E Johnson

I have two nycb subscriptions for each season, and liberally exchange for different performances.

Serenade, always, although not always at the same point. This Saturday afternoon at NYCB it happened during Firebird, when the curtains opened for that final beautiful wedding tableau.

A slightly dissenting (and late) view here. I found Kowroski in Swan Lake too cold and distant to really be enjoyable. Technically, she was very good, but did not give me any sense of the dramatic or emotional components of the role. This changed a bit near the end, but to me it looked more as if Askegard was pulling the emotions out of her than that she was doing any of that work herself. It also looked, as I think it has too often this season at NYCB, as if the partners hadn't spoken to each other before they hit the stage. On the other hand, Kowroski looked lovely in Serenade. Quinn, as she has each time she's conducted, really made an enormous difference. If only she'd conduct more! Theme: Stafford struck me as a very young dancer doing her best. Which was nothing to sneeze at, but she doesn’t have much projection or confidence on stage yet. At least she looked human (I saw Janie Taylor in Ash last weekend, and, when I think of her and Kowroski being the kind of dancers Martins favors, I get a chill all over). Someone, I don’t know who, needs to find a way to make Woetzel look, or be, interested in what he's doing on stage. There is no question his technique is breathtaking, and he has personality to burn. But even a casual viewer (like the friend who accompanied me on Tuesday) gets the impression he's bored out of his skull. "I will toss off this variation. Then I will go have a sandwich." I wonder if a change in casting could make a difference. For all their faults, the roles Feld made on him, in Unanswered Question and Organon showed me a very different, and less bored, dancer than I see in Woetzel’s usual roles.

Huh. Barber Violin Concerto is about the only Martins work I can abide. Other guilty pleasures? Robbins' The Four Seasons. And, in a vague way (the guilt, not the pleasure, is vague), Symphony in Three Movements.

NYCB regularly calls me to remind me to renew, and I am grateful. The people who call are generally pleasant, if a tad persistent, and seem knowledgeable.

I assumed that marketing research was one reason NYCB is trying to get people home earlier during the week. One reason for this might be what i think of as the "reluctant date" problem -- a ballet fan might be willing to get home at midnight for a good program, but the less interested spouse/significant other might not.

NYCB is doing just a few of these shorter performances, at least this season: Tuesday nights start at 7:30 and have only one intermission. I assumed that the reason, or at least one reason, was to cater to (and possibly increase) the suburban audience (or, as we snotty manhattanites would put it, the B&T crowd). People might be more willing to attend a performance if they get home at more reasonable hours.

Twelve blocks below the New York State Theater, I'm fine. Eerily enough, from my apartment it looks like nothing happened, since our view is north and west -- no missing towers, no cloud of smoke. Just quiet streets.

Lindy Mandradjieff is listed as a member of the corps at least as of last night's performance.

There are two more performances of Duo COncertant scheduled for next month. No way of knowing who'll be dancing them yet.

An extremely late note to say that I, too, was very glad to see that Variations Pour Une Porte et Un Soupir was revived. (So glad, in fact, that in order to see it I left my less tahn a month-old son at home with his father for the first or second time after he was born.) I know many people hate it, and I imagine it would be laughable if not well-performed, but I really wanted to see it again (saw it first during the Balanchine Festival). Kowroski and, even more so, Tom Gold gave wonderful performances. The ballet was obviously extremely well coached. Not only was it a pleasure to see the ballet, but also I find the fact that Martins was willing to program it and allow the necessary time for it to be so well done a good sign. As others have said, its an extremely atypical Balanchine work and is worth preserving for that reason alone.

I saw "Polyphonia" in the 1/6/01 matinee performance. I agree with those who have said that one problem with the ballet was that it did not hang together well. To me it seemed like several separate dances that were not in any real way unified. Some of the individual parts I liked and some I did not. Technically, there was little to complain about. I really liked the costumes and lighting and the dancers were spot-on. Polyphonia compared badly to Mercurial Maneuvres, which I liked, in at least two ways. One, I didn’t feel that Wheeldon was comfortable in this style, it didn't come naturally and so the seams and the effort showed. He was having a difficult time choreographing in this style and as a result had nothing left over to make the ballet coherent, or meaningful. MM, by contrast, seemed to just flow. Two, he really didn't show me anything new about the dancers. One of the lovely things about MM was the nice big role for Liang, who I like a lot; Wheeldon showed us Liang in a different light than we had seen him before. (I got a similar feeling about Ansanelli here -- we were seeing a new side of her -- but not to as great an extent.) Here, he mainly showed us what we already know about Soto and Whelan, having seen them perform Agon, etc., over the years -- they are really good at these contortionist things, they can look cold and dispassionate while doing them; they will be rock-solid as dancing partners and yet can have next to no obvious emotional connections. Well, we've SEEN that. Show me something else. I almost got the feeling that Wheeldon knew that was what he was doing when, at the end of their last (I think )pdd he had Whelan and Soto, after he has passed her under his leg which was at right angles to the stage, simply kneel and stare out at the audience. They seemed almost defiant: "This is what we do. We did it. We did it perfectly." Yes, its better than Reliquary. Not exactly strong praise. I don’t think this ballet shoe Wheeldon is a bad choreographer; he did move the dancers around, he has a good feeling for space. I think it showed either that he isn’t going to be comfortable doing leotard ballets, and perhaps shouldn’t try, or at least that he should think a lot harder before doing another one.

Maybe part of what confuses discussion of this topic is what we are used to seeing. In a classical ballet, we are used to seeing, as Leigh put it (sorry if not quoting quite accurately) a woman extending her hand and a man there to take it, We perceive that as an image about love and romance, even though there can be a more sexual element. After all, when Aurora and Desire get together, it is romantic, but they are also expected to further the royal dynasty, which would presumably require some sex. But if we saw the same image -- a hand extended and taken - between two men or two women, it would be unusual, it would almost definitely be deliberate on the part of the choreographer, and it would have different connotations. I don't think most viewers would see it as just Romance, but as Gay Romance, which is seen also as either overtly sexual or furthering an agenda (or both). Similar to the way that, at least for now, many people perceive two men holding hands as a provocative gesture but a man and a woman as just sweet. The gesture/step in itself isn’t sexual, but people think it is.

<shallowness ON> Well, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed Neal's haircut! I also thought it was flattering. And is he not a bit more buff than in previous seasons? <shallowness OFF>

Even in the United States there is not conformity. At NYCB, I think it is much less common to interrupt a performance for applause than at ABT.

I am surprised by the vehemence on this topic. I have both gotten up to leave during curtain calls (although pretty much only if I am sitting on the aisle or the people between me and it are gone, and I wait until I'm out in the lobby to put on my coat, etc.) and have sat in my seat and read during intermissions (and I don't mean the Stagebill). Only the latter of these behaviors seems to disturb my fellow audience members, although of course they don't say anything - but if they did, here's my answer, and I'm sticking to it: The only way I can get my job done and see this ballet is to work in the intermissions and leave as soon as I can. Sorry. I'd rather be here than not.

I've been looking for a way to describe Damian Woetzel for a while, and the best I could come up with was "He's the BMOC, and he knows it, and he likes it, but he can't forget it." Manhattanik's "in search of freedom for his inner hoofer" [a bad paraphrase, I know] is MUCH better. Brilliant, in fact.