abatt

Although there was no review in the paper, Macaulay did write about the Teuscher/Ahn performance on his public instagram account. He saw the debut at the Wed matinee. He had very positive things to say about both the leads. I don't recall any mention of Gamzatti. Correction: He did also comment positively on Shevchenko's Gamzatti.

Maybe when Hallberg decided he could no longer perform Solor, ABT and Mariinsky did a swap - we'll loan you Kimin Kim for Solor, and you loan us Hallberg for Albrecht.

Ditto Harrison Ball.

Hamrick has been injured. She returned for one performance of Giselle, but seems to have been absent after that due to injury.

In prior years McKenzie went completely overboard in relying on guest artists, many of whom were unreliable. Now the plan seems to be that the school is going to produce a pipeline of talent for ABT if we are patient. However, I do not believe that the JKO school attracts the best talent, so I don't think the JKO pipeline is going to be a source of abundant talent in the future. I think the best dancers flock to other more prestigious schools, not the JKO school. While I like a lot of the new dancers who are rising within the company, it is highly questionable whether they will ever become superstars who will sell massive numbers of tickets. People are looking to attend "events", and the Osipova Hallberg performance was such an "event".

Yes, there are people who bring their own cushions. I'm not talking about people in wheelchairs; I'm referring to people who are 100 percent mobile on their own two feet. As far as I know, the bag inspectors don't care. They are looking for weapons, not cushions.

I know people who always bring their own cushions. It's a small investment if you attend performances regularly.

I don't think it's necessarily that the audience is bored by the rep. I think they are bored by the dancers. to a large extent. It's no coincidence that the only show that has sold out during the season was the Osipova Hallberg Giselle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/arts/dance/new-york-city-ballet-dancers-graduate-from-college.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Farts&action=click&contentCollection=arts&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront Wonderful article about the college graduates of NYCB for 2018. In additon to Dieck and Lowery, Likolani Brown is also retiring and pursuing a medical career. Abi Stafford will be going part time to St. John's law school in the fall.

I never worried about Gordon being able to pull off the solos. I'm more concerned about the difficult partnering in the final act.

I was sitting in the orchestra on the right side. I could see something protruding in the area where she tripped during the entire second act, even before she tripped. In fact, the protrusion was so obvious I thought to myself that someone was bound to trip on that before the show is over. Sure enough, several minutes later Hee tripped. The protrusion appeared to be part of the set. Her accident had nothing to do with Bolle.

I thought the choreography looked like most of the other McGregor works I've seen in the past. He uses the same jerky overwrought movement style, but the bells and whistles change - the set design, the lighting, the "concept".

The fact that the gas chamber was the means used to exterminate an entire race means that any depiction of the use of a gas chamber on stage, in film or in other contexts should be undertaken with sensitivity and thought. I've seen scenes in films like Schindler's List and Life is Beautiful where gas chambers were depicted, but those films were addressing the Holocaust. In those instances, it seemed appropriate as part of the story being told. In contrast, the McGregor chamber appears to be a terrarium or greenhouse throughout the entire work, until the very end when it suddenly becomes a gas chamber. If Howard Stern is the shock jock, I guess Wayne McGregor is the shock choreographer With ABT's apparent blessing, McGregor decided that a device that killed millions could be used to serve his desire for a coup de theatre.

This is not good news for dancers who deserve promotions, unless the interim team plans to take on that task.

Watching an adult woman dance herself to death by jumping around and up and down seems far less terrifying for a child than watching an actual little girl be placed in a gas chamber and gassed to death. Also, people have been referring to kids who read Lord of the Flies and the Lottery. When you read a book you use your imagination. That's a completely different experience from a child sitting in a theater and seeing a little girl on stage placed into a sealed box and gassed.

Schindler's List had an R rating, so I assume the school obtained the permission of parents before allowing 8th graders to see it. Is that the case?

The problem with that is that you have paid full price to see half a program. ABT tickets aren't cheap. They should have given a parental age warning at the time subscription sales began. Since they failed to do that, they should offer a full refund to anyone who requests it regarding this program. We all know there is a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. Yes, by becoming so incensed about the gas chamber I forgot about the hood and the other violence in this.

California raises a great point about issuing a warning to parents. Many children will be seeing this program because it starts with Firebird. Can you imagine a little kid watching the second half of the program, and seeing a little girl be killed in a gas chamber? As far as I know, no warnings were ever issued by ABT that the content may be inappropriate for children under a certain age. It's irresponsible.

ABT has embraced works that are challenging. Ratmansky's Shostakovich trilogy comes to mind. It had overtones as well as specific overt references regarding the oppressive nature of the Soviet Union. However, unlike the McGregor piece, it did not trivialize suffering and oppression for a grand theatrical effect.

ABT is also the only ballet company that performs 8 consecutive weeks of mostly full length classics in a 3,800 seat house. The major European companies have a system where opera and ballet are performed simultaneously at the same venue . It is very difficult to have a stable of lead dancers who can perform without injury for 8 consecutive weeks. It is also difficult to attract audiences to 8 consecutive weeks of ballet, particularly when your main competitor is performing a few feet away. Also, European opera houses are much smaller and therefore easier to fill than the huge Met auditorium. All these factors have weighed into ABT's use of guest artists. Moreover, the guest artist invitations at ABT started a long time ago, before McKenzie ever took over. During the golden age of Carreno, Corella, Ananiashvilli and so on, they were not guest artists. They were full company members who performed with ABT during the entire Met season and for the most part during all ABT tours. I don't think the vast majority of principals now at ABT come close to the skill level and artistry level of the dancers we saw during the golden age. And I don't believe that situation is caused by lack of past opportunities to hone their skills. For example Seo and Stearns were both promoted at a relatively young age, got major roles as soloists, have been principals for years and have danced the classics many, many times. Neither one will ever be at the level of Nina Ananiashvilli or Angel Corella.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/arts/dance/review-abt-spring-gala.html FYI, see attached. While watching the McGregor work, it was never intimated during the entire ballet that this set piece would turn into a gas chamber. It was a verdant space with plants and light. As noted in the article, it was a space where the two little girls in the work simply stood, sometimes with Ferri. The change into a gas chamber during the final moments was, in my opinion, a way to gratuitously shock the audience. Now it will be known as the Gas Chamber Ballet.

My objection to this work relates to the gas chamber element of it. Absent that aspect, it would just be another piece of choreography I didn't much care for but had no particular reaction to one way or another. Ask yourselves this question. If McGregor had decided to raise his survival of the fittest theme by showing a slave beating on stage, do you think McKenzie would have allowed that to proceed? NO WAY. It would have been shut down at the first rehearsal. ABT is led by a tone deaf hypocrite. Allowing an instrumentality used to murder a race of people as a ballet gimmick crossed the line in a big way and trivialized the suffering endured by people who were and are victims of gassing.

We shall see what the lead critics say, but as far as selling tickets, this program has been a box office bomb. Virtually every performance this week was previously on TDF. Without Misty in Firebird, full priced ticket sales for this week would have been even more dismal. I don't think McGregor sells a lot of tickets in NYC. The one work he did for NYCB a few years ago has not been revived. In London McGregor may be much more popular.

On the way out of the theater last night, a complete stranger on the elevator asked me if I go to the Joyce theater downtown? I responded sometimes. She replied that the McGregor work is something that belongs at the Joyce, not at ABT at the Met. Her sentiment was that she doesn't go to see ABT for this type of work. I completely agree. Additionally, McKenzie seems to be hypersensitive when it comes to certain race issues, but he has completely MISSED THE BOAT that having a gas chamber killing on stage might be offensive to , say, audience members whose ancestors were actually murdered in gas chambers. CLUELESS. I guess the ABT political correctness machine only applies sometimes, but not in matters involving the gassing of millions of real people in real gas chambers. Nothing wrong with allowing a mechanism used in an attempt to obliterate an entire race from the planet to stand in as a theatrical gimmick.

It never dawned on me that your students would try to find a blog written by their teacher. Hope you can remain incognito with the new blog title.