Ballet Quibbles and Bits . . .

'Nutcracker' Featured in Elle:

Here's a nice series of backstage pictures from New York City Ballet's production of George Balanchine's 'The Nutcracker' that appeared in Elle magazine:

http://www.elle.com/pop-culture/best/behind-the-scenes-new-york-city-ballet-nycb-nutcracker#slide-1

Mouse heads ready for the court of the Mouse King in 'The Nutcracker'.  Photo from Elle

The series of 37 photos provides a lot of interesting and unusual angles on this holiday classic.

'Live from Lincoln Center' SAB Broadcast Still Available On-line:

If you missed last Sunday's broadcast of the SAB Workshop Performance on WNET, Channel 13, or on your local PBS station during the past week, you can still watch it online here:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365385279/


It's a wonderful account of a lovely performance by the future stars of American ballet.

NYC Ballet Names New Music Director -- at last:

New York City Ballet has named a new Music Director, Andrew Litton.  Maestro Litton is currently the music director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Bergen (Norway) Philharmonic.  He was formerly the music director of the Dallas Symphony and chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony.  He will begin his duties at New York City Ballet with the start of the 2015-2016 season in September, 2015.

Maestro Andrew Litton, newly named Music Director-designate of New York City Ballet.
Photo by Steven J. Sherman

The company has been limping along without a music director since Faycal Karoui left at the end of May, 2012.  During that time, Andrews Sill has been 'Interim Music Director'.  Sill will continue with the company as Associate Music Director.  Maestro Litton will only be available for 13 weeks during the 2015-16 season and 16 weeks during the following season, so Sill will continue to play a significant role in the company's music program.

I think that the company performs 21 weeks in New York City each year, plus 2 weeks in Saratoga Springs and 1 week in Washington and the company usually has three or four weeks of either national or international touring.  Then there are four weeks of full company rehearsals prior to the fall, winter and spring seasons and the Nutcracker season.  That's a lot for a music director to cover in just 13 or even 16 weeks with the company.

Litton does appear to know the company and its repertory from his years studying at Julliard -- when he was dating a member of the company.  The New York Times article says that Litton will be only the company's sixth music director.  There have been three of distinction in the 50+ years we've been watching the company -- Robert Irving, Andrea Quinn and Faycal Karoui.  Let us hope that Andrew Litton will join that illustrious list by inspiring and challenging the musicians, the dancers and the choreographers so that we, the audience, really do 'see the music' and so that the music is consistently worthy of the Company of George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Lincoln Kirstein. 

SAB on 'Live from Lincoln Center'

We taped the School of American Ballet Workshop Performance shown on 'Live from Lincoln Center' on PBS on Sunday afternoon.  It seemed like a strange time to air it -- but maybe it was smart counter-programming for PBS to spotlight these graceful young athletes as an antidote to all of that football mayhem on other channels.  The broadcast was extremely well done.

We had seen two of the three Workshop performances back in June, so we had a pretty good idea of the shape of the performances.  What was truly exceptional, though, was how well they were filmed and pulled together as a coherent TV show.  Too often, dance on television is difficult to watch because the cameras insist on close-ups or tracking an individual dancer when there is a larger -- and usually better -- stage picture that is being ignored.  Here the cameras pulled back to include the entire stage (or at least the entire dancer), closing in for close-ups only when there were infrequent static moments.  Feet were not chopped off and there was also sufficient screen space around the dancers to allow them to move -- and boy can they move!

By the way, here's a link to Alistair Macaulay's review of the broadcast in last Friday's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/arts/dance/live-from-lincoln-center-to-air-curtain-up.html?


Beyond praising this broadcast, Macaulay bemoans the lack of American companies in the high-definition broadcast of dance performances.  I would add that this in part due to the intransigence of the various unions required to stage and broadcast dance -- they have allowed the market to shift to overseas dance companies.

Balanchine's 'Serenade' at the 2014 SAB Workshop Performances.  Addie Tapp's grand jete among the corps.
Still from 'Live from Lincoln Center' broadcast.

Balanchine's 'Serenade' is really about all of the dancers -- the seventeen member corps as well as the five principals -- interacting and creating beautiful shifting patterns and perhaps telling a story or several stories or no story at all.  Suki Schorer's meticulous and vivid staging was beautifully captured on camera.  We got close enough to the student dancers to feel the adrenalin rush of their performance as well as their caring, careful execution of Mr. B's steps and never losing the beauty of his sweeping patterns.  And we got a brief snippet of Ms. Schorer preparing the students for the performance and another snippet of the leads, 16-year-old Dammiel Cruz, talking about his training and preparation.

In the excerpts from the Balanchine/Danilova 'Coppelia' we got close enough to see the solemnity and mischievous joy of 24 little girls dancing in one of Mr. B's great ballets for children.  And we could watch them interact with four lovely student ballerinas -- providing each with an animated frame of changing patterns for their solos.  Then we saw the concentration of 18 advanced students making the best case for the 'War and Discord' divertissement -- one of Mr. B's least persuasive pieces of choreography.

Finale tableau from Balanchine's 'Swan Lake' with Alston Macgill and Joshua Shutkind.
Still from PBS 'Live from Lincoln Center' broadcast.

Then in Balanchine's one-act 'Swan Lake' we saw the ballet cycle of life happening before our eyes -- Darci Kistler, who was coached in 'Swan Lake' by Alexandra Danilova for her Workshop performance in 1980, coaching Alston Macgill in 'Swan Lake' for the 2014 Workshop performances -- promising student taught by former star ballerina becomes a radiant star ballerina who becomes an inspiring teacher for the next generation of promising students.

One thing to note here is that the 'Live from Lincoln Center camerawork brought us close to the gallant partners, especially in 'Serenade' and 'Swan Lake', who allowed their ballerinas to shine.  Having watched them in Adagio Classes with Jock Soto and Darci Kistler, I've come to appreciate the special accomplishments of these self-effacing young men.  This broadcast allowed the entire viewing audience to see their strength, their poise, their determination to get beyond the mechanics of a partnership into the artistry and chemistry that make each pairing special.

The Fourth Movement of Balanchine's 'Western Symphony'.  Clara Miller wows the corps with her pointe work.
Still from PBS 'Live from Lincoln Center' broadcast.

Finally, we witnessed the exuberance of the final movement of Balanchine's 'Western Symphony'.  Susan Pilare, the wonderful SAB teacher and stager, drove her student cast hard in the months leading up to the June workshop, but then encouraged them to go on stage and have fun.  They obviously did -- and the PBS audience did, too.  It was a wonderful conclusion for a wonderful broadcast.  

Bravo, PBS 'Live from Lincoln Center'!  Bravo, SAB faculty and students!

PBS Airs SAB's Workshop Performance This Week

Here's another teaser for the School of American Ballet's Workshop Performances on Live from Lincoln Center PBS:

 visit the Live From Lincoln Center web site

or here on the School's Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=799921260069493&set=vb.221175451277413&type=2&theater

It will be 12:30pm to 2pm on Sunday, December 14th on WNET (Channel 13) in the New York area.

Mikayla Lambert, Bailee Jones, Dammiel Cruz and Addie Tapp in Balanchine's 'Serenade'.
Baily Jones is now an apprentice at New York City Ballet.
Addie Tapp is in the corps of Boston Ballet.
Dammiel Cruz is still a student in the Advanced Men's Class at SAB.
Photo from broadwayworld.com

You might want to do your homework before you watch the show on PBS.  I wrote about the SAB Workshop program shortly after it was announced here:

http://zylopho.blogspot.com/2014/04/2014-school-of-american-ballet-workshop.html

And I wrote about the actual Workshop performances here:

http://zylopho.blogspot.com/2014/06/school-of-american-ballet-workshop.html

That post on the performance has more page views than any other posts I've published during the past eleven months, so I know you guys are interested.

Here's a brief summary of what's happened to many of the leads since the Workshop performances last June:

Addie Tapp ('Serenade', Waltz Girl) Boston Ballet, corps
Preston Chamblee ('Serenade') New York City Ballet, apprentice
Baily Jones ('Serenade', Russian Girl) New York City Ballet, apprentice
Lyrica Blankfein ('Coppelia', Waltz of the Golden Hours) Dresden Opera Ballet
Sarah Anne Perel ('Coppelia', Spinner) Los Angeles Ballet, company
Jasmine Perry ('Coppelia', Discord and War) Los Angeles Ballet, company
Taylor Carrasco  ('Coppelia', Discord and War) Cincinnati Ballet II
Clara Miller ('Western Symphony', Lead Dance Hall Girl) New York City Ballet, apprentice

Many of the rest are back at the School this year continuing to perfect their artistry.

Ballet Odds & Ends . . .

I just wanted to share a few bits about ballet that have recently come to my attention.

Wendy Whelan's farewell evening in her own words:

Here's a slide show of photos by Henry Leutwyler from Wendy Whelan's farewell evening on October 18th along with Wendy's comments on each:

http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/wendy-whelan-last-performance.html?mid=facebook_nymag#photo=1x00012

I was really impressed with the range and depth of her thoughts on her retirement from New York City Ballet.

Wendy Whelan's shoes for her final performance.  Photo by Henry Leutwyler

Second Season of city.ballet on AOL:

The second season of city.ballet is now up on AOL at:  

http://on.aol.com/show/517887470-city-ballet/518489161

There are 12 segments, each from 5 to 9 minutes long, covering various aspects of New York City Ballet.  The clips were taken during the company's preparation for the Fall Season that ended October 19th.  They feature several dancers and cover their lives both within the company and in the outside world.  Each segment is a small gem that can enhance viewer's understanding of what it's really like to be one of the exotic creatures that we see on stage a few times each year.  Gee, they're not so different from the rest of us!

city.ballet 'logo' from AOL

SAB Workshop on PBS 'Live from Lincoln Center:

PBS has announced that it will broadcast the School of American Ballet's June Workshop Performance on Friday, December 12th, at 9:00pm (hardly live, but certainly worth the wait).  The all-Balanchine program includes 'Serenade' (to Tschaikovsky's 'Serenade for Strings in C'); excerpts from Act II of 'Coppelia'; 'Swan Lake' (Balanchine's 1-act version); and the fourth movement of 'Western Symphony' (to Hershey Kay's music based on American folk themes).  You may recall my post about this program which you can read here:


http://zylopho.blogspot.com/2014_04_01_archive.html

There's a short PBS 'tease' clip of the students in 'Serenade' here:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365363809/

You'll recall that I wrote about the workshop performances in my posting here:

http://zylopho.blogspot.com/2014/06/school-of-american-ballet-workshop.html 

By the way that's my most popular post so far -- thanks for your support.

Addie Tapp (now a Boston Ballet corps member) and Preston Chamblee (now an apprentice at NYC Ballet)
performing George Balanchine's 'Serenade' in the School of American Ballet Workshop last June.
Photo is a still from PBS Live from Lincoln Center broadcast to be aired on 12/12/14 at 9pm.

'Ballet 422' coming to movie theaters near you:

The documentary movie 'Ballet 422', which was well-received at film festivals this fall will be opening in movie theaters in February, 6, 2015.  It provides a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of New York City Ballet's 422nd original ballet -- Justin Peck's 'Paz de la Jolla'.  You can see the movie's trailer here:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1484789521803444&set=vb.1400931226855941&type=2&theater

Look for movie theaters near you displaying this poster.

Nutcracker couples rehearse:

Finally, around the Rose Building (where both the School of American Ballet and NYC Ballet have their studios) we're starting to see George Balanchine's 'The Nutcracker' taking shape for its annual season (this year from November 28th thru January 3rd).  Ballet master Albert Evans was rehearsing with Teresa Reichlen (Sugarplum) and Ask la Cour (Cavalier) on Tuesday afternoon.  On Thursday afternoon Ashley Bouder and Joaquin De Luz were rehearsing the grand pas de deux before a studio doorway packed with rapt students plus the School's Executive Director, Marjorie Van Dercook, and me.  And many of the younger students are busy rehearsing to be guests in the Party Scene, Mice, Angels, and Candy Canes.  And the older students are learning the Dewdrop and Sugarplum variations and the grand pas de deux from the wonderful faculty -- many of whom have danced those roles themselves.

Teresa Reichlen as the Dewdrop in George Balanchine's 'The Nutcracker'.  Photo by Andrea Mohin for NYTimes

  

'Last Days of Vietnam' by Rory Kennedy

Saturday, we saw 'Last Days of Vietnam', a documentary produced and directed by Rory Kennedy.  It is an extremely important movie -- and also a beautifully organized and presented one.

Official poster for 'Last Days in Vietnam'

The movie uses a mixture of archival footage from various sources with articulate and well-chosen talking heads to tell the story of the fall of Saigon in April, 1975.

The Paris Peace Accords in January, 1973, lead to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Vietnam in the following months.  The subsequent impeachment and resignation in August, 1974, of President Richard Nixon, sufficiently changed the cast of characters who had negotiated the fragile accord.  The North Vietnamese took advantage of the anti-war sentiments and unsettled political atmosphere in the U.S. to violate the Paris Accords and begin encroaching on South Vietnam.

By early April, 1975, it was clear that the Viet Cong was intent on taking Saigon.  Many thought that they were planning to conquer Saigon in time to celebrate Ho Chi Minh's birthday in early May.

Unfortunately, the American ambassador in Saigon, Graham Martin, refused to concede that South Vietnam was lost, and as a result, resisted planning for an orderly evacuation.  

There were initially four viable options for evacuating American citizens, their dependents and the many South Vietnamese who had supported them.  However, Martin's unwillingness to face the situation allowed the three best options to slip away.  That left only the use of helicopters for most of the evacuation.

As the U.S. copes with the fallout from its withdrawal from Iraq and moves ahead with its withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is certainly instructive to reacquaint ourselves with the havoc created by end of our misadventures in Vietnam.

Rory Kennedy's movie is foremost a tale of the heroism and sacrifice in the face of desperation and chaos.  But it is also a cautionary tale, well-told, of unnecessary hardship because those 'in charge' were unwilling to deal with very real consequences.

Ms. Kennedy, a daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, and her editor, Don Kleszy, were at the showing we attended at Sunshine Cinemas.  During the Q. and A. following the movie, Rory Kennedy brought up the way that the South Vietnamese were relocated to the U.S. after the fall of Saigon.  It could provide a useful model for helping to resolve the current immigration mess in the U.S.

For those of you who can't see this documentary in a movie theater near you, look for it on your PBS station sometime in the future (PBS is one of the films producers).  It is a powerful reminder of how U.S. leadership can fail when it is too much swayed by public opinion or preconceived ideas -- especially as we deal with our current views on avoiding foreign entanglements and winding down unwanted wars.

Matthew Bourne's 'Sleeping Beauty' on PBS Great Performances

I watched Matthew Bourne's 'Sleeping Beauty' which I had recorded from PBS Great Performances over several evenings last week.  It completes Bourne's reconceptions of the great trilogy of Tschaikovsky ballets -- 'The Nutcracker', 'Swan Lake', and 'Sleeping Beauty'.  The so-called 'male' 'Swan Lake' became an enormous hit in London, on Broadway and around the globe.  We saw 'The Nutcracker' in Los Angeles over ten years ago.  It's set in a Dickensian orphanage. 

In rethinking 'The Sleeping Beauty', Bourne has tackled the thorny problem of the love story.  How realistic is it for Princess Aurora to awaken from a 100-year sleep by the kiss of a prince she has never met, then to immediately fall in love with him and marry him?  

Bourne's solution is that the fairies from the Prologue are also vampires -- vampire fairies.  

The six Vampire-Fairies in the Prologue/Christening.  Liam Mower as Count Lilac is third from the left.
Photo by Simon Annand

This clever and trendy (think the 'Twilight' series of novels and films and the HBO series 'True Blood') combination allows him to make the Act I 'Rose Adagio' into a love duet for Aurora and her true love, the gamekeeper.  

Hannah Vassallo as Aurora and Dominic North as Leo, the gamekeeper, after she is pricked by the thorn
Photo from BBC

When Aurora is pricked by the rose thorn and falls into that century of slumber, the Lilac-Vampire-Fairy bites the gamekeeper -- making him an immortal gamekeeper-vampire-fairy.

Meanwhile, Carabosse, the evil fairy is only a fairy -- not a vampire --  and thus sickens and dies after making her curse in the Prologue.  She's replaced by one of her sons, Caradoc,  who is distraught at his mother's mistreatment by the royals in the Prologue.  He proceeds to enact the curse on Aurora at her 21st birthday celebration.  Later, Caradoc deceives Leo, the gamekeeper-vampire-fairy, into bestowing the awakening kiss on Aurora.  Then Caradoc abducts her for a blood wedding to himself.  

Hannah Vassallo as Aurora arrives for the 'blood wedding' to Caradoc
Photo by Simon Annand

Caradoc is foiled by the Lilac-Vampire-Fairy who kills him with the sacrificial dagger he is about to use on Aurora.

Count Lilac (the Lilac Fairy-Vampire) stabs Caradoc with the ritual knife to end the blood wedding
Photo by Simon Annand

Aurora is spared to wed the gamekeeper and the Apotheosis shows them happily married with their own vampire-fairy-child.

Wedding of Aurora (Hannah Vassallo) and Leo, the gamekeeper-vampire-fairy (Dominic North)Photo by Simon Annand

Throughout the ballet Bourne's choreography ranges from inspired to insipid.  Bourne often demonstrates that he has studied the Petipa original and uses it as the reference point for his own choreographic deconstructions.  His variations for the six fairy-vampires in the Prologue is one clever example.  He uses Petipa's dance motifs for each of the fairies, but then lets his choreographic imagination take hold to expand and alter them to suit his fairy-vampires -- half of whom are female and half male.

In Act I, Bourne's choreography to the garland dance often undermined the waltz impulse of the celebratory music in order to make points about the Edwardian setting.  While his choreography to the Rose adagio music moved the love story forward, it really rode over many of the natural climaxes that are so beautifully effective in the traditional Petipa choreography.  

The vision scene was really more of a collection of dance moments than a sustained exploration of longing and desire. 

Bourne discarded much of the Act III music for the wedding guests (bluebirds, precious jewels, red riding hood) and used the Puss'n'boots music for a dance for the corps with cat-claw motifs.  Bourne used Tschaikovsky's music for the wedding pas de deux for the action sequences of the interrupted blood wedding.

The Prologue/Christening is set in 1890, the year that Petipa's production opened at the Maryinsky in Saint Petersburg.  Act I is set in 1911 on Aurora's 21st birthday celebrated with an Edwardian tea dance/lawn tennis party in front of the castle.  The Act II vision scene is set in a birch forest where most of the characters are in Edwardian corsets and undergarments.  Act III begins in 2011, the year before Bourne's production was introduced.  It starts with the awakening in the birch forest and then moves to a blood-red underground club where all of the characters are dressed in red and black for the blood wedding.  It ends in 2012 with the birth of the vampire-fairy-child to Aurora and Leo.

Aurora as a baby and Leo and Aurora's vampire-fairy-child are played by puppets manipulated by puppeteers using sticks.  They add a whimsical note to the Christening and the Apotheosis.

Having seen all three of Bourne's Tschaikovsky reinventions I think they all display some novelty in their conception, but fail to follow through with consistent levels of choreographic invention.  'Sleeping Beauty' falls back on the admittedly clever vampire-fairy concept but dance imagination often flags.