Winter Season Wrap up

[liebs]

I may be jumping the gun a little but thought I'd start a conversation on the first half of the Balanchine Centennial season. This is the season where everyone was injured or out with the flu and the Company still managed to show us a very high standard of dancing.

Major events included Double Feature, the return of Jewels, the promotion of two very popular dancers female dancers and a fabulous exhibit of photos at the State Theatre.

Going forward what will you remember?

[dancingfan]

I will certainly remember Alexandra Ansanelli's debut in Rubies. She was absolutely fantastic in this role, her dancing was dynamic and Damion was a great partner for her. They have such chemistry onstage and always bring down the house. I don't think anyone else in the part measured up. I look foward to seeing her grow in the part.

[oberon]

Miranda Weese as Aurora & in Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #2, Kowroski in SWAN LAKE, Ringer as Aurora and in EMERALDS; seeing Kyra Nichols in roles she might be doing for the last time; Boal in PRODIGAL; Bouder as L'Alouette & Edge as Pierette in HARLEQUINADE; Sylve as Hippolyta; Riggins and Hendrickson in Bluebird {and also Adam as Puck & Jester (SWAN LAKE)}, Amanda Hankes as Lilac Fairy; Rutherford in EMERALDS; Ulbricht as Jester (SLEEPING BEAUTY); having Merrill Ashley back as Carabosse...I could on and on...

Even in a season with the ranks depleted by injuries, there was much to enjoy.

[Farrell Fan]

I'll remember the contrasting Apollos of Peter Boal and Nikolaj Hubbe; the revival of Jewels, especially Ansanelli's Rubies; the vodka toast to Balanchine on his 100th birthday; Jenifer Ringer as Coppelia, Aurora, and in Donizetti Variations; Tara Sorine and Kyra Nichols in the first part of Double Feature and Tom Gold in the second; and all three of the Auroras I saw -- Weese, Ringer, and Bouder -- as well as Kowroski's Lilac Fairy. It was a good season, I thought, but it didn't rise to the heights that the first half of the Balanchine centennial should have attained.

[Michael]

What I remember: two gorgeous, romantic, performances of Piano Concerto Number 2 by Miranda Weese at the very beginning of the season. They take their place alongside two performances of Theme and Variations by Weese in the Spring of 1991, as benchmarks against which not only all future performances of this ballet will be measured by me, but against which all experiences of aesthetic pleasure at the ballet will be compared. Weese’s ability to preserve the thread of a chain of steps, the living, liquid heartbeat of the choreography, while at the same time clearly showing for perhaps only a nanosecond each purely inflected step, accent and pose in an enchainement – not freezing it in staccato manner a la Ashley Bouder – but somehow showing it in purely etched visual form while at the same time flowing through it, is a supreme gift.

Ditto, two Miranda Weese performances of the pas de deux in the divertissement of Midsummer Night’s Dream. The second one, partnered by Sebastien Marcovici, was the better and the more unforgettable. Marcovici’s youth, strength and power drew out of Weese that night more athleticism, a more spontaneous energy and attack than Soto’s partnerning had evoked a few days before.

As for Ballets, I remember huddling myself through the frigid windswept midwinter streets to see a Midsummer Night’s Dream again and again at the very beginning of January and how extraordinarily good this ballet looked in all five performances. A spectacular Boal scherzo early on. A breathtaking final performance by Kyra Nichols. And how surpassingly beautiful the women’s corps de ballet looked in it, night after night, particularly the Butteflies (Flynn, Hyltin) and Titania’s Attendants (Krohn, Ostrom, Arthurs, Hankes and all the tall fair girls).

My broad assessment is that the beginning of the season was much stronger than the end, that the company and the corps de ballet looked much better in January than it did in late February. Small wonder, they have been dancing non stop since the end of November.

What would the season have been without Joaquin de Luz to carry the need for virtuosic or even half-virtuosic roles in the male repertory? He is demi character, perhaps not the most classical of dancers, but without him there would have been only the black hole. He and Megan Fairchild carried both Harlequinade and Coppelia. Without the two of them those ballets would have been much more problematic than they were.

In the girls’ corps de ballet, Rebecca Krohn had a wonderful season, appearing beautifully classical in performance after performance right to Sleeping Beauty. Amanda Hankes was all of that and even more, showing the skills – speed, placement, balance, beautiful inflection and interpretation of steps, ability in grande and petite allegro as well as supported adagio dancing – of a potential soloist.

Also in the girls’ corps, I thought Katie Bergstrom the most improved dancer in the company as a whole (younger girls and boys included). The gangly 17 year old of two seasons ago who had trouble turning and with balance is suddenly a classical dancer, centered, doing everything right, holding down the front line of the corps de ballet it seemed in every single performance.

The company must bring Sterling Hyltin along. With her long lines and feet, speed, placement and musical gifts, she has tremendous dance interpretive potential. Among the men we need to see more of Antonio Carmena, who, similarly, has speed, ballon, lines and perhaps the ability to dance Peter Boal’s repertory.

Among the soloists, this was a superb great-leap-forward seasons for both Pascale Van Kipnis and Rachel Rutherford. Van Kipnis has long impressed with her clean and soft feet but danced this year with much more attack, musicality and athleticism, much less caution, than ever before.

I must say that in retrospect the Balanchine Centenary was more of an announcement than a real performance thing, a media non-event which would have done Bill Clinton or George Bush’s media handlers proud, proving Derida and his followers right that events are what people say are events and nothing else. A toast on opening night in November. Another one on January 22 or 23d. Then please go away. January 22d/23d was the peak of the season. It was all downhill from there. The irony is that, no matter what wasn’t happening in the house, Balanchine’s name was that which was spoken amongst people around town who never go to the ballet. As Mr. B probably had no small amount of the showman and snake oil salesman in him himself, it probably did him proud. Unlike the present administration, however, Balanchine knew how to deliver the goods, walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

[Drew]

Thanks to everyone for the season wrap-ups.

Michael -- as I have very little direct contact with NYCB these days, I enjoy reading your account of the individual dancers; it makes me feel once again connected to the company. I cannot forbear adding that Derrida, although very interested in how words can constitute events, has never argued that events are "what people say" they are and "nothing else," and if anyone claiming to be a "follower" of his has made that claim then s/he is saying something he never has...I admit this doesn't have much bearing on your main point which I understand to be that the hype around the centenial was not matched by its on-stage acheivements.

[nina]

A good season but not a memorable one until Merrill Ashley ignited the stage as Carabosse.

[dirac]

It is remarkable how many statements of that kind were attributed to Derrida, although I'm sure Michael had only the best of intentions.

As one on the west coast who gets much of my information about the current state of NYCB here, I also appreciate these reports!

[Michael]

I stand corrected on Derrida, I used his name as a shorthand for a line of thought which I cannot, alas, recite the pedigree of without spending an hour or two checking sources. You did get my point Drew, all the same. My apologies to Mssr. Derrida. Re-reading what I wrote, I omitted so much. Particular praise is also very due to Phillip Neal this season among the men and Alexandra Ansanelli and Jenny Ringer among the women. Ansanelli's first Harlequinade on a Saturday afternoon was a lovely performance.

[carbro]

I thought I'd let the season stew in my memory a while before posting. Are we there yet? We are.

The big highlight remains Jennie Somogyi's Sugar Plum . followed by my deep disappointment that her season was so short.

Also

• Megan Fairchild's most auspicious debut as Swanilda.
  
• Jenifer Ringer's luxuriant Emeralds.
  
• Ashley Bouder as Aurora AND in the Diamonds Variation in Sleeping Beauty.
  

I enjoyed the new Stroman -- a good opportunity for the company to don its artistic jeans and sweatshirts and have a good time.

I know I also missed some spectacular (in the good sense) performances :nopity: and can hardly wait to see Ansanelli's Rubies -- hopefully, in '05. :huepfen:

[GeorgeB fan]

For me seeing Jewels once again. Weese and Ringer I thought was wonderful in Emeralds; a great debut by Ansanelli partner by a strong Woetzel in Rubies; and the marvelous Kowroski partner by a noble Neal in Diamonds. I know some people did not cotton to her performance in Diamonds, she does need to refine herself, but I thought all in all she was wonderful. I enjoyed the students of the SAB performance of Chopiniana. Ansanelli's Aurora and Garland Dance in The Sleeping Beauty. Kyra Nichols in Scotch Symphony, but thing again I would love her in anything. Woetzel as Prodigal Son, watching Jennie Somogyi in the second lead of Concerto Barocco. I love watching Teresa Reichlen slowly making herself the dancer to watch from the corps de ballet. But the moment I love the most was taking my niece to The Nutcracker for the first time. I thought it was so cute as the tree was growing my niece said, "Uncle they must have a really tall ceiling, the tree is growing, growing, growing!!" and she just fell in love with Ringer's Sugar Plum Fairy