Haglund's Heel

observations 1-13

As of January 1, 2016, the State Primorsky Opera and Ballet Theater in Vladivostok, Russia has been officially re-designated as the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre. There is a new beautiful website, still a work in progress, (http://prim.mariinsky.ru/en/) where our very own Joseph Phillips is now a Principal Dancer under the Mariinsky label, banner, and brand. The archive of the company's former identity is still available, too. (http://primopera.ru/splash_page/primorsky_splash_page_en.html). 

We could not be more proud.

––––––––––

Excitement is percolating for the debuts of Lauren Lovette, Joseph Gordon, Brittany Pollack, Unity Phelan, and Megan LeCrone in Balanchine's Who Cares? during the second week of New York City Ballet's Winter Season. Gordon is also set for his sailor debut in Fancy Free. What a natural that will be! We hope to see other fabulous corpsmen in that ballet soon, too, – Harrison Coll, for instance, would simply live this ballet beyond life as we know it.

––––––––––

Anyone who has this Friday off can hear the New York Philharmonic freakin' kill Stravinsky's Rite of Spring for $39 (plus service fees) by using the code mat0115 on the website. If you haven't heard the NYPhil and Maestro Gilbert give their love, passion, and respect to this piece of music, you are in for a treat. Concert starts at 11am.

––––––––––

We wish that ABT would can that second intermission for its Sleeping Beauty. Life would be so much easier.

Speaking of ABT's Sleeping Beauty – in the Winter edition of Ballet Review, Alastair Irrelevant is at his most anal in his contribution entitled: Further Annals of The Sleeping Beauty: A Questionnaire in which he literally pesters Alexei Ratmansky, Richard Hudson, and Doug Fullington with written questions firstly designed to plump up the public's perception of the interrogator's own grasp of details but also reveals his proclivity for weaving his opinions within facts to make them also look like facts. It is a good read for what Ratmansky says, but you have to wade through Mr. Irrelevant's gush & slush to get to it.

observations 6-4

This weekend members of the Sarasota Cuban Ballet School will be in Manhattan performing a little promo work in the windows of Saks Fifth Ave. They did this sort of thing earlier this year in Sarasota for the grand opening of a Saks store there, and now Saks is bringing them to New York to do it here.

The dancers will be miming and posing in six center windows at Saks from 10 am until 6 pm on Saturday and Sunday.

––––––––––

Thanks to the Haglund'eeler from far off places for this tip that our Joseph Phillips will be performing as a guest artist in Philippine Ballet Theatre's production of Don Quixote later in July. The company opens its 29th season with Don Q followed by a program of Balanchine in September that includes Serenade.

Wow, have Phillips and the State Primorsky Opera and Ballet Theater taken off. The whole kit-and-caboodle in Vladivostok just keeps upgrading and upgrading and appears to be at the center of the transformation of the entire Primorsky Krai region.

The new affiliation with the Mariinsky Theater that was put into place earlier appears to be mostly support rather than a controversial takeover. However, dancers from the Mariinsky will visit to perform in a joint performance with the Primorsky Ballet on July 5th and 6th that will officially close the theater's second season. The program will include the Primorsky's new production of Firebird and Inspiration along side the Mariinsky's Dying Swan, Le Spectre de la Rose, PdD from Scheherazade, and Les Sylphides.

We continue to be thrilled by the success of Phillips and by all of those talented artists who defected from ABT in search of much deserved opportunities, but truth be told, we miss them all.

 

observations 3/29

This comes from the Department of It's-best-to-come-up-with-one's-own-original-artistry-instead-of-messing-with-another-genius's-respected-work-and-trying-to-call-it-your-own.

The Director of Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet has been fired as the result of his re-working of Wagner's opera 'Tannhauser' which was offensive to a lot of people. According to the Siberian Times, "The dismissal came as several thousand protesters rallied against the opera, waving patriotic flags and banners. One said: 'Orthodox Christianity is the foundation of the great Russian culture.'"

The Russian Culture Minister, Vladimir Medinsky, fired Boris Mezdrich and replaced him with –

(wait for the trumpet roll, please)

– Vladimir Kekhman, who will now wear two hats as the head of the Mikhailovsky and the Novosibirsk.

At the end of last year, the ballet artistic director of the State Primorsky Opera and Ballet in Vladivostok, Russia (where our very own Joseph Phillips is the highest ranking Principal Dancer) was ousted following the company administration's dissatisfaction with the manner in which Tchaikovsky's beloved music was manipulated in Swan Lake and other ballets. It seems particularly disturbing was the treatment of a waltz in connection with Von Rothbart. That character has made a career out of getting stagers in trouble.

––––––––––

Down in Washington DC at ABT's Kennedy Center gig, Julie Kent withdrew from both of her performances on extremely short notice due to injury. Many were saddened when the DC casting originally revealed that Stella Abrera would not have an opportunity to dance a warm-up Cinderella before the Met Season because Julie needed to ride one last tiara into the sunset.

Injuries are always a shame. Being so grabby with roles at the end of a career is shameful. Not being prepared to dance them and then not acknowledging it in time to give others a chance is shameless diva behavior.

Due to Julie's uncertain physical condition, she should be withdrawn from all but her final Met Season date to insure that she has plenty of time to prepare to give her last performance of Romeo and Juliet her very best. The Giselle belongs to Stella Abrera who will in April perform it with the Australian Ballet and will receive coaching from world-respected classicists for her company debut. Unlike Julie, Stella will be in top performance condition with a fine-tuned Giselle when the Met Season begins.

––––––––––

The Monterrey International Ballet Gala has announced its lineup for performances on September 5th and 6th:

5 y 6 DE SEPTIEMBRE, AUDITORIO LUIS ELIZONDO

Elenco 2015:

Marianela Núñez - The Royal Ballet
Thiago Soares - The Royal Ballet
Greta Hodgkinson - The National Ballet of Canada
Marcelo Gomes - American Ballet Theatre
Victoria Ananyan - Dutch National Ballet
Daniil Simkin - American Ballet Theatre
Victoria Jaiani - The Joffrey Ballet
Fabrice Calmels - The Joffrey Ballet
Antonio Douthit-Boyd - Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre
Kirven - Douthit-Boyd - Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre
Katia Carranza - Ballet de Monterrey

Much more information is available at the organization's Facebook Page.

observations 2/21

Julio Bocca's Ballet Nacional Sodre in Montevideo, Uruguay celebrates its 80th birthday this year. In March and April, the company will present Coppelia with choreography by Enrique Martinez, the former dancer, ballet master, and assistant director of ABT under Lucia Chase. He died in 1998 from hepatitis at age 72.

Julio, by the way, just concluded a brief stay in a British hospital where he was treated for liver inflammation and is expected to make a full recovery.

Here is a photo of our Maria Riccetto (BNS Primera Bailarina Residente) as Nikiya in BNS's production of La Bayadere in December. We already know what a charming Swanilda she will make.

––––––––––

Angel Corella's Pennsylvania Ballet opens its Swan Lake on March 5 in Philadelphia. The choreography, by Christopher Wheeldon, re-invisions the ballet with Degas-like influences.

––––––––––

On February 27th in The Great Hall of the State Primorsky Opera and Ballet Theater in Vladivostok, Russia, Joseph Phillips and his partner, Irina Sapozhnikov, both principal dancers at the theater will close out the evening's opera and ballet gala with the PdD from Sleeping Beauty. Here's a picture from the theater's refurbished website. It's hard to tell if this is from SB or Nutcracker, but wherever it's from, it's gorgeous.

Here they are leading Swan Lake:

We're so proud.

 

observations 5/30

Three ABT Coppelias and a NYCB rep program equal one crowded weekend calendar. Check back here on Sunday for a blog post unless something earth shattering happens that keeps Haglund up all night blogging. These Coppelias had better be worth missing The Four Temperaments – especially with Sara Mearns debuting in Sanguinic on Saturday.

––––––––––

Joseph Phillips will dance Prince Siegfried in the State Primorsky Opera and Ballet's production of Swan Lake tonight and tomorrow opposite the lovely Irina Sapozhnikova.

––––––––––

It is looking more and more promising that Maria Alexandrova has recovered from her Achilles injury and will indeed dance her scheduled Don Q when the Bolshoi arrives in NYC in July. The July casting for the company's run in Saratoga Springs has just been announced, and Maria will dance Don Q twice – on July 29th and August 1st.

––––––––––

Haglund is very excited to see Joe Gorak as the Prince in the upcoming ABT production of Cinderella with Xiomara Reyes in the title role. Having watched Xiomara skillfully guide Herman Cornejo through his first performances of Albrecht, Sascha Radetsky through his first performances as the Prince in Kudelka's Cinderella, and Cory Stearns through his first performances as Oberon in The Dream, Haglund is sure that Gorak will be in good hands for this major, major debut. We all will be cheering before things get really and literally ugly during Giselle Week when there will be so much to complain about, particularly on Wednesday afternoon. And it appears that 45-year-old Julie Kent has her cougar claws firmly into the flesh of Marcelo Gomes and intends to "dance" Cinderella for the first time. Do you think that anyone will notice when the steps go blurring by - or are so slow that they could freeze on a hot June day? And Julie will be monopolizing yet another Giselle, for Pete's sake. True, we always get a lovely Act II if there is a strong guy who can drag her around, but to be perfectly frank, Julie's Act I has always died long before Giselle's heart gave out. Meanwhile, Stella Abrera, the consummate classicist who should be dancing both Giselle and Cinderella, is the only soloist without a leading role this season.

 

observations 3/27

Lucinda Dunn, Australian Ballet principal and wife of Associate Artistic Director and former ABT principal Danilo Radojevic, is set to retire from the stage in April after 23 years with the company.

Australian press has just reported today that Radojevic has also decided to leave his longtime job at Aussie Ballet.

Wonder if any of this has popped up on the radar of the Royal New Zealand Ballet which is hunting for a new artistic director to replace Ethan Stiefel who is finally coming home to New York. Radojevic at RNZB would be pretty perfect. Come to think of it, Radojevic running ABT would be pretty good, too.

__________

The State Primorsky Opera and Ballet Theater, born in the Fall of 2013 in Vladivostok, Russia, and for whom American Joseph Phillips is a Principal Dancer, has been invited to perform at the Bolshoi Theater.

The company will take its acclaimed production of "Fourteen" to Moscow this year. The multi-disciplinary work choreographed by Primorsky's Ballet Director, Aidar Akhmetov, is set to Shostokovich's Symphony No. 14 and poems by F. Garcia Lorca, G. Apollinaire, W. Küchelbecker and R. Maria Rilke. It stars Inna Ginkevich (Death) and Artem Yachmennikov (Poet), both formerly of the Stanislavsky Theatre, and Joseph Phillips as the soldier.

The dates of the Primorsky performances at the Bolshoi will be announced in a joint statement by the two theaters soon.

Wow, Phillips' work in Vladivostok sure beats carrying the spear for Kevin McKenzie.

 

observations 1/23

The State Primorsky Opera and Ballet's new production of Fourteen set to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14 and choreographed by artistic director Aidar Akhmetov will be nominated for a prestigious Golden Mask Award.

Vladivostok's mainstream culture scene is certainly taking off.

The theater is featuring clips of Joseph Phillips in its latest commercial which you can see on its FB page.

From Akhmetov's Fourteen (nice lines on the corps lady):

––––––––––

Why isn't David Hallberg dancing with more real, homegrown ABT partners? A couple of performances of The Dream with Gillian Murphy and that's it? Let's pray that he doesn't drag some guest artist here to accommodate him in one of those La Bayadere or Cinderella performances that are still TBA. Those roles should go to Stella Abrera, who as yet has NO leading roles for the spring season even though she is the most deserving soloist of them all. But the question remains - why doesn't David Hallberg dance with more homegrown ABT artists? Does he think they're not good enough or perhaps not prestigious enough?

"Never forget the ones who rode with you before you were anything."

Where would he be today if ABT's principal women had turned their noses up at dancing with him when he was a soloist? Why has he not yet managed to deliver that Giselle with Stella Abrera that was promised to us multiple times? We're still waiting.

––––––––––

There is much to look forward to during NYCB's second week.

Tiler Peck and Abi Stafford take over Emeralds and Ashley Bouder takes over Rubies. Rebecca Krohn debuts as the 1st violin in Concerto Barocco - she's already shown how gorgeous she can be in the 2nd violin role – and she'll be in the new Liam Scarlett piece on Friday along with Bouder, Mearns, Tyler Angle, Ramasar, Danchig-Waring, and Huxley.

Haglund is praying that he does not see one, single, solitary copycat move from Glen Tetley's Voluntaries in Scarlett's new ballet which uses the same music. Most of the time, this business of "quoting" or "paying homage to" other choreographers by stealing their ideas and phrases is what it is - plain bad form.

––––––––––

There doesn't seem to be anything else for Haglund to complain about today - at least not yet.

 

observations 1/6

Stella Abrera and Alexandre Hammoudi will join Tyler Angle and Teresa Reichlen in the cast for Emery LeCrone's classically-based ballet to Bach’s Partita No. 2 in C Minor that will be presented on March 23rd and March 24th as part of the Guggenheim's Works & Process Spring 2014 season.

Vassily Primikov will perform the music. Costumes will be designed by Yigal Azrouël.

Emery will also present a second dance utilizing the exact same music but the choreography will be more contemporary in nature. It will feature Sarah Atkins, Kaitlyn Gilliland, Pierre Guilbault, Richard Isaac, Kimi Nikaidoh, and Alfredo Solivan.

General ticket sales begin on Januray 15th although priority ticketing for Guggenheim W&P members is in full swing through January 14th. Haglund will post the livestream plans if and when they become available.

––––––––––

Just want to remind everybody that Cincinnati Ballet comes to the Joyce Theater May 6-11. The program includes Hummingbird in a Box which is set to seven brand new songs by Peter Frampton. Hummingbird was part of a full evening of choreography set to Frampton's tunes for which he and his band played live on stage last April in Cincy.

The Joyce stage is smaller than the one at the Aronoff Center where the Cincinnati Ballet premiere took place, so you might not think that there is much of a chance that Frampton will show up for the NYC gig. But this is freakin' New York, ya know, where freakin' anything can happen. And it would be just like freakin' Frampton and his freakin' sometime bass player, Willem Dafoe, to show up on stage for a gig for one or more of those Joyce dates. Don't be freakin' sorry you didn't get tickets.

––––––––––

Also, don't forget to get your tickets to Royal New Zealand Ballet's debut at the Joyce Theater February 12-16th. We're getting their rep program while lucky L.A. gets the new Giselle production with Gillian Murphy making her U.S. debut in the title role. By the way, Gillian and Cory Stearns will be dancing the leads in Giselle with the Festival Ballet Theatre at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on March 22nd and 23rd.

––––––––––

The Primorsky State Opera and Ballet Theatre is presenting a series of performances entitled "Bridges of Culture: St. Petersburg to Vladivostok" for which artists from St. Petersburg, Moscow, and that side of Russia are being featured in a variety of cultural works in the brand new theater in Vladivostok which is way over on the other side of Russia.

The special dance evening on January 19th will feature a one-act premiere by Artistic Director Aidar Akhmetov set to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14 which incorporates poems by Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Kuchelbecker, and Rainer Maria Rilke. The featured soloist will be Inna Ginkevich, former ballerina of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre.

By the way, Joseph Phillips' star continues to shine in Vladivostok.  Here he is executing the Grigorovich Lift in a recent performance:

And here he is in what appears to be Walpurgis Night:

 

So much of the rest of the world knows exactly what to do with ABT's talent.  Why doesn't Kevin McKenzie?

 

From Andris Liepa –

(well, via Bing translator)

Guys who danced the excerpt of "Corsair", well done. If there is such a possibility, I will come and help bring artists and educators, will do a project on the big stage, said the famous dancer. – Andris Liepa yesterday.

He was talking about:

Joseph Phillips - Le Corsaire - yesterday

Phillips and a lovely ballerina whose name we're not sure about.

The ballet troupe of the State Primorsky Opera and Ballet Theater gave its first performance in the new arts complex in Vladivostok on Friday night and got a thumbs-up from one of Russia's greatest, Andris Liepa. The performance occurred on the so-called Small Stage because the Main Stage is not yet prepared for the ballet and some of the other performances.

Liepa toured the complex and then sat between the Primorye Territory Governor Vladimir Miklushevsky and theater AD Anton Lubchenko during the performance:

observations 11/24

This Friday and Saturday (November 29-30), the ballet troupe of the brand new State Primorsky Opera and Ballet Theater will present its first performances in the beautiful arts complex that opened less than a month ago in Vladivostok, Russia.  Our own Joseph Phillips (Джозеф Филлипс) is a charter Principal Dancer with the company and will be performing both nights.

The program will include selections from Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Flames of Paris, Le Corsaire, Don Quixote, La Sylphide, Harlequinade, and more. The theater's artistic director and chief conductor, Anton Lubchenko, and the ballet's director, Aidar Akhmetov, want to give the residents of Vladivostok a crash course in the classics, because the area has seen so little in the way of ballet performances.

Hopefully, we'll be able to find some pictures from the performances, because this type of programing and our Phillips are going to register on the Richter Scale this weekend.

––––––––––

Also on November 29th and 30th, the Ho Chi Mihn City Ballet, Symphony Orchestra and Opera (aka HBSO) in Vietnam will perform The Nutcracker in the HCM City opera house where tickets start at about $19 and the median income in the city for a middle income call center employee is about $408 per month. The next time Haglund speaks with one of them, which seems to be with evergrowing frequency, he will quiz them extensively and assertively – perhaps even annoyingly – about their Nutcracker production.

By the way, Ho Chi Mihn City is building a brand new 1,700 seat theater for the HBSO to be completed in two years, which coincidently will be the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. There was a noisy controversy about ripping up the city park in the center of town to build it, but at a HCM City People's Committee hearing, the artists and cultural activists won out over the objections of urban development experts and residents of the surrounding highrise towers who wanted to preserve the green space. Love it.

––––––––––

Closer to home, Francis Patrelle's Yorkville Nutcracker will be presented at the Kaye Playhouse at East 68th Street and Park Avenue from December 5 through December 8. The theme of this production is Olde New York, and it is one of the most charming and beloved Nutcrackers in the city. NYCB's Jenifer Ringer will be the Sugar Plum Fairy and Jared Angle will be Her Cavalier. While the children in the production come from professional schools all over the city, many hail from the Ballet Academy East, a particularly fine school with high standards but a lower profile.