Haglund's Heel

Different Drummer – The Life of Kenneth MacMillan

Observing that this new book is not available through either barnesandnoble.com or amazon.com BUT IS available on amazon's UK site, Haglund informed amazon.com, b&n, and the publisher that " literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the U.S. are waiting for this book."   Literally.  Thousands.  If anyone spots this title in an NYC bookstore, please share the news here.

The Ballet Bag – On the Mayerling Trail

Go immediately to The Ballet Bag to read Emilia's fantastic interview with Edward Watson of the Royal Ballet.  Watson speaks so eloquently about Kenneth MacMillan's choreography, in particular, his preparations for and commitment to the role of Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling:

The most research I did was with Mayerling because Crown Prince Rudolf was a real person and so you have a responsibility to be very honest. I read a lot of books on the subject. Deborah [MacMillan] lent me a book which Kenneth gave her for her birthday which he based the ballet on [The Road to Mayerling]. She lent me her copy so I could find things that he had underlined in there, things that were really important to him. I also had a weekend in Vienna, I went to visit Mayerling and saw the grave. It fascinated me, this ballet has always fascinated me since I was a kid, from having seen the South Bank documentary originally with Lynn Seymour and David Wall. It is one of those ballets that grow on you. The more you see it, the more you want to see it again. Being in Mayerling had an impact on me because it doesn’t come around that often. It wasn’t in the company for about 8 years while I was here.

And this picture by Johan Persson of Watson as Rudolf with his "friend":

Haglund looks forward to any and all coverage that The Ballet Bag will publish on the upcoming symposium: Kenneth MacMillan's Choreographic Imagination & Psychological Insight: A symposium to explore and celebrate MacMillan's creative genius Imperial College London, 8 Nov 2009.  That's this Sunday!

Psychoanalysts, writers, and artists and former artists of The Royal Ballet, including Viviana Durante (an astonishing Mary Vetsera), Edward Watson, Clement Crisp, Wayne Eagling, and Monica Mason are among the participants.

What's it going to take for us to get an ABT Mayerling?

If we wish for it, it will come.

Mayerling: If we wish for it, it will come.

The Movement is building.

The Mayerling Movement.

We've waited long enough. 

Haglund has been crying out for a home team production of Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling for some time.  And now The Movement has crossed over into the next borough where Swan Lake Samba Girl  has raised her voice and joined The Call.

If we wish for it, it will come.

We must prepare.

We shall dispatch our Marcelo Gomes, David Hallberg, Isaac Stappas, and our own Edward Watson: Eric Tamm, to Greece to learn the fine art of using guns and human skulls as sex toys from the great Irek Mukhamedov, perhaps the most frightening and disturbed and sexually-magnetic Rudolf ever to walk our planet - and now the director of the Greek National Opera Ballet.  And we must commence our search for the perfect Mary Vetsera of the Viviana Durante mold. 

Yes, we must prepare.  Because if we wish for it, it will come.  And when it comes, well, yes, we will have asked for it.

 

Buy it here.
 

Royal Ballet Celebrates MacMillan with Mayerling

Just reading this little preview paragraph by Judith Mackrell in The Guardian started Haglund's spine tingling, his limbs shaking, and his breathing, well, heavy:

The Royal opens its new season with a nod to the 80th anniversary of Kenneth MacMillan's birth, reviving the choreographer's 1978 ballet Mayerling. It's a work that's at the core of the MacMillan canon, mixing his gift for large-scale ballet spectacle with his willingness to push the form beyond its comfortable boundaries. Telling the true tale of Prince Rudolf, heir to the Austro- Hungarian Empire, the ballet explores a weak personality warping under the pressure of a dysfunctional family and a paranoid political situation. Rudolf's violent, ambivalent relationships with women are charted by MacMillan in a series of shockingly charged pas de deux, culminating in his death by suicide at the Mayerling hunting lodge, along with his 17-year-old mistress Mary Vetsera. Opening cast is Edward Watson reprising his manic, febrile interpretation of Rudolf and Mara Galeazzi as Vetsera.

What's it going to take to make our home team bring this production to New York?

 

Crazy for Rudolf

While wandering around the Upper West Side in a dark mood, Haglund stopped by Barnes and Noble to browse the music selections. Nothing appealed to him enough to shell out cash he should not spend anyway until he observed on a shelf at eye level, a DVD with a beckoning photo. Irek Mukamedov. Mayerling. Either the Rx for a dark mood or lethal poison - depending on how you take it. Haglund smoothed out the cash for the DVD and then ran with pounding heart three blocks to catch the Express train home.

A glorious theater ballet with depravity and decay, and sex with guns, MacMillan’s Mayerling sucks the breath out of you.

After viewing the DVD, Haglund had two thoughts: 1) a career-defining performance for Mukamedov and 2) the world must not be deprived of seeing portrayals of Crown Prince Rudolf by Marcelo Gomes and David Hallberg.

With all due respect to Lady MacMillan’s view that her late husband’s production is so identified with the Royal Ballet that it would be unfair to allow any other company the rights to perform it, Haglund and others believe that if Sir Kenneth knew of the unique dramatic abilities of Messrs. Gomes and Hallberg, he would want them to dance this work.

We need to make it happen.