Haglund's Heel

observations 5/8

According to Uruguay's El Pais and a 2014 culture consumption survey, 1 in 9 Uruguayans attended a ballet performance, 1 in 12 attended a folk dance performance, 1 in 18 attended a modern dance performance, and 1 in 43 attended a tango performance. Prior to the arrival of Julio Bocca to Ballet National del Sodre, folk dance attendance ranked first place. Imagine how great it would be if the U.S. could boast like that.

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ABT opens its Spring Season tomorrow at the Met where the billboards currently feature a picture of the Fake Principal Dancer Polina Semionova (who isn't even dancing) instead of one of our own ballerinas and a grossly over-used old image of Firebird, one of ABT's worst productions. Never a new marketing idea.

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Last night, NYCB's Anthony Huxley was a marvel in everything he danced – such a brilliant light on a stage where the brightest lights stream nightly. This Tuesday evening Huxley debuts in Ballo Della Regina opposite Megan Fairchild. Not to be missed.

 

 

NYCB 5/6 Flying, flying by the seat of their pants, soaring

Last night at New York City Ballet, the dancers in Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes seemed to be navigating the winds mostly on instinct and observation. The final waltz from Der Rosenkavalier had fifty dancers on stage, half in white gowns with billowing trains – always a crowded situation where it’s best for each dancer to know exactly where he or she is going next. A slew of last minute replacements brought Taylor Stanley, Zachery Catazaro, Chase Finlay and other unscheduled and very new corps dancers to the stage to fill in as an emergency. The swirling of the waltzing took on a new and exciting aerodynamic vector, right at the edge of chaos; but no one stepped over the edge, and there was very little straying off course. A beautiful job by everyone.

In the earlier sections, Teresa Reichlen and Tyler Angle were swept up in the romance of Strauss’s moonlit G’Schichten Aus Dem Wienerwald. Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley danced magnificently to the Voices of Spring, and Erica Pereira and Troy Schumacher exploded with joy and charm in the Explosions-Polka. Rebecca Krohn and Chase Finlay (a last minute replacement for Ask la Cour) had an intoxicating dynamic going in the Gold Und Silber Walzer, and Sara Mearns with Jared Angle magically swooned in the opening of Der Rosenkavalier.

The evening began with an electric interpretation of Ballo della Regina led by Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia. We’ve written before about Tiler’s brilliance in the series of pique turns that open to arabesque, but honestly, you have to see them to believe them. How she completely stops the upper body with arms opened in second position while the finish of the arabesque gently rides the centrifugal force from the piques is perhaps one of the most amazing things that we have seen the most amazing Tiler do.

The demi-soloists, Lauren King, Ashley Laracey, Alexa Maxwell, and Erica Pereira were a marvel, although Alexa’s entrance of grand jetes did not have the upward trajectory that we have admired from others in the past. The corps de ballet looked fabulous – so full of energy and confidence.

Kammermusik No. 2 also received a phenomenal performance from Rebecca Krohn & Adrian Danchig-Waring and Abi Stafford & Amar Ramasar with a corps of eight men. Abi’s dancing is in top form and she danced with an abandon that we haven’t seen from her in a while. The abandon sent her palms to the floor in one instance, but she didn’t slow down afterward. Rebecca now has the stamina of – dare we say this six hours prior to today’s Derby – Nyquist. (We’ll revise later if he doesn’t at least place.) She was so beautiful with such attitude and vivacity.

The H.H. Pump Bump Award, fresh wings from Alexander McQueen, goes to the cast of Der Rosenkavalier for its skillful maneuvering and smooth landing.

 

NYCB – Spring Gala 5/4

New York City Ballet’s 2016 Spring Gala last night at Lincoln Center honored Board Chairman Jay Fishman who now battles advanced ALS. Mr. Fishman attended and sat in the front row of the First Ring attached to a bulky respirator. After a brief video that described and expressed gratitude for his leadership, the company performed the “Rain” excerpt from Jerome Robbins’ The Concert.

Dancers traversed the stage as pedestrians with black umbrellas, opening and closing them in response to the threat of rain. In the end, they huddled together in a circle facing inward from which one dancer arose, opened a red umbrella, carried it downstage and exited to the left wing. Red umbrellas are a trademark of The Travelers Companies for which Mr. Fishman is the current Chairman. In recent years, Travelers has been one of NYCB's strongest financial supporters.

A somber but appropriate start to the gala, it was a reminder that big financial supporters such as the highly respected Mr. Fishman, who has been described by Forbes as “Wall Street’s Honest Man” (which might also suggest that there is only one), do indeed exist in the world of performing arts along with the big supporters who are not particularly honest or ethical but who garner much more media attention. One such person we are thinking of either was a no-show or was keeping an uncharacteristically low profile last night.

A cast change for Ratmansky’s DSCH was announced at curtain. Brittany Pollack replaced Ana Sophia Sheller in the “blue” role most strongly identified with Ashley Bouder. We couldn’t remember ever seeing Brittany in this role which may well have been her debut. Debut or not, she danced the choreography as though it had been made on her. A startlingly brilliant display of technique, verve, and camaraderie marked this soloist’s performance and nearly eclipsed the superb dancing of her partners, Gonzalo Garcia and Anthony Huxley. The PdD, originally set on Wendy Whelan and Benjamin Millepied, was danced by Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle. All roles are not interchangeable among dancers. The ease, delicacy and clear forms that Wendy Whelan stamped on this role were not replicated last night. There were several corps dancers who stood out for their ability to comfortably grasp Ratmansky’s style: Daniel Applebaum, Harrison Coll, Kristen Segin, and Gretchen Smith seemed best able to navigate the chaotic changes of the choreography.

Nicolas Blanc’s world premiere of Mothership to the Mason Bates electro-classical music made famous by the YouTube Orchestra five years ago was thankfully short. Riddled with cliches from contemporary ballet, the piece offered nothing to praise except for the casting of corps dancers and apprentices, some of whom showed the expected inexperience but will get a nod and a pass. The choreographer gets a thumbs-down for his steps and choice of music.

Christopher Wheeldon’s new American Rhapsody was not as great as we were hoping for. The music, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, was gorgeously played by the NYCB orchestra (conducted by Guest Conductor Rob Fisher from An American in Paris). Cameron Grant’s piano and Steve Hartman’s clarinet made the whole event worthwhile.

Maybe the ballet will look better after it gets a few more rehearsals and the choreographer substitutes better evolved ideas. Everyone except Tiler Peck seemed still in the process of trying to remember the choreography. Her solos were vividly danced, and her PdD with Robert Fairchild was quite interestingly put together – the best part of the piece. Amar Ramasar and Unity Phelan will certainly smooth out their choreography quickly. Perhaps then we'll like it.

Unfortunately, we did not care at all for Janie Taylor’s costume designs. When the most extraordinary aspect of a production is the music, the costumes should defer to it rather than trying to make some kind of independent statement. The costumes’ contemporary design rubbed abrasively against the glorious Gershwin melodies. In short, they looked homemade but not in NYCB’s home.

We don’t know what Wheeldon was trying to convey when he horizontally lined up the dancers who attached their arms and legs together to make some type of linear signaling. All we could think of was his work DGV where something similar occurs. True, he is a busy man with many projects, but this Gershwin music is too beautiful for him not to go back and make it right choreographically. We’ll just have to wait.

The HH Pump Bump Award, Giuseppe Zanotti's twist & turns stiletto, is bestowed upon Brittany Pollack who lit up the theater last night in Concerto DSCH. How much longer are we going to have to wait to see her lead Theme and Variations?

observations 5/4

We could not be more excited about the 5th week casting at NYCB. Lauren King debuts in the lead of Western Symphony opposite Chase Finlay (also debuting) on Thursday, May 19th. Brittany Pollock also debuts in the cast. On the same night, Rebecca Krohn debuts as the Waltz Girl in Serenade opposite Russell Janzen (also debuting). These casts repeat at the Sunday matinee. On Tuesday, Tiler Peck debuts as the Russian Girl in Serenade and repeats on Saturday evening.

Friday evening yields a brand new cast for Concerto DSCH – Hyltin, Danchig-Waring, Pollack, Ball, Gordon.

Excitement is high for tonight's NYCB Gala because of Christopher Wheeldon's new piece set to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Haglund predicts that the crowd will simply go nuts once the gushing melodies spill forth while being interpreted by Tiler Peck, Robert Fairchild, Unity Phelan, Amar Ramasar and a nice sized corps.

Here are some images by Cameren Chan for WWD of Unity's costume in the making. Janie Taylor is the designer:

 

 

 

observations 5/3

Julio Bocca has agreed to return to the Ballet Nacional del Sodre after walking out for a month long breather. He's keeping the acting artistic director as a co-director and has acquired a company master to be another partner in running the ballet company. Hopefully, he'll be happy, but we all know that he'd be happier in New York – and he knows we'll wait for him. There's a reason why he has kept his condo here all these years...

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Royal New Zealand Ballet premieres its imaginative The Wizard of Oz on Wednesday night in Wellington. We can’t wait to get some comments. It's not anything like the familiar Judy Garland movie, but has been adapted from the book by L. Frank Baum.

Artistic Director Francesco Ventriglia has created this full length ballet based on his earliest childhood experience with the story. He told the New Zealand Listener:

When he was five, he spent months in a children’s hospital. Close to his room was a girl of the same age who was seriously ill. One day he noticed she was no longer there and wanted to know where she had gone. His mother and his doctor told him the Wizard of Oz story to explain her death. “They said the girl was in Oz and had started a journey with friends, a lion, a scarecrow and a tin man. This story remained in my mind for a long time.

In Ventriglia’s ballet:

When Dorothy wakes up from her trip to Oz, she is not back in Kansas with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, rather she is in hospital recovering from a coma. Her exploits in Oz are coma-induced dreams.

He explains:

My idea of this journey is that to ‘come back home’ means to wake up and become an adult and find yourself. Everyone is in the ballet – Dorothy, all her friends, little Toto – but in the ­background, it is very much me.

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Back here in the USA, ABT has predictably waited until the last minute to predictably report that one of its Fake Principal Dancers, Polina Semionova, is predictably bowing out of the season on a medical leave. Predictably, McKenzie stuffed Hee Seo into most of the roles, which we don't care about, really, because we never intended to buy any tickets to Semionova's predictable performances anyway. Predictably, he has given one of Semionova's Swan Lakes to Boylston in order to continue to try to shove the unprepossessing dancer down everyone's throats as an Odette. When is this nightmare going to be over? The great tragedy in all of this is that Kochetkova has been moved over to Blaine Hoven's performance of Sylvia. What a stupid, dumb ass move. The only reason that she was ever hired was that she was small enough to be partnered by Cornejo. Blaine doesn't require a small partner. He's big enough and strong enough and skilled enough to partner god. What a predictable waste of an opportunity for a real, honestly talented, classical company ballerina to debut in the title role. Someone like Stella Abrera who always looks sublime with Blaine Hoven. Predictably, we're not buying a ticket to this performance even though we would like to see Blaine bring the house down. We predict there will be other cast changes trickling down weeks after ABT has known about them; so, predictably, we're keeping our wallets closed.

 

 

NYCB 5/1 – Jewels

Some of the tender azaleas in Damrosch Park next to New York City Ballet’s theater are beginning to tucker out after throwing beautiful blooms in their brief debut season. That’s okay. They’ll spend the rest of the season deepening their roots and preparing for many performances to come – so long as someone remembers to water them.

With so many debuts blossoming on NYCB’s stage Sunday afternoon, where 10 out of the 12 leading roles in Balanchine’s Jewels were danced by artists for the first time, there was plenty of proof of the careful cultivation of talent within the ranks of the company.

Emeralds, which has had a more spiritual and elegiac tone this season, received a sensitive and at times lush reading from its new cast of Ana Sophia Scheller & Chase Finlay, Ashley Laracey & Andrew Scordato, the PdT of Kristen Segin, Harrison Ball & Indiana Woodward, and a corps that was 40% apprentices.

Ana Sophia’s interpretation capitalized on her technical classicism and her Romantic spirit. How lovely it was to see the gentle rise of the breath-filled chest and the lengthening of the neck coincide with the lowering of the front arabesque arm. The lyrical sweeping, reaching qualities of her dancing were to a degree that we had not seen before from Ana. Her subtlety and the measured breaks away from it were the stuff of mature artistry. Ana's partner, Chase Finlay, swirled around her linking the crook of her elbow with his own, and met her gaze time and time again with a captivating mix of urgency and affection. His variations were secure and giving; the sequences of pirouettes/tour with the foot in back-coupe were exceptional.

If Ashley Laracey’s potent musical perfume could be bottled, it would be worth more than emeralds. She is one of the most unique stylists in the company. Time and time again, she caught the lush points of the music and let them carry her through the phrases like a surfer catches a huge wave and rides it into shore. Most of the time, her inherent remoteness worked in her favor. However, her noble and very eager partner, Andrew Scordato, had some trouble catching a gaze from her. Scordato continues to impress with his progress. He looks much stronger physically and is obviously intent on becoming a high quality partner.

The Rubies cast of Lauren Lovette, Anthony Huxley, and Emily Kikta combined wit, sensuality, and charisma in their debut performances. Anthony Huxley caught the crouching playfulness of the role perfectly and also delivered dynamite allegro variations. Lauren Lovette’s minxy tease of a showgirl romping around on the stage while Huxley pursued her was delightful. Emily Kikta’s grand battements in the tall girl role were about as lethal as one ever wants to witness. We wonder what her Siren to Huxley’s Prodigal Son might be like –– besides beyond illegal.

Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle repeated their lovely Diamonds PdD along with the exceptional corps de ballet. However, we would like to see a few others take on the Diamond ballerina role so that we might see it less angsty and over-dramatised. Sara adds more drama to it than Olga Smirnova. Perhaps Rebecca Krohn, Ana Sophia Scheller, Ashley Laracey, or Unity Phelan might be a good fit. And we have to see Preston Chamblee and Aaron Sanz in this type of cavalier role ASAP.

The HH Pump Bump Award, an emerald gem from Christian Loubouton, is bestowed upon Ana Sophia Scheller, Anthony Huxley, and Ashley Laracey for their exquisite dancing on Sunday.

 

 

Renegade ballerina

Here is the NYCB Rubies corps de ballet rehearsing today outside next to the theater. Everything was going splendidly until all of a sudden one ballerina went a little crazy and "pinked out" in a coloratura solo. It must be the pressure of the job.