Wednesday, September 25

[dirac]

An interview with Joseph Gordon prior to his season-ending injury.

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I think I’m in some of my best years, dancing-wise. When I turned 30 I thought, Oh, my God, I’m gonna feel so old. But actually, you deepen as an artist. Last year the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky made this piece for me called Solitude, inspired by the war in Ukraine, and it broke something — there was a deepening that happened. It was very dark and very personal; it dealt with grief and the dislocation you feel after death, which I know well but haven’t been able to express in this art form. Because of my technical abilities, I was kind of typecast in the company to do more classic work, probably what you’d think of as typical ballet. This was much more human and raw. I had to let go onstage and trust myself, learning how to hold space without doing too much. It gave me the freedom to take risks.

 

[dirac]

A review of New York City Ballet by Mary Cargill for danceviewtimes.com.

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Indiana Woodward and David Gabriel debuted as the doomed couple in “Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fee’”.  The work, to music by Stravinsky based on themes by Tchaikovsky, opened in what seemed to be a happy peasant land, with a frisky female corps, led by two dancers (an incisive Alston Macgill in her debut and a sweeping Mary Elizabeth Sell).  Woodward’s creamy upper body, elegant footwork and sunny presence illuminated her piquant solo, where she may represent the frolicking peasant girlfriend of the ill-fated man.  (In Andersen’s story, he is claimed by the ice maiden who killed his mother when he was a baby; at the end of the story, she returns on the night before his wedding to kiss him and he dies; in the original ballet libretto he abandons his village life to follow his muse—either way the poor girl loses.)  But even in the opening sections of Balanchine’s abstraction, there are disturbing hints as she and Gabriel rarely connect, often looking in different directions.