Eileen

I bought tickets to the filmed Nutcracker on Fandango on November 3 at Union Square multiplex.

As you may know, Annabelle Lyon died recently at the age of 95. She was a member of the original cast of Serenade in 1935 (not the student cast). At a seminar Suki Schorer recently gave, partly on Serenade and its creation and structure, she announced that she learned from original cast members Elise Reiman (faculty at SAB, died 1993) and Annabelle Lyon how Balanchine formed with ballet with an irregular number of dancers. I can't recall unfortunately how Suki described it exactly, but it was in terms of height. He called out 4 similar height girls, who ran onto the stage at Suki's words and took places. Then 4 medium height girls, then short girls, all of whom took prescribed places, and he was left with two quite tall girls who were placed in front. The result was a diamond, and when the SAB students turned just so, they were in Serenade position. It was quite dramatic. But this Suki told us was straight from Reiman and Annabelle Lyon. So I thought Miss Lyons' passing was worth mentioning on this board. If anyone was at the seminar and can correct me on the details of putting together Serenade, please do so.

Here is the Fandango link for New York City. http://www.fandango.com/nycballetpresentsgeorgebalanchinesthenutcrackerlive_149960/movietimes?date=12/13/2011

Thanks so much -- I didn't have time to rummage around on the NYCB site. The tickets are on sale now on Fandango, at least in New York.

I live in New York City and don't own a television. I go to live performances and films of ballet. I already bought a Balanchine's Nutcracker ticket the other day on fandango, not on fathom. I believe it is at the Union Square multiplex.

Try Fandango.

The December 13 performance is 6 pm. Maybe performances in earlier time zones will be delayed an hour or three.

Just bought tickets for NYC performance live on December 13. Only about $20, and I've seen it on NYCB stage so many times. For $20 I'll gladly see it again. (The 1993 filmed version was marred by the (commercially motivated) casting of child star Macaulay Culkin, whose performance was artificial and "acting".)

I think Natalie Portman showed him a new glamorous world where you don't have to tax yourself physically but can make a career of being beautiful and posing prettily. He must have been thrilled at meeting famous actors and being the consort of the actress-of-the-moment. He had gone beyond NYCB he thought. I'm glad he is making room for someone who is still serious about dancing, like (eventually) Chase Finlay and Anthony Huxley. I think stardust and Portman have drawn Millepied to "opportunities" to be part of the celebrity scene.

Sorry, it posted twice.

The Ocean's Kingdom video in which the much-admired Sara Mearns sparkles her brightest and during her commentary, hair specially curled for the occasion and make up neon-bright, she exudes all her charm and stage presence, trying to convince us that her ballet is something other than a failure and a fiasco. Looking at the excerpts, what strikes me is that it seems like a comic book plot, and suitable for teenagers. It has that teenage vibe - tattoos, young couple against the world.

I attended the Sunday matinee. I thought Haieff Divertimento was a little too "dance by numbers" for me - every step spelled out with ultra clarity, you knew if one girl lifted her leg, the next one would strike the same pose on the next beat, and so on. The soloist couple (Courtney Anderson and Kirk Henning) did not grab me with star quality. The men were not exactly at City Ballet standards of technique. The women were over-precise. That's what I mean by dance by numbers. The whole piece failed to flow, though I can see how it is Balanchinean, with a lead couple and four demi-soloist couples framing them. Diamonds Pas de Deux featured Heather Ogden and Michael Cook. I thought she was lovely, romantic, all a ballerina should be (I was in row K center). But he was wooden emotionally, and not exactly a technical whiz. But Meditation - from the entrance of Momchil Mladenov as the Balanchine character, I was transfixed. In profile, he actually looked like pictures of the young Balanchine in profile! (As someone else has mentioned.) He also had the emotional intensity for the role. I had only seen a brief excerpt of Meditation in Elusive Muse, the famous documentary of Suzanne. How could someone else play Suzanne? Elisabeth Holowchuk could and did. She lacks only Suzanne's natural beauty, but she has rapture, sorrow, total engagement in this ultimate muse-poet ballet which encapsulates Balanchine and Farrell's tragedy - that they are of too distant generations for a relationship. By imagining Balanchine as a young man, Farrell has heightened this aspect of the tragic and made it more real. I was so emotionally moved by this performance that I left at intermission, wanting the images of this central tragedy to be my last memory of the Farrell Ballet. I'm grateful her company came to New York so I could finally see for myself what she has wrought. She definitely needs the Kennedy Center stage and more dancers. She is obviously working on a shoestring. But we are lucky she is working and presenting her work to the public in NYC. I thought Meditation was the standout, and we are not going to see it in NYCB as long as Peter Martins is in charge. Bernard Taper explained Balanchine's will at the end of his biography, and Suzanne owns certain ballets bequeathed to her, including obviously Meditation and Don Quixote and I surmise Haieff Divertimento. So if we want to see these ballets, it must be under her auspices in her own company. Any major donors out there to help Suzanne do justice to these and other lost Balanchine works? Suzanne is his youngest muse and was instrumental in Balanchine's creation of so many works. If I could, I would fund her. Can you?

Here, here! (Or is it "hear, hear"!)

Thanks so much for telling me this about Row K center, where I will be October 23 matinee. I bought my ticket May 23, the moment they went on sale. How I've been waiting for Suzanne Farrell Ballet to come to New York, where we have everything - everything but Suzanne, and now my ballet life will be complete. Waiting anxiously for Sunday.....

Excellent point, Abatt.

There is an anecdote in Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear, the new book about a year behind the scenes with Pacific Northwest Ballet, where Peter Boal recalls learning Prodigal Son just after Balanchine had died, and according to Boal, "nobody really knew what the coaching was like." So for six hours he watched the video of Balanchine coaching Baryshnikov. But when he asked Martins to bring in Villella to coach, Martins wouldn't do it. (He hired Villella himself. Villella: "I cost one beer.") Of course there are other stories, old now, of frustrated dancers not being able to work with Farrell and others. What a shame. If this story is true, it casts Martins in a poor light indeed. What pettiness. Villella is raised in my esteem - he coached Peter Boal for the price of a beer.

I feel I have had this conversation before, made my point before on another thread, but I will repeat it. If dancers want to work with a choreographer, that is irrelevant to the audience. If I want to experience something new, I read a new book, but I do not thrust it upon my friends and insist they read it, too! That is the trouble with the "dancers need new choreography" argument. I'm not necessarily going to read your favorite book, and I'm not gonna watch the dancers' favorite choreographer. Audiences want to be entranced and astonished. Entrance me. Astonish me. Hold my interest. Uplift me. Do not foist upon me your DOA failures like the McCartney venture. Artists are self absorbed creatures, naturally so, but if they can't hold an audience, their company will suffer and their artistic opportunities will be narrowed. Please cinnamonswirl, don't come down too hard on me! It's only my own uninformed but well-financed opinion as an audience member. Well-financed as I have an expensive subscription this season. Don't disappoint me, NYC Ballet! Give me reason to maintain my loyalty, rather than subscribe next year to the NY Philharmonic or Chamber Music Society or sit home in my easy chair with the Yalta volume of Churchill's memoirs. Dancers wanting to work with new choreographers? Why should I pay for it?

Yes. Peter Martins choreographed a ballet called "Octet" to that very music a few years ago. That's right, now I remember!

Listening to Kurt Masur leading the NY Philharmonic today, particularly the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1, made me think of choreographing this music. Not that I am qualified to choreograph, but it made me want to dance. As Suki Schorer said of Balanchine at the Sunday program she led, Balanchine was inspired to create dances by music. Therefore the motto "see the music". Why haven't more symphonies been made into ballets? Look at Symphonie Fantastique - it comes complete with program. Alexei Ratmansky could do a lot with it, if he resisted the temptation to excessive melodrama or grotesquerie. Any ideas for symphonies or concertos that are danceable? Perhaps the lack of fecundity in premieres is due to the use of esoteric and unmusical scores. Has the Mendelssohn Octet been choreographed?

I totally agree. So many new ballets are immediate discards, and using Sara Mearns in the McCartney-Martins fiasco deprived us of seeing her Swan Lake as she was involved in rehearsing "underwater". I have written in another post that so many mediocre premieres are wasting money, and diluting the City Ballet brand. If you see too many flops, you will be wary of going to City Ballet in the future. It's a significant investment for the individual audience member in terms of money and time, and for me, Churchill, Eliott, Dickens, and Trollope are low cost alternatives.

Thank you for posting this link.

Sorry, I called the box office and they told me they don't have the vouchers this season. Brilliant.

Has anyone tried NYC & Co. located on Seventh Avenue around 53rd St.? They used to always have reduced price vouchers - i.e., $55 for orchestra on the sides and $15 for 4th ring. Now with the change in seating arrangements I don't know if NYCB is still issuing those vouchers. I'll look into it and report back.

Are there any other dancers who have been promoted after 8 years in the corps? I assume if someone is a standout, he/she will be promoted quickly, after a few years at most. Is 8 years in the corps fatal to promotion? That if he were going to make it, he would have made it by now? Sometimes dancers mature later. Hope you're wrong.

Sat in First Ring, center row A to see Jewels this afternoon, and it was simply beautiful. Luckily, I have Robert Irving's CD (Balanchine Album with all the correct tempi) including Emeralds, the Faure pieces. The curtain opens with Pelleas and Melisande in a forest glade. A couple - Abi Stafford and Jared Angle begin the first pas de deux. Throughout, Abi Stafford was certainly adequate to the technique and the dance, but she never came alive for me as a personality. She remained a generic dancer. Not so Jenny Ringer, who has a spirit that cuts through the dance and projects to the audience. Perhaps this spirit is called kindness. She danced the Sicilienne with grace and beauty, within and without. Jonathan Stafford was replaced by a courtly Ask la Cour. A shift of mood as the trio enters to the music from Shylock; they are Erica Pereira, Antonio Carmena, and Ana Sophyia Scheller. They were beyond perfection, at least to my non-connoisseur eyes. Rubies, the "wild child" of Jewels, as Sterling Hyltin put it on the video, was delightful. Tess Reichlen is perfectly cast as the central figure. Her impassivity is to good effect in Rubies, unlike in Swan Lake where I missed the emotional expressiveness needed in both white and black roles. Tess Reichlen's temperament, or lack of temperament, is perfect for Stravinsky ballets, or Four Temperaments (Hindemith). Her legs are endless, and she possesses an inner authority that radiates outward. Meg Fairchild and Joaquin de Luz were delightful. (I have no recording of Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, unfortunately.) Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3, Polish, and its waltz rhythms summon visually the choreography of Diamonds. The music demonstrates Balanchine's genius in creating precisely the formations and number of dancers needed - no more, no less - to bring Tchaikovsky to life. We were all awaiting the endlessly elongated entrance of Maria and Charles, from opposite corners of the stage, to the andante elegiaco. They are an exquisite couple. Charles Askegard's solos were much clearer with more force than I've seen previously, and Maria Kowroski is consummate mistress of this material. Her shapes and extensions are breathtaking. I didn't know she was 5'9". (This makes me wonder if Ask la Cour will be promoted so she will have a partner.) The 8 demi-soloists perform a Russian-type dance to the scherzo:allegro vivo - they are too many to name, but Christian Tworzyanski was a leader of the corps and one of the group of 8. In the last movement, allegro con fuoco, the dancers enter in processional led by Tworzyanski (his partner was?) who is becoming increasingly prominent. If la Cour becomes a principal for Maria, will Tworzyanski become soloist? I can't resist these speculations, as you see. The logic of Tchaikovsky's third symphony (minus the first movement) is reflected in the Balanchine's logical patterns of the corps. I am inadequate to describe the formations he created, that can be viewed effectively only from the first row of first ring of the Theater Formerly Known as State. When we reach the fugue - you actually see the fugue come alive as rows of dancers successively awaken from pose to movement. The journey, as Sara Mearns terms it, is reaching its climax, as the entire corps, the demi-soloists, and finally the star couple, take their places on the stage and the music reprises the processional theme that opened the movement. The company execute identical steps, as if this music were an anthem, the company's and Balanchine's. In moments, it was over. We burst into spontaneous applause of gratitude - three front of curtain calls for Maria and Charles, who got down on his knee, one leg extended, in elaborate homage to Maria. She returned the favor in a later curtain call. If you heard the Tchaikovsky score being sung as you left the first ring, well, that was me, humming the hits. On October 9 at noon there will be a seminar called Imperial Jewels, only $15, in the Theater Formerly Known as State. "NYCB and SAB collaborate to explore Balanchine's special connection to Tchaikovsky's music. This presentation will compare and contrast traditional Russian ballet style with Balanchine's stylistic refinements." I'll be there, and will report back.