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 Volume 2, Number 3  January 19,  2004            An online supplement to DanceView magazine

Letter from New York

19 January 2004.
Copyright © 2004 by Mindy Aloff

Five or six years ago, Pacific Northwest Ballet—codirected by NYCB alumni Francia Russell and Kent Stowell—mounted a new production of George Balanchine’s 1962 evening-length version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with new sets and costumes commissioned from Martin Pakledinaz (the first time The Balanchine Trust authorized the redesign of a Balanchine story ballet). I happened to see that lovely production in its first season and was astounded to discover how much my view of the latter half of the ballet was changed by the seriousness with which Russell (a ballet mistress for Balanchine at the time of Midsummer’s making and the stager of the work for PNWB) had treated the wedding dances of the Second Act, both in the directions to Pakledinaz about the set and in her own attention to details of the choreography. In conversation at that time, Russell expressed her admiration for the construction and nuances of those wedding dances—not just the famous partnered adagio at the end, but all of the ones for the corps de ballet that lead up to it. She also referred to the passage in one of the Jonathan Cott interviews with Balanchine from the early 1970s (subsequently anthologized by Lincoln Kirstein in the album Portrait of Mr. B), which guided the new PNWB set for the Second Act that reveals the night sky, illuminated by a crescent of stars:
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read past Letters from New York


Balanchine's Magical Confection

Harlequinade
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, New York
January 17, 2004
2:00 p.m.

Even if a stage filled with jesters is your idea of dance hell, you should see Harlequinade (1965, revised 1973), brought back with an all-new cast as part of the New York City Ballet’s “Balanchine 100". Particularly to those who tend to think of Balanchine as a superlative modernist, it will be interesting to see him working his wiles in this backward-glancing Petipa mode. It is a reminder of the scope of his genius. Balanchine could do anything in dance. This makes what he chose to do, and when, that much the more compelling food for thought. Of course if you start with Harlequinade, you’ll be starting with the candy course, and listening to Riccardo Drigo.
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No One Danced At My Mother’s Wake

by Ann Murphy
Copyright © 2004 by Ann Murphy

No one danced at my mother’s wake. Not a single person found the screwdriver that might have removed the front door so that that door could be stretched out in the parlor to let an uncle tap out a jig or a reel as another relative fiddled. No one kept awake all night by her side to usher her spirit on, dancing about the room with her tiny body to help her get to the next world.

It’s not a surprise.

There was no Derry County front door, no parlor, not a stitch of food nor a drop to drink at this sanitize wake in the New England suburbs for this Irish American woman who could never fully embrace nor escape her origins. And anyway, the uncles that might have danced were dead, and no one knew a reel or jig to play.
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The Inside View

Robert Altman's The Company

by Rita Felciano
Copyright ©2003 by Rita Felciano

With The Company director Robert Altman created a gentle hermetically self-contained world into which reality bursts like momentary gusts of wind when opening a window. As has been his wont throughout his long film career, Altman blurs the line between fiction and fact when taking us inside a somewhat mythologized Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. In this case the approach served him particularly well. Ballet is an arcane universe but is inhabited by surprisingly human beings. The Company captures this double perspective with considerable success. One would only wish that the works shown in performance were of higher quality.

Not much of a plot animates this otherwise sweet little film. It traces the love and work life of an ambitious but amiable young dancer, Ry (Neve Campbell who also co-wrote the story with Barbara Turner) and her chef boyfriend Josh (an affable James Franco). But the real story, as the title indicates, is the company. Altman weaves a richly textured fabric of off-stage life, rehearsals and performances. Periodically he introduces little dollops of personal drama. However, those never interfere with the film’s trajectory. He plops them in much like close-ups on a face. It’s an excellent way of bringing individuals momentarily to the surface without having to develop characters.
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Old and New

BalletNY
Symphony Space
New York, NY
January 8, 2004

by Mary  Cargill
copyright © 2004 by Mary Cargill

The Fugate/Bahiri BalletNY (formerly DanceGalaxy) presented a varied program of old and new, lyrical and dramatic works. If some of the experiments were less successful, the company, basically a pick-up group of dancers with various backgrounds and performance histories, looked well-rehearsed and engaging.

The 1967 version of Balanchine’s Valse Fantaisie (to Glinka—the music was taped) opened the program. It was set by Judith Fugate, who had danced it at the New York City Ballet. It suited her strengths so well, with its romantic urgency and stylish arms, and her company caught the windswept, lyrical, and otherworldly quality with a beautifully controlled amplitude. The four corps girls were true sylphs, with delicate and perfectly placed arms, but were modern, fearless ones, sweeping through the music. Cheryl Sladkin, especially, stood out for her elegance and sense of reaching further.
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New January 23, 2004

An Evening's Debuts

Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2/Harlequinade
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, NY
January 20, 2004

by Mary Cargill
copyright 2004 by Mary Cargill

Jennie Somogyi made her eagerly awaited debut as the lead ballerina in Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2; she has previously danced gloriously in the second lead. This ballet, so full of the spirit of Petipa, needs a phenomenally accomplished dancer, which of course Somogyi is, as well as an instinctive ballerina, who can make the steps sing her own song. Somogyi does have the rare ability to speak with her body, without imposing a false drama, and it was an extraordinary debut.

The opening cadenza, where the ballerina (who might as well be called Aurora) dances a fast and difficult solo, recalls the beautiful princess at her birthday party, and Somogyi did have the youthful grandeur and grace notes (if not always impeccably secure turns) to bring the role alive with all its youthful joy.
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Royal Danish Ballet in D.C.

New January 21, 2004
La Sylphide Restored

La Sylphide/Etudes
The Royal Danish Ballet
Opera House
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
Saturday and Sunday, January 17-18, 2004

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra  Tomalonis

When the curtain rose Saturday afternoon on the Royal Danish Ballet’s new production of La Sylphide it rose on a miracle. After four days of a Napoli that, one tried to tell oneself, might be the best that could be expected after the many changes the company has undergone in the past decade, the minute Gudrun Bojesen extended her long, beautiful foot and began to dance, time stopped. What we saw last weekend was, with allowances for changes in cast and designs, what we saw 11-and-a-half years ago when the company last danced La Sylphide at the Kennedy Center. The musicality was there, the poetry was there, the drama, the pacing, the beautiful soft, clear, modest dancing.
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The Knight of Faith

Napoli
The Royal Danish Ballet
Opera House
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
Tuesday and Friday, January 13 & 16, 2004

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra  Tomalonis

When it was new, August Bournonville’s Napoli (1842) was typical of mid-19th century ballets: a good story with fantastic elements, lots of local color, a stage full of individualized characters, classical dancing based on the French school, and character/demi-caractere dancing that helped place the ballet and added vigor and spice to the mix. Napoli is the only full-length ballet of this type to survive, and seeing it is a privilege. It’s not only a window on dance history, it’s the showcase for the talents and tradition of the Royal Danish Ballet, its custodian.
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New casts in Napoli

Napoli
The Royal Danish Ballet
Opera House
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
Wednesday & Thursday, January 14 & 15, 2004

by George Jackson
copyright © 2004 by George Jackson

It's a tall order to conjur Napoli, its down-to-earth salt-of-the-sea populace with temperaments as suddenly volcanic as Mt. Vesuvius and then as calm and clear as a cloudless Italian sky. But not just showing what's special about that city and citizenry, but letting the audience discover bonds these people have in common with the rest of humanity is the challange Royal Danish stagers and performers face every time the curtain goes up on August Bournonville's Napoli, a ballet in three very different acts.
read review


New January 21, 2004

Commentary
Bournonville's Next Steps

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright © 2004 by Alexandra  Tomalonis

In June of 2005, the Royal Danish Ballet will celebrate Bournonville’s 200th birthday with a third Festival, at which it will present the surviving ballets. It will be a festive time, but also a sober one. This may be the last chance to make the case for Bournonville. There are no credible opportunities for another Festival for years to come. Will the Danish audience, and the Danish dancers, want to keep him around for another century?
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This weeks' articles

 

DanceViewNY
Mindy  Aloff's Letter from New York

The Balanchine Celebration
New York City Ballet:
A Veteran and a Raw Recruit
by Mindy Aloff

Heart and Soul
by Mary Cargill

Kid Stuff
Cas Public's If You Go Down To the Woods Today
by Susan Reiter

DanceViewWest
San Francisco Ballet:
New Wheeldon (Rush)
by Rita Felciano

New Tomasson (7 For Eight)
by Paul Parish

Possokhov's New Firebird for OBT
by Rita Felciano

Moscow Festival Ballet and Scott Wells
by Paul Parish

DanceViewDC
Hamburg Ballet's Nijinsky:
Nijinsky—Lost in the Chaos
by Clare Croft

NijinskyMadness and Metaphor
by Alexandra Tomalonis

Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes
by George Jackson

Batsheva: Breaking Down Walls
by Lisa Traiger

Ronald K. Brown/Evidence
by Clare Croft

Choreographers Showcase
by Tehreema Mitha

Zoltan Nagy
by George Jackson

 

 

 

 

Writers

Mindy Aloff
Dale Brauner
Mary Cargill
Clare Croft
Nancy Dalva
Rita Felciano
Lynn Garafola
Alison Garcia
Marc Haegeman
George Jackson
Gia Kourlas
Sali Ann Kriegsman
Jean Battey Lewis
Alexander Meinertz
Tehreema Mitha
Gay Morris
Ann Murphy
Paul Parish
Susan Reiter
Jane Simpson
Alexandra Tomalonis(Editor)
Lisa Traiger
Meital Waibsnaider

Leigh Witchel

DanceView

The Autumn DanceView is out:

New York City Ballet's Spring 2003 season reviewed by Gia Kourlas

An interview with the Kirov Ballet's Daria Pavlenko by Marc Haegeman

Reviews of San Francisco Ballet (by Rita Felciano) and Paris Opera Ballet (by Carol Pardo)

The ballet tradition at the Metropolitan Opera (by Elaine Machleder)

Reports from London (Jane Simpson) and the Bay Area (Rita Felciano).

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last updated on January 21, 2004 -->