observations 5/11

The irresistible Whipped Cream T-shirts with Mark Ryden designs are ready and waiting for you in the Met Opera Shop – pink version, black version. At $30 each, they are no more expensive than those offered at the premiere performances of ABT's new ballet in Costa Mesa. There is also a very cool collection of postcards with Ryden's artwork and a couple of different books. We did not observe any child sizes of the T-shirts or any of the nifty W.C. sticker sets that were available at the Segerstrom Center. Lost opportunity seems to be an ABT specialty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Speaking of pink – She's back!! Our little pink renegade azalea made it safely through the winter to bloom among the Rubies again!

Here she is in Damrosch Park kicking up her heels today:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The truth is hard to find. © The New York Times

Oh, yes it is, especially when The New York Times critic has a personal financial interest in the subject of her article.

The truth is hard/the truth is hard to know/the truth is more important than ever. © The New York Times

Independent journalism. More essential than ever. © The New York Times

Pardon our incredulous smile and slight snicker, but what about the latest factless piece of garbage by NYT critic, Gia Kourlas, who is writing a book about Misty Copeland (the pillar example of whining your way to success and paying to play) among several other more respected and more professional ballerinas of color who Kourlas intends to include in her book? She was granted a multi-thousand dollar fellowship by Jennifer Homan's Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU to perform the research for the book entitled Finding the Black Swan. It is being promoted as historically grounded, and will also be a promotional effort for her own solutions on how ballet can be re-invented and invigorated through diversity. We're all dying for it to be released. It should be an entertaining read given how she obscures truth when it will help move her writing along.

The point is that Kourlas' latest article in the NYT has no point other than to promote Misty Copeland, to keep the Misty breezes blowing as hard as possible, to delay that inevitable Misty-fatigue that is upon the world. If the Misty breezes stop blowing, then who will want to buy Kourlas' new book?

So, in the NYT, Kourlas has begun the careful manipulative transformation of Misty from the (fake) victim of white ballet to Misty the martyr for ballet. “Even just approaching the fouettés,” she says caused her to sustain a pop in her neck and a warm feeling run down her back, which in turn required her to cancel her second performance in Washington DC during the Swan Lake run in January.  Misty cannot even "think" about them without incurring injury. She might not be real ballerina material, but she certainly is real diva material - no one will argue about that.

But where was the question about whether the pressure on Misty in Washington increased exponentially because soloist Devon Teuscher knocked out ALL of the tricks flawlessly (per the Washington Post) in her debut the night before Copeland's own performance which the critic characterized as weak and struggling and went on to clarify that her problems were ongoing from years earlier?

Devon was the long-legged, cool blond in 2011 who Copeland publicly trashed on stage at bows during a Nutcracker performance at BAM following Copeland's fall on her ass during an exit. The two were among the Nutcracker Sisters. Big mouth flapping wide open, fat tongue wagging, in front of thousands of people, she trashed Devon to whom she apparently ascribed some responsibility for her fall -- all of this while Daniil Simkin and Maria Riccetto were trying to take their principal bows after an absolutely magical performance. If anyone wants to go to the videotape, the exact date was December 23, 2011. The only thought that came to mind at the time, other than astonishment at Copeland's unprofessionalism and arrogance, was that someday this would all come back to bite her in the ass because she would never be even half the dancer that Devon would become. Perhaps in Washington on the night of her pop in the neck and warm feeling down her back, Copeland was physically suffering from humiliation and embarrassment that she deserved. Gia wouldn't touch that, though. Nope, she's not going to poke at Misty and risk sales of her new book. Nor apparently, is she going to write anything about Misty that won't serve eventually to promote her new book.

"Misty Copeland, a ballerina with real acting chops" Really?! Has any critic ever lauded her for her acting? True, her acting might be better than her actual dancing technique, but that isn't saying a lot.

Kevin McKenzie is quoted, “[S]he’s taking the mantle of the classics on.” Uh, not exactly Kevvie. The classics are being handed to her on a silver platter even though she cannot dance them at a high professional level while there are many, many others in the company who can and could dance them very well. So instead of seeing Veronika Part, Skylar Brandt, Cassandra Trenary, or Devon Teuscher actually bang out Kitri with pop, pizzazz AND ALL THE STEPS, McKenzie is wasting not one, but TWO Don Q performances on Misty because of her race. Ditto with Swan Lake and Giselle. Race is Misty's ace, and she's got an endless supply of them tucked up her sleeve.

How interesting that Copeland didn't mention her upcoming scheduled performances in Whipped Cream, the choreography for which is also far beyond her capabilities. She withdrew from the first performances of it in March in Costa Mesa, again citing an injury, but continued rehearsing Giselle while in California and shortly thereafter performed it in Oman. Injury? Maybe to the ego, again.

But Gia has the solution for brushing away all these lapses in technique and form. She'll make Misty a martyr for ballet. All those near career-ending injuries, the plates and screws in her leg -- it just hurts so badly to even try to do those fouettes that Misty has never been able to do in her life but should be able to do to the left as well as to the right. What about a reporter's basic question about why she's never been able to do them? That question was nowhere in sight for this article and never will be by any reporter who has a personal financial interest in keeping the Misty breezes blowing.

Says the most over-ballyhooed ballerina ever: “You feel the age and the injuries, and you realize the importance of character,” she said in a recent interview. “I used to muscle through these things. I can’t do that anymore. There needs to be something more, something else.” Help us understand this. She used to muscle through what things? The fouettes, the hops on pointe, the gazillion revolution pirouettes (two revolutions represents Misty's gazillion), all that fast batterie? Our little ballerina should up her dosage of psychopharmaceuticals if she is remembering herself as a technical tour de force back in the day.

Perhaps most laughable is Kourlas' attempt to show how hard Copeland is working on her "acting" with her coach – the same acting coach used by Kevin McKenzie, Susan Jaffe, and Isabella Boylston. Now there are three stellar examples on which to rest a career as an acting coach. It is doubtful that Gia Kourlas ever saw performances by either McKenzie or Jaffe where their acting was particularly worthwhile – unless she wants to credit McKenzie's nonchalance about his drooping sweatpants incident as "acting" or Jaffe dramatically throwing her face to the ceiling every time she ran across the stage during the last several years of her declining technique as "acting".

The truth is hard to find – in The New York Times – when the critic has a financial incentive to obscure it.

 

Comments

[Nicole]

Awesome opinion piece. Thanks for bringing this out into the open. No one connects the dots in the dance world quite like you, Haglund.

[Eulalia Johnson]

Although I am more of an opera than ballet fan, I do appreciate dance and have learned much from your invaluable Web site. Even I wasn't taken in by the piece in the NYT; the stench of BS emanated from every word. Thank you for calling out this disgraceful advertisement.

[Haglund]

Thanks Nicole and Eulalia. The truth is not so hard to find if one looks beyond the NYT.

[David]

Forgetting Misty's and the NYT's shameless BS and whether in fact she's more of an actress than anyone else, have there been examples of dancers whose character realization was so moving and vivid that one would overlook their less than first-rate technical abilities?

[elfantgirl]

I like Misty's dancing, always have. I at first thought that she was being good for ballet with all her publicity. Then she was promoted to principal, I thought before she was ready, but again good for promoting the art.

I've since changed my mind. I now think she is far too opportunist and with all her other projects going on, will not ever put in the focus to develop her technique to justify her position or acclaim. I read this NYT "puff piece" and was thoroughly dismayed - and that was before learning the author had her own personal reasons to push Misty. Feh.

[pennsylvania]

I could barely read that article, so badly was I rolling my eyes and I couldn't wait to see your take on it. But it was quite revealing in that Misty all but admitted she can't DANCE these steps anymore so she has to amp up her acting to distract the audience. Maybe the public isn't as slow on the uptake as we think. Judging by that article, she's getting scared her audience is fading away. She definitely should be scared.

[Haglund]

Thanks for all the comments, David, elfantgirl, and pennsylvania.

David, the answer to your question is no, not in this town. If a dancer can't do the steps, she's got no business launching an effort to get new roles from a platform of dishonesty. Less than 1st rate (New York level) technique is not excused unless a dancer is winding down a career during which she previously performed the skills at the expected level. Our disappointments with Misty have been exacerbated by her continual media effort to claim that she is something better than everyone else.

[LLF]

And here I thought that obnoxious story was simply more self-generated publicity from Team Copeland, meant to obscure the fact that Cassandra Trenary - the best natural actress in the company - is about to wipe away any thoughts of Copeland in the upcoming Whipped Cream, or any other ballet for that matter. Of course, where Copeland is concerned, it's more about money than anything else. With all that cynical Goldman Sachs funding behind her, she really is the ballet dancer the American public of today deserves: an empty vessel, overpriced & of little value.

[Jeannette]

I'm disappointed with Kourlas. What a sell-out.

[Zoot]

I didn't know she was 34. No huge fan, but I really hope she comes out of her insanely demanding season without injury.

I guess all we have to do is stay zen until this underwhelming micro generation of principals (Boylston, Seo, Kotchetkova, Copeland), passes the spotlight over to all the amazing soloists.

Is anyone going to Don Q next week? What an absolutely underwhelming week to open the season (love Gillian but I'm seeing her in so many other things, and she never screamed 'kitri' to me anyway). Pity I have to miss Schevchenko's debut due to work. I might have called in sick for Brandt.

[Erica]

I'm ITA with you Haglund. The bottom line is this: If she can not master "The Step," she need not be given "Swan Lake," nor should she be given Kitri -> etc. She is a fake Principal.