New York City Ballet 2022-2023 season

[BalanchineFan]

On 7/4/2023 at 8:56 AM, uptowner said:

I could be remembering incorrectly, but I think the apprentices are usually announced when when the fall season begins (September) or later if they start for Nutcracker. Is it always “announced”? I think sometimes their names just show up on the roster. I recall that in recent years SAB usually does a little feature on Instagram congratulating them and showing now/then pics of when they started at the school. 

Thanks for the info on Charlie Klesa, I have heard he's one to watch and I think he's already had a role or two stepping in as an understudy or something.

As I remember,  the IG stories are for new company members (corps de ballet) and not for apprentices. 

[KikiRVA]

Anyone at Saratoga able to give a report?

[FPF]

I did a ballet double-header yesterday and I'm going again tomorrow. Will report later over here: https://balletalert.invisionzone.com/topic/47342-nycb-at-spac-july-18-22-2023/

 

[Royal Blue]

On 1/26/2023 at 2:26 PM, vipa said:

Interesting topic, Bellawood. I haven't read Arthur's review, but for me a tremendous source of enjoyment in watching some of Balanchine's great works is that an atmosphere is created and a story/relationship perhaps implied, but as an audience member I am free to make of it what I will. What I see and feel when watching a particular ballet can change over time, or with different casts. From what I've read, and been told by people who danced for Balanchine, he didn't explain what his ballets "meant." That was a gift to them and to us.

A few years ago, I came across an article about an interactive work of art and instantly felt (and still do) that it was something that wouldn't interest me. And yet, I am mistaken. 

This is at the top of the Wikipedia entry on the subject: “Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist or the spectators to become part of the artwork in some way.”

One of the greatest achievements of Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun is that it can make one deeply conscious of the extent to which all art is interactive. The only question is the level of this interaction. At its greatest, uncovering the layers of meaning and significance in any exceptional work of art through our intuition and knowledge, our innermost feelings and thoughts, our imagination and experience is something to truly marvel at and inspire awe. Without this critical process can an ambitious work of art “achieve its purpose"? Any great artwork, essentially, invites the observer to "walk through, over or around" it. Furthermore, artists always become "part of the artwork in some way" they have created. Through the vital act of interpretation and the meaning attributed to a work, so does the spectator. An artist is also a spectator of their own work. A spectator of a fascinating work of art—deep down—must effectively “become” or emulate the artist. And, ultimately, the artist needs the spectator as much as the spectator needs the artist.

Regardless of how "abstract" Balanchine's ballets that have no plot may be considered to be, it is interesting to note how any specific work of his is perceived and analyzed by different observers. Not only did watching New York City Ballet closely have a phenomenal impact on my appreciation of this type of ballet, but it also led to reflection about the relative merits of abstract and narrative art in general. Moreover, it made me more cognizant of an essential abstract quality in the greatest narrative works of art of our culture, without which they would not have survived. 

During the year 2023, for example, ballet audiences in New York City had the opportunity to view performances of The Sleeping Beauty in the winter, Romeo and Juliet during the summer, and Prodigal Son last fall. All three narrative ballets are adaptations of esteemed literary works that have been around for centuries or even millennia. To add to the point vipa made in the quote above (in the course of a discussion about Aria II of Stravinsky Violin Concerto), those who created the incalculably significant Awakening Scene, the denouement in the Capulet crypt, and the P/prodigal's return to his F/father gifted us veritably by never explaining what they meant, either. Through the magic of "interactive" art, these monumental stories and scenes conceived ages ago retain the profundity, sense of mystery, and eternally modern relevance inherent in them.