Haglund's Heel

observations 10/31

While having just spotted the citizen in the West Village who always marches in the Halloween Parade as the guy from the movie The Birds who is being chased by a flock of black crows with explosive rage disorder, Haglund was somehow reminded that the Bolshoi in Cinema broadcast of La Sylphide will be on Sunday, November 11th at 12:55pm. It will be at all of the usual places in New York. From the promo it looks like the cast will include Daria Khokhlova and Artemy Belyakov. Look for tickets and cinemas here.  [Edited 11/1 to call attention to Irina's comment below regarding the announced casting of Stashkevich and Chudin.]

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There are a few reserved seats left for the Tuesday, November 13 Landmark Cinema's presentation of the Royal Ballet's Mayerling starring Gary Avis, Sarah Lamb, Steven McRae, Kristen McNally, Laura Morera, James Hay, Nehemiah Kish, Meaghan Grace Hinkis, Mayara Magri. Do not miss this. Tickets here.

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Only three weeks until the start of NYCB's Nutcracker Season and only a couple of weeks until the first casting is announced. Let's hope that some of our corps favorites are over their injuries and back on stage to dance along side the wonderful brand new soloists.

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And lastly, we're excitedly ticking off the nanoseconds until the Balanchine Celebration begins tonight at New York City Center. Hopping up & down excited, we are!

 

Mayerling at Landmark Cinema 11/13

It. is. here.

Kenneth MacMillan's masterpiece.

MAYERLING.

The Royal Ballet. 

Cast: Gary Avis, Sarah Lamb, Steven McRae, Kristen McNally, Laura Morera, James Hay, Nehemiah Kish, Meaghan Grace Hinkis, Mayara Magri

Tuesday, November 13 @ 7PM

Landmark Theatre Cinema at 657 West 57th Street.

Reserve your seats here.

Your nerve endings will never be the same again. Bring drink money. You'll need it at intermission.

 

 

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

It. is. happening.

The Landmark Cinema folks said that they could not transmit the Royal Ballet's Mayerling live on October 15th, but they will be showing a taped version of the live performance in early November. Haglund will watch the Landmark calendar carefully and will immediately report when it appears.

The cast that the Royal Ballet has listed for filming on October 15th is: McRae, Lamb, Morera, McNally, Hinkis, Magri, Hay, Avis, and Kish. 

Mayerling... Oh, Mayerling...

 

 

observations 7-29

Landmark Cinema on W. 57th St. is going to screen a 3rd showing of the Royal Ballet's Swan Lake but it will be on Tuesday, August 7th at 7PM in one of their larger cinemas. Reserve here. The other two showings will be this coming Tuesday and are sold out!

It would seem that we've got their attention, folks! Let's start the chant right now for October 15 when the Royal Ballet streams MAYERLING!

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

Mayerling.

Please, Mayerling.

 

It's a Field of Dreams moment on the blog this morning

The Royal Ballet is coming to the U.S. in July of 2019. So far we know that the company will be at the L.A. Music Center from July 5-7 with – trumpets, puleeezze! – MAYERLING! Hopefully they'll send MacMillan's masterpiece eastward, too. After all, L.A. isn't the only big city in this country that can't get enough drugs, guns and illicit sex.

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

[Ray. People will come, Ray. They'll come to Iowa L.A. for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your the L.A. Music Center's door as innocent as children, longing for the past. "Of course, we won't mind if you look around", you'll say. "It's only $20 $200 per person". They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it, for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers into the theater; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect July afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines in the orchestra level, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game Mayerling and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces.]

[The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball ballet. American Ballet Theatre has been rolled over by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball the Royal Ballet has marked the time. This field company, this game ballet; it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh…people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.]

 

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

and it IS!!! (Just not to NY.) Our nearly decade long campaign of wishful thinking is about to pay off.

Houston Ballet will become the first American company to present Kenneth MacMillan's masterpiece Mayerling. Oh my gosh. Imagine our Jared Matthews as the crazed drug/sex addict Crown Prince Rudolf. Jared has always done "depraved" so well. And imagine our Yuriko as Mary Vetsera or Princess Stephanie.

September 21st to October 1st are the dates.  Read about the rest of HB's fabulous 2017-2018 season here.

 

observations 9/16

When the Paul Taylor Dance Company celebrates its 60th anniversary with The Diamond Gala on Thursday, March 13, 2014 at Lincoln Center, the program will include Cloven Kingdom, Sunset, Piazzolla Caldera, and an excerpt from Airs danced by NYCB's Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild.  Here is a brief YouTube clip of these two dancers performing Airs at the Vail Dance Festival over the summer.  Tickets to all PTDC performances at Lincoln Center are on sale right now!  A 25% discount on multiple shows is in play. Black Tuesday, Esplanade, and those over-heated bugs from Gossamer Gallants should not be missed.

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Speaking of bugs, the very sticky Gregor Samsa will be creeping and crawling around the Joyce Theater for 13 days beginning tomorrow when the Royal Ballet's Edward Watson opens in Metamorphosis, the Kafka-based choreographic creation of Arthur Pita.  To celebrate the occasion, the Rocking Horse Cafe across the street will be serving up Bugs on a Pita. Free. Various sauces, extra. No, not reallllly.

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Edward Villella has choreographed an ice skating ballet for Ice Theatre of New York's performances at Chelsea Piers on October 24, 25, and 26.  The Gala on October 25th will honor legendary skater Kurt Browning and his lovely wife, the National Ballet of Canada ballerina Sonia Rodriguez.  More info here. After the show, you might want to swing by the Chelsea Piers Golf Club's driving range which is on the next pier and smack a few balls.  The range is open for business until 11pm.

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The Joffrey Ballet has received a $500,000 challenge grant from the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation for the sole purpose of launching an endowment for the creation, production, and performance of FULL-LENGTH STORY BALLETS.  Wow, that puts in high gear an engine that has been slowly but steadily revving up for the past decade or so as the Joffrey acquired more story ballets – Cinderella, The Merry Widow, Romeo and Juliet – to go with its rich repertoire of original and ecclectic works.

You know, the Joffrey Ballet could find itself once again on the cover of Time Magazine and on the covers of a lot of other magazines if it mounted the first U.S. production of Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling.  The company would do a phenomenal job. It's in their genes to do that type of work, and they have a long history of doing things first in ballet. Joffrey should seduce Edward Watson to bring his special creepy brand of Crown Prince Rudolf to the Chicago stage. The city would eat it up. Too bad Nureyev was already 40-years-old when MacMillan created his masterpiece.  Rudy probably would have loved to put his own mark on that bad-boy crown prince and would be honored to have a grant in his name support the production. Haglund would take a whole truckload of folks from New York to Chicago to see Mayerling if the Joffrey presented it.  Better yet, Joffrey should bring it to Lincoln Center. 

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

 

Mayerling – not here

From London's Daily Express today:

WHEN it comes to exploring the darkest corners of the psyche through ballet there is nobody to touch the late choreographer Kenneth MacMillan. And they don't come much darker than Mayerling.

Based on the true, if veiled, account of the tragedy that befell Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary and his semi-psychotic son, Crown Prince Rudolf, who ended up shooting his 17-year-old mistress before turning his gun on himself, it is replete with sex, death, guns, drugs and politics.

Not the usual subjects for dance but Mayerling isn't your usual ballet.

MacMillan's last great narrative work goes far beyond the customary tropes of classical dance to produce one of the defining masterpieces of 20th century ballet and remains one of the crowning glories of The Royal Ballet.

. . .

If the narrative complexity requires foreknowledge of the story, it is a small price to pay for an evening that goes way beyond polite appreciation.

A rare and precious night of dark alchemy.

Many believe that Mayerling is one of MacMillan's "greatest narrative works" but ABT has never performed it despite having an embarrassment of wealth of dramatic heavy-weights who could deliver Crown Prince Rudolf's character with such complex darkness that it would make the ballet one of ABT's "crowning glories," too.  The company completely wasted the opportunity to have one of MacMillan's hand-picked original cast members pass down her principal role and historical knowledge to ABT's dancers when it had Georgina Parkinson as its ballet mistress.  Today, in its ranks, it's lucky enough to have a dancer who has actually prepared and performed the principal role of Princess Stephanie in the Royal Ballet's production of Mayerling, but that is going to waste, too.

Lady Deborah MacMillan wants ABT to perform Sir Kenneth's masterpiece, but Kevin McKenzie doesn't think the New York audience would understand the story.  No doubt, he's also afraid of critic Alastair Macaulay's certain scathing reviews, because Macaulay is on record as despising Mayerling and carries a disrespectful attitude toward most of MacMillan's work. 

We're missing a lot by not seeing this fine work performed by an American company.  Someone needs to do it:  ABT, Joffrey, San Francisco Ballet. 

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

Mayerling

 

Blimey! Marcelo the Magnificent @ the RB

Our very own Marcelo Gomes is off to London next week to fill in at a performance of Ashton's The Dream at The Royal Ballet on Thursday, Feb. 9th. 

Hopefully, while he's there, Dame Monica will introduce him to a little bit of Mayerling - just enough to whet the appetite - it won't take much.  Then, he could come home and perform the charming Wedding Night PdD with our little Stephanie-in-Residence, Gemma Bond, on Opening Night of ABT's Met Season.   YE-E-E-E-O-O-O-W!!!!

Dearest Dame Monica and Dearest Lady Deborah, pul-l-l-e-e-a-a-z-ze don't let this opportunity slip by!

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

 

Enuff a'ready with the snow !

Are the guys in the Weather Modification Office drinking, or what?

This would be such a good day to stay in and watch the new Mayerling DVD with Edward Watson as Crown Prince Rudolf, but alas, that's one more thing we can't yet get in the U.S. along with the MacMillan bio by Jann Parry.

If we wish for it, it will come.