Gottlieb on the NYCB Ballerinas

[Leigh Witchel]

More food for thought here.

Talking about dancers is intensely personal - I may have liked X earlier or I like Y less and Z more, but I agree that the female crop at NYCB is coming back into its own not just in capability, but as individual dancers with individual personalities - and that is something the Balanchine repertory feeds on.

[Thanks to Kevin for noticing the article]

[vagansmom]

Can someone explain the following comment to me?

you can sense her dance intelligence at work just a little too clearly; she has to learn to appear less intelligent

[Mel Johnson]

I read that as meaning that you can read her intentions a little too clearly, that she's still more artifice than art, and that she telegraphs her audience about what she's doing. It would be nice if it all came naturally, like breathing.

[carbro]

That's good, Mel. I was going to say "contrived."

[kfw]

She telegraphs because she still has to think hard about what she'd doing? And you can read this primarily on her face?

[CalMia]

I think it's saying that she is a very intelligent dancer, but she shows it to the audience. She has to learn to hide her technical thought process on stage, and make it look like it's easy.

[carbro]

It's a question of whether she makes it look as if her "ideas" are spontaneous and organic to the choreography on the one hand, or something she's laying on top of the choreography on the other hand. Art vs. artificiality.

[Leigh Witchel]

Or artifice - which is slightly different. Standard disclaimer of bias here, but I think I know what he's talking about and we add the points up slightly differently. What he's seeing as (I think) showing us the mechanics of her process I haven't seen that way. Ansanelli has gotten theatrically huge on stage, (her presence, not her body!) she has immense personal projection. I understand why someone could find that artificial, but it happens to work for me; it's an operatic personality and I accept it as that. It's 180 degrees opposite someone like Peter Boal in process, but both are artistry to me.

[carbro]

Stop! You're both right!

There have been moments -- moments -- when I've been made aware of the phenomenon that Gottfried cites, and they are slightly distracting. But they are evident partly because of Ansanelli's large-scale projection. I've been mulling this over, and it's hard to be negative when for so long, NYCB audiences were hungering for projection from its younger (and some mid-career) dancers.

Alexandra is still quite young, and she shows growth almost from one performance to the next (a sign of "dance intelligence" of a somewhat different sort). I have confidence that she will learn how to control this aspect of her presentation before long.

[Farrell Fan]

Gottlieb said of Ansanelli, "She's assumed the place that pretty, soft Jenifer Ringer might have held if she danced large rather than small." Any comments on his apparent writing off of Ringer? This is the kind of Olympian judgment that I find quite annoying.

[carbro]

I was hoping Gottlieb's dismissive tone was careless writing. I always worried about young Ringer's career, as it was clear from the outset that she was not Martins' favorite style of dancer. He likes relentless attack (not Ringer's style) and does not care about musicality, lyricism or shading (defining Ringer qualities). She has defied the odds. That she has lasted (kind of) this long and come as far as she has and has so many more opportunities to triumph than I had realistically expected, well, all those are cause for celebration.