Haglund's Heel

Here and Now festival – 4/25New York City Ballet used to be called The House of Balanchine

That’s how the company will be routinely described in the not too distant future if the company maintains its current path.

 

What a disheartening, disappointing, disturbing first evening of the Here and Now festival, as it is being called by NYCB. As one of Haglund’s favorite readers “C” said to him, I’ll take Then and There anytime over Here and Now. Of course, there will always be the predictable praises from those who go to the performances for free – those who don’t have to open their own wallets to buy tickets or toil at mundane day jobs to put together the cash needed to see NYCB. 

 

The evening began with curtain remarks by Peter Martins and a toast to Christopher Wheeldon whose works were performed that evening. The toast was fine. The remarks not so.

 

During the speech, Martins dropped a bombshell. He said that NYCB spends half of its time attending to Balanchine’s and Robbins’ works and half of its time on new works making it clear that LESS than half of its time is spent on Balanchine. LESS than HALF. “We’re giving Balanchine a little vacation [during this festival],” he said. 

 

How can NYCB continue to call itself The House of Balanchine when it mothballs his work and replaces it with riff raff. Let’s look at next year’s schedule:

 

In the fall season, only 7 out of 28 performances will include Balanchine’s work while 20 performances will include Martins’ work. In the winter season, only 17 of the 42 performances will include Balanchine’s work while 16 performances will include Martins’ work. In the spring season, only 19 of the 42 performances will include Balanchine’s work while 22 of them will include work by Jerome Robbins because it is his centennial celebration. The remaining dates are filled in with mostly media candy choreographers including far too much of Justin Peck's work.

 

No Serenade, no Jewels, no Symphony in C, no Ballet Imperial, no Ballo della Regina, no Brahms-Shoenberg Quartet, no Danses Concertante, no Donizetti, no Fairy’s Kiss, no Firebird, no Flower Festival, no Ivesiana, no Liebeslieder, no Prodigal Son, no Raymonda, no Davidsbundlertanze, no Scotch Symphony, no Stars and Stripes, no Sylvia PdD, no Slaughter, no Theme and Variations, no Tschaikovsky PC 2, no Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3, no Tzigane, no Union Jack, no Valse Fantasie, no Vienna Waltzes, no Walpurgisnacht, no Western Symphony, and no Who Cares? Well, we care.

 

In the 2017-2018 season, we are seeing only 15 different Balanchine works for the whole year. How can NYCB continue to call itself the House of Balanchine? Not only is it presenting fewer and fewer of his works, but it is substituting new work that doesn’t even approach the brilliance of Balanchine’s work. Does. Not. Even. Approach.

 

How can NYCB continue to call itself the House of Balanchine? It simply cannot. This schedule doesn't constitute any type of a "vacation" for Balanchine; it's an effort to reduce his significance at NYCB and force-feed the audience lesser work simply because it is new. 

 

All of the new crap that is landing on NYCB’s stage is being presented in the name of moving the art forward. There is no such thing as moving forward in art. There is no moving backwards, and there is no moving sideways. Art is simply made. It employs evolved tools such as evolved musical instruments, evolved pointe shoes, evolved lighting and stage flooring. But art itself is humanly created and simply added to the universe. This nonsense about art MOVING FORWARD like it’s on some imaginary linear journey to Art Nirvana is a load of marketing gobbledygoop by artists who are desperate for attention which their honest skills are not getting for them. If they can imply that someone else’s art is stale, backward, not hip, not “FORWARD” thinking, then they have a better chance of rising above it all without the necessary skills to succeed.

 

For over a half century, Balanchine created ballets for his company through World War II, Korean War, Vietnam, Nixon, Kennedy’s assassination, the first moonwalk (on the moon, not in a Michael Jackson video), invention of color TV, civil rights riots, civil disobedience riots, draft dodging, inventions of Mr. Potato Head and The Pill. Did he chant about making ballets that were relevant to current times? No, he did not. Did he create ballets about wars in which he did not fight or physically suffer? No, he didn’t. By now, we should all be gagging on the word relevant. It means NOTHING in the world of art. The idea of relevance is merely a reaction to art, not a measurement of quality or artist’s skill. Once the artist’s goal becomes to obtain a certain reaction or affirmation of relevance from the viewer, e.g., “I can identify with that” or “Wowzer, that really speaks to me me me me me me me,” then his goal is no longer to create art. 

 

In the Met Museum, does one ever hear things like, “That 3rd Century BC gold phiale libation bowl decorated with bees and acorns is pretty, but it doesn’t relate to me me me me me me me like the new line of dishes at Pottery Barn.” Or at the NY Phil, “Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony is okay for the first ten minutes, but it would be more relevant to me me me me me me me if Rhianna would sing something to it.”

 

Relevance is overrated.

 

Last evening’s performance included Christopher Wheeldon’s Mercurial Manoeuvres (2000), Polyphonia (2001), Liturgy (2003), and American Rhapsody (2016).

 

Mercurial Manoeuvres was the best of the four ballets in terms of musical responsiveness through the creation of group movements as well as sizzling solos for a man in a burning red unitard. Unlike American Rhapsody, which closed the program, it is not cast dependent. Tiler Peck was the featured ballerina in Mercurial Manoeuvres which has enjoyed a history of wonderful performances from Abi Stafford and Miranda Weese as well as Tiler. Last night her work glistened with the beauty and sense of freedom that we saw the week before in Allegro Brilliante. Tyler Angle was her outstanding partner and delivered his own blazing allegro. But the highlight of this ballet was Harrison Ball (replacing Anthony Huxley) whose fiery form, while amazing, only suggested what we might see from him in the future.

 

The Corps de Ballet and demi soloists Sara Adams and Kristen Segin were all pinpoint perfection. Their straight arm swinging is where we first encountered Wheeldon’s proclivity for this sort thing back in 2000. Now it shows up the way “like”, “you know”, and “totally” show up between words in common speech.

 

Robert Fairchild and Tiler Peck carried American Rhapsody in its first showings in 2016, and their absence last night sunk it. Sorry to have to say once again that Russell Janzen (in Fairchild’s role) is no jazz bunny, no matter how badly he wants to be one. Lauren Lovette (in Tiler’s role) was trying to use her eyebrows to create passion and drama, but the choreography was not in her body. What made the PdD in American Rhapsody acceptable last year was Tiler’s innate musicality. Lauren has her own attributes, but natural musicality is not one of them at the moment.

 

The absence of Fairchild and Peck even seemed to throw water on the performances of Amar Ramasar and Unity Phelan who danced in the premiere. Their chemistry came across as forced and they looked over-challenged by the choreography.

 

Then there was the mundane straight arm waving that we’re seeing way too much of in Wheeldon’s works, e.g., Mercurial Manoeuvres, DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse, Liturgy. 

 

Speaking of Liturgy, Maria Kowroski and Jared Angle gave it the old college try, but really, there isn’t much in the choreography. It’s Wheeldon presenting a big nothing as being of world importance through the use of dramatic stage lighting, minimal movement, and skimpy costume. Ditto with Polyphonia which is definitely cast dependent and isn’t likely to ever garner the interest it did when Ansanelli, Whelan, and Somogyi were on the stage in it. Last night, watching Sara Mearns in an unflattering black-belted leotard plow through steps next to Sterling Hyltin might qualify as cruel and unusual punishment for both the viewer and Sara. 

 

With the exception of Mercurial Manoeuvres, Haglund did not have a good time last night and wishes that he had saved his money. The only way that he’ll ever watch American Rhapsody again is if Harrison Coll is in the Fairchild role - then only maybe. Boy, is this young dancer ready to set the world on fire in roles that feature Gershwin, Bernstein, and Kay! Here’s hoping that we see a lot of him during next year’s Robbins’ celebration.

 

Since it was such a distressing night, we’re going to hold off awarding any HH Pump Bump Award. Oh heck anyway. We’ll bestow a red suede flame by Louboutin on Harrison Ball since his dancing seems to be on such a strong and virtuous track right now.

 

 

NYCB 4/23 matinee Utterly brilliant

Just saying – if that was a final salute to a role yesterday, it was one that the Balletomane Brigade will never forget. To be clear, we have no information to the effect that it was Maria Kowroski’s final Symphony in C. But the ballet is not slated to be performed during the 2017-2018 season (nor is Jewels) and our Maria is at the most delicate and precarious stage of her career. Her instrument may allow her to decide when and how to depart or it may not. Perhaps though, there is a crafty plan afoot to persuade Maria to stick to her discipline so she can stick it out for 2018-2019 - assuming that both Symphony in C and Jewels will reappear. It would certainly be a crime if these ballets were kept in storage while common riff raff from contemporary wannabes littered NYCB’s great stage.

Haglund agrees that it is important for NYCB to build new work into its repertory, but – and this is a but bigger than Beyonce’s – it has to be incredible world class art that is good enough to stand along side Balanchine’s. If it’s not good enough, then NYCB shouldn’t keep torturing the audience with it just because it is recent work. The new works should earn their places in the repertory, not ascend and replace Balanchine’s works because they have cultivated obnoxious media attention. If NYCB believes that it can force people to watch its new works (after the premieres) by taking away or severely reducing Balanchine’s works, then they should do some re-thinking.

The works on yesterday's program were 61, 71, and 70 years old. People still flock to see them; dancers still adore dancing them and dream of the day when they will dance a lead role; audiences still gasp at their beauty. This has been going on for 61, 71, and 70 years now. Does NYCB think it’s going to suddenly stop and they need to have trendy new work to replace it? That’s what Pillsbury thought back in the 1970s when it came up with Wiener Wrap. (We have to create something new and different to bolster up our refrigerated biscuits and keep us going. Wiener Wrap will be the next big thing!) Today one of Pillsbury’s top selling products is still its basic refrigerated biscuit which celebrates its 66th birthday this year. Where’s Wiener Wrap these days? It doesn’t even make the list.

The lesson here is for NYCB to be careful not to put Wiener Wrap on stage. In Haglund’s view, the next four weeks of the spring season contains a lot of it, sadly.

Back to yesterday's matinee –

What a treat it has been this week to watch Tiler Peck grow to Sequoia heights in the ballerina role of Allegro Brilliante. By the time she finished her fourth performance of the week on Sunday, she had achieved Hyperion status. There are those who will debate that assertion by sniffing that she takes musical liberties that Merrill Ashley would never dare to during Balanchine’s time. But who really knows what Balanchine might have created if Tiler had come along in his time? He seems to be inspiring her from afar – enough to make us think that this is Balanchine’s time whether he is with us or not.

Tiler’s breadth of musicality and daring inspired her demi-soloist couples as well. Sara Adams, Megan Johnson, Meagan Mann, and Lydia Wellington have never danced as freely and as luxuriantly as they did on Sunday. Their partners – Devin Alberda, Daniel Applebaum, Aaron Sanz, and Andrew Scordato – were as gallant and precise as could be. If those arabesque lines and cabrioles from Aaron Sanz and Daniel Applebaum become any more brilliant, we may need to start wearing protective sunglasses at their performances. Both men, along with Andrew Scordato, danced energy-draining demi-soloist or principal roles in all three ballets yesterday and did so magnificently.

In The Four Temperaments, Scordato was paired with Lydia Wellington in the First Theme, Applebaum with Lauren King in the Second Theme, and Sanz with Ashley Laracey in the Third Theme. Maturity becomes all of these dancers. A sense of “getting the steps right” has been replaced with the higher obligation of “doing the steps justice.” It’s a realization that comes at different points in dancers’ careers, and when it finally does come, it is most gratifying for the viewer to see.

We can’t say that Sunday's casting of the other principal roles in The Four Temperaments will ever be at the top of our list, but we can say that the performances were serviceable. As Haglund grew a little bored, he imagined the dancers with cat whiskers. It helped pass the time.

Symphony in C apparently is not taking well to the idea of being mothballed for all of next year. She made quite the spectacle of herself yesterday, “You’re going to miss me because you know I am the most beautiful of all.” Well, she certainly was yesterday. The remarkable and ever exquisite Corps de Ballet and demi-solists were led by Megan Fairchild & Chase Finlay in the First Movement, Maria Kowroski & Tyler Angle in the Second Movement, Alston MacGill & Harrison Ball in the Third Movement, and Brittany Pollack & Taylor Stanley in the Fourth Movement. Chase had a more even performance than earlier in the week but he is quite off his game this season. Megan, who had to miss her first performance of this ballet this season, was in fabulous form. Crystalline clear feet and legs, graceful upper body, and no pushing at the audience helped to make this a beautiful afternoon for her.

Maria and Tyler were simply dazzling in their elegance and grace. Signature suppleness and royal refinement were evident throughout their dancing, whether together or as soloists. The linear relationships of their limbs was a geometric heaven. While Maria has never been known as a virtuosic pirouetter – the length of her legs makes that all but impossible – she managed the very fast sequence of two unsupported double pirouettes in the finale as well as ever and as well if not better than Sara Mearns earlier in the week. Ditto for the series of fast supported double pirouettes where the working leg opened first to the front, then to the side, then to the back. At least we saw the shape of the extended working leg and foot each time - something that Sara was unable to show us in either of her performances.

Alston MacGill, who danced the Third Movement for the fourth time during the week, finished with a skilled and confident performance opposite Harrison Ball. Thank goodness Harrison is finally throwing some hints to the audience that he actually enjoys performing. Brittany Pollack and Taylor Stanley gave the Fourth Movement a big jolt of electricity. All four principal ladies got their acts together for the finale. They found their ensemble coordination and precision which gave the final moments of the ballet its brilliance.

The matinee was such an extraordinary afternoon of dancing; it almost felt like a closing performance to the season. In some ways it was. That was the last of the Balanchine repertory pieces until fall. Only a week of Midsummer Night's Dream remains, and it is preceded by four weeks of ballets commissioned over the past 30 years – most of which do not even hold a candle to Balanchine's works. It's not going to be a happy time for balletomanes or for those who count tickets sold.

The HH Pump Bump Award, a First Position Award with diamonds from the House of Borgezie ($250k with Haglund's discount), is bestowed upon Tiler Peck and Maria Kowroski for their incomparable performances in Allegro Brilliante and Symphony in C.

 

 

 

 

observations 4-24

Member presale began today for NY City Center's concert production of Brigadoon starring Robert Fairchild, Kelli O'Hare, and Steven Pasquale with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon. Only six performances November 15-19.

Public ticket sales begin on April 27th at 2pm.

Ain't gonna miss this no way no how.

 

NYCB 4/18Ave Maria!

What is there left to do but hail Maria Kowroski after one of her most glorious adagios in Symphony in C last evening as NYC Ballet opened its spring season with a blessed all-Balanchine program that included Allegro Brillante and The Four Temperaments. We’ve used up all of the adjectives for Maria over the years. This role and her Diamonds role from Jewels make us all but forget that she is also one of the most honest interpreters of Balanchine's black & white ballets such as Agon and Stravinsky Violin Concerto as well as a stunningly beautiful dancer in a white tutu. But last night, who really expected Maria to alight the stage and dance as well as she did a decade ago? Will this year, her 23rd, be her best ever? Last night suggested it might.

Rather than gearing up like it was the beginning of the spring season, she simply took off from where she left off with her incredible Slaughter on Tenth Avenue that closed the winter season. And if she bent a penche arabesque or two past 180 degrees like she might as the Slaughter showgirl, well, she’s earned the right. Those most beautiful of all beautiful limbs were steady and strong without resorting to any showy flexing of muscles that the less accomplished must resort to in order to get their attention.

We owe more than a nod to Tyler Angle for his flawless partnering of Maria. He knew where he would be needed even before she did. Here’s hoping that we get to see this pairing in Diamonds this summer.

In the First Movement of Symphony in C, Ashley Bouder and Chase Finlay were mismatched: she of unwavering stability and shine; he of uncertainty and less than sharp technique. Alston MacGill and Harrison Ball danced the Third Movement without any big issues although Alston blew out those tricky pirouettes in the finale. She will have to mature before she becomes believable in that big sparkly tiara. Brittany Pollack and Taylor Stanley led the Fourth Movement with fine brio. We’ve missed so much of Brittany’s dancing in the past year due to injury; it’s a little disappointing to hear that she’s going to take time off from NYCB for the Carousel Broadway gig.

In the final section when the four leading women lined up to do their pas de bourrée en tournant with that little fouette renversé, our veterans – so different physically and so different as dancers – were able to match each other brilliantly in the timing of the working leg. Our younger ballerinas allowed their working legs to swim to the second position, arriving some where around the 1.25-1.5 count instead of on the 1. We’re hoping for a better result on Sunday.

Tiler Peck and Andrew Veyette polished off Allegro Brillante as though they were famished and could not devour its challenges fast enough. (The tempo was a little like a Sunday afternoon stroll, though. Tiler is at her most astonishing when she has to chase the tempo instead of pushing it.) The dancers may have been tempted to chomp down every delicious bite of Balanchine, since after this week, there will be four long weeks without even so much as a morsel.

The demi soloist women (Megan Johnson, Meagan Mann, Sara Adams, and Lydia Wellington) quite outdid themselves in precision and energy. The men (Devin Alberda, Daniel Applebaum, Cameron Dieck, and Andrew Scordato) were fine also, with Applebaum’s growing strength and confidence flattering his always crystalline lines.

All five sections of The Four Temperaments was a joy to watch but it was a little strange to see Choleric (Teresa Reichlen) as icy cool and calm while Sanguinic (Sara Mearns with Jared Angle) looked like a limb-throwing temper tantrum. Ask la Cour in Phlegmatic was as placid and articulate as always, but when did this section become all about the four women back-up dancers? Answer: when Ashley Hod, Emily Kikta, Claire Kretzschmar, and Isabella LaFreniere took over. What an interesting contrast their stalking attitudes made with the lead dancer’s calm demeanor. Each one of these women had such a powerful stage presence that it was hard to look away to watch Mr. Phlegmatic. We were so happy to see Isabella dancing so strongly following her absence last winter due to injury. Speaking of missing due to injury, we are hoping that Adrian Danchig-Waring will be back on stage soon.

Gonzalo Garcia’s Melancholic was respectable but he doesn’t cover space the way other interpreters do. The Theme section, danced by Lydia Wellington & Andrew Scordato, Lauren King & Daniel Applebaum, and Ashley Laracey & Cameron Dieck, was in the hands of the experienced — all of whom made their parts greater than the sum of the steps.

The HH Pump Bump Award, Giuseppe Zanotti’s stiletto with magic straps, is bestowed upon Maria Kowroski for her brilliance in Symphony in C.

 

 

YAGP Honors Julio Bocca at Lincoln Center 4/14 It Was A Good Friday

Literally.

 

YAGP’s 2017 Tribute to a Dance Legend honored Julio Bocca, the beloved star of ABT for twenty years who is now Artistic Director of Uruguay’s national company SODRE which he has buffed and pumped up into that country’s most high-profiled performing arts institution.

 

The evening was a mix of tribute and roast. In tribute to his former colleague, Marcelo Gomes described how as a young ABT corps dancer he would sit in the studio corner watching Julio rehearse while wondering if he could ever be as good. Then as if to answer his own question, he performed a couple of sequences from Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Songs with Luciana Paris and then the balcony PdD from MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet with Maria Riccetto. Luciana, in the years prior to joining ABT, was a principal dancer and frequent partner of Julio's in his Ballet Argentina. The company also included Herman and Erica Cornejo. Maria, of course, is the former ABT soloist who is now the Resident Prima Ballerina in Julio’s company of 70 dancers. 

 

For the roast part, Joaquin De Luz offered a hilarious, deadly accurate imitation of Bocca’s famous stage walk during which he would trace an arc the width of the stage with his chest puffed out and chin, eyes, and downstage arm raised to the highest seats in the house as he circled to the back to begin his variation. 

 

There were many admirable performances during the evening, most notably Yuan Yuan Tan and Vitor Luiz of San Francisco Ballet in the final PdD from Bells by Yuri Possokhov, and Tamara Rojo and Isaac Hernandez from English National Ballet in the Don Q PdD. Yuan Yuan, who is 40, has been blessed with the exceptionally narrow and lengthy limbs that are so highly prized and create such exquisitely graceful shapes. But she still has enough strength to pull off a respectable Black Swan PdD as she also showed with Luiz on Friday night. Tamara, who is about to turn 43, didn’t offer a “lite” version of her Don Q variation either. Nosiree, Bob. She packed it with virtuosity and energy that anyone half her age would be grateful to have.

 

In all the celebration of Julio’s career, however, important parts of his story were missed. 

 

Julio’s meteoric rise in the world of ballet began with a spectacular failure that he turned into gold - literally. At the 1985 Moscow Ballet Competition, an early forerunner of the YAGP, 18-year-old Julio took a messy, bruising fall during his Don Q variation. But he rose above it and also performed a stellar Nutcracker PdD that drove the learned Russian audience wild and impressed the hard-to-impress judges who included Yuri Grigorovich. It’s all on tape – the fall, the recovery, the rise. (Don Q, Nutcracker, and one of Haglund’s all-time favorites of Julio's Don Q with Cynthia Harvey - Baryshnikov version.)

 

Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov heard of Julio’s performances in Moscow, invited him to audition for ABT, immediately hired him as a principal dancer, and became his mentor and ardent taskmaster. That probably didn’t sit very well with Kevin McKenzie who struggled to get Baryshnikov’s respect as a dancer and has since made an effort to erase Baryshnikov’s years from ABT’s history. Nevertheless, it was a surprise and a little disappointing to see YAGP fail to credit Baryshnikov for his discovery of Bocca or even mention the Moscow competition.

 

Julio has recently mentioned in an interview that he would like to take a year off to recoup and refresh, like he did after retiring as a dancer, and to assess what challenges he wants to invite into his next chapter of life. Friday night he looked very good and happy but also contemplative. Perhaps he knows, as do we, that it is time for him to come home – that this is where he can make his greatest positive impact and this is where he is needed most.

 

The many wonderful photos of the evening which are dancing their ways through the internet ensure our long memory of the celebration. Balletomanes, though, have elephant memories; we never forget.

 

 

More here....

 

Ruthie

Ruthie didn't miss very many of Julio Bocca's performances during his decades with ABT. Haglund became fast friends with her when we kept showing up in the same side box at the Met Opera House. Under five feet tall and in her 80s with the energy and sass of a 20-year-old, she would go to the stage door every night to greet Julio and tell him how happy his performance had made her. Occasionally she encountered him near Fairway's on the Upper West Side where they both lived and she would be floating on Cloud 9 weeks later.

Years after Julio retired, Ruthie's eyes still lit up when his name was mentioned. "There will never be another Julio," she would say with a tinge of sadness. "He was one of kind."

When we met at Carnegie Hall for a Hvorostovsky or Jonas Kaufmann recital, she was eager to re-live Julio's performances and lament his retirement. She had all the videos and even limited edition photos by Nancy Ellison who probably photographed his career the most and the best.

Ruthie passed away a few years ago. But tomorrow night at the Tribute to Julio Bocca at Lincoln Center on the occasion of his 50th birthday, she will be looking down from the Sixth Ring to applaud this beloved artist. She wouldn't miss it for the world.

Cheers, Ruthie.

 

Scottish Ballet brings poetry to the Joyce Theater 4/12

The Scottish Ballet brought a chamber-sized touring group of mostly principal dancers to the Joyce Theater this week in a program that both distinguished the company from the typical fare served up by Joyce visitors and also showed that they could not resist faddish content.

Artistic Director Christopher Hampson’s Sinfonietta Giocosa to music by Bohuslav Martinu opened the program with its straightforward neoclassical vocabulary of pleasing geometries. Martinu’s music is less symphonic than piano concerto, particularly the first movement which recalls Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto in its pace and energy. Still, there is an unmistakable neoclassical direction in the music that Hampson followed skillfully.

 

Beginning with two parallel lines of dancers stretching the depth of the stage, the ballet went on to present tidy examples of perpendiculars, interesting skews and slopes, and an agonic-type PdD. Such choreography can celebrate the technical strengths or expose the weaknesses of dancers. But in this case, the unfortunate choice of costuming for the women – black tights, black leotards, and black pointe shoes to dance on a black, under-lit stage floor – made it difficult to see and appreciate the intricate footwork. 

 

Bryan Arias’ Motion of Displacement exemplified The Angst and Yank of Contemporary Ballet trend. It was a banal, repetitive, unimaginative effort to out-Forsythe Forsythe and all of his many imitators. The dancers wore socks which came in handy for endless sliding across the floor following their joint snapping maneuvers. As disturbing as this trend is to balletomanes, it’s candy for the local Joyce Theater regulars who enjoy more off-the-ballet-road type of performances. 

 

Christopher Bruce’s Ten Poems had its share of angst & yank choreography, but it explored Dylan Thomas’ poetry creatively. The last time we observed dance set to text at the Joyce Theater, it was John Cage’s Empty Words choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj in a dance called Empty Moves. Bruce’s Ten Poems was a comparative breeze to sit through. Bruce selected ten of Thomas’ well-known poems as read by Richard Burton including In my Craft or Sullen Art that has these gem lines:

 

I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages

 

and laid atop joint-snapping, gymno-choreography that sometimes alluded to Thomas’  words and sometimes had nothing to do with them. Thomas’ use of alliteration – “Drunk as a new dropped calf”, "And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed Whoever I would with my wicked eyes” – tickled Haglund pink as did the possibility of alliterative dance. 

 

Ten Poems was the most successful dance of the evening, certainly the most innovative. It’s full of Rambert DNA. Both Christopher Bruce and Antony Tudor are in Rambert’s choreographic ancestry tree. However, setting the typically harsh and very narrow contemporary dance vocabulary to Thomas’ thoughtful poetry didn’t always work or enlighten us about either although it was interesting to watch. So was Preljocaj’s Empty Moves.

 

The HH Pump Bump Award, with its contemporary mesh of alliterative straps, is bestowed upon Ten Poems. Originality counts for a lot.

Royal Ballet cinema screenings in NYC

The Sunshine Cinema at 143 E. Houston Street (btwn 1st & 2nd Aves) will screen the Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty next Tuesday (April 11) at 7PM. Marianela Nuñez is Aurora; Vadim Muntagirov is Désiré.

More good news: Sunshine will show the RB's Jewels performance from last week on Tuesday, May 23rd at 7PM. The cast includes Sarah Lamb, Steven McRae, Marianela Nuñez, Thiago Soares, Beatriz Stix-Brunell, Laura Morera, Valeri Hristov, Ryoichi Hirano, Melissa Hamilton.

 

The Joffrey Ballet @ Lincoln CenterDancing with bells on

The Joffrey Ballet’s gala performance on Thursday night was the type of program that those who remember the company from its New York years would associate with it. The three part program of Bells by Yuri Possokhov, Body of Your Dreams by Myles Thatcher, and Fool’s Paradise by Christopher Wheeldon was two-thirds successful. The Wheeldon piece, made during his Morphoses days, was choreographically weak, pretentious, and ridiculously sentimental. The audience was asked to treat a bunch of nothing like it had world importance. On the other hand, Possokhov and Thatcher each put something new on the New York stage that was handsome and unique.

Thatcher’s Body of Your Dreams was set to Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis's piano and spoken urban-cool mash-up soundtrack. It was just the type of cheeky, hipster, trippy dance that Robert Joffrey would have loved. The soundtrack is comprised of snippets of infomercial type script about miracle products to eliminate cellulite or love handles, lose weight, and achieve the body of your dreams. (Take a listen and see if you don't agree that it harks back to the days of Deuce Coup, Panoramagram, etc.) The dancers responded to it with contemporary exer-dance type movements with some tricky ballet thrown in. Would Haglund like to see this danced by any company other than the Joffrey? Nuh uh. But it is a perfect fit for this company’s historically youthful, dare-to-be-different personality. We know the Joffrey can dance serious classical ballet as well as most anyone, but the dancers can also kick back and throw some tongue-in-check nonsense out on stage and make the audience adore them.

What an improvement this dance was over Thatcher’s Polaris that New York City Ballet danced in the fall of 2015. Polaris looked like the choreographer was trying desperately to fit into the contemporary ballet culture – that culture that so many of us despise for its dullness and pompous sense of self-importance. Here, he was daring to be different without resorting to the tastelessness or offensiveness that today’s ballet wannabe-choreographers stoop to exploit – when they’re not pandering to some critic’s personal agenda. We’ve placed Thatcher’s false start with NYCB aside, and we’re ready to see more of his work – hopefully at The Joffrey.

The highlight of the evening was Yuri Possokhov’s Bells set to seven piano compositions by Rachmaninov. From the first steps, we felt like we were in the hands of a master dancemaker – someone who understood composition, dramatic arcs, musicality, and how to convey emotion through movement. There was no story to this ballet, but it was very much about life, love, and loss. An exquisite PdD by Georgian couple Victoria Jaiani and Temur Suluashvili was the centerpiece of the ballet, but the other couples (Anastacia Holden & Yoshihisa Arai, April Daly & Fabrice Calmels, Jacqueline Moscicke & Graham Maverick, and Joanna Wozniak & Aaron Renteria) were given quite beautifully composed dances that made you feel the music up and down your own muscles.

The HH Pump Bump Award is bestowed upon Yuri Possokhov for his beautiful Bells. We can’t wait for his production of A Hero of Our Time which will be presented by Bolshoi Ballet in Cinema on April 9th. We are definitely ready to see more of his work.

Despite the unevenness of the choreography brought to Lincoln Center on this visit, The Joffrey Ballet did not disappoint with its dancing. Why this company has waited so long to return or hasn’t yet turned up at SPAC during the summer is a real mystery and is our loss.