ABT Met Season 2024

[bingham]

2 hours ago, abatt said:

ABT didn't have trouble filling the Met when they had Vishneva, Corella and their ilk as mainstays in the company.  They were permanent company members.  I won't even begin to list the remarkable guest artists that we got to see at the Met.     The real explanation here, in my opinion, is that the majority of the current roster of principals   does not generate excitement and is  not at the same high level as yesteryear, with a few exceptions.  So the dancers won the fight for homegrown talent to perform instead of imports, but now they have about half the number of performance weeks at the Met.  Is that a victory for them and for us in the audience?  I'm not so sure. 

If ABT was still competing with NYCB due to overlapping seasons, ABT would lose a certain number of balletomanes.   The dancers at NYCB are far more interesting than most of ABT's principal roster now.  In July ABT is the only game in town for ballet, so the extension of the opera season is, in my opinion, a blessing for ABT.

Agree too. But where can one find the likes of Diana, Angel  JM Carreno etc Even the big European companies don’t have “stars”  now that we would ran to see..

Edited August 26, 2023 by bingham

[matilda]

You definitely see more sloppy finishes and landings at ABT these days -- from the corps to principal level -- than you do at NYCB. Part of why Jake Roxander and Jarod Curley have made such big impacts is because there are so few "star quality" men at ABT right now. 

[Papagena]

1 hour ago, Marta said:

 

Yes, 1000% agree.  Also this:

matilda said:  ABT has the disadvantage of competing with a larger, better funded, and better-known ballet company in the same city.

better funded, better-known and better.  Some [all?] NYCB corps dancers dance at the level of  ABT soloists.

 

 

Yes - also NYCB's brand has always been its sophisticated, accomplished repertoire/choreography and the varied strengths of its company as a whole. Most programs are not set up to spotlight just two dancers, and it is not up to one or two dancers to hold up an entire program or attract an audience. It's a more holistic approach to making performances that people actually might want to see, thus feels more sustainable to me.  

ABT''s later golden ages succeeded almost exclusively off star power (and ... Swan Lake no matter who is dancing it). Very few people are interested in watching Don Q itself - we love watching Baryshnikov, Herrera, Corella, Osipova or Simkin in Don Q. Even as a balletomane, I can't think of a single ABT dancer right now that would pull me into a Don Q unless I scored an orchestra rush ticket. 

 

 

[Helene]

Baryshnikov tried to shift from foreign-born and -trained dancers often hired directly as Principals to growing the company from within, and that went over as well as it seems to now.

Outside NYC there aren’t so many theaters available for major, including visiting, ballet companies as there are in NYC, with two in Lincoln Center and City Center 10 blocks away, plus BAM in Brooklyn, and NYC is the only one with two major mostly resident ballet companies, plus other major companies that tour, like Joffrey Ailey (see correction below) and Dance Theatre of Harlem. In opera, with NYCO defunct, the Met competes with Carnegie Hall and the NY Phil where performances include vocalists, let alone for people who are choosing among all the arts, while NYCB competes against all of the music, except when the Met is dark (For example, for me, it was the late Hvorostovsky singing Mussorgsky with the NY Phil for the win, when there was formidable other competition for my then-visitor arts dollar.)  The Met has cut down the number of productions significantly this season, and the number of performances was cut by about 10%,  It’s a struggle for them to fill the house beyond the occasional hit and the Zeffirelli La Boheme, and they are not performing during tourist season, when most major artists are performing in festivals.

 ABT is the only major NY company that doesn’t control its venue, and because of that, it’s the only company without much major competition during it’s main season, also the tourist season, and yet, it still has issues filling the house.  Some of this can still be attributed to the impacts of the pandemic — travel is way up again, but not everyone is back traveling, and, even among travelers, there were backlogs of visits to family and friends — so it will be interesting to see what happens in 2024. 

In San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, and Phoenix, there is one major opera and one major ballet company, and they share a venue, and in Phoenix, the ballet and opera share the venue with the Symphony for most of their season.  So there’s little competition and overlap from each other, especially since some often share the same musicians for their orchestras, and the symphony isn’t/is no longer dominant, like it is in Boston, Chicago (along with the opera), and Philadelphia.  

 

[MRR]

8 hours ago, California said:

I'm only able to see San Francisco Ballet one, maybe two long weekends each year. But it's always very difficult to get good seats, even with some priority friends ticketing. And I'm struck that, yes, the house always seems to sell out. It just seems to be a city that really supports ballet, for whatever reason. And they don't seem to be dependent on tourists the way NYC is, although their practice of scheduling two overlapping programs over a few days is a big advantage to visiting out-of-towners. 

Impressive as the War Memorial Opera House seats over 3100, roughly in-between the size of the Koch and the MET.

I would add Houston Ballet to the list who sold out its entire run of Swan Lake, several days in advance.  I know, I know, Swan Lake is indestructible with box office, but I was told by a longtime follower of HB that the company had never sold out an entire run before, only individual performances.  Tickets were reselling on StubHub at sizable markups.

Also the Joffrey Ballet's Anna Karenina (February 2023) was its record grossing production outside of Nutcracker.  This beat their 2019 premiere despite swaths of protestors outside the Lyric Opera House, calling for the production be cancelled.  Dare I say, the press covering the production (and the protests) helped?  Ticket sales increased the second week.

Edited August 26, 2023 by MRR

[abatt]

21 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

In those days the Met was heavily subscribed. I remember my aunt's annual ritual of choosing the subscription package with the fewest operas/singers she didn't want to see. Locally, the season at the main theater complex was 100% subscribed a few decades ago. Make-your-own packages and ticket exchanges were unthinkable not that long ago. Over the past 20 years, though, the audience has been tanking.

Today the opera does not have household names like Pavarotti and Domingo to sell out the house.  Not sure what the state of her voice is now, but Bartoli was also someone who could sell out the house at the Met.   When I started going to the opera at the Met, I recall that there was almost no flexibility to exchange tickets. 

[abatt]

2 hours ago, bingham said:

Agree too. But where can one find the likes of Diana, Angel  JM Carreno etc Even the big European companies don’t have “stars”  now that we would ran to see..

They are out there.  Carmago was a great hire.  Why is Simkin not with the Company anymore?  I would much rather see him than most of the current roster of men at ABT on the principal side.  

I'm not sure of the state of the company's finances right now.  Is there even any money to hire a major guest artist?  Since the company cut its number of weeks at the Met, did the dancers have to take a pay cut due to the reduced schedule?

[MRR]

42 minutes ago, Helene said:

and NYC is the only one with two major mostly resident ballet companies, plus other major companies that tour, like Joffrey and Dance Theatre of Harlem. 

Joffrey Ballet has been based out of Chicago since 1995.  There is an unaffiliated Joffrey school that remains in New York.

Alvin Ailey and Ballet Hispanico would be other examples.  

[Helene]

1 minute ago, MRR said:

Joffrey Ballet has been based out of Chicago since 1995.

You are right:  I was thinking of Ailey, not Joffrey.

[California]

2 minutes ago, abatt said:

Why is Simkin not with the Company anymore?  I would much rather see him than most of the current roster of men at ABT on the principal side.  

I've been googling to try to figure out what Simkin is doing now that he left Berlin. All I can find is "gala of the stars" stuff in London, Hong Kong, and even Manassas, Virginia, next April.

Also watching the casting for ABT this fall. Simkin does Etudes (and would be truly spectacular).  He has also done Lensky in Onegin with Berlin recently. He would sell tickets if they can afford him! 

PS. With ABT tickets going on sale to Friends this Tuesday, I hope they announce some casting soon!

[Helene]

17 minutes ago, abatt said:

Today the opera does not have household names like Pavarotti and Domingo to sell out the house.  Not sure what the state of her voice is now, but Bartoli was also someone who could sell out the house at the Met.   When I started going to the opera at the Met, I recall that there was almost no flexibility to exchange tickets. 

Which is really a shame, because, while I heard Pavarotti give excellent performances, sometimes in the middle of his carrer and certainly by the end of his career, there are at least ten tenors singing right now that I would rather hear live, and that's not thinking about it very hard.  Domingo was never a draw for me, whatever the voice range or as a conductor, but I'm in the minority about that one. 

But even now, if I were in NYC, I'd want to hear more of the singers cast, even if it was giving up a Pavarotti or Kaufmann, another hot ticket, in the more recent past.  I love getting the cover's single performance, just to hear new and/or other voices.  Just like now, I'd want to see different ABT dancers in major roles, although only the Ratmansky production of Don Q plus dancers I didn't actively avoid in the cast would entice me to see the ballet again.

The Met's ticket flexibility has for decades been inversely proportionate to how they are selling.  (Not specific performances, but seasons on the whole.)  They have gotten looser and tighter over the years.

ABT wasn't always terribly flexible, either.  There was no stated policy in the "make your own" subscription terms, but a BA! person posted here that when they called to make a subscription with all of one dancer's performances -- I believe Osipova, who wasn't always reliable anyway, even if her casting listing sold a lot of tickets -- the box office person refused.  I wasn't sure they'd give me three La Sylphides in a row when i was coming to NYC for a long weekend on my way to some work travel, but they did, and possibly only because I had a west coast address.

If they make changes, it's usually to follow the dollar, but, if they can, their policies are based on (sometimes retroactive) supply and demand.

[MRR]

18 minutes ago, abatt said:

  I'm not sure of the state of the company's finances right now.  Is there even any money to hire a major guest artist?  Since the company cut its number of weeks at the Met, did the dancers have to take a pay cut due to the reduced schedule?

I've also been curious about this, but more in terms of the number of contracted weeks the dancers are offered with the shortened season.  The dancers could be making less overall with fewer weeks but being paid the same or more weekly.  ABT seasonal contracts were consistently shorter than NYCB's even when performing 8 weeks at the MET.  NYCB has a 40+ week contract, while ABT topped out at 36 weeks pre-COVID.  A main reason for this is Nutcracker, where ABT's run is extremely short compared to NYCB's and those of other major companies.  However, this does have a benefit of opening up more time for guestings and thus additional income.  

Edited August 26, 2023 by MRR

[Fraildove]

There are major stars out there… a few off the top of my head are Jacobo Tissi, Marianella Nunez, Friedman Vogel is still dancing gorgeously at 43, Kimin Kim, Antonio Cashalino is up and coming very quickly, Elise Badenes, Maia Makhateli, Yana Salenko, Olga Smirnov, Vadim Muntegirov etc. Even having a few guests each season could help energize ticket sales for all performances. 

[coffeelover]

I think the only current ABT dancer I would put into the “star” category would be Aran Bell. 

[vipa]

On the topic of energizing sales - Whiteside, in a Conversations on Dance interview, said that he wasn't paired with Boylston in the Met season because management thought they were too comfortable as partners, and would grow as artists more by being paired with others. I have no strong opinion about Boylston and Whitside as partners, but if that reflects a management attitude it seems odd to me. If they have a pairing that has any charisma they should nurture an promote it. 

[abatt]

9 minutes ago, vipa said:

On the topic of energizing sales - Whiteside, in a Conversations on Dance interview, said that he wasn't paired with Boylston in the Met season because management thought they were too comfortable as partners, and would grow as artists more by being paired with others. I have no strong opinion about Boylston and Whitside as partners, but if that reflects a management attitude it seems odd to me. If they have a pairing that has any charisma they should nurture an promote it. 

i agree with that sentiment.  Some of the most memorable performances I've seen over the years were due to the fact that the partners worked together often and were able to take their artistry to a higher level because of their relationship - Ferri/Bocca for example in R&J, Vishneva and Gomes in everything. 

 

[volcanohunter]

15 hours ago, abatt said:

So the dancers won the fight for homegrown talent to perform instead of imports, but now they have about half the number of performance weeks at the Met.  Is that a victory for them and for us in the audience?  I'm not so sure. 

Since a larger number of in-house dancers now get a chance to perform principal roles, I'd call that a victory for them.

[Papagena]

13 hours ago, abatt said:

i agree with that sentiment.  Some of the most memorable performances I've seen over the years were due to the fact that the partners worked together often and were able to take their artistry to a higher level because of their relationship - Ferri/Bocca for example in R&J, Vishneva and Gomes in everything. 

 

But they don't have the same kind of chemistry that Ferri/Bocca and Vishneva/Gomes had.

Boylston / Whiteside have a very 'close silly friends' energy that doesn't translate well to the romantic ballets - almost like seeing brother and sister together. The only pairing with them that really worked for me was Harlequinade, where their goofy energies and playfulness lit up the stage. Really early in their careers it was different, but now I think management was in the right. I think they are a great pair for comedic ballets, which are rarely done anymore since they don't sell well. 

Then again I've avoided them together for this reason (love Whiteside's modern energy with a more muted romantic ballerina, and Camargo brings out the best in Boylston), so my exposure to them together during the last few years has been limited. 

Edited August 27, 2023 by Papagena

[ABT Fan]

4 hours ago, Papagena said:

But they don't have the same kind of chemistry that Ferri/Bocca and Vishneva/Gomes had.

Boylston / Whiteside have a very 'close silly friends' energy that doesn't translate well to the romantic ballets - almost like seeing brother and sister together. The only pairing with them that really worked for me was Harlequinade, where their goofy energies and playfulness lit up the stage. Really early in their careers it was different, but now I think management was in the right. I think they are a great pair for comedic ballets, which are rarely done anymore since they don't sell well. 

Then again I've avoided them together for this reason (love Whiteside's modern energy with a more muted romantic ballerina, and Camargo brings out the best in Boylston), so my exposure to them together during the last few years has been limited. 

I was going to say the exact same thing. Whiteside/Boylston are close friends and that chemistry translates to their stage partnership, which does not work in a romantic story. I saw them together in Giselle in 2021 and it was like watching a brother and sister play games in the first act - a little cringy actually. So by “too comfortable “ I think management may have meant this. In a modern ballet, or one without a romantic backstory, they work well together, but there were no such ballets in this past Met season.

[abatt]

49 minutes ago, ABT Fan said:

I was going to say the exact same thing. Whiteside/Boylston are close friends and that chemistry translates to their stage partnership, which does not work in a romantic story. I saw them together in Giselle in 2021 and it was like watching a brother and sister play games in the first act - a little cringy actually. So by “too comfortable “ I think management may have meant this. In a modern ballet, or one without a romantic backstory, they work well together, but there were no such ballets in this past Met season.

I know from old articles that Ferri and Bocca were also great friends.  Ditto Gomes and Vishneva.  The fact that Boylston and Whiteside are not good enough actors to portray romance onstage is not a reason to split up other partnerships at ABT that do work. 

[fondoffouettes]

2 hours ago, abatt said:

I know from old articles that Ferri and Bocca were also great friends.  Ditto Gomes and Vishneva.

And these four dancers were able to create magic onstage even when dancing with other partners. They had a way of drawing out the very best in their partners.

So many of the current ABT dancers leave me cold. I can't really come up with an obvious dream pairing in my mind, at least when looking at the principal roster. 

[BalletFan]

On 8/25/2023 at 1:55 PM, abatt said:

Yes, Kennedy Center offerings for next season are unimpressive.  I might instead head to Florida to see Miami City Ballet, or possibly to Philadelphia to see Philadelphia Ballet.

I used to travel to the Kennedy Center about once a year, but I agree that since Covid, the offerings have been very unimpressive. I've been attending the Philadelphia Ballet more and more. I like what Angel Corella is doing with the company, and for the first time ever, I purchased a subscription to the 2023-24 season. 

[balletlover08]

Do you guys think any of the younger soloists or principals will leave ABT for a European company? They just dance so little compared to Europe I just wonder.  I know some of the men have left like Cirio and Simkin but I wonder about the females. 

[fondoffouettes]

3 hours ago, balletlover08 said:

Do you guys think any of the younger soloists or principals will leave ABT for a European company? They just dance so little compared to Europe I just wonder.  I know some of the men have left like Cirio and Simkin but I wonder about the females. 

I think everything about ABT right now -- fewer performance opportunities, reduced prestige, repetitive repertoire -- could lead a dancer to experience a feeling of stagnation and ultimately seek greener pastures. I think we're most likely to see any departures at the corps and soloist levels, as I believe has generally been the case at ABT. The principals who have come up through the ranks at ABT generally tend to stick around. And there's been no wave of early-ish retirements among ABT's principals like there has been at NYCB.

I do wonder about Brandt. She's always been so hungry to take on new roles and push herself as a dancer. Does she dream of dancing Nikiya, for example? Because who knows when we'll ever see Bayadere at ABT again. (For comparison, it's kind of wild to look at Gillian Murphy's bio page and see just how many full-length and other roles she's danced. Will future ABT ballerinas ever take on such huge swathes of the repertoire?)

That said, the fact that we haven't really seen any prominent, voluntary departures from ABT since the pandemic (unless I'm forgetting someone) makes me think there's not going to be some big exodus.

I'm truly hoping ABT is just going through a slump or transitional period, and that we may see an upswing in the next five years or so. Fingers crossed...

Edited August 28, 2023 by fondoffouettes

[matilda]

For someone like Brandt, I'd imagine staying at ABT, where she has truly made it to the top and is favored in most big roles, would be favorable to moving elsewhere. Plus her family lives in the area and her parents are known to attend all of her performances. Going to a European company might be she has more shows and more diverse repertoire but would have heavier competition for lead parts, and wouldn't necessarily be hired immediately as a principal. And I think by US standards, ABT probably has more appealing performance opportunities than most other domestic companies. Compared to NYCB and pre-pandemic ABT, even a prestige company like San Francisco Ballet has a fairly limited yearly schedule.

The 2024 Met season lineup should be a good indication of what's to come. While the company needs ballets that draw big audiences, putting on the same things every summer is not necessarily sustainable in the long run.