Haglund's Heel

Nina Ananiashvili & State Ballet of Georgia U.S. Tour

"Nina Assoluuuuuta" is bringing her State Ballet of Georgia back to the States for a tour in April 2023. So far, we've found dates in New York, Minneapolis, Fairfax, VA, and New Orleans. It appears that New York, Fairfax, and New Orleans will see Balanchine's Serenade and Concerto Barocco along with Yuri Possokhov's Sagalobeli. The Minneapolis program will be Concerto Barocco, Mozartiana, and Sagalobeli.

Tickets here for the NY performance at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts. In the Serenade picture, note the yellow stripes. It would be nice if NYCB just gave those costumes away and returned to the original design.

 

New Jersey Ballet – Purcell Suite

        We’re always looking for signs of hope — under every rock, in every nook and cranny, between the lines, within the lyrics, in the stars, or just in our imaginations. Fancy finding it on a bluntly cold night in New Jersey, off the beaten track, down a ways from the Lokl Cafe. But that’s what happened. Last Saturday, we trekked out to New Jersey Ballet’s opening performance at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown where it is the official resident ballet company under the direction of Maria Kowroski. That morning the old bones had rattled a warning, “You don’t want to miss this.” The performance was to include the premiere of Harrison Ball’s first choreographic commission – the development of which we had been following with keen interest for several months.

 

        Set to excerpts from Henry Purcell’s Baroque masterpiece Dido and Aeneas, Ball’s Purcell Suite for twelve women delivered a sophisticated dance painting influenced by classical frieze and Nijinsky poses. Back in the 1980s, Mark Morris was inspired by the same Purcell opera to create a dance with a heavy emphasis on a bended narrative. Ball’s emphasis was on design, on collective movement, and on the relationship of the occasional soloist’s movement to that of the corps de ballet. Wearing Zac Posen’s sleek black gowns, the women traveled in flock with outstretched arms, upward facing palms flexed open, and elbows hyper-extended creating an image at once Baroque and avant-garde. Ball skillfully blended exits and entrances of groups of dancers with elision quality. Soloists arose from the corps and then receded back into the corps with startling creativity and organization. The nine-part dance concluded with an unforgettable tableau of individual women temporarily left standing as their group descended around them to Dido’s Lament “When I am Laid in Earth” sung by Leontyne Price. This was a superb performance by Emily Barrows, Yuiko Honda, Lilli Etheredge, Se Hyun Jin, Ilse Kapteyn, Raleigh Ledford, Risa Moschizuki, Denise Parungao, Abigail Robison, Eunice Suba, Catherine Whiting, and Caroline Baggs.

 

        The evening included Peter Martins’ Hallelujah Junction and George Balanchine’s Who Cares? Haglund was unable to stay for Who Cares but heard immediately afterward that the company triumphed in it with sizzling technique, glamour, and charm. The dancers' opening performance of Hallelujah Junction predicted just that. We’ve missed seeing this ballet at New York City Ballet. Hallelujah Junction and Fearful Symmetries are the most admired of the Martins ballets created to John Adams’ compositions. They race and pulse with burning energy. Guest artists Lauren Lovette and Carlos Gonzalez executed the pas de deux with seamless authority. Company member Akira Iida’s confident virtuoso solos propelled the ballet with relentless force. 

 

        The choreographer, who was in attendance, had every reason to be jubilant: his ballet looked great, the ballerina who he invested decades in has clearly demonstrated directorial skill on her first try and has put together a handsome troupe of performers, the ballerina he developed and coaxed into choreography looked stunning, and his grateful protege who he firmly steered to success as a performer has now shown enormous promise as a dance maker. This was Martins' night as much as anyone’s.

 

        Hats off to the New Jersey Ballet dancers and their director, Maria Kowroski. Hats off and an H.H. Pump Bump Award to Harrison Ball for his wonderful new ballet, Purcell Suite, which we hope will see the light of stage again soon.

 

 

 

observations 11/17

        A dancer’s body is an instrument of the workplace. If the instrument is out of tune, it is absolutely the responsibility of management to get it corrected or replace it. Ashley Bouder has been out of tune for a long time, and it’s time for NYCB to stop tip-toeing around and bench her or cut her loose. The old “I can no longer make the standards, so the standards must be wrong, unfair, and cruel” will never go away. There will always be people who think everyone should cut them slack, that they are entitled to slack, and that if they make enough noise they will get the slack that they want.

        People in the real world don’t get slack these days. If a salesman’s numbers aren’t what they should be, he loses his job. Sometimes he loses his job anyway because of numbers more important than his own. Sometimes he loses his job because he made too many medical claims or because he actually used all of the vacation days allotted. Sometimes he loses his job because he doesn’t project the youthful, energetic image that his company wants projected to potential customers. Sometimes he loses his job because he contributes to a toxic environment in the workplace. Sometimes he loses his job because, well, the boss just doesn’t like him. That’s the real world. That’s the real, cruel world. 

        Ashley is in a place in her career where many other dancers are. The new generation is coming up and they are much better than the outgoing generation. Her star has been dimming for a while and it has not been pretty to watch her deny it or try to claim that she incurred some hardship that others have not. For years she has done whatever she wanted to do regardless of the impact on NYCB or the other dancers in the company. She rode a very high ‘high' in which her brand was to force her way through everything and present herself as being better than everyone else. Time has marched on. Other dancers achieved more on and off the stage. They got more college degrees. They had more babies. They had more success with their books and endorsement deals. They expanded their dancing careers to Broadway and cinema. They danced better. And they got the attention that Ashley wanted for herself.

        The latest episode of Ashley reaching out to the public to help defend her and support her by telling her that she is right in every way is nothing short of nauseating. It is a shame that she got injured and that she admittedly didn’t commit to a fitness regime like many of her co-workers did. Her injury was not her employer’s fault. Injuries happen and Ashley knows it. It is what it is and Ashley is not helping herself by trying to place blame on others or make a case that she is so special that she deserves some slack, i.e., to be on stage when she is not in performance shape and when there are others who could dance better. The audience deserves the best performance that NYCB can deliver every night.

 

        Ashley knows that she crossed the line by publicly berating a board member. She intentionally implied that the board member waltzed in, started the conversation about Ashley’s weight and then told her that it was time for her to look for a new job. It’s not likely that it happened that way at all. It is just as likely that Ashley herself brought up the subject of her effort to shed weight to which the board member offered that he/she didn’t mind it. And for a dancer at 39 years of age, it is expected that there will be career transition inquiries, particularly when a dancer is struggling with injuries and fitness. You don’t burn down the bakery because you want more bread — unless you are Ashley Bouder. She’s now weeping and wailing and drowning in self-pity about being a victim of everything and everyone but her own ego in an effort to ameliorate her own missteps. Her “possibly career ending injury” was chronicled on instagram starting with showing her free-wheeling on a knee scooter which indicated that she was supposed stay off her foot, followed immediately by endless pictures of her wandering around Paris and Disneyland on vacation. That’s not taking care of one's instrument the way the NYCB organization has every right to expect an artist to do. And while she was supposedly recovering and rehabbing, she was also taking a long vacation away from the discipline that dancers maintain. Ashley Bouder has made her choices and she freely admits to making those choices. She also admits that any discussion about weight, no matter how it is delicately discussed, sounds to her like fat-shaming. It’s time for NYCB to make the business and artistic choices it knows it should make. 

 

        In addition to Ashley Bouder, we now have MSNBC’s fired Tiffany Cross who just declared that she would “go out in a blaze” and “take the network down” and go after her boss. What is it with these people?

 

observations 11/16

New Jersey Ballet will premiere Harrison Ball's new work this Saturday evening at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown. Set to Henry Purcell's music, the piece percolated through the NY Choreographic Institute Workshop earlier this year and is now set for its official unveiling with costumes by Zac Posen.

Purcell Suite is on the program with Balanchine's Who Cares and Peter Martins' Hallelujah Junction featuring Lauren Lovette and Carlos Gonzalez.

It is a mere five minute walk from the train station to the theater. Let's get out there, People, and see what Maria Kowroski has been doing since becoming Artistic Director. Tickets here!

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Looking forward to next week's opening of The Nutcracker at NYCB. We just got word that The Bunny is not happy about The Donald's announcement last night in Mar-a-Lago. That could mean anything and it's making us nervous.

 

PTDC – What a season!

What a thrill and honor to see composer Philip Glass in the house last evening for the Orchestra of St. Luke's performance of his composition The Hours: A Suite in Three Movements. PTDC Music Director David LaMarche conducted, and Margaret Kampmeier was the featured pianist. Glass's music has a way of settling into one's nervous system. It can either send the circuitry into overdrive as in his composition for Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room or, as in this case, it can persuade the mind to discover new shimmerings within the comfort of continuity - possibly signaling a theme of this PTDC season.

Glass was the centerpiece of the evening which began with a spirited performance of Taylor's Arden Court. This dance is usually about celebrating the Taylor men with their expansive "V" positions with the arms and legs and their leaps into the air, but the trio of women in this cast – Eran Bugge, Madelyn Ho, and Maria Ambrose – claimed their own bliss from William Boyce's music. Again, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, this time conducted by Tara Simoncic, made the Baroque feel like a modern day celebration.

Kurt Jooss' The Green Table should be required viewing in these times. The foolishness of neatly-dressed diplomats who send the world into war without ever having to come face-to-face with the human toll of their lunacy seems to continue – lessons are never learned. Staged by Jeanette Vondersaar, The Green Table is a handsome addition to the Taylor company's repertory. However, the Taylor dancers need to be given the freedom to dance it as Taylor dancers, not as preservationists of a sacred relic. Ms. Vondersaar needs to trust them more.

Shawn Lesniak's performance as Death grew substantially throughout the dance and by the end was a character whom we both feared and accepted. Death did not like his job, but he knew that he was the biggest fact of Life. John Harnage exuded sleaziness as The Profiteer who stole from corpses. Jada Pearman was heartbreaking as the Young Girl who was victimized and eventually claimed by Death. Kenny Corrigan was a valiant Standard Bearer. The whole cast was wonderful, but they need to be unchained and allowed to broadcast this ballet's message with the life that they bring to everything else they dance. Pianists Margaret Kampmeier and Blair McMillen pulled all the force from F.A. Cohen's music.

Our H.H. Pump Bump Award is bestowed upon Shawn Lesniak for his stirring portrayal of Death in The Green Table.

Paul Taylor Dance CompanyCompany B, Rhapsody, and Rush

Rather than torturing yourselves on Tuesday night as the dismal election results trickle in, consider taking advantage of a $15 ticket to see the phenomenal Paul Taylor Dance Company at Lincoln Center. Tuesday evening includes a concert performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue played by Conrad Tao and the Orchestra of St. Luke's whose musical director and conductor is also our favorite ABT conductor David LaMarche.

People, listen – at yesterday's matinee, Conrad Tao got so carried away that he forearmed the piano keys like Jerry Lee Lewis. LaMarche's expression was priceless – "Woo-whoo, we're off the leash now." Tao leveled upon the audience an extraordinary display of virtuosity and passion for Gershwin's masterpiece. Meanwhile, LaMarche did more relevés on the podium than Odette and Odile combined to bring out the best of the Orchestra of St. Luke's.

The audience went bonkers. And when Tao showed up to sit in the audience to watch the last dance, he got another spontaneous ovation.

The Taylor company looks phenomenal! Company B has never looked better. The young John Harnage was a spectacular Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy whose polished technical energies kept coming forward right at us right to the end. In the last piece, Rush by Larry Keigwin, Harnage added a dark expression of impressive theatrical power to go with his thrilling dancing. Alex Clayton, Maria Ambrose, Jada Pearman and all of the dancers were in superb form with a pleasingly uniform high level of technique and Taylor style.

PTDC has put together a fantastic season. Did we mention the $15 tickets?

The H.H. Pump Bump Award – and we had to dig deep into the shoe closet to find this one with piano keys and a bugle – is bestowed upon John Harnage and Conrad Tao for their sensational performances on Sunday. We'll be there again on Tuesday -- so should everyone else.

 

observations 11/4

School of American Ballet is hosting a FREE digital insider look beginning on November 29 at 7 p.m. through December 6th. Behind the Barre -- See the Music will focus on how music shapes SAB's training. Daily classes, interviews with students, faculty, and pianists, and some student choreography will be presented.

One must sign up on this SAB website page in order to receive the link.

The program premieres on Giving Tuesday; so it would make sense for it to be a solicitation effort as well as an informative, interesting, and entertaining SAB event.

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November 10 @ 7 p.m. and November 12 @ 8 p.m. are the dates and times for Paul Taylor Dance Company's performances of Kurt Jooss' The Green Table. The program includes Arden Court and an orchestral performance of a suite from The Hours by Philip Glass. The November 6 and 8 performances include an orchestral performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue featuring Conrad Tao. This is imaginative programing by PTDC -- not to be missed.

From NYTimes:

Photo of PTDC in The Green Table by Ron Thiele

 

 

observations 11/2

Looking forward to jingling these in my pocket soon. The issue date is 2023 but the coins always seem to appear in circulation early.

 

 

Edited to add: Below "Maria Tallchief" is her name in Osage orthography.

 

 

 

ABT - Fall Season Mixed Rep

        The Czech composer Leoš Janáček was already 72 years old when the majestic orchestral work Sinfonietta came tumbling out of him. The piece had been commissioned for the Sokol Festival, a gymnastics festival in Prague sponsored by the Sokol movement, an all-age gymnastics program that was based on the principle of “a strong mind in a strong body”  and would later became a source of patriotic and national pride.

        The brass fanfares and swirling piccolo flourishes beg for the leaping and turning and the precision duos, trios, and multiples that Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian envisioned for Sinfonietta when he chose it for his eponymous ballet which his Nederlands Dans Theater premiered at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina in 1978. The festival’s theme that year was the celebration of Czech composers.

        ABT’s first performances of the work in 1991 while under Jane Hermann’s direction were critically acclaimed from one coast to the other: “exhilarating,” “bold,” “a perfect showcase [for ABT],” “rhapsodic,” said the real dance critics of the time. But since then, audiences have rarely had the opportunity to see ABT’s dancers in this glorious ballet. Last week’s opening cast boasted eleven principal dancers and three others who should be on principal track in one of the most energized, celebratory, unleashed, unifying, and passionately danced performances that we have seen from ABT in quite a while. In a word, it was uplifting.

        Not so with what followed. Christopher Rudd’s race-based work, Lifted, purportedly represented a journey of self-everything: -reflection, -confrontation, and -love with a healthy dose of -pity and -victimization thrown in. All of this was danced by Black artists whose talents were recognized when they were children and who received the same type of encouragement and financial assistance that many, if not most, of ABT’s dancers have received in their careers: YAGP scholarships, SAB scholarships, Kirov Institute scholarships, ABT National Training scholarships, gold medals in international competitions. The choreography failed to make the argument that the dancers' constant obsession with the mirrors on stage was any different than the mirror-obsessions of their non-Black colleagues. Mirror-obsession is quite simply a dancer thing. And the obsession goes way, way, way, way beyond skin color. So who and what did these dancers represent? And was this dance the “ground-breaking” piece that Kevin McKenzie claimed in his opening remarks? To answer the last question first - no. It was mediocre contemporary anything-goes choreography far beneath these talented dancers to perform. What was the message? Most probably it was a reflection of Rudd’s own personal experiences and views of the world and of how the injustices of the past continue to inform the present. It’s not a bad message to make, but the message will not make up for bad choreography. There is no grade “E for Effort” or “M for Message” that serves as justification for spending oodles of money on lousy work product.

        Or lousy costumes, like in Ratmansky’s The Seasons, his frenetic disoriented concoction to Glazunov’s beautiful music. In a nutshell, it was ADHD spun into choreography. Did it show off the dancers? Absolutely! Did they love the challenge? Seemingly so. Was there a lot of action on stage? Like last night’s Halloween Parade, it just kept coming with one outlandish costume after another. ABT, please put this away until the threads disintegrate and you regain the fabric of your senses.

        ABT’s senses were partially regained and the audience’s senses were rewarded with the return of Ashton’s The Dream. But thank goodness for second chances. Our opening cast led by Gillian Murphy, Herman Cornejo, and Daniel Camargo as a last minute substitute for Cory Stearns weren’t quite ready to bring their imaginations along with Ashton’s. The dancers looked tired and unsure. The corps, less than bright and sparkling. At the final performance on Sunday, however, this crew brought its magic. Cornejo’s Puck appeared to be 20 years old again. Murphy found her inner sassy Titania. Camargo’s Oberon stunned with his control, finesse, and power. And then there was Tyler Maloney as Bottom who stole every scene he was in with his elastic expressions and hilarious hoofing.

        In between these two performances, we watched the absolutely stunning debut of Cassandra Trenary as Titania opposite Camargo. This was Shakespeare’s dream of a Titania, if not Ashton’s. Feisty, impudent, unpredictable. Her mime stung Oberon but her lovely arabesque and soft port de bras bent his will. His authority enraged her but his charm ultimately won her over. 

        Also debuting at this performance was corpsman Elwince Magbitang as Puck. Flashes of brilliance and hints of what will be made this a highly successful debut. Hopefully, he had the opportunity to watch Cornejo on Sunday, because that is the standard that has been set.

        Another startling debut came with Patrick Frenette as Demetrius. Never have we more enjoyed watching this secondary role. Frenette made it Oscar-worthy with dramatic details from his own imagination. Here’s the thing. All of this new-found dramatic power will inform this technically-talented dancer’s Albrecht, Siegfried, and Desire just as soon as ABT opens its eyes and casts him. He is someone to look for in each cast, and he makes every role noteworthy. 

        The H.H. Pump Bump Award is bestowed upon Patrick Frenette and Cassandra Trenary for their remarkable debuts in The Dream.

 

 

ABT Whipped Cream – B.Y.O.C.

When ABT premiered Alexei Ratmansky’s Whipped Cream at the Segerstrom Center five years ago, there were tables set up in the lobby with huge containers of candy. For $6, you got an empty box into which you shoveled as much candy as possible before carrying it into the theater to enjoy during the performance. During Act I there was that expected moment when you thought “Ugh, I’ve eaten too much of this stuff — the stomach feels sick, but the buzz in the brain is fantastic.” And then after a little while, you plowed back into the candy again. What was happening in the story on stage was literally happening throughout the audience at the same time. 

 

Then when the show moved to New York, everybody got all serious and nixed the candy. "Have a cocktail, instead, for $20,” we were urged. Nah, bring your own candy! Twizzlers, root beer barrels, chocolate covered anything — bring your own candy. It will make this delicious, caramelized production all the more enjoyable. Whipped Cream is a scrumptious, delightful affair that ABT has reprised with new intense flavoring during its current run at the Koch Theater. 

 

Designer Mark Ryden shows us the brain on acid. His Snow Yak, Long Neck Piggy, Gumball Lady, and that freaking bouncing out-of-control Bumblebee are to die for. The big-headed Priest with his moralizing gaze, the even bigger-headed Doctor who manages to get his hands under The Boy's hospital bed sheet after which he dips into the booze, the battalion of Nurse Ratcheds with their nightmarish, rocket-sized syringes — all of it mixed in with the sweetest little tea flowers and spices — you can’t imagine-up this stuff without pharmaceutical help.

 

On Thursday and Friday nights, ABT’s dancers performed superbly while the non-dancing Extras nearly stole the show. The company looks so inspired when they dance Ratmansky’s works. Jonathan Klein, slightly wrestling with the overwhelming reality of leading Opening Night, was in top form as The Boy who indulges in too much whipped cream, ends up in the hospital, and has an awful nightmare. May Klein have many more Opening Nights in his future — in our future. His solos were packed with goodies and his characterization was true. The second performance saw Daniil Simkin reprise his original role with the crazy, over-the-top pyrotechnical embellishes that are fructose to his fans. Simkin was out to make us believers. He didn’t just politely taste the whipped cream; he stuck his whole face in the bowl. Who hasn’t done that? Well, you’re all liars.

 

Skylar Brandt took Princess Praline to a new level on opening night. Her brilliance came so easily and so boldly. It was breathtaking to see that level of technical authority on stage. She was, in fact, the very top tier of the beautiful cake that becomes the focal point at the party. Breanne Granlund successfully debuted in the role on the following night but had a couple of technical issues. We look forward to seeing how ABT develops her artistry. 

 

Christine Shevchenko and Calvin Royal danced the roles of Princess Tea Flower and Prince Coffee on opening night while Devon Teuscher and Cory Stearns danced the second night. Both couples were charming and persuasive. Shevchenko offered more effervescence while Teuscher’s brew had more subtle flavors. Royal’s dancing continues to improve rapidly. It seems to rise a level or two every time he has to dance a Ratmansky role. Stearns is still capable of doing most of what he has always done, and on the second night he incorporated real energy into the characterization of Prince Coffee.

 

Joseph Gorak and Eric Tamm shared the role of Prince Cocoa, and each danced brilliantly. Why is it we see so little of them? Blaine Hoven’s Slivovitz with his concern for his manicure was hysterical along with Catherine Hurlin and Connor Holloway on opening night and Zhong-Jing Fang and Joao Menegussi on the second night. Each cast mixed up a potent cocktail of comedy and fun.

 

The H.H. Pump Bump Award is bestowed upon –– wait, there’s a tie –– Long Neck Piggy and Skylar Brandt for their brilliance and imagination on opening night.