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Happy Nymphs and Happy Swains

The final tableau of Mark Morris's Acis and Galatea. Photo by Richard Termine for Lincoln Center.
The final tableau of Mark Morris’s Acis and Galatea. Photo by Richard Termine for Lincoln Center.

As part of the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Mark Morris Dance Group is performing Morris’s production of Handel’s opera “Acis and Galatea,” in which dancers and singers share the same sylvan world onstage. In the pit, Nicholas McGegan conducts the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale. Here’s my review of last night’s performance, for DanceTabs.

A short excerpt:

“Unlike his Dido and Aeneas (1989) and L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (1988), in Acis Morris places the four soloists…onstage among the dancers. The chorus is down below, with the players. (Morris also took this approach in his delightfully zany staging of Purcell’s King Arthur, staged at New York City Opera in 2008.) Here, the singers and dancers share the same world, in relative harmony.”

And a couple of images from the production:

 

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Susan Jones, or, the Art of the Ballet Mistress

Susan Jones cooaching "Paquita."
Susan Jones cooaching “Paquita.”

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.

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The Martha Graham Dance Company, Underwater

As you may have read, the Martha Graham Dance Company’s storage areas at Westbeth were flooded during the storm. They are only now beginning to understand the full extent of the damage to the company’s treasure of sets, costumes, and paper archives. I wrote a piece about the situation for the New Yorker blog, which you can read here.

And here’s a short excerpt:

“As the waters receded, the amount of damage became shockingly apparent. A recent visit revealed a scene of chaos and incipient decay: Crates flung around every which way and cracked open, spilling out their muddy contents. Dissolving cardboard boxes on buckled shelves. Trunks and unidentifiable stuff piled high, like the detritus from a shipwreck. The stench—of filth and wet paper, swollen wood and soggy wool, and, especially, of mold—was worryingly pungent.”

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American Ballet Theatre is Leaving City Center

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that “American Ballet Theatre will announce Wednesday that it has signed a three-year deal to perform at the David H. Koch Theater, starting in October 2013 with a two-week season.”
That means the end of City Center seasons, though the decision won’t affect the Met season or the Nutcracker run at BAM. Still, it’s a big change. More fallout from City Opera’s desertion of Lincoln Center.