fondoffouettes

52 minutes ago, cobweb said:

Thank you for pointing this out. I didn't realize they were new; I've been scratching my head over how I failed to notice this aspect of the costume for years. I think it looks odd too, and glad to know I'm not blind! 

Yes, it seems they were introduced in fall 2016, based on this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/arts/dance/new-york-city-ballets-fall-season-bursts-with-talent.html

The lighter panels were there in the pre-refurbishment costumes, but they blend in and serve to highlight the legs beneath:

The costume shop is usually so rigorous about recreating Karinska's intentions. Could she have really wanted these thick lemony panels that detract from the dancers' legs?

I attended today's matinee and the highlight for me was Mozartiana. I didn't much care for Hyltin's Preghiera --  it lacked the expansive, spiritual, otherworldly quality you might hope for -- but I also think this section could benefit from being played a hair more slowly by the orchestra. (I know NYCB is all about speed, but I think the ballerina could use a little more room to luxuriate in some of the steps and poses.) Hyltin, and especially Huxley (wow!), were excellent in the Theme and Variations. With Finlay's unfocused performance still fresh in my mind, Huxley's incisive, lightning-quick dancing was all the more impressive. Hyltin danced very, very well, though I'd like to see her play more with her phrasing and the way she accents some of the steps. It felt a little by-the-book at times. Schumacher captured the jaunty spirit of his role, though I thought his dancing looked a bit small-scale at times. My eyes were glued to Kikta during the entire Minuet; perhaps someday she'll make a great lead in Mozartiana. Something odd happened in the orchestra during the Minuet, by the way; the orchestra cut out right before a repeat they were supposed to play. The women kept dancing, and then the orchestra came back in; not sure what happened.

Lovette made a strong debut as the Waltz Girl, despite one pirouette that really got away from her. Hopefully her characterization will become more fully fleshed-out with more performances. I've seen Hyltin and Mearns be transcendent in the role, and Lovette still has a ways to go. The first male principal is a good role for Ask la Cour at this stage of his career; his partnering looked solid, and in the limited amount of solo dancing he looked just fine. (Also, he looks trim and fit in that rather unforgiving costume; it was probably smart to avoid casting an Angle brother in the role.) Sanz did very well in the second male role, though you could perhaps see the concentration on his face as he dealt with some of the partnering. Gerrity wasn't a particularly memorable Dark Angel, though she acquitted herself well. The way she covered Sanz's eyes looked odd, as if she were gripping his face; maybe she's too short to do it any other way. Bouder was my favorite part of the performance; it's a great role for her, and her dancing looked so big and free. No mugging whatsoever, not that you'd expect it in this role. The yellow-beige tulle panels in the front of the refurbished costumes were so distracting! They didn't even seem like they were having the intended effect of making the dancers' legs more visible through the skirts.

Piano Concerto No. 2  is one of my all-time favorite ballets, so I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually felt bored at times watching today's performance. I'm not sure it's a great role for Reichlen. Yes, she certainly looks very regal and glamorous, but I was missing a bit of energy, dramatic presence, or something from her. Perhaps she has to work so hard to get those long, beautiful limbs to cooperate with the choreography, that it doesn't give her much room to focus on being interesting from a musical standpoint. Yes, she danced well, but it felt a bit bloodless to me. I've been among those who've been critical of the Angle brothers (Jared more than Tyler), but Tyler Angle's dancing was excellent throughout. LeCrone was solid as the second ballerina.

The new costumes are a mixed bag. I love the overall color palette -- dusky blues and metallics -- but I do think the two lead ballerinas' bodices are overly encrusted. They look like armor, which was only further reinforced by their rectangular shape. I'm also puzzled by the decision to put the two demi-soloist women in heavily encrusted bodices, as well. This was distracting in the second movement, when they link arms (along with the other eight women) with the principal man. I wish the men's costumes could have been designed in a way that would work with white tights. Between the dark brocade vests and navy blue tights, the corps men really faded into the background (also blue). And I can only imagine how hard it would have been to see their legs from, say, the fourth ring. This was especially disappointing in the finale, when, usually, it's overwhelming and exciting to see all those legs working in unison, but really only the women popped. I do think the corps women's costumes were just about perfect; not overly ornate. But overall, I don't think all the costumes worked together harmoniously, and it all just felt a bit dark and heavy. I wasn't crazy about the previous costumes, but I feel like the new ones really diminish the poetry of this piece. I hope NYCB considers some alterations now that they see how the costumes read onstage, and how they don't really work together as a whole.

This video of Nilas Martins from 1993 shows him performing that section on his heels, while Guerin just barely does the steps on her heels:

Here, in 1968, Farrell dances on her heels but Martins doesn't:

And in this 1960 clip, both d'Amboise and Adams don't dance on their heels:

I guess it must be one of those details of Apollo that has morphed over time, either because of Balanchine's tinkering or the way the steps have been passed down. I prefer the look of the passage as danced by Farrell and Martins.

On 1/16/2019 at 3:06 AM, nanushka said:

I hope so. I love the colors, too.

So, no tutus.

Wonderful news! The current costumes are so similar to the Tchai Pas and Allegro Brillante costumes, while the ballet seems to call for something grander. I assume with a bodice that ornate they must be going with tutus rather than chiffon skirts.  

4 hours ago, DeCoster said:

But Mack is only dancing one Ali (a Wednesday matinee).  I think it's obvious they are bringing him to the Met to dance Conrad with Schevchenko.  Do Scott, Klein, Maloney, or the others you mentioned have the size or the technique to pull off that partnering assignment?  I don't think they'd want to try!

One doesn't need a big fan base to get a chance on the Met stage in one of these big roles.  I saw Cory Stearns debut as Conrad with Dvorovenko when he was a 22 year old corps member who most of the audience was unfamiliar with.  He had been practicing the role with Veronika Part and Dvorovenko since Gomes was injured that season, yet some of the partnering was still sketchy.  Bell has had a lot of opportunities come his way since Gomes resigned, and think it has a lot more to do with his size and skill as a partner than any fan base.

Mack has proven himself as a partner in big roles, and has danced Conrad with the English National Ballet.  I'm actually with KM on this one. Excited to see Mack, Shevchenko, Trenary, and Simkin in Corsaire on 6/15!

No, if they had wanted to go with someone in-house, I think they might have considered Forster or Royal, both of whom have partnered Shevchenko in the past. By all accounts, Forster pulled off the showy lifts in Nutcracker beautifully. But the company seems to have such limited capacity to coach new roles. 

I agree that I don't think Mack is being brought in as a box-office draw. I didn't mean to sound disparaging when I noted Mack is a former dancer from a regional company (there's nothing wrong with dancing at a regional company!), but I don't really think of him as an international star, though I may be in the minority. He seems to be more a fixture of the gala circuit rather than someone who appears frequently as a guest in full-lengths; ENO would seem to be one of his most prominent guesting gigs so far, though I believe he has also appeared in full-lengths with the national ballet companies of Ukraine and Georgia.

But would I look forward to seeing Mack? Absolutely! It feels like it's been ages since I've looked forward to seeing a new Conrad at ABT. Stearns and Whiteside do nothing for me in the role. Mack's jump looks to be huge.

3 minutes ago, abatt said:

I guess Adrian D-W is still injured.  I enjoyed his Apollo very much. 

Garcia apparently did Apollo back when he was at SFB.  I guess it's a stroke of luck for him that the male ranks are now so depleted at NYCB that in the twilight of his career he is again cast as Apollo.

It's too bad. I really enjoyed his Apollo, as well, and I remember him posting a photo of him in Apollo earlier this fall on Instagram, with a caption to the effect of it being motivation for the winter season (it was a story, I believe, so I can't locate it).

I'm curious about Garcia in the role. I've found him to be a let-down in roles requiring bravura technique and speed, so perhaps I'll enjoy him more in Apollo, which is of course very demanding, but in a different way than, say, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. I was also surprised to see La Cour is making a late-career debut in Serenade; I would have assumed he'd danced that role before. 

I can't wait to see Reichlen in Piano Concerto No. 2, but I can't say the same for LeCrone. The second ballerina is such a great role, and I'd love to see a dancer who approaches the ability of the lead. Maybe she'll be a surprise; no one can be as bad as Savannah Lowery opposite Sara Mearns. 

Echoing others, I'm very glad to Stanley is debuting in Apollo. Martins obviously had a very specific mold in mind when he cast Apollo, but it's been nice to see the interim team has been thinking outside the box a bit with type-casting (e.g., Claire Kretzschmar as the tall girl in Rubies, which I know everyone wasn't crazy about). 

21 minutes ago, Dale said:

Guest artist news:

 

BROOKLYN MACK TO DEBUT WITH
AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE AS GUEST ARTIST

FOR 2019 SPRING SEASON AT
THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE

MACK SCHEDULED TO DANCE THREE PERFORMANCES OF

LE CORSAIRE, JUNE 12 MATINEE,
JUNE 13 EVENING AND JUNE 15 EVENING

Brooklyn Mack, a former member of The Washington Ballet and ABT Studio
Company, will join American Ballet Theatre as Guest Artist during the Company’s 2019
Spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House. It was announced today by Artistic
Director Kevin McKenzie.
Mack will dance the role of Ali in Le Corsaire at the matinee on Wednesday,
June 12 and the role of Conrad on the evenings of Thursday, June 13 and Saturday, June 15.
Mack began his ballet training at age 12 at the Pavlovich Dance School in Elgin,
South Carolina. At age 15, he received a full scholarship to study at The Kirov Academy
of Ballet in Washington, D.C. Mack joined the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago as an apprentice
in 2004 and began training with ABT Studio Company in 2005. He joined Orlando
Ballet in 2006 and The Washington Ballet in 2009. His numerous awards include a silver
medal at the 2006 USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi, the
2007 Princess Grace Awards fellowship, the silver prize at the 2009 Helsinki
International Ballet Competition, the Grand Prix at the 2012 Istanbul International Ballet
Competition and the Gold Medal at the 2012 Varna International Ballet Competition.
The 2019 Spring performances are Mack’s first appearances with American Ballet
Theatre.

Subscriptions for American Ballet Theatre’s 2019 Spring Season at the
Metropolitan Opera House are available by phone at 212-362-6000, or online at ABT’s
website www.abt.org. Individual tickets, starting at $22, go on sale beginning Sunday,
March 24 at 12:00 Noon. The Metropolitan Opera House is located on Broadway
between 64th and 65th streets in New York City.

This is a slap in the face to male dancers at ABT who can dance these roles. To bring in a dancer who formerly danced with regional companies...

I've been under the impression that arts organizations almost always hire search firms for such high-level positions. I imagine search firms do much more than simply identify candidates. They'd presumably provide support/guidance throughout the hiring process. And as Helene says, they'd be more of a neutral third party. Wasn't it the search firm that did the "listening tour" thing to find out what the dancers and others wanted in a leader?  You wouldn't want the board members doing that. 

1 hour ago, vendangeuse said:

Also, I'm noticing today that Tyler Maloney has been given two Harlequins, and one 'Boy' in Whipped Cream. (Perhaps this was always the case and I am only noticing now... but I think some of these were formerly scheduled as Lendorf performances?) Has anyone noticed him especially in the past?

I think Maloney was cast as the Boy in Whipped Cream all along, and I believe the same goes for Harlequinade (I think the Harlequins originally assigned to Lendorf went to Carlos Gonzalez). Maloney was very good in Serenade After Plato's Symposium. I've otherwise only seen him in strictly corps roles, but he has always struck me as a fine dancer. 

I hope Marshall Whiteley gets some opportunities this spring. He's certainly a standout in the corps, and based on videos he has posted, he's able to pull off a surprising degree of bravura dancing for someone so tall. 

1 hour ago, laurel said:

They were superb in every way, and I can’t say enough good things about them.  If by some miracle they are teamed again this coming spring in New York, I would say you should not hesitate to buy tickets to their performances.  They are enthralling!

 

I'm thrilled to hear these reports of how well the Forster-Shevchenko performances went. 

At least we'll see them together in On the Dnieper, but gosh, I'd love to see them in Swan Lake. The last thing I need to see is another Siegfried from Whiteside. I hope any future casting shifts will provide Forster with some more opportunities. 

1 hour ago, CTballetfan said:

Garcia was a supportive partner, although his solos were sluggish and he looked a bit out of shape. 

This seems to be the new norm at NYCB among several of its principal men. You can get by in the company if you're an excellent partner, and if you crap out after struggling to execute a few turns a la seconde, oh well. It makes me all the more grateful for dancers like Joseph Gordon and Harrison Ball.

On 12/18/2018 at 4:21 PM, California said:

Has anybody ever seen Gorak do the original choreography? That substitution with Lane might be all he can handle.

 

It sounds like they did the original choreography in the final season it was presented at BAM, more successfully at one performance than the other:

https://balletalert.invisionzone.com/topic/39051-2014-nutcracker-bam-season/?page=6

Random thought:  Whelan is mentioned frequently as a contender, but has Kowroski's name been suggested as a possibility for AD? Presumably she'll be winding down her stage career somewhat soon, even though she's still dancing quite well. 

I think Lovette was basically back to dancing a full principal load in the fall. I remember comments from her along the lines of "It's been a long time since I've danced this much," like in the post below. It seems like she must have asked for a release from this Nutcracker season, but I was under the impression that most of her previous absences were due to injury, not outside projects (though several of those have certainly come her way). 

1 hour ago, canbelto said:

I just checked -- the doll is in blue in the playhouse 90 tv version, and sort of light blue in the 93 film version.

That's interesting. In the pic above, I wonder if the tulle had originally been blue but morphed into a sort of mauve color over time. In this video about the Theme costumes, Marc Happel describes blue dyes as being unstable. But if the new costume is cornflower blue, I wonder if they found something to suggest that the original Karinska costumes were a more vivid blue. 

Edited to add: Here's a photo of Karinska's sketch and fabric swatches for the costume, which was included in the 2015 Vanity Fair article about Balanchine's Nutcracker.

7 hours ago, Fleurfairy said:

One does get the impression from her Instagram posts that she's frequently teetering on the edge of certain failure or disaster. 

 

I think of her as a risk-taking, go-for-broke sort of dancer, so I imagine that may contribute a bit to this perceived quality in her (it's also what I find so compelling about her). I didn't catch much of Mearns' dancing before her big injury, but I'd say her ability has remained consistent over the last several years. 

She certainly acknowledges when she's having off nights on Instagram, but I can't recall nerves being a consistent theme in her posts. I was actually surprised to read that she had what sounds like near-debilitating stage fright when it came to performing Nutcracker.  But I remember she said somewhere that she retired Dewdrop because she kept getting injured in it, so I can imagine how a buildup of negative experiences could have led her to that point.

1 hour ago, Quiggin said:

And I've always thought it highly unusual that all San Francisco Ballet's photography – the whole visual archive of the company's work – was the solely the work of the son of the artistic director, Erik Tomasson. Even the San Francisco Chronicle's images in reviews are credited to Tomasson. Can't think of any other situation like that – City Ballet had Martha Swope but there were many others including Cartier-Bresson and New York Times photographers, etc, leaving a much more varied visual history behind.

 

I think it's increasingly rare for a newspaper to be able to commission all or most of its performance photos, so it's sort of a luxury that the NYT still does that (and like you say, a very valuable addition to the visual history of dance). I wade through a lot of performing arts coverage for my job, and I'd say about 75% or more of the time, a photo is credited to the photographer hired by the presenting company, not the newspaper. It looks like the San Francisco Chronicle does commission some of its own performing arts photos, but for whatever reason doesn’t bother to do so for the ballet.

In terms of other examples -- and this isn't exactly analogous, since it's an opera company -- virtually every production photo from the Santa Fe Opera is by Ken Howard. He's one of the most gifted performance photographers in the country, and Santa Fe hires him for every production they do. Newspapers like the NYT don't bother to fly in their own photographer or hire someone locally in Santa Fe. So, at least in recent history, the company's performances have been documented mostly by one photographer. 

But is it nepotistic that all of SFB's photos are taken by the AD's son? Quite possibly. From what I'm seeing online, it looks like he does very good work, so the company may also be happy to have him. 

15 hours ago, Dreamer said:

During the recent Balanchine Festival at the NY City Center I got to see how dancers from various companies interacted with their fellow dancers, colleagues or former teachers. I don’t want to assume that their enthusiasm and excitement was always sincere and genuine but I noticed that Simone seemed to keep her distance. I must say, though, that offstage she is a strikingly beautiful woman with feline aloofness. So who knows, maybe it is  the way she comports herself.

2

Messmer basically says as much in the Ballet Review Q&A. She mentions that the Miami City Ballet dancers socialize outside of work but that she prefers to keep a clear division between her professional and personal life. She talks a lot about how she values a high level of professionalism; there's an anecdote about how someone carelessly left their cell phone on top of some lighting equipment, and how that irked her. 

1 hour ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

The temporary PR buzz from a Sunday New York Times Arts Section feature about a ballerina's long road back from tragedy to triumph seems hardly worth it.  

 

I agree -- I don't see Morgan's following on social media as being a factor in her potential hiring by a company. If/when she's hired by a company, it might produce a few articles. But her following seems to be largely bunheads and balletomanes, and that's to whom she tailors her content. I give her a lot of credit for creating a niche for herself during her time away from the stage, but I don't see her being a big box-office draw among people who aren't already ballet fans. 

Maybe Pennsylvania Ballet would be a good fit since they still do some Balanchine, as well as the full-lengths?

She has confirmed that she is working to join a company. The rep she discusses certainly sounds very ABT. It's too bad the company seems to have such limited resources to hire and promote dancers, but you never know. 

Hod offers some details about her injury in the comments section of this post. She says, "Came back a little too soon so I had a minor setback, but I will hopefully be back and much stronger as soon as I am ready!"

2 hours ago, FPF said:

And Coffee may be next up for revision.

 

It seems far less clear how to deal with Coffee, if they decide to revise it. With Tea, there were obvious, mostly cosmetic changes that made the dancers appear less caricatured. But in that video, Reichlen isn't wearing blackface or blackface "light" (the spray-tan version you see in the Met's Aida), and her hair is her own. And as far as I can tell, her makeup is heavy, but not exoticized. So, it would come down to the costume and choreography. I could definitely imagine eliminating the gesture where she covers her face with her arm in the beginning, which seems like something out of Corsaire. But I think they'd have to consult with specialists to know what choreographic elements maybe be respectfully referencing Middle Eastern dance traditions and which may be stereotypical and potentially offensive. 

It's tough because the music itself paints a picture of the Middle East as highly sensual and languorous -- classic 19th-century Orientalism. It's like the musical equivalent of a Gérôme painting. And Balanchine matched that with his choreography. So even if you tweak a gesture here and there, it's still an eroticized fantasy of the Middle East. So how do you "fix" a piece whose very concept may be offensive to some? I guess you just do the best you can, and make compromises.  

Adrian Danchig-Waring made his Instagram account public again. An update on the status of his foot. 

On 11/5/2018 at 10:41 AM, ABT Fan said:

Yes, ABT's site is correct. It's the Met Opera's site that isn't, and what several of us are referencing:

https://www.metopera.org/season/2019-abt/

The Met site has finally been (partially) fixed. Abrera is back in the four roles that Smirnova and Shayer had temporarily occupied. There are still issues with some roles being double-cast for the same dates, though.