Haglund's Heel

Well thank goodness that's over

        Thinking back over the years, it's hard to recall a lot of NYCB dancers who made a public hoopla about a role that they retired. The simple grace that Maria Kowroski showed in quietly finishing off roles was and still is admired. Same with Sterling Hyltin. Did Kyra Nichols elicit public gratitude and applause every time she retired a role? Nuh uh. But man oh man, is it ever a different time. The applause in the theater seems never to be enough for some. Either they painstakingly set up photo shots of themselves in dramatic, contemplative poses and publish them as illustrative of their emotional artistic output or they try to conflate their anger about a waning career with political outrage. Can't wait to see for which media outlet Ashley Bouder reserved exclusive photos of herself with her little Angel in full costume. We can guess, though.

        Now, let's get on to the Winter Season.

        Seven rep programs and an extra helping of Swan Lake is not much more than one program per week. Not to belabor this point, but NYCB is rolling in money. They have gobs and gobs and gobs of money and can certainly afford to present more Balanchine programs with a wider selection of dancers in principal roles. Poor Serenade which used to be emblematic at NYCB and opened many seasons -- because it should -- has been reduced to just another rep piece and stuck in a dismal rotation. (But thanks for the student performance of it last year... 🙄)

        Assuming we don't get stuck with the same casting over and over again for these same few programs that are presented over and over again, we could have ourselves a brilliant Winter Season. Our hopes include more opportunities for Emily Kikta and Miriam Miller, who are dancing beautifully, but who IMO can rise to new levels of distinction by asserting musical individuality. We either need to see much, much more of Alexa Maxwell in traditional Balanchine works or we need to hear the reasons we're not. Would love to see her leading Allegro Brilliante.

        Above all, we hope NYCB stops under-utilizing the enormous amount of true talent in its ranks. Most of the time, if a dancer has been performing a role for 15 - 20 years, we've seen enough and we've seen everything that the artist has to offer in the role. There are historical exceptions, of course.

        Our toast for the New Year: As NYCB continues to raise prices and fees, it should strive to raise content and quality as well.

 

Merry Christmas from Haglund's Heel

       

        We had a complete changing of the guard this past year. Meet Finale a/k/a Gala Grand Finale Sugarplum Fairy. Five months old. Born in a junkyard at the side of a busy highway.

        Changing of the guard is inevitable whether a cat, a ballerina, or a president. Cats sense when it’s their time to go, and they will let a listening caregiver know it. Presidents have a more difficult time recognizing when it’s time to step aside. But what is it about a ballerina who lived decades of privilege but now tunes out the music blaring that her time is up? 

 

        (Hold on, hold on. Since it’s Christmas, maybe old Hag should settle back into his ultra-courteous mode. Ah, that’s more like it. Feet up. Mug of warm something or other. Muffins in the oven. Tree lights twinkling.) 

 

        This year’s NYCB Nutcracker had a few prosaic principal performances and too few major debuts. The one debut that actually enhanced this already-stellar production with new brilliance was Taylor Stanley’s Drosselmeier. Eyes flashing, magic in every pocket, charmingly creepy — Stanley was a Brothers Grimm version born from his own imagination. Stand aside Marie, Fritz, Bunny, Soldier, and Rat King! Drosselmeier is the main story of Act I and worthy of a place in Act II — perhaps lurking under Mother Ginger's dress or shadowing Naomi Corti’s bold new Coffee. 

 

        We weren’t able to see all of the performances we wanted due to having to choose dates months in advance of casting, but we lucked out with a trio who easily scaled the cliffs and treacherous ice of Mt. Dewdrop, planted their flags, and quipped “Come on, is this really the top?” Tiler Peck, Mira Nadon, and Emma Von Enck gave three dazzling interpretations. Aurora’s, we mean, Emma’s was like none we’ve ever seen. She released energy like a cat with the zoomies.

 

        The Sugarplum Fairies and their Cavaliers were all fine and serviceable. Joseph Gordon made the strongest impression with the greatest energy and use of space during his brief time on stage. 

 

        The “dancing” children in Act II were always well-rehearsed and seemed genuinely excited to be on stage. Of course, the little Angels were all the talk around town because one of them was the daughter of a star — wait for it — pitcher with the Yankees and most recently the Mets. (We hope the Mets re-sign free agent Ottavino. The bullpen needs him.) Little Angel Ottavino was as cute as could be. The one unsmiling Angel may have been carrying a lot of baggage for her Mommy Dearest who continues to use her as a prop to promote her own postmortem career. 

 

        As we mentioned but are mentioning again because it’s worth mentioning, there were too few principal debuts this Nutcracker season. All of the well-worn principals were out gallivanting around the world making thousands and thousands of dollars as guest artists in Nutcracker. They didn’t need to hog SPF and Cavalier roles at NYCB where the casting in those roles has no impact on ticket sales. We may as well mention that the regular season casting has shone itself to be unnecessarily repetitive, too. When the season consists of very few programs and the ballets in those programs are repeatedly cast with the same dancers, it kills audience enthusiasm. We’re tired of it. NYCB is rolling in money. ROLLING in money. It can afford to rehearse new dancers in principal roles.

 

        Our final H.H. Pump Bump Award of 2024, a stylish witchy little stiletto with snake fangs, is bestowed upon Taylor Stanley for his revealing new Drosselmeier. It felt like we were seeing Act I for the first time.

 

 

 

 

ABT Crime and Punishment 10/31 When the ballet requires super titles

— or a heavy lean on another artist's reputation or gimmicky angst & yank choreography of the type that neither William Forsythe nor Jorma Elo could make stick, it’s time to reassess the campaign to force the genre to progress in a certain direction for no reason other than to claim easy attention. As we have chanted before, there is no such direction in art as “moving forward” or “progressing”. Those are marketing tags to make people dissatisfied with what they have so they will buy something new. Art creation simply expands like the universe; it doesn’t move along any progressive line. Music didn’t progress from Mozart to Nico Muhley. Painting didn’t progress from Rembrandt to Gerhard Richter. Architecture didn’t progress from Louis Sullivan to Norman Foster. Art ideas expand and mutate and are born from the imaginations in human brains which haven’t changed all that much since Rembrandt’s time.

 

        ABT, in its misguided effort to look progressive, has suffered yet another failure in Helen Pickett’s Crime and Punishment, a mediocre dance version of Dostoevsky’s epic novel about a character's road to hell that is paved with a trumped-up good intention to commit a crime in order to enrich himself and collaterally help others. Did we even really need to revisit Raskolnikov’s criminality, self-indulgent suffering, conviction, imprisonment, and election to the presidency? Hold on . . . we sense a troubling digression. Let’s all pause to focus on our breathing. Thumbs & index fingers together, palms up, breathe.

 

        Okay. 

 

        Was there anything to admire about Crime and Punishment? Well, yes: the dancers’ commitment and determined effort to sell the angst & yank to the audience. In this particular performance on Thursday, Herman Cornejo quite literally threw himself into Raskolnikov’s steps, rolls, flails, and head-holding. Skylar Brandt portrayed with soulful obligation the beautiful, innocent Sonya who truly loved Raskolnikov but was forced into prostitution. Aran Bell was Razumikhin, Raskolnikov’s friend who didn’t know how to help him. Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunya, (Catherine Hurlin) loved Razumikhin (they kissed passionately - in the dance, not the book) and had to fight off the affections of Svidrigailov, portrayed with skillful theatrical shading by Patrick Frenette. Hurlin and Frenette danced a vigorous Mayerling-like pas de deux that involved a gun. She rejected him and tried to shoot him, but in the end, he decided to shoot himself behind a glass door at the top of a staircase to nowhere. (In Mayerling, the suicide by gun was behind a bedroom screen.) 

 

        The stage was constantly in a buzz of activity — not dancing, but the dizzy swirling in and out of the scenery walls. It has become all the rage for dancers to move the scenery on and off the stage instead of using union stage hands. Ratmansky did it in On the Dnieper, his first ballet for ABT, and then Wheeldon began doing it with his Broadway shows and ballets. There was a lot of obnoxious scenery moving by dancers in ABT’s “Lifted” a few years back, too. This time, however, the audience got to listen to the barking of the stage manager’s instructions from the wings as part of the charm.

 

        The music composed for this dance by Isobel Waller-Bridge was, at its best, unremarkable. Not a minute of it would stand alone on its own merits. Boisterous and dramatically obvious, it was like music running through an old silent movie to predict and warn the viewer of the action ahead. Not a note of it reached the soul of the audience.

 

        Haglund wanted to cry at the end of Crime and Punishment. Cry because of the donors’ money wasted by ABT. Despite all the extraordinary full length works at its disposal, ABT has opted for mediocrity for no reason other than to pander to some audience sub-sector that it thinks it needs. On the horizon, however, it appears that it has the good sense to bring in Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale for next year — but possibly too late, because ABT allowed Wheeldon to recycle many of his ideas from The Winter’s Tale for the dud production of Like Water For Chocolate. People will remember. Balletomanes have elephants’ memories.

 

        A dance that depends on super titles flashing across the stage to explain to the audience what is going on despite two magazine-sized pages in the evening’s program full of helpful Cliff-like notes is a dance in trouble. This was one more sign that all of Pickett’s good intentions could not ameliorate the artistic crime.

 

ABT Fall Season What's old is new again

        The saying in the world of antique furniture is that refinishing a museum-quality piece knocks the value out of it. It is the preservation of the artist’s original work that is important, not what the piece looks like compared to today’s manufacturing standards. On the other hand, if the antique is something that is to be handed down from generation to generation for the family's enjoyment, use, and reflection on a time and the lives of members who are known only by name and an entry on a family tree, then refurbishing can actually enhance its value. We’re somewhere in the middle of those two camps of thought with regard to our classical ballets for which we desire to retain their original intent and quality of patina while enhancing their finishes and strengthening their hinges to allow them to continue to be enjoyed.

 

        American Ballet Theatre’s The Kingdom of the Shades from Petipa’s La Bayadere as lovingly remembered by Natalia Makarova, undergoes periodic reupholstering as significant new talent emerges from the ranks. The same is true for Balanchine’s exquisite jewels Ballet Imperial and Sylvia Pas de Deux and Lander’s illuminating treatise on the systematic development of the ballet artist in Etudes. Thanks to these four works, ABT’s Fall Season, thus far, has amounted to a sensational comeback of good sense and good taste. 

 

        Ballet Imperial, aka Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No 2 at New York City Ballet, benefitted from elegant new costumes by Jean-Marc Puissant which were designed with colors and themes similar to both the retiring costumes and the current NYCB costumes. The ballet further benefitted from pristine technical performances by Christine Shevchenko and Chloe Misseldine and the fine partnering by Calvin Royal III. But was it a good idea for ABT to try to distinguish its version of the ballet from NYCB’s version by using tempi so painfully glacial that the ballerina had to punctuate phrases with chin throws? Everything is open to debate, of course, and this will be, too. Those of us who have watched Shevchenko her whole career and clearly remember her blistering speed in Piano Concerto No 1 know that she isn’t a dancer who requires a grandma pace for a Balanchine ballet as perhaps others required in past decades. In fact, the initial swivel turns off pointe that finished in tendu probably would have been cleaner and easier had they been up to speed. But she was very lovely to watch in most every respect. And the corps de ballet probably would have been more bright and energetic if they had been able to anticipate the music rather than wait for it to appear. Not to belabor the point, but the corps dancers are of a generation that can move a lot more quickly than past generations. Why not let them do so when it would benefit the work?

 

        Calvin Royal III delivered some truly beautiful allegro and classic lines in addition to attentive partnering. Chloe Misseldine soared through the grand allegro soloist role with energy and crystal clarity which turned out to be a mere preamble to her radiant performance in Sylvia Pas de Deux with Aran Bell at the ABT Gala the next week. Terpsichorean in the most Balanchine sense, she was the music on the stage. All of that blessed length made for stunning arabesques of grand statement. Bell’s allegro was plush as velvet, not showy, with an effortless nobility. We’d love to see him as Apollo.

 

        Alexei Ratmansky’s Neo pas de deux was created during the Covid shutdown and premiered as part of a digital program by the Joyce Theater in May 2021. The can’t-stop-us explosion of energy was instantly recognizable by those of us who danced like crazy people in the small spaces of living rooms, kitchens or garages trying to release pent-up wattage, frustration, and impatience while retaining some sense of normalcy. Just let it out of your system however you can, the choreographer seemed to convey. 

 

        The music for the piece, Neo by Dai Fujikura, was the composer’s first for the Japanese instrument shamisen. He said that his aim was to create something that was like distortion on an electric guitar, and that he treated the piece like a guitar solo in a rock concert. His hope was that the audience would scream at the end like they were at a rock concert. Check. We did. It was crazy fun by Catherine Hurlin and Jarod Curley. Playing on stage, Sumie Kaneko ripped the shamisen like she was Peter Frampton.

 

        The excerpt from Lynn Taylor-Corbett's Great Galloping Gottschalk whetted the appetite to see the whole ballet again. The originators of the pas de deux were Susan Jaffe with Robert La Fosse who was beaming as a member of the audience. Sunmi Park and Calvin Royal III hit their stride on their second performance, releasing joy and warmth and dancing as though they were improvising throughout. 

 

        Twyla Tharp’s In The Upper Room received serviceable treatment but was less grounded (less urban, less “downtown”) than previous generations managed to make it. Standouts in the cast we saw were Devon Teuscher, Aran Bell, and Joseph Markey. Memories of Laura Hildago and Maria Riccetto as the joined-at-the-hip bombers in red pointe shoes were running in the back of the mind while watching the current bombers on stage struggle somewhat with unison and finding their fierce energy.

 

        The highlight of the season was the restoration of The Kingdom of the Shades which as a stand-alone ballet is enjoyable but not to the extent that it is within the full production of La Bayadere. It exposes the classical caliber of the company like few other ballets do. The sight of the 24 Shades calmly descending from the heavens via arabesque after taxing arabesque was mesmerizing at each performance. We wondered, however, why most of the Shades smoothly peeled their feet from the floor to initiate their arabesques while a few stopped to do point tendu before lifting the leg to arabesque. Something tells us that Makarova probably has issued a memo or two on this over the years.

 

        At the gala, Christine Shevchenko and Isaac Hernandez were scrupulous and glimmering in the excerpt. What a beautiful transition from Gamzatti to Nikya Shevchenko has made. Such crystalline shapes and flowing port de bras made us ache to see this whole production again. Hernandez grabbed us into the story with his first step and was well-matched with Shevchenko in form and temperament. After a so-so start to the season in Ballet Imperial, his Solor soared with Hernandez’s fabled brilliance. He’s the dramatic heft that ABT needs more of right now. Teaming up with Hee Seo for two other performances of The Kingdom of the Shades, Hernandez was even more effective in his solos. However, Seo’s technique appeared fragile, particularly during the scarf section where she had considerable difficulty with the turns. Despite her unique ability to embody Nikya’s love and suffering, the role has always been on the outer edges of her technical abilities and is more so now. 

 

        Surely, Makarova must have watched Lea Fleytoux as the first Shade soloist and realized she was witnessing her next Gamzatti and Nikya. Oh my goodness, what an utterly gorgeous solo Fleytoux danced. She is, indeed, small (possibly as small as Makarova), but her textbook use of port de bras makes her appear larger on stage. The technical brilliance so apparent in her calm multiple pirouettes, balances, and generous jumps are more indications of a comeback for ABT. Now, listen up. Fleytoux and Miyake or Roxander in Balanchine’s Theme and Variations could possibly eclipse that pair from the 1970s. And while we know that Fleytoux is destined to be a great Giselle, let’s hope that she doesn’t get pigeonholed in 2nd cast Petipa. She is clearly a full-service ballerina on the cusp of greatness. Jaffe should move her along in the way that Baryshnikov moved Jaffe along.

 

        The H.H. Pump Bump Award, the "Paloma" diamond stiletto from Sophia Webster, is bestowed upon Lea Fleytoux, one of the brightest glimmers of hope for ABT’s future.

 

 

 

 

Great sadness

NYCB Conductor Clotilde Otranto.

RIP.

Legacy.com

 

ABT 3rd cast Etudes Takumi Miyake rings the bell

So sorry we missed this performance and this corpsman's bravery and accomplishment of nine incredible double tours in the Etudes finale. Bocca, Corella, Sarafanov, and now Takumi Miyake.  So glad I-gramers were there to make this incredible record:

 

 

ABT Fall Opener 10/16 Better than the Mets' game

        At least ABT didn’t get blown out of the water 8-0. Not an emphatic start to the Fall Season, however. Whatever happened to “start strong, end stronger” in ballet seasons?

 

        ABT’s opening night included a new work by Gemma Bond, a new work by Kyle Abraham, and an old, but gleaming Etudes by Harald Lander. Not exactly a “This is who we are” opening statement.

 

        Gemma Bond’s La Boutique with music arranged by Respighi after Rossini made one thing clear:  we have a serious choreographer, refreshingly serious about acquiring composition skills to which she can apply her own appealing musicality and love of moving within the classical idiom. Some may recognize the music from Leonid Massine’s previous story ballet La Boutique Fantasque about a toy store; but here the music supported no narrative, only new combinations of mostly classical phrasing that really had us paying attention. 

 

        Three main couples — Devon Teuscher & Aran Bell, Sunmi Park & Cory Stearns, Skylar Brandt & Carlos Gonzalez — led a vivacious corps of men and women in Bond’s intricate and inventive patterns that occasionally became too busy and crowded, not just with dancers but with new ideas instead of offering fewer ideas that evolved in a thematic way. But we’ll take it. And we’ll run with it. But first we’ll strip the dancers and turn on the lights.

 

        Oh my, what a costume, scenic, and lighting mess. Would Jean-Marc Puissant’s costumes look good under different conditions? Yes, but black tutus against a scuffed black Marley floor with low lighting will miss every time. White bodices with colorful details that clash with the lighting backgrounds will miss every time. What happened here? Did ABT repurpose the lighting scheme from some other Clifton Taylor ballet design and just throw it onto the stage for Bond’s new work? How could this lighting not have been immediately replaced after a dress rehearsal? None of it works and it all is a detriment to the ballet.

 

        Kyle Abraham’s Mercurial Son to the bombastic, unlistenable noise by Grischa Lichtenberger was too obvious an effort to claim relevance to those who think a hard-hit foul is just as good as a bunt to first base. Wriggles, head rolls, wavy arms, and some swirling turns to loud music — with obnoxious low lighting (again) and costumes that had no rhyme or reason or theme — the flowy fabric and the arm waving were like throw-away edits from Paul Taylor’s hilarious insects dancing in Gossamer Gallants. It would be unfair to call this choreography bad; it was terrible and amateurishly elementary. Next.

 

        The evening closed with an okay performance of Lander's Etudes. Isaac Hernandez’s introductory performance wasn’t from his top shelf. His nerves were evident upon entering the stage and they messed with his pirouettes for most of the night. His allegro was stunningly clear, however, and he managed well the partnering of the vivacious Catherine Hurlin. She was fantastic throughout the ballet. Everything was working for her: lines stretched to the max, solid pirouettes, eager to race at Ormsby Wilkens’ spirited pacing of the orchestra. During the finale we thought maybe she hit the proverbial wall but then bounced off it to finish strongly. 

 

        Jake Roxander repeated his brilliant turning role from ABT’s last fall season, and truly lifted up the performance several notches. We know he wants to conquer those consecutive double tours in the finale, and he will; and we’re excited to watch him and the other ABT men continue to try to nail them. Bocca did them. Corella did them. Sarafanov did them. Roxander will do them, too. His command of the stage was the strongest of the evening, Everything he did was worthy of admiration. The guy’s charisma, power, and precision are the equivalent of NYCB’s Roman Mejia’s — and aren’t we the lucky ones!

 

        The Corps de Ballet mostly kept up with the speed and precision, but the effort was showing by the end. How happy we were to see Cameron McCune back dancing at full pace and form. Sierra Armstrong and Léa Fleytoux were exceptional as well. However, there were a few veteran corps women who had trouble lifting themselves into the air and making those all important arabesque lines.

 

        The H.H. Pump Bump Award, a classic platform with plenty of spike and a big tank, is bestowed upon Jake Roxander for his performance in Etudes.

 

 

 

NYCB 10/10 Balanchine + Ratmansky - both in top form

        Thursday night’s Balanchine + Ratmansky program capped off the fall season like a royal's fascinator. Oh my gosh, watching this new generation fashion the masterworks onto their crowns — re-tooling the tulle, as the saying goes — has us fixated.

 

        Only the sickest balletomane would obsess over the perfectly crossed, perfectly maximum turned-out back heel of Mira Nadon’s bourrees coming downstage in the Preghiera of Mozartiana. The sight of her feet compulsively tip-toeing forward with the flat profile of that back heel peeking out on the opposite side nearly triggered a Paxil emergency. Her ensuing deep cambré engaged the sacral wings in a moment that seemed to resurrect and release the choreographer’s spirit. A memorable solo indeed.

 

        The Theme et Variations by Nadon and Peter Walker gleaned the musical wit from Tschaikovsky’s re-telling of Mozart’s work while stunning with its split-second coordination in the pas de deux. Walker’s variations were excellent—only occasionally over-powered at the expense of plush landings. The leg lines and batterie were crystal clear. He possessed a beautiful arabesque profile on both the right and left sides. The final single tour, double tour combination was not quite what it should have been on the landing, but we’re not sure why. We’ve seen and admired the form of Walker’s double tours since he was a soloist. The assemblage of those mile-long legs in the air was a stunning sight to behold but the tentativeness of and reluctance to finishing on the knee suggested some kind of impairment. Nevertheless, this Mozartiana performance by Nadon and Walker made us some new beautiful memories that we will hold onto for a long, long time.

 

        Miriam Miller and Aaron Sanz in Monumentum pro Gesualdo followed by Dominika Afanasenkov and Davide Riccardo in Movements for Piano and Orchestra continued to inject new life and clarity into these esoteric Balanchine pieces. We liked the idea of different casts dancing the two works because it promoted the idea of considering each ballet on its own merits without the influence of the other. The easy length and gentle geometry of Miller and Sanz contrasted nicely with the acute shapes and seriously straight lines of Afanasenkov and Riccardo. 

 

        Emma Von Enck’s explosion of energy in Concerto DSCH set a new standard in this ballet. She’s a Ratmansky dream come true — a dancer who can actually give even more than he asks for. What an absolute delight it was to watch her take blistering command of the stage — propelling herself through the choreography as though the steps were trying to catch up with her energy. What a bright lightning bolt. However, does any of this make up for not casting her as Aurora and Coppelia? Nuh-uh. Grudge intact.

 

        Unity Phelan and Adrian Danchig-Waring were an appealing couple who brought the ease and flow required in the pas de deux. The whirling around of the ballerina in the air did not look like a strenuous windup for a hammer throw as it did in the previous cast. Harrison Coll and Sebastián Villarini-Vélez offered great charisma along with fetching tours and allegro. 

 

        Haglund kept watching the corps in Concerto DSCH, not only because Gilbert Bolden III and Davide Riccardo were making it impossible not to watch, but because Owen Flacke and Samuel Melnikov suddenly looked mature, commanding, and both huge men could move like the wind — at Ratmansky velocity. 

 

        The H.H. Pump Bump Award, a Manolo Blahnik revealing pump, is bestowed upon Mira Nadon for her memorable Mozartiana that fully revealed the beauty of the choreography.

 

 

 

NYC Ballet Gala 10/9 Signs pointing to nowhere . . .

        . . . before pointing us the wrong way into the water.

        The New York City Ballet Gala performance taxed our patience as we have come to expect over the years. Gianna Reisen’s Signs included a lot of hugging & tugging & skipping & sudden pauses to express emotion about whatever. “But we want to act and emote on stage” the dancers seemed to be saying. How about trying some ballet steps and leave the acting to the professionally trained actors? Ballet dancers create such a kerfuffle when models or actors are shown in ads or online pretending to “do ballet”. But they have no problem wading into areas on the stage that are outside their bailiwick.

 

        Reisen’s Signs offered no signs of progress for the choreographer. Dull beyond dull, academically cute beyond cute, at times it showed great admiration for Twyla Tharp — who by the way will be blowing the roof off here next week with In The Upper Room. Reisen’s Signs is not NYCB main-stage ready. The content is not there. The organization is not there. The creativity is not there.

 

        Choreographer Caili Quan checked all the boxes for NYCB: female, non-white, young, photogenic & personable, not too terribly ballet-ish. In her choreography entitled Beneath The Tides, here the principal dancers went again: “We want to act.” There was too much emotional display over nothing and a lot of watered down ballet-ish movement.  We can’t even give the costumes by Gilles Mendel a good grade. Different? Yes, sort of — corsets on both men and women. But the overall effect was hodge-podge. We were able to appreciate Tiler Peck’s costume and output which reminded us of her output in Justin Peck’s works — right down to the fouettes. In fact, it was Tiler Peck who saved the evening with her own choreography.

 

        Peck’s Concerto for Two Pianos is technically, musically, and artistically skilled and a joy to watch. Her problem, though, is the same as other choreographers who have first-cast her in their new works. Once Mira Nadon (or Tiler Peck) originates a role, it will be a long, long time before anyone else can make balletomanes happy in it. Nadon, Chun Wai Chan and Roman Mejia dazzled in the work. The corps de ballet ran with the choreography like race horses. This is what they have been brought up to do since they were foals. 

 

        It seems impossible for New York City Ballet to put on a gala without wading into identity politics these days. Can’t the company stick to dancing and fashion? Can’t we just put tribal politics in ballet aside? Detractors within ballet continually try to claim that women are its victims from grand plies to grand battements. Last evening's emphasis at NYCB’s gala that all of the choreographers for the evening were women was a point made to underscore how the ballet brotherhood has locked out women from choreographic opportunities. All of those obnoxious white males who have been monopolizing ballet choreography over the years — you know, Twyla Tharp, Agnes de Mille, Susan Stroman, Anna Marie Holmes, Bronislava Nijinska, Alicia Alonso, Lynne Taylor-Corbett, Birgit Cullberg, Ninette de Valois, Martha Graham — they’re getting their comeuppance now, aren’t they? NYCB has Tharp choreography socked away in the basement. It has Taylor-Corbett, too. And Stroman. And Nijinska. If the company truly wants to celebrate the accomplishments of women choreographers, why not stage a celebratory evening of Tharp, Taylor-Corbett, Nijinska, and Stroman? The truth is: ballet hasn’t locked out women from choreographic opportunities; the post-boomer generation simply forgot about women for a time while free-riding along on previous women’s generations’ accomplishments.

 

    Everyone should go see McNeal at the Beaumont Theater. Robert Downey Jr. is brilliant. The play offers a lot to think about in the way of borrowing others' work for one's own, quoting others' work, using others' work as a so-called tribute or inspiration.

 

 

 

NYCB 9/26 Impressive debuts

        The final performance of the Masters at Work series included successful debuts for Unity Phelan, Peter Walker and Miriam Miller in Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2. All three clearly had decided beforehand that any errors were going to come from giving too much, not too little. Not only was Unity competent and beautiful, but she was able to add elements that none of the other current interpreters could — such as an arabesque that rose above 90° and a breathtaking and beautifully placed a la second extension that was exclaimed by a magnificently arched foot. Her joy came across as authentic. Her energy was not compromised in any way. Her turns and grand allegro were on the money. This was a very, very good debut performance with the promise of future spectacular ones. We’re not sure why at times Unity seemed rushed — perhaps from trying to make every movement as large as possible or perhaps from her realization that this was a one & done performance that she wanted to make the most of. We wish after the first dismal performance by Sara Mearns, management would have made a complete substitution with Unity. 

        Peter Walker’s debut began with almost overpowering force — like he was trying to be someone else. Peter Walker is good enough to dance this ballet as Peter Walker. He doesn’t need to be anyone else. When he finally settled down, we were able to appreciate his beautiful lines and blazing batterie. His deportment in the central portion of the ballet clearly conveyed his sincerity and the feeling of loss. The few awkward partnering moments with Unity seemed born from over-excitement by both dancers. All of these nerves would have subsided at a second performance if only they had been given one.

 

        Miriam Miller in the soloist role had high energy and danced beautifully but did not have the confidence to try to steal the show. We needed something in between Serenade and Slaughter from her. If only there had been a second performance . . .

 

        While we understand that these days featured corps roles tend to be handed out based on seniority, neither Kristen Segin nor India Bradley captured the elegance of the two women who performed forward-pitched arabesques with the male principal during the center section of the ballet. Both seemed quite awkwardly and uncomfortably perched during each instance. The corps de ballet as a whole danced splendidly in each performance of this ballet.

 

        This evening included repeats of Duo Concertant with Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley, and Glass Pieces with Unity Phelan and Adrian Danchig-Waring.  All gave strong, satisfying performances. The Corps de Ballet rocked Glass Pieces, as they tend to do.

 

        Our H.H. Pump Bump Award, a Jimmy Choo jeweled sandal, is bestowed upon Unity Phelan for her promising debut in Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2.