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October 21, 2015

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I thought Monotones was miscast. Boylston should not have been in this, she ruined the line of Abrera and Gorak. Sadly, Veronika Part was too tall a girl for II. I go by the gold standard examples of Elizabeth Parkinson from the Joffrey that was filmed years ago and Marianela Nunez just recently. Those folding turns in the beginning are quick, and Part was just too big to maneuver.

I like seeing Veronika even when she is miscast, but my overriding impression of Boylston has always been that she cannot fit into an ensemble. As a demisoloist, she was continually out of sync with her fellow dancers. I honestly used to wonder if it was a bid for attention!

Haglund, I know exactly what you mean about Tharpsters. I feel like I need to go back over my old programs to pick out more of them. Stiefel and Radetsky spring to mind. Murphy and Herrera. Paris and Kajiya. Kristi Boone. Whatever happened to her?

Hi, Annie H.

Kristi moved down south with her husband, Isaac Stappas. She had a baby a year or two ago.

She was a fab Tharp dancer as was Laura Hildago, a current principal at Queensland Ballet. Hildago along with Maria Riccetto, Nicole Graniero, and Yuriko Kajiya were some of the best red-footed bombers in In the Upper Room - ever! Stella is a tremendous Tharpster. Beloserkovsky and Corella got it, too. One of my most favorite memories in In the Upper Room was when the tall, blond, gangly Hallberg and the short, dark, muscular Cornejo came flying like bullets down the diagonal together doing the exact same steps in perfect unison. No one has ever seen it since and probably never will again.

Well, I had the misfortune of seeing Copeland, Simkin, Kochetkova in Monotones I: painful and boring. They were, all three of them, wobbly and messy. I wanted to stand up, clap my hands together briskly, and call a time-out and a do-over for these three.

In Monotones II, Veronika looked like a goddess: long, elegant lines and fully embodying the music. My husband sat up and asked, "Who is THAT?" while we both later confessed to having dozed off during Monotones I.

WHAT is going on with casting??

It is so interesting that the NYT dance critics failed to report on the second cast of Monotones even though Macaulay tried hard to make it seem that the ballet was the most important part of the season. It's as though they stop themselves from writing anything that might be contrary to the paper's established and ongoing narrative about Copeland: "Never let absence of skill get in the way of purchased celebrity." And also the paper's desire for ABT to continue to load up with imports and guest artists becomes fragile in the wake of a lousy performance. What a joke it all is.

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