Haglund's Heel

10/30 Update: scroll downStella Abrera Debuts as Aurora in RNZB's Sleeping Beauty Premiere

Okay, Haglund is a little more sour than usual because he could not attend last night's world premiere of the Royal New Zealand Ballet's production of Sleeping Beauty starring Stella Abrera as AURORA.  But the word is out already this morning that Stella stunned them with her Beauty.

Raewyn Whyte, who will be formally reviewing the opening performance in Auckland on November 30th, attended the premiere and was kind enough to send all Haglund'eelers a few notes which appear in full here and which include:

Ok so, briefly on a night when I was just there for pleasure (and to inform my interview) -- Stella Abrera rules! A beautiful, lissom Aurora, with impeccable technique, split second timing, a mature authority in everything she does, and she utterly charmed the audience.

You have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the link above and through the numerous comments – numerous because there are a lot of Haglund'eelers in these here parts who are unhappy about missing Stella's debut.

Check back here for reviews (click on "comments" at bottom of post), pictures, and comments as they come in.

In the meantime, congratulations to our Stella!

Update:

Here's what we've been waiting for.  Evan Li caught some lovely photos of the performance and has placed them on the RNZB FB page here, including this one of AURORA (click on photo to enlarge):

Photo by Evan Li for RNZB.

 

Program reminders

PBS presents Miami City Ballet tonight at 9:00 p.m.

Tickets for the YAGP documentary "First Position" at the NYU Kimmel Center on November 5 are available at this link.

PBS presents NYCB Nutcracker on Live from Lincoln Center on Wednesday December 14th.

 

 

What next?! Why, Ballet Next, that's what.

Chuck Askegard's and Michele Wiles' new adventure, now called Ballet Next, is going to have one rip-roaring, smack-on-the-butt-joyous birth at the Joyce Theater on November 21st.

Listen to this:

Chuck & Michele
Drew Jacoby
Jared Matthews
Misty Copeland
Jennie Somogyi
Joaquin De Luz
Maria Kochetkova

The program is going to be one wild choreographic mix of everything from Petipa to Jorma Elo to Margo Sappington to Balanchine to Bigonzetti to Robert Sher-Machherndl.

The tickets are a little pricey - $50 or $90, but look – Jared Matthews and Jennie Somogyi in the same night!

Order your tickets today!  If you go the route of the Joyce website, the system seems to present a picture of limited availability.  So, it may be best to call the Joyce Tuesday right away.

The Ballet Next website is a work in progress, but check it out.

Here's a little blurb in Broadway World.

#OccupyABTwithABTdancers

Wall Street isn't the only villain that is screwing Americans out of job opportunities.  It's happening right in the middle of Lincoln Center.  American Ballet Theatre is using American donated dollars to import foreign guest artists who are less skilled than the American born and/or American trained workforce.  These imports are amassing huge profits, taking away opportunities from ABT dancers who should have them, and laughing all the way to their foreign banks.

Why is the U.S. government awarding these guest artists work visas when the work they are doing can be done by U.S. born or U.S. trained workers just as well and better?  

Professional ballet dancers are no different from any other workers.  They do art for a living.  They profit from their artistry.  There are more extraordinary dancers in this country than the country has room to employ.  The dancers who were born here, or who were born in foreign countries but spent years training here and working their ways up through the ranks and now have made fully productive lives here, should have the benefit of being employed in the high profile roles that are now being handed over to foreign guest artists with no sense of concern or guilt or regret.

Does anybody need a reminder that there are 14 million people out of work in this country?  The median annual paycheck in this country is $26,364, says Reuters, or $507 per week, the lowest since 1999.

Why was Kevin McKenzie allowed to engineer the exit of a U.S. citizen principal dancer and give her permanent job to an eastern European imported worker of less quality who costs more?

STOP DONATING to ABT until it stops giving away dancers' jobs to foreign guest artists.

STOP DONATING to ABT until it pays full attention to the talent within its ranks.

STOP BUYING tickets to performances starring foreign guest artists.

STOP BUYING any magazines, newspapers or products that promote ABT's foreign guest artists.

And if you don't like reading these rants, stop reading this blog.

 

Paris Opera Ballet NYC July 2012

Just a reminder that the Paris Opera Ballet will bring its outstanding production of Giselle to Lincoln Center during its 12 day visit as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.  The company arrives on July 11 which is immediately after the end of the ABT season.

The Paris Opera Ballet has a strong national identity, a strong national style, a clear aesthetic.  It is admired the world over for the quality of the classical dancing that it puts on the stage. 

So before plopping down money for any of the 22 performances during ABT's spring season that rely on media-generated guest artists who represent an incoherent hodge-podge of styles, including some with no aesthetic at all, think about saving your money for the Paris Opera Ballet.  The tickets will probably be expensive, but you will be rewarded with impeccable style, good taste, and extraordinary classical dancing. 

Sign up here to receive early notification of Lincoln Center Festival and Paris Opera Ballet ticket availability.

ABT's Spring Season @ the Met 2012 - a sorry state of affairs

A collection of guest artists is convening on the Met stage this Spring and is calling itself ABT.  What is even more unfortunate is that Natalia Osipova is no longer listed as a guest artist.  She has been snuck into the ranks of company principal.

Osipova, Semionova, Vasiliev, Kobborg, Cojocaru will be stealing the principal roles from Abrera, Riccetto, Lane, Radetsky, Matthews, Part, and Corella this spring.  The icing on the insult & absurdity cake is Semionova stealing a Myrtha in Giselle while Veronika Part gets dumped and Stella Abrera only gets one performance - and no Giselle.

Onegin
Firebird
Apollo
Thirteen Diversions
The Dream
Romeo & Juliet
Giselle
La Bayadere
The Bright Stream
Swan Lake - at least Isabella Boylston and Daniil Simkin will debut as leads.
Le Corsaire

All in all, it is clear and convincing evidence that the current artistic management cannot create enough world class dancers for a season at the Met and must go out and buy them from other more talented and capable artistic teams.  It is also clear that ABT has no national identity, no national focus or vision, no defined aesthetic.

Once again this year, the talented soloists and corps members of ABT have struck out in Mudville - and so have the fans.

 

Your free ticket Sun & Mon @ 7:30 Eastern time

Grab yourself a man-sized sandwich and a beer, plop down on the couch, and tune into the Guggenheim's Works & Process live streamed presentation of ABT's Fall Season Preview on Sunday or Monday night at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time.  Here is the link:

http://www.ustream.tv/worksandprocess

It's free.  You can watch it simultaneously with the Rangers, Tigers, da Bears and Vikes on TV.

ABT's fall season needs a little selling this year, and the company has lined up just the group of Fuller Brush Bandits who will make you dash to the City Center box office to buy tickets for the performances coming up November 8 - 13.  Once Isabella Boylston, Misty Copeland, Blaine Hoven, and Sean Stewart  get their awesome feet in your door, you'll be buying whatever they're selling.  Add Simone Messmer, Gillian Murphy, Patrick Ogle, Luciana Paris, Craig Salstein, and Cory Stearns to the preview cast and you can be sure you'll soon find your cabinet filled with the whole product line right down to Dad Fuller's Ultimate Skin Balm – and you'll believe that you need it all.

7:30 p.m. Eastern U.S.  This Sunday and Monday nights.

10/12 Update: ABT fall casting dribbling in

Some of the casting for the performances at Bard has been posted.  The only surprise so far is that Paloma Herrera is performing Sinatra Suite with Marcelo Gomes.  Hopefully, the City Center casting will go up very soon so that those of us who are discriminating consumers can make purchases.

Haglund noted that the BAM Nutcracker casting on the ABT calendar has not been linked to the dancers' bios yet.  Hopefully, that isn't an indication of uncertainty.  Maybe they have a guest web administrator maintaining the calendar instead of a real employee.  That would also explain why for the past couple of weeks Reyneris Reyes – not Xiomara – has been listed as Herman Cornejo's Kitri for the performances in Oman.

By the way, The Royal Ballet has all of its principal casting through March 31, 2012 published on its website.  So, doing better is possible.

UPDATE for NYCC:

Blaine Hoven and Maria Riccetto get the spots in Seven Sonatas vacated by David Hallberg and Stella Abrera - but in the alternate cast. Cha-ching - tickets purchased.

No Stella on the schedule.  Bummer - but her star will shine in New Zealand.  No Radetsky listed - bummer.  Hope he, at the least, will be leading In the Upper Room.

Veronika Part dances in Garden of Villandry Thursday and Saturday nights.  Cha-ching - tickets purchased.

 

NYCB – Square Dance, Fearful Symmetries, West Side Story Suite – 10/8

Despite the high level of dancing seen these past four weeks and despite having attended far fewer performances than usual, Haglund is relieved that NYCB's Fall Season is finished.  The deceitful and disrespectful manner in which the company's business management went about trying to manipulate and squeeze extra dollars out of faithful patrons resulted in an embarrassing decline in attendance. 

When one of the greatest ballet companies in the world is dancing some of the greatest choreography in the world with dancers at peak performance in the very center of the ballet capital of the world, but its grossly overpaid executive director cannot find 2500 butts to put in the seats of the magnificent theater, it is time to look for someone with the credentials and qualifications who can or else dump the executive director and go back to the previous arrangement that didn't cost the company an extra half million dollars in compensation – and do it fast – before the damage is so severe that this great ballet company is sucked down the sewer. 

Saturday evening's program of Square Dance, Fearful Symmetries, and West Side Story Suite was gloriously danced.  Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley sliced through the petit allegro of Square Dance with beautifully formed feet and high energy.  The joy and exuberance of Fairchild's play with the music left you thinking that despite the taxing pace, she still had a lot in reserve.  Huxley managed well in all departments and has beautiful legs and feet, but he is not yet equal to Fairchild in confidence and maturity.  The two coordinated with one another reasonably well, but they didn't quite look like a true partnership. 

Fearful Symmetries received a sensational performance from Teresa Reichlen & Jonathan Stafford, Sara Mearns & Amar Ramasar, and especially Lauren King & Allen Peiffer.  Some of the ladies in the lighter pinkish costumes had some unintentional asymmetrical moments, but for the most part, the corps was sharp and aggressive.  Haglund enjoys Fearful Symmetries more and more with each viewing.  True, there are too many of those jazz-ballet arm positions that show up in Martins' choreography with the frequency of the word "like" in an adolescent's sentence.  But, the choreography in Fearful Symmetries has a driving and relentless energy that reflects the sense of chase in the John Adams score.  Phillip Glass' influence comes through loud and clear in Adams' music, but that's not a complaint or criticism.  The score is a pleasing and dynamic piece of dance music.  This winter NYCB will present Wheeldon's DGV to a Michael Nyman composition that has a similarly relentless pulse with Glass influences.  Unfortunately, the choreography is not as appealing as Fearful Symmetries and relies heavily on crotch-splitting acrobatics rather than the type of intense movement seen in Martins' piece.

The cool intensity of Reichlen, the smoldering, space-devouring passion of Mearns, and the infectious enthusiasm of Lauren King, who intended to keep up with the other two come hell or high water, made for an interesting composition on the stage.  Every season reveals new strength and maturity in Lauren's dancing.  Her PdD with Allen Peiffer was quite a touching story in itself with both artists expressing a tenderness and emotion that one doesn't usually observe in dancers at the corps level.  Sometimes Lauren's feet look a little soft instead of being strongly pointed, but her ability to keep up with Teresa Reichlen and Sara Mearns on Saturday night made quite a statement about her progress.  She was one of only a few who danced in all three of the ballets during the evening which suggests some appreciation of her value.

West Side Story Suite closed the evening with Georgina Pazcoguin in the role of Anita, Chase Finlay as Tony, Andrew Veyette as Riff, Justin Peck as Bernardo, Lauren Lovette as Maria, and Gretchen Smith as Rosalia.  The physical characterizations by Veyette and Peck were a little more balletic than Broadway and could have used more intensity in their postures.  As expected, as hoped, Georgina Pazcoguin stole the show with her tough little Anita whose sassy grand battements punctuated the music like cymbals.  Haglund must mention that the singers were not at the tops of their games, however.  Maybe some of them had that nasty cold that is going around.

Haglund bestows this Dior rope and feather beauty of a Pump Bump Award on Georgina Pazcoguin and Lauren King who are two major reasons not to take our eyes off the corps de ballet.

Stiefel's ABT retirement (and other) plans

Ethan Stiefel told reporter Valerie Lawson of The Australian that his 2012 spring performances in Le Corsaire and Swan Lake with ABT at The Met will probably be his last with the company. 

The new artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet spoke more about his collaborations with Johan Kobborg which include a new La Bayadere that the two will prepare for the National Ballet of Canada's 2015 season.  Designs will be by Robert Perdziola who is well known for his opera sets and costumes at The Met Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Opera Australia, and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

The article in The Australian, which has an interesting typo in the penultimate paragraph, also seemed to confirm that Stella Abrera's Aurora in RNZB's Sleeping Beauty later this month is still a go.  Fist Pump, Baby!!