More Bournonville at NYCB
Lauren Lovette and Anthony Huxley had their débuts in Peter Martins’ La Sylphide, and Teresa Reichlen and Zachary Catazaro danced the pas de deux from Flower Festival in Genzano. Read my review for DanceTabs here.
Bournonville in the House
At the spring gala, New York City Ballet unveiled a program of Bournonville works. In the first half, a suite of excerpts, including Flower Festival in Genzano and the tarantella from Napoli. In the second, La Sylphide (performed without an intermission). How did they do? You can see my DanceTabs review here.
Starting off 2015 with a toast to Bournonville
Wrote a piece on the enduring appeal of the Royal Danes for the Times. You can read it here. An ensemble from the company will travel to the Joyce Jan. 13-18.
A Chat with Ormsby Wilkins
I had a brief chat with ABT’s music director, Ormsby Wilkins, about the recently rediscovered Benjamin Britten orchestration of Les Sylphides that the company is using this season. How is it different from the one they were using before, by Roy Douglas? On first hearing I found it lighter, more classical, with more detailed voices. But I wondered whether the differences went deeper. You can link to the conversation here.
Susan Jones, or, the Art of the Ballet Mistress
Here’s my interview with Susan Jones, a ballet mistress at American Ballet Theatre in charge of the corps de ballet. Jones joined ABT in 1970 and stayed for nine years. In that time, she danced every corps role in the rep, plus Lizzie in Fall River Legend, Cowgirl in Rodeo, and a few other choice parts that suited her dramatic side. She quickly showed a skill for remembering steps, which became handy when working with Twyla Tharp on Push Comes to Shove. Baryshnikov made her a ballet mistress, and she never left. This fall, she is re-staging Tharp’s Bach Partita, which hasn’t been done for almost thirty years.
Opening Night at New York City Ballet
The company kicked off its spring season — a.k.a. the American Music Festival — on April 30, with an all-Balanchine program. (The date also marked the thirtieth anniversary of Balanchine’s death.) On the program: Who Cares?, Tarantella, Stars and Stripes, and the revival of that most mysterious ballet, Ivesiana (not performed since 2004). The cast of Ivesiana was mostly new, and included Ashley Laracey in her first big role since being promoted to soloist int the spring. And what a striking, chilling ballet it is. You can read my review (for DanceTabs) here.
And here’s a short excerpt:
“Made in 1954 (the same year as Western Symphony, of all things) for a cast of dancers that included Janet Reed, Allegra Kent, Tanaquil LeClercq, Francisco Moncion, and Todd Bolender, Ivesiana is one of Balnachine’s simplest, and most unnerving, compositions. Four ideas, four sections, not many steps, and no pointe-work – except in the crazed third chapter, “In the Inn,” which is crammed to the gills with steps and performed on pointe…. The entire thing is steeped in an atsmophere of suffocating irresolution, of irratonal occurrences and otherworldliness.”
Dancing Around 