Haglund's Heel

ABT 10/29Raymonda, Bach Partita, Gaite Parisienne

Real men wear pink gloves. And plenty of Wildroot cream-oil on the hair. "It has a subtle talc scent that blends well with other manly smells,” you may recall.

Both were important tools for Herman Cornejo’s Peruvian who was trying to win the most beautiful and seductive French glove seller this side of St. Petersburg in last night's Gaite Parisienne. But alas, pink gloves were no match for the much taller baron's pink jacket. In a blink of the pink, the baron had the glove seller wrapped up more artfully than Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrap air – at least for this evening. Tomorrow the game would start anew.

Along with Veronika Part (the glove seller), Cory Stearns (the baron), and a high stepping, high kicking cast of players, Cornejo breathed life into ABT’s fall season that has been suffocating from poor taste, bad judgment, and loosely focused dancing. He was as oily as the best of them – Johan Renvall, Julio Bocca, Gil Boggs – and sported an over-confidence that marked him as a loser the moment he appeared, like Groucho Marx crouched over chasing after Marilyn Monroe. Veronika’s glove seller was fizzy like a fox, selling everything she had to anyone willing to buy. To be sure, she would always get more out of every deal than she had to give out. A single, unshielded glance at those gorgeous, perfectly formed legs in an attitude with plenty of French attitude, and the looker was under her control.

Joseph Gorak stepped in for Eric Tamm as the Dancing Master and let rip some Plisetskayas to the back of the head in an overall outstanding performance. Joe should dance himself over to BAM to speak with the Mariinsky in January and then bolt from ABT without looking back.

The evening opened with Raymonda Divertissements that still lacked polish as it did on opening night. Hee Seo didn't do anything more with Raymonda than Julie Kent might be able to do with it these days, and frankly, that isn’t nearly enough. While we wouldn’t in a million years expect a performance on the order of Oleysa Novikova, we do expect some sense of regal and royalty. Dropping the chin and grinning doesn’t accomplish much. One wonders why the most difficult solo variation of Raymonda’s was not danced by Raymonda, but instead was assigned to a soloist. Was it because the first-cast Raymonda doesn’t possess the technical chops needed to dance it and so no Raymonda will dance it? Last night, some thought that was the reason. Apparently it’s still true that the royal family has its subjects perform all the hard labor.

The Jean de Brienne, James Whiteside, was as wooden and inelegant as ever. A couple of diagonal passes of cabrioles and a short spurt of coupe jetes had him looking like a stiff-legged monster on attack. His knees bent upon landing but there was never any sense of plie. His lines lacked grace and looked like a gymnast’s who you wished had some turnout.

The male pas de quatre didn’t embarrass itself like in past performances and managed a clean finish. Alexandre Hammoudi was replaced last night in the quartet. He had a terribly sloppy opening night in the pas de quatre and a poor showing in his variations when he subsequently danced the lead opposite Gillian Murphy. What is going on with this soloist? Ratmansky was able to turn him into a prince for Nutcracker but McKenzie can’t do a thing with him. His mandate seems to be to jump as big as he can regardless of what it looks like. His pirouettes and tours en l’air are all over the place. His lines are beginning to look as workman-like as Whiteside’s.

Tom Forster, on the other hand, holy cow. Such beauty, power and grace in Raymonda's male quartet. The eye is quickly drawn to this dancer as soon as he steps on stage, not because he is the tallest man on stage but because his dancing commands our attention. In many, many respects, he is on a par with Roberto Bolle already, particularly in the generous flexibility in the back, beautiful leg lines, and the gorgeous feet.

It was a pleasure to see the ease with which Skylar Brandt repeated her faultless variation. Christine Shevchenko struggled with the more challenging variation normally danced by Raymonda. Having seen Devon Teuscher sail through this tough section the other evening almost as well as the beautiful Christine Dunham did decades ago really rekindled some hope for this company. Maybe that’s putting too much pressure on this brand new soloist, but her pairing opposite Cory Stearns in Jardin Aux Lilas last week looked like it had classical stardom written all over it. Unfortunately, McKenzie’s current practice is to put the most competent classical artists on ABT's backburner for their entire careers while promoting or importing second rate dancers who look like they came out of a Salvation Army thrift shop. So let’s not get our hopes up too high for Devon.

Sarah Lane and Misty Copeland were an odd mismatch in their demi-soloist variation. Sarah’s confident but unpushy refinement opposite Misty’s I’ll-stoop-as-low-as-I-need-to-go-to-get-what-I-want – or whatever her current and ever changing tag line is – with chin forced up arrogantly was hardly attractive. Why does ABT continue to allow Misty to force the hyperextension in her knees? The legs are so mis-bent that they look like they are about to snap in two when she stands in a B+. It’s less noticeable in contemporary work where no tights or beige tights are worn, but in pink tights under a classical tutu, the excessive hyperextension is truly ugly, and it’s dangerous. It’s just one more thing that this dancer exaggerates beyond what she should.

It would have been interesting to see Sarah and Misty matched up in the variation that Devon and Christine did. It would have revealed a lot about who the better, more classical dancer is. Or forcing the actual Raymondas to do their own variations would have been enlightening as well.

The middle of the evening’s program, Bach Partita, was the most satisfying and well-danced piece on the program. Years ago, Haglund thought that in his next life, he would come back as Pinchas Zukerman’s violin on a Mozart night. Forget that. He’s coming back as Charles Yang’s violin on a Bach night. There were points in this ballet where one had to close the eyes and just experience the energy and life in the music. One wishes, though, that Yang would have been positioned less far to the left in the orchestra pit – more central – for the benefit of those on the right side of the house. Better yet, why not on the side of the stage? After all, Bach is the true star in this ballet and was being played in the house where the music always comes first in importance.

The cast was led by Gillian Murphy/Marcelo Gomes and Stella Abrera/Calvin Royal III along with Misty Copeland/James Whiteside. Skylar Brandt and Craig Salstein gave their little bit in the fourth section principal importance with their sparkling wit and technical brilliance that was tossed off with ease.

Gillian and Marcelo danced like branches budding off the Tharp tree – so perfectly bent to her style with an understated sass that was prevalent in Tharp’s earliest works. An unassuming balance on pointe that Gillian held so casually seemed even to surprise Marcelo who stopped himself from interrupting it too soon.

Tharp’s challenge when adopting ABT decades ago was to get the women to dance on pointe with the same casual, off-center aloofness that marked the style of her own company members when they danced in soft shoes. It set ballet on a new path that is now copied the world over but has never been replicated with skill equal to Tharp’s.

Stella and Calvin celebrated seamless harmony in their pas de deux that took them from one unlikely move to another. Stella’s 6 o’clock developpe with the front leg up Calvin’s chest didn’t stop for applause; it continued right over the top of herself as a somersault like a smooth shot of whiskey down the hatch. They were the most musical of the pairs – accenting split lifts with swift closings and just going on about their sparkling business with the air of nonchalance that endeared Tharp’s works to us.

It was difficult to watch Whiteside and Misty try to turn Tharp’s choreography into a muscly display of tricks without treats. There was no sense of casual I-could-do-this-everyday ease. The lifts and turns were labored and made as big and flashy as possible with no understatement or surprise inherent in them. They don’t get Tharp. Nor does the costume favor Misty.

We sure are glad that we’ve got Yuriko Kajiya and Jared Matthews this weekend in Giselle to save ABT’s fall season – oh wait, they quit, didn’t they? Something about seeking opportunities. It all sounds so sadly familiar.

The H.H. Pump Bump Award, the devil’s Halloween stiletto, is bestowed upon Stella Abrera and Calvin Royal who fanned the warm flickering flame of Tharp's genius in just the right way.

Mariinsky at BAM with Lopatkina in Swan Lake

The A-List Classical Crew of the Mariinsky is bringing its big Swan Lake to Brooklyn. Whodathunkit? Well, Haglund will fold up his legs in a bow tie in those cramped little seats at BAM if need be to watch Lopatkina and Korsuntsev in Swan Lake and Pavlenko in anything. In fact, he might hit all five Swan Lake performances. Let's just make a permanent record of this too-good-to-stay-true-but-still-very-incomplete casting so we can keep track as it all goes down hill in the coming weeks - because, well, this is the Mariinsky.

SWAN LAKE

Principal casting: Viktoria Tereshkina (Jan 15), Vladimir Shklyarov (Jan 15), Ulyana Lopatkina (Jan 16), Danila Korsuntsev (Jan 16), Alina Somova (Jan 22), Yekaterina Kondaurova (Jan 23). There appears to be a Jan 21st performance on the calendar, too.

CINDERELLA

Principal casting: Diana Vishneva (Jan 17), Yekaterina Kondaurova (Jan 17), Vladimir Shklyarov (Jan 18), Daria Pavlenko (Jan 18)

CHOPIN: DANCES FOR PIANO rep program

(Jan 24; only performance) Principal casting: Alina Somova (Chopiniana, Without), Vladimir Shklyarov (In the Night), Yekaterina Kondaurova (In the Night), Ulyana Lopatkina (In the Night), Danila Korsuntsev (In the Night)

Real Swan Lake with real classical dancers in Brooklyn. Most of us will ride the G-train with joy to get to BAM. How lucky we are that the Mariinsky's A-List Classical Crew is coming to Brooklyn. Pavlenko, Lopatkina, Kondaurova.

Somebody freakin' pinch me.

 

The Retirees

At about 35 sec. into this very short clip from the early 1990s, the retirees are standing on opposite sides of the barre. 

Miss the voice. Miss the gift.

 

Sometime ago the Buenos Aires Herald ran an interview with one of its most famous citizens, Paloma Herrera. When asked whether there was a lack of discipline in the new generations of dancers, here is part of what she said:

New generations are great, I enjoy watching them so much from the front but the work ethics, the way things are done is changing, the technology, the constant use of phones, and not as much passion, not as much commitment. I don’t feel I belong to that. I feel kind of out of place now.

Not as much commitment. No kidding.

 

UIEX: Mariinsky coming to BAM in January 2015

[Update: BAM website will be updated sometime on Wednesday, October 29th.]

Look for the Brooklyn Academy of Music's website to be updated on October 28th.

Tickets will go on sale to BAM patrons during the second week of November. Tickets to the general public will go on sale December 8th.

That's all we know.

 

observations 10/24

The hotly anticipated new Starz series Flesh and Bone starring Ben Daniels, Irina Dvorovenko, and Sascha Radetsky among others has been converted into a "limited series" with a final ending from its original ongoing series status. Oh dear. One reader of the announcement/article in Deadline Hollywood commented, "that’s the nicest “you’re cancelled before you even get on the air” statement I’ve ever heard of...."

Maybe the silver lining in all this is that Ethan Stiefel, the consultant and choreographer, is now free to tackle a great big new job.

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This Sunday, October 26th, the season's first live cinema presentation of the Bolshoi Ballet will be transmitted from one end of Balletdom to the other. Grigorovich's famous Legend of Love will star Sveltlana Zakharova and Denis Rodkin. It's a long one – 3 hours 45 minutes – but will surely have all the very entertaining little extras that come at intermission. Go here to find your local movie houses where the cinemacast will be shown.

 

ABT Gala 10/22Desperate times call for desperate measures

The only thing that went right for ABT at its opening night gala on Wednesday was that Klinghoffer had the night off next door at the Met Opera.

On the 39th anniversary of his funeral which the Met is celebrating this fall with a production that has been noisily protested as being anti-Semetic, ABT opened its own 75th anniversary with an anti-Balletic evening that disregarded its past successes and presented current works that demonstrated how pitifully mundane and similar today’s choreographers are. With the monotony of a John Adams’ opera, hour after hour went by with the dancers doing the same tedious gymnastics in choreography that looked like it all came straight off of So You Think You Can Dance.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The pre-curtain celebrity show outside in the rain was being managed by none other than Misty Copeland’s manager, publicist Gilda Squire, who ABT has hired to do the gala media for several seasons. Does anyone else wonder about the professional ethics of having the least talented, most aggressively ambitious soloist’s manager running ABT’s PR for them? She buys the celebrities to come in and make the gala look like a “success” to those who don’t know better. But of course, she chooses carefully. Misty’s manager brought in Misty’s boyfriend’s cousin, actor Taye Diggs, before the cameras. Misty’s manager ushered in Star Jones, the same Star Jones who Misty wrote about in her memoir as being just one more black person who never got her “due.” Misty’s manager ushered in Adam Shankman who now has money invested in promoting Misty’s drama and keeping it going. Misty’s manager brought in whoever would talk-up/tweet-up Misty to the crowd along with the usual has-beens and no-names.

Misty probably “made history” again last night by becoming the first black girl to have her tits fondled by a white guy on the stage at the David H. Koch Theater. So it was in Liam Scarlett’s offensive, redundant With A Chance Of Rain to Rachmaninoff piano selections that James Whiteside crouched down in front of Misty Copeland who was the only woman on stage wearing a leotard designed to emphasize her tits and ass and cupped both hands over Misty’s tits and bounced them up and down for several counts. Repeat. To be clear, Copeland did not then reciprocate by grabbing Whiteside’s testicles and fondling them. Maybe that’s in Scarlett’s next piece. But the two dancers proceeded to grab each other’s shaking asses as some in the audience began packing up to go home while expressing disgust. The bulk of Scarlett’s choreography we had already seen at New York City Ballet in Acheron and Funérailles; so apparently this was an effort to put ABT's stamp on it.

Clearly, ABT paid for an original but got a do-over. Even some of the costumes looked borrowed from Acheron.

A solo for Marcelo Gomes could not have been less interesting – let’s take that back, because we know now that choreography can always be worse and there is no bottom floor for failure. But the choreography was the same contemporary vacant crap that pretends to be momentous – like a hiphop song of buzz words arranged with no meaning. A PdD for Gomes and Whiteside revealed little other than its obvious pandering to Alastair Macaulay’s relentless cry for more same-sex sex on ballet stages. A PdD for Gomes and Hee Seo was the same manipulative gymno-gyno-ballet that everyone else does over and over again. Devon Teuscher, Gemma Bond, Sterling Baca, and Joseph Gorak were the background couples. In one instance, Copeland got to run up and aggressively push the pretty blond girl out of the way in order to get her man’s attention. For those who haven’t read her memoir, Copeland claims everyone thinks of ballerinas as pretty blond sylphs – you know, like her declared role model Paloma Herrera. Too bad she pushed a pretty blond sylph who dances classical rings around her.

Scarlett has established a pattern of interest in exploring the potential sexual violence between men and women in relationships. The topic has shown to have validity in true narrative ballets; but to suggest it continually in abstract work is kind of creepy. Obsessive.

Christopher Wheeldon’s Thirteen Diversions closed the program. This piece has always looked as much like a Millepied work as a Wheeldon. It was a little messy on Wednesday night and overall under-rehearsed. As in past years, Isabella Boylston couldn’t keep up with the speed of the other three ladies (Gillian Murphy, Sarah Lane, and Christine Shevchenko) in ensemble phrases like the one involving chaine turns. Tom Forster, who substituted for Eric Tamm, danced magnificently. He is a huge man who moves with the speed, ease, strength and accuracy of a leopard. It wasn’t always smooth-going while partnering with Gillian Murphy, but we’ll chalk that up to the pairing being a late substitution. Craig Salstein/Sarah Lane, Blaine Hoven/ Christine Shevchenko, and Cory Stearns/Isabella Boylston were the other pairs. Salstein and Lane were spirited and completely in tune with one another. Hoven and Shevchenko sometimes looked like they were carefully making their ways through speeding traffic. Stearns and Boylston were not an optimal match; he had trouble lugging her around in some of the lifts, and his own dancing paled in comparison to Forster’s. The corps de ballet was sharp much of the time and not so during other times. Leann Underwood and Melanie Hamrick seemed to know what they were doing and how to make it all look articulate and beautiful at the same time.

The program opened with a student piece choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky. Rondo Capriccioso to music by Camille Saint-Saens forced the audience that won’t voluntarily attend the ABT school recitals to sit through every level of student performance at gala prices. It was harmless enough, and the cuteness that sometimes is way overdone in Ratmansky’s choreography for the professional dancers looked fine on these children. They didn’t dance badly, but they paled in comparison to the crisp classicism of the children that the Mariinsky puts on stage in events and also didn’t measure up to the pedigree-emblazoned students at SAB performances.

All in all, a disappointment of an evening. The audience’s reception to the dancing was polite with the loudest and first applause always originating from the same section of the theater. The fourth ring on this gala evening was far from full with many $20 seats left. The rest of the season is not well sold either. One has the feeling that Wile E. Coyote has raised up three fingers and is about to submerge for the last time after diving into the lake while chasing the roadrunner.

The H.H. Pump Bump Award, a pile of Crocs, is bestowed upon Liam Scarlett for his thoughtless, unedited, tasteless work for ABT.

Pennsylvania Ballet Press Play 10/19

On Sunday morning Haglund rode the rumbling Acela through the crisp autumn air and deciduous delights to beautiful Philadelphia to catch a matinee performance of Pennsylvania Ballet. It is the directorial debut season of Angel Corella and he has taken this town by storm. There is hardly a street lamp or bus shelter along the Avenue of the Arts that doesn’t have his image and eyes focusing on you as you walk down the street. There are so many red hanging banners, they could call it Red Square.

He's everywhere:



Modern Philly is now clean to Disney standards. Not a scrap of trash on the sidewalks. The stunning new architecture and the historic landmarked buildings co-exist in harmony. The new structures emphasize bold engineering design while the old proudly display the handmade artistry of past centuries.

The 157-year-old Academy of Music is a gorgeous concert hall and opera house that has more curves than corners on the inside. The foyer bends around the back perimeter of the interior auditorium in the shape of a horseshoe creating a sense of expanse and luxury. The inside seating area is a warm, intimate space with beautiful ornamentation and gold-leafing.

The company’s dancers have had the benefit of Angel Corella for only two months but his positive influence is already strongly felt. On short notice, he altered the season’s pre-planned program to include Balanchine’s Allegro Brilliante, Christopher Wheeldon’s Liturgy, and Jerome Robbins’ Other Dances in addition to the already scheduled Jeu de Cartes by Alexei Ratmansky, and renamed the program Press Play. (The program repeats next Saturday and Sunday.)

At the Sunday matinee before a large and very appreciative audience, the company danced all four ballets skillfully and with a sense of excitement that they were blazing down a new trail illuminated by a billion volts of AC. Tidy hands, super strong centers in the men's pirouettes, and a willingness to reach out boldly to the audience to make a connection were just a few of the positive impressions made.

Allegro Brilliante was led by Mayara Pineiro and Jermel Johnson – she, a new corps de ballet hire by Corella from Cuba via Milwaukee Ballet; he, a veteran PABer who has been a principal since 2012. They maneuvered through the tricky partnering smoothly and each shone in his or her variations. In her pirouette sequence, Mayara managed to whip off four revolutions on the final turn. She has extraordinary long limbs that are subtly sculpted and that wonderful Cuban sense of confidence and importance in her dancing. While she may not have blazed though Allegro Brilliante the way we might expect Tiler Peck or Ashley Bouder to do, Mayara certainly wasn’t stuck in any mud. She tightly hugged the brisk tempo and delivered a literal musical interpretation. Jermel led an extremely strong group of men (Craig Wasserman, Alejandro Ocasio, Alex Ratcliffe-Lee, and Lorin Mathis) in the ensemble grand allegro. They spun out their pirouettes with finishes that were exactly together, entered the air at precisely the same instant, and landed together - no small accomplishment considering the wide range of heights of these guys.

Elizabeth Wallace and James Ihde were the audience favorites in their striking interpretation of Wheeldon’s Liturgy to music by Arvo Pärt. Violin soloist Luigi Mazzocchi drew a haunting, mystic quality from his strings to carry the spiritual sense of the choreography. Elizabeth of the long legs and cool blondness was luminous against the darkness of the stage, and James’ shadowing of her arm movements was riveting. The only other person who Haglund has seen perform this ballet is Wendy Whelan. While Elizabeth isn’t as attenuated as Wendy – nor need she be, nor should she be – the geometric shapes she made with her limbs were wonderfully expressive and clear. The iconic pose created by the woman's stepover pirouette that ends with her leaning diagonally across the man while their front arms curve toward the heavens was divine.

Other Dances was handily dispatched by Lauren Fadeley and Ian Hussey. Although this piece can seem dated no matter who dances it these days, Lauren and Ian gave it a freshness and didn’t overplay the humor. Both are charming dancers, and Ian seems to have a natural charisma not unlike Corella's.

Ratmansky’s Jeu De Cartes to music by Stravinsky completed the program. This particular Jeu De Cartes, created for the Bolshoi Ballet in 2005, is not about card playing. Rather, it is a purely ensemble work that focuses on the gamble inherent in traversing across Stravinsky’s musical terrain. Pennsylvania Ballet first danced it in 2011 and the dancers have a solid grasp on what Ratmansky is all about. The extreme speed, the agility to go from balletic moment to collapsible pedestrian pose to antics the likes of Larry, Curly and Moe, and back to balletic moment posed no problems for these dancers. There is a lot of movement and energy expended in this ballet, but to what end?

Making the short trip down to Philly turned out to be one of the best spent Sundays in a long time. Before too long Amtrak will be nicknaming one of its weekend Acelas the “Corella Express” because Haglund is going to be dragging a lot of people from New York down there with him to see Pennsylvania Ballet’s wonderful dancers in Prodigal Son, Swan Lake, and the rest of their season's program.

Pennsylvania Ballet is so lucky to have its new director and we all are grateful that Angel Corella has come home to the U.S. Over the years, Haglund has bestowed upon Angel a lot of H.H. Pump Bump Awards and simply cannot resist doing it again. So here's a bold classic stiletto with a bolt of lightning under the heel:

NYCB – Wendy's Farewell

What a happy, positive energy-filled, forward-looking Farewell Evening to Wendy Whelan it was. A local Haglund’eeler spotted this clip of the last few minutes of Wendy’s actual dancing on the NYCB Facebook page which you can access here.

The first two sections of the Piece d'Occasion, By 2 With & From, were created by Christopher Wheeldon; the second two sections by Alexei Ratmansky. The music source was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons but it was recomposed by Max Richter who created that wonderful mash-up with Dinah Washington for Wheeldon’s This Bitter Earth. This whole collaboration was curated by Wendy. She chose the music; she chose the choreographers; and she assigned the musical sections to each choreographer.

For this final tribute, Wendy shared the stage with her most frequent partners of the last several years, Tiler Angle and Craig Hall, and it was a mutual expression of generous thanks and love and of serving the art.

Over the years, Wheeldon and Whelan – even the phonetic similarities of their names suggest an organic connection – have had what amounts to a warm, ongoing conversation through their collaborations. The ballets didn't frequently repeat themselves but seemed like a continuation of their long artistic conversation. Last night, that conversation came to a natural pause – not Au revoir, but À la prochaine. This artistic relationship will go on; it will evolve and move into other realms. Despite this event of retirement, both individuals are still very young and have decades of creative growth ahead of them. We'll just have to hang out around them and see what happens. One doesn't just waltz out of NYCB with thirty years of institutional knowledge in her back pocket and not look back – not if one loves ballet, which we know Wendy does.

We have a 2015 documentary on Wendy’s life and career to look forward to. Clips of it were shown between ballets, and it reflects not only her positive, grateful, and dedicated sides, but also her great humor and down to earth sensibilities. In one scene, Wendy was shown sitting on a bench in Central Park reading the New York Times' article which announced her retirement. She says something to the effect, I guess I really have to go now; it's in the paper.

Also on the program were the complete La Sonnambula, and excerpts from Dances at a Gathering, Concerto DSCH, and After the Rain – Wendy danced in all of them. The theater was as full as it could be and there were many who could not get tickets or afford the premium tacked onto the prices by NYCB. So here's a look at the Playbill:

While freshest in our memories may be her collaborations with Wheeldon and Ratmansky, our everlasting memories of her will be in the Balanchine and Robbins reps - Concerto Barocco, Mozartiana, The Cage, among others.

Our H.H. Pump Bump salute to Wendy, the one who has made us think about what we are seeing on stage:

 

Spoiler alert: we're not happy

A few years ago, ABT spent thousands of dollars that it didn’t have on trying to turn Natalia Osipova into an Aurora for its pathetic production of Sleeping Beauty instead of investing in the company’s own enormous talent. Osipova's was the worst performance of the Sleeping Beauty week, and she subsequently bailed out on future Sleeping Beauty performances with ABT because, well, that’s what she does – lose a passport, get mugged, get sick, have an accident, whatever it takes and always with big media-driven drama at the last minute. Then she went to the Mikhailovsky where they tried to turn her into an Aurora - because she sees herself in the role - and she bailed out on their Sleeping Beauty performances at the last minute, too. Then she moved to the Royal Ballet where apparently they have all the resources and money in the world to waste. Despite her obvious shortcomings and unreliability, they tried to teach her the finer points of Aurora. She bailed out on their Sleeping Beauty performances at the last minute, too.

Now comes Ratmansky to ABT with a brand new, expensive Sleeping Beauty and who does he want to invest resources in? The one who walks out when the going gets tough; the freakin’ ballet hillbilly with no aesthetic who creates a negative uproar at ABT’s studios. Who needs this crap? Once again, we are being denied the opportunity to see our best dancers perform the lead roles in Sleeping Beauty and Giselle because of this freakin’ ballet hillbilly. Maybe there will be a special scene in this new Sleeping Beauty production where Princess Aurora eats with her fingers, picks her teeth, drinks moonshine and pulls a wool hat down over her ears. Her Queen Mother will mime: "Nattie May, don’t spit in front of your birthday party guests. Wait until they leave.”  Those who think of Nattie May as nonpareil, such as Alastair Irrelevant does, also think of McDonald's french fries as fine French food.

ABT keeps giving a hackneyed outsider chances after chances for her to fail in this ballet while it ignores its own talent in the company. Apparently ABT thinks it’s damn funny to wait until the last week of the season, always the weakest attended, to toss Abrera a couple of breadcrumbs as Cinderella instead of giving her the Aurora and Giselle that the audience deserves to see. And suddenly, Ratmansky thinks that ABT’s equinarina, the unprepossessing Boylston, is now a Petipa ballerina? He is losing our support and the support of many, except for the infatuated stringer who aspires to be the Paula Broadwell to Ratmansky’s General Petraeus.

ABT is fast becoming the homeliest ballet company on the planet that wants New Yorkers to throw down money to see homely hillbillies dance ballet. And why do we keep getting this Kochetkova shoved down our throats when we have a much better, more classical Sarah Lane? Is the artistic team totally blind to Kochetkova's inadequacies, lack of musicality, lack of classical being or don’t these things matter any more? There were good reasons why the Bolshoi rejected her and good reasons why the Royal Ballet rejected her. She’s not top drawer.

Then there is the one out of the underwear drawer. You’d think it couldn’t get any uglier until you read that Misty Copeland is going to be flopping around in Swan Lake and Romeo & Juliet. We’ve already seen clips of her fumbling and flopping last August in Brisbane. What a joke; basic regional ballet quality or even less. ABT has already spent the money and time to prepare Sarah Lane for the role of Juliet and she has top professional experience as the lead in Swan Lake. There isn’t a soul other than those on Copeland’s promotion team who doesn’t know that Sarah would be a helluva better Juliet, Odette, and Odile than Misty could ever dream of being.

The problem, and it is a very big problem, is that Sarah is not black, and McKenzie is giving opportunities based on an employee's ethnic affiliation – not her classical ballet abilities and certainly not the content of her character. He has his legacy to be concerned about now that the company is in its worst artistic shape in decades. So he’s thinking that a black ballerina, or at least someone who says she’s black because, after all, race in this country is a completely self-reported attribute, will make him look more respectable as a director and a liberal hero to the conventional media. Never mind her actual dancing. Never mind that the company has dozens of artists who are much better. All he has to do is stuff her into a costume, let her bounce around on stage and watch the media squeal all over itself. At least half of the audience, including Alastair Irrelevant, doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to what is on a ballet stage; so what does it matter? Kevvie’s got his hero undershirt on and is ready to rip off his button-down oxford cloth while he’s ripping off the public with mediocre, uber-hyped product. It’s the taking off of one's shirt and exposing oneself that gets one what one wants. When Copeland refers to her fellow soloists as “underdogs” it’s because she knows that they lack the trashy proclivities that are propelling her career forward. Self-proclaimed black girl, big tits, and is willing to strip off her clothes for the public: McKenzie must think he is the luckiest white male AD on the planet.

When kids see adults do things that they shouldn’t do, it is a green light for them to do it – whether it’s smoking, drugs, alcohol abuse, public sex, wagging a bare ass all over a piano, or offering one’s tits to a photographer and then self-publishing the material. If ABT thinks that Copeland’s slutty online behavior hasn’t resulted in young girls emulating her, maybe they should consider joining Project Parent Reality. Unless of course, ABT and Copeland aren’t satisfied that a mere 7 out of 10 African American babies are born out of wedlock and that promiscuity among teens is no longer the exception. Twenty-two percent of teen girls have posted nude or semi-nude pictures or videos of themselves – just like Misty Copeland does. Thirty-seven percent of teen girls have sent sexually suggestive content via phone or internet – just like Misty Copeland does. Seventy-five percent of teens KNOW that sending such content can have “serious negative consequences” but Misty Copeland demonstrates that it is a good career move. A full ten percent say they have sent sext messages to people they don’t even know. When Misty Copeland distributes images of her bare tits and ass to her underage fan base via Instagram, she is conveying to them that it is perfectly acceptable for them to copy her behavior. That makes her very, very popular which, in turn, gets her cast in principal roles before better dancers. Sadly, it is that simple.

It’s been quite a while since the Mariinsky has allowed Diana Vishneva in a classical tutu on the St. Petersburg stage although she occasional slips into one when the company is on tour. She is no longer a strong purveyor of Vaganova values, or at least enough of them. But that has been her clear choice and it has served her well in these later chapters of her career. But why all of a sudden is she grabbing a new Sleeping Beauty, arguably the Petipa ballet that requires the strictest classical form? She’s grabbing it away from Veronika Part; grabbing it away from Stella Abrera; and yes, grabbing it away from Yuriko Kajiya. Vishneva is not really an ABT principal. Nor is Bolle. Nor is Semionova. They’re all just perennial guest artists who drop by for a gig or two in order to get some New York media attention and dollars. It's sickening to see freeloaders hog principal lot space at ABT while Stella Abrera, Sarah Lane, and Yuriko Kajiya, the three who long ago earned the principal designation and should be leading all of the major classics because they are qualified, have had to sweep the trash for these and other littering loafers. And to be clear, this year we are in no mood to see Vishneva’s lined lips cooing like an over-heated Manon while she’s dancing Aurora, the way she did last year in Giselle. Not kidding.

Pardon our incredulous stare at Julie Kent’s name under Giselle. Last year in front of a half-filled house, she gave an embarrassingly substandard performance that illuminated her declining fitness. Nobody wants to see that again when there are at least four other major ballerinas who we deserve to see in the role. Kent is blocking out FOUR major ballerinas with her I-just-can’t-give-up-this-role-Oh-it’s-so-important-to-me-for-my-children-to-see-me-on-stage selfish nonsense. Add that to the unprepossessing Boylston and the totally miscast and dull Semionova, and you get a wasted week of Giselles. Thank goodness it will only cost a few hundred bucks to go see Yuriko and Jared dance a true Giselle performance in Detroit.

Not that we object, but from the few castings of Daniil Simkin, it would seem that this could be his exit year. One performance in the fall and only three in the spring do not a principal load make.

Nobody should stay home tomorrow night

... that is, if you are in or around Manhattan. There are too many fabulous ballet choices and not enough Apple Quantum iCycles for everyone to be in three places at the same time. Uh-oh, did Haglund just leak the newest A-Rex Applegagesaurus? It's going to be very big but please fuggetaboutit. The thing will have a long beta test period. Right now the space gray handlebar streamers seem to engage in unprovoked slapping of the rider's hands, and the blue sport pedals grab at shoelaces. It's going to be a while before you see this thing on Main Street.

Tomorrow night grab your Metrocard and get to one of these places for an evening of big entertainment:

NYCB for Taylor Stanley and Abi Stafford in Square Dance and the penultimate performance of This Bitter Earth with Wendy Whelan and Tiler Angle;

Lar Lubovitich Dance Company at the Joyce Theater where Alessandra Ferri is guesting;

To Union Square, or 42nd Street Imax, or Kips Bay Imax to see a delayed live cinema cast of the Royal Ballet's Manon starring Marianela Nunez and Frederico Bonelli.