Haglund just received an email reminder about performance-only tickets for ABT's first ever Innovation Initiative presentation. New works by budding sprouting choreographers Craig Salstein, Nicola Curry, Gemma Bond, and Daniel Mantei will be showcased. Among the 20 dancers performing: Stella Abrera, Sarah Lane, and Jared Matthews. Tickets go on sale at the Frederick P. Rose Theater Sunday - at the box office, by phone, and via the Rose Theater website. Be there or be square-a-rino, People.
On the subject of innovation—
In yesterday's preview piece for her review of Sjeng
Scheijen's Diaghilev: A Life in this coming Sunday's
Book Review in The New York Times, Jennifer B. McDonald utilized a clip of
Nijinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps from the Joffrey's
brilliant and riveting reconstruction. It brought back a flood of
fantastic memories.
Haglund first encountered the Joffrey's Le
Sacre in the 1980s. It came on a program with Massine's
Parade and something else. He sat in the front row of
the orchestra. Beatriz Rodriguez was The Chosen One. This wasn't just his first
encounter with Le Sacre, it was his first encounter
with Stravinsky and Nijinsky, too. Talk about being overwhelmed.
The performance was a thrilling excursion into the
passionate madness of mindless religious ritual. To this day, Haglund can still remember
the eyes of the Joffrey dancers – glassy, unmoving, completely absorbed in
the ritual and blind to all else. It was thrilling and troubling at the same
time. The Stravinsky music instantly surged through the nervous system, agitating, and
finally seizing Haglund's imagination and transporting him into the Joffrey's
frenzied, primitive world on the stage.
Nearly 100 years old, Nijinky's Le Sacre du
Printemps is some of the most innovative choreography ever made
and makes the efforts of today's flash-in-the-pan, high media-maintenance choreographers look
clueless and craftless. True, Le Sacre was created by a genius who was also a mad man
in the making. Perhaps that's part of the appeal.
See for yourself:
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