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The Kirov Delves into Balanchine

"Serenade," "Rubies," "Ballet Imperial"
Kirov Ballet
City Center
New York, NY
April 19, 2008 (evening)

by Susan Reiter
copyright © 2008 Susan Reiter

It was exhilarating, and profoundly moving, to see the Kirov take on this ambitious and demanding program of Balanchine masterworks. After the oddly restrained response to the musical impetus that marked some of their earlier programs, this final (of six) programs let them truly connect to the music and dance with newfound openness and spontaneity. The layers of history and significance embedded in this program were fascinating. Here were works made by the choreographer who followed and inherited the legacies of Petipa and Fokine. who absorbed all the tradition and majesty of the Russian Imperial ballet, and then charted a brave new course that brilliantly transformed and translated everything from that noble past, to point the way to ballet's future. And here was the company that embodies, and keeps alive in today's terms, that past, finding its own distinctive way into a representative sampling of what he created.

Miami High

Miami City Ballet
"Raymonda Variations", "Sonatine", "Tarantella", and "In the Upper Room"
Tilles Center for the Performing Arts
Long Island University, New York
April 25, 2008

by Mary Cargill
copyright 2008 by Mary Cargill

The Miami City Ballet made one of its too rare and too brief visits to the New York vicinity, appearing for two days in the spacious and well-designed Tilles Center of Long Island University; the company has yet to appear in Manhattan.  This visit confirmed the virtues seen in earlier performances, and showed a well-rehearsed, well-trained company with a fine sense of style.  Of course, dancing only a comparatively few ballets a season allows for more intensive rehearsal, and so it isn't really surprising that Miami's "Raymonda Variations" showed more cohesion and more detail than the recent NYCB version, performed as one of several dozen ballets, but audiences do not watch excuses and explanations, they watch performances, and Miami's version was pure joy.  Well, not pure, perhaps, because financial constraints forced them to dance to taped music, so the lush Glazounov score sounded a bit tinny.

Royal Ballet Mixed Bill

“Rushes”, “Serenade”, “Homage to the Queen”
23 April – 14 May 2008
Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
London, England

by Judith Cruickshank
copyright 2008 by Judith Cruickshank

Nearly 30 years ago when he was director of the Berlin Ballet, Valery Panov created a full evening ballet based on Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot”.  Despite strong performers — Panov himself as Rogozin, the Kirov-trained Vladimir Gelvan in the title role and Eva Evdokimova as Nastasya — and some blindingly theatrical moments, the ballet failed to deliver much idea of the richness and complexity of Dostoevsky's plot and writing.

In his first creation for the Royal Ballet, the Danish choreographer Kim Brandstrup also claims “The Idiot” as his inspiration. But rather than the published novel he has turned to Dostoevsky’s early drafts in which the central figure combined the characteristics of both the saintly Prince Myshkin and the worldly anti-hero Rogozin.

Back to its African Roots

John Neumeier´s “Othello”
Stuttgart Ballet
Opera House
Stuttgart, Germany
April 24, 2008

by Horst Koegler
copyright @2008 by Horst Koegler

When John Neumeier, then  31 years old, started in 1973 his directorship of the Hamburg Ballet, he commissioned a full-length ”Othello” ballet from Gerald Humel, an American composer who lived in Berlin and had just scored a hit with “The Tortures of Beatrice Cenci”, written for Gerhard Bohner, one of the pioneers of  the infant German tanztheater movement. But when Humel delivered his score, Neumeier was not satisfied with it and thus the planned Hamburg staging was cancelled. However, the idea let him not go, and so he produced “Otello”, Verdi´s dramma lirico, in 1977 at the Bavrian State Opera in Munich (with Juergen Rose as designer). Eight years later the time of another attempt to deal with Shakespeare´s “Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice” had come, for which Neumeier emigrated from the Hamburg opera-house to the Kampnagelfabrik, a workshop setting, where his “Othello" was premiered in 1985 , Ballet by J.N. after Shakespeare, choreography, production, stage, costumes and lighting by J.N. -  a unanimous success, not et least thanks to an ideal cast with Gamal Gouda (Othello), Gigy Hyatt (Desdemona) and Max Midinet (Jago).

Fast or Slow--As You Like It

Doug Varone and Dancers
“Lux,” “Home” and “Boats Are Leaving”
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
April 21, 2008

by Rita Felciano
copyright © 2008 Rita Felciano

San Francisco Performances closed its current season with a return visit from Doug Varone and Dancers. What a smart move that was! Two years ago, when the company made its first appearance in fifteen years, Varone was practically unknown in the Bay Area. Certain companies return year after year but Varone’s was never among them. Yet this is a  choreographer whose work is rich beyond the way he uses music and movement. No matter the tenor of the times with its demands for experimentation for its own sake, Varone never let this get into the way of making formally cogent work about what it means to be human: conflicted, fragile, resilient. He may also be the most visible direct descendant of early modern dance.

Bavarian State Ballet (Munich)

“Cambio d´abito”, “Adagio Hammerklavier”, "Violakonzert/II"
Bavarian State Ballet
National Theatre
Munich, Germany
April 12,2008

by Horst Koegler
copyright @2008 by Horst Koegler

Among the four German Ivy League ballet companies of Berlin , Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart, the Bavarian State Ballet, housed at the beautiful Munich National Theatre, is certainly the most classically oriented. Solidly established under the experienced direction of Konstanze Vernon in 1989 as part of the greater Bavarian State Opera establishment, it has been led since 1998 by Ivan Liska, formerly John Neumeier's star-pricipal in Hamburg. Its repertory offers the most comprehensive survey of Petipa of all German troups, including the Tchaikovsky classics plus “Don Q”, “La Bayadère”, “Raymonda” and the recently added “Le Corsaire”.  Other choreographers contributing substantially to the bulk of the repertory are Cranko (the three full-lengths), Balanchine, Neumeier, MacMillan, Van Manen and Kylián through Childs, Ek, Preljocaj, Teshigawara and Forsythe. Its annual Ballet Festival Week opened this year with Van Manen´s “Adagio Hammerklavier” of 1973 vintage, flanked by two creations: Simone Sandroni´s “Cambio d´abito” and Martin Schlaepfer´s “Violakonzert / II”.

The Custom of the Country

“Serenade,” “Rubies,” “Ballet Imperial”
Kirov Ballet
New York City Center
New York, NY
April 18, 2008

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel

It takes guts to bring an all-Balanchine program to New York.  The scene at City Center on the Friday night opening of the program was thick with present and former New York City Ballet dancers, including Peter Martins, all there to watch, and perhaps to judge. If bringing coals to Newcastle is going to be done, it might as well be by a company like the Kirov that has a completely different tradition. Watching the Kirov do Balanchine is like wandering into a Japanese grocery and marveling at Western dishes transformed by native tastes; Ronzoni spaghetti is next to packages of spaghetti sauce mix – cuttlefish flavor.

Balanchine-Nureyev-Forsythe at Paris Opera

Balanchine-Nureyev-Forsythe
Paris Opera Ballet
Opéra Bastille
Paris, France
5 April 2008

by Marc Haegeman
copyright 2008 Marc Haegeman

With its latest triple bill simply called ‘Balanchine/Nureev/Forsythe’ the Paris Opera Ballet invited us to rediscover the styles of three major figures of 20th century ballet, each in his own way expanding and transforming the classical legacy of Marius Petipa. To illustrate this, the company revived George Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments”, a short suite of extracts from Rudolf Nureyev’s full-length “Raymonda”, created for the Opera in 1983, and “Artifact Suite” from William Forsythe, distilled from his evening length 1984 “Artifact.” Not the most balanced choice of works perhaps for such an ambitious programme, but one which had at least the merit to say something about the present state of the company itself, if not about the personalities and their respective styles it wanted us to compare.

Assimilation

“Steptext,” “Approximate Sonata,” “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude,” “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated.”
Kirov Ballet
New York City Center
New York, NY
April 15, 2008

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel

In 2004, the ballet of the Mariinsky Theater (we still call it the Kirov when it comes to visit) decided to propel itself into the late 20th century – better late than never – with an all-William Forsythe evening.  For the Mariinsky, it was a bold move. All Forsythe evenings aren’t a new thing; Paris Opera Ballet presented one in 1999 that included two of the works performed here (“In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated” was also commissioned for them by Nureyev in 1989) but also with two new works.  There were no commissions in St. Petersburg. By 2004, Forsythe wasn’t making dances on ballet companies.  We’ve seen some of these works in New York for more than two decades.

Lightheaded

“Sawdust Palace”
Susan Marshall & Company
Kogod Theatre, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland
April 12, 2008

by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson

With its circus title and cabaret staging Susan Marshall’s latest opus was on the light side and a little giddy. It dovetailed neatly with springtime frolics on the college campus. Oh, there were moments when a serious breeze blew through its absurdist proceedings, acrobatic stunts and rangy dancing but these gusts subsided amidst bushels of surrealist fun. A pity that, because “Sawdust Palace” could have been more than an entertainment.  It started (rather like Jerome Robbins’s “The Concert”) with a put-upon pianist and passed through 20 scenes or circus “acts”. Some made you laugh, some made you squirm but a few of them almost made you think.