Haglund's Heel

UIEX: RNZB bringing Giselle to NYC!

Whoa, this almost got by old Haglund. 

We knew that the Royal New Zealand Ballet planned to take its new Stiefel/Kobborg production of Giselle to China next year, but now it seems that there is a trip to NYC planned also.  In a filmed interview for TVNZ,  AD Ethan Stiefel and the director of the new RNZB feature film, Toa Fraser, spoke about filming the production while the company tours New Zealand "before heading to China and New York next year."  

The interview includes some brief footage of Gillian Murphy in Acts I & II (watch the huge lift by Qi Huan's Albrecht) and, of course, what would an interview with Stiefel be without footage from Center Stage - except this footage shows Radetsky!

Who could possibly be surprised that Stiefel is bringing RNZB and its Giselle starring Gillian Murphy to NYC?  Well, possibly Kevin McKenzie who has never given her the chance to dance the title role in her 16 years with ABT.  There's nothing like having your bad decisions shoved in your face in the center of Manhattan. 

 

Another voice re: Simkin's promotion

Please take a moment to read Rachel March's thoughtful blog entry regarding the promotion of Daniil Simkin to principal at ABT.  A few of her pointed comments:

[Simkin] borders on unwatchable in anything other than a gala solo, and even then I wouldn't pay just to see it.

...

He frustrates me more for his bravado and lack of respect for his ballerinas than for his dancing itself, though to quote a knowledgeable balletomane friend of mine, this promotion is "really rather disgusting.  Especially after City Center, where he killed Stars & Stripes, and not in a good way." 

...

Ironically, this promotion was announced minutes after ABT called me to request my annual donation. Luckily, I had put them off for now, and unless something drastically wonderful happens with the empty casting spots for Met season, they won't be getting any money out of me this donation season.  And by wonderful I mean meaty principal casting for Stella Abrera, Yuriko Kajiya, Misty Copeland, Jared Matthews and Joey Gorak.

You can catch up with Rachel on Twitter at twitter.com/rachelmarch which Haglund reads frequently even though he doesn't officially indulge in Twittzling himself.

 

The Squeal Deal on promotions at ABT

Well, of course, when he hires the wife of the associate artistic director and the senior principal ballerina and escorts her to his own squealing fan base halfway across the world to present her in his own program, and when he surrounds himself with principal dancers to schmooze and solicit, and when he "medias" himself to a gag-inducing degree and then engineers rumblings of exploring non-ABT options, it really doesn't matter that after four years, he still is not much more than a lightweight trick pony.

Sorry, folks, but after four years, Daniil Simkin still cannot act.  His partnering skill is the worst on ABT's stage -- need anyone be reminded how about this time last year, he dropped Skylar Brandt flat on her face in Ratmansky's Nutcracker and then tripped over top of her.  Even when he can get it right technically he looks less convincing than Justin Bieber trying to force his tongue down his microphone.  He's so slow that he chooses to (disrespectfully) change Balanchine's choreography so he doesn't have to try to meet its demands.

It's really wonderful that Julie Kent and Roberto Bolle had such a great time working for Simkin these past two weeks in Tokyo and everyone would expect them to put in a good word or two for him.  But given everything that he still can NOT do, it doesn't justify steamrolling over the senior soloists who are a) more complete artists and b) more deserving.

No donation this year – again.

And let's just add – thank goodness for great artistic directors like Joe Girardi who just signed 18 year veterans Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera to multi-million dollar contracts -- despite their injuries.  The Yankees don't leave a man's job to an unproven kid, no matter how loud the adoring squealing in the stands is.

NYCB on 60 Minutes plus

CBS has loaded tonight's 60 Minutes segment onto its website.  Additionally, some footage that did not make the final cut, including film footage of Balanchine, is on the website as Correspondent Candids. 

As fluff promo pieces, these were great.  And thank you CBS for mentioning that the dancers are homegrown.  But as 60 Minutes pieces, it would have been nice to see something a little more objective in certain areas which were overstated.  When in the Correspondent Candids Daniel Ulbricht demonstrated NYCB style jumps in first position, any journalist who had done his research would have challenged Martins on the controversy of jumping without putting down the heels and how that increases the probability of injury.  Also, the business of "how they bow everywhere else in the world versus how we bow" is old Martins schtick where he encourages his dancers to demonstrate a caricature of the classical ballet bow. 

Again, nice fluffy promo pieces, and it is absolutely wonderful that NYCB got these opportunities on 60 Minutes and on the CBS website, but the journalism should have been a lot better.

 

NYCB – The Crux of the Nut – 11/24

In the Playbill program for last evening's NYCB The Nutcracker, there was a brief excerpt from a 2009 interview with Valery Gergiev, who while commenting on the social power of the theater, said:

"When I was a child it was important for my mother, now it is important for me — what my children will hear, what they will see. Instead of watching some really terrible movies, where people go in and kill each other for two hours, I much prefer my daughter or my sons to see another Nutcracker."

The theater audience was filled with kids last night – cleaned-up, shiny faces, hair combed, curious but reluctant to stray far from the adult arm.  There didn't seem to be any complaining about how they'd rather be home watching a video. 

Balanchine's The Nutcracker at 58 years old is as young and spry as its newest Marie and LIttle Prince.  This year's little duo of Rommie Tomasini and Maximillian Brooking Landegger led the children's cast that included Philip Henry Duclos as Fritz and 40-50 kids from the School of the American Ballet.  They all did a fabulous job, but as often is the case, the highlight was the Little Prince's extended mimed solo at the beginning of Act II during which he summarizes all that happened in Act I culminating with the victorious arm salute with the dead Mouse King's crown in his hand.

Joshua Thew was the fierce but outwitted Mouse King.  He was clearly winning the battle and was within a whisker of carrying off the battling Nutcracker Prince when – when – no one is going to believe this but Haglund saw this with his own eyes – it happened again – just like last year!  The Bunny – yes, that Bunny – jumped up and did a quadruple tour en l'air to the left, ears spinning like helicopter blades, and then lifted its little bunny tail to reveal gas turbine bunny jets firing furiously.  Suddenly, the Bunny shot toward the Mouse King, grabbed his big mouse tail, and it was all over in a second.  The Mouse King didn't know what hit him.  And then the Bunny blazed off into the wings leaving the Mouse King to carry a sore tail to his final defeat.  The audience sat in shocked silence.

The adult principals, Tiler Peck as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Robert Fairchild as Her Cavalier, sailed through their PdD and variations with all the outsized magic kids expect at Christmas.  Tiler's soft elegance was fortified with a steely technique that made everything she did look easy.  One swore that the notes of the celesta were emanating from her pique pointes.  Fairchild was less at home in the princely role of Her Cavalier than his more neo-classical roles.  Some coupe jetes with an unpointed front foot and lagging turns in a la seconde were a bit of a disappointment but the partnering of Peck was, well, impeccable.  His catches of her jumps to his shoulder were kiss-perfect. 

Ana Sophia Scheller's Dew Drop was stunning for its clarity and ease of balances.  The shape and control of a fouette sequence was one of the prettiest sights of the evening.  Ana is expending more effort on musical phrasing which is tremendously important but there were a couple of times last night when she was a little late to recognize an opportunity but then pushed her own phrasing through it anyway.  She will dance the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy at next Saturday's matinee, which Haglund hopes to see.

The dances in the Act II Land of Sweets were a little sticky in places.  Among the company corps dancers, which on this night included a big group of apprentices, there seemed to be a mandate to dance really, really big no matter the consequences.  As a result, the corps was a little more "harmonious" than a single note, but it's still early in this five week Nutcracker run. 

The Pump Bump Award, an embroidered jeweled stiletto from Christian Louboutin, is bestowed upon Ana Sophia Scheller for her dazzling display as Dewdrop:

From the New World to Nutcracker

One of the many cool New York moments occurs at Lincoln Center whenever two or more of its grand houses empty out at exactly the same moment late in the evening. 

Friday night just as thousands were exiting Avery Fisher Hall while still humming the beautiful melodies of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 From the New World, directly across the fountain thousands were streaming out of the doors following the season's first performance of The Nutcracker.  Excited kids were skipping and twirling, singing, and tugging on the grownups' arms.  As the masses from the two sides of the plaza converged, Haglund stood at the side to take in all the smiling faces.  For a few moments, New Yorkers became especially civil, gentle, even warm and fuzzy before leaving the protective custody of Lincoln Center to step out onto the avenue of reality -- which at the moment is really dirty, congested, and very unChristmasy – or unHoliday-y, if political correctness is demanded.

Haglund is pretty excited about seeing Tiler Peck, Robert Fairchild, and Ana Sophia Scheller in The Nutcracker Saturday night, but tonight he was at Fisher Hall for the New York Philharmonic's concert of Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, and Dvořák.  Andrey Boreyko conducted and Frank Peter Zimmermann was the violin soloist for the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor.  

Here's hoping that this particular Shostakovich piece is not on Alexei Ratmansky's long list of music to which he wants to choreograph any time soon.  Even after listening to it twice before attending the concert, Haglund couldn't wrap his head around the rampaging violin solos and the angst erupting within the music.  But the Dvořák symphony was something else.  So beautiful.  And it was made in New York during Dvořák's first years here.

Next weekend at the NY Phil, the program includes Barber's Violin Concerto, Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, and a new symphony by Steven Stucky.  And, of course, NYCB's The Nutcracker continues across the way.

 

Radestky wrap-up

An English version of an interview with Sascha Radetsky has surfaced on the UB Post of MongolNews.mn from when he first arrived in Mongolia to dance the role of Albrecht opposite G. Tsolman's Giselle with the Mongolian State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet.

The cultural exchange sponsor, Blue Silk Travel of Verona, Wisconsin, has added the following short clip of the Giselle performance to its website.  While initially the tempo seems glacial, it is similar to what the Paris Opera Ballet used during its glorious performances at Lincoln Center last summer.  The sense is that there is a lot more time for Albrecht to fill up in this staging of the ballet than that to which we are accustomed to seeing at ABT.  The tempo also makes the lifts, particularly the descents, more spectacular.  Radetsky's technique speaks for itself - loudly.  He and Abrera should have a shot at the TBAs in the calendar for Swan Lake next June, and the guest artists & imports slotted elsewhere need to be dumped to make more room for our own dancers to dance.

 

 

NYCB on 60 Minutes this Sunday

CBS 60 Minutes anchor Leslie Stahl follows Robert Fairchild in his 2011 debut in Apollo during this Sunday's edition of 60 Minutes.  As everyone knows, the program is customarily on at 7pm, but this is a Thanksgiving-Football Weekend, so who knows what time it will really air.  Here's a link to a brief clip.

 

_________________________________________________________________________________
Dear Abatt:

I've been meaning to mention to you that if you are going to use my posts for your posts elsewhere,
please so indicate the source.  Thanks.

Sascha Radetsky as Albrecht

Here are саша радецки (Radetsky) and his beautiful Giselle, Г.Цолмон, in the final moments of their performance at the Mongolian State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet a couple of days ago.  The source of the photo is the Mongolian News organization's Facebook page which updates almost every minute. 

Haglund wishes he could identify the lovely ballerina in English but this blog's Cyrillic Specialist has been away on a special assignment which has made reporting on this particular story a little more difficult than it should be.  Nevertheless, this beautiful picture says it all --

 

NY Phil - exquisite evening of Brahms

Tonight's Brahms program at the New York Philharmonic was a gift from Heaven, that's for sure.  Eighty-five year old Kurt Masur basked in the affection and respect of the musicians and the audience as he conducted the program of Brahms' Symphony No. 3 in F major Op. 90  and Symphony No. 4.  You can still get tickets for Friday night and Saturday night performances here.

Haglund would like to thank ballet class accompanists everywhere who play classical music in class including the overwhelmingly beautiful Brahms Symphony No. 3 Poco allegretto.  Here is the Plovdiv Philharmonic of Bulgaria in a live performance: