volcanohunter

I asked about the bare legs. The company wanted the women to wear tights that matched their skin tones. However, since the wardrobe department couldn't find satisfactory matches, they were forced to go without. So despite the supposed feminist credentials of the production, the women ended up even more naked than usual. It looked bizarre, like an Ivanov/Ek mash-up. The corps men, meanwhile, wore identical stone-colored tights.

The ballet begins with a dimly lit prologue, as Odette and three friends are assaulted by Rothbart, although there is no indication of a spell or transformation.

I don't like to describe a production by talking about its designs, but these are awful: saccharine and gaudy. Yolanda Sonnabend in Disneyland. In childhood some of my girlfriends had white poster beds with ruffled gauzy pink canopies. Act 1 looked like that, albeit in shades of lilac and lavender.

Siegfried, oddly, makes his entrance to the most muted part of the music. The waltz (choreographed by Robert Binet, if I understood correctly) is frenetic and cluttered. Busy, busy, busy; frantic, frantic, frantic, like the grand allegro part of class on steroids. Except for a couple of bars toward the end, the ensemble doesn't dance together. It was exhausting to watch, though I admired Isaac Wright in particular. I'll say this: when I watched it a second time from the side orchestra, the group furthest downstage would obscure groups behind, so it seemed less frazzled simply because some of the choreography wasn't visible.

Accompanied by a hunting party, the Queen arrives with crossbow for Siegfried and instructions to take a wife, as usual. In order to dance the pas de trois, Benno and Siegfried's sisters don additional lilac feathers. (Why?!) The text is pretty much traditional, except for Benno's variation, which is set to the music Ashton used in his pas de quatre for the mens' variation. I don't remember the Bruhn production well enough to recall whether this variation came from there. I was sorry that the massive, ballooning skirt overwhelmed the batterie of the first variation. Also, the sisters' tiny tiaras looked out of proportion to everything else on stage. The little dance for the Queen's lady in waiting and Siegfried's tutor avoids the worst of ballet's hackneyed jokes about older people.

The final polonaise is better than the waltz. Bruhn's melancholy solo for Siegfried follows. The tutor suggests Siegfried cheer himself up by going hunting, although why someone in the late 19th century would do it with a crossbow is a mystery.

Act 2 is pretty much intact. The inky backdrop suggests a snowy valley on the other side of the lake, which confused me. We just saw a stage full of bare-legged women at the birthday party. Odette's mime is excluded, but her request that Siegfried not shoot her companions and his reply remain. The swans' entrance varies a bit: chugs for theme A and temps levés for theme B. Despite some odd rhythms, the production restores a traditional cygnet quartet, without Kudelka's unfortunate bourrées and pinwheel effects. The tutus are bulky, and there's the matter of the naked legs, but this is not enough to ruin it. Both Jurgita Dronina and Svetlana Lunkina were ravishing. During Lunkina's adage in particular you could hear a pin drop, and her coda is just about the best I have seen. (This is the fourth production of Swan Lake in which I've seen her.)

Act 3 is awful. It looks like a novelty store knockoff of the Venetian carnival. One of the supers is dressed like a unicorn. A unicorn! On the first night the queen nearly stumbled down the stairs in her enormous, encrusted, gold lamé skirt. There is a trio for Benno and the sisters to the Dance of the Clowns. Boring (uncut) music, boring choreography (by Christopher Stowell, I think), the sisters' skirts seem to have be mauled by attack dogs, and Benno's outfit appears to have been taken from Elton John's wardrobe. The prince gets to ditch his glittery mask almost immediately, but it doesn't make for a particularly dignified entrance. The waltz of the fiancées is a dance for six couples, during which each of the four candidates appears only briefly behind a mask, so there isn't even a semblance of interaction before Siegfried is asked to make his choice. Each woman briefly reveals her face to him as she curtsies in the inspection line, but that's it. Odile, wearing a mask that imitates Natalie Portman's eye makeup in Black Swan, and Rothbart, looking like a villain out of Pirates of the Caribbean, make their entrance and quickly run off.

The rejected candidates then present their dances, although Siegfried stays for only two-thirds of the first one, a Russian dance by a soloist and two demi-soloist women in Disney princess dresses. Genevieve Penn Nabity danced it with striking rapture, but it fell flat without her. The Neapolitan dance is probably the worst constructed, because in the unison allegro finale the soloist ends up completely overshadowed by her two male companions, who jump higher and whose commedia dell'arte costumes are louder. (Really, really loud.) There is no csárdás or mazurka. Instead there is a "French" dance for four women in large powdered wigs to the music Ashton used for the entrée of his pas de quatre. I think the choreographer was aiming for something like Balanchine's marzipans, but the counterpoint was insufficient and the costumes too similar to distinguish the soloist from the other three. Tina Pereira was genuinely fetching, but without her all four women had equal weight. Finally there is a Spanish dance for a soloist and two couples, with entirely typical choreography. The demi-soloist women have flashier dresses, but the soloist is distinguished by the enormous red flower she is forced to wear above her forehead.

The Black Swan pas de deux uses Bruhn's adage and variation for Odile to alternate music, and the traditional Siegfried variation and coda. This is the only choreography in the act that isn't immediately forgettable. I thought Dronina in particular sailed through the balances and tricky changes in position of the adage. During her opening-night fouettés she seemed on the verge of losing her balance half way through, but she crunched down on her ankle and somehow stayed on pointe to keep going.

Siegfried proposes marriage, the deception is revealed, Rothbart and Odile run under a giant piece of dark silk, from under which Rothbart reemerges in his lakeside appearance and then a frantic Odette. (Not sure about the logic of that one.)

Act 4 is a relief in comparison, although Siegfried's entrance is a poor use of the magnificent music, and at the end of it he kneels down before Rothbart, not Odette. (Huh?) I dislike the insertion of a reconciliation duet, because it slams the brakes down hard on the momentum of the music. (It's one thing I appreciated about the old Grigorovich production.) But as far as reconciliation duets go, Bruhn's is better than most in that it alludes to Act 2 - Odette's entrance and the adage. Both Dronina and Lunkina were heartbreaking.

In the final scene the choreography doesn't do a particularly effective job of using the swan corps to evoke turbulent waves, although I admired the commitment of Chelsy Meiss and Connor Hamilton. On opening night there was a partnering disaster when Harrison James failed to lower Dronina from an overhead lift into an arabesque, so she ended up slumped on the ground. Fortunately, she was okay, and this wasn't repeated at their next performance. Since 1967 NBoC productions of Swan Lake have ended with Odette mourning over a drowned Siegfried, and that bleak tradition continues.

Overall, it is an improvement over the previous production, but it's not great. At least there isn't overt misogyny anymore, or excessive tinkering with canonical choreography, or a man's absurd infatuation with a bird. But unfortunately the rot and dinge of Kudelka's production has been replaced with the tacky sap of Kain's. At the opening performance there were posted notices that the performance was being filmed for a documentary (so whoever didn't want to appear in it was advised to steer clear of the cameras). When Kain emerged for her bow, there was a cameraman in her face, his back to the audience and surely blocking the view of many. (He couldn't have stood in the wings? They couldn't have filmed this from a side ring?) It left an unpleasant feeling that film, not ballet, was what the evening was all about, as though the appearance of triumph was more important than an actual success.

P.S. If the company wants to adopt a policy of tights to match each dancer's skin tone, that's fine, but then it actually has to supply them. Standard shades are only approximations, and it turns out they don't actually match anyone's skin. And if dancers are applying makeup to their shoes (which didn't really work for those whose skin is paler than the peach satin), they should also think about what to do with the off-white canvas that remains after they've cut off the satin from the platform.

Perhaps it wasn't the best format, but I finally got around to the film on a plane. I found the photography ponderous, the dialogue pompous, and I thought Mike Faist was completely unconvincing as a gang leader. But that's always been the Achilles' heel of WSS.

I lasted 18 minutes, before I gave up during the first scene between Tony and Riff, primarily because I couldn't listen to Faist's thin, nasal voice for another second. Having to listen through headphones probably made it worse. 

More complete casting has been posted, including Benno and Siegfried's sisters: Celia (as in company founder Celia Franca) and Elizabeth (as in school founder Betty Oliphant). Kain is emphasizing the humanity of Odette and her companions, hence there are leading women rather than big swans and young women rather than cygnets. (This is in contrast to the previous production by James "More Swan!" Kudelka, in which Odette was not an enchanted maiden at all, but a bird.) This approach should suit Svetlana Lunkina especially well, since it's the one she takes when given the choice.

There is a "French dance" rather than a mazurka. (Is there something wrong with a "Polish dance"?) The soloists of the national dances are all women, so presumably these are the prospective fiancees.

From the old Bruhn production Kain is keeping the Black Swan adage set to the same music used by Burmeister, Nureyev in Vienna and by Balanchine in the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, and Odile's variation, again to the same music as used by Burmeister, Nureyev in Vienna and Grigorovich.

https://national.ballet.ca/Productions/Programme/Casting/Swan-Lake

It was advice I was given informally when applying for a Russian visa. "If an American, born in the United States, speaks Russian too well, it's suspicious." Not that my Russian is spy-level, because it isn't, but it's true. Stand mute before a border guard and they see an stupid tourist and say nothing. If automatic civility kicks in and you say hello, then the questions and the super-close inspection of your passport begin.

These days, though, I'm sure the crossing can be seriously unpleasant. Some have told me they're afraid to make the attempt to leave the country, for fear of having their passports taken away at the border. I don't know whether this is actually happening, but I can understand the anxiety.

Interesting that she expects her post to be "banned" by authorities, rather than deleted by her.

Skorik's post doesn't specify whether she was entering or leaving, but Russia is just about the only country in my experience that asks more questions of people upon exiting than upon entering. Exit visas went the way of the Soviet Union, but evidently some habits die hard, and oddly this one extends to foreigners as well. The way Adrian Blake Mitchell described leaving Russia with Andrea Laššáková was quite terrifying, even though you'd think an American and a Slovak would be entitled to leave Russia whenever they pleased. Perhaps the border guards were suspicious because they couldn't imagine a Black man and a White woman traveling together. He deleted text messages that could be seen as anti-Russian, and pretended not to understand Russian well. (I've done that too.)

https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/arts/2022/04/07/two-ballet-dancers-recount-their-journey-fleeing-russia

Alberta Ballet is aiming for gender parity among choreographers. Its next season includes the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in Lila York's The Handmaid's Tale, a triple bill of ballets by Cathy Marston, Alysa Pires and Helen Pickett, and a full-length version of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Botero. On the men's side there is Edmund Stripe's Nutcracker, Complexions performing works by Dwight Rhoden and Christopher Anderson's production of Giselle. An earlier production of Giselle had been staged by a woman, but I suppose AD Anderson has to earn his keep.

Like many younger companies, Alberta Ballet was founded by a woman, Ruth Carse. And as with many other companies, all her successors have been men.

https://www.albertaballet.com/2022-23-season-line-up

Laura Fernandez on leaving Russia, her family's hell in Mariupol and how lack of exposure to contemporary repertoire has limited her career options. 

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/jun/08/ballet-star-laura-fernandez-on-fleeing-russia-and-starting-over-i-couldnt-discuss-the-war-any-more

4 hours ago, canbelto said:

Ok we get it. You don't like her. 

No, I think Kovalyova has obvious limitations and is frequently miscast. I base this on my first-hand experiences in the audience, and I'd be hard pressed to think of another company where a dancer would be permitted to flounder repeatedly in problematic roles as she has.

There are other women at the Bolshoi I like a whole lot less.

44 minutes ago, Drew said:

gather you feel that this is still how Kovalyova dances today, but I am still  a bit wary of citing videos from much older performances to establish where a dancer is.  Or at least I think the date of the video should be noted. All of us have seen lots of growth in many young dancers especially over the course of 3 1/2 years. Youtube videos are often videos of debuts which aggravates the problem.

I don't think I saw this particular performance of Etudes, but I saw one very much like it. By my count it was Kovalyova's seventh performance of the ballet, and she fell off pointe repeatedly in the variation and in the adagio section. I think I last saw her in January 2020, when she was performing Mireille de Poitiers in Flames of Paris. There the variation ends with a diagonal of hops, much simpler than the hops in Etudes because the pelvis doesn’t have to change position, and she fell off pointe four times in the span of about 10 seconds. I also saw her fall off pointe in Symphony in C, although the second time I saw her she was less shaky than she had been in her debut, when I thought her quaking ankle would buckle during the slow sequence of fouettés into arabesque with the pliés on pointe. naomikage's experience is more recent, which suggests this problem hasn't gone away.

I was never tempted to boo Kovalyova (as I was in the case of one of her older colleagues) because I blame management for casting her in ballets she cannot execute. If a dancer can't jump, she shouldn't do La Sylphide. If she cannot turn, she shouldn't do Don Quixote. And Kovalyova should never be asked to hop on pointe or have to let go of her partner’s hand during a balance. After that awful Etudes, though, I was infuriated and left the auditorium as soon as the curtain fell. Ahead of me in the corridor I saw Vaziev, who'd bolted even sooner, and I was sorely tempted to run after him, kick him in the shins and demand to know how he could permit such a disgraceful display on the Bolshoi stage before a paying audience.

So y'all will have to pardon me for not checking up on Kovalyova's progress. I've had quite enough already.

Well, obviously it was the West that forced Russian companies to go chasing after a bunch of inferior Guillem imitators: Zakharova, then better yet Somova, followed by Kovalyova and Sergeyenkova after that, so that Russian ballet ultimately reached a state of total discombobulation. And it was the West that forced first the Mariinsky and then the Bolshoi to hire Makhar Vaziev to holler "leg higher!" nonstop at their dancers. 

I was so pleased to read that Bullion will return to do Mayerling. When the next season was announced, it seemed absurd to me that the ballet was programmed after the retirement of its most obvious interpreter. It's a brutal undertaking, so I wish him the strength to endure it!

I think he's kidding himself if he thinks the wings won't be packed with colleagues for his final performance. 

Although next week he has another performance as Petit's Quasimodo with the Asami Maki Ballet in Tokyo.

https://www.ambt.jp/pf-notredame2022/

In anticipation of Hans van Manen's 90th birthday in July, the Dutch National Ballet is presenting a festival of his works, featuring four programs performed by eight companies. This behind-the-scenes video includes sound bites from Floor Eimers, James Stout, Anna Tsygankova, Olga Smirnova and Constantine Allen, and Van Manen himself is admirably spry.

I have to reinterate that this is not the standard of a principal dancer. Makhar Vaziev has brought the Bolshoi low.

I hope the Kennedy Center and other presenters use the opportunity to discover that the world's finest ballet does not consist of hoary Soviet-era productions from St. Petersburg, but rather the Royal Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, the National Ballet of Japan, the Staatsballett Berlin, the Dutch National Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, the Stuttgart Ballet, the Hamburg Ballet, the Dresden Semperoper Ballet and many others, which are actually moving the art form forward.

Maria Kochetkova, Sebastian Haynes and Toon Lobach perform Paul Lightfoot's Selvportræt.

Americans probably wouldn't enjoy being referred to as "colonials," as in the old days. I doubt the State Ballet of Georgia would appreciate being seen as "substitute Russians." It's not a huge company, but it deserves to be perceived on its own merits, especially since Ananiashvili has leveraged her extensive professional contacts in the West, to build a wide-ranging repertoire.

Ananiashvili is Georgian, Parish and Frame are British, Fernandez is Swiss and Heine is American. To lump them all together as somehow representing "Russian" ballet is offensive, especially considering how much Georgian territory is currently occupied by Russia. Georgia has a very old and distinct dancing tradition, and ballerinas like Samadashvili and Surmava don't move like Russian-trained dancers. Their quality is stronger, faster, direct, almost to the point of fierceness, unsentimental and not at all decorative.

I saw Kovalyova only a handful of times, because I avoided her performances, but even so, I reckon I saw her fall off pointe almost a dozen times. She is about 5'11" tall and doesn't have good control of her body, and probably never will. Her Myrtha and Queen of the Dryads were not impressive, and her performance in Etudes was shambolic. The only role in which I enjoyed her was as the ballerina in Béjart's Gaîté parisienne, because the height imbalance with her partner played into the comedy, it suited her natural gaucheness, and she was completely unvain about it.

But since there's a good chance I won't see her again, I won't fret about Kovalyova too much.

It's a disgrace. Vaziev has elevated a young woman who flops her limbs around and routinely falls off pointe. Over the weekend Muscovites still using Instagram started a huge wave of sympathy for Maria Vinogradova.

I have a feeling that Gerashchenko is being used as a proxy in the war between Vaziev and Tsiskaridze. Tsiskaridze is continually critical of Vaziev and has terrible things to say about Gerashchenko, so Vaziev takes his revenge by promoting the latter, even though he is not remotely ready.

https://www.kino-teatr.ru/lifestyle/news/y2021/3-27/24138/

The silver lining is that with the Bolshoi back behind the iron curtain, we won't be subjected to Vaziev's perverse casting, and we won't have to watch the Bolshoi's continuing degradation. 

That was also T&V.

https://nypost.com/2000/05/12/with-woetzel-theme-works-like-dream-for-abt/

Sarah Lane will dance Odette-Odile with Houston Ballet on tour in Tokyo on 30 October (matinee). Her partner will be Charles-Louis Yoshiyama. The other pairs are Beckanne Sisk and Chase O'Connell, and Yuriko Kajiya and Connor Walsh.

https://www.koransha.com/ballet/houston/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CeSJ_phh9qX/

7 hours ago, Helene said:

He had been first in Europe.

I have no idea whether the Bavarian State Ballet offered Catazaro a permanent contract, but his repertoire there was peculiar. The Duke in Neumeier's Lady of the Camellias is a walking role. Gremin in Cranko's Onegin is overwhelmingly partnering. The Gladiator in Grigorovich's Spartacus is a tiny part. I have never seen Spuck's Anna Karenina, but I expect Stiva does quite a lot of dancing. And he did Balanchine's Diamonds. But I don't think there were any Albrechts, Siegfrieds or Romeos.

I can understand why someone from Ohio might want to work closer to home.

Two public rehearsals of Christopher Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate with the Royal Ballet

The audience has spent two years waiting for this production, so I'm not surprised by the pent-up demand.

Since this production features a male Rothbart, Kain clearly isn't following Bruhn all that closely. 

What really worries me are the designs, because what I've seen on the promotional videos is hideous - the most nauseating kitsch.  I hope they will look less awful under the lighting. Because lord knows, ballet productions have been lit really dimly for several decades now.