observations 7/2

Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech has chosen Feld's successor as Artistic Director. Former DTH member and Broadway performer Dionne Figgins will take the helm in August upon Feld's planned retirement.

Ballet Tech, now over 40 years old, provides free dance and public school education to NYC children. Feld's original and ongoing goal has been to recruit students from every single NYC public elementary school, a goal that Figgins will continue to pursue. The school's performances have delighted audiences at the Joyce Theater for many years. Some may recall that the charismatic, extremely talented, and under-used NYCB dancer, Spartak Hoxha, is a discovery by Feld's Ballet Tech.

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ABT is scheduled to dance at Little Island in Hudson River Park tomorrow, but the weather could make that impossible. Scheduled are Hee Seo in The Dying Swan, Christine Schevchenko and Tom Forster in an excerpt from Seven Sonatas, a new PdD by Adriana Pierce danced by Remy Young and Sierra Armstrong, and an excerpt from Let Me Sing Forevermore danced by the water & oil combination of Aran Bell and Isabella Boylston.

So...no Don Quixote PdD as shown in the original advertisement on the Little Island website which was switched to a photo of Let Me Sing Forevermore after all of the tickets were sold.

 

Comments

[Jeannette]

Thanks for the reminder of ABT at Little Island, Haglund. I hope that Mother Nature cooperates.

Perhaps the Don Q costumes are all on the ABT Across America truck n’ bus tour? It appears that a film crew is going along to document the journey for Ovation TV. Whee!
https://www.abt.org/events/abt-across-america/

[Haglund]

It was nice to see that 6,000 people showed up on the lawn in Lincoln. But the performance was only 50 minutes long! Subtract the bows and the pauses between pieces, and you've got one short show for people who dragged their blankets and lawn chairs from around town to get there. Free or not, it still costs people time and gas.

[Georgiann]

I'm hoping that the Nebraska tour inspired some new audience members and ballet lovers. For some, 50 minutes may have been enough, but for we balletomanes, we can never get enough ballet! Parts of the mid-west are virtual ballet desserts. So many have never been to a professional ballet, even though Kansas City has a ballet company and sponsors some good dance through other programs. So it is my hope that these performances spark an interest in ballet and lots of new paying audience members.

[Haglund]

Let's hope so!

[Jeannette]

Below is the link to a fine report, with photos, of ABT’s performance in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Hurlin & Ahn in Black Swan pdd?! Interesting.
https://journalstar.com/entertainment/music/review-big-crowd-embraces-american-ballet-theatres-performance-at-pinewood-bowl/article_f28fc12f-4f03-5012-ae80-0ca759b09952.html

[Haglund]

Thanks for the link, Jeannette.

Since expectations were low for the show at Little Island yesterday, it wasn't so bad. Every piece had to be adapted to a postage stamp sized piece of marley. Hee Seo's The Dying Swan began with a near catastrophic slip on the tape as she was stepping onto the performance space. Despite all the compromises that had to be made, I think the audience appreciated her effort the most although there was a lot of woo-hooing for all of the pieces, especially the Tony Bennett thang at the end. And there seemed to be some curiosity about Seo as an artist, judging from what folks were saying as they left.

I'll reserve comment about the Adriana Pierce pdd because I haven't seen it performed as intended. But I will say that Sierra Armstrong impressed with her innate squareness. One could almost hear Maggie Black's spirit bellowing "and line, and line, and line." A very strong dancer with a very lovely presentation.

Although the excerpt from Ratmansky's Seven Sonatas was performed well considering the space, the piece itself doesn't work well as an excerpt. One should not sit so close to the dancers in a Ratmansky piece because their required effort to get through it can't be hidden. I just shook my head while thinking how much I have missed these two artists these past two seasons.

The Lang/Tony Bennett thang made me think that I wouldn't even like it if Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild were dancing it. That's probably not true - I'd probably watch it a hundred times in a row. But this was poor man's Tharp/Stroman imitation. "Yeah" for Tony Bennett, though.

After 29 minutes of dancing, McKenzie held a panel discussion with Aran Bell, Hee Seo, and Isabella Boylston.

[Christina Skoski]

The Australian Ballet live stream perfomance of Anna Karenina has been re-scheduled for Fri. Oct 22 @7:15PM AEDT.

[Haglund]

Oh dear. Australia is behind on vaccinations. Let's hope things improve considerably by October.