ABT Met Season 2024

[choriamb]

On 8/29/2023 at 10:13 AM, FauxPas said:

To hammer home my point - back in 1980 Susan Jaffe made the papers when Mikhail Baryshnikov chose her to dance the lead in "Swan Lake" at the age of 18.  Things like that happened then.  

I also don't think that 10 years wait to dance principal roles is a good idea since that basically cancels out the dancer's 20's when they should be at their peak physically.  That is why the majority of the principals (including several who were promoted in the late aughts) are 35 and over now.

It takes years to develop a star in terms of both artistry and celebrity.

That's why it behooves managment to elevate dancers as quickly as possible. When ABT tried that with Boylston and Seo (elevated in their mid-20s), the backlash due to the existing pipeline of older dancers (Abrera, Copeland, Lane, Messmer) who regulars felt had been skipped was so damaging to the young hires that it's understandable why they pulled back.

The story of the past decade has been how they've made each subsequent cohort of dancers a little more prepared at a little earlier age while easing the pre-existing pipeline out. Shevchenko/Teuscher were given more featured roles at a younger age than Copeland/Lane. Brandt/Trenary were given more featured roles at a younger age than Shevchenko/Teuscher. Hurlin was given more featured roles at a younger age than Brandt/Trenary.

Only now are dancers (Granlund/Park/Misseldine) really being given featured roles at the correct age to become full-fledged stars. But it's finally happened, I think it will be the norm moving forward...and it will be exciting to see the results!

And my read is that the main role of a star is to create other stars. Ballerinas who perform past their late 30s are the ones who have enough box office clout to sell tickets even with a novice partner and the experience to support/develop those novice partners under duress.

If you subscribe to that idea, Kochetkova's intended role (after a first season to acquire her Met legs) wouldn't have been to dance with Simkin or Cornejo:  it would have been to shepherd younger men like Hoven, Gorak, Shayer, and Klein until they could fly on their own. (Basically, to assume Reyes' role of setting less-experienced short men at ease and saving their badly-supported fouettes into her 40s.) Kochetkova played that part rather well from what I saw, but she may have decided after a year that she really only wanted to dance with more experienced dancers...or ABT may have thought that Lane had the potential to do it just as well.

Similarly, Semionova and Osipova were wonderful solo artists...but what was equally notable about them was how much better they made Hallberg and Stearns look (and the ways they could potentially have developed the company's younger men). When you're under 35, you're graded on your own performance; when you're over 35, you're graded on your partner's performance.

Edited September 5, 2023 by choriamb

[volcanohunter]

On 8/24/2023 at 12:39 PM, California said:

I haven't seen it. And I'm not finding it on the Royal Ballet stream, Medici, or Marquee.

Woolf Works  has just been added to ROH Stream.

https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/woolf-works-2017-digital

[FayBallet]

Just noticed that there are different dates listed for the American Ballet Caravan premiere of Ballet Imperial. Does anyone know the reason?

NYCB has the premiere listed as June 25, 1941 in Rio De Janeiro - Ballet Imperial | New York City Ballet (nycballet.com)

ABT has the premiere listed as May 27, 1941 in New York - ABT - Ballet Imperial

Edited September 9, 2023 by FayBallet

[FayBallet]

And under TPC2, it's listed as May 29, 1941 in Rio de Janeiro: Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 | New York City Ballet (nycballet.com)

[Helene]

The Balanchine Catalogue Archive for Ballet Imperial shows:

• Premiere

Quote

June 25, 1941, American Ballet Caravan, Teatro Municipal, Rio de Janeiro. Conductor: Emanuel Balaban. Pianist: Simon Sadoff. (Open dress rehearsal: May 29, Little Theatre of Hunter College, New York. Conductor: Fritz Mahler.)

For TPC2, NYCB is listing the open dress rehearsal date.

ABT's date looks like a typo for the open dress (at Hunter College), unless they had an earlier rehearsal in mind. 

[Quiggin]

[Marginally OT] Interesting that Balanchine delivered Ballet Imperial alongside Concerto Barocco ,"in a burst of creative energy unlike anything he'd had for several years" (Duberman). It premiered in Rio with Serenade and Filling Station. Marie-Jeanne, who was technically brilliant, perhaps a little like Tiler Peck, has some interesting things to say about the difficulty of Imperial/TPC2:

Quote

Ballet Imperial was no masterpiece, and it didn't kill me except for the opening cadenza. It was extremely uncomfortable. Usually George never did anything that was uncomfortable, perhaps musically his choreography was perfection. But the cadenza was difficult in an uncomfortable way. George just threw it in and I don't know if I did what he wanted––those crazy things he would invent. I don't think he knew either. It was difficult and it made me terribly nervous. I was never sure I was going to be able to do it. And it wasn't technically difficult, really. It was a crazy thing. Of course, there were some passages that were hard: there were a lot of double sauts de basque on the way. But I enjoy doing those things. So do all five-year-old ballerinas! It was the same  in the Bizet Symphony in C where I did entrechat dix, which nobody does today.

Holly Brubach has a good overview of BI/2 in Reading Dance, about the ballet and its score (it was an abridged version rewritten in parts by pianist Alexander Siloti). She ends by saying that Ballet Imperial was "redolent of classical the Maryinsky" & "a caricature of classical Russian ballet."

Some of the Russian Formalists of the 1920s discuss artists' apprenticeships in terms of parody and irony – Dostoevsky's parodies of Gogol, Manet's of Goya and Velasquez, Proust of various 19c writers – as a way to find their own voice. It often feels there is an edge of parody humming along in Balanchine's classical works, especially Bizet.

Edited September 9, 2023 by Quiggin

[angelica]

20 minutes ago, Quiggin said:

Some of the Russian Formalists of the 1920s discuss artists' apprenticeships in terms of parody and irony – Dostoevsky's parodies of Gogol, Manet's of Goya and Velasquez, Proust of various 19c writers – as a way to find their own voice. It often feels there is an edge of parody humming along in Balanchine's classical works, especially Bizet.

That's so interesting, Quiggin. So what would be examples of Balanchine ballets that aren't parodies--the black and white, perhaps?

[California]

16 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

Woolf Works  has just been added to ROH Stream.

https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/woolf-works-2017-digital

Thanks for the heads-up! I just watched Royal's Woolf Works on the ROH Stream. All-star cast, starting with Ferri, Lamb, and Osipova. But I wonder: to really appreciate this, do I need to visit/revisit Woolf's novels? (I did revisit Plato's dialogue The Symposium after seeing the Ratmansky of the same name, and I don't think that helped - indeed, it was more a distraction.) Woolf Works is super-artsy-postmodern (pardon my French!) with stunning sets, lighting, costumes all quite different from anything we've seen before in ballet. That seems likely to attract a diverse contemporary arts audience who will be curious to see all of this. All the women in pointe shoes, interestingly. I think I'm going to need some guides from seasoned ballet writers to help me understand what's happening. 

[Quiggin]

18 minutes ago, angelica said:

That's so interesting, Quiggin. So what would be examples of Balanchine ballets that aren't parodies--the black and white, perhaps?

Yes, I would say the black and whites, like The Four Temperaments and Episodes where Balanchine uses Soviet Constructivist vocabulary on which to built his works. (Of course these could not really be made explicit points of reference in a press kit during the Cold War.)

The B&Ws are perhaps so severe they perhaps don't allow the space of parody (don't know quite how to support this idea). Yuri Tynianov is the Russian Formalist I was thinking of who proposes a theory of parodic apprenticeship, but also Victor Shklovsky, whom Balanchine knew and was amused by. Pierre Bourdieu cites both in his fascinating book on Manet.

You can see traces of Meyerhold Biomechanics exercises here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8MkzBxHqts/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=invalid&ig_rid=8f4450d9-a0f0-4162-9120-16ab5f82b4a9

[Papagena]

1 hour ago, California said:

Thanks for the heads-up! I just watched Royal's Woolf Works on the ROH Stream. All-star cast, starting with Ferri, Lamb, and Osipova. But I wonder: to really appreciate this, do I need to visit/revisit Woolf's novels? (I did revisit Plato's dialogue The Symposium after seeing the Ratmansky of the same name, and I don't think that helped - indeed, it was more a distraction.) Woolf Works is super-artsy-postmodern (pardon my French!) with stunning sets, lighting, costumes all quite different from anything we've seen before in ballet. That seems likely to attract a diverse contemporary arts audience who will be curious to see all of this. All the women in pointe shoes, interestingly. I think I'm going to need some guides from seasoned ballet writers to help me understand what's happening. 

I'd say only read the books if you're excited to read them, rather than doing so in service to the ballet. Book summaries and reading more about Woolf herself (her letters, the themes of her writing and philosophies) might help the most since McGregor seems like he's really just trying to tap into the essence of Woolf and her novels. 

If I had to choose one or two books to read again (all are worthy but not easy reads), I'd probably read Mrs Dalloway, as it's her most known work and is the most character-heavy section of the ballet. For Orlando, just watch the gorgeous 1992 movie version of Orlando starring Tilda Swinton! For The Waves, you could always thumb through a few pages to get a feel for her more experimental side. Reading about the concept and ideas behind The Waves instead of the The Waves itself is definitely enough to understand this part of the ballet. 

I hope Alessandra Ferri comes to perform the Virginia Woolf role with ABT! Such a marvelous role for a more seasoned ballerina who can captures its depths. Off the top of my head I can't image anyone else at ABT in the role. 

Edited September 9, 2023 by Papagena

[Josette]

I read the three novels before seeing Woolf Works  last spring in London, but I had already fallen in love with the ballet when I saw it in a cinema several years ago, to the extent that I vowed to go see it multiple times when The Royal Ballet performed it.  I saw Woolf Works on a Tuesday evening at the cinema and a few days letter I was at the premiere of Ratmansky's Whipped Cream, which I found unbearable  because of where Woolf Works had put me.     As much as I loved the film Orlando, the novel was more meaningful, and beautifully written, delightfully witty, and had much more to it than the film.  I found having read Mrs. Dalloway  did enhance my recognition of what was going on stage, but did not enhance my appreciation of the the dancers and this incredibly human, episodic work.   I would not call any of these works difficult reading.     Pagapena is right in advising to read the works if you want to read them for themselves.  The last act, pertaining to The Waves,  will be more meaningful if you know about Woolf's suffering from depression and her relationship with her sister.  

I saw Ferri, Osipova, and Nunez, and they were each extraordinary and unique, as they each always are. 

[cobweb]

I took an entire semester of Virginia Woolf in college, many years ago. I remember The Waves as being mostly impenetrable except for a few memorable lines that registered and  stayed with me even after so long. Dipping into it a bit is probably the best bet. Mrs. Dalloway was easier going, but still not easy. Orlando on the other hand is entirely readable, delightful, funny and very, I would say, au courant. I re-read it a few years ago, I can't remember what prompted that, but I was laughing out loud (quoting loosely: "... so that illicit love on a pleasure ship... but we omit the moral"). On another note, I have been refreshing my knowledge of ballet history over the summer, and it was interesting to hear that the grandmother of Vita Sackville-West (Woolf's sometime lover) was Pepita de Oliva. She was a Spanish dancer renowned in Europe at the time, although not entirely admired by critics including Auguste Bournonville. I have been dipping into several volumes, I think I got that from Apollo's Angels, but don't quote me on that. 

Edited September 10, 2023 by cobweb
added favorite quote

[California]

I think Daniil Simkin is taunting us! His Instagram stories today says to expect a big announcement next month. Is it a coincidence that we are expecting ABT to announce its Met 2024 season in a few weeks? If they need another male principal who can sell tickets and who is available, hard to think of a better choice!

[bingham]

The Met season is usually announced at the end of the Fall season. Is Susan going to surprise us with her selections?

[ABT Fan]

1 minute ago, bingham said:

The Met season is usually announced at the end of the Fall season. Is Susan going to surprise us with her selections?

I would love that, but there’s little room for surprises at this point. It’s only 4 weeks, and we already know they’re doing Woolf Works, Swan Lake, and Carlos Lopez said on his IG awhile ago that R&J will come back (again…). So that leaves either one more full length or a weeks worth of mixed rep. Ugh. So for me the biggest surprise (or relief if I’m being honest) will be to see who will be promoted (whenever that happens) and who will be retiring. Or, maybe we’ll see some huge debuts, other than Misseldine in SL. 

[bingham]

2 minutes ago, ABT Fan said:

I would love that, but there’s little room for surprises at this point. It’s only 4 weeks, and we already know they’re doing Woolf Works, Swan Lake, and Carlos Lopez said on his IG awhile ago that R&J will come back (again…). So that leaves either one more full length or a weeks worth of mixed rep. Ugh. So for me the biggest surprise (or relief if I’m being honest) will be to see who will be promoted (whenever that happens) and who will be retiring. Or, maybe we’ll see some huge debuts, other than Misseldine in SL. 

Hoping it will be DQ then..

[matilda]

I would love to see Roxander in DQ! And Simkin could guest again. There are slim pickings for other Basilios though. Roxander/Brandt, Simkin/Boylston, Bell/Hurlin, and Camargo/Shevchenko would all be worthy casts. 

[BalletFan]

3 hours ago, ABT Fan said:

I would love that, but there’s little room for surprises at this point. It’s only 4 weeks, and we already know they’re doing Woolf Works, Swan Lake, and Carlos Lopez said on his IG awhile ago that R&J will come back (again…). So that leaves either one more full length or a weeks worth of mixed rep. Ugh. So for me the biggest surprise (or relief if I’m being honest) will be to see who will be promoted (whenever that happens) and who will be retiring. Or, maybe we’ll see some huge debuts, other than Misseldine in SL. 

Do we know for sure that the summer 2024 season will only be four weeks? I'm hoping it will be longer.

[laurel]

For an abbreviated Met season, I vote for Coppelia, with Brandt and Roxander teamed for a minimum of two performances! 

[Drew]

14 hours ago, laurel said:

For an abbreviated Met season, I vote for Coppelia, with Brandt and Roxander teamed for a minimum of two performances! 

This gets my vote. Coppelia is less of a showcase for a rising male star than Don Q, but given Roxander's relative lack of experience it might be a good choice for his first  full-length  lead.  I also think ABT can likely field a slew of charming Swanildas. I'd love to see Hurlin give it a go. And if Copeland returns and takes on classical roles, then Swanilda would probably be one of my top choices for her.

Don't know about overall box office for Coppelia though. DQ may be a bigger draw.

(In the meanwhile I'm casting Misseldine as prayer in my mind and casting other roles too, but since I think Coppelia is very unlikely, I will drop the fantasy.)

[naomikage]

As I have noted in the Vienna State Ballet topic, Alessandra Ferri will be taking over the role of Artistic Director there so if ABT will be doing Woolf Works at the MET in 2024, this might be one of the last chances to see her perform live. (I am not sure whether she will be performing in it or not)

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cyxp4ejo8yi/?img_index=1

Edited October 24, 2023 by naomikage
typo

[onxmyxtoes]

I went to a talk for donors and a member of the artistic staff said Romeo and Juliet is back next Met.

[abatt]

Oh no.  What a complete lack of imagination.  

[fondoffouettes]

6 minutes ago, abatt said:

Oh no.  What a complete lack of imagination.  

Truly. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they program Giselle again next year. I just hope they can fit in a fifth production this year rather than devoting a week and a half to single work, like they did last season with LWFC. 

[ABT Fan]

1 hour ago, onxmyxtoes said:

I went to a talk for donors and a member of the artistic staff said Romeo and Juliet is back next Met.

Carlos Lopez, one of the ballet masters, wrote that on an IG post awhile back. Ugh.

I only hope it's used as a vehicle for a retirement, or two.