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Plum Perfect

"The Nutcracker"
New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center, New York
November 28, 2008

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips

Much has been written about the decline of Balanchine style and technique at New York City Ballet over the last generation, and much of it is true. Other companies today show more discipline and taste in presenting the master’s work. However, NYCB can still lay claim to one distinction – the best production anywhere of George Balanchine’s “Nutcracker.” New York is the original and permanent home of this ballet, and only NYCB has the wherewithal to give it the treatment Mr. B intended. Among its advantages: the original costumes and sets, a theater built in part with this very ballet in mind, a school overflowing with talented children, professionally trained and rigorously rehearsed, plus three more generations of NYCB artists steeped in Nutcracker lore – apprentices, company dancers and senior artists in character roles. This "Nutcracker" lights up every holiday season, beginning the day after Thanksgiving, and for some of us, outshines every other splendor of December in New York.

Triple Play

"The Four Temperaments," "Joyride," "Within the Golden Hour"
San Francisco Ballet
Opera House
J.F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
November 25, 2008

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright 2008 by Alexandra Tomalonis

San Francisco Ballet doesn't play Washington very often, and that's a pity. It's the nation's oldest ballet company (75 years and counting), but under the direction of Helgi Tomasson, it's developed a very young, contemporary profile without disregarding or compromising its classical values. Tomasson has been at least as successful at encouraging, and acquiring, watchable new choreography as anyone; he's a master a developing and casting dancers; and he knows how to program. Tuesday night's well-attended opening was a mix of one 20th century masterpiece and two works by major contemporary choreographers new last year.

Beauty & Blemish

“The Way Dogs Do” ... One-Man Show by Christoph Dostal

Embassy of Austria

Washington, DC

November 21, 2008

by George Jackson

copyright 2008 by George Jackson

Christoph Dostal is a handsome man. Looks are not normally the thing I mention first in a review. In this instance, though, Dostal’s appearance is central to his art of clowning. He’s a sad clown, eliciting our pity by distorting the classical features of his face and the uprightness of his bearing to narrate a goofy story and play grotesque characters. Each of his forays into an incident or personality is like an insult to the beauty and dignity of the human form. When Dostal disengages from his storytelling and acting tasks and resumes his “own” guise, it is a surprise to find that all the make believe hasn’t left irreversible traces behind. He emerges as fine a specimen as he was at the start, and that is the real drama of this one-man show.

A Rare Royal Triple Bill

"Serenade," "L'Invitation au Voyage," "Theme and Variations"
Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
London, England
October 28 - November 10, 2008

by Judith Cruickshank
copyright 2008 by Judith Cruickshank

Triple bills are something of a rarity at Covent Garden these days, when the repertory is based firmly around full length blockbusters which are assumed to be what will fill the house and also attract the new, younger audiences for which the management yearns. Personally, I suspect high ticket prices may have something to do with the lack of younger audiences, and reports of swathes of empty seats during the recent run of "Manon" would seem to undermine the view that full-evening works are all people want.

Either way, the mixed bill which opened on 28 October for a run of just five performances promised well; two Balanchine masterpieces and the revival of a ballet by an English choreographer, first given in 1982.

Three Vintage Neumeier Works in Hamburg

Homage to Diaghilev
John Neumeier, “Daphnis and Chloe”, “The Afternoon of a Faune”, “Le Sacre”
Hamburg Ballett John Neumeier      
Hamburg Opera House
Hamburg, Germany
November 13, 2008

by Horst Koegler
copyright @2008  by Horst Koegler

 In Hamburg, John Neumeier started his 2008/9 Diaghilev anniversary season on November 7 with a revival of three of his earlier creations: “Daphnis and Chloe” and “Le Sacre”, both dating from his Frankfurt beginnings in 1972  sandwiching his version of “Afternoon of a Faune”, created in 1996 in Dresden for Vladimir Derevianko and two of his partners. I attended the fourth performance on November 13, with a full house enthusiastically applauding all three newly polished pieces, and danced by a new generation of dancers; the threesome looked in mint condition. Actually it was one of the happiest performances I attended in recent months, one of the reasons being that the ballets are set to three of the century´s musical masterworks by Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky. Though I have heard them at former occasions far more brilliantly played than on that night by the Hamburg Philharmonic and Chorus under the competent, but hardly electrifying, baton of Christoph Eberle, the musical riches were truly overwhelming. Remembering that they all date  from the years before World War One, a whiff of nostalgia was unavoidable if one compared them with so much electronically generated sounds and noises as our customary fare in so many of today´s modern oriented ballet-evenings.

In Miniature

Sensedance
Ailey Citigroup Theater
New York, NY
November 11, 2008

dance on a shoestring
New York Theatre Ballet
City Center
New York, NY
November 15, 2008

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel

Small ballet companies in New York City are an uncommon lot, laboring in the shadow of the major institutions.  Two of them, Sensedance and New York Theatre Ballet, performed last week.  New York Theatre Ballet’s “Dance on a Shoestring” series are in-studio performances that are a cross between a full-dress affair and an informal studio showing (ask the little kids wandering up and down the risers) and they’re a great value at ten bucks.  This one contained a little treasure, the beginning of a reconstruction of Antony Tudor’s “Trio Con Brio.”

In and Out of the System

“Delinquent”
Circo Zero
November 13, 2008
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano 2008

What an odd place the Bay Area is for watching dance. One night you sit in an alley, under a full moon, and watch LEVYdance’s quintet of exquisitely volatile dancers in work that is so luscious that you can’t take your eyes of it even though most of it uncomfortably slithers over the surface of the issues it raises. The following evening there is a group of “graduates” from the Juvenile Justice System brought together by Keith Hennessey’s Circo Zero in an awkward, at times bumbling work that scrapes at you like sandpaper on the soul.

Mavericks, Mavens & Machines

Beyond Boundaries: Genre-bending Mavericks
Takayuki Fujimoto, Takao Kawaguchi, Tsuyoshi Shirai
"True"
Japan Society, New York
November 13, 2008

By Tom Phillips
Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips

It was many months ago that Japan Society decided to title its fall performance series “Genre-bending Mavericks,” long before the term “maverick” was picked up and pounded to a pulp in this election year. In any case, the guys who put on the latest installment of this series seem more mavens than mavericks: masters of a new form of technological theater that blends sound, lighting and dance into a seamless whole. “True” is an illusion with the force and incomprehensibility of reality.

Nowhere to Hide in "La Bayadere" (Vienna Letter #2)

by George Jackson

copyright 2008 by George Jackson

Some dancers, like certain cities, make you conscious of volume more than line, space or even spot. Vienna is one of the cities, at least in its inner districts. These are built up of substantial structures - apartment houses of much the same size and shape. The prototype stems from the 19th Century. Façade styles differ – Biedermeier, neoclassical, art nouveau, functional, fancily glass-and-steel and so forth. It is the buildings' boxy volume, though, that stamps itself into the consciousness to become a norm. Dancers who conjure volume – they seem sculpted in the round or molded on a lathe – include three 20th Century ballerinas: the USSR’s Marina Semyonova, Austria’s Poldy Pokorny and the USA’s Nana Gollner.

Philadelphia Story

Ballo della Regina,” “Kazimir’s Colors,” “Push Comes to Shove”
Pennsylvania Ballet
Academy of Music
Philadelphia, PA
November 1, 2008

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel

Surely it’s a coincidence, but Pennsylvania Ballet was stalking American Ballet Theatre last weekend. Both companies danced “Ballo della Regina” and Pennsylvania paired it with Tharp’s breakthrough work for ABT, “Push Comes to Shove.”

Pennsylvania’s version of “Ballo” has a few advantages.  The stage at the Academy of Music is big enough to really move.  Beyond a better space, Pennsylvania’s version is better in premise; the dancers are more conversant in the Balanchine style.  Their dancing is accented, they’re lighter on their feet, they jump and most importantly they move.  The soloists and principals aren’t at the same level as at ABT, granted.  The four demi-soloist variations were well-rehearsed if a bit staid. Amy Aldridge had fast feet but a tight neck and frozen smile; Zachary Hench had the jump, but not the cleanliness.