Haglund's Heel

The Nutcracker 12/17 - Joffrey Ballet School / Gelsey Kirkland Academy

Every so often we meet up at the bar during intermission, quite by accident, but we tend to frequent the same bars at the NY State Theater and the Met Opera House.  We toast each other the same way every time:  We were in Gelsey’s first class.  Technically, it may not have been the first class she ever taught, but the week of Master Classes at David Howard’s studio on West 61st Street some 15 years ago was Gelsey Kirkland’s first high profile teaching assignment in this country.  She was nervous; we were nervous.  She had high expectations; we had high expectations.  What she may not have expected, though, was the rather wide range of abilities that showed up that first day to take her class. 

 

Every level of talent and degree of balletic disability lined the barre that day.  Could she teach the group as an advanced class?  No.  Could she teach us as an intermediate class?  No.  Could she teach the group as a class of lifelong beginners?  No.  The meticulously designed lesson plan went out the window, figuratively speaking.   Almost an hour later we all were exhausted but still trying to feel the centers of the soles of our feet on the floor as we struggled with her tiny, tiny rond de jambe par terre – while holding each finger of the hand perfectly, while inviting the light into our faces with raised eyebrows, while breathing. 

At some point, the studio manager appeared around the corner, caught Gelsey’s attention, and tapped his watch.  So much to do and so little time.  She apologized and apologized for moving the class along so slowly but we just wanted her to keep going.  We were hearing the ballet message in a new and different way.  Arms low, body high – over and over again.  The battement energy travels in an arc, not a line.  And above all, more, more, more, keep going, more.  That was the way it was day after day. 

 

Those of us who took the Master Classes became better dancers, better teachers, and above all, more discriminating consumers of the art form. 

 

Gelsey’s current crop of students is performing this weekend in a Joffrey Ballet School/Gelsey Kirkland Academy collaborative production of The Nutcracker at the Lynch Theater of John Jay College.  The production is choreographed mostly by Gelsey and her husband, Michael Chernnov, with credit to Vassily Vainonen’s version for the Kirov.  Like 15 years ago, the dancers are a group with extremely wide ranging abilities.  But each one carries Gelsey’s sensibilities.  The arms are low, the bodies are high, the fingers and hands are perfectly formed, the eyes reach for the balcony.  Basically, the art is in the details, not the athleticism.  Nice to see.

 

The beautiful costumes and handsome scenery including a grandfather clock with huge owl wings appended to it added much to the charm of this Nutcracker at Friday's premiere performance.  The little soldiers, who were sent to fight the mice, arrived on stage inside a huge armoire and descended to the fight via a big green slide.  Of course, each soldier slid down precisely on the music.  There was a cute dancing donkey.  The Arabian section, often cast with only one or two dancers, had soloists and a corps. 

 

The ballet’s choreography overly-challenged some of the dancers, but even when the feet, legs, and centers went awry, the upper bodies still maintained composure and the assigned character.  For students who don’t get on stage much, this was an impressive feat. 

 

The more experienced performers included the tiny dynamo, Teele Ude, who was familiar from her dancing in The Met Opera’s production of Armida.  She nailed the whole transformation from little Marie to grown-up princess dancing with her dream prince.  The softness and articulation of each step coupled with the high energy committed to each move was proof positive that many of the admired qualities of Gelsey’s own dancing could indeed be passed on to a new generation.  Ude, Victor Smith, Aichen Mitsuhashi-Acs, Jarred Pior and many others illustrated that the new Kirkland Academy, with its mission to pass on and preserve the art of dramatic storytelling in ballet, is already making a strong impact.

 

 

 

 

ABT Nutcracker sneak peek

It’s coming together, Folks.  It is REALLY coming together. 

 

Haglund spent the afternoon at a dress rehearsal for ABT’s new Nutcracker.  This was a working dress rehearsal at the NJPAC where things looked a bit cramped but nevertheless, it was a good substitute stage for the BAM facility that is in use until about 48 hours before the first scheduled ABT performance.  Haglund is not going to give away any details, but let’s just say the mice are going to steal this show.  And within about three or four stage rehearsals the kids may take it all over.

 

The Nutcracker principals performing in costume today were Yuriko Kajiya and Alexandre Hammoudi.  If you don’t have a ticket to one of their dates, you are going to miss their BREAK-OUT performances – break-out in a very big way.  Trust ole Haglund, you are going to be surprised like you never expected.  Also performing, but in practice clothes, were Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes who made the one old-time Bolshoi lift in the PdD look, well, bolshoi-er than you can imagine with Veronika about 10 feet up in the air.  Whew!  Absolutely gorgeous.

 

Come on, People, get your tickets!  The trip out to BAM from Manhattan is no big deal – 2,3,4,5,N,R,Q,B,D, and A&C with connections to G all get you within a very short walk of the opera house.  Easy.

Peeps

There’s just something fundamentally wrong about chocolate reindeer Peeps.  The little guys are on display in the candy aisle at the Duane Reade.  Reindeer don’t peep.  Haglund isn’t sure what kind of a sound reindeer make, but he’s sure it isn’t a peep.  Peeps should only be chicks – yellow or pink or in rare cases blue – but always chicks that hatch out in five-packs at Easter time.  Our holidays should not be allowed to bleed into one another like this.  Nobody wants to see Easter bunnies made out of candy canes, do they?  Andy Rooney needs to address this, if he hasn’t done so already.  Some traditions are too important to mess with.

Ballet Cop on the Beat: Times to remember

In today's edition of The New York Times, Alastair Macaulay, who has no practical dance education whatsoever, reviews Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut.  He calls it a “revelation” and “among the most touching” of all the productions he’s seen – and probably not seen.  He experienced “tears of wonder” while watching it and on and on and on.

 

It’s worth revisiting the New York Times review of Morris's production which was written by someone who does have a practical and applied dance education, someone who does know a step or two, someone who stood at the barre for a good while before pronouncing herself as a critical authority:

 

Boring choreography: That is certainly what you don't expect from Mark Morris but that is certainly what you get, sight gags aside, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Mr. Morris's sitcom, "The Hard Nut," had its American premiere on Friday night.

Look at a current aspect of the international dance scene that hovers on intellectual bankruptcy and you find retellings of the ballet classics like Mats Ek's "Giselle," set in an insane asylum, and now, Mr. Morris's conceptual "Nutcracker" that begins in a vaguely 1960's suburban American living room.

And this:

The jokes in this production, in Mr. Burns's hostility-ridden world of uglies, are mainly associated with bodily functions. Drosselmeier, the usual godfather, kisses the hand of the heroine's sister and then wipes his lips while she smells her hands and makes a face. The suspicion that Mr. Morris as a party guest in Act I is headed for the bathroom proves true when he returns, toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

And this:

There is nothing sacred about "The Nutcracker" as a ballet and Mr. Morris does not trash Tchaikovsky's glistening score. But he does trivialize it; unlike Peter Sellars, with whom he has worked and whose opera productions have similar provocative updatings, he manages, choreographically, to miss the musical climaxes consistently by a mile. The whole thing sounds better on paper than it looks onstage.

You may want to read the entire review written by Anna Kisselgoff when the production debuted in the U.S.  Anna stood at the barre.

What’s a reader to conclude about the cultural guidance that The New York Times gives its national readership when it flip-flops on something as basic as The Nutcracker?  Macaulay’s reviews are little more than a telling of his tastes.  If all he has to offer is his taste, he should be reviewing restaurants.  When it comes to ballet, we need a critic with more sophisticated and fundamental knowledge.

 

 

Patrelle's Christmas Card to New York

One cold, early evening in December at an historical location in Manhattan, there occurred an unlikely, yet pre-planned meeting among a VP/General Counsel of Saks, a liver transplant surgeon, a Bloomberg salesman, a novelist, an engineer, an SVP/General Counsel of a biotech company and others concerning a matter of great importance to the community . . .

 

 Oh, nuts, you guessed it already.  Was it that obvious?  It was?  You mean Francis Patrelle’s Yorkville Nutcracker is getting that predictable?  Not hardly, Alice.  The only thing predictable about the Yorkville Nutcracker is that it allows New Yorkers to think for a blink that their town is the quaint, charming place it was back in the 1890s when a nice Christmas party at the Gracie Mansion in honor of newly-elected Mayor Strong might have turned into a little girl’s dream fantasy about a broken Nutcracker doll.  The only other thing predictable is that what one sees on the stage is a marvelous, if not brilliant collaboration among real townspeople and real dancers – dancers just beginning their dreams, dancers at the height of their dreams, and well, dancers still hanging on to their dreams.  Whereas the wonderful Nutcracker production at NYCB belongs to a fair amount of the whole country, the Yorkville Nutcracker belongs to New Yorkers.  It is like a Christmas Card to New York with scenes of Central Park, Gracie Mansion, New York Botanical Gardens, and more.

 

Haglund had a blast at the opening performance.  The theater was packed with town folk, New York folk.  Everyone was excited.  The kids on stage handled themselves like pros – and they were tested – a pointe shoe ribbon became unraveled, a mouse’s shoe flew off, a sombrero cord nearly strangled a little boy, and nerves were a bit unsteady here and there.  But the performing was fabulous.  Never has Haglund seen three foot tall reindeer move as such a focused team with antlers perfectly aligned.  And the Pages from Spain, Persia, China, Russia, Austria, France and the Netherlands – stunning!  Since there were at least 71 named parts in this production, it would be difficult to review everyone’s performance; however, everyone contributed mightily and the performances of Teddy Roosevelt, Babcock, and the various Consuls General (and their wives) were priceless.

 

The professionals of the evening were not to be outdone – especially by performers who barely came up to their knees.  The Snow King and Queen, Matthew Prescott and Natalia Boesch, swirled through Patrelle’s not unchallenging choreography confidently and were joined by “Snow Boy” Fernando Duarte who expertly managed the fiendish and fast en dehor pencil turns that we see frequently in Patrelle works.  Sabra Perry displayed smooth control over the extended moves of her Arabian solo.  Christopher Charles McDaniel as the Lead Spanish dancer in the ensemble was precise and took his energy right to safety’s edge time and time again – an exacting and exciting performance from the young man who is on his way out to the Los Angeles Ballet.

 

The Sugar Plum Fairy and Her Cavalier were NYCB’s Jenifer Ringer and Jared Angle.  There were some teary eyes in the audience during their first PdD.  While the music is so emotional that it can be overwhelming, the lump stuck in Haglund’s throat was from seeing how beautiful Ringer inhabited the notes of the music – never pushing or pulling it to go faster – just enjoying every second that she was within it.  There were an ease and a naturalness to her turns and an unwillingness to throw the legs high for the sake of high.  The light always seems to look for Ringer’s face, and with good reason:  she’s one of the more expressive dancers at NYCB without ever forcing that expression.

 

Jared Angle had a better night than on opening night at NYCB.  His turns a la seconde had 200% more energy and speed to them as did his solo grand allegro.  While the black tights and black shoes were more forgiving than the white ones the other night, it’s still apparent that the fronts of those ankles need to be stretched over a lot more if the feet are to look pointed. 

 

Happy 15th Anniversary to the Yorkville Nutcracker, and a Stuart Weitzman ruby Pump Bump Award for one and all who performed this evening:

 

Kansas City Ballet - Pas de Twain

The name St. Petersburg is, of course, known for being the source of some of the most magical ballets and ballerinas of all time.  It’s also the name that Mark Twain gave his fictional town along the Mississippi River in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.  It might be hard to suggest that the latter was influenced by the former since there are no historical records to support the idea that Mark Twain was a balletomane.  He once ascertained from his own experience that the waltz and polka were “precisely the same” dance, but that may be the extent of what is known about his interest in dance.  You have to think, though, that Twain would howl with delight if he heard that his Tom Sawyer was about to be made into a ballet. 

 

William Whitener, Artistic Director of Kansas City Ballet, is collaborating with Tony winning Broadway composer Maury Yeston to create Tom Sawyer – A Ballet in Three Acts for the inaugural season of the spectacular new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in October 2011.  The Kansas City Symphony will play in the pit for all of the performances.  The Kauffman Center will be the new permanent home of the Kansas City Ballet, Kansas City Symphony, and Lyric Opera of Kansas City.

 

Whitener immersed himself in the choreography of Joffrey, Arpino, Tharp, Robbins, Ailey, Jooss, and Fosse during his performance career with the Joffrey Ballet, Twyla Tharp Company and on Broadway.  He is the former Artistic Director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal.  His choreography credits are broad-ranging – ballet, opera, Broadway, ice skating theater.  Yeston’s Broadway music includes Titanic, Nine, and Grand Hotel and the “in the works” Off Broadway production of Death Takes A Holiday as well as film and concert compositions.  Whitener and Yeston are the artistic anchors for an eclectic team of creative artists, who suggest the possibility of a collaboration that could reinvigorate the effort to make new story ballets in this country. 

 

The orchestrator, Brad Dechter, is a jazz lover with his own octet who has worked extensively in films and was mentored by the Ellington trumpeter, Bill Berry.  The set designer, Walt Spangler, has designed productions for the Lincoln Center Festival, English National Opera, Lithuanian National Opera, Papermill Theater and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.  The costume designer is Holly Hynes, long associated with the New York City Ballet and now the resident costume designer for the Suzanne Farrell Ballet.  The lighting designer, Kirk Bookman, has done a ton of work on Broadway, Joyce Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, and on and on and on.  The Assistant to the Choreographer, Shelley Freydont, danced with Twyla Tharp, Louis Falco, and is a published author of a mystery series.  The conductor, Ramona Pansegrau, is the current music director for the Kansas City Ballet.  She was the music director of the Tulsa Ballet and conducted the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra in their ballet performances.  Prior to that she was the principal pianist at the Boston Ballet and much more.

 

When was the last time we saw a full-length ballet created by an American choreographer and composer for an American company based on a famous American literary theme?  Kansas City Ballet thinks this may be a first.  This is just the sort of production that would be a winner for PBS.  Hope it’s on their radar.  Let’s keep it on ours and also keep an eye out for good fall fares to K.C.

 

From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:

Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.

 

Mark Twain knew ballet – he just didn’t know it.

 

When the NYT's critic can't find the right words

Haglund can hardly keep up with all the December Nutcracker doings.  But he’s going to lower the old chin and push forward.  He wouldn’t want some snarky donut hole at The New York Times suggesting he lay off the Schoko Pfeffer-Nüsse.  He especially wouldn’t want to hear it from a snarky donut hole who has never stood at the barre – the ballet barre, that is; doesn’t know a good arabesque from a bad one; doesn’t know good port de bras from bad port de bras; wouldn’t recognize a good shape of the foot from a bad one; doesn’t know good alignment from bad; doesn’t know when a step has been done correctly or not; doesn’t know his own donut hole from a hole in the ground when it comes to the technical aspects of ballet. 

 

The problem with Alastair Macaulay's dance reviews is at least two-fold:  1) he has a proclivity for being nasty and 2) he doesn’t have even a basic knowledge of ballet technique.  Unlike David Vaughan who spent years and years in professional level ballet class – taking barre and the first few exercises of center religiously and then watching the remainder of the class to observe the dancers and listen to the expertise of the instructor – Macaulay has never acquired any applied knowledge of the art form.  Haglund often stood near Vaughan during class and respects his writing all the more because of his devotion to understanding the art form from the inside out – from an applied perspective.  Macaulay is an outsider and unqualified judge who was hired by those who know even less about the art form.  Consequently, when he observes something that he doesn’t care for and wants to shout like it’s a five alarm fire in the theater, he does not know enough about ballet technique in order to express it without being uncivil.  Oh, and there’s a third problem:  his employer enjoys any and all controversy its writers’ mistakes generate.  The employer thoroughly enjoyed all of the extra readers that came its way as a result of Jayson Blair’s and Judith Miller’s false reporting – and so did the paying advertisers.  The employer doesn’t care why people read its paper – only the numbers of people who do.

 

In his recent review of NYCB’s opening night of The Nutcracker, Macaulay did not like the physical appearance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier.  But he did not have the tools, knowledge, or experience to equate it to the effect on their dancing – which is their work product.  If Macaulay had made similar statements to a colleague at The New York Times, he could have been fired with cause.  It is regrettable that Macaulay doesn’t have the skill or craft needed to explain how a dancers’ dancing has been adversely affected by what Macaulay perceives to be substandard conditioning.  Even if he had possessed the skill, employing it wouldn’t have made as colorful copy as simply attacking the dancers.  Nor would he have enjoyed the whistles and winks from the NYT Culture staff who wished they had the courage to step over the line of civility and over the line of good professional writing the way Macaulay did. 

 

Macaulay claims a mastery of dance history, but who is going to take the time to check up on what he writes about it – especially when it is so gassy and profuse?  Note there that Haglund has referred to the writing as gassy and profuse; he did not refer to the snarky donut hole at The New York Times as gassy and profuse.  How much of his stuff does he simply make up and how much does he slant and color to advance his views?  Who knows.  Certainly his editors don’t. 

 

So while the snarky donut hole is traveling the country desperately trying to reform his image before The New York Times mercifully installs its promised paywall which will entomb him in his own snarky poo if we all don't subscribe, let’s look at all of his cheery prose about the children of the Nutcracker.  

Macaulay loves children. Loves. Loves children.  So much so, that he was once arrested for photographing little children in their little bathingsuits without their parents’ permission.  The police jailed him initially and authorities investigated him for several months.  He’s written about what a horrible experience it was and tries to persuade the reader that he was ultimately found innocent of any wrongdoing – much like he has tried to defend himself in today’s NYT.  But it remains that the critic who The New York Times has sent on the road to cover what has become known as a children’s ballet has a history with children that would make any parent uncomfortable.  If Haglund had a child in a production, he wouldn’t want Macaulay anywhere near the kid and he certainly wouldn’t want Macaulay pandering to his child in The New York Times.  He wouldn’t want Macaulay writing about his child:

As you follow the action from room to room here, you’re so close to the performers that you’re involved in a new way. My favorite moment came in the battle scene when a child mouse caught my eye, picked up her tail mischievously and swung it in a quick circle, like rope.

        or

 

 The children all look motivated and ample, with warm, elegant upper bodies. In Tuesday’s cast, Ana Arrieta played Tess with the kind of absorption and prettiness that made the young Elizabeth Taylor heart-catching in her first movies.

Macaulay’s gobbledygook today about his own painful childhood and how even-handed he is in his writing is just that – gobbledygook.  As for his earlier criticism of the two dancers’ weight, please look at the picture of the two dancers that accompanies his flimsy defense article today.   Enlarge it.  Make it as big as you can.  It is Exhibit A as to just how wrong Macaulay is.

 

Bolshoi Nutcracker casting for 12/19

If you've visited the Emerging Pictures Ballet in Cinema website like Haglund has been screaming at you to do, you know that on Sunday, Dec. 19th at 11:00 a.m. EST the Bolshoi Ballet's Nutcracker will be presented LIVE in theaters all across the U.S.  In Manhattan, we will be enjoying the performance at Manhattan Cinemas which is located at 239 East 59th Street.

Haglund fished out the 12/19 casting from the Bolshoi website.  The only player not yet listed is . . . The Nutcracker Doll!  So we're going to be surprised!  Here's the cast list from the Bolshoi's website:

19.12.2010 19:00
New Stage

Stahlbaum, medical councilor
Alexei Loparevich

His Wife
Olga Suvorova

Marie, their daughter
Nina Kaptsova

Fritz, brother to Marie
Anna Proskurnina

Drosselmeyer, legal councilor and godfather
to Marie and Fritz
Denis Savin

The Nutcracker-Doll

The Nutcracker-Prince
Artem Ovcharenko

The Mouse King
Pavel Dmitrichenko

Harlequin
Vyacheslav Lopatin

Columbine
Anna Tikhomirova

She-Devil
Victoria Litvinova

He-Devil
Morikhiro Ivata

Spanish Dolls
Anna Okuneva
Andrei Bolotin

Indian Dolls
Victoria Osipova
Ruslan Pronin

Chinese Dolls
Svetlana Pavlova
Denis Medvedev

Russian Dolls
Anna Leonova
Alexander Vodopetov

French Dolls
Daria Khokhlova
Vadim Kurochkin

Final Waltz and Apotheosis
Yulia Grebenshchikova
Victoria Litvinova
Olga Marchenkova
Yanina Parienko
Ana Turazashvili
Angelina Vlashinets
Karim Abdullin
Artemy Belyakov
Yegor Khromushin
Ivan Mikhalyov
Denis Rodkin
Klim Yefimov

Conductor
Pavel Klinichev

Nutcrackers in your own livingroom

A round of applause for OvationTV which kicks off its annual Battle of the Nutcrackers this Monday.  This is a huge undertaking by the ambitious cable network that champions the beloved art that all the other channels seem to want to forget about. 

 

This year’s "battle" includes 14 airings of The Royal Ballet’s production choreographed by Peter Wright with Alina Cojocaru; 14 airings of the Bolshoi Ballet’s production choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich with Irek Mukhamedov; 15 airings of the Berlin State Opera’s production choreographed by Patrice Bart; 17 airings of the Casse Noisette Circus: Ballet of Monte Carlo; and 14 airings of Maurice Bejart’s production danced by the Bejart Ballet Lausanne that features accordion music performed on stage.  Wunnerful, wunnerful. 

 

OvationTV wants you to VOTE for your favorite of the five Nutcrackers at their website.  Then, they will announce the winner on Christmas Eve.  Of course, we are the winners.  Thanks, OvationTV!

 

Ana 1, ana 2

December showings – Emerging Pictures Ballet in Cinema series

Mark your calendars for these screenings by Emerging Pictures Ballet in Cinema program:

December 19th - Big Cinemas Manhattan (239 East 59th Street)
LIVE !  The Bolshoi performs The Nutcracker

December 19th - Kew Gardens Theatre (81-05 Lefferts Blvd.)
Flames of Paris by The Bolshoi

December 26th - Symphony Space (2537 Broadway)
The Nutcracker by the Royal Ballet

CLICK HERE.  If you live outside of Manhattan, type in your zip code to retrieve the information for your location.

If you have any trouble finding the information on the website, call Emerging Pictures at 212-245-6767 (Barry).  Tell him Haglund sent you.