Haglund's Heel

Ballet in CinemaYAGP's Ballet's Greatest Hits

If you missed YAGP's Ballet's Greatest Hits on Easter Sunday, don't let the second screening on Tuesday pass you by.  The White Swan PdD with Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes on a twenty foot tall screen will destroy you.  It's one for the ages.  Thank all gods everywhere and YAGP that it is finally preserved on film. 

Seeing Veronika and Marcelo in this bigger-than-life PdD is all the Swan Lake Haglund needs to see this spring.  There's no sense seeing anyone if we can't see these two together at the Met.

Lincoln Center Festival 2013 = Disaster

What a letdown, LCF.  Seriously?  No ballet, but a bunch of Monkeys?

Not a thin dime this year, not one thin dime.

 

Ballet in Cinema – March 31 & April 2

After the traditional Easter Morning breakfast of Peeps with maple syrup, many folks will stash a few buttercream eggs and jelly bean contraband in their socks and pockets and shuffle off to the local cinema to see the first of what all hope will be many YAGP feature film presentations.  Ballet's Greatest Hits isn't really a collection of ballet's greatest hits; it's more like a collection of some of today's rare Fabergé Imperial quality artists nestled among other nice performers who will grow in value as they age and acquire patina through artistic polishing.

The rare treat to witness Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes in the White Swan PdD is reason enough to shell out a few yolks for a ticket and hop on your bunny for a quick trip to the nearest Ballet in Cinema hut.  They are the most magical Swan Lake pairing that this country has to offer.  We don't see them together in ABT's Swan Lake in New York anymore because to cast them together makes all other pairings seem like mis-dyed eggs.  So, in order to sell tickets to others' performances of Swan Lake, they are split up and we no longer get to see the absolute best that ABT has to offer.  It's a sad and destructive marketing scheme.

The lucky cinema audiences will see Ashley Bouder and Daniel Ulbricht, Greta Hodgkinson and Matthew Golding, Stella Abrera (pictured above from a YAGP email), and the enormously talented and charming Alejandro Virelles.  Following his defection from Cuba where he starred with the Cuban National Ballet, Alejandro landed at the Corella Ballet and shortly thereafter toured with that company to New York.  He was one of the highlights of their performances. Currently, he dances with Boston Ballet.

The full cast is on the Ballet in Cinema website where you also can enter your zip code to find the participating theaters nearest you. Undoubtedly, a DVD will eventually surface for sale; so, don't despair if the film doesn't show in your country or region. 

    (Click on me and feel the rush.)

Lincoln Center Theater presentsNikolai and the Others – a play about Balanchine, Stravinsky, Nabokov

from LCT website

Richard Nelson has written a play about the time surrounding Balanchine's creation of Orpheus in 1948.  Previews begin on April 4 at Lincoln Center's Newhouse Theater.  Opening night is May 6th, and it appears that the play will run through mid-June.

From the Lincoln Center Theater website:

It's 1948 and during a spring weekend in Westport, Connecticut a close-knit group of Russian emigres, including choreographer George Balanchine, composer Igor Stravinsky, conductor Serge Koussevitsky, painter/set designer Sergey Sudeikin and composer Nikolai Nabokov, gather to eat, drink and talk.

In Nikolai and the Others playwright Richard Nelson (Some Americans Abroad, Two Shakespearean Actors) imagines the relationships between Balanchine and Stravinsky, their friends, lovers, wives and ex-wives, partners, supporters and dancers (including Maria Tallchief and Nicholas Magallanes), at the time of their historic collaboration on the ballet Orpheus.

Later that year, Orpheus would be the spectacular inaugural production of the newly formed New York City Ballet. With this in mind, the play also explores the controversial ways American art and artistic institutions were funded at the outset of the Cold War -- including the subtle hand of the State Department in the post-war cultural scene.

Natalia Alonso (Ballet Hispanico, Complexions) will portray Maria Tallchief, and there will be some Orpheus choreography on display as staged by Rosemary Dunleavy. Blair Brown as Vera Stravinsky, John Glover as Igor Stravinsky, Stephen Kunken as Nikolai Nabokov, Michael Rosen as Nicholas Magallanes, and Michael Cerveris as George Balanchine are among the cast of 18 players.

Spring is getting busy.  Purchase tickets here.

Why is ABT pushing this as classical?

Image quote from Pointe Magazine

Suddenly ABT has decided that it doesn't matter what Odette's wings look like.  It only matters who her sponsor is.  The accomplished ballerinas who should be the next Odettes – the ones who have the long lines, the narrow, endless, expressive arms, the long swan necks, the beautiful, soulful faces, the Prix de Lausanne winning technique, and the Genée Gold Medal winning technique are being sidelined in favor of one with habitually messy hands and arms.  No wonder our classics can't get any world respect. 

McKenzie may be impressed, but Mckayla isn't.  Not impressed at all.

http://mckaylaisnotimpressed.tumblr.com/

 

PTDC – Last call at the bar

Paul Taylor Dance Company winds up its Lincoln Center three week season with a weekend of fabulous works. Get to the theater for one of the last four performances. Get the book at the souvenir bar. Get the mug. Get the tee-shirt. Get some a them fancy soaps that'ir guaranteed to make you smell like a dancer.

Looking forward to the 60th Anniversary Season. 

 

If you're wondering why ABT ticket prices increased so much

Recently, Guidestar.org published the most currently available IRS Form 990 for ABT.  It covers the tax year 2011 and includes some disturbing information.

Last spring when Kevin McKenzie acknowledged that donations were down, he seemed unwilling to admit that the severe downturn in the public's financial support was a loud "Vote of No Confidence" for the way he is mismanaging ABT. 

Contributions dropped an unheard of 32% – nearly $6 million – from $18,570,819 to $12,699,853. 

(Click on image to enlarge and clarify.)


A comparison of the latest Form 990 with the prior year's 990 revealed that in spite of the catastrophic drop in donations, McKenzie got a whopping $31,708 increase in total compensation while Executive Director Rachel Moore was granted an outrageous increase of $60,241.  This seems to be a very screwy application of the pay-for-performance executive compensation model – unless, of course, the Board's stated objective was to lose $6 million in contributions. 

2011 (Click on images to enlarge and clarify.)

2010

In 2011, the ABT Board saw a reduction of four members including Lewis Ranieri, Nancy Ellison, and Susan Fales-Hill.  These are big, influencial names in the world of finance, arts, and philanthropy and were big losses for ABT.  Devotion of their magnitude is hard to find.

What is and has been so odd about the ABT Board – and what may explain its inability to function responsibly – is that it is not truly and totally independent in the way nonprofit boards are expected to be.  Two board seats are allocated to Kevin McKenzie and Rachel Moore who have the opportunity to quickly explain away and dismiss any other board member's concerns and advocate eagerly for their own interests.  Ms. Moore not only garnered a $60,241 increase in compensation in 2011, but last year she was able to get herself elevated from Executive Director to CEO, directly causing the resignation of longtime board member Rod Brayman who objected strongly to the change.  It seems that being known as a flagship Executive Director wasn't title-enough for Ms. Moore even though several of the most gifted and promotable soloists in the company have had to bear that same terminally inferior designation.

The board of an organization that is as artistically and financially troubled as ABT cannot have the candid, spontaneous, and forthright discussions that it needs to have in order to ascertain its proper course of action if Rachel Moore and Kevin McKenzie are running interference and manipulating the conversation.  How can the board have honest, spontaneous, forthright discussions about replacing the director when he and his cohort are sitting in the room?  Any request by the board for them to leave or not attend the meeting would just send them into damage-control overdrive.

By contrast, the NYCB board is 100% independent; neither Peter Martins nor the Executive Director sits on the board.  For the same financial reporting period, NYCB's contributions increased by $144,797.  Tickets priced at $29 are available in every level of the house that is open for sale, and Society NYCB members buy tickets for $17.  Furthermore, the company was able to promote two homegrown artists to principal last year, and last month, promoted 11 more artists including three to the rank of principal – again, all homegrown artists.

Maria Riccetto & Ballet Nacional Sodre in La Sílfide opening night

 

  

Maria – exquisite, luminous beauty.

Ciro – perfection.

Julio Bocca is a genius director.

 

Just throwing it out there . . . .

Never has NYCB had more dancers who would thrill the ballet universe in the traditional Petipa role of Kitri.  Think of Bouder, Mearns, Scheller, Peck, Hyltin, and Reichlen tearing up the stage in Don Quixote.  Ana Sophia Scheller has already danced the role with one of the greatest ever Basilio's, Julio Bocca.

Why is it impractical to think/wish/petition/dream that NYCB could partner with Bocca in his new production in 2014, perhaps helping to arrange an infusion of Balanchine into Bocca's own company in Uruguay as an exchange for allowing his new production to be adapted for NYCB?

 

Julio Bocca's Ballet Nacional Sodre opens La Sílfide tonight

More than 10,000 tickets have already been sold for the performances in Montevideo.

Below is a rehearsal photo of Maria Riccetto and Ciro Tamaya from Julio's FB page.  Tamaya is quoted in El Pais as saying, "[Maria] is divine.  It is an honor to dance with her."  No kidding.  Those long, thin arms of hers will be divine in Swan Lake in August, too.  Her opportunities next year also look pretty fine when Julio presents his new spectacular Don Quixote, Ashton's Marguerite and Armand, MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, and Makarova's staging of La Bayadere.