ABT donations are down - with good reason.

Under Kevin McKenzie, ABT has become the McDonald's of Ballet with its high calorie, low nutritional value guest dancers who are quite literally plugging up the arteries of the company.  ABT donations are down - for good reason. Donors have started skipping dinner rather than pay for the greasy Big Macs served up by ABT.

In recent days on film and in print, McKenzie has acknowledged that donations this year are way down, that his business decisions have been bad artistic decisions, that he treats ABT's dancers like children in a family, and that he sees nothing wrong with forcing dancers to remain as soloists when they deserve to be principals.

In the new issue of the New Yorker, Joan Acocella calls for the promotion of Misty Copeland based, in part, on her performance in Firebird which Acocella viewed as superior to Osipova's  These remarks are from the free synopsis.  The longer version comes with a paid subscription:

A.B.T. has long been known for bringing in foreign guest stars. The fondness for guest stars ruled out any unity of style within the troupe. You may see some spectacular performances but never a single picture. When Mikhail Baryshnikov took over as director of A.B.T., in 1980, he tried to reverse the guest-star policy. The artistic director for the past twenty years, Kevin McKenzie, is quite content to have foreign guests.

She concludes with:

The problem with Osipova is that she doesn’t appear to have much to say. Osipova starred in Alexei Ratmansky’s new “Firebird,” which had its New York premiere last week. Ratmansky has kept the old plot but shorn it of its old-time glamour. A Firebird has to be like a bird, but to move us she also has to be like a human being. That didn’t happen until the second night, when the role passed from Osipova to Misty Copeland, an A.B.T. soloist. Copeland is the only highly placed African American woman in ballet in the city. Now they should promote her for artistic reasons as well as political ones. She deserves it.

Haglund agrees that Misty should be promoted based on what she has already brought to the table and what she could bring given the opportunity, but recognizes that there is still work to be done before she should dance the more high profile classical roles - roles now given undeservingly to Osipova and Semionova who substitute repulsive gymnastics for artistry.  However, there are at this very moment other female senior soloists who have for many seasons delivered such high quality classicism in principal roles that to deny them principal status is like keeping their shoes away from them so they will stay slow and silent on the plantation. 

It costs ABT precious little to promote the deserving senior soloists who have been performing as principals season after season.  There is very little difference between the wages paid to a senior soloist compared to a first year principal.  It costs little, but it means a lot. 

Comments

[little ballet junkie]

Good read, and well said. Thanks.

[Angelica Smith]

Can't wait to get this week's New Yorker!

[Haglund]

The full read mentions among many other things how demoralizing it was to the company members in the pre-Baryishnikov days when so many guest artists were shipped in. I can only imagine how bad it is today.

[Rachelmarch]

Well, they didn't receive my usual donation this year, and lost about the price of 10 tickets I didn't buy, both because of the guests and the lack of opportunities for Stella and the other soloists. Sad.

[Haglund]

Same here.

[EJC]

Thanks for another great post. I strongly agree with you. If I wanted to see Osipova, I would go see the Bolshoi when they are in town and the same goes for the other guest artists. I don't want to put down the guest artists though as they are all glorious dancers, but ABT has so many amazing dancers in their ranks. WHen I buy tickets to see ABT, I want to see THEIR dancers. That is why I buy the tickets. Simple.

[Haglund]

Amen.

[PortCityLady]

Why is Mr. McKenzie under the impression that ambitious soloists should be content to remain soloists forever? Why would anyone want to be part of a company or ANY business where there are limits to one's chances for advancement no matter how talented the person may be or how hard that person works?

Would Mr. McKenzie have been content with such an arrangement when he was a dancer?

I know next to nothing about ballet and even I know that operating this way is bananas.

I thought one of the joys of being a ballet fan was the chance to watch talented young dancers rise up the ranks.

Is there some law that says the principle ranks can't be filled with both homegrown talent AND famous guest stars?

[Kallima]

Those questions when he says bad artistic decisions were good business decisions and vice versa are answered by McKenzie in a way that seems like they are almost meant to evoke some kind of pity with him because he has to carry such a heavy burden. Doesn't really work for me.

[Haglund]

Hi PCL and Kallima. Thanks for the comments.

McKenzie tries to make the argument that good artistic decisions are always bad business decisions and good business decisions are always bad artistic decisions. That's the pleading of an inept manager.

This business of expecting principal-qualified dancers to be satisfied with McKenzie's meaningless characterization as "Flagship Soloists" is bull crap. Most any other union would not allow a management to continually use an employee at a higher grade without appointing him to that grade - certainly not for years and years and years. The situation at ABT is just absurd. McKenzie acts like he's the Big Daddy of the house instead of a responsible executive manager of a company.

[Rachelmarch]

So I'm a little worried - I just realized ABT is doing Le Corsaire in DC next spring. Looking at THIS spring's lineup of Stiefel, Simkin, Vasiliev, Vasiliev, Vasiliev and Vasiliev dancing Ali....

ABT better start teaching some homegrown talent the Ali role...unless Marcelo is going to do both Conrad and Ali almost every night. (They better not bring Vasiliev on tour!) I vote for Gray Davis getting the shot - he's danced it before somewhere down south I think.

[Rachelmarch]

Or of course, there's always Joey Gorak...but he (like Simkin) seem a little featherweight for that role IMO.

[Haglund]

Herman is a fabulous Ali. Don't know why they took it away from him. He is superb!

Here's a YouTube clip of Joe Phillips performing Ali FOUR years ago. All he needs is to trade some of the lyrical musicality for Corella's blistering pace - which he CAN do - and we've got ourselves one fine Ali. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75s03ciVRKg That we are having Vasiliev shoved down our throats instead of getting to see Phillips or Herman is so troubling.

Also, Craig Salstein should get the chance to do this role. Wow, I'd love to see Joe Gorak try it if he could manage it at a Corella pace.

I definitely will go down to DC to see any of them - provided there is nothing objectionable in the rest of the cast. That's objectionable in the way of non-ABT dancers which includes Osipova and Semionova regardless . . . .

[Rachelmarch]

I wonder if they felt they had to give Vasiliev the extra perfs to make up for exercising the non-compete.... Probably not.

[Rachelmarch]

needless to say, the audience will be shouting and gasping no matter what we think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYHhadnKfeA

[Haglund]

Vasiliev's dancing in that clip is so slow and sluggish that it's nearly constipated.

[Rachelmarch]

LOL. He likes to give the audience time to gasp and shout in between his moves.