cobweb Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 4 minutes ago, bellawood said: My son is headed to the show tomorrow with his 6th grade class where he gets to see a Roman/Emma preview. Hope your son can provide a few comments for BA! 😀 Link to comment
bellawood Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 5 minutes ago, cobweb said: Hope your son can provide a few comments for BA! 😀 He’s actually a student at Ballet Tech so I’ve already told him to watch Roman's jump. He'll be attending with his ballet teacher Ashley Tuttle (and potentially watching his allegro teacher, Robert LaFosse, on stage). Only in New York, kids! Link to comment
uptowner Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 I believe the student shows are free for the participating schools. They were doing 2 of them for a while— not sure now. Those shows are not open to the public. Link to comment
cobweb Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 1 hour ago, bellawood said: He’s actually a student at Ballet Tech so I’ve already told him to watch Roman's jump Your son sounds like a discerning young man! I look forward to his thoughts on Roman’s jump. Link to comment
Fleurfairy Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 Stafford doesn't seem to be as generous in his Nutcracker casting as Martins was. Martins' casting sheets were chock full of debuts for corps members (and sometimes apprentices) in big roles. I see only a few sprinkled here and there. Makes for a rather humdrum season. Link to comment
matilda Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 LaFreniere seems like an obvious choice for Sugar Plum Fairy, and management seems to love her. Also Miriam Miller. Two more weeks of casting to come out so hopefully more announcements. Would love to see Davide Riccardo as Cavalier at some point. Link to comment
cobweb Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 Martins did cast Nutcracker very liberally, but I think most of the debuts were typically concentrated in the final week or so of the show (sadly, when I am usually out of town). LaFreniere and Miller do seem like super obvious choices for Sugarplum. Thinking about the casting patterns, it seems that Sugarplum is virtually all the principals and soloists, but not corps members. For Dewdrop, however, they do sometimes cast corps members. Is that right - can anyone think of someone who did Sugarplum as a corp member? Link to comment
matilda Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 Ashley Hod danced Sugarplum while in the corps. Also I remember going to the Nutcracker forever ago and Abi Stafford, then a corps member, was cast. Link to comment
Jacqueline Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 I saw Megan Fairchild dance Sugarplum as a corps member WAY back in the day. Link to comment
Helene Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 I used to love that post-Christmas week of performances for the concentration of debuts and opportunities, and also the "drunken" New Year's Eve performance followed by a late-ish dinner. Link to comment
canbelto Posted November 30, 2022 Share Posted November 30, 2022 Bouder now out of Nutcracker this Friday, replaced by Gerrity. https://res.cloudinary.com/new-york-city-ballet/image/upload/v1669845514/Documents/Casting/NYCB_Casting_Nov_30-Dec_4_2022_20221130.pdf Link to comment
BalanchineFan Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 (edited) 9 hours ago, Fleurfairy said: Stafford doesn't seem to be as generous in his Nutcracker casting as Martins was. Martins' casting sheets were chock full of debuts for corps members (and sometimes apprentices) in big roles. I see only a few sprinkled here and there. Makes for a rather humdrum season. There was one year Peter Martins cast 17 SPF debuts. I don't think he was as generous other years, but by then he had a full slate of women who had performed it once. He was interviewed in the NY Times and he said the principals could earn a lot of money guesting with Nutcracker elsewhere, and NY audiences didn't buy tickets for the casting, so he let the principals do their guesting. Ashley Hod and Claire Kretschmar were two of the 17 women who debuted that year, IIRC. I see Alexa Maxwell has a debut in Coffee. India Bradley in Marzipan. And Zoe Bliss Magnussen is out of Dolls. I hope she's ok! She had surgery sometime last year, (there were pictures of it on IG, or maybe in a NYCB newsletter) but she's been performing since then. Edited December 1, 2022 by BalanchineFan Link to comment
vipa Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 22 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said: I see Alexa Maxwell has a debut in Coffee. India Bradley in Marzipan. And Zoe Bliss Magnussen is out of Dolls. I hope she's ok! She had surgery sometime last year, (there were pictures of it on IG, or maybe in a NYCB newsletter) but she's been performing since then. Speaking of soloists being cast, I don't see Gina Pazcoguin cast much. Coffee of course, and I believe one Dew Drop. Meagan LeCrone is cast even less. Both of these ladies have been soloists for a long time. Link to comment
matilda Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 Neither Pazcoguin or LeCrone have impressed me much in recent years, so lack of casting makes sense. Time for the new soloists to shine. In Pazcoguin's case, publishing a book bashing the company couldn't have been good for her NYCB career. Link to comment
abatt Posted December 1, 2022 Author Share Posted December 1, 2022 (edited) I see that in addition to Bouder, Mearns and Laracey are also replaced in the casting for this week. Hopefully all is well. Edited December 1, 2022 by abatt Link to comment
BalanchineFan Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 43 minutes ago, matilda said: Neither Pazcoguin or LeCrone have impressed me much in recent years, so lack of casting makes sense. Time for the new soloists to shine. In Pazcoguin's case, publishing a book bashing the company couldn't have been good for her NYCB career. Most of Pazcoquin's complaints were against Peter Martins. I cant' see how that would hurt her career at this point. The Fosse-Verdon crowd doesn't seem to have minded a bit. Link to comment
cobweb Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 Megan LeCrone has done Sugarplum. I didn't see it, but I recall when the casting came out, I thought there was hardly anyone less Sugarplummy than her. To check my memory, I looked at her bio on the website, and it's listed in her rep. Interesting that she no longer seems to be cast in it. Link to comment
bellawood Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 19 hours ago, Jacqueline said: I saw Megan Fairchild dance Sugarplum as a corps member WAY back in the day. Was this the one she wrote about in her book that was a complete disaster? A debut with Joaquin DeLuz that went sideways. Ashley Bouder had posted to her stories that she had to have her ankle drained and so she's out this week (it might have timed out by now). It's interesting to me that Peter Walker is only cast once so far (with Mira Nadon for her debut) and Harrison Ball not at all. Child report from the Wednesday morning Nutcracker was more about the noisy audience than the dancers on stage, I'm afraid. He did bring home the playbill and he saw VonEnck/Meija and Hod as Dew Drop. There was one principal -- Daniel Ulbricht showed up to do Candy Cane at 11 am. Link to comment
Jacqueline Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 Bellawood, I am not sure. It may have been her debut and it was certainly during the same era. I remember being unimpressed at the time but don't recall it being a "complete disaster," at least not from an audience member's point of view. She also talked about that performance and her utter terror and dread on "Conversations with Megan." Now, I'm sure she's a sublime Sugarplum and I would love to see her in the role again. Link to comment
tutu Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 3 hours ago, Jacqueline said: Now, I'm sure she's a sublime Sugarplum and I would love to see her in the role again. Confirmed that Fairchild is a wonderful Sugar — saw her a year or two ago and I just love her presence in the role. Link to comment
Fleurfairy Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 Oh yes, Fairchild is the current gold standard for Balanchine's Sugarplum. Link to comment
BalanchineFan Posted December 2, 2022 Share Posted December 2, 2022 21 hours ago, Jacqueline said: Bellawood, I am not sure. It may have been her debut and it was certainly during the same era. I remember being unimpressed at the time but don't recall it being a "complete disaster," at least not from an audience member's point of view. She also talked about that performance and her utter terror and dread on "Conversations with Megan." Now, I'm sure she's a sublime Sugarplum and I would love to see her in the role again. I'm not surprised that she thought it was a "complete disaster" OR that audience members found the performance lovely. Megan Fairchild writes in her book that much of her journey has been learning not to be so hard on herself. Was she the dancer who said of SPF ppd that there are "14 things that could go terribly wrong", she had counted them?!!! Link to comment
FPF Posted December 2, 2022 Share Posted December 2, 2022 55 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said: Was she the dancer who said of SPF ppd that there are "14 things that could go terribly wrong", she had counted them?!!! I remember that as coming from Peter Martins. Link to comment
BalanchineFan Posted December 2, 2022 Share Posted December 2, 2022 2 hours ago, FPF said: I remember that as coming from Peter Martins. By any chance, do you remember where Peter Martins said it? Link to comment
AG Posted December 2, 2022 Share Posted December 2, 2022 (edited) I just found it: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/arts/dance/the-nutcracker-gives-young-dancers-a-spotlight-role.html?ref=dance: “There are 13 places that are very precarious, that can conceivably go very wrong to the visible eye of the layperson, not just us,” Mr. Martins said. “So whenever I watch it, I’m like: 10 more to go, seven to go, four to go, O.K., only two left.” He paused. “Maybe that’s not a good thing to write because people will be watching for it.” Edited to add a link to the original BA! thread including the NYT article: Edited December 2, 2022 by AG (Link to 2015 BA! discussion.) Link to comment
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