I have admitted before that I am absolutely unqualified to comment on dance. My connections to the art are a roughly 10-year subscription to the Joffrey Ballet, and that I often do a flexibility workout taken from the New York City Ballet Workout book (which I recommend highly; I gather there are a couple of DVDs as well, I can't comment on them). So I have a strange relationship with dance; I have almost no ability to compare one dancer or company with another, but I do know what a fondu or an arabesque is.
All that said, this is my blog, so I can make a comment without knowing much of anything. I've seen the Joffrey production of The Nutcracker quite a few times, and, the other night, I watched the current PBS show with the San Francisco Ballet. From this limited perspective, I enjoyed the PBS show, but not anywhere near as much as did the commenters at the web site. I recognize the danger here, comparing something on TV I've seen once to something I've seen live 10 or so times (dance really does suffer when it's seen on the screen, as the depth gets flattened almost intolerably).
One thing I have noticed is that there is far more of a star hierarchy at most ballet companies than there is at the Joffrey. Whether San Francisco or ABT, there seems to be a bewildering array of titles, principal, soloist, corps, and so forth, whereas the Joffrey is more nominally egalitarian. Obviously there are stars, like the recently departed and much missed Maia Wilkins, but a dancer who is a flower in The Nutcracker might show up in the spring program as the star of a dance. It's my impression that we don't see that in most other companies. The result: the corps at the Joffrey is of far higher quality. The wife and I saw ABT dance Swan Lake a few years ago, and I was amazed at the lack of unison in the corps, something you almost never see with the Joffrey.
The same was true in the SF Ballet Nutcracker, anything with an ensemble was shaky, with none of the precision I've come to expect. In the minor roles there are also some problems; for example, one of the dancers in the Arabian coffee piece seemed to have major problems with landing relatively simple jumps. And I have to believe that affects the choreography. Gerald Arpino (who, sadly, we lost this year) created a couple of the ensemble dances in Robert Joffrey's Nutcracker, most notably the Waltz of the Flowers, which is a wondrous piece with non-stop movement and stagecraft. In comparison, the San Francisco version is woeful indeed, with long solo turns by the Sugar Plum Fairy alternating with the aforementioned questionable ensemble work. I wonder if Arpino knew that he would have a strong ensemble, so the Waltz became a non-star turn, while the SF choreographer knew he had to work around a less-outstanding corps.
To continue with the negative comparisons, the second acts are quite different in staging. In the Joffrey version, the stage is full, with a great density of people and movement. The SF version, in contrast, is far more stark, with all the business focused on whoever's dancing at the moment - the rest of the vast stage is empty. Maybe that's a matter of taste. If your major concern is a focus on the principals, you might not want a lot of stage business. Personally, I prefer the swirl of activity, the sense of continuity that comes from, for example, having Clara onstage at all times observing what is, after all, supposed to be her dream.
Look, I don't want to be overly negative here. I'm fortunate in that I live close enough to see the Joffrey production, and many don't have that opportunity. The San Francisco version is lovely, and there is some superior individual dancing (this Nutcracker Prince guy is very good, though he looks distractingly like Justin Long, Mac from the PC vs. Mac commercials). If you like The Nutcracker, this is a fine presentation, well worth your time at the holidays.
Showing posts with label dance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dance. Show all posts
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Three reviews
Each of the last three nights, my wife and I took advantage of the cultural riches Chicago has to offer and attended a different event. I have said before that I am far more an uninformed fan than an expert, so these are, of necessity, the scribblings of an amateur. Read these at your own peril.
Wednesday night, it was off to the Lyric Opera. Bizet's The Pearl Fishers is an opera I've seen once before, and, other than a couple of hit tunes, I've found it rather flimsy. The story is preposterous, even by opera standards; worse yet, it is close to non-existent (the tale is told that the librettists, upon hearing the music the 24-year-old Bizet had written, apologized for the poor quality of the story). I won't bother to summarize, it's irrelevant to whether you'll enjoy it.
There are only four singing parts, one of which is the small role of the high priest, so we're left with two male friends and the woman they both love. The most moving and famous song is the friendship duet between the two men, and it was handled well at the Lyric. One thing that irks me about many of the recordings I've heard is that the remarkable flute parts often get swallowed up; Wednesday night, the flute was left as the third partner that it should be.
The rest of the opera just doesn't grab me much. There's some nice orchestration, if not as impressive as in the 12-years-older Bizet's Carmen. It's all pleasant, at times even lovely, but there's really nothing here that grabbed me emotionally. I have this problem with French operas in general, that they're light and delightful, but the stories are thin and the music unmemorable. Perhaps that's an unfair generalization, but it has been pretty consistent over the years. All that said, the performances by Nathan Gunn, Eric Cutler, and Nicole Cabell were wonderful. They invested this opera with as much gravity as possible through their singing and acting.
Thursday night, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The hot young conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya brought his new Caminos del Inka project to Symphony Center, an attempt to bring the music of the Andes (he is from Lima) to the orchestral stage. The pieces ranged from folk tunes of the 18th century (or before) to a couple of works on which the ink was barely dry. The only one most people had heard before was El condor pasa, and that only because Paul Simon worked it into a famous Simon & Garfunkel song.
I am generally unmoved by these experiments. The brilliance of Dvorak or Bartok came from their ability to take folk tunes and spin them into serious orchestral works. Barring that, one ends up either with music that is inflated to fit a large orchestra, or that is largely standard fare with exotic accents (as in Soro's Tres aires chilenos, which came off as stirring Hollywood-type music with South American influences - not horrible, but nothing that couldn't be pasted together by a Waxman or a Herrmann).
Added to this was a slide show that detracted from realization of the music. It's difficult to trust that there is a complete commitment to the orchestra when the audience is asked to watch Peruvian scenes or, worse yet, completely unrelated abstract images. These are invariably attempts at expanding an audience that is presumably assumed to wish to multitask, but the images condition the music in ways that are almost certainly not the intention of the composer.
One piece was called Illapa, a tone poem for flute and orchestra, a piece composed in 2004. This one featured a soloist on Andean flutes, Jessica Warren-Acosta; oddly enough, she mixed the South American flutes in with standard flutes to no particular effect. Another was Mariel, a piece by the well-known contemporary composer Osvaldo Golijov. This featured a remarkable solo effort by cellist Kenneth Olsen, but the orchestral part seemed underwritten and incompatible. I'd love to hear the original piece for cello and marimba.
There were a couple of other pieces, but the whole thing was pretty much unmemorable. When one looks at the "standard" orchestral program, where there is a short piece, then a concerto, finishing with a symphonic work, any of these seven pieces would fit into the first slot and give the audience some exposure to the culture. For a complete concert, these works just don't hold up.
Harth-Bedoya seems to be trying to bring the success of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project to gain some recognition of the music of his homeland. It's a noble effort, one that is worth pursuing, but not one that I feel works at this stage with a high-powered orchestra like the CSO. If the audience reaction was any indication, my opinion was widely shared.
Friday night, it was off to the Joffrey Ballet. The three works on the fall program were quite varied, and the Joffrey did its usual impeccable job of bringing them to us. The company may not get quite the attention it did when it was based in New York, but, in my limited experience with "the dance," I find them truly superior. (As an example, the ABT gave a performance of Swan Lake in Chicago a couple of years ago, and the corps de ballet was appallingly out of synch. The Joffrey rarely has these problems.)
Each of the three works, though this is not expressly stated, seem to be focused around a series of pas de deux. Perhaps it betrays a lack of sophistication on my part, but I generally enjoy solo turns and large group dances over duets. So there was not enough of what I like for my taste, but there was still plenty here to enjoy.
The first piece, Postcards, was Robert Joffrey's final work. The revelation to me was the music of Erik Satie, a composer about whom I've always been pretty indifferent. (I own a version of his Gymnopédies which is dreadful, it's played so slowly.) And it was quite good here. The dancing was not so appealing to me. There wasn't anything wrong with it, it just struck me as repetitive and uninteresting. Maybe it was just me.
The second piece, In The Night, was choreographed by Jerome Robbins, famous for his Broadway and Hollywood work. This piece was so much more, showing three different phases of love. The last in particular I found quite moving as danced by Suzanne Lopez and Patrick Simoniello, but all the couples were good. This was kind of a revelation, as I had not realized that Robbins had created "classic" ballets, but this was absolutely gorgeous.
The final work, Age of Innocence, is a new piece by Edwaard Liang. I thought it got off to a rough start; the first two parts (of five) seemed stock and static. But it came into its own in a dance for four men, then moved into what was, in effect, a duet for Fabrice Calmels and Victoria Jaiani, two of the real stars of the Joffrey. This part was amazing, with novel holds and positions, and was followed by a fast-paced finale that marked Liang as a choreographer to watch.
So that's enough culture for me for one week, it's time for a rainy weekend of football (and assorted chores and things).
Wednesday night, it was off to the Lyric Opera. Bizet's The Pearl Fishers is an opera I've seen once before, and, other than a couple of hit tunes, I've found it rather flimsy. The story is preposterous, even by opera standards; worse yet, it is close to non-existent (the tale is told that the librettists, upon hearing the music the 24-year-old Bizet had written, apologized for the poor quality of the story). I won't bother to summarize, it's irrelevant to whether you'll enjoy it.
There are only four singing parts, one of which is the small role of the high priest, so we're left with two male friends and the woman they both love. The most moving and famous song is the friendship duet between the two men, and it was handled well at the Lyric. One thing that irks me about many of the recordings I've heard is that the remarkable flute parts often get swallowed up; Wednesday night, the flute was left as the third partner that it should be.
The rest of the opera just doesn't grab me much. There's some nice orchestration, if not as impressive as in the 12-years-older Bizet's Carmen. It's all pleasant, at times even lovely, but there's really nothing here that grabbed me emotionally. I have this problem with French operas in general, that they're light and delightful, but the stories are thin and the music unmemorable. Perhaps that's an unfair generalization, but it has been pretty consistent over the years. All that said, the performances by Nathan Gunn, Eric Cutler, and Nicole Cabell were wonderful. They invested this opera with as much gravity as possible through their singing and acting.
Thursday night, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The hot young conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya brought his new Caminos del Inka project to Symphony Center, an attempt to bring the music of the Andes (he is from Lima) to the orchestral stage. The pieces ranged from folk tunes of the 18th century (or before) to a couple of works on which the ink was barely dry. The only one most people had heard before was El condor pasa, and that only because Paul Simon worked it into a famous Simon & Garfunkel song.
I am generally unmoved by these experiments. The brilliance of Dvorak or Bartok came from their ability to take folk tunes and spin them into serious orchestral works. Barring that, one ends up either with music that is inflated to fit a large orchestra, or that is largely standard fare with exotic accents (as in Soro's Tres aires chilenos, which came off as stirring Hollywood-type music with South American influences - not horrible, but nothing that couldn't be pasted together by a Waxman or a Herrmann).
Added to this was a slide show that detracted from realization of the music. It's difficult to trust that there is a complete commitment to the orchestra when the audience is asked to watch Peruvian scenes or, worse yet, completely unrelated abstract images. These are invariably attempts at expanding an audience that is presumably assumed to wish to multitask, but the images condition the music in ways that are almost certainly not the intention of the composer.
One piece was called Illapa, a tone poem for flute and orchestra, a piece composed in 2004. This one featured a soloist on Andean flutes, Jessica Warren-Acosta; oddly enough, she mixed the South American flutes in with standard flutes to no particular effect. Another was Mariel, a piece by the well-known contemporary composer Osvaldo Golijov. This featured a remarkable solo effort by cellist Kenneth Olsen, but the orchestral part seemed underwritten and incompatible. I'd love to hear the original piece for cello and marimba.
There were a couple of other pieces, but the whole thing was pretty much unmemorable. When one looks at the "standard" orchestral program, where there is a short piece, then a concerto, finishing with a symphonic work, any of these seven pieces would fit into the first slot and give the audience some exposure to the culture. For a complete concert, these works just don't hold up.
Harth-Bedoya seems to be trying to bring the success of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project to gain some recognition of the music of his homeland. It's a noble effort, one that is worth pursuing, but not one that I feel works at this stage with a high-powered orchestra like the CSO. If the audience reaction was any indication, my opinion was widely shared.
Friday night, it was off to the Joffrey Ballet. The three works on the fall program were quite varied, and the Joffrey did its usual impeccable job of bringing them to us. The company may not get quite the attention it did when it was based in New York, but, in my limited experience with "the dance," I find them truly superior. (As an example, the ABT gave a performance of Swan Lake in Chicago a couple of years ago, and the corps de ballet was appallingly out of synch. The Joffrey rarely has these problems.)
Each of the three works, though this is not expressly stated, seem to be focused around a series of pas de deux. Perhaps it betrays a lack of sophistication on my part, but I generally enjoy solo turns and large group dances over duets. So there was not enough of what I like for my taste, but there was still plenty here to enjoy.
The first piece, Postcards, was Robert Joffrey's final work. The revelation to me was the music of Erik Satie, a composer about whom I've always been pretty indifferent. (I own a version of his Gymnopédies which is dreadful, it's played so slowly.) And it was quite good here. The dancing was not so appealing to me. There wasn't anything wrong with it, it just struck me as repetitive and uninteresting. Maybe it was just me.
The second piece, In The Night, was choreographed by Jerome Robbins, famous for his Broadway and Hollywood work. This piece was so much more, showing three different phases of love. The last in particular I found quite moving as danced by Suzanne Lopez and Patrick Simoniello, but all the couples were good. This was kind of a revelation, as I had not realized that Robbins had created "classic" ballets, but this was absolutely gorgeous.
The final work, Age of Innocence, is a new piece by Edwaard Liang. I thought it got off to a rough start; the first two parts (of five) seemed stock and static. But it came into its own in a dance for four men, then moved into what was, in effect, a duet for Fabrice Calmels and Victoria Jaiani, two of the real stars of the Joffrey. This part was amazing, with novel holds and positions, and was followed by a fast-paced finale that marked Liang as a choreographer to watch.
So that's enough culture for me for one week, it's time for a rainy weekend of football (and assorted chores and things).
Sunday, May 25, 2008
A farewell
I like ballet. There, I said it, I do. I didn't hate it before, but, when the wife started taking me to the Joffrey Ballet ten or so years ago, it's not something I would have gone out of my way to see.
I do have some history with it, as my mother took my brother and me to see Rudolf Nureyev many years ago, something that is more impressive to me for having done it than in any particular memories of the occasion. But, despite recognition of the great precision and artistry, I really didn't get into it.
Now, however, though not a balletomane, I do enjoy attending three or four times a year. Every so often, the Joffrey does some outreach to their subscribers, offering something extra, and that's usually fun - it's always cool to get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes stuff. Yesterday, they held a subscribers' brunch, which included the chance to sit through a rehearsal.
I won't ramble on through my thoughts, because I know very little about the dance. I enjoy the vocabulary, and it's great fun to see the artistic director go through a routine, then to see the company execute it.
What struck me was the recognition of what great athletes these dancers are. I basically knew that from watching the dancing, but I didn't know their schedule so well.
A few years ago, I took on one of the classic challenges of running, the 24 X 1. This consists of running one mile in each of the hours of the day, starting in the 12-1AM hour, finishing before midnight. This is surprisingly difficult, not so much because of the running, but because of the time in between. The go, rest, go, rest, etc. pattern is hard to sustain (and it is a lot of showering).
So the dancers yesterday had a schedule like this: 11:00 - the rehearsal we attended, and it struck me as pretty tough. They start with barre work, which is not overtly athletic but can be challenging. By the end, however, they're doing some major leaping about (that's my technical term - for those who care, there were some jetes and glissades and pirouettes and the like).
Then at 2:00, a performance. I presume there was some re-warm up before that. Then, another performance at 7:30, and many of the dancers had to participate in all of it. I have no idea how one stays loose over 11 hours of rehearsing, performing, stretching, and so on. I guess that's why they're the world-renowned Joffrey Ballet.
**********
Oh yes, the farewell. The Joffrey is a community of dancers, no one is really supposed to stand out. But that never happens, and today we said goodbye to Maia Wilkins, who has been something of a prima ballerina with the company. She's been with the Joffrey since 1991, and has done some lovely dancing over the years. The circumstances of her departure are a bit muddled, but her send-off has shown due recognition of the esteem, even love, with which the audience has regarded her.
She leaves with her husband, Michael Levine, and her long-time partner Willy Shives (who will be moving to the non-dancing side of the company), and they will all be missed. It's always sad to lose people we've enjoyed, whether it's someone we work with or someone we watch on a stage or a diamond or a field, but it happens; I wish them all well.
I do have some history with it, as my mother took my brother and me to see Rudolf Nureyev many years ago, something that is more impressive to me for having done it than in any particular memories of the occasion. But, despite recognition of the great precision and artistry, I really didn't get into it.
Now, however, though not a balletomane, I do enjoy attending three or four times a year. Every so often, the Joffrey does some outreach to their subscribers, offering something extra, and that's usually fun - it's always cool to get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes stuff. Yesterday, they held a subscribers' brunch, which included the chance to sit through a rehearsal.
I won't ramble on through my thoughts, because I know very little about the dance. I enjoy the vocabulary, and it's great fun to see the artistic director go through a routine, then to see the company execute it.
What struck me was the recognition of what great athletes these dancers are. I basically knew that from watching the dancing, but I didn't know their schedule so well.
A few years ago, I took on one of the classic challenges of running, the 24 X 1. This consists of running one mile in each of the hours of the day, starting in the 12-1AM hour, finishing before midnight. This is surprisingly difficult, not so much because of the running, but because of the time in between. The go, rest, go, rest, etc. pattern is hard to sustain (and it is a lot of showering).
So the dancers yesterday had a schedule like this: 11:00 - the rehearsal we attended, and it struck me as pretty tough. They start with barre work, which is not overtly athletic but can be challenging. By the end, however, they're doing some major leaping about (that's my technical term - for those who care, there were some jetes and glissades and pirouettes and the like).
Then at 2:00, a performance. I presume there was some re-warm up before that. Then, another performance at 7:30, and many of the dancers had to participate in all of it. I have no idea how one stays loose over 11 hours of rehearsing, performing, stretching, and so on. I guess that's why they're the world-renowned Joffrey Ballet.
**********
Oh yes, the farewell. The Joffrey is a community of dancers, no one is really supposed to stand out. But that never happens, and today we said goodbye to Maia Wilkins, who has been something of a prima ballerina with the company. She's been with the Joffrey since 1991, and has done some lovely dancing over the years. The circumstances of her departure are a bit muddled, but her send-off has shown due recognition of the esteem, even love, with which the audience has regarded her.
She leaves with her husband, Michael Levine, and her long-time partner Willy Shives (who will be moving to the non-dancing side of the company), and they will all be missed. It's always sad to lose people we've enjoyed, whether it's someone we work with or someone we watch on a stage or a diamond or a field, but it happens; I wish them all well.
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