Haglund's Heel

McKenzie dives into the toilet to get his latest principal dancer

In one of the most embarrassing acquisitions in its history, ABT has hired the classless, graceless, unballetic, obnoxious, grandstanding, stump-legged Ivan Vasiliev as its latest principal. 

What a freakin' joke this company has become. 

Now they've got three Ardani properties, all of whom walk out on employers as easily as they walk out the door to go to the grocery.  Not one of them is a top classical dancer in the world today.  And every one of them relies on cheap, vulgar, sloppy gymnastics to woo the ignorant audiences who think they're seeing ballet.  What a freakin' joke ABT has become.  It deserves every empty seat, every lost donor, every lost subscription, every bad review.

It is such a shame that the artists who have come up through ABT's ranks are subjected to having these embarrassing and inferior circus performers brought in and held over their heads as being superior. 

It's time for ABT to close up shop.

 

Valentino hangin' at the NYCB costume shop

NYCB's fall season opens in fewer than 48 hours!  The Fall Gala on Thursday – Hommage à Valentino – will feature costume designs by the great Valentino.  He was hanging out in the costume shop at NYCB recently, and New York Magazine got some fab photos like this one:

Photo: CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON/MAGNUM

 

UIEX: Stars at the NYCB Fall Gala

Thanks to the Haglund'eeler who directed our attention to the Italian news source which yesterday reported that Roberto Bolle, Ralph Lauren, Beyonce, and Gwyneth Paltrow will attend the NYCB's Fall Gala Hommage à Valentino on September 20th.

Oh, Lordy. 

 

Relevé

 

Mariinsky babies!

The LA Times reported tonight that BOTH Viktoria Tereshkina and Alina Somova will miss the LA engagement in early October at the Segerstrom because BOTH are pregnant.

Wow, this will turn things upside down at the Mariinsky for the next year or so.

Here's the new LA casting; we'll just have to wait to hear about the changes in DC:

The new principal casting is: Oct. 2 -- Oxana Skorik (Odette-Odile), Vladimir Schklyarov (Prince Siegfried); Oct. 3 -- Ekaterina Kondaurova, Evgeny Ivanchenko; Oct. 4 -- Skorik, Timur Askerov; Oct. 5 -- Kondaurova, Ivanchenko; Oct. 6, 2 p.m. -- Anastasia Kolegova, Danila Korsuntsev; Oct. 6, 7:30 p.m. -- Skorik, Schklyarov; Oct. 7, 2 p.m. -- Kolegova, Askerov.

 

Oh, let's offend everybody

The Met Museum probably has no idea how offensive this Fat, Turbin-wearing, Dwarf Turkish Pasha with White Face would be to the whining dance critic at The New York Times.  Isn't the dwarf-sized sword cute? 

Should the Met Museum remove it from its collections because it might offend three or four or five sectors of society along with a newspaper dance critic who wants to control artistic offerings instead of reporting on them?  Should our reaction to seeing this in the museum be one of shame and refusal to admire the artist's sense of humor and craft?  Is the Met Museum perpetuating a stereotype of the Turkish Pasha?

Dwarf as Turkish Pasha
Capodimonte

Haglund cannot wait for Le Corsaire during ABT's Spring 2013 season.  Hopefully we will see Joe Phillips as Ali, Stella Abrera as Medora, Eric Tamm as Conrad and a few other real ABT dancers get their well deserved chances.  Maybe the company could import a guest dwarf to play the pasha since obviously ABT discriminates against dwarfs in its ranks.

NYC Dance Alliance Foundation Gala

Few of the many students who attend college on football or basketball scholarships ever land gigs in the NFL or NBA.  Few students who attend college on scholarships while majoring in French or history or sociology ever become French citizens, historians, or sociologists.  Few students who attend college on scholarships to study literature ever become professional readers or writers. 

But something important happens to these students over the course of four years while they participate in and study things which they love.  They are also strong-armed by the educational institutions into studying a variety of core subjects in which they may have little interest but which enhance their abilities to understand and affect the world in which they live.  Eyes widen.  Perceptions deepen.  Focus lengthens.

Last evening the New York City Dance Alliance Foundation, which is primarily a scholarship-funding organization founded and directed by the well-known jazz teacher and choreographer Joe Lanteri, presented a gala evening of performances and awards at NYU's Skirball Center.  The draw for Haglund to attend was the announcement that some of his favorite professional dancers would perform and that the evening would honor Mikhail Baryshnikov, who seems still too young with too much to do to already be racking up lifetime achievement awards such as the Ambassador for the Arts Award bestowed on him last night by the NYCDAF.  While that was the draw for Haglund to attend, what impressed him the most last night was hearing about the huge financial impact that the NYCDAF is making on kids who have embraced an art form which can now be leveraged to acquire something very important but very expensive. 

NYCDAF has lined up college partners who assess the hopefuls and grant life-changing financial scholarships.  This year's college partners include Point Park, Mercyhurst, Marymount Manhattan among other schools, all of which have nationally recognized theater or dance programs.  NYCDAF hopes that the 2012 scholarship total will exceed the 2011 record awards total of $2.8 million.  Additionally, last night a number of awards of $5,000 and $10,000 each were bestowed upon college bound dancers to help defray tuition at the colleges of their choice.  A gift of $10,000 was bestowed upon the Baryshnikov Arts Center as well.  As Baryshnikov noted in his acceptance speech for the Ambassador for the Arts Award, some of the students may go on to find success as professional performers but many will not.  The latter will help develop the audience for dance, the philanthropy for dance, the administration for dance, and some will become the "gentle critics" of dance.

A number of guest speakers spoke of Baryshnikov's influence on their lives and their art.  Julie Kent, who seems to be turning into a listenable speaker, noted with a tinge of sadness that she is the sole remaining dancer in ABT who was hired and developed by Baryshnikov.  She is the last of his era in that company today but still stands head and shoulders above all the other artists who have been imported to try to pump up the company's classical reputation but who have mostly tainted it.  It was Baryshnikov who invested his time in developing Julie Kent, Susan Jaffe, Wes Chapman, Robert Hill, Amanda McKerrow, John Gardner, Cheryl Yeager, and Cynthia Harvey because he was committed to the organic and sustainable development of ABT.  He also motivated Leslie Browne, who was a disengaged teenager in an elite ballet family, to become one of ABT's most respected ballerinas.  She spoke last evening of the transformative experience of seeing Baryshnikov perform with Natalia Makarova in Giselle.

The dancing part of the evening was a mix of styles and levels of achievement.  Ballet Next opened the program with an excerpt from Margo Sappington's Entwined.  Ballet Hispanico performed Club Havana.  Complexions offered two excerpts from its repertory.  Scholarship recipents performed as did a student group from a local school.  ABT's Sarah Lane and Sascha Radetsky performed the PdD from Don Quixote.  NYCB's Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild performed the PdD from Wheeldon's Mercurial Manoeuvres. 

Roberta Flack, who was last year's Ambassador for the Arts Award recipient, spoke eloquently.   Liza Minnella made the formal presentation to Baryshnikov which was augmented by film clips of them dancing together in the PBS broadcast Baryshnikov on Broadway.

NYCB – get ready, get set, Week 1 here we go!

LOTS to look forward to during NYCB's first week of the Fall Season which begins on September 18th:

Robert Fairchild's Apollo on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday along with Sterling Hyltin, Tiler Peck, and Ana Sophia Scheller as the Muses;

Chase Finlay's Apollo on Wednesday and Saturday evening along with Maria Kowroski and debutantes Teresa Reichlen and Rebecca Krohn - whew, that's a lot of legs for one cast lol ;

Rebecca Krohn and Ashley Bouder will debut in Agon on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively;

Charles Askegard will return during the Thursday Gala to swirl Maria Kowroski around in Sophisticated Lady;

Three sets of dancers will share the three movements of Rubies during the Gala which will include the debut of a new Tall Girl, Emily Kikta and Daniel Ulbricht in the beloved Edward Villella's role (Couldn't we invite him, too? What a damn fine party that would make!)

The new Martins piece set to the glorious music from Tschaikovsky's Onegin includes just about everybody: 18 principals and a couple of soloists;

and last but not least, all those new costume designs by the Great Valentino for the Gala.

That's only a little bit of what's going to pack the theater with happy balletomanes.  Go here to check out the rest.

Missing from the first week's festivities: Sara Mearns and Jenifer Ringer. 

We need an update on Jennie Somogyi; she must be progressing right along.  Hopefuly she'll be ready to return to the track this winter or spring.

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines!

 

 

Martha Swope: In Rehearsal photography exhibit @ NYPL Lincoln Center

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center acquired revered dance photographer Martha Swope's archives in 2010.  Beginning on Thursday, September 27, an exhibit comprised exclusively of her dance and theater rehearsal photos will be on display in the Vincent Astor Gallery for the public to enjoy free of charge through Saturday, January 13, 2013.

The exhibit will feature more than 100 images including those from rehearsals of the original productions of West Side Story and A Chorus Line and from George Balanchine's and Igor Stravinsky's creation of Agon.  Rehearsal photos of Martha Graham, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, Jack Lemmon, Liza Minnelli, Gregory Hines, Chita Rivera and many other greats will also be on display. 

For those of us who grew up in remote parts of the country during the middle of the last century, Martha Swope's photography was our introduction to the New York City Ballet and the Martha Graham Company –– both for which she served as official photographer during her illustrious 40 year career.  Her images in Dance Magazine, Saturday Review, and the library edition of The New York Times were our connections to the greatness that we dreamed of seeing on stage one day.

For more information on this not-to-be-missed exhibit, click here and here.