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Taking on Forsythe

“Forgotten Land,” “At Various Points,” “Artifact Suite”
Pennsylvania Ballet
Academy of Music
Philadelphia, PA
June 15, 2013

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2013 by Leigh Witchel
 

Pennsylvania Ballet closed their season ambitiously. The company put on a world premiere of a work by choreographer in residence Matthew Neenan, but the real challenges lay in two older works still new to the company: “Forgotten Land” and “Artifact Suite.”

Jiří Kylián created “Forgotten Land” a few years after assuming the mantle of Netherlands Dance Theater, but this dance was made for Stuttgart ballet in 1981. The piece plays out in front of a forbidding landscape; a moody rendering of a seascape before a storm with a glowing breakwater at the horizon.

Variations on a Theme

"Pur ti Miro", "No. 24", "The Man in Black", and "Theme and Variations"
The National Ballet of Canada
Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
Toronto, Canada
June 19, 2013

By Denise Sum
Copyright © by Denise Sum 2013

The mixed program which closed the National Ballet of Canada's 2012-2013 season was a great success. The four short pieces showed the best of the company and left the audience wanting more. Karen Kain's interesting programming took the viewer on a journey from tutus to cowboy boots and back, with a mix of both homegrown talent and choreographers from abroad.

Dancing at the Philharmonic

"A Dancer's Dream"
New York Philharmonic
Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, New York
June 28, 2013

By Tom Phillips
Copyright 2013 by Tom Phillips

Typical New York street dialogue:
Q: What is all this about?
A: Oh, they’re making a movie.

Making a movie is just one of the things they were doing at the New York Philharmonic this weekend. (Scheduled for release in September, it won’t be a Hollywood-style blockbuster, more like a an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus) They were also humanizing the orchestra, shaking the audience out of its doldrums, showcasing the ringmaster skills of music director Alan Gilbert, putting on a puppet show and by the way, a little ballet.

The Power of Two

"Tulip"
Molly Lieber & Eleanor Smith
Roulette
Brooklyn, NY
June 19, 2013

By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2013 by Martha Sherman


Alone, Molly Lieber or Eleanor Smith is powerful; together they’re shattering.  “Tulip,” the latest duet by the pair, who have worked together since 2006, charts a continuing course exploring female relationships and pushing the limits of their own partnership. “Tulip” has a straightforward structure, a modified A-B-A format, with a central movement bound by parallel, framing scenes. The bookended dance segments offer many surprises, but in the mesmerizing central section, the two naked women cling, writhe and enfold each other in  breathtaking intimacy.

The Show Must Go On

"Sylvia"
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
New York, New York
June 26, 2013 Matinee

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2013 by Mary Cargill

Veronkia Part and Cory Stearns were scheduled to make joint debuts as the nymph Sylvia and her beloved Aminta; however at the last minute Stearns was injurned and replaced by Marcelo Gomes. (There wasn't even enough time to put a slip in the program.)  Gomes, of course, is an experienced Aminta and a partner extraordinaire, but much of the partnering requires split second timing, and there couldn't have been much time for rehearsal, so I expect the performance of the pas de deux was at best a dress rehearsal.

Endings

"40th Anniversary Season Encore Performance"
Pacific Northwest Ballet
Sunday, June 9, 2013

"32nd Annual School Performances"
Saturday, June 15, 2013 (evening)

McCaw Hall
Seattle, Washington

by Helene Kaplan
copyright © 2013 by Helene Kaplan

Early in his tenure as Artistic Director of Pacific Northwest Ballet, Peter Boal introduced a special season-ending retrospective of excerpts from the season's rep in which each of the Principals and Soloists reprises at least one featured role. A weekend later, the School is celebrated with the "Next Step" program, in which the Professional Division students dance works by company choreographers, giving them valuable experience of working directly in the creation process, and the following day with the two-part school performance, in which the Student Divisions in the Francia Russell Center and Seattle Schools perform works by the faculty and the Professional Division students dance works by prominent choreographers.  For most of the second-year PD's, it's a farewell to Seattle as they take their places in companies around the US and in Europe.

Here Comes the Sun

"Sylvia"
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
New York, New York
June 24, 2013

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2013 by Mary Cargill

Michael Mayer, the director of the new "Rigoletto" at the Met, explained his decision to set the opera in 1950's Las Vegas by saying "It gives the audience a chance to recognize these people in a way that doesn't require a giant imaginative leap.  I'm not totaly sure where Manuta is in Italy, it's not one of those beautiful places I've visited."  Fortunately, Ashton's "Sylvia" shows far more respect for the music, the story, and the audience, as he set his ballet firmly in Arcadia, a place I am sure he nor the audience ever visited.  And so far no one at ABT seems to be worried that Endymion, Ceres, and Persephone might be Greek to Today's Audience.  "Sylvia" is multi-layered; a 21st century revival of a 20th century ballet, set to a 19th century score for a ballet based on a 1573 poem by Torquato Tasso, "Aminta", set in an idealized classical Greece.  But, as in "The Sleeping Beauty", the 18th century, with its belief in harmony and reason and the essential beneficence of nature, also illuminates the work; both heroes have only to trust in a diety to be rewarded.  To modern eyes, this can make both heros look rather passive (so many versions of "The Sleeping Beauty" try, all unsuccessfully, to beef up the Prince's role and give him something to do, rather than just trusting in his essence).  But there is a rare and unusual beauty in the idea that goodness must prevail in the natural order of things, and the audience has only to reach out to be taken into this world, a world where the effortless and innocent nobility of both Désiré and Aminta can be transcendent.  Though the stories are very different, the same suns shines on both works.

Back to the Lakeside

Swan Lake
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House, New York
June 18, 2013

by Tom Phillips
Copyright 2013 by Tom Phillips

The theatrical deficiencies of ABT’s current Swan Lake have been well documented over the dozen years of its existence, and they were all evident Tuesday night at the Met. Both Act One and Act Two should end like cliffhangers, but instead each seemed to just trail off. Act Four should raise the drama to tragic dimensions, but instead it just gets rid of the principals in perfunctory fashion, leaving a corps of swans in limbo. Still, the dual role of Odette and Odile remains the ultimate challenge for a ballerina, and there’s enough drama inherent just in the pas de deux of Acts Two and Three to make a memorable evening. On Tuesday, Veronika Part rose to the ballerina’s challenge. But this Swan Lake was still short on drama, mostly because of her unsatisfying partnership with Cory Stearns.

A Right Rite

"Mosaic and United"
"Spring, Spring, Spring"
Mark Morris Dance Group
Hertz Hall, University of California
Berkeley, CA
June 12, 2013

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2013

 

John Luther Adams' percussion piece "Strange and Sacred Noise", performed in UC Berkeley's bucolic Faculty Glade, served as an unlikely, but on second thought quite appropriate prelude to Mark Morris' re-imagined "The Rite of Spring." As performed by the percussion ensemble red fish blue fish, Adams' flowing sonorities may have been far removed from the fiendishly intricate rhythms of Stravinsky's score as reconfigured by the Bad Ass Jazz Trio. But they animated that landscape by paying tribute to it and placing it within the context of much larger natural forces.

New Crew Aboard

"Le Corsaire"
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
New York, NY
June 8, 2013 evening

By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2013 by Carol Pardo

American Ballet Theatre tends to program the same handful of full-evening ballets during its annual run at Lincoln Center. The company tries to make the familiar tempting with mix and match casting, and a novelty or two thrown in, so that audiences will keep buying tickets for a ballet they already know by heart. This season "Le Corsaire" has new sets and costumes, and a new orchestration of its score, but the reason to see it again lies in the casting, plucked from throughout its ranks.