Haglund's Heel

Forward looking

It seems that Haglund has tickets for every performance of the first week of NYCB's winter season. In fact, at least eleven times during the first two weeks he’ll be ensconced in his favorite haunt with his eyeglasses freshly wiped, ears swabbed, and hands ready to burn new clapping blisters.

NYCB is not a company “on hold” or a company carefully walking across broken glass. As the new season begins, it is a company that is pushing its dancing and its best choreographic product to the forefront for everyone to focus on. Jon Stafford’s steady leadership through a turbulent year has been outstanding, and the company deserves to own the benefit of his serious and energetic focus permanently. The company doesn’t need another up-ending as it regains its stride so that Sarah Jessica can talk high heels with a token female director on Hulu TV.

Young artists are growing and the company as a whole is blossoming beautifully, not pushing up daisies as some would have you think. Unfortunately, the media suffers from an attention deficit disorder which prevents it from focusing on what takes place on the stage. At least now that the NYT has eased out its pretentious critic whose own troubling back story and lack of technical expertise in ballet were too long ignored, perhaps it will hire someone who focuses on art and performance qualities as opposed to promoting obnoxious socio-political agendas or engaging in Page Six style titillation and libel. 

The highlight of highlights of NYCB’s first week may be the return of Balanchine’s grand and glorious Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2.  We don’t mean to put any pressure on the solo pianist for that week, but this is an extraordinary recording from 30 years ago by pianist Peter Donohoe with the Bournemouth Symphony that brings out details in the music not always heard. Take a listen and don’t miss this ballet during the first two weeks of the season.

 

 

Come on, NYCB, make our hands burn from clapping.

 

NYCB Nutcracker 12/9 & 12/16 eves

The big, fat Rat King waddled out waving his gilded sword and then paused to pat down his lacquered helmet of baby-poop-yellow hair. 

 

He hollered, “I’m going to shut this whole place down, and I’ll be proud to do it. What, Bunny? What did you whimper, you fake little cottontail? How did you ever get into my country?” 

 

The Bunny muttered under his breath, “We’re having ourselves another tinkle contest with the skunk. Every Christmastime we have to have this same fight with him. It’s like a manhood thing with him, as if manhood could ever be associated with him.” 

 

The Rat King stomped and bellowed and belched smoke. Out of nowhere came the Nutcracker Prince who bravely jumped on the Rat King’s back and began pulling out strands of yellow hair from his head. 

 

The Rat King roared, “Don’t touch my hair!” and then threw the Nutcracker Prince to the ground. “Where are my rat friends when I need help?! Are they all flipping and ratting on me now?"

 

Suddenly, the heroic Bunny raced toward the Rat King and grabbed his tail. “I’ve got your manhood! I’ve got your manhood!” He yanked the Rat King’s tail and gave it a bite before hippity-hopping back to his 54% renovated house. While the Rat King stroked his sore manhood, the Nutcracker Prince skewered him in the paunch with his sword and screamed, “Shutdown shmutdown. $15 federal minimum wage for your undocumented hotel maids is coming, RK, along with a climate change that you never imagined!” The Rat King’s medics rushed onto the scene, formed a protective wall around their leader, and carried him off to his Fox hole.  

 

A calming snow began to fall about the land while the soothing notes of some of the most beautiful music ever heard on earth began to heal our time.

And so it went these last two Sunday evenings and probably all those in between. New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker is the major event of the holiday season in this city. It’s as traditional as it gets. It’s as charming as ever. And it continues year after year to enable families to create lifelong joyous memories that will be more deeply imprinted than any impressions forced by our turbulent times. 

 

On December 9th, Lauren King and Daniel Applebaum danced the roles of Sugarplum Fairy and Her Cavalier with the rich sweetness of the Wintermint cake from Baked in Brooklyn. (You may as well slap it right on the hips – the cake, that is.) This was Applebaum’s debut in the role and his most significant opportunity to date. His lines were princely and confident; his partnering attentive. There seemed to be an issue with upper body strength that made some of the lifts less glorious than they could have been, but overall, his pairing with the festive, ebullient Lauren was a stunning combo. Like many of the NYCB men, Appebaum’s turns a la seconde seem not to be high on the list of priorities all year around; so, they suffer come December. Lauren’s dancing continues to grow in authority and clarity. Newly noted this year was an expansiveness in everything from simple developpe steps to pique to her grand saut de chat. At times, however, arms overhead with raised shoulders looked more like () than ( ) - a habit possessed by other NYCB dancers as well.  

 

Yesterday, Erica Pereira and Anthony Huxley were confection-perfection as the Sugarplum Fairy and Her Cavalier. Without a doubt, the roles that require faultless, Waterford quality classical technique dispensed with calm and joy are Erica’s best roles. Haglund is going to be soooooo disappointed if he can’t watch Erica as Aurora in this year’s Sleeping Beauty run — opposite Huxley, of course. The problem with Erica has always been her small size. Dancing on stage in front of a corps of NYCB amazonians can make her seem like The Bunny in Nutcracker. But when on stage yesterday in front of a semi-circle of little angels while performing choreography that invited her to dance downstage, Erica was a revelation. Exquisite arabesque shapes held gloriously on balance, musical pirouettes that ended perfectly, floating pas de chat, complete confidence in her partner during jumps and promenades – it all boiled down to making Haglund open up his wallet for another Nutcracker performance next week. This time, Erica will dance opposite Daniel Ulbricht in his NYCB debut, and this surely will be a treat.

 

Huxley's variation as The Cavalier was brief but nevertheless superb. It even seemed like he had been working on his turns a la seconde. Perhaps Haglund’s eyes deceived him, but it looked like Huxley threw in a 3rd revolution during those turns. A partner of such elegance and noble bearing should not be denied the role of Prince Désiré. Haglund is going to be sooooo disappointed if he can’t watch Huxley as Prince Désiré –– opposite Erica Periera, of course.

 

On December 9th, Brittany Pollack danced a scrupulous, light and lightning fast Dewdrop while avoiding the ostentatious flashing of power that spoils the performances of some other Dewdrops. Her artistry is perhaps the most mature and best calibrated among the women soloists. Anthony Huxley’s Candy Cane had the kids bouncing in their seats and their parents dropping their jaws. Clara Miller showed the type of poise and decisiveness in her Coffee solo that we don’t generally see in her corps work. For a while now, we’ve been noticing her long lines and lovely feet in the corps along side Christina Clark, Isabella LaFreniere, and Emily Kikta but frequently sensed uncertainty in her execution. Hopefully, her fine work in Coffee will make that uncertainty a thing of the past. 

 

Yesterday, Miriam Miller’s Dewdrop showed that she’s made great progress in the areas of strength and confidence but still has major work to do on stability and stamina. As the conductor gave her extra room in the music to labor through the last turn variation, it seemed that it might have been easier for her to accomplish it through a faster tempo. Oftentimes, when faced with a quick tempo, the body automatically rises to the challenge and makes the steps less perilous. Metaphorically, a too slow tempo can mean the difference between separately pronouncing each syllable of a word and pronouncing the word itself. Roman Mejia’s Candy Cane smoothly cruised through his choreography until the final double-spin of the hoop which got stuck at the front of his feet. Emilie Gerrity's Coffee was smoldering and mysterious.

 

Among the cast of children, Athan Sporek’s Little Prince gave a huge performance. The kid already has tidy lines and good feet and can act up a storm. His miming sequence in Act II was as good as Lance Chantiles-Wertz's from a decade ago. (Lance has been the high barre for a long time.)

 

We don’t have much to complain about. Oh, the Marzipan Shepherdesses needed some primping; there’s a light out in the big chandelier; and … why yesterday was a water bottle $4.50 on the promenade but $3 in the 4th ring? Same water. Time for a concession confession from someone.

 

The H.H. Pump Bump Award, a diamond winged stiletto in Rose gold, is bestowed upon Erica Pereira, perhaps the most undervalued ballerina at NYCB. We’re going to be sooooo disappointed if we can’t watch her Aurora next year.

 

 

 

 

New York City Center Balanchine: The City Center Years 10/31

Halloween is one of those unofficial holidays when people pretend to be something they are not. It’s very big in New York – as is St. Patrick’s Day when everyone pretends to be Irish in order to celebrate the Irish. Nobody complains to Horst McSchmidt that he's not really Irish on March 17th; it wouldn’t be in the spirit of the holiday to do so. Besides, Horst just might know a little more about what it means to be Irish than those with authentic green in the family tree.

This all really doesn’t have much to do with last night's opening performance of New York City Center’s grand celebration of Balanchine in conjunction with its marking of the center’s 75th anniversary – well maybe a little. 

Balanchine and the New York City Ballet were in residence at New York City Center from 1948 until the company moved to Lincoln Center in 1964. Many of his most famous works were created during this period. Almost immediately following NYCB’s move to Lincoln Center, the Joffrey Ballet moved into City Center where they stayed for the next 30 years before decamping to Chicago. While it doesn’t seem that City Center, which is run by former Joffrey Ballet dancer Arlene Shuler, will be offering many remembrances or postcards from the past Joffrey residency (other than a Studio 5 discussion in April), the Joffrey Ballet will make a pilgrimage back to the old Mecca Temple to perform Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments three times over this weekend. 

Getting back to last night’s opening performance which included some spectacular dancing within the overall good performances - it also included spectacular music. The New York City Ballet Orchestra, which is playing for all performances, was energetically conducted by Andrews Sill and Clotilde Otranto. 

Miami City Ballet presented a neat, academic Serenade except that in addition to the two scheduled falls in the choreography, there was a third unscheduled fall. Everyone seemed okay afterward, though.  Much of the corps de ballet danced with the joyless, sometimes nervous sternness that Haglund recalls in Lourdes Lopez’s own dancing many years ago. Simone Messmer as the Waltz Girl danced exquisitely and forcefully, but had a demeanor of Myrta throughout much of the ballet. Emily Bromberg’s Dark Angel possessed just the spirit that one wants to see in the role. Her stationary rotating arabesques on pointe began to turn immediately upon hitting the pique arabesque which was lovely to see. Jeanette Delgado as the Russian Girl was the soul of this Serenade. It seemed like she simply could not contain her explosive energy or stop herself from devouring every inch of the stage. She danced as though she dearly wanted to jeté over the orchestra pit and into the audience.

The Mariinsky Ballet’s Viktoria Tereshkina and Kimin Kim gave a knock-out performance of the Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux at high speed. We simply don’t have anyone in either of New York’s companies who can dance like that. Sad to say, but true. Of course, the Mariinsky doesn’t have a lot of other dancers who can fly like Kim or charge with the grace of Tereshkina, either. The Mariinsky brought their best for this — no surprise there. Haglund loved their every step, their musicality, their respectful rapport, and the joy with which they expertly and cleanly dispatched the choreography. The speed was easy for them. Kim’s grand allegro was huge, but it was also beautifully lined and stretched. Tereshkina has always been a goddess in everything that she does. It was wonderful to see just how warm she can be and how she reached out to establish a rapport with the audience.

The Royal Ballet presented Tarantella danced by Anna Rose O’Sullivan and Marcelino Sambé. We can’t say that there was anything wrong in what was danced, but it did seem lacking in flavor. We’re not saying that it was bland, because it wasn’t. It just needed some more spice.

New York City Ballet closed the program by ripping through Symphony in C. (Much thanks to Conductor Otranto for keeping everyone aflight.) It was a very good performance, but not close to the best that we have seen these principals dance. Tiler Peck, Sara Mearns, and Ashley Bouder seemed sluggish like they were coming back from a few days off. Lauren King in the Fourth Movement was brilliant - so absolutely ready and eager for every step. In her few years as a soloist, she has developed gorgeously and is now so ready for much bigger leading role challenges. We remember when she was first promoted how her legs and feet needed so much work. She put the work in and it has paid off beautifully. We note that the brand new soloist Claire Kretzschmar now faces challenges very similar to those that Lauren had, and we are excited to watch her develop and improve, too.

The men in Symphony in C (Tyler Angle, Jared Angle, Anthony Huxley and Taylor Stanley) came fully prepared to impress. And they did. But so did demi-soloists Aaron Sanz, Daniel Applebaum, and Peter Walker whose long, clean leg lines and powerful jumps had greater impact. Just want to remark how beautiful those tall corps women were and how impressive their speed was. We’ve been watching Miriam Miller pick up speed like she was skipping gears this year. In Symphony in C and earlier this year in Concerto Barocco, she kept up with the 5-footers without reducing her range. And hopefully, we will soon see a lot more of that Sequoia with long graceful limbs, Christina Clark. How about a Dewdrop at the end of the month? 

Our H.H. Pump Bump Award, Louboutin's studded metallic leather stiletto, is bestowed upon Viktoria Tereshkina and Kimin Kim for bringing the daring, the energy, the preciseness, and the elegance to Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux.

 

 

 

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!

 

More hypocrisy from the NYT Here we go again...

Two NYT stringers are wailing and moaning like scorned women who want attention and screaming how the world should be while possessing no facts, no evidence, no journalistic standard of justification, nothing of substantive weight to back up what they are saying. Nothing. In fact, they promote known falsehoods and stereotypes in order to further their theories.

Honestly, why don’t they focus on cleaning up their own house that includes critic Alastair Macaulay who was arrested and jailed for stalking little children on a beach with his camera. Oh, wait, he is finally being swept out the door. We’ll have to watch to see if this December he takes one last opportunity to textually luxuriate over the “warm bodies” of the little children in Nutcracker, perhaps with 100-letter words that we will be able to analyze for decades to come. If the two NYT stringers were to apply their arguments about the ballet culture to the NYT culture department, we’d be hearing how the whole staff is comprised of sexual deviants who prey on children. And then there is the NYT reporter Glenn Thrush, who admitted his sexual harassment and misconduct. What did the NYT do? Poo-pooed it all as insignificant and sent him off to sensitivity training. If these two stringers were to apply their arguments about the ballet culture to the NYT news staff, we’d be hearing how the NYT staff is inundated with sexual predators who are allowed by management to do what they want to women.

 

The NYT doesn’t much like the American judicial system when it inconveniently gets in the way of a good story – true story or not. So it tries to sweep it aside and hard-sell its own conclusions to the public. But let’s be clear, really clear: To date, no sexual harassment, abuse, or misconduct has been proven to have occurred at New York City Ballet or allowed/promoted by the NYCB culture. None by Peter Martins. None by Amar Ramasar. None by Zachary Catazaro. And none by Chase Finlay. No injury has been proven by anyone who has come forward with claims in the past year. NONE. Unfortunately, the NYT sees no money to be made in patiently waiting for NYCB and the American judicial system to work through the details to find a conclusion. Besides, it might not be the conclusion that will get the NYT the most clicks on its website. Therefore, the matter needs to be fueled and fanned by NYT stringers who unprofessionally and unethically portray all the accusations as being true when they have no facts, no evidence, no journalistic standard of justification, nothing of substantive weight to back up what they are saying. 

 

There is no basis for attacking ballet culture. There is no basis for claiming that ballet directors are usually men, that women are routinely addressed as "girls" and that this is sure proof to support an assumption that the culture is unfair or dangerous to women. There is no basis for demanding that the ballet culture be changed. None at all. These two NYT stringers who are known for being woefully short on ballet knowledge, are even further short-changed on knowledge about how the world should be run – any part of the world, let alone a part with which they are wholly unfamiliar. Neither of them possesses credential .01 for saying how the ballet world should be run. Neither of them even has a full-time job at NYT.

 

Based on the information made available to the public thus far, the terminations of Amar Ramasar and Zachary Catazaro appear unjustified. Certainly there was no justification for NYCB making a huge public statement about the firings that smeared them to such an extent that it likely destroyed their livelihoods. Whether some NYCB dancers now claim that they would be uncomfortable working with Ramasar and Catazaro should have no bearing on whether the two dancers are reinstated with back pay. Every real world company that has adults working in it has people toiling together who don’t like one another, don’t trust one another, and wish they didn’t have to work with one another. NYCB’s uncomfortable dancers should grow up and take a cue from the real world.

 

NYCB has plenty of dancers who over the years have unsuccessfully romantically pursued Ramasar, Catazaro, and Finlay. One noisy feminist principal, who as a corps dancer reportedly snuck into the boys dorm at SAB to enjoy one of the male students, was simply banned from the dorm for life. If that happened today, the NYT might be claiming statutory rape and blaming it on the company culture. A NYCB dancer who allegedly had her own sexting-in-bed issues with Chase Finlay optionally chose to wail loudly and vaguely on Instagram and then rely on her friends and colleagues to disseminate the details to everyone around her. She, like Alexandra Waterbury, didn’t go to the police. Perhaps a police report would have prevented the incidents that Waterbury is alleging. Perhaps a police report by Waterbury might prevent future alleged victims. Are women really standing together on this issue of unwanted photography or is it business as usual? 

 

And what about that NYT culture? When is it going to take the high road and get rid of its predators instead of wasting time wagging its tiny, tiny finger at NYCB?

NYCB 10/14 Joaquin de Luz – From one dream to the next

When you can dance for a quarter of century and finish your career in white tights performing in a technically exposing role like Theme and Variations in which you can still do a series of double tours with pirouettes straight down the white dotted vertical line on the stage floor while landing fifth after fifth after fifth position, you are either lucky or blessed or brilliant – more probably all three. My goodness, did Joaquin de Luz ever make us sorry to see him go on Sunday afternoon.

 

But what a celebration it was of fine dancing, of Spanish heritage, and of a dancer who literally went from one dream to the next dream when in 2003 he left ABT after dancing Puck in Ashton’s The Dream and stepped right into New York City Ballet's A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Oberon (following a compulsory debut in Nutcracker). Where will his dreams take him next? We don’t know. We had hoped to see him on stage in NY City Center’s A Chorus Line with perhaps Tiler Peck, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. However, there is the upcoming High Button Shoes that Jerome Robbins choreographed and will be presented in May by NY City Center Encores! He would be fabulous in that, just fabulous.

 

On Sunday, Theme and Variations looked in top form. In addition to Joaquin’s technical mastery and exemplary execution, there was Tiler Peck’s glorious musical phrasing and equal determination to be perfect. The demi-soloists and corps were in top form as well. Among them was Aaron Sanz, only hours before having been appointed a soloist, dancing with rocket boosters firing under him. The pride was close to chest-beating, “He & I – from Madrid!” The up and coming Spaniard might also one day knock our socks off in Theme and Variations. Let’s hope that he invests 30 seconds each and every day practicing that double tour/pirouette sequence so that he will be ready to carry the torch.

 

During the celebration at the end of the performance, out came a slew of colleagues and people who were important to Joaquin throughout his career including, of course, more Spaniards. Gonzalo Garcia ran out waving the red and yellow Bandera de España, and the two performed an impromptu bull fight with Joaquin as the matador and Gonzalo as the bull. Victor Ullate, Joaquin’s first director when he danced in Ullate’s company at the age of 16, arrived on stage with the vigor of a man decades younger. It doesn’t appear that many in the audience recognized him even though his very famous school produced Joaquin, Angel Corella, Tamara Rojo, Luciá Lacarra, and Carlos Lopez, the former ABT soloist who also arrived on stage to congratulate Joaquin. What a touch of class it was to invite orthopedic specialist Phillip Bauman (probably not a Spaniard except for perhaps on Sunday) to also appear on stage; where in the last decade would Joaquin’s career have abruptly ended without him? And finally Joaquin’s dancing mother arrived in the pink — literally. The two of them festively swirled around one another to the snapping of cameras from all sides. Such a joyous celebration.

 

We salute Joaquin de Luz – always one of our favorites for more than 20 years regardless on which side of Lincoln Center he danced. We look forward to what ever he dreams up next.

 

NYCB – stars rising

Interim leader Jon Stafford announced this afternoon that Joseph Gordon has been promoted to principal dancer and that Daniel Applebaum, Harrison Coll, Claire Kretzschmar, Aaron Sanz, Sebastian Villarini-Velez and Peter Walker have been promoted to soloists. All excellent choices. We love all of these dancers. Every one of them delivers 1000% when they hit the stage. Congratulations to all!

Now – could we please see about getting our other favorite ballerinas in the corps off the disabled list and back on track? We old folks don't have a whole lotta time to waste while these ballerinas dilly-dally around in ortho boots and the like. Let's go let's go let's go. On stage.

And could NYCB just name Stafford permanently to his post so the obnoxious media can find something new to obsess over – like the game-changing importance of Taylor Swift's and Kanye West's political endorsements and, of course, the hidden message in each item of Melania's wardrobe.

 

 

NYCB 10/10 – Getting back to big house ballet

New York City Ballet returned to “big house ballet” on Wednesday evening. The large (paying) crowd was enthusiastic about the program’s three masterpieces: Balanchine’s Prodigal Son sandwiched between Robbins’ Fancy Free and West Side Story Suite.

Fancy Free, which was originally made for American Ballet Theatre in 1944 and first danced by NYCB in 1980, is one of the few ballets that ABT and NYCB share regularly, and it is always interesting to watch the companies’ collective casts to see which company currently fields the strongest performances. Opinions goes back and forth with, perhaps, a consensus being that a contemporary high bar was set by Carreno, Corella, and Stiefel at ABT a long, long time ago. These days, the scales tend to tip in favor of NYCB. Last spring its newly minted cast of Roman Mejia, Harrison Coll, and Sebastian Villarini-Velez knocked our white Dixie cup hats off. Villarini-Velez, who is riding atop a huge wave of successes this season, stepped into last night’s performance as a substitute for Sean Suozzi. He along with Daniel Ulbricht, Joseph Gordon, Mary Elizabeth Sell, Sterling Hyltin, Miriam Miller, and Giovanni Villalobos delivered the heat of a summer night in New York and the charm of unsophisticated sailors meeting up with the experienced city girls for a night on the town and a little bit of fun as a distraction from the uncertainty of the future. Terrific performances from one and all.

 

Saturday evening Joaquin de Luz will dance in Fancy Free for the last time on the eve before his retirement. Joaquin is among a small handful of artists who danced in Fancy Free as a member of both ABT and NYCB. Robert LaFosse and Mikhail Baryshnikov are the only other ones that come to mind although dancers have guested on occasion – Marcelo Gomes made an appearance in NYCB’s Fancy Free ten years ago and there have been collaborations among artists of both companies at festivals and on small tours. Saturday night is not to be missed.

 

In last evening’s performance, Joaquin and Maria Kowroski, with 84 years between them, burned through the 89-year-old Prodigal Son with the glow of blue flames. This was a towering performance from both artists. Maria, in top slinking predator form, chased after Joaquin’s Son like a python chasing after prey, eventually wrapping herself around him with a python’s smothering satisfaction. Joaquin’s Son – wayward, privileged, petulant, impertinent – was asking for trouble from the outset. He found plenty of it in Maria’s Siren whose control over her trailing red cape symbolized her complete control over her realm of grotesque little beings and the debauchery that the Son aspired to experience. Joaquin’s Son’s repentance and the slow, painful walk on his knees toward his father, portrayed perfectly by Ask la Cour, revealed a vulnerability and desperation not present in any other roles danced by him during his long, storied career. What a pity we could not have seen him as Albrecht.

 

West Side Story Suite closed out the evening with such powerful dancing that it looked like a do-or-die audition for many of the performers. How many of them will show up in Spielberg’s remake of the movie which was originally choreographed/directed by Jerome Robbins? Georgina Pazcoguin, certainly. She’s been dancing the role of Anita for ten years. It’s hers. She owns it. There’s no one better. Everyone in the cast seems to have been working on their singing since last time. They should keep working - every day. It was much improved, but not good enough for the movies. Peter Walker, another corpsman who has bolted to the forefront and is now someone who we look for in the castings, performed the role of Tony. There’s lots of depth and color to whatever he puts on stage. Justin Peck as Bernardo, a mostly walking around role: No, just no. His stage days were over before they ever got past meh. Andrew Veyette is past his Leader of the Jets years. He has been minimally convincing in the past, but no longer.  Brittany Pollack made a sparkling debut in the singing/dancing role of Rosalia, and Mimi Staker met the typecasting requirements for Maria and danced charmingly. We need to see more of her in some taxing pointe roles. It was encouraging to see Ashley Hod back in the lineup. She has been missed during her very long injury rehab.

 

Our H.H. Pump Bump Award, a diamond encrusted gold stiletto which was introduced in Dubai last month as costing $17 million for the pair, is bestowed upon Joaquin de Luz and Maria Kowroski for their pure gold performances in Prodigal Son:

 

 

NYCB Sat 9/29 Mat & Eve Huxley in La Sylphide – As if to the manner born

On Saturday evening, Anthony Huxley returned to the role of James in La Sylphide, which in 2015 vaulted him to his appointment as principal dancer along with his partner at the time, Lauren Lovette. That New Yorkers have had the privilege of seeing both Huxley and Herman Cornejo (across the way) dance this role in recent years is one of those blessings for which balletomanes will be eternally grateful. Huxley's dancing and theatrical interpretation were brilliant. He carried himself in true Bournonville fashion throughout the evening as though he had been born to it. His allegro cut across the stage with the sharpness and accuracy of a Boker Gorm chef knife. (Gorm was the first Danish king.) His dramatic timing was acutely musical. His fascination and obsession with the Sylph were totally convincing. Every aspect of his performance needs to be praised including his partnering which on this evening was everything one could ask for.

In the evening Ashley Bouder’s enjoyable Sylph was more of an earthen tease than Sterling Hyltin’s ethereal sprite at the Saturday matinee opposite Joaquin de Luz’s handsome, amusing James. Ashley was quick to seize on potential balances, but they were static showstoppers as opposed to the breathing, floating balances that were present in Sterling’s performance. 

 

Marika Anderson gave an outsized performance as Madge in both performances on Saturday. Her witch was unpredictable and strangely endearing.

 

Lauren’s King’s Effie in the matinee was a sparkling lass whose wide-eyed naiveté, easy smile, and bold dramatics allowed her to hold her own against the uninhibited theatrics of de Luz and Daniel Ulbricht as Gurn, James’ rival for Effie. Gurn’s one grand allegro variation in Act I is less than a minute long but punishingly slow to elicit maximum height and distance of jumps. Ulbricht made them seem effortless. In the evening, Harrison Ball’s Gurn variation looked like a forerunner to what could be his James during the next run of La Sylphide. What a pleasure it was to see that Ball can deliver comedy; we’re so used to his serious expression that borders on grim that this sudden change made us see him as someone with more wide-ranging possibilities on the stage. His Effie in the evening was Megan LeCrone. She, too, stepped out of her ultra-serious default expression to create a warm and somewhat daffy character.

 

But for the color palette chosen for the costumes, this is a handsome production staged lovingly by Peter Martins with the assistance of Petrusjka Broholm in 2015. Ms. Broholm, a Bournonville expert who also stages Martins' works and Alexei Ratmansky’s works on other companies around the world, has recently joined ABT as a teacher in the school and as the ballet mistress for the ABT Studio Company directed by Sascha Radetsky. 

 

La Sylphide was the closing piece on a program that included Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, Justin Peck’s Easy, and Christopher Wheeldon’s Carousel [A Dance].

 

Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle led Allegro Brillante at the matinee with success but without the brilliance implied in the title. It’s not a good fit for Sara’s strengths; trying to force the ballet to fit her is the wrong approach. Maybe if the music were the big symphony that Tchaikovsky originally intended it to be before discarding the symphonic form to focus on it as a concerto, it would be grand enough to accommodate Sara’s very big and intense style of movement. But it’s a concerto; a quick, at times delicate concerto that requires delicacy and lightness in the ballerina. 

 

On Saturday evening, Tiler Peck, who is now this ballet’s foremost interpreter, danced with a debuting Roman Mejia, a corps member for less than a year. An obvious talent of the allegro persuasion, Roman is also height disadvantaged and leg length disadvantaged. When he bolted onto the stage leading a squadron of medium and tall, lean, long-legged men (Andrew Scordato, Aaron Sanz, Daniel Applebaum, Devin Alberda), he looked like a fierce little Napoleon with major Latino flair. Charming, yes. Big arabesque saute, yes. Balletic leg lines either en l’air or à terre, nuh uh. Roman was exciting and he was excited — so much so that he nearly dumped Tiler to the Marley and had a few other mishaps. We’ve helped bolster up many danseurs as they brought their partnering skills up to speed, and we’ll hold up Roman, too. But we have to see lines if he is going to dance in ballets such as Allegro Brilliante. 

 

Tiler was a very good sport in all of this — kind of like the mother cat who took her kitten’s clumsiness all in stride. Hopefully, between Saturday and their next performance on Wednesday, she will have grabbed that kitten by the scruff of the neck and taken him somewhere for a little cleanup.

 

There’s not much to say about Peck’s Easy which is set to Leonard Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs. It’s trivial, boring, and borrows too much from Robbins. The audience wasn't enthused enough on Saturday afternoon to even bring the dancers to the front of the curtain for bows. 

 

Wheeldon’s Carousel [A Dance] is inferior to the piece that Kenneth MacMillan made and not engaging without voices singing “If I Loved You”. Tiler Peck in the afternoon and Lauren Lovette in the evening stamped the choreography with their own beautiful and individual nuanced interpretations. Tyler Angle was a superb partner and had both a softness and the toughness of a carnival barker. 

 

The H.H. Pump Bump Award, a gold party stiletto by Danish designer Nanna Liv, is bestowed upon Anthony Huxley for the beauty of his Bournonville in La Sylphide.

 

 

 

 

 

Like a lame Carson jokeHow bad was it?!

It was so bad that the Citizen App on Haglund's phone sent him an alert that a crime was in process at Lincoln Center. Twice.

We are, of course, talking about New York City Ballet's Fall Gala performance that has dropped its focus on ballet in favor of trying to sell low brow pop culture to the high brow crowd. The new choreography at this annual event has devolved into freestyle punctuated with ballet clichés. From one couple: "I don't think we should have purchased front row for this." No kidding. Not even back row would have been a sensible way to spend money.

But sensibility is not what this particular gala is about. Nor is it apparently about projecting responsibility and maturity at a time when the institution's sense of responsibility and maturity have come under attack and recently suffered a major loss to suicide. Here's what NYCB chose to dance to last evening in Kyle Abraham's The Runaway:

We're going to skate to one song and one song only
Ball so hard muh'fuckas wanna fine me

So I ball so hard muh'fuckas wanna fine me
But first niggas gotta find me
What's fifty grand to a muh'fucka like me
Can you please remind me?
Ball so hard, this shit crazy
Y'all don't know that don't shit phase me

...

She said 'Ye can we get married at the mall?
I said look you need to crawl 'fore you ball
Come and meet me in the bathroom stall
And show me why you deserve to have it all

 

And this:

 

The most beautiful thoughts are always besides the darkest
Today I seriously thought about killing you
I contemplated, premeditated murder
And I think about killing myself
And I love myself way more than I love you, so
Today I thought about killing you, premeditated murder.

 

While NYCB may think it's cool to joyfully skip blithely across the violence and misogyny of popular hip hop culture, the majority of the audience (excepting the student screamers in the 4th Ring) thought otherwise. It also begs the question: If they put this on stage, how can they object to any dancer's private texts or emails that celebrate similarly atrocious behavior?

 

In Gianna Reisen's Judah set to selections from John Adams' "John's Book of Alleged Dances", we had an unrealized concept that relied once again on freestyle dance punctuated with ballet clichés. At the back corner of the stage and at the opposite front corner of the stage were two white staircases of six steps. We truly wish that they would have led to somewhere, anywhere. Instead, they were used to present two dancers in white unitards (attractive costumes). As in Gianna's previous piece created for NYCB, we had a large group of dancers carrying one atop them to signify – what? Chunks of music were devoted to intricate hand movements of the type that one would see in a Christopher Wheeldon piece when he runs out of ideas for steps.

 

The Exchange by Matthew Neenan set to Antonin Dvořák was the most cohesively constructed dance on the program. Here again, though, it was mostly freestyle dance punctuated with ballet clichés. But they were clichés that became clichés because we've been watching them forever in Jiří Kylián's work and in Najarian's Gaga. By the way, Lady Gaga was listed in the gala program as an honorary committee member, but we know of no sightings of her.

 

Since this gala was principally for the costumes, we'll speak of them briefly: we've seen them before – except for the black and white creations by Giles Deacon for the Abraham dance. The headpieces were as outrageous as they were fun. Sara Mearns in a black wig with straw-like pigtails sticking out of the sides of her head took the night's honors when she chaînéd on the diagonal without allowing her headpiece to "helicopter" her into the air. We can't be sure, but we think that it was Peter Walker in a headpiece that looked like his head was stuck in the middle of an upside down black broom. Even though he couldn't really "dance" in it, the effect was awesome when he lay down on the floor horizontally.

 

We're glad this gala is over with. We knew it was in trouble from the start when the dancers decided to address the audience with a speech about how committed they are to ballet and to maintaining a respectable culture – you know, one in which you hear "Today I seriously thought about killing you / I contemplated, premeditated murder" and "I said look you need to crawl 'fore you ball / Come and meet me in the bathroom stall And show me why you deserve to have it all." NYCB needs to get its signals straight.