the danceview times
|
Volume 1, Number 12 December 15, 2003 An online supplement to DanceView magazine
Letter from New York 15
December 2003.
Letter from Bangkok 15
December 2003. A
celebration of George Balanchine:
Let’s Take a Trip and Playhouse 90: The Nutcracker By
Dale Brauner
Although invaluable as lasting records, the performances on The Bell Telephone Hour, The Ed Sullivan Show and the Voice of Firestone were often filmed in less than ideal circumstances—cement floors, limited space, and last minute casting changes. In addition, the early recording equipment made the dancers’ noses appear long and their legs look short. Balanchine, who advanced the art of ballet in films in the 1930s, developed a strong relationship with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and was pleased with the results produced and aired between 1956 and 1979. His decision to have a large amount of his ballets filmed in Germany soured him to the filming experience. Director Hugo Niebeling made strange camera angle and editing choices. Balanchine derided the 1978 Live at Lincoln Center broadcast of Coppèlia, which featured too many long-range shots, for making his ballet look like “dancing matchsticks." It was only after he worked with the Dance in America crew for the “Choreography by Balanchine” series that Balanchine truly felt comfortable to re-envision his work on television. Balanchine’s
work on television and film is the subject of a series held by the Museum
of Television & Radio in New York and Los Angeles in honor of the
great choreographer’s centennial. Nine sets of screenings are scheduled
from December to March, as well as a seminar in January featuring Suzanne
Farrell, Edward Villella, Live at Lincoln
Center executive producer John Goberman. Balanchine at the New York Public Library “The
Enduring Legacy of George Balanchine” “Dear
Lincoln, This poignant
passage from a 1947 letter, handwritten in Paris by George Balanchine
to Lincoln Kirstein, is one of the extraordinary artifacts on view in
“The Enduring Legacy of George Balanchine,” a most thoughtful
exhibition, sensitively installed on the ground floor of The New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center through 24 April.
Some of the letters, photographs, publications, remarkable oral histories,
and other items will be familiar to Balanchine fans; however, quite a
few—such as the unusually vulnerable letter, quoted above—may
be revelations. Ballerinas important to the School of American Ballet
(such as Alexandra Danilova and Felia Doubrovska) are also separately
honored.
|
Lyrical, Witty and Nutty as a Fruitcake: The Hard Nut Swings Into Town The
Hard Nut by
Paul Parish
I've myself
seen it every year since it first opened here in 1996—it's played
with a few breaks, almost every year since—and I find it to be,
like a great comic opera, mysteriously intricate and deep, and that the
more I see it, the more satisfying it becomes. This year I was shocked
to realize how romantic The Hard Nut is—despite all its overt ironies,
and the manifold gay references, the pas de deux for Marie (Lauren Grant)
and the Nutcracker (David Leventhal) made me cry, it was so beautiful,
so touching, so delicate and poignant and fresh and musical, and so beautifully
danced. It has I think become more classical, more mythic, more universal
over the years, as this couple has taken over the roles—rather as
Apollo evolved with Farrell and Martins in the roles, except that in the
case of the Hard Nut, Leventhal and Grant are musical, generous,
classical in their way of moving, and WARM. This is how our parents should
have fallen in love. Ailey's Feast of Dancing and Premieres HeartSong/Juba/Revelations By
Susan Reiter The new
works tend to come and go; among the recent ones, Ronald K. Brown's are
among the few to find an ongoing place in the Ailey repertory. Too many
of the premieres are in suite form, consisting of assembled musical selections
and offering a rich display of dancing that does not cohere or add up
to much. Some tend toward the harsh and edgy; other are more showbiz and
display-oriented. Strangers On a Train D.C.
9th International Improvisation Plus+ Festival
By Lisa Traiger "Come
ride the Red line with us … we're CatScratch Theatre," whispered
a woman after slithering across a cement bench in Union Station. She handed
me a business-sized card and snuck up to the next unsuspecting customer.
Sometimes riding along with the unexpected makes for a serendipitous hour
or two, as it did on Saturday. The CatScratch dancers and a small cohort
of assistants—a flag carrier and one or two who lugged bags of cold
weather layers—began stealthily, hard to spot in their wool caps
and winter coats. But soon slight, ponytailed Stephen Clapp instructed
us to board the next Red Line train bound for Shady Grove. Along the way
we disembarked at pre-planned stops at Gallery Place, Metro Center and
Dupont Circle before finishing up with a game of follow the leader at
Friendship Heights that took us to the door of the Jack Guidone Theater.
Classical Showcase The
Winter Performance Recitals
by the Universal (formerly Kirov; originally Universal) Ballet Academy
have gained a reputation for classical purity and professional polish
that is matched by few other schools around the world. These showcases
occur two or three times a year just before breaks in the academic schedule
and they are long, lasting sometimes three hours or more. This year's
winter performance was relatively brief, just two and a half hours. Often
the starting number is a demonstration class but this time it was Classical
Composition by Nadig to Glinka music that served as a classroom based
entrée for six young women. There followed 32 other numbers, 18
of them by (or after) Marius Petipa. All the Petipa selections were classical,
not from his character dances, for arguably even Raymonda's solo is upper
class at its core with the folk ingredients elegantly, imperially transformed
(An Na Yung had the requisite authority). Among the dancers lit up by
Petipa were Ian Lindeman (in the Paquita trio), Emily Bicks (in
a Don Quixote Act 3 solo, and very finished for someone so young),
long limbed Sae Hyun Kwon (in the Vestalka solo to music presumably
by Gasparo Spontini and not Sposini; although M. Ivanov is listed as composer
for Petipa's ballet on the Vestal Virgin topic, this could have been from
the Spontini opera), Kenya Nakamura (in the Giselle Peasant Boy
variation), Brooklyn Mack (powerful in a Le Corsaire solo and
partnering lyrical Sofia Dahlgren in the duo), Sasha De Sola (another
Corsaire variation), Mikayla Williams (simple, fresh and elegant
in a Sleeping Beauty Prologue solo) as well as Mara Thompson,
Emily Drexler, April Giangeruso and Hee Kyung Bae. The dancers in Petipa
ensembles struck the right balance between individuality and uniformity.
|
|
Copyright
©2003 by DanceView |
|