fondoffouettes

24 minutes ago, Barbara said:

If very short Copeland can dance with very tall Hallberg I don’t see why Sarah couldn’t be paired with Hoven. I don’t think that would be an extreme height difference. Would you say Hoven and Ahn are similar heights?

This photo gives a pretty good indication of how Lane looks next to Hoven. I don't see any reason why they couldn't dance together; the height difference would of course be lessened when she's on pointe. Even though Copeland is short, she appears to have much longer feet than Lane. 

9 minutes ago, MarzipanShepherdess said:

She seems to have similar issues to those Veronika Part had--not broadly liked by her peers or by management, and it certainly seems to impact casting.

There was a definite sense that Part was somewhat removed from her peers, but I've never gotten that sense about Lane (at least based on social media). I feel as if I've seen tons of photos of Lane interacting warmly with her colleagues, and gracious comments being posted back and forth. Gorak seems to be her particular bestie. 

1 minute ago, ABT Fan said:

Well, that is bizarre that they don't follow each other. Hmmmmm. Does Cornejo follow Trenary?

I'll be there Saturday night. 

Yes, he follows her main account and her @pearltakespics account. 

44 minutes ago, canbelto said:

Not that this means much but Cornejo has been absent from Sarah's Instagram for awhile now. And she's usually very effusive about posting about the fun times she has with colleagues.

Just checked and they aren't following each other on Instagram, which seems odd considering that they both follow many ABT colleagues, including those with whom they've frequently danced. Cornejo follows Copeland, Brandt, Paris and Boylston. Lane follows Simkin, Gorak and Cirio. 

The performances they turned out in Manon and Sleeping Beauty were sensational last year, and they had such chemistry. I can't imagine those performances being the product of a frayed relationship. But who knows what may have happened between then and now.

I hope anyone who attends Saturday night will report on whether Lane presents Cornejo with flowers during the curtain calls and what the interaction is like. Those interactions, as well as absences, during anniversary/farewell curtain calls can sometimes speak volumes. Herrera's chilly reception of McKenzie during her farewell curtain calls comes to mind...

16 minutes ago, canbelto said:

I might be in the minority but I haven't been so excited for an ABT spring season in ages. 

I like Fancy Free. A classic ballet ABT can actually do.

Excited for the farewell of Abrera, seeing Abrera in R&J, the Lane/Simkin Giselle, Osipova and Hallberg in R&J, La Bayadere with Smirnova and Kim, and Catherine Hurlin's debut in Aurora. 

I agree. Despite a lot of things I don't want to see, there's so much I do want to see, with all the debuts, Abrera's last season, and the sparing use of guest stars. I'm going to really need to pick and choose, as there are more casts I want to see than I'll be able to see. I haven't had that problem in several years, so I can relate, @canbelto.

21 minutes ago, Lena C. said:

Oh God he is phasing Lane out!! I hadn't thought of Part but this is frighteningly similar. 

Herrera, Part and Dvorovenko were all given dwindling opportunities until they were phased out, all at age 39. Reyes at least made it to 42, but also left because her casting dried up. It seems ballerinas at ABT have 50-50 odds of retiring on their own terms. 

I'm hoping Lane's season may be rounded out, at least a bit, by T&V, The Seasons (presumably she could dance the Rose role again, since it won't be on the same program as T&V), and perhaps the new Ratmansky full-length. She was also a superb Princess Florine, and I'd love to see her in that role again, along with Aurora, of course. 

41 minutes ago, abatt said:

Sad to see that Herman is no longer dancing Desire.  His performance of the difficult solo in the wedding act was impeccable, and nobody else who did the role at ABT came close to Herman's breathtaking performance.

I agree; he was superb last season. I was wondering if perhaps he'd get the TBA with Lane and/or Brandt. Perhaps they are waiting to see how he's doing physically closer to the season, as he's had injury-prone Met seasons the past few years? I guess it would be likelier they'd fill those TBAs with a more junior dancer making his debut, but one can always hope...

Regarding economics, they've also supersized the run of Romeo and Juliet. 

I'd like to see Osipova, but I'm just not sure I can stomach The Hallberg and Osipova Show. 

The calendar is showing both Forster and Royal dancing Albrecht in the 6/10 matinee of Giselle, opposite Shevchenko. Presumably one of them should have been assigned to the evening performance, with Murphy, which currently lacks an Albrecht. I guess that will be Forster, since he's dancing it with her when they are on the road. 

9 minutes ago, abatt said:

Sadly, Cornejo is again cast in SL with Copeland.  I would like to see him again in this role, but.....

My feelings exactly. Maybe one will turn into a Lane SL; fingers crossed. 

I also just noticed that Simkin is only slated for one performance the entire season, opposite Lane in Giselle. Wow. I'd expected him to be fully engaged for the Met season, but I guess now he's like a Hallberg. 

And Bell is dancing every major male lead -- Solor, Albrecht, Romeo, Prince Desire, Siegfried. Wow. 

One other takeaway as I'm absorbing this...Brandt gets just one performance of a principal role, her debut as Aurora, whereas Trenary gets Gamzatti, Juliet and two Auroras. I wonder if management is thinking of Trenary as being slightly ahead of Brandt on the promotion track. Stella's departure will presumably open up a spot.

7 minutes ago, abatt said:

Not a problem.  Good news should be repeated often!

YES! I think this could really be Forster's year if all goes well. 😃

And I just noticed his Albrecht is opposite Shevchenko (in her role debut, I believe), and both of his SL's are opposite her, as well (could be the makings of a great partnership).

You can at least view the casting on their master calendar. The things that jump out at me:

-Sarah Lane gets just one performance each of Romeo and Juliet (but finally she gets one, though opposite Gorak), Sleeping Beauty and Giselle. I would have liked to see her get another shot at Bayadere, but they aren't doing many performacnes 

-Copeland is again dancing two Swan Lakes, so she doesn't seem to be giving up the role anytime soon.

-Hurlin gets an Aurora. Yay!

-Forster gets Romeo, Albrecht and TWO Siegfrieds!!!! Wowza! I'm so, so happy for him.

I'm still absorbing everything. The grid would make it easier, but you can go to the calendar for casting, too: 

https://www.abt.org/performances/master-calendar/

Edited to add: Oops, @abatt, it seems I was posting the same info about Forster just as you were. 

49 minutes ago, ABT Fan said:

Very glad to see Forster cast. With a Siegfried and Albrecht debut coming, is it possible he’ll be promoted?

Still surprised no Copeland.

I'm thrilled for Forster, and yes, I think it's possible he could be promoted. ABT has shown that it's willing to promote dancers to principals at relatively late stages of their careers. I think it's pretty clear by now that Hammoudi, Gorak, Scott and Zhurbin will almost certainly remain in the soloist rank for the remainder of their ABT careers. I'm afraid the same may be true of Hoven, based on how he's been cast in recent years, despite his often excellent dancing. Royal remains a "maybe" when it comes to principal potential, but I haven't been particularly impressed by him lately. That leaves Ahn, Bell and Forster as the ones with the most principal potential, at least to my mind.  

13 minutes ago, abatt said:

The announcement of the Spring season should be very interesting.  It seems that there will be many debuts in important lead roles.  Anyone know what is happening with Hammoudi.  He seems to have disappeared.

Didn't he injure himself at the end of the previous Met season? I remember him being replaced in something. Not sure if that may be related or not. It's certainly true, as well, that he went from being given what seemed like endless chances to prove himself, to being barely cast at all. 

3 hours ago, abatt said:

Aside from Gorak's error at the very end when he was unable to lift lane to his shoulder, his double tours were sloppy.  I think he did about  4 and gave up.  There was still plenty of music left when he should have been doing additional double tours.  Instead, he raised his arms and lowered himself to one  knee to assume the final position of that section of the choreography.  His performance explains why he will never move up to principal  Awful.  If ABT doesn't have men who can handle the demands of a ballet, they should not perform the ballet.  How this company has declined.  Their male roster used to be the best anywhere.

I've been curious: in performances of T&V (at ABT and NYCB), do they always insert the repeat of the music for the double-tours, which isn't in the Tchaikovsky score? Or have some men decided to do four tours (without the musical repeat) and others have decided to do seven or eight (with the repeat), as Baryshnikov does in the video below.

That's unfortunate about the final lift. I've definitely seen performances in which the man looks like he barely has any steam left to do the lift; a Hallberg/Wiles T&V from years ago, in which Hallberg looked as if he was going to pass out by the time he had to lift Wiles onto his shoulder, comes to mind. 

16 minutes ago, stuben said:

Why should anyone with his talent take so long to be given a chance that he felt he deserved? Lack of coaches? Feels like artistic won't look at a dancer unless it is someone that suits their taste buds? 

I think it was largely related to Cornejo's height. It took him just four years to go from corps to soloist to principal at ABT, so clearly they recognized his talent. But I think it took the AD a lot longer to start envisioning him for the leading-man prince roles. I started going to ABT in 2003, the year Cornejo was promoted to principal, and back then, he danced a lot of Bennos (it was ultimate luxury casting -- he danced the most dazzling Act I pas de trois I've ever seen), as well as roles like Mercutio in R&J (again, he was fabulous). The company also had no shortage of lead male dancers back then. 

Just a reminiscence...but Cornejo's Puck is indelibly etched in my mind, when I think back on his career at ABT. Has anyone ever danced it so brilliantly?

25 minutes ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

Honestly, it doesn't matter what Macaulay meant. It's rude for anyone to refuse to refer to someone by their name, and worse than rude for a person of Macaulay's public prominence to do so. He's a journalist: part of his job is learning how to pronounce the names of the artists he writes about. He's also a human being and part of that job is according every other human being the dignity that is their right, rather than treating them as vessels for his wit. 

I don’t disagree; it’s rude and self-indulgent. Also, he’s referring to his last name IN PRINT, so pronunciation is truly irrelevant. I wonder if Macaulay feels freer to make these sorts of comments now that he’s a freelancer.

What’s odd is that I remember multiple instances of Macaulay indicating phonetic spellings of artists’ names in his social media posts to inform his readers of their pronunciation. And I could be misremembering, but hasn’t he commented on the way ballet titles like Serenade and Allegro Brillante are pronounced?

20 minutes ago, canbelto said:

Could it have been a snide referral to Adrian using Danchig-Waring as his surname when I believe his legal name is Adrian Clay?

This old thread from his promotion to soloist seems to suggest that Clay is his middle name and what he uses in place of a last name on social media:

2 hours ago, sz said:

Adrian Danchig-Waring and his perceived body shaming from The NYTimes.

Bravo to the responder re strong, healthy, awe-inspiring dancers who are not stick thin
such as Adrian.

I do not have an Instagram account, but if any of you here at Ballet Alert do, please
send Adrian your grateful appreciation for his wonderful, beautiful dancing and body. 

To be fair, we truly don't know what Macaulay meant by "Double-Barrelled" and Danchig-Waring himself says he's not sure if it's intended as a comment about his physique. It could be a compliment, an insult or just plain dumb. But it obviously triggered what I think is a perfectly valid response. 

I do find Danchig-Waring to have one of the most strikingly beautiful and distinctive physiques at NYCB.

After hearing for years that Balanchine established the aesthetic for thin, willowy dancers, I was amazed when I first started watching old videos of NYCB and saw such a diversity of body types represented, and far fewer women who were stick thin than we might see today. 

55 minutes ago, cobweb said:

Thanks for the report. Glad to hear she looked good. Expansiveness in particular is such a great quality in a dancer. Hopefully I'll get to see her next time this piece comes back (in the spring, I believe). 

I had no idea it was a debut, and would have never guessed it. She seemed really at ease in the (not easy) role, and yes, I think "expansiveness" is an appropriate descriptor for her dancing. It's just a pity she wears the nearly the same (or is it exactly the same?) costume as the demi-soloist girls. She deserves to stand out visually. 

1 hour ago, Marta said:

canbelto said:  I am NOT a fan of these dresses for the muses. Way too summer sundress.

Agree! Those tunics  are hideous. Are they new? i don't remember the pleated look when I saw Apollo at ABT about 6-7 years ago.

Yeah, I think they're the same ones as a before. Here are some pics of previous casts. They may look better after they are fitted and get a good steam. The (silver?) embellishments along the top sides of the bodice make no sense to me, though. In theory, I don't mind the idea of pleated tunics for the muses.

4 hours ago, FPF said:

There was a new one, Tazewell Thompson's Blue, this past summer at Glimmerglass. 

Also new this summer were Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on Charles Blow's memoir (at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis), and The Central Park Five (at Long Beach Opera).

The Met is planning to stage Fire Shut Up in My Bones in a future season, which is big news: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/arts/music/metropolitan-opera-black-composers-terence-blanchard.html

I think there have been more casting shifts (I'm not sure; correct me if I'm wrong): 

https://www.nycballet.com/NYCB/media/NYCBMediaLibrary/PDFs/Press/Casting/NYCB-Casting_October-8-13-2019_lobby-20191010_2.pdf

Bouder is dancing in place of Mearns tonight in Piano Concerto No. 2, with Janzen. Pereira is back on for Russian Girl in the Saturday matinee (hadn't Bouder previously been listed as replacing her?). And Joseph Gordon says he may be thrown into Piano Concerto Saturday night. (I'm surprised he says so; whether it's a formal policy or not, dancers at NYCB and ABT never seem to announce that they may be subbing for someone until it's a done deal.)

I think part of what makes the pipeline particularly constricted for people of color, when it comes to ballet, is that your talent can't be discovered in the same way as, say, an opera singer. (You might hear a talented child in a school or church chorus, and realize they could have the pipes for opera.) There's a barrier to entry to ballet -- money -- and until you get a kid in ballet class, you don't really know if they might have what it takes to be a ballet dancer. I think cases in which dancers find free classes -- as I believe Misty Copeland did at the Boys and Girls Club -- are exceptions rather than the rule. 

On 10/4/2019 at 12:05 PM, nanushka said:

I haven't read the article in careful detail, but has there been a suggestion that she's shifting her focus away from classical ballet? My sense is that she's always been interested in doing both.

I read through the article, and I don't get any sense that she's definitively leaving classical roles behind. I interpreted it more as that she's broadening her horizons, and perhaps taking on more outside projects that aren't classical ballet (a la Sara Mearns). 

1 hour ago, BLalo said:

Yeah the new costumes don’t work for me. It’s a beautiful color palette, but the wrong color palette for this ballet and almost nothing to distinguish the principals from the corps. 

Right, and the costumes just don't pop enough against the blue cyclorama; this is especially problematic with the men's dark blue tights. 

7 hours ago, ABT Fan said:

This explains why ABT has cast Forster alongside Murphy in Giselle March 29 (since Hallberg is doing SL w/ the Royal March 11). They're still holding a TBA Feb 15 in DC w/ Murphy (for Hallberg? Unless he finds a more preferable performance/partner somewhere else?).

Maybe, but hasn't it been several years since Hallberg has appeared with ABT in anything but the Met season? I'd be surprised to see him appearing on the road with them these days, though perhaps it would be one of his last opportunities to dance this role with Murphy, and they do have a special rapport. 

At least the Royal Ballet has the good sense to call Hallberg a principal guest artist.