MCB Jewels.

[cubanmiamiboy]

Mar 18 – Apr 24, 2022

Jewels opened last month, and  will close next weekend.  I attended a couple of performances here in Miami and will attend a couple more in Broward.  I have never been a fan of Emeralds, which I tend to find a bit soporiferous, and Rubies...well...it's quite fun to watch, although it doesn't really fit in the aesthetics I search for within the art form. Diamonds I always feel it as a Jayne Mansfield if Theme and Variations is Marilyn Monroe, although the pdd is certainly unique and very beautiful.  MCB does a very nice, fast, elegant Diamonds but without the "grandeur" mannerisms I've seen it permeated with by the Russians and even by NYCB sometimes. I have seen the ballerina in Diamonds dance with wrong pomp and ceremony, or even in a quasi tragic manner like Odette during her White PDD. No no.  The impression I get from this lead is more of a subtle being.  Not an "on your face" icy Russian Tsaritsa, but more of a demure and somehow lost in her own world Russian noble woman. Perhaps a bit aloof...perhaps longing for her lost past and maybe for love.  I have to say MCB women can't really fit into the Smirnovas or Zakharovas of the world, because they are built different and they dance different.  There's just too much sun and beach and Cuban rum around here, so no Ice Queen for Diamonds. 😉

 

[Jack Reed]

Just wondering if your experiences of MCB Emeralds includes Catoya's realization of the lead?  It's easy for the stillness of this world-beneath-the-sea ballet to be sleep-inducing, but she made it softly royal, elegant, among other qualities, for this old Verdy fan:  I remember being riveted and awake.

But, yeah, pomp, tragedy, or iciness are alien to Diamonds.  Even in New York, pretty far from the beach, the Diamonds woman was a little lost in her own world, aloof, yes, a major facet of the woman, Farrell, it was made on;  doesn't the pdd have some of that built-in?  She doesn't always need him, proceeding across by herself, and he can admire her from upstage, lucky guy...  or is my memory burnishing what I saw?  

[Helene]

NYCB's and other companies' ballerinas have gone through various phases in "Diamonds," but, @Jack Reed, your memory of Farrell isn't burnished.

[Jack Reed]

That's the way it really was, eh, Helene?  Thanks for the reassurance.  It's been a long time, though we have  video, and ballet is the art which disappears even before it's finished - not to say incredible in the first place sometimes.  (It could be hard to be sure what you really saw even on the way out of the theater.)  But sometimes it still seems now like it just happened.  And if "that's the way it was for you, too" it must have actually have happened.  (My quote refers to another article by the author of the one for which our board is named.)  

[cubanmiamiboy]

On 4/16/2022 at 10:21 PM, Jack Reed said:

Just wondering if your experiences of MCB Emeralds includes Catoya's realization of the lead?  It's easy for the stillness of this world-beneath-the-sea ballet to be sleep-inducing, but she made it softly royal, elegant, among other qualities, for this old Verdy fan:  I remember being riveted and awake.

But, yeah, pomp, tragedy, or iciness are alien to Diamonds.  Even in New York, pretty far from the beach, the Diamonds woman was a little lost in her own world, aloof, yes, a major facet of the woman, Farrell, it was made on;  doesn't the pdd have some of that built-in?  She doesn't always need him, proceeding across by herself, and he can admire her from upstage, lucky guy...  or is my memory burnishing what I saw?  

Your memories of Catoya are real. She danced a wonderfully dreamy Walking pdd.