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Veronika Part in May issue of Vanity Fair


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A lovely picture of Veronika Part rehearsing Mozartiana and an article by Gia Kourlas about ABT's mounting that ballet are in Time Out New York (May 20-27 issue). Kourlas interviewed Maria Calegari, who is staging the ballet, as well as the three principal women taking turns in the lead role: Nina Ananiashvili, Part and Ashley Tuttle. I was especially struck by the quotes from the "Russian-born dancers" Ananiashvili and Part.

Nina

performed the role at the Bolshoi Ballet (Farrell taught it to her) and refers to it as "My beloved!" Strangely enough, it was a gift from her husband.  "For my birthday, he bought the rights for me to dance Mozartiana," Ananiashvili says gleefully.  "It was the greatest present of my life."  For Part, previously a soloist at the Kirov, the ballet affords her one of the most prominent roles she's had with the company in a New York season. But performing the lead in Mozartiana isn't special for that reason alone: "I feel there's some secret in this ballet," she explains with the help of a translator. "I haven't found the answer yet, but that's why it's interesting.  I think Mozartiana is like real life: There are so many different steps and characters in the variations.  It's not one color."

Part's quote shows why, to me, she is so interesting in Balanchine roles. More than any of the other Kirov dancers, she wasn't affraid to fall off balance or take risks in ballets such as Serenade or Emeralds. She was a little too perky in Apollo, but that could be coaching [all the Kirov dancers during the run treated their variations like they were performing Judgement of Paris and not Apollo]. Unlike others from that company who perform the same well-thought out, well-rehearsed interpretation, Part's performance of a single role changed from performance to performance. I saw her four times in Emeralds, and she had a slightly different tinge to her performance each time. I suspect many believe Mozartiana will be too much of a technical challenge, but I think she is stronger in that department than some give her credit for. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to seeing her in this role (as well as Ananiashvili and Tuttle).

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I think that's true of the Kirov aesthetic more or less across the board. They are exciting because each performance is an episode in their own lives, not simply an obligation to fulfill. But as you say some Kirov dancers do not have the same trust in spontaneity or don't have as many colors in their palette as Part

Part actually has enormous technical strength-- in London four years ago she whipped off the 32 Swan Lake fouettes without a problem (but is that really the test it's made out to be?) But she has very soft feet, and that makes it difficult for her to do off-balance things sometimes, as she showed in Diamonds.

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Thalictum, I think she's very good at off-balance movement (Zakharova, who was very lovely in Diamonds, did the solo completely upright), but was undone by certain apsects of her training - she put her heel down and therefore had to play catchup with the solo and looked rushed. Lopatkina made the adjustment and looked great. But Part is incredibly strong (as you said), as her rock solid solo as the Dryad Queen solo showed, and has a big jump. Critics say she's weak technically, but she passed through all the tests of Swan Lake, as noted. Her Shades solo last year was a model of control, yet all we saw was the creaminess and beauty. But she will not astound with her technique as others will. Laura Jacobs, in the New Criterion, put it best in her review of Swan Lake:

Veronika Part—it wasn’t a showstopping Odette, but a fascinating one. That heavy lightness of hers, so appropriately sinking into a dream in Emeralds, was here a voluptuous problem to be solved, a wreath of languor from which to break free. Part’s bust, plumy feminine flesh in the manner of Sargent’s Madame X, seemed the stronghold of her mystery. She spoke with breast and back, plunging, twisting in her bodice—Odette as deep décolletage. ...

Part, she ate space as Odile, charging the stage, legs reaching like a racehorse, and her arabesques unfurling with a swift mass that seemed to pull her back and away from her heart’s desire, a complex physics I’ve never seen before. In my daze I ran into the Ballet Review critic Don Daniels, who spoke of Part’s lower center of gravity, and how it offered a range of movement properties—centrifugal pleasures—we don’t get from our lighter, more linear dancers. Yes. Pleasures of pull, not push, the tide inhaling under the waves. Here was a compleat Swan Lake, meticulously prepared from the corps up, every curve in alignment, the elements understood, a world created by the latitudes and longitudes of classical technique, and Odette bound in that net, its queen.

I'm looking forward to her opening prayer in Mozartiana. I'd love to see her in Raymonda and La Bayadere, but I imagine her most in Balanchine roles at NYCB - Liebeslieder, Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, Diana Adams' part in La Valse, or Titania in Midsummer Night's Dream.

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"Creamy" was exactly the word that came to mind as I watched her in Bayadere's pas d'action this afternoon, Dale.

Big jump, indeed, but I'd be willing to sacrifice some elevation and/or trajectory in exchange for a stretched back left leg. From a dancer who is otherwise so satisfying, it's an especially irksome flaw. :)

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I'm talking about the supported adagio in Diamonds; Part had trouble even dancing with Viktor Baranov, who is not a virtuoso but a great partner.

But perhaps I quibble. She wasn't quite as on in this afternoon's Pas D'action as she was Monday night, where she was electrifying. But in general I don't see a lax back leg in her jetes. Stiefel's leg was very lax toward the end of his manege Friday night, but this afternoon he danced brilliantly.

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