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Ashton in Sarasota

Sarasota Ballet in Frederick Ashton’s Illuminations. © Frank Atura.
Sarasota Ballet in Frederick Ashton’s Illuminations.
© Frank Atura.

I’m just back from the Ashton festival at Sarasota Ballet, a four-day tribute to the choreographer. Under the directorship of Iain Webb, the company has been undergoing a major expansion over the past few years. By any measure, the festival was a big success, with strong performances, expressive dancing, and a powerful sense of style and common purpose.

You can read my review for DanceTabs here.

And a short excerpt: “The advantage of putting all these ballets on the stage in quick succession is that the audience begins to see all sorts of interconnections and motifs running through the works. Thus, in Monotones II (1965), there is an echo of the slow trio near the beginning of Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, in which a woman is slowly revolved by two men and shown from all angles, the center of a slow-moving planetary system.”

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About a Boy—a new ballet for New York City Ballet by Liam Scarlett

On Friday, New York City Ballet unveiled its first ballet by the young Briton Liam Scarlett, who, at 27, is considered one of the most promising new voices in ballet. The work is entitled “Acheron”—the name of a river in Greek mythology— and set to Poulenc’s Concerto in G for Organ, Strings, and Tympani, the same piece Glen Tetley used for his1973 ballet Voluntaries. You can read my review for DanceTabs here.

And here’s a short excerpt:

“The première of Acheron…revealed a choreographer of prodigious imagination and compositional craft, adept at building an atmosphere and suffusing it with traces of meaning. Though the ballet is abstract, without characters or a plot, an underlying theme coalesces by the end. With this deeper understanding, everything that comes before is bathed in a different hue. I’m eager to see it again, armed with this knowledge.”
I’d love to hear comments and thoughts from others who saw the ballet.

Enjoy your sunday—I hear Renée Fleming will be singing somewhere in Jersey tonight…

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Edward Villella, Unplugged

Edward Villella at a café in his new 'hood, Hamilton Heights. Photo by yours truly.
Edward Villella at a café in his new ‘hood, Hamilton Heights. Photo by yours truly.

Edward Villella is back in town, unbowed by his Miami City Ballet experience and ready to begin the next chapter of his life. I sat down with him recently at a café around the corner from his Hamilton Heights brownstone to talk about his life in dance, Balanchine, his experiences in Miami, and his plans for the future. You can read the interview here, in DanceTabs.

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“The Music Comes First” — an interview with Sara Mearns (DanceTabs)

Sara Mearns as Dewdrop. Photo by Paul Kolnik.
Sara Mearns as Dewdrop. Photo by Paul Kolnik.

Here is a recent interview with Sara Mearns of New York City Ballet, for DanceTabs, in which she discusses  recent struggles with injury, her love of dance, and some interesting upcoming plans.

A little excerpt:

“The music comes first, hands down. The music will tell you everything. It will guide you to where you need to go. It’s hard to describe how I go to that place when I get out there and hear that music. There’s nothing else.”

What are some of your mental images of Mearns’ dancing?

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Carla Körbes Gets Ready for New York—an interview for DanceTabs

Carla Körbes in the studio at PNB. Photo by Angela Sterling.
Carla Körbes in the studio at PNB. Photo by Angela Sterling.

I spoke with Carla Körbes of Pacific Northwest Ballet as she prepared for the company’s New York visit, Feb. 13-16 (at City Center). She’ll be dancing the role of Terpsichore in Balanchine’s “Apollo” and Juliet in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s version of Prokofiev’s ballet. Körbes was just as I had imagined her: laid-back, quick to laugh, warm, completely unguarded. These are some of the qualities that make her such a compelling dancer.

You can read the review here.

Q: What’s Terpsichore’s secret?

A: As Peter Boal says, the Muses have trained a lot of gods. I think she’s very wise and cool and looks down at Apollo like, “oh, he’s a baby,” but they do have a special connection. You know sometimes you meet someone and it’s just different. A special connection. I love Suzanne’s interpretation; she looks so cool, sort of like “ok little boy, here we go.”

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Balanchine’s Bait and Switch: Divertimento from Baiser de la Fée

On Sunday, at the New York City Ballet matinée, the company performed a mixed bill: Divertimento from ‘Baiser de la Fée,’ Tchaikosvky Pas de Deux, Bal de Couture, and Diamonds. As always, I was fascinated by Divertimento‘s ungraspable quality. It seems like one kind of ballet, but turns out to be something completely different. Its haunting ending makes you question everything you’ve seen before. Tiler Peck captures this transformation perfectly; she is able to transform herself, subtly, from country girl to spellbound woman, lost in a dream. You can see my review here.

Sara Mearns also performed, in Diamonds:

“Sara Mearns, back from an injury which had kept her off the stage for nine months, was in rare form, dancing with that special intensity that sets her apart from other ballerinas. One could almost hear her thoughts as she slowly zig-zagged across the stage toward her cavalier (Ask la Cour) at the start of their pas de deux. The deep arch in her back in the duet’s many backbends expressed enormous yearning; each unfolding of the leg was a momentous, slow, deliberate affair. “I am your queen, and I have suffered long.” Like a great opera singer, Mearns is able to sustain endless legato phrases, melodies that modulate and stretch and leave the viewer gasping for air.”