Haglund's Heel

Blue Skies & Legs at Lincoln Center

F.Y.I. — FREE CHAMPAGNE DURING INTERMISSION ON OPENING NIGHT.  UH-HUH!

Update: Emerging Pictures/Opus Arte

According to today's info on the Emerging Pictures website, the Kew Gardens Theater in Queens, NY will screen The Royal Ballet's January 19th performance of Giselle on February 13th.  No casting listed yet.  The Bolshoi's Les Flammes De Paris (Osipova, Savin, Vasiliev) will be screened at this cinema this coming December 18th.

Symphony Space and Big Cinemas Manhattan are still TBA but the UIEX has already reported that EP disclosed that Symphony Space plans to carry all of its Opus Arte offerings.  The EP Opera in Cinema page has an interactive feature that invites you to input a zip code to find a participating movie theater.  It appears that The Royal Ballet's Giselle will be screened LIVE in Pasadena, Encino and LA on January 19th.  A theater in Schenectady will apparently show Giselle LIVE on January 19th as well. 

Heard on the street . . .

 

[Very late at night.  Somewhere on Lafayette Avenue.  In Brooklyn.]

 

Reggie:    Did you see the ABT Nutcracker Audition Notice in the garbage up by Waverly Avenue?

 

Reilly:    No man, I'm trying to find that KFC hot wing and mashed potatoes that I saw the guy dump in the corner can.  I know it's there somewhere, but I can't get up the side of the can.  My claws won't hold me. 

 

Reggie:    You need to cut weight.  Stick to the leftover salads on the street between Clinton and Washington. 

 

Reilly:    That's a subway ride up to Clinton.  I'm staying out of the subway for now.  It's too freakin' dangerous.  The Department of Health is looking for us and it's not just to write us a ticket!

 

Reggie:    Well then, WALK.  It'll do you good.  You've got to get into shape if you want to impress RATmansky at the audition.

 

Reilly:    You're right.  This new Nutcracker is gonna be my ticket outta here.  I've always wanted to be on stage – or in the audience under someone's feet – or even just in a dressing room.  My life is the thea-tra !

 

Reggie:    You're such a ham.

 

Reilly:    Oh man, what I wouldn't give for a little ham.  Let's go check the cans in front of the church.  Church hand-outs have been good lately.  What exactly do we have to do at this Nutcracker audition?

 

Reggie:    High-speed scurry in a circle.  Extend our tails.  Basic technique.  I'm sure you can handle it.

 

Reilly:    Is this guy RATmansky going to expect a resume?

Reggie:    Naa,  you're wearing it.

 

 

 

 

Show us the RATS!

Less excitement and more blank looks seem to be the response to the glimpse of casting for the new ABT Nutcracker at BAM.  And the institutional pea-soup-green and brick red color scheme of the latest announcement doesn't build breathless anticipation either. 

We really need to get a good look at the Rats in order to create the right Nutcracker buzz.  Brooklyn's rats have long needed a makeover – especially the ones along Lafayette Avenue – so it is with great anticipation that we – and they – await to see how Captain A-Rat will spruce up the native population and turn the scurrying darlings into productive members of the community.

That aside –

It certainly is good to see that apparently – this surmised exclusively from the limited casting published on the eve of the opening of The Nutcracker box office – there will be a wide range of choreographies for Prince What'shisname and Clara created to accommodate the wide range of abilities and styles of the lead dancers.  We'll have something spectacular for several Princes and then we'll  have the watered-down version of spectacular for you-know-who.  For Clara we'll have some stiff-shoed wiz-banging, some grown-up elegance, and perhaps two instances of true progressive character development of a young girl.  You gotta wonder whether the leads were pre-cast in stone for Ratmansky before a single step was ever choreographed.  Just observing the collection of principal women – Part, Murphy, Herrera, Reyes – when have they ever danced the same full length role?  Oh yeah, McKenzie's Sleeping Beauty – but, really, try to think of one.  And it appears that one of the perennial Sugar Plum and Cavalier couples  (Abrera & Radetsky) and a perennial Clara (Riccetto) have lost their positions in the lineup.  No doubt they are being good sports about it, though.

Let's hope nobody notices that nine out of sixteen principals are not dancing the "lead" roles – roughly 56-57% of the principal roster are excluded.  Maybe it's high time that a few of these so-called principals who only show up for the Met Season are finally correctly labeled as permanent guest artists so that a few deserving soloists can be moved up to company principal rank and finally be given the respect they deserve – before their tights grow moldy.  No doubt, McKenzie has a hat-load of flimsy excuses for obstinately refusing to promote Abrera and a few others and another hat-load for falsely carrying Vishneva and Bolle as company principal dancers, and Lord knows a Hoss-sized Stetson full of flimsy excuses for continuing to push the struggling Stearns at us in principal roles with marginal or less success.  It must be very comfy under that bubble of excuses.

 

 

NYCB 2011 Spring Gala Performance

The Opening Night September 14 performance is quickly selling out; so get on it, if you haven't yet made your purchase.

Haglund wants to call your attention to the May 11th Spring Gala which includes the premiere of the Seven Deadly Sins and which is selling out fast, also.  To date there are only two ballets listed on the calendar for that evening.  It is not likely that the other third of the program will be a bunch of short films and boring speeches.  Therefore, Haglund highly recommends that you plop down a few bills for that May 11th performance just in case it turns out to be a one-night only event that you'll be kicking yourself for missing.  GO HERE to purchase.

The Ballet Bag in Time Out London!

It is truly cause to celebrate when one of our own comes into its own – when it arrives at a destined destination where acclaim waves over its being like lemon buttercream icing drizzling over a ginger cupcake at London's Primrose Bakery.  We are, of course, speaking of The Ballet Bag and Bag Ladies Linda and Emilia who were featured subjects in a most complimentary article in the August 5-11 issue of Time Out London.  The magazine declared The Ballet Bag to be "Best of the new bunch" and cited Linda's and Emilia's smart use of evolving social media and technology. 

 

Haglund, like many of you, has known the Ballet Bag and the Bag Ladies since they were in short pants - not so long ago - and has been delighted by their ballet reviews, dancer interviews, entertaining side trips and awesome access to celebrated dancers.  (And they can be very effective international co-conspirators when you need them.) 

Congratulations to The Ballet Bag!

NYCB Fall Season opens one month from today

Haglund woke up this crisp, clear Saturday morning and began fondling his fistful of – pause – NYCB tickets for the coming year!  He feels so rich.  Life is good.

If you haven't yet purchased your gift-priced ($25 & $50) tickets for the Opening Night on September 14th, go here to do so.

UIEX: Royal Ballet's Giselle LIVE in HD

Emerging Pictures has now  formally posted the January 19, 2011 Royal Ballet's performance of Giselle as one which its participating cinemas will carry.  The website's interactive cinema search engine confirms Symphony Space and Big Cinemas Manhattan (on East 59th Street) as two theaters which will carry as-yet-unnamed performances.  Also on the list is Kew Gardens Theatre which lists an October screening of Tosca at the Teatro Carlo Felice.  It seems that we may see Shakespeare from the Globe Theatre as well!

This is all looking very promising, isn't it? 

Brooklyn Daily Eagle on Michael Kidd

Go immediately to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to read today's fascinating article on Michael Kidd by Vernon Parker. (the page loads slowly)  Kidd was a Brooklyn Boy who attended New Utrecht High School and City College before launching his brilliant career as a dancer and choreographer.

Just goes to show that Brooklyn has a lot of ballet savvy stored up in unlikely places like the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.  Wait 'til ABT lands its Nutcracker at BAM – you'll see.

Purity Schtick

The Metropolitan Opera just announced that next season will consist of plotless operas of pure note singing.  Not to be outdone by its rich sister, the New York City Opera announced that its season will consist of plotless operas of a single, pure note of music.  Next, the New York Philharmonic, in a well-funded new pure plotless music project, announced the premiere of its new symphony entitled Fingernails Down the Chalkboard which will be performed with guest artists from Manhattan's Pinky Nail Salons.  The Met Museum announced the new Single Line exhibit which will replace all of its Monets:  each painting will be black and white and consist of a single pure line. 

Witnesses at The New York Times report that upon reading the above off of the news wire, Alastair Macaulay strapped on his pointe shoes and performed handsprings down several flights of stairs at the Times Building on Eighth Avenue squealing, "See, see.  Everyone is doing plotless.  Plotless is purity.  Yes, pure.  Oh, how I love the word pure.  It makes me feel so good to say it.  Now I must quickly jete to my desk to prepare my spit on the world's great classical story ballets" and the result was this.

When Alastair Macaulay finally slips behind The New York Times’ impending pay-wall, never to be heard from again, it will be a relief not to observe him blowing his pompous, out-of-tune horn about the state of the art of ballet to a general readership that mostly lacks the knowledge needed to weigh the value of what he says.

This past week his meandering gobbledygook with which he sought to devalue classic story ballets included:

The pure-dance sections, which provide a release from the acting and mime portions, slow down the narrative, putting a story ballet on pause for long periods. And the ballets that have pared away pure dance to maintain a constant narrative thrust have seldom achieved lasting popularity or classic status.

No examples, no evidence, and no substantiation are included because his complaints, and they definitely are complaints, are baseless and of a minority so small that they are inconsequential. Then, he starts drumming up alleged complaints from the 1700s:

Some of the complaints in the 18th century were just the same as those today: too much dancing or not enough; some stories make incomplete sense while others seem unsuited to dance; some star dancers are poor actors.

Could these complainants from the 1700s, who Macaulay believes were sufficiently numerous, authoritative or esteemed so as to have their assessments rekindled 300 years later in The New York Times, be identified?  And who else is complaining today besides Macaulay, himself?  Where are his editors? 

Audiences regularly sit through a poverty of dance-narrative expression that they would never tolerate in a movie, a novel, an opera, a play or even a musical.

There are lots of awful movies, dreadful operas, stupid plays and worthless musicals that routinely sell out theaters.  Macaulay may have missed The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy some years ago during which the soprano sang an aria in English that climaxed with an upper register squeal, “I’ve missed my period!”   Talk about “poverty“ in narrative expression.   But then, if Mark Morris could figure out a way to put that into steps, you can be sure Macaulay would applaud it - especially if it included a typical Morris episode of spanking or urinating. 

The narratives and subtitles for many famous, enduring, universally praised operas border on the ridiculous, but that hasn’t stopped audiences from truly enjoying and appreciating the stories, the music, and the overall productions.  Perhaps those audiences should be ashamed for having such low standards. 

Going on –

I cringe at the sensationalism, the triteness and the ham that characterize the majority of story ballets, works like “Don Quixote,” “Le Corsaire” and “La Bayadère.”

Oh man, there he goes again picking on one of Haglund’s most favorite ballets, La Bayadere.  Let’s take this opportunity to say once again how the beautiful Lanchbery orchestration stirs the soul and so perfectly conveys the story’s sadness, hope and longing.  Who can avoid getting misty-eyed while listening to the cello when Nikiya dances for Solor and Gamzatti or the winds in the exquisite Candle Dance or the strings in Gamzatti’s Act III solo and her PdT with Solor and Nikiya? 

La Bayadere has more than enough beautiful, universal storyline for the 30,000 or so people who see it each year when it’s part of ABT’s spring season.  And Haglund certainly is not the only one who attends multiple performances of this classic because he can’t get enough of it.

So why doesn’t La Bayadere touch dance critic Alastair Macaulay and why does he “cringe“ at Don Quixote?  Since he is about to disappear behind The New York Times’ pay-wall,  never to be heard from again, we shouldn’t care.  It’s his loss.  His uber-serious ponderings about men wearing pointe shoes and same-sex PdDs is so-o-o-o New York Times - and nobody else.  Oh, how readers “cringe at the sensationalism, the triteness and the ham that characterize” writing in The New York Times.  Why, even Macaulay’s article, originally entitled “Story Ballets, Still Romantically Inclined” [go to his review here and then look at the tab of your browser page] was revised to “For Ballet, Plots Thicken, or Just Stick?" in order to add sensationalism, triteness and ham.   Of course, it was hoped that readers would read that last word as Schtick.

Macaulay rarely writes about a problem in ballet that is a problem in anyone’s eyes but his own.  It’s sad to see the newspaper waste space, expensive space, for such drivel.  The paper wouldn’t tolerate a restaurant critic who panned every meat dish because he’s a vegetarian.  It wouldn’t tolerate a home design writer who criticized antique Shaker furniture because of the sect’s tradition of separating the sexes.  So why does it tolerate a dance critic who hates fundamental ballet classics? 

UIEX: Breaking News Emerging Pictures/Opus Arts Screenings

BIG news that will make you crazy!

 

An inside source at Emerging Pictures reports that it is" 99% sure" that Symphony Space in Manhattan will carry "ALL" of EP's Royal Opera House transmissions via Opus Arts including – hold on to your hats – the Royal Ballet's LIVE performance of GISELLE on January 19, 2011!  The inside source said that the Symphony Space scheduler (who shall remain nameless so s/he isn't pestered) is on vacation and so it's still possible that Symphony Space may elect to show it on a delayed basis - because of the time zone difference.  However, wouldn't it be an absolute blast to go to Symphony Space at 12:30am for a LIVE performance.  OMG¹⁰⁰ !  What a freakin' party that would be!

 

Also, EP (and "99% sure" Symphony Space) will be screening the Bolshoi Ballet in Le Flammes de Paris in the fall.  How freakin' wonderful is that!

Just remember - you heard it first on Haglund's Heel - where your ballet gumshoed detective is hard at work.  He's still sniffing out that ABT October 12th performance but he could sure use some help.

UIEX: ABT Nutcracker Tickets

Haglund wandered into the BAM Box Office today and asked when the ABT Nutcracker tickets would go on sale.  The B.O. attendant saw nothing in his computer and proceeded to ask the B.O. manager.  She flipped through a dog-eared multi-page memo that said the tickets would be available for sale on August 25th.  Haglund asked whether that date was just for donors or for the general public to which she replied "the public." 

This somewhat unofficial information is somewhat different than the somewhat unofficial information being unofficially reported elsewhere.  Haglund is an official member of the Unofficial Information Exchange – UIEX – and considers it his responsibility to load such unofficial information onto the UIEX ticker-tape upon its receipt so that his sophisticated readers may consider it in their ticket-investing plans and box office travels.

It seems that ABT's Press and Marketing departments are behind on releases for the BAM Nutcracker ticket info and the October 12th special performance which Andy Barth let slip [pdf] during a donors' event in LA last month.  They haven't even managed to put the November Cuba trip on the performance calendar yet.  Is everybody there on vacation or what?!

NYCB – Single Tickets on Sale August 9th

But hold off buying single tickets if you haven't yet subscribed.  Subscription requirements are a mere THREE performances over the course of the entire year and it entitles you to the same discount on additional performances.

It makes no sense not to subscribe with a Create-Your-Own series.  And don't forget to add on the specially priced opening night for either $25 or $50.  Come on, People – NYCB is trying hard to make it all affordable.  We've got to show them it works!