lara

>>>>Like in his big jumps they were saying something like “ka-boom” or some such in Italian. The audience laughed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Actually, it's French, not Italian (it's some lyrics from Bizet's opera). I don't remember it exactly, but I think what sounded like "ka-boom" probably was "l'amour"

(in the song "l'amour est enfant de bohême").<<<<

Thanks for clearing that up!

Steve,

I am really glad you concurred with my thoughts on Carmen, Murru and Durante. She is the reason I didn't go to work that day and went to the ballet instead. Her dance was impeccable, I just wish there was more of it!

I really want to see her in one of the Macmillan roles she does so well. I would probably fly to England to see Mayerling!

Last night I saw Giselle at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Southern California. I had an OK seat in the orchestra section - too far to the right so part of stage right was blocked by the curtain.

After I came home I watched parts of the La Scala film version with Ferri and Murru so that I could make some comparisons between the traditional version and Sylvie’s.

It is hard to do that with only one viewing of the newer Giselle, but here are my first impressions.

It seems to me that when a choreographer is going to rework a classic, the resulting work should be more than just different.

It should bring a new emotion to the piece, a new aesthetic. To be innovative and not just dissimilar.

This version did not meet that criteria.

Evidently Sylvie was trying to achieve a more realistic look at the ballet.

Well, a piece with dead girls dancing is not a realistic ballet to begin with!

Hilaire broke his foot in rehearsal so had to be replaced by Murru - who was great as Albrecht. I thought his performance was much better than on Wednesday night in Carmen.

His line was long and elegant with terrific jumps, neat feet and graceful hands that were not wimpy.

Hilarion, Andrea Volpintesta, was also very good - in the small amount of dance he did. His opening scene was lost behind a scrim and bad, bad lighting, which remained rather dim the whole ballet.

Sylvie danced beautifully, but not memorably, if that makes sense. Her choreography in Act I is almost ballet-lite - rather simplistic with many 180-degree, 'six o'clock' leg lifts. Impressive the first few times you see it, but then too much of a good thing is not a good thing.

At first I thought the lack of dance in the first act was so that Sylvie could show off more - nope, she didn't do that either!

The main set was drab — a movable thing that made a shallow stage even more shallow in the first act. It swung around and I could never figure out WHY! It was very annoying.

One side was Giselle’s front door and I think the other side was meant to be the opposite side of the street, it was hard to tell.

So what you had was a wide set piece that split the stage in half depth wise; drastically reducing the amount of actual dance space. Traditional would have been better here.

At the end of Act One the flat piece opened up into a three-sided tavern - which was pretty neat - bottles hanging down from the air added a “pub” feel to it.

If the set was drab then the costumes were more so. I read that the dresses and such were created by some big designer. Well, they were simply ugly. Bad hats and scarves covering up the girls hair.

They looked like the dresses my great-grandmother would have worn tilling the fields in the wild west.

No colour. Nothing to make them stand apart from the set. It all blended together in one brownish mush. Even Sylvie’s blue dress was drab.

The dancers wore NO makeup — which was ok if one was in the orchestra section of the house, but those poor people up in the tiers must not have been able to see any facial expressions I'll bet.

In comparing last night’s version with the film, much dance was left out - not nearly as much peasant dancing in the opening.

The wonderful peasant pdd by Deborah Gismondi and Antonio Sutera was reduced to one solo each. The dancers were very good in the limited amount of space they had but the few lifts and jumps were constrained.

Evidently Sylvie reduced the amount of mime to make for a cleaner story - but it didn’t really work all that well. Hard to tell what was going on if one didn’t know the story.

The loves me-loves me not flower scene was so understated and quick you could hardly see what was happening. Again I wonder what the folks in the tiers could see.

During the very long intermission ( they had to chance floors) I talked with several people. They like what they saw but were not hugely impressed ... one guy said, lots of motion, but not a lot of dance.

The applause was respectful, but not overwhelming.

Act II.

The stage was littered with these big faux boulders— three Wilis danced out among them — nice floating bourees.

Their costumes were quite lovely - variations on different wedding dresses. Very effective.

The three girls danced a bit and the rocks rose - up and up and up and there they hung. They blocked some of the light that was supposed to be on the dancers!

The corps and queen Wilis (Beatrice Carbone) actually had the best dance!

This was one part that I liked better than the traditional version. The Wilis’ movements were more lyrical and less rigid than in the film.

The theater had lighting problems in the second act. One key light wouldn’t stay on and another side/back light kept flashing just off-stage making it look as if the scene had poor lightning effects happening.

One of the things Guillem could have changed for the better would have been less walking around in the mourning scene of Act II

The Ferri version has Albrecht entering and walking around emoting to beautiful music in the Act II opening.

Last night the walking around seems to have been increased and there was less emoting.

This would have been a great opportunity for Guillem to add some poignant adagio dancing for Albrecht.

Technical problems caused the ending of the ballet to lose some of its impact. One of the smoke machines at the end made so much hissing noise it totally disrupted the tragic flow. Very disconcerting to say the least.

Lest I sound too negative, all in all I am glad I went. There was good dance - just too little of it.

I saw Sylvie dance and that was a treat because she is such a name. There were some good moments but just not enough to go WOW.

There was a long standing ovation at the end which told me that people really appreciated the second act. Murru was especially treated well as was Guillem.

My sense is that this is a somewhat condensed version of the traditional. And shorter in this case does not mean better.

also posted on ballet.co and critical dance

This was originally posted on ballet.co

La Scala — Live in Southern California

How to start... ok, first impressions...

The venue: Orange County Performing Arts Center in Southern California. Lovely modern facility with really uncomfortable seats! Or maybe they just seemed that way because I had been driving two hours to get there.

I had a “good” seat — 13 rows back and dead center. A great seat! Site lines looked to be good from anywhere in the house. Row M orchestra is pretty close to the stage.

The man sitting next to me was wearing either an old leather jacket or a vinyl one — that squeaked when he moved. Disconcerting to say the least. :-) And then he would open up these paper-wrapped candies. Thank heavens he didn’t do that too much.

I was very concerned about sitting still, which is nearly impossible for me, but after reading some of the comments here about twitchy people I sat as still as possible. Only shifting about during stage changes. Y’all would have been proud of me. :-)

Amarcord: The audience let out a gasp as the curtain rose on the set of life-size dolls hanging in multiple rows across the back of the set. Very stark, very interesting.

Not sure what it meant - more of the townspeople hanging around the square, or maybe representing civilian war dead.

I liked this dance - very contemporary ballet with great energy by all the cast. Too long, bits and pieces could have been cut out without disturbing the flow of the story.

Wonderful dance by principal Vittorio D’Amato as the Father and corps member Raffaella Benaglia as the Mother.

Another stand out was soloist Sabrina Brazzo as Gradisca and Maurizio Licitra as Titta.

One of the reviewers mentioned Murru as the cross-dressing German officer. I must have missed something because I did NOT see any cross dressing. Maybe Murru just looked so good as a girl I didn’t notice anything amiss.

His Amarcord German officer pdd and solo work were good if a little understated. Rather reserved I think.

He is much taller than the rest of the troupe - one of my first thoughts when the dancers took the stage was they were short...most of them anyway. I expected the women to be short, I didn’t expect the men to be so.

Four taller men played the Fascist soldiers who were very good and very handsome. Couldn’t help but notice that — they were REALLY handsome.

The audience loved the piece. Many curtain calls, bravos and bravas as the dancers bowed. In particular the male dancers were very strong, and not just in their leaps and turns.

The whole cast seemed to really enjoy dancing and they were very skilled. Their smiles during the curtain calls seemed genuine and honest. Murru was somber. I wonder if he can smile or if he is just so “star” that he has to appear morose.

And the real reason I went: Carmen.

The very opening number had the dancers all dancing with cigarettes and it caused quite a bit of verbal commenting — like a whisper of noise running through the house with a word understood here and there.

I don’t think smoking on stage is common in US ballets????

Murru’s solo early in the ballet was strange. Not because of his dancing but because there was this chanting going on in the corps which was posed behind him.

Like in his big jumps they were saying something like “ka-boom” or some such in Italian. The audience laughed.

It took away from the moment you might say. Then the chanting really got going accompanied by hand slapping rhythmically on the stage.

Poor guy. How can a danseur compete against that?!

I am not sure of the name, but the soloist in this ballet - dancing in the red corset - was really good and fiery. I almost thought she was Carmen!

There were some real standouts in this ballet including the Toreador - Francesco Ventriglia.

There was much dancing with chairs, which caused more audience comment...why chairs? And one poor girl, after leaping from chair to chair across several chairs - fell as she went off stage.

Durante: It was great to see her live. She either has cut her hair REALLY short or she had on a wig that really didn’t look like a wig.

Her entrance was rather a let down. There was so much going on before she came on stage it was hard to figure out what was what.

I have seen her in several MacMillan pieces I have on video so I was expecting more emotion than was actually there.

In her first big solo she fell off pointe early on coming out of a small turn which made the audience gasp. It was SO unexpected. She recovered quickly and I didn’t see any more broken moves the rest of the ballet.

And then a really strange thing, when she snapped open her fan it split in half. So instead of hiding her face behind it and peering over the top, she was peeking out between two halves.

I can just imagine the curses going through her mind when that happened!

Her bedroom scene with Murru was grand - but again, there was something missing - a passion or something. She did all the moves technically perfect and I had tears running down my face at the end because her dancing is so lyrically beautiful, her line and extensions are amazing, but there was no real connection to Murru.

Most of her solo he sat in the corner smoking, which caused some consternation in the folks around me. Perhaps the lack of passion was due to his remoteness.

The ending scene where Don Jose kills Carmen is visually very exciting and Durante danced beautifully and again a sigh from the audience when she died. Very moving.

Then the troupe came on and that was that.

I thought to myself - Is that all there is? And the squeaking-jacket-paper-crackling man said “Is that all there is?”

Then, as the dancers were taking their final calls he said about Murru, “boy, that guy was sure lethargic.”

He was right. The corps men were so much more energetic and feeling. Murru was just there.

I am glad I went, Durante was worth the price of the ticket, I just wish there had been more of her!

Tonight - Giselle!

Lara

Well it depends on whose sweaty feet those canvas shoes were on! ;)

Lara

So are the men's shoes ever put up for sale? I personally would love a pair from Corella!

Alexandra,

It was more than just fast turns ... fast peeling fruit for example, and head/hand movements that were just plain unnatural. But humorous!

But Nureyev - I had forgotten what a great dancer he was.

lara

Re: Don Q by Australian Ballet with Nureyev. Did anyone notice that the dance was simply too fast many times - jerky and strange looking? Also there were places where the dance did not match the music - actually lots of places, but especially when there were hand claps and foot stomps - the image was behind the music! It is really obvious in the very last scene and in the "bar" scene.

Even with as many raves this DVD got I still sent my back to Amazon. The dancers looked like they were on speed.

lara

Bourne's is the version where the men are swans, but I don't see that as crossing dressing. And there were women in the ballet too!

It is an innovative take on the Oedipel story with incredible acting and dancing.

The DVD is awesome and the music is great.

Swans after all are not sweetness and light animals. They are fierce and strong and I think that men doing the roles played that up nicely.

A brief moment is shown at the end of Billy Elliot.

Critcs and fans alike loved this ballet.

Now, that said, Eck's version with bald swans and a destruction of the music is plain awfu - got and still gets horrid reviews.

Lara

One of the things to remember about multi-system DVD players is that not all of them have NTSC output that works with your normal NTSC American television.

Now, if one has a multi-system TV then

those DVD players will work.

The best solution is to buy a DVD player that is multi-regional and the PAL signal is converted to NTSC - playable on American TV.

I just, like Friday, bought one of those off Ebay. Totally brand new. Sampo DVE 620.

These folks have a web site where they can be bought also.

What that means is that Region 2 DVDs PAL encoded like those from England can be played on your American tv that is not multi-system.

A VCR that also is a converter can play PAL tapes AND convert the output signal to NTSC for watching on regular TV.

So I decided also to get a VCR that is the multi-system CONVERTER too. So now I am set for any kind of video and DVD format. I have friends in England who send me videos of dance programs and it is WAY expensive to have them converted.

One can buy an inexpensive PAL VCR but again, without a multi-system TV you can't watch it.

There are many configurations in solving the PAL/NTSC problem but this is the way I went simply because I had just bought a new TV and didn't really think to check if it was multi-system or not.

Sorry to be so long winded - technical stuff gets so....technical.

Lara

In addition to the more traditional ballets that have been mentioned here be sure to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake with Adam Cooper as the Swan and Scott Ambler as the Prince.

From the first moment you see the Swan you'll know this is not your mother's Swan Lake!

Also I highly reccomend the Royal Ballets Mayerling with Vivianna Durante and Irek Mukhamedov - a powerful story that will knock your socks off.

Lara