Humbled and Overwhelmed

Every year I splurge once for a NYCB Nutcracker performance. Balanchine's nostalgic recreation of the ballet he danced as a child in the Imperial School of Ballet remains the sweetest, richest, and best choreographed version of the ballet in existence. No matter how many times I watch this ballet, there's always a new detail that touches me as particularly beautiful and tender. In this case, I noticed the delightfully comic treatment of the mice by Balanchine. They're not just enemies of the soldiers -- most of them are just followers, sitting bleacher style watching the fight. When they drag off their mouse king I even felt bad for them.

La Clemenza di Tito November 16, 2012 Metropolitan Opera

Il Trovatore at the Met last night on paper should have been a rather dull night. David McVicar's production is on its third tired revival in three years. The Met is alternating casts and I saw the B-cast. Enrico Caruso once said that all you need for Il Trovatore is "the four greatest singers in the world" --not exactly what comes to mind when you read a playbill that says: Guanqun Yu (Leonora), Gwyn Hughes-Jones (Manrico), Dolora Zajick (Azucena) and Angel Odena (di Luna). Zajick's Azucena is of course a well-known portrayal but the other three were completely unknown to me. The evening overall was a pleasant surprise. The Leonora was probably the chief reason for the evening's relative success. Guanqun Yu has a lovely, well-produced, fairly large lyric soprano voice that she uses with taste and refinement. I could quibble that she doesn't have much of a trill, the coloratura is gingerly attacked, and her low notes are kind of inaudible, but they are ...

The NYCB's fall season has been beset with injuries and absences (Mearns for the whole season, Bouder for most of the season, Somogyi perhaps never coming back, Whelan scaling down her repertoire), but the great thing about the NYCB is that one star goes out, and very often, another star is born. Peter Martins drew on his well of talented corps and soloists to create an overall excellent season. Yesterday's programs showed the NYCB doing what they do best -- presenting a variety of both modern and classic ballets that showed off the depth of the company's talent.

My last memory of La Sylphide was the Royal Danish Ballet 's transcendent performance during their tour to NYC last year. I thought nothing could erase those memories, but this morning the Bolshoi Ballet proved once again that they are the ballet company that can indeed dance everything. Thirty years ago, they probably would have looked completely lost in the Bournonville style, but today they were absolutely wonderful. The production is by Johan Kobborg, himself trained at the Royal Danish Ballet. He's now a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet but he's staged his very orthodox La Sylphide for several companies. He deserves credit for obviously coaching the Bolshoi dancers to drop their "Russian-isms" and adapt to the more modest, low-key Bournonville style. Gone for the most part were the darting diagonal grande jetes -- they were replaced with the Bournonville style jumps which tend to travel in an arc around , rather than across the stage. The arms ...

Balanchine choreographed so much over such a long span of time that it's impossible for even the most hardcore Mr. B disciple to have "seen it all." And truth be told, some of his works are probably not worth reviving. PAMTGG is maybe the most famous example of a famous Balanchine turkey. But sometimes, a "rare" Balanchine work will be revived, and the reaction will be, "Why isn't this done all the time? It's beautiful!" Such was the case last night when the NYCB presented a bill of Scherzo a la Russe , Divertimento from "Le Baiser de la Fee,"   Danses Concertantes , and finally the well-known Firebird. Scherzo a la Russe is a kind of throwaway charmer, it was made in 1972 for the Stravinsky Festival and it was danced by the SAB students. It's really sort of a folk dance in pointe shoes. Short, sweet, to the point, and perfect to showcase the SAB students. The real revelations of the night, however, were  Divertimento ...

L'Elisir d'Amore September 27, 2012 Metropolitan Opera

The New York City Ballet kicked off its fall season with a two-week tribute to the extraordinary musical collaboration between Balanchine and Stravinsky. The first program was entitled "Greek trilogy" and featured three seminal works in the NYCB canon -- Apollo , Orpheus , and Agon . All three are important works in the company's history, and it was a nice gesture to the company's faithful audience to start off the fall season with such a program. (It almost made up for the horror of the Valentino gala.) These works, however, don't exist in a vacuum. Strong dancers are needed to breathe life into these ballets.

The first time I was told to read 50 Shades of Grey , my reaction was one of complete disdain. " I don't read literotica." Literotica and romance novels to me have about as much artistic value as low-rent porn videos. And I say this as someone who absolutely loved the Hunger Games trilogy, so it's not as if I'm a lit snob. Flash forward a few months. It's the summer. I'm bored. The Game of Thrones books are so heavy . One click later at the Amazon Kindle store, and 50 Shades is on my iPad. And let it never be said that E.L. James is a heavy, dense writer. I finished 50 Shades in a day. I'm slogging through the next two books of the trilogy though. So is the book really worth all the fuss?  Libraries are pulling it from their shelves.   There's a debate about whether it glorifies an abusive relationship.   Hotels replaced Bibles with 50 Shades copies.  And everywhere, in the subways, on the beach, I see women reading it.

Gluck: Orpheus and Eurydice Paris Opera Ballet July 22, 2012

Giselle Paris Opera Ballet July 13 and 14 (evening), 2012

Recently the La Scala Ballet released a DVD version of a reconstruction of the 1898 production of Raymonda . That video is a must for balletomanes, as it really brings a lot of dignity and clarity back to this ballet. I thought about that reconstruction as I watched the HD transmission of the Bolshoi Ballet's Raymonda . The production is of course by that great aesthete, Yuri Grigorovich, who managed to make every single production he's ever created ugly. (I could do a nice little poll. Mirror mirror on the wall, which is the ugliest Grigorovich production of them all?)

Swan Lake June 28, 2012 American Ballet Theatre

Romeo and Juliet June 18, 2012 American Ballet Theatre

Last night's performance of Midsummer's Night Dream at the NYCB was so enchanting I decided to go again this afternoon. I decided to see an entirely different cast, to see what individual dancers could bring to each role in this very busy ballet. And while the performance didn't have the magic of last night's performance, there were still many things to treasure in Balanchine's evergreen ballet. In particular, the set of Athenian lovers this afternoon were a much stronger quartet than last night's lovers.

The NYCB's spring season is ending on a magical note with its revival of Balanchine's Midsummer's Night Dream . Tonight's performance was one that was really practically perfect in every way. I don't mean that all the dancers were perfect, or the steps were executed perfectly, but the overall performance had such energy and charm that at the end of the evening the usually reserved NYCB audience clamored for multiple curtain calls for the cast. Congratulations to the entire NYCB, from the SAB students who played the butterflies and fairies to the principals, for putting on such a great performance.

In the 1960's, there was a new wave of choreographers who consciously rebelled against the Balanchine ideals of abstract ballet. These choreographers made lavish 3-act story ballets with highly melodramatic plots. John Cranko and Kenneth MacMillan were maybe the most well-known of these choreographers, and their ballets became a sensation. Today, the ballets haven't aged very well. The repetitiveness of the choreography (swoony lift after swoony lift after swoony lift), the derivative nature of the stories (Cranko's Onegin is predictably, not as deep and rich of a work as Tchaikovsky's opera on which the ballet is based), and the piecemeal scores ( Onegin's score is taken from various Tchaikovsky music pieces) make the ballets heavily reliant on the charisma of the performers. Great dancers with strong personalities can make a ballet like Onegin work, but I can also see how with lesser dancers it can be one very boring evening.

Veronika Part and Marcelo Gomes, photo @ Richard Termine Tonight's La Bayadere at the Met was supposed to feature the highly anticipated show-down between Diana Vishneva and Natalia Osipova. Both are Russian ballerinas known for their, well, fierceness. But Vishneva cancelled, and instead the performance featured Veronika Part (also Mariinsky-trained) as Nikya. The end result was a wonderful performance of this ballet not just from the principals, but from the entire company. Even the orchestra sounded decent tonight.

 This week I attended three Giselles at the ABT -- one on Thursday, and two today. Last year the Giselles of Cojocaru and Vishneva were so great in their own way that I had to see them again this year. I also had to see the Giselle of Natalia Osipova. That's a lot of Wilis in a short amount of time.

Ballet season kicked off for me officially today, when I went to see the Balanchine triple bill at the New York City Ballet. On the bill: Serenade, Firebird, and Symphony in C. These three ballets are such Balanchine masterpieces that you could probably get any company in the world to do them and it'd be a great afternoon at the ballet. But the NYCB currently has perhaps the deepest and most talented female roster in the ballet world today, so I knew even before the curtain rose that this was going to be a great afternoon at the ballet.

La Traviata Metropolitan Opera April 14, 2012 (matinee)

Yesterday I saw possibly the most disturbing, creepy dance I have ever seen in my life. It was Paul Taylor's Big Bertha . I can't really describe it except to say it starts as an amusement park spectacle, with this tinkly amusement park music and a seemingly normal family dancing onstage. There is a mechanical doll named Big Bertha and the family innocently stops at the doll. But soon the doll (played by Amy Young) starts commanding them to darker and darker actions, and it climaxes in the father (Michael Trusnovec) raping the daughter (Eran Bugge). The mother (Michelle Fleet) starts doing a frantic striptease for Big Bertha, who still is not satisfied. Big Bertha is not satisfied, in fact, until the whole family is sprawled onstage, lifeless. At the end of the performance, a slight, unassuming man came onstage to take a curtain call with the dancers. Paul Taylor still looks handsome, and one could hardly believe the guy with the shy smile is capable of such a sick, twis...

Massenet - Manon Metropolitan Opera March 31, 2012

I made a return trip to see Paul Taylor Dance Company tonight. As usual, it was an oddly assorted triple bill that showed off the choreographer's incredible, if quirky range. Although I'm not nearly as familiar with Paul Taylor's output as I am with ballet, everyone can be a quick study with him. It doesn't take a dance expert to love the joy of Esplanade . The audience for these performances I've noticed is surprisingly diverse, a mix of young and old, male and female, very different from, say, Nutcracker performances. It's not good or bad, it's just different. The program started with Roses , which I saw last week. I don't have to be very familiar with this piece to know that tonight's performance was much stronger. The movements had much more snap and flow, especially the series of cartwheels that the couples do over each others' bodies. The couples were much more coordinated and the cartwheels seemed an expression of joy. At first, i...

I went back to catch a second performance of the Met's revival of L'elisir d'amore tonight, and found it even more wonderful than opening night. It's really a great revival and I recommend that people catch the remaining performances -- you won't be disappointed. Diana Damrau's was in much better shape than on opening night, where I found her voice surprisingly weak and thin. Tonight it was the familiar Damrau sound again -- bright, a bit brassy, but definitely a stellar, A-list lyric coloratura soprano. She also seemed to be more familiar with the production and cast, and added some funny acting bits that I don't remember on opening night. Juan Diego Florez gave the same lovely, charming performance he gave opening night. I didn't think Nemorino would be the right role for him -- at times, he can seem aloof and stiff onstage. But he was an absolute delight as Nemorino. He showed his unsophisticated nature by some delightfully bad dancing, ...

The Paul Taylor Dance Company is back in town, but this time they're using the Koch Theater due to NYCB's off-season and the NYC Opera's eviction from the theater last year. Their triple bills are always surprising, delightful, thought-provoking, and most of all, a reminder that Paul Taylor is maybe the last choreographic genius who is still alive, running his own company, choosing his own dancers, and supervising his dances. He's a national treasure and when he comes out for his curtain calls at the end of performances there's always a bittersweet feeling that it might all come to an end. The triple bill this afternoon started with the stunningly beautiful Roses , set to Wagner's Siegfried's Idyll and Heinrich Baermann's Adagio for Clarinet and String . It starts off with four couples, the women dressed in black, the men in gray, as they move to the strains of Wagner's Siegfried's Idyll . At times Roses looks like something Balanchine co...

Watching the Bolshoi's Le Corsaire is sort of being like treated to a four-hour extravaganza of the sweetest, thickest pastries. It's delicious and fun at first, but by the fourth hour, you feel sick. I've never been able to make sense of the plot of Le Corsaire , and I have seen this ballet a surprising amount of times both live and on video. Something about pirates and slave girls and a pasha and his harem. The score is stitched together from six composers, and various choreographers. The current Bolshoi production is one of those reconstructions where some attempt has been made to restore long-lost music, mime, and old-fashioned Petipa-era costumes. The ballet certainly has a plethora of opportunities for dancers at every level of the company, and it's a lot of fun, but as I said, this production drags on for way too long and my interest totally sagged by Act III. I saw this production live when the Bolshoi toured to Washington D.C. a few years ago, and had th...

For last night's premiere of L'elisir d'amore, I wrote for parterre, and my full review can be found here. Needless to say I enjoyed the performance very much, and recommend it highly.

Yesterday a young soprano named Latonia Moore made her debut at the Met, subbing for Violetta Urmana in Aida . It was the broadcast performance, heard around the world. Normally I'd write a wall of text, but in this case, I'll just let the singing speak for itself. Hi world, meet Aida. Ritorna vinctor: O patria mia:

The New York City Ballet ended its winter season with an all-Balanchine program that once again showcased the company's strengths (depth in casting, discipline within the corps de ballet, strength of repertoire). It was a great afternoon at the ballet, a strong end to a strong season. The triple bill of Agon , Stravinsky Violin Concerto , and Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3 was really a win-win for everyone: the audiences, the dancers, ballet itself. These wonderful triple bills of Balanchine make me want to scream at the NYCB programming department: "Please, sir, I want some more." No more "new Millepied ballets" or Seven Deadly Sins.

After a few weeks of hiatus, it was back to the New York City Ballet last night, and as usual, they did not disappoint. Their casting was strong from the last line of the corps de ballet to all the soloists, the program was diverse and artistically gratifying, and even the band sounded good. What's not to like? The evening started out with Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia in Donizetti Variations . I had seen this ballet earlier with Megan Fairchild and Joaquin de Luz , two excellent technicians who for some reason never fail to bore me. Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia made me see the ballet in a whole new way -- it seemed more like a romantic pas de deux, rather than a typical Balanchine exercise in allegro dancing. I loved the series of supported pirouette followed by a supported air turn in their pas de deux. Peck has a way of simply floating across the stage that suggests the giddiness of someone in love. Particularly impressive were her circle of pique turns, which she slowl...

RIP Whitney. It's always sad when childhood idols pass away. I'll never forget how when I was a little kid Whitney just seemed like the most beautiful woman with the most beautiful voice. Then when she kind of degenerated into tabloid "crack is whack" fodder it was always surreal. I believed it, but didn't want to believe it. Of course I watched Being Bobby Brown and laughed at her antics, but it was sad that she was apparently never able to get her life together. What a voice.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia February 8, 2012 Metropolitan Opera

Wagner - Götterdämmerung Metropolitan Opera January 27, 2012 (premiere)

The NYCB is known for its diverse triple bill offerings, but occasionally one piece on the program so dominates the evening that one rushes home and can hardly think of anything else. That happened tonight when the NYCB performed Firebird , with Ashley Bouder in the title role. She was so commanding, and the performance such a memorable introduction (for me) to the work, that it was like. huh, Donizetti Variations ? There was a Donizetti Variations ?

I recently found Newt Gingrich's youtube channel. In light of Gingrich's South Carolina primary win, I've been watching a few of these videos. I find them fascinating, and not really for the right reasons. Since these are videos uploaded by the Gingrich campaign, I suppose these are the videos he thinks best represent him. The most striking thing about these videos is their consistent, unabashed, gleeful meanness. Most politicians when running for president affect a geniality that everyone knows is probably phony, but at the same time, totally necessary. You have to kiss those babies and praise those townhall moms whether it's at 5 in the morning or in a midnight rally. You have your wife or mom next to you on the campaign trail to show that you're really just a family man at heart. That's part of the American political process, the unrelieved peppiness that politicians have to fake on the campaign trail. This is reflected to an almost painful degree in ...

The Enchanted Island January 21, 2012 Metropolitan Opera

The NYCB's winter season kicked off tonight with an all-Balanchine program that, while maybe not the most exciting, was a good reminder of all the reasons to love the company. Four Balanchine ballets was a nice way to start the season, even if the first half of the program lacked a bit of excitement. The program got better as it went along, and it ended with a truly spectacular performance of Who Cares? It's so good to have ballet season back in NYC that isn't the Nutcracker , however much I might love Nutcracker .