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About That Nutcracker

December 16, 2012 by 2 Comments
A dream wedding: Clara and her Prince (Hee Seo and Cory Sterns). Photo: Gene Schiavone

The Nutcracker in its many manifestations is like an attic toy box into which generations of children have tossed the playthings they’ve grown too old for. Amid the dolls and stuffed animals and fairy tales and toy soldiers are folded longings, nightmares, pre-pubescent thoughts of sex, and fear of growing up. The ballet by Lev Ivanov that premiered in St. Petersburg in December of 1892 has bourréed across centuries, discarding this, adding that. Mark Morris, for his delectable The Hard Nut, even leapfrogged backward over the ballet to … [Read more...]

12/16/12 10:07 AM | filed under: ballet |

In Season

October 23, 2012 by 1 Comment
The peerless Herman Cornejo in Ratmansky's Symphony #9. Photo: Gene Schiavone

Hello!  Goodbye! American Ballet Theatre’s City Center season came and went with dispiriting speed—seven performances in five days (October 16 through 20). The pleasures outweighed the disappointment. New Yorkers could rendezvous with revivals of three ballets in the company’s history: Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo (1942), Antony Tudor’s The Leaves Are Fading (1977), and Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes (1988).  Alexei Ratmansky premiered a gorgeous new ballet. And a live orchestra played the music. Ratmansky’s … [Read more...]

10/23/12 7:35 PM | filed under: ballet |

Korean Dancing: Ancient and Very New

August 1, 2011 by 9 Comments
Jinyuk Ryu (L.) and Insoo Lee in Lee’s Modern Feelings Photo: Christopher Duggan

Fifteen years ago, I decided that the Korean salpuri was one of the world’s great dances. For some time, smitten by a performance in an early black and white film, I had corralled graduate students from Korea to perform a salpurifor the dance history class I taught. They managed it with varying degrees of skill and spirituality. Then, in 1996, in Seoul, I saw a version of this solo (which derives from a shaman ritual) danced by a small, quite aged woman with the status—as I remember—of a Living National Treasure. That was the … [Read more...]

08/1/11 3:16 PM | filed under: New Dance from Abroad |

Sharing the Wealth

July 26, 2011 by 2 Comments
Ivan the Fool and the Humpbacked Horse Meet the Princess of the Sea Photo: Stephanie Berger

  Of late, I’ve been having a recurring daydream—probably prompted by the Mariinsky Ballet’s recent season at the Metropolitan Opera House (July 11 through 16), as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. Ballet companies square off like kids on the playground. “Nyah, nyah! I’ve got more Ratmanskys than you do!” “You do not!” “Do so!” “Well I’ve got the best Ratmanskys.” “Take that back or I won’t share my candy bar with you.” Ballets by Alexei Ratmansky have become hot commodities. Not only does he … [Read more...]

07/26/11 2:55 PM | filed under: ballet |

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