Nouvelles des compagnies américaines

[voyageur]

[voyageur]

For the penultimate week of its summer season, ABT performed Swan Lake. While the Giselles this year were decently sold (particularly Vishneva/Gomes), this is the ballet that invariably fills the house, and full it was. I attended the performances on June 23 (per my post above, Murphy and then Seo with Gomes), June 25 (Semionova with Gomes) and June 27 (Seo with Bolle). Each of them presented cast changes resulting from injuries: Seo replaced Murphy halfway through on June 23, Gomes replaced an injured Hallberg on June 25, and following Cojocaru's injury, Seo and Bolle replaced her and Cornejo on June 27.
Until she sprained her foot in the coda of Act II, Murphy danced a strong White Act, one showing how far she has come from her early days, but still to me one devoid of poetry. Her Odile is for me the high point of her Lake, but unfortunately it was not to come, though I doubt many of us realized her small faux pas would take her out of the performance--she finished the Act with a dramatic transformation back and exit with big swan arms (no little ripples for Gillian).
Seo, who has shown technical difficulties dancing the Petipa rep, danced a superb adage in the Black Act, which included a monumental balance, but more to the point, she was sexy, teasing, toying and showed her gorgeous line. But it was downhill from there for the rest of the act--her variation showed some strain, particularly in the opening pirouettes, and her fouettes traveled so far forward that I feared she might well have fallen into the orchestra pit had she not run out of steam before she ran out of space, finishing about 26 of them. We've come a long way since Pierina Legnani, and nowadays 32 unadorned singles are simply not very thrilling, but they are the minimum one should do, or else (as has been done) do something else entirely. The truncated Act IV in this version has very little dancing; she looked lovely in the poses.
Gomes is the consummate dance actor in the company (I loved his very slow mime in first the attempt to swear his love in Act I and then the actual swearing of it, as well as the way he cradled Murphy in the adage) and his dancing always expresses his emotion--in Act I his loneliness and search for something more, in Act III his ardor and excitement for the Swan Queen who has come to his ball. The strongest partner in the company, he handled the change in ballerina very well, and his delight in the execution of the Black Swan pas was palpable.
Jared Matthews, the Purple-Princess-Eating von Rothbart, flashed a great grin of seduction at the audience before starting his dance of seduction, but it's a difficult variation and Gomes is the only one I've ever seen dance it smoothly and with complete control.
In the Act I pas de trois, Lane was charming and Gorak perfection, but later, in the small pas de trois that almost opens Act III, he seemed to have some trouble alternating between the two women.
Teuscher did a very good job as a big swan.

I've seen Semionova's Lake several times (and with several companies). It has never really moved me, and that is somewhat surprising, as it should be a natural for her, with that pliant back, long limbs, and superhuman technique. This one was the best of the ones I've seen, and I suspect it was helped by the change of partner from the previously-scheduled Hallberg to Gomes; even though their limbs don't look as good together as hers do with Hallberg's, she clearly responded to Gomes' ardor. The Act II adagio was taken very slowly, with a beautiful folding and unfolding of those limbs. (Her variation also seemed a bit slow.) I would have preferred a more tragic sense of her being driven in the coda. Her Black Act was brilliantly danced. In the adage, she held that balance so long that it made Seo's two nights earlier feel like a flutter. A very secure variation (albeit with too many swan arms for my taste) and then after, I think, an opening triple pirouette, very fast fouettes, mostly doubles. But it was the characterization that fell flat for me--this Odile was just too much a happy girl when she should be vampy or just plain evil. Her poses in Act IV were lovely. Gomes danced beautifully, including a lovely combination of pirouettes landing perfectly to the knee in Act III.
I don't know whether he has fully recovered from the injury that had him out so long, but Alexandre Hammoudi had some difficulty with that tough von Rothbart variation, and I found his characterization very flat--neither evil nor seductive.

I have seldom approached a performance with as little enthusiasm for it as I did Friday's Lake, in which all three principals were changed from those originally cast (and to see whom I had bought the ticket). It's not that I had thought Cojocaru would be a great Swan Queen (she wasn't the one time I saw her dance it, though that was years ago), but rather that I was very curious to see what changes in her Odette/Odile the years had brought, and, having seen half of Seo's Lake on Monday, I was neither all that curious or enthusiastic about seeing the rest of it. If it had been earlier in the season, I would have exchanged my ticket, but there were no performances left I wanted to and could see. As it turned out, it was not a bad performance, but it was not a particularly good one, either.
In Act II, Seo showed her beautiful line and pliant back, and danced a lovely variation. Her adage had some beautiful moments, but I did not find it well-shaped or particularly moving. Her transformation and swan arms on exit were not very good. In Act III, her adage was much less effective than on Monday night: she was unable to hold the balance very long, and while she was trying, she didn't merely wobble, she really jerked her body, but, more significantly, she was neither as seductive nor as sensual as she had been on Monday. The opening turns in her variation were handled better than earlier in the week, but it did not feel strongly danced, and I thought she looked uncomfortable at times. Her fouettes again traveled quite a distance, stopping when she fell out of them at about 25. (I also thought she had her working leg at an unbecoming height).
Bolle gave us an introspective, somewhat distant prince in Act I. He handled the many shifts of weight and direction in the choreography of his Act I variation with grace and aplomb. He certainly has some technique (he tossed off a lovely double assemble), but there's an element of lyricism I look for in my ballet princes that I don't see in him--his transitions are always smooth but they don't seem to go THROUGH the music. His Act III variation and coda were not very exciting but certainly understandable, as he and Seo were going to be dancing their originally scheduled Lake the following night, as well.
Jared Matthews, who has been having a very fine valedictory season (he and Yuriko Kajiya are joining Houston Ballet at the end of the season), danced a very good pas de trois.
A perfectly executed Neapolitan Dance (and, for a welcome change, actually danced in unison) from Joseph Gorak and Zhiyao Zhang.

[haydn]

Thank you very much, voyageur!

_________________
Un petit "j'aime" sur la page Facebook de Dansomanie : http://www.facebook.com/Dansomanie/

[voyageur]

Haydn and Sophia, you are most welcome. Here's my last post on the ABT season at the Met:

The last week of ABT's summer season opened with a double bill of Ashton's Dream and Ratmansky's Tempest. I saw the performance on June 30, which featured Murphy, Stearns and Cornejo in The Dream and Gomes, Simkin, Whiteside, Lane and Gorak in The Tempest, and returned this afternoon for another performance of The Dream with the same cast. Although there is another performance of the Shakespeare bill tonight and the week will conclude with 3 performances of Coppelia (all valedictories for departing soloists), in the absence of a hurricane, tornado or major transit strike, I am going to escape the now fairly brutal heat here instead.

On Monday, Murphy gave us a great Titania. I would never have guessed she'd sprained her foot the week before--in true Ashton style, her footwork sparkled. And her upper body (which I'd found a bit tight in Lake) swooned. Her Titania was imperious, petulant, sensuous, infatuated and altogetehr glorious. If she doesn't have that quicksilver quality Antoinette Sibley, the original Titania, had (she has a bigger, more robust frame), she articulated every movement with clarity and beauty.
As I noted in an earlier post, Cory Stearns replaced David Hallberg, who is nursing a foot injury. I was sorry not to see how Hallberg's greater stage command would look in the ballet--in the past I thought he just wasn't a Fairy King. Stearns has beautiful line and very good proportions, and as he spent some time at the Royal Ballet School he perhaps has had more Ashton experience than most of his colleagues. On Monday, I thought he looked a bit uncomfortable in some of the rapid directional changes and his scherzo lacked some power, but he may just have been tired, as the scheduling gods (or demons?) at ABT had put him in BOTH The Dream and The Tempest dress rehearsals that afternoon. Overall, I had the same reservations about his Oberon on Monday as I'd had in the past about
Hallberg's: it lacked authority and command.
The first time I saw The Dream pas de deux performed I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, and when I first saw the entire ballet a couple of years later, I kept waiting for it. I am not sure I have learned the value of patience in the ensuing decades, but I rapidly came to love what comes before (especially the Scherzo, but really, all of it). To this day, though,
the pas de deux remains one of my three favorites and is for me the heart of the ballet. Stearns and Murphy danced it beautifully on Monday--while they don't move the same way, their movements together formed a greater whole and gave it great amplitude. And a special "Brava" to Murphy, who, unlike too many Titanias nowadays, did not go all ragdollish--Titania doesn't give up her free will and become a puppet when she gives up the changeling--rather she gives him up for the greater joy of connubial bliss.
But even though the pas de deux is the most beautiful part of the ballet, on Monday the ballet belonged to Herman Cornejo's Puck, who simply turned in the best performance in that role I have ever seen--great elevation, pirouettes that went on and on, some snaking down the leg, chaines that were so fast they blurred--and always in great form in those Puckish positions Ashton created and in character. A standing ovation for him (not so frequent mid-program at ABT) and one well-deserved.
Blaine Hoven handled the pointe work of the Bottom role relatively well, but I found his mime too comic and not sufficiently touching.
The four lovers (Adrienne Schulte, Stella Abrera, Jared Matthews and Grant DeLong) were all good, but special kudos to Matthews for his woeful "What, You Are Making Me Sleep Over THERE?" mime.
I thought the corps managed the footwork well (loud clumping in the opening sequence notwithstanding), but I did see some wooden arms and insufficiently bent torsos.
New costumes for this production by David Walker, some of which seemed a bit too bright, and I don't remember Oberon's cape ever getting in his front quite as much as this one did.

I gather that Kevin McKenzie has long wanted to present an all-Shakespeare evening, but I don't think he did ABT's Artist in Residence any favors by putting The Tempest on the same bill as (and running it after) a masterpiece like The Dream. I understand Ratmansky has tinkered with the piece since its performances last fall, but I didn't know it well enough to discern any differences, other than the impression that it's a bit shorter now. I still don't find it completely successful.
As with Psyche, the score constrains the storytelling possibilities, and the added problems here are posed by a very complex story (the characters might as well be those mothers-in-law Mr B said there were none of) and a play whose main glory is its language. The best of the choreography went to Miranda and Ferdinand and to Ariel, beautifully danced by Sarah Lane, Joseph Gorak and Daniil Simkin, respectively. Marcelo Gomes as Prospero doesn't get to do much other than emote wizardry, power, and then forgiveness. James Whiteside was an effective bestial, threatening and ultimately pathetic Caliban.

Not wanting to end my season on that note, I went to the matinee today just to see The Dream again, and this performance was perhaps better balanced. I thought Stearns more commanding and with smoother changes of direction today, Cornejo a bit less dynamic (a few less rotations and slightly slower chaines today), and Murphy as great as on Monday. I knew I wasn't in heaven only because that pas de deux brought tears to my eyes.

[voyageur]

ABT had barely concluded its summer season at the Met when it announced yesterday its short fall season at the neighboring formerly-formally-named-New-York-State-Theater. Highlights will be the premieres of a new Liam Scarlett ballet and a staging of Raymonda Divertissements by Irina Kolpakova and Kevin McKenzie (as the former was a glorious Raymonda on the video, at least, and the latter was, if I recall correctly, jointly responsible--with Ann-Marie Holmes--for the company's weak and watered down last full-length version of it, I am hoping it's far more Kolpakova than McKenzie.)
As this will be the company's 75th anniversary season, some heritage works, notablyly Lilac Garden and Fancy Free, return. As do last year's critically-acclaimed revival of Bach Partita and this summer's less-acclaimed revival of Gaite Parisienne. Ratmansky and Wheeldon figure with Seven Sonatas and Thirteen Diversions, respectively. Kylian's Sinfonietta also returns.

http://www.abt.org/insideabt/news_display.asp?News_ID=487

[sophia]

Justin Peck est nommé chorégraphe en résidence du New York City Ballet.

New York City Ballet Names Justin Peck as Choreographer

[paco]

Justin Peck dont on avait pu voir une chorégraphie lors du spectacle L.A. Project de Benjamin Millepied au Châtelet cette saison

[sophia]

Et déjà prévu dans les futures programmations de Benjamin Millepied à l'ONP.

[sophia]

Le Joffrey Ballet diffusera demain jeudi, à 11h30 heure de Chicago (18h30 heure de Paris), un livestream d'une répétition du Lac des cygnes dans la version de Christopher Wheeldon.

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheJoffreyBallet/

[sophia]

Cette répétition reste apparemment en ligne : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Ldk4Ed9GQ

[sophia]

Un article de Gia Kourlas sur Kathryn Morgan, une toute jeune soliste du NYCB, qui, malade, avait dû démissionner de la compagnie en 2012. Il semblerait qu'elle envisage d'auditionner dans des compagnies en Europe et fasse donc prochainement son retour à la scène.

Betrayed by Her Body, a Dancer Connects Online

[sophia]

Wendy Whelan, 47 ans, fera ses adieux au NYCB le 18 octobre. Roslyn Sulcas lui consacre un long article : A Muse Steps Away - Wendy Whelan Says Farewell to City Ballet

[sophia]

Et trois étoiles de l'ABT feront leurs adieux cette saison : Julie Kent (qu'on croyait pourtant éternelle), Xiomara Reyes et Paloma Herrera.

Three Ballet Theater Principals to Retire

[sophia]

Wendy Whelan fait ses adieux ce soir après trente ans de carrière au NYCB. Une trajectoire exceptionnelle, dans ce monde de l'éphémère, résumée en images dans le Guardian.
Egalement un beau portrait (qui change du moins des rétrospectives conventionnelles) dans le New Yorker.

[sophia]

Une belle interview, par Roslyn Sulcas, d'Irina Kolpakova, "la ballerine classique ultime" comme l'appelle Barychnikov, 81 ans et toujours maître de ballet à l'ABT.

A Teacher Who Bridges the Eras