Haglund's Heel

Antony Tudor explodes onto the social media scene.

As of today, November 12th, Antony Tudor via The Antony Tudor Ballet Trust led by Sally Brayley Bliss, has a mammoth presence on the social media scene.  With a beautiful new website that has oodles and ooodles and oooodles of information, a Twitter page, a Facebook page, a YouTube site,  and a weblog, the Trust has launched a huge effort to increase and preserve the awareness of Antony Tudor and his choreography.  The Trust is even putting together a Tudor Syllabus for University Dance Programs!

Be sure to sign up for the Trust's newsletter.  The first one, which was published today, notes that on November 12, 1938, Tudor's very first original work "Cross-Garter'd" was given its premiere.

The website has a store, of course, where we will be able to purchase a commemorative book/dvd set sometime in January 2010.  All proceeds from purchases made in the store will go to an endowed Tudor scholarship at The Juilliard School – another great idea.

What a terrific project!  Congratulations to everyone who helped put it together. 

Imagine what Tudor might have said if someone had asked him if he Twittered. 

  Picture from the website.
 

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet – Upcoming Showings in a City Near You!

Haglund noticed that a lot of people were visiting this blog with inquiries about dates that this remarkable film will be showing in other cities.  So, he searched out the information on the production company's website.  Here is what they say as of today – but of course, check with your local movie theaters to make sure you have correct information:

LA DANSE- The Paris Opera Ballet will open in theaters nationwide. Please consult your local listings before heading out to the theater!

  DATE        CITY       THEATER

11/04/09 New York Film Forum
11/12/09 Baltimore The Charles
11/20/09 Chicago Music Box
11/20/09 Huntington, NY Cinema Arts Ctr.
11/20/09 Los Angeles Music Hall
11/20/09 Encino, CA Town Center
11/20/09 Pasadena Playhouse 7
11/20/09 Irvine, CA Westpark 8
11/27/09 Palm Desert, CA Palme D'Or
11/27/09 Santa Barbara Metro 5
11/27/09 Washington D.C. AFI Silver
12/04/09 Seattle NW Film Forum
12/04/09 San Francisco Balboa
12/04/09 Berkeley, CA Elmwood 3
12/04/09 Santa Rosa, CA Rialto Lakeside
12/04/09 San Jose, CA Camera 3
12/11/09 Portland, OR Cinema 21
12/11/09 Boston The Brattle
12/11/09 Providence Cable Car Cinema
12/11/09 Charlotte Park Terrace
12/18/09 Memphis Ridgeway
12/18/09 San Diego Gaslamp 15
12/18/09 Sacramento Crest 3
12/19/09 Olympia, WA Capitol Theater
12/25/09 Hartford Real Art Ways
12/25/09 New Haven Criterion
12/25/09 Santa Fe CCA
12/25/09 Denver Starz Film Center
01/02/10 Cleveland Museum of Art
01/08/10 Tallahassee Film Society
01/13/10 Stamford, CT Avon Cinema
01/17/10 Nevada City, CA Nevada Theater
01/20/10 Santa Barbara UCSB
02/06/10 Columbus, OH Wexner Center
02/12/10 Port Townsend,WA Rose Theater

To check for schedule updates, visit Zipporah Films.

Different Drummer – The Life of Kenneth MacMillan

Observing that this new book is not available through either barnesandnoble.com or amazon.com BUT IS available on amazon's UK site, Haglund informed amazon.com, b&n, and the publisher that " literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the U.S. are waiting for this book."   Literally.  Thousands.  If anyone spots this title in an NYC bookstore, please share the news here.

Yankees Win Yankees Win Yankees Win !

     Haglund salutes the NY Yankees – World Series Champs!

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet

Haglund attended the U.S. premiere of Frederick Wiseman’s documentary La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet at the Film Forum today.  Mr. Wiseman, himself, will be at the 8:30 p.m. showing this evening which is sold out.  This afternoon’s showing was nearly sold out as well. 

The film was a long one – 158 minutes – but it was glorious from beginning to end.  The Paris Opera Ballet Dancers are exquisite – especially when they are 20 feet tall and filmed from a low angle which further exaggerates their length. 

The only complaint that Haglund has is that Wiseman overdoes the audio on the film.  We hear every squeak, clomp and brush of the pointe shoes, all the grunts and heavy breathing of the dancers, and the amplified but mundane sounds of a clerk’s pencil eraser, a custodian sweeping paper, someone walking up the stairs, and lots of noisy traffic. 

The documentary follows rehearsals and portions of performances of Genus by Wayne McGregor, Paquita by Pierre Lacotte, The Nutcracker by Rudolf Nureyev, Medea by Angelin Preljocaj, The House of Bernarda Alba by Mats Ek, Romeo and Juliet by Sasha Waltz, and Orpheus and Eurydyce by Pina Bausch. 

Haglund found the rehearsal footage of the contemporary works far more interesting than the actual performance clips.  The dancers were intensely focused when working with the choreographers and truly seemed to be devouring the new works.  Watching that process was watching theater itself.  But when the actual choreography appeared on the stage, it was just not that great.  There was a performance clip of Medea killing her children that was rather gruesome for the amount of “blood” used, but the actual movement or dance was not particularly compelling.

On the other hand, the rehearsal and performance clips of Paquita and The Nutcracker were fantastic.  The word Paquita certainly must be French for Paris Opera Ballet.  Haglund hopes they bring their production to New York in 2012.  Such beautiful style with no grossly overdone extensions.  In fact, dancers were cautioned about extensions being too high, knees being too high, and even passes being too high,.  There were complaints about plies not being juicy enough and an exchange between ballet masters about a dancer not getting her heel down on a plie.  When one ballet master defended it as an evolution, the other ballet master disagreed sharply and quipped that Suzanne Farrell’s faults have become other dancers’ qualities. 

The arabesques in Paquita with the front arm parallel to the floor were exceptionally beautiful.  All of the dancers’ feet were gorgeous with ample arch to them.  During supported pirouettes and fouettes, it was hard not to focus on the rotation of the supporting feet because they were so beautifully shaped.

It seems to take a very long time for a dancer to rise to the level of Etoile at the Paris Opera Ballet:  Letestu 10 years; Dupont 11 years; Cozette 9 years; Gillot 14 years; Ciarovola 19 years, to name a few.  True, they enter the company at an early age, usually 18 and much younger; but that is still a long time for a dancer to ferment.  Nevertheless, the institutional results are remarkable, as you will see from this film.

The Ballet Bag – On the Mayerling Trail

Go immediately to The Ballet Bag to read Emilia's fantastic interview with Edward Watson of the Royal Ballet.  Watson speaks so eloquently about Kenneth MacMillan's choreography, in particular, his preparations for and commitment to the role of Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling:

The most research I did was with Mayerling because Crown Prince Rudolf was a real person and so you have a responsibility to be very honest. I read a lot of books on the subject. Deborah [MacMillan] lent me a book which Kenneth gave her for her birthday which he based the ballet on [The Road to Mayerling]. She lent me her copy so I could find things that he had underlined in there, things that were really important to him. I also had a weekend in Vienna, I went to visit Mayerling and saw the grave. It fascinated me, this ballet has always fascinated me since I was a kid, from having seen the South Bank documentary originally with Lynn Seymour and David Wall. It is one of those ballets that grow on you. The more you see it, the more you want to see it again. Being in Mayerling had an impact on me because it doesn’t come around that often. It wasn’t in the company for about 8 years while I was here.

And this picture by Johan Persson of Watson as Rudolf with his "friend":

Haglund looks forward to any and all coverage that The Ballet Bag will publish on the upcoming symposium: Kenneth MacMillan's Choreographic Imagination & Psychological Insight: A symposium to explore and celebrate MacMillan's creative genius Imperial College London, 8 Nov 2009.  That's this Sunday!

Psychoanalysts, writers, and artists and former artists of The Royal Ballet, including Viviana Durante (an astonishing Mary Vetsera), Edward Watson, Clement Crisp, Wayne Eagling, and Monica Mason are among the participants.

What's it going to take for us to get an ABT Mayerling?

If we wish for it, it will come.

Paris Opera Ballet – 2012 NYC / Wash. DC Tour!

As most know, the Frederick Wiseman film La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet opens tomorrow at the Film Forum in Manhattan.  Diana Barth, who writes for the Epoch Times and The New Millennium, has an interview with POB Artistic Director Brigette Lefevre in the current edition of Epoch Times.

At the very end of the article, Barth notes that the Paris Opera Ballet has not been to New York since 1996 and follows with Lefevre's announcement that she is bringing the company to New York and Washington DC in 2012!

PBS – Jerome Robbins' NY EXPORT: OPUS JAZZ

From the first press release, slipped to Haglund by a Yankees fan, for the March 24, 2010 broadcast on PBS's Great Performances of Ellen Bar's and Sean Suozzi's film Jerome Robbin's NY Export: Opus Jazz:

(New York, NY – Nov. 4, 2009) Shot on location all over present-day New York City, NY Export: Opus Jazz takes Jerome Robbins' 1958 jazz ballet, of the same name, and recreates it for a new generation.  Created, produced, and danced by members of the New York City Ballet, NY Export: Opus Jazz (www.opusjazz.com) will air on THIRTEEN's Great Performances series on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 8 p.m. EST (check local listings).  Conceived by Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi, New York City Ballet soloists, and directed by Henry Joost and Jody Lee Lipes, NY Export: Opus Jazz completed shooting in and around New York City at the end of September 2009.

Bar and Suozzi danced in Jerome Robbins' NY Export: Opus Jazz when it was revived by New York City Ballet in 2005.  They were struck by the themes that came out in the dancing – the energy and raw emotions of urban youth – which makes the ballet just as relevant today as it was when it was first conceived in the 1950's.  With a couple of changes – street clothes instead of costumes and New York City locations instead of a stage – they believed that a film of this ballet would be very accessible to both novices and balletomanes.

After NY Export: Opus Jazz was sanctioned by all nine members of the Robbins' Trust – not only an approval first but an immediate vote of confidence – the pas de deux, "Passage for Two," was shot in June 2007.  Filmed at the High Line (pre-renovation), it features New York City Ballet soloists Rachel Rutherford and Craig Hall and was shot in just two days.  Bar and Suozzi utilized this preliminary sequence to help raise funds for the entire film.

The film, like the ballet, is divided into five movements and was shot on location at a gymnasium in Carroll Gardens (Brooklyn), the McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg (Brooklyn), the Imlay building in Red Hook (Brooklyn) and at the Loew's Theater, circa 1929, in Jersey City.  "It was always our intention to shoot each section in a different place because each movement has different moods and atmospheres," explains Bar.
. . . .
The original ballet was 28 minutes long.  The film includes every step of the ballet from first to last – danced by New York City Ballet dancers – but also has a narrative scene between each movement where the audience is introduced to the characters.  Accompanying the ballet on Great Performances will be a documentary, by Matt Wolf and Anna Farrell, which follows the story of the original ballet up until its adaptation for film.
. . . .

Calendar this.  March 24.  And visit the film's website.

Wouldn't it be wild if there was a simulcast large screen showing outside at Lincoln Center?!

World Series Balletics – 10/31

What a fantastic Halloween Night!   Like a team of Draculas, the New York Yankees sucked the blood out of the Philadelphia Phillies AND almost everyone brought home candy – even Nick Swisher and Johnny Damon.  Don’t misunderstand – those two are still in the Haglund’s Heel Doghouse for lousy form.  Damon with his wide open fourth position stance in the batter’s box looks like he’s trying to be some kind of Balanchine ballerina.  Swisher’s goofy tics and wild bat swinging in the box are enough to send Haglund crawling for his little pills. 

But last night Mr. Andy Pettitte stood in the batter’s box with perfect, textbook form and looked like the perfect Nutcracker Prince as he whacked out a hit which incited the Yankees’ greedy bats further.

A great night indeed!

But Guys, we gotta talk about the spitting, etc.  Maybe the camera operators aren't doing it on purpose, but it seems that they are overly alert to catching players in ungraceful moments.  Last night, broadcaster Joe Buck was praising Alex Rodriguez when the camera shot him off third base launching a wet wad out his left nostril which was quite full.  Then Buck starts into more high praises for Philly Jimmy Rollins who was observed launching into a fit of spitting.  The camera seemed to seek out Johnny Damon every time he adjusted his dance belt, and there just had to be a checklist to get a shot of every single player spitting.  Spitting on the field.  Spitting in the dugout.  Spitting. Spitting. Spitting.  Guys, it’s flu season.  Dial it back.

Tonight C.C. "Chubby Cheeks" Sabathia rolls to the mound in an attempt to roll over the Phillies in Game 4.  He can do it.  No question. 

Go Yankees!  Point those toes.