Mr. S. from Sydney Distinguished Guest Reviewer

H.H. has a frequent reader in Sydney, Australia who makes an annual trip to New York City each fall to enjoy the cultural offerings of our wonderful city. "Mr. S" always generously contributes to our conversation when he is here (and sometimes there). He is currently in town and has attended several ABT performances with several more still on his calendar. Following are his most recent observations which are, as usual, articulate and enlightening:

 

Good evening Haglund. Another year already; another ABT Fall Season; another chance to be in New York for that fortnight.

This year I have a total of eight performances. They are broken by performances at the Metropolitan Opera on 26th and 31st October, and it seems a good idea to write to you now in connection with the first three ABT programmes in my schedule.

Friday, 23rd

The announced order of the programme was altered on the night and so that the new ballet After You was danced first. It was, to me, another of those long and abstract ballets which are no doubt fascinating to anyone who has been a ballet dancer or who has some developed knowledge of ballet technique. I could not dance if my life depended upon it and I have no particular knowledge of ballet technique. That meant that, notwithstanding the cachet of Mark Morris's name and fame, it all looked to me like imaginative gymnastics. Interesting? Yes, of course. Beautiful? Not to my eye. Thrilling? Not at all. The music, by Hummel, was unfamiliar to me, but I enjoyed it thoroughly and I thought that it was markedly well played.

And then, after an intermission, things were transformed and for the better.

First up, Mr Cornejo partnered Miss Lane in Le Spectre de la Rose. Now this is what I call real ballet. A simple episode of coherent narrative fantasy, beautifully staged, with a wonderful score by Weber. And the dancing. Mr Cornejo was simply dazzling. No gimmicks. No pretentiousness. He was the very incarnation of beauty in movement. The piece is famous for the male dancer's exit: Nijinsky, who created the role, caused a sensation when he sailed off the stage and through an open set window. I once read somewhere or other that people who saw Nijinsky thought, so great was his art, that he actually hung suspended in the air for a moment or two as he made his exit. Well, I can't say anything about Nijinsky, but I can say that Mr Cornejo, as he made the exit leap, bent his leg and gave the impression, just for a split second or two, that he, also, had managed to suspend flight. I myself thought that the way he made his entry, poised momentarily on the window sill and looking like an ancient Greek sculpture, was every bit as exciting as his final leap.His entire performance was instinct with great art : elegant, distinctive, crackling with stage electricity. This performance alone was worth the (considerable) price of the ticket.

None of the foregoing is to denigrate from the performance of Miss Lane. I wrote at length last year about how greatly I admired her style and grace. She was every bit as good this year as I remembered from last year.

Can somebody please persuade the Artistic Director and his associates to programme more, much more, of this type of ballet danced with this level of superb artistry?

As it happened, the next piece in the second segment of the programme was another fine classical piece: Valse Fantasie. This was a company premiere and the two featured soloists were Miss Seo and Mr Whiteside. The piece made, I thought, an interesting contrast to the Mark Morris piece. Both are what I would call abstract ballets, but Valse Fantasie, which looked to me to be very well danced, was, quite simply, beautiful to look at and that made, for me, all the difference to my comparative enjoyment of the two pieces.

The final segment of this programme was The Green Table.

I wish that I could share your enthusiasm for this piece, but I have to say that it did not appeal at all to me. I can agree readily with you about the quality of the performance. It is the structure of the piece that leaves me unresponsive. It seems to me that the ballet is intended to be satirical, but like a good deal of contemporarily relevant satire, it confuses the provocation to think seriously about some serious issue with the making of a didactic political statement. I am unconvinced that such is the authentic role of the art of ballet. I appreciate that that is a conservative viewpoint, but if there is one thing that modern experience should be teaching us by the day, it is that to demonstrate that something is unfashionable is not at all to demonstrate that it is unsound.

Saturday, 24th (Matinee)

A second performance of After You. Different cast; same response by me.

A second Le Spectre de la Rose, this time with Mr Siimkin and Miss Trenary. You know from last year's posts that I generally like Mr Siimkin's work and, had it not been for a distinct and distracting fall, his performance, although not for me in the same class as Mr Cornejo's, would have been very acceptable. As it was, I greatly admired the way in which Mr Siimkin, as it were, picked himself up, dusted himself down and got on with the performance, as a true professional in any field can always manage to do. He and Miss Trenary danced well together. At the curtain calls, she received a handsome bouquet. She plucked out of it a yellow rose, and then offered the entire bouquet to Mr Siimkin. He refused it, of course, but accepted the single rose. I hugely admired Miss Trenary's gesture. She must have understood how Mr Siimkin would be smarting from his misadventure, and it seemed to me that her simple gesture of offering her bouquet to her partner was Generous and considerate, a genuine class act.

There followed a second performance of Valse Fantasie. The soloists were Miss Teuscher and Mr Gorak. I liked them much better than the Friday evening cast.

You might recall from last year's posts that I greatly admire Mr Gorak's dancing and had wondered more than once why he had not been promoted to Soloist. Well, now he has been, and in addition has received an Annenberg Fellowship which will open up to him all manner of exciting opportunities. I recently read somewhere or other that Mr Gorak had told an interviewer that his dream had always been to dance as a Principal with ABT. May I say how greatly I hope that his promotion and his Fellowship will not draw him away from that ambition. The days are coming when ABT is going to have to refresh its roster of Principals and it is, precisely, up and coming artists of Mr Gorak's evident promise to whom the Company will have to look for that renewal.

And then, for the first time this year for me, Company B. I have enjoyed this piece ever since I first saw the Company perform it a couple of years ago. To a man of my age, the Andrews Sisters are a living memory. The choreography seems to me to be snappy without being merely gimmicky and, in general, good fun. All of the dancing was good. If iI speak yet again of Mr Gorak it is because he performed the Boogie Woogie Bugel Boy solo, an episode which remains in my memory as the one in which I first became aware of what Mr Siimkin could do. I think that Mr Gorak's style is not that of Mr Siimkin, but it certainly worked for me.

Saturday, 24th (Evening)

Repeats of Company B, Le Spectre de la Rose and Valse Fantasie. There is no need to repeat things peviously said, but once again Mr Gorak shone in Company B, and once again Mr Cornejo simply took one's breath away as the Rose. What an artist! I could happily have watched him all evening.

This programme introduced a ballet new to me, The Brahms-Haydn Variations. I enjoyed it greatly, much more so than Miss Tharp's Bach Partita of last year. The music of Brahms, which I love, was a great musical setting but, the music itself apart, the stage action seemed to me to be more interesting overall. Last year, I was lukewarm about Miss Copeland's dancing, but I must say that, partnered by Mr Barca, and partnered very well to my eye, Miss Copeland danced her role with what I thought was much greater flair than she showed last year.

Overall, and at about the mid-point of my 2015 ABT schedule, I think that the programming, about which I complained last year, is very much improved; and the dancing has been uniformly good and, in the cases of Mr Cornejo and Mr Gorak, excellent. For me, Mr Cornejo has been, thus far, not so much a stand-out as a knock-out. To see that level or artistry is a privilege and an experience justifying the effort of getting to New York from the opposite side of the world.

                                                                                                    Mr. S

 

 

Comments

[Georgiann]

While Mr. S. states that he has no particular knowledge of ballet technique, he is insightful and pretty much right on target with most of his assessments! So nice to read his appreciation of some of our favorite dancers. I do enjoy reading his reviews.
I would love to have seen Herman Cornejo and Sarah Lane dance Le Spectre de la Rose. I was fortunate to see Baryshnikov and Makarova perform this ballet. Sounds like Cornejo and Lane generated a similar level of excitement.

[Haglund]

They received very warm appreciation from the audience.

[SZ]

Mr. S has an excellent eye! Mr. Haglund and Mr. S rule the ballet blog reviewers of today as far as I'm concerned. I'm very happy to see such fine, insightful writing from both of you! Don't stop!

[Haglund]

Thanks, SZ.

[Nicole Dubois]

Mr. S, you are a wonderful writer and clearly a man of taste and refinement. I look forward to more.