Haglund's Heel

NYCB 1/28 - Mozartiana, Rubies, La Valse

New York City Ballet redeemed itself last night with a superb program of the highest quality choreography performed beautifully by its perfectly cast dancers. By performance time, it had been snowing in NYC for quite a while. The streets and sidewalks were becoming slick which might have — cosmically speaking, of course -- contributed to the occasional skid during the evening. That's all we'll say about that.

Mozartiana received a gorgeous performance by Sterling Hyltin and Anthony Huxley as well as Daniel Ulbricht in the Gigue. Ulbricht’s Menuet muses were the newly-appointed statuesque soloists Ashley Hod, Isabella LaFreniere, Miriam Miller, and Mira Nadon. They made a fabulous size contrast with him while also scripting their steps with the same accuracy and verve that Ulbricht has delivered day-in and day-out over his 20+ year career. Sure — the Menuet muses were all his friends on this night, but he knew that the chances were very good that any one of them could evolve into a dangerous, venomous Siren later on in the season. So he kept his eye on them throughout. Truth be told, we’re actually looking forward to such an entanglement.

 

We have always admired Sterling Hyltin in this role — not just for her pristine technical gifts but for that je ne sais quois undercurrent that suggests she could unleash her impishness at any moment. Intended or not by Tschaikovsky, that quality flows throughout his score, and Hyltin exploits it beautifully. Anthony Huxley was a gallant partner and danced masterful variations. Perhaps not in championship-ready form yet, he was nevertheless brilliant.

 

OMG Rubies! Rubies Rubies Rubies.

 

We could not have loved this performance more. With Megan Fairchild’s scampering hot Ruby and Gonzalo Garcia’s hot-blooded Wile E. Coyote chasing after his roadrunner, Rubies was the highlight of the week. It was a superbly danced and theatrically-rich performance. If that wasn’t enough, we had Emily Kikta’s bombshell of a Tall Girl. There was so much Old World showgirl glamour in her performance that we were not surprised at all to hear that immediately following her series of backward penche arabesques into the wing, she was observed climbing out onto the fire escape where a fedora-clad Sinatra was waiting for her with a ciggie. He said, “Baby, you may be a puzzle, but I like the way the parts fit.” Tall Girl was heard cooing, “Gotta run, Frankie. Don’t wanna miss my next stage entrance” and away she went. We can hardly wait for Sunday to watch this again.

 

La Valse closed the program with strong performances from Sara Mearns, Jovani Furlan, and Amar Ramasar (subbing for Andrew Veyette). We thought that the climactic moment where Mearns slipped her arms into the black gloves was irresistible theater. The gloves looked as though they were swallowing up Sara. Last night may have been the first time that we have seen Jovani Furlan in a dramatic role; he really did project all the way to the back of the second ring in the theater and gave a boldly theatrical performance. Of course, Amar Ramasar simply ran away with his character. Such fun — all of it.

 

Ashley Laracey and Aaron Sanz told a lovely little story in the Fifth Waltz with lots of mystery and perfume. And we were ecstatic to see Christina Clark fly back on to the stage in the corps de ballet with such joy and beauty.

 

More than twelve hours later we are still giddy about what we watched on NYCB’s stage last night. Our H.H. Pump Bump Award, a ruby stiletto with a cut-out cage, is bestowed upon Emily Kikta for her out-on-bail Tall Girl in Balanchine’s masterpiece.

 

 

 

NYCB's Opening Night - a bit of a yawn.

New York City Ballet backed its way into its Winter Season last evening with a mostly insignificant program that included plenty of kitsch and dated contemporary work seemingly designed to appeal to a low common denominator of audience taste. Hopefully, NYCB had staff planted in the audience who could observe the yawns, watch-watching, pretend applause, and mid-evening departures. It was an unfortunate decision to omit Balanchine from the first program of this troubled season which was delayed due to the pandemic. 

The premiere from Justin Peck, Partita, was not really a premiere but a re-hashing of his “sneaker” choreography. For a long time, ballet was focused on the feet and legs doing the tough stuff while the arms complimented and accented what was going on with the lower limbs. Now we have the opposite. Frantic, aggressive, punchy arm movements are the choreographer’s focus while the legs and feet serve as punctuation for the arms through a limited vocabulary of battements, developpes, swivel turns and a bunch of posturing and running around.

 

The guest vocalist ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, provided their avant-garde vocalizing which was far more interesting than what was happening on the stage. The dancers huffed and puffed through Peck’s gym workout with full commitment and tried to substitute bold glowering at the audience and sassy facial expressions for what the choreography could not offer.

 

It was an evening where the scenery provoked more interest than most of the choreography. Eva LeWitt’s pleasant designs for Peck’s Partita were boldly colorful ribbon streamers hanging from the ceiling. The streamers were grouped together to form long rectangular shapes with circular bottoms that instantly reminded one of tongue depressors. Maybe we’ve seen too many tongue depressors of late, but that’s what the streamers, colorful & lovely though they were, brought to mind. LeWitt’s designs contrasted sharply with the dull, thoughtless, here-we-go-again “designed” workwear from Reid & Harriet which looked like randomly chosen clothing from a dance catalog.

 

Merce Cunningham’s Summerspace soared on Robert Rauschenberg’s scenic and costume designs of colorful dot sprinklings that, on this evening, proved to be mood altering in a positive way. It is always fascinating to watch the camouflage effect when the dancers pause in front of the backdrop. It’s the same camouflage effect that little brown thrushes enjoy when nestled among the stick branches in a tree. 

 

Our little birds this evening — Sara Adams, Adrian Danching-Waring, Meaghan Dutton-O’Hara, Emilie Gerrity, Ashley Laracey, and Sebastian Villarini-Velez (subbing for Anerew Veyette) — chirped and flew about in fine Cunningham form. But the dance is a relic. It is a reminder of an earlier innovative time but no longer looks very innovative. We can’t say that ballet technique enhances the output of Cunningham’s choreography, but the lovely limbs of the dancers certainly conveyed an avian image.

 

DGV: Danse å Grande Vitesse, Christopher Wheeldon’s creation for the Royal Ballet in 2006, got a bumpy, tentative start last night. The ballet’s inspiration came from the TGV, the Parisian high speed rail system. There were struggles with partnering wherein the men had to toss the women up and about. In some cases it looked like the problems might have been a matter of size mismatching.

 

The strongest performance came from Chun Wai Chan and Mira Nadon as the fourth couple. They exhibited a trainload of style with strong rapport. We’d like to see them matched up in Fascinatin’ Rhythm and The Man I Love. Chan might be the most capable male dancer in NYCB right now, and he certainly is always interesting to watch. Nadon has uncommon musical intelligence to go with her sturdy technique and physical beauty. Corps standouts included Jonathan Fahoury and Samuel Melnikov. We’ve said it before, but Fahoury is the quintessential NYCB dancer. His speed, focus, and ability to show us the music grabs our attention every time he’s on stage. 

 

Tonight begins the main event of the week: Mozartiana, Rubies, and La Valse. It seems like it has taken us forever to get to this point. We’ll finish off last night by bestowing an H.H. Pump Bump Award, a stiletto that reveals its beauty through an unlocked style, to Chun Wai Chan and Mira Nadon for their performance in DGV.

 

observations 1/23

Wow, this news makes us happy.

Congratulations to Ashley Hod, Miriam Miller, Emily Kikta, Isabella LaFreniere, Mira Nadon, Emma Von Enck, and Preston Chamblee on their promotions to soloist at New York City Ballet. Technique, style, grit, and glamour in spades.

Just turn them all loose and let them go crazy on the audience.

observations 1/20

Reminder: Bolshoi Ballet in Cinema presents a livestream of Jewels this Sunday, January 23rd. Check this website for the cinemas in your area that will carry the broadcast on Sunday or perhaps later in the week. Full casting is listed in the post below.

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We're fairly excited about some of the cast offerings coming up during the first two weeks of NYCB's winter season. A second-week Rubies cast that includes double debuts of Tiler Peck and Isabella LaFreniere is irresistible. We'll also happily revisit Emily Kikta's Rubies tall girl during the first week. If we're lucky, maybe later on we'll also get to see Mira Nadon reprise the role. It's safe to say that NYCB's Rubies tall girl role is in pretty spectacular hands (& legs) for the foreseeable future.

Ashley Laracey and Harrison Coll will perform The Unanswered Question from Balanchine's Ivesiana during the second week. We fondly recall Ashley in the ballet's first section, Central Park in the Dark, and look forward to seeing her in the spooky role which we last saw Janie Taylor interpret. Balanchine's avant-garde ideas in 1954 still tower over what today's so-called contemporary choreographers try to hard-sell to the public. He continues to be groundbreaking.

We can't wait to see the match-up of Emma Von Enck and Roman Mejia during the second week of DGV. These two have been flitting around each other in corps ensembles for a couple of years, and we've been waiting for them to collide in something. Each artist emits megawatts of theatrical electricity, and their debuts together in this ballet will surely spark & crackle. There will be many other fabulous principal debuts in this ballet which we are looking forward to as well.

Tiler Peck and Harrison Ball will debut in Mozartiana. Here's hoping for the subtlety that this ballet deserves but which eludes certain NYCB over-interpreted performances. We've been reflecting on how nice it might be to see Ashley Laracey or Mira Nadon leading a Mozartiana.

Let's get this show on the road. We've been stuck in Park for way too long.

 

 

observations 1/12

The choice of Tamara Rojo as San Francisco Ballet's next artistic director makes a lot of artistic sense. Whether it makes cultural and managerial sense remains to be seen. Putting aside the anticipated controversies regarding the Hernandez brothers, the SFB culture may take time to transition from the Icelandic cool of Helgi Tomasson to Rojo.  It is curious that Rojo would choose to take the reins of the second or third largest ballet company in a country where she never expressed much interest in dancing. One can count the minutes until certain ENB dancers decide to return stateside -- not that they would be the reason to run to an SFB performance -- the company is loaded with talent and will be able to survive any major defections.

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We're looking forward to the start of the NYCB season. Let's hope we don't hear any excuses about how certain dancers are trying to work themselves back into shape. If they're not performance ready, they should stay off the stage. Period. There are too many talented dancers who need and deserve opportunities that are being monopolized by the same old, same old. It's past time for some of these dancers who have had a stranglehold on certain roles for a decade to step aside and allow the audience to see new interpretations.

Perhaps the best casting solution would be to use all veteran principals for the new works exclusively – since veterans just love having new works set on them – and leave the Balanchine classics to the up and coming dancers. The Balanchine works are and always have been the "life blood" of the company; they deserve the best blood of the moment, not the tired blood from dancers who consider themselves ballerina blue blood. Even Eli Manning knew when it was time to step aside.

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Bolshoi Ballet in Cinema brings us Jewels on January 23rd. Check for your local cinema here. Thanks to the Russians for bringing us this masterpiece this year. Hopefully, the Mariinsky will be able to get into the U.S. in April for its highly-anticipated run at the Kennedy Center.

Here's the 1/23 casting:

EMERALDS
Two leading couples	Anastasia Denisova Evgenia Obraztsova Ivan Alexeyev Klim Efimov
Pas de Trois	Elizaveta Kruteleva Maria Mishina Denis Zakharov
	Xenia Averina Anastasia Dedikina Mariana Gomes Anastasia Grigorieva Polina Kolyada Olga Ladina Stanislava Postnova Alexandra Rakitina Tatiana Tiliguzova Olga Vdovkina
RUBIES
The leading couple	Elizaveta Kokoreva Dmitry Smilevsky
Soloist	Maria Vinogradova
	Mikhail Kemenov Artur Mkrtchyan Alexei Putintsev Pavel Smirnov
	Polina Afanasieva Bruna Cantanhede Gaglianone Ekaterina Klyavlina Elizaveta Kruteleva Olga Ladina Stanislava Postnova Alexandra Rakitina Lina Shevelyova
DIAMONDS
The leading couple	Svetlana Zakharova Jacopo Tissi
Soloists	Antonina Chapkina Anastasia Denisova Arina Denisova Xenia Zhiganshina Mark Chino Klim Efimov Fuad Mamedov Mark Orlov

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ABT has emailed around a video tribute to Stella Abrera who retired gracefully during the pandemic without the benefit of a farewell performance of Giselle. It's always nice to see video clips of Stella, but my goodness, McKenzie sanitized with stinky bleach his mistreatment of this artist to the point where it seemed like he was promoting his own big lie. Let's not forget that this artist was fully recovered and dancing beautifully while McKenzie continued to import guest artists and used his own talented dancers as wallpaper. It was only because Semionova got injured that Stella got her first Giselle at ABT.  The video tried to mix up the timeline and portray that McKenzie awarded her Giselle after her promotion. Pulleeeezze.

We wonder if this video is a warm-up for over-blown others to come.

 

NYCB cancels 1st Winter week & muddles schedule

NYCB has announced that it has cancelled the first week of its Winter Season and withdrawn a number of large-scale ballets (full length Swan Lake, Diamonds).  Yet, they're still proceeding with other large scale works such as DGV.

This is a tremendous disappointment, especially considering today's report in NYT about how well the Met Opera has been able to meet casting dilemmas head-on through the use of understudies and imaginative solutions. That same article points to NYCB's ultra-conservative position that it will shut down performances if as few as three people in the company test positive. NYCB employs more than a thousand people and relies on hundreds of volunteers. A three-person threshold is a bit ridiculous, in our opinion.

Having just enjoyed a second performance of The Music Man which has a cast of over 40 people on stage every night along with a packed orchestra pit, and which doesn't blink an eye at the thought of throwing understudies on stage after their only rehearsal that same day, we have to wonder what NYCB is saving all of its dancers for.

We'll be asking for our money back. Everyone should demand full refunds and go straight to The Music Man. This is the most extraordinary Broadway musical that we've seen in decades. Hugh Jackman is The Master of the Musical -- in total control of the stage and has the audience in the palm of his hand every second. The whole cast is exceptional and happens to include a former NYCB Nutcracker Prince and an ABT-JKO student. The understudies are brilliant. It is such a good time and will make you forget about what you're missing at NYCB.

(Edited to add)

There is presently a January 20th performance on the calendar which is identified as Opening Night and shows a bill of Serenade, After the Rain, and Symphony in C. The site won't allow ticket purchases, however.

If the website is accurate, this would certainly be a welcomed turn of events -- unless of course someone decided to screw the patrons with dynamic pricing -- but my sense from the past few weeks is that NYCB's IT department is kind of like this: