mail that the company does not condone Mr. Goecke’s behaviour during the incident in question, 'but feels he has since demonstrated sincere regret and apologized publicly,' she wrote. 'This and time to reflect has informed our decision.' "This project has been in discussion since 2021, and subsequently postponed twice. Mr. Goecke has previously worked with the National Ballet, which Ms. Muir called a very positive experience. 'He is an important and gifted choreographer and I feel that his work will enhance the repertoire of the National Ballet and should not be cancelled.'" (Hope Muir was not affiliated with the NBoC when Goecke worked with the company in the past.) Lederman, who was previously the paper's arts correspondent in Vancouver, noted that she was been on the receiving end of verbal "poop" as a result of her writing: "Not only from anonymous trolls – and not from choreographers, generally, as far as I know, but from people who hold what would be considered respectful positions (usually male, in the case of my own inbox). The sticks-and-stones theory of bullying has long been disproved – names can hurt, and you should see some of the names we are called. "True, it would be a lot worse to be on the receiving end of an actual feces-laden attack, but in this environment where the discourse has reached new, often expletive-filled misogynist and racist lows, verbal smears also deserve condemnation." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-two-things-you-wouldnt-expect-to-find-together-the-national-ballets/
  22. I stumbled upon some rehearsal photos from the Opéra-Comique and couldn't help but notice that in March Renavand will be performing in its production of Pulcinella, with choreography by Clairemarie Osta. https://www.opera-comique.com/fr/actualites/les-repetitions-de-pulcinella-l-heure-espagnole-en-images https://www.opera-comique.com/fr/spectacles/pulcinella-l-heure-espagnole
  23. Brief and belated impressions of week 4. I first saw Rotunda in October 2021. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. The circular images are trite. I hate the music. I don’t think any cast could save it for me. I did enjoy Concerto for Two Pianos. (Love Poulenc's music.) Perhaps the choreographic vocabulary wasn’t spectacularly original. Tiler Peck’s choreography for the central male seemed a little derivative of Hans van Manen, and the references to Spanish dancing each time castanets appeared in the score were a bit obvious. But I appreciated that the ballet was direct, joyful and unpretentious. Roman Mejia was brilliant, Mira Nadon was ravishing, and Emma Von Enck was dazzling. I hadn’t seen Odesa before and thought that the choreography was strikingly original and that Leonid Desyatnikov’s music was gorgeous. It was odd to see Joseph Gordon in the role of an abusive gangster, but I have to say I particularly admired Andrew Veyette and Tyler Angle, not just as partners, but as solo dancers. And full points to Von Enck for performing fouettés en dedans and en dehors. I’ve seen Opus 19/The Dreamer a lot over the years and am puzzled by the ballet’s longevity. For me, in any case, it’s aged badly, and on a program with ballets by Ratmansky and Balanchine, the choreography looked almost simplistic. Taylor Stanley danced it beautifully, and Unity Phelan was very fine, but I think the ballet’s central position in the company’s repertoire should be reevaluated. Alexei Ratmansky’s Solitude was immensely powerful. I was glad when Gia Kourlas’ review appeared the following day, because I could not have described or analyzed the choreography. But at every point it was interesting and layered and meaningful. I think we are seeing a new Ratmansky, who is more overtly personal and emotional. But he also steered clear of melodrama and spreading his guts all over the place, and the ballet is more powerful for it. Nadon tore up the stage with the amplitude of her dancing, and Gordon was both affecting and dignified in what was an incredibly long and taxing solo. I can only sympathize with Felix Valedon, who didn't get to dance the boy in the premiere, and also Theo Rochios, who did dance the part, but whose name wasn't printed in the program for the world premiere. No doubt that would have been a wonderful keepsake. Symphony in Three Movements is a favorite, although initially the dancing seemed a little underpowered. I did enjoy Isabella LaFreniere’s uninhibited energy – I always do, and I am a long-time fan of Adrian Danchig-Waring, whose dancing I find genuinely interesting, as well as having amplitude and clarity. I was only sorry that this and Rotunda were the only ballets I saw him dance. I would have liked to see him in Solitude. The Four Temperaments is among my very favorite ballets. For the most part, the themes were danced less than incisively, particularly the second theme on February 18th. Jules Mabie made a fine debut as Melancholic, but there’s still a way to go to reach Anthony Huxley’s stellar standard. Alston Macgill absolutely devoured the choreography. In Sanguinic, I liked Peter Walker better than his partner. Davide Riccardo’s debut as Phelgmatic was excellent, particularly in his second performance. I would just say that toward the end of the variation, when he performed a sequence of very high à la secondes, the rond de jambe was sacrificed in the process, and structurally it is more fundamental to the choreography than the extension. Nadon as Choleric was sensational, approaching goddess standard. I love Liebeslieder Walzer unequivocally, except, in this instance, the screechy soprano and wobbly mezzo. I enjoyed all the dancers. I think I liked LaFreniere more than others did, because I thought she caught the bend and lilt of the movement, and Sara Mearns somewhat less than others, because I thought her dancing verged on the inelegant. I would not have guessed that Indiana Woodward, Preston Chamblee and Veyette (can that really be?) were making debuts. I hadn’t seen Copland Dance Episodes before and thought it was terrific: engaging, inventive, bracing. I guess the thing with Justin Peck is that I have to like the music he selected. When it’s Copland or Martinů, I’m thrilled. Otherwise, his musical choices are a real obstacle for me. Among the dancers I particularly enjoyed the trio of Megan Fairchild, Ashley Laracey and Von Enck, and I thought that Miriam Miller held her own as the central woman. In Ballo della Regina Fairchild was admirable, although in terms of style and panache she was outdone by partner Gordon, and I am always a bit disappointed when the ballerina doesn’t perform fouettés en dedans at the end. But it’s a great piece, danced well by everyone, especially Mary Thomas MacKinnon.
  24. It's interesting that Chelsy Meiss is making her debut as the Queen of Hearts. Since she has a background in tap dancing, during the last run she danced the Mad Hatter, the first woman to do so.
  25. I don't enjoy Goecke's pieces. Watching his choreography makes me feel as though a hole is being drilled into my skull. Sorry, but that's the effect they have on me.
×
×
  • Create New...