Seeing Things: June 2007 Archives

This article originally appeared in Voice of Dance (http://www.voiceofdance.org) on June 25, 2007.

Savion Glover, Invitations to a Dancer / Joyce Theater, NYC / June 19 - July 14, 2007

Savion Glover. Photo by NiNA.

The master tapper Savion Glover may have been cool providing the feet motion-captured for the irresistible dancing penguin Mumble in the movie Happy Feet. But he's hot in his new live show, Invitations to a Dancer, at the Joyce Theater in New York through July 14.

A big chunk of the program takes place on three raised miked rectangles--each just roomy enough to hold a guy and his dancing. Glover, who's obviously the main man, is flanked by a pair of sidemen, Marshall L. Davis, Jr., and Maurice Chestnut, who provide a nuanced obbligato to Glover's star turn. Combined, the sounds their feet make have unquenchable vitality. This is cannily coupled with a hint of threat, like the distant noise of a ferocious storm or an infernal machine revving up to do its secret job. Every so often, though, Glover lightens the mood with sheer gaiety, lifting his knees and freeing his feet to gambol blithely in the air, as if the law of gravity had been briefly suspended.

From time to time, Glover generously cedes the center space to one of the sidemen. Davis uses the opportunity to concoct an impressive solo that is heavy and grave, his feet thudding against the top and sides of his platform as if to announce what we all knew was coming--the end of the world.

Related to this solo is the theme of knocking that prevails throughout the three men's work together. Knocking at the door, hoping to find a welcoming person behind it? Knocking at the gate of opportunity or, perhaps, Heaven? Despite the obsession lurking in the repeated knocking, Glover's optimism buoys these ideas, especially when he smiles. Often a sullen performer, or at least one reluctant to acknowledge the presence of his audience, Glover frequently gives way in this show to one of his rarely recognized assets--the angelic smile of a child who hasn't yet been notified of the world's troubles.

The biggest miracle of the trio's work remains its collaboration. Performing alone, a good hoofer can sound like a series of different musical instruments. Three so finely attuned to one another can become a whole jazz band at once. The fact that--apart from the steady outline of a session-much of the work is improvised simply boggles the mind.

The second half of the show contains a long solo by Glover, and watching--better yet, hearing--what he can do is like a little sojourn in Paradise; one is keenly aware of the privilege. Alone on a dusky stage, caught in the narrow glare of a downlight, he performs a few casual feats like keeping his gleaming turquoise tap shoes nearly flat on the floor while making them sound like a bubbling spring that accidentally got itself amplified. Then he gets down to business. Sober-faced now, body bent over, he barely moves from his spot while he focuses on generating a wide spectrum of sound. He seems to be a man who, past a wild youth, is now addressing his life with sobriety. Suddenly, he appears to have aged decades, threatens to collapse to one side, then the other. When the knocking theme recurs, it might be an inexorably ticking clock. Before the mood gets maudlin, though, he straightens up, reclaims youth's vivacity, and tries out some new inventions.

Understandably, Glover worries about providing sufficient diversity in his productions. Incomparable as his dancing is, two hours of relentless, essentially abstract footwork would exhaust the viewers' attention--in part because the experience is so intense. Tap, remember, didn't start out as concert dance, and the formal conventions of the proscenium stage remain slightly alien to it.

So Glover, being, among other things, a savvy showman, experiments with variety. Early in 2005, he made a point of dancing to classical music--a worthy try, and worth pursuing, though the marriage wasn't fully consummated. Another show, in the Christmas season of the same year, had a religious, praise-God bent.

For the current production, Glover tried introducing non-tapping women into the mix. Accompanied by Glover and his two sidemen, three barefoot femmes move with lush enthusiasm, front and center, in a jazz mode laced with dollops of ballet. Two of them, Lauren Last and Jerica Niehoff, are pulchritudinous beauties with Broadway instincts. The third, Sheila Barker, wiry and graceful--and the only African-American on the distaff side--is far more accomplished and interesting than her sisters. Wonderfully supple in an Indian-inflected, jazz-rooted duet with Glover, she proves to be the only one of the lovelies who can really reflect his rhythms. In another number, Glover challenges a fourth gal, Suzana Stankovic, who is got up as a tiny ballerina-doll off a music box--fluffy white tutu, pointe shoes, and all. Stankovic, who is game and strong, tries to make her antics funny, but since she is, at best, a mediocre classical dancer, the effect is grotesque.

There is no instrumental or vocal accompaniment to this show. Given the spectacular aural variety and ingenuity of the tapping, one hardly noticed.

© VoiceofDance.com 2007. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 19, 2007.

June 19 (Bloomberg) -- The New York City Ballet's sublimely cool Kyra Nichols and American Ballet Theater's tempestuous Alessandra Ferri have little in common except the fact that, to the sorrow of their countless admirers, both ballerinas are retiring this weekend.

Nichols, 48, is leaving the stage after a remarkable 33 years with the City Ballet; Ferri, 44, who may continue to perform elsewhere, has been with ABT for 22 years. Some classical dancers have ruefully called retirement a first death, but the gala evenings honoring these artists at Lincoln Center - -Nichols's on Friday at the New York State Theater, Ferri's on Saturday at the Metropolitan Opera House -- promise to be memorable celebrations of extraordinary careers.

Born in Milan, Ferri trained at La Scala and joined London's Royal Ballet in 1980. She quickly became a favorite of the celebrated choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, her fluidity and febrile quality serving his purposes well. After her early stardom in England, she emigrated again, joining ABT as a principal dancer in 1985. A permanent guest artist at La Scala, she has cultivated an adoring following all over Europe. In Japan she's virtually a cult figure.

Ferri is small and delicately built. She's very pretty, with large eyes, an expressive, heart-shaped face and perhaps the most exquisitely arched feet in the profession. She's a lyric dancer essentially, not a pyrotechnician. More important, she's a dancer-actress, with a range that's enormously useful in ballets rooted in story and character. She moves her audience as an innocent, a temptress, a passionate lover, a tragic victim or a heroine reduced to a state so abject, death seems a blessing. Everything she does looks utterly heartfelt.

Impetuous Onstage

In the past decade, Ferri arrived at the point in her career when she could permit herself to be completely impetuous onstage. In her recent ``Manon,'' with her chosen partner, La Scala's Robert Bolle, she was physically fearless as he adeptly tossed her through the air and flung her about his body like a silk scarf. Matching her physical daring with emotional abandon, she created a woman for whom sexual exploits were not simply ecstatic but like food to the starving.

These qualities promise to make her farewell performance in MacMillan's ``Romeo and Juliet'' (partnered again by Bolle) a soul-stirring experience. She's been dancing the role for over a quarter-century, deepening her interpretation of a character for whom she felt an instant affinity when she first played it in her debut with the Royal Ballet at the age of 17.

Flawless Technician

Nichols was practically born into the City Ballet. Her mother and first teacher, Sally Streets, had danced in the company's corps de ballet. She grew up in California, eventually studied at the School of American Ballet, and was invited to join the City Ballet in 1974, where she was shortly given important roles and officially made a principal dancer after five years.

Calm and modest in manner, Nichols was first recognized as a flawless technician, a slender long-limbed young woman who could do everything effortlessly. Ego and affectation were absent from her dancing. She put her talent at the service of musicality in ballets by Jerome Robbins, who was the first to recognize her gifts; by George Balanchine, who trusted her with key roles in his repertory; and later by Peter Martins. Often she seemed to become the music itself.

In recent seasons, Nichols withdrew from ballets that were athletically beyond her and reduced her schedule, making every appearance an event of sorts -- the most glorious sunset imaginable. She forced nothing, faked nothing, just grew more quiet, more serene and more luminous than ever. The purity that had been evident in her dancing from the first seemed to expand into a moral force.

Three by Balanchine

For her farewell, Nichols will appear in three Balanchine pieces. Appropriately, the opener will be the 1934 ``Serenade,'' the first ballet the choreographer created in America, in which she has managed to retain her freshness and her refusal to overdramatize the work's tragic subtext. In ``Robert Schumann's `Davidsbundlertanze''' (1980), she will again epitomize tender empathy and understated grief in the role thought to represent the composer's wife, Clara, watching her husband slip away into madness. The ``Rosenkavalier'' segment from ``Vienna Waltzes'' is a perfect vehicle for her ability to forgo projecting while drawing the audience into her universe of gentle crystalline perfection.

Nichols will give her farewell performance with the New York City Ballet at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, on June 22. Information: +1-212-721-6500 or http://www.nycballet.com.

Ferri will give her final performance with American Ballet Theater at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, on June 23. Information: +1-212-362-6000 or http://www.abt.org.

© 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 11, 2007.

June 11 (Bloomberg) -- To the sound of birdsong, Wendy Whelan transforms herself from ballerina to magical avian creature. In a sienna-streaked tunic suggesting feathers, she accents the familiar curved-arm movements of classical dance with quick, sharp angles. Her head flicks this way and that, as if noticing the pleasures and dangers of the natural world. Her feet, on pointe, delicately pick their way across the ground.

After this inventive, beguiling solo, it's pretty much downhill for Christopher Wheeldon's ``The Nightingale and the Rose,'' created for the New York City Ballet and given its world premiere at Lincoln Center on Friday.

The biggest problem is narrative. The half-abstract proceedings on stage are unfathomable if you haven't read the 1891 Oscar Wilde story -- a blend of bathos and worldly cynicism that inspired Wheeldon -- or the program insert in which the choreographer sets forth his own modification of the tale.

The story concerns an artist (the nightingale, pouring out its soulful song) who sacrifices her life to produce a perfect red rose for a young man (Tyler Angle) in love with a demanding and ungrateful minx (Sara Mearns, in a filmy gown, with ``Alice in Wonderland'' hair).

The neighborhood offers an abundance of yellow and white roses (the female corps de ballet), but the tree that usually yields red ones has been through a tough winter that prevents its flowering unless certain terms are met. It requires the nightingale to sing through the moonlit night, pressing her breast to one of its thorns until it pierces her heart.

Nourishing Blood

The nightingale's blood nourishes the production of a rose and stains it to perfection. The young man duly presents the flower, which the petulant object of his affections finds unacceptable. The swain, far from being broken-hearted, shrugs as if to say ``That's life.'' He leaves the beautiful rose where the girl flung it and goes on his way, ignoring the lifeless body of the self-sacrificing bird.

Wheeldon fails to make the story intelligible, calls the young man The Student (while ignoring Wilde's point about the fellow's dependence on dry, dusty books rather than the sublime and lasting passions of art) and delivers the kind of entertainment clueless adults concoct for children.

After Whelan's opening solo, the only worthy choreography is for the ensemble of men led by Seth Orza and Craig Hall, who form the fatal tree. Sheathed in earthy brown highlighted here and there with the scarlet of freshly spilled blood, they've been assigned a weighty, gnarled dance vocabulary to create a perch, a nest and, inevitably, a trap for the bird.

The score was commissioned from the company's resident composer, Bright Sheng, who also conducted. The music is colorful and lively, and clearly is influenced by Sheng's Chinese background. But it lacks the rhythms and melodies that serve as an invitation to the dance.

One-Eyed Moon

Martin Pakledinaz designed the imaginative costumes. James Buckhouse is credited with animation, including a one-eyed moon that spills a couple of tears over the sad events.

Wheeldon -- widely considered classical ballet's savior in our current choreography-poor era -- has done far better work than ``The Nightingale and the Rose.'' Bred by the Royal Ballet in his native England, he came to the City Ballet as a dancer and quickly proved his mettle as a choreographer.

Next year he'll relinquish his base as the company's resident choreographer, a position created for him, to strike out on his own with a small troupe he calls, awkwardly, Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company. Slated to perform at the City Center Oct. 19-21, it aims to change the face of classical ballet in both its artistic and organizational aspects.

Wheeldon's choreography is in great demand from conventional big-time companies, so presumably his free-lance work will help pay the bills.

``The Nightingale and the Rose'' will be performed again on June 16, 17 and 20 at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, Broadway at 65th St. Information: +1-212-721-6500 or http://www.nycballet.com.

© 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in Voice of Dance (http://www.voiceofdance.org) on June 5, 2007.

School of American Ballet's 2007 Workshop Performances / Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / June 2 & 4, 2007

School of American Ballet in George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments with Raina Gilliland (foreground). Photo by Paul Kolnik.

As the entire classical dance world surely knows, the School of American Ballet's annual Workshop Performances show the public the high-powered training that provides carefully selected young candidates to the New York City Ballet as well as companies worldwide. This year's three performances--I saw the two on June 2, matinee and evening, with many alternations in both major and minor roles--were dedicated to Lincoln Kirstein. The occasion was the 100th anniversary of the birth of man who brought George Balanchine to America, co-founded the now-illustrious academy with him, and masterminded the companies that evolved into the New York City Ballet.

To open the program, SAB faculty member Sean Lavery revived his brief, unpretentious, and endearing suite, Twinkliana, for the school's younger children. The silly title (a riff, of course, on Balanchine's Mozartiana) comes from the fact that it's set to Mozart's Variations on "Ah, vous dirais-je, maman," to which English speakers sing "Twinkle, twinkle, little star."

A half dozen lithe little girls and a boy who's something of a prodigy display the extraordinary technical capabilities of their generation, most effectively in mini-solos. The choreography is no more than capable; the wonder of its performance is the way Lavery has the youngsters dance--gently and joyously, buoyed by the music. Even the backdrop contributes to the lovely tone of the dance, a still-dark sky brushed with a faint scattering of stars.

Peter Martins's 1987 Les Gentilhommes, for nine men dancing to Handel concerti, provided a showcase for the academy's late-adolescent male contingent, which goes from strength to strength. The ballet seems to reach back from the 18th-century era of its music to the Renaissance cavaliers who were deft fencers, equestrians, and poets alike. All this, and the flawless manners of the gentlemen, is conveyed in the purest classical style, as befits a ballet dedicated to Stanley Williams, the celebrated SAB teacher from Denmark who bred dancers to his impeccable standards.

School of American Ballet in Peter Martins' Les Gentilhommes led by Matthew Renko (center). Photo by Paul Kolnik.

A late addition to the program was the balcony scene from Martins's new Romeo + Juliet, featuring Callie Bachman. When Martins created the work for the NYCB, he shaped the heroine's role on the sixteen-year-old, intending her to dance the premiere of the piece. An injury kept her from doing so; performing this excerpt from it now that she's healed was her consolation prize. I'm glad that Bachman got the moment in the sun that she deserves, but I don't see in her what the publicity hoopla surrounding her performance wants me to see. She is a sweet young thing (straight out of a Boucher painting) with terrific technical prowess. Yet, being a little too conscious of her own abilities and charms, she's not very convincing as a girl swept away by a first passion. Her partner was Russell Janzen, who gave the job his best effort.

Balanchine was represented on the program by The Four Temperaments, a landmark work, and Gounod Symphony, a candy box affair with intermittent flashes of genius. The ballets were staged by veteran custodians of the master's repertoire, Suki Schorer and Susan Pilarre, respectively. As often happens, these women, given their own talent, a generous rehearsal period, and the eagerness of their young protégés, shaped productions that had more force and personality than the NYCB's own versions.

Created in 1946, The Four Temperaments still looks amazingly new and its impact is stunning. In Schorer's superb staging, full-blooded and propelled by rhythmic vitality, the piece was the program's heart and anchor. Why Schorer doesn't extend her gifts to the main company and why the Workshop programs that feature her skills aren't toured are just two of the mysteries of the dancing life.

Gounod Symphony, by contrast, is pretty and fluffy and pink. Very pink, thanks to Karinska's tutus, where layers of rosy and yellow tulle create a sunrise glow. The ballet hasn't a moment of darkness or doubt. Balanchine amuses himself creating dozens of ways in which lines of dancers can interweave, then challenges the main couple of this pastoral matrix with inventions of highly sophisticated urbanity. Pilarre has coached her pupils to handle these features with aplomb. She might have added just a whiff of perfume.

Among this year's raft of gifted dancers displaying almost uncanny technical acumen, Raina Gilliland and Samuel Greenberg were distinguished for a stage maturity way beyond their years. Tall, elegantly built, and beautiful--like her elder sister, Kaitlyn, already notable in the NYCB corps--the 17-year-old Raina led the Choleric section of The Four Temperaments with goddess-like power. Both Gillilands are third-generation members of a distinguished dance family. The late Loyce Houlton, founder of the Minnesota Dance Theater, was their grandmother; their mother, Lise Houlton, was a soloist with American Ballet Theatre.

Greenberg, 18, hasn't (yet) achieved leading-man status but was outstanding in the eight-member ensemble of Les Gentilhommes and the first theme of The Four Temperaments. He already projects an adult dignity and depth of feeling that recalls the unforgettable Francisco Moncion, a charter member of the NYCB.

Best of all, perhaps, was the feeling of camaraderie in the program's ensemble dancing. In Les Gentilhommes and Gounod Symphony especially, all the corps members seemed to delight in belonging to the same team and this made the ballets radiant.

© VoiceofDance.com 2007. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on June 4, 2007.

June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Veronika Part's lush, emotionally eloquent dancing as Aurora in the Vision Scene was the sole unarguably wonderful element in American Ballet Theater's new version of ``The Sleeping Beauty'' that had its world premiere Friday at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

The Kirov-trained ballerina's work in the arduous first act had been admirably strong and clear. But here -- seemingly impalpable, yet making it clear that she is longing for the Prince as much as he is for her -- Part worked the real ballerina magic of transforming steps into atmosphere and feeling. If only choreographer Kevin McKenzie's full production had come anywhere near that feat!

Set to Tchaikovsky's enchantment-invoking score, ``The Sleeping Beauty'' has challenged choreographers since Marius Petipa first staged the ballet in St. Petersburg in 1890. Peter Martins's 1991 version for the New York City Ballet, revived this year, is typical of the speed-it-up and minimize-the-mime jobs that are common today.

Counting one-act versions, this is ABT's sixth go at the story and its third full-length production. It was created by a triumvirate: the company's artistic director, McKenzie, who has already concocted unsatisfactory versions of the two other great Tchaikovsky ballets, ``Swan Lake'' and ``The Nutcracker,'' abetted by the incomparable, if troubled prima ballerina Gelsey Kirkland and her husband, Michael Chernov.

Homage to Petipa

Aside from Part's glorious performance in the Vision Scene, the production was continually in conflict with itself. It seemed, on one hand, to want desperately to sell tickets to an uncultivated audience -- and its kids. On the other it paid homage to the idea that ``The Sleeping Beauty'' is the lodestone of classical ballet, earnestly recreating chunks of it that have become legend.

The minuses are many. Though the production kept most of the segments that people lovingly recall from more traditional versions -- among them, the fairy solos in the Prologue and most of Aurora's dances at her coming-of-age party, including the Rose Adagio -- even these highlights were interfered with unnecessarily and illogically. Every bit of the newfangled business -- like the Prince's solo of longing for perfect love - - was indifferently choreographed.

The narrative, exquisitely simple, has been crammed with extraneous, sometimes ludicrous, notions. The Lilac Fairy and her retinue intrude on passages to which Petipa never invited them. Whole scenes, here severely curtailed, have lost all their meaning -- notably the Hunting Scene, meant to reveal the Prince's society and why he leaves it to seek his heart's desire.

Unsightly

The decor is unspeakable. Aiming for country-cottage prettiness, Tony Walton's scenery is sometimes saccharine, sometimes vulgar, sometimes both at once. Willa Kim's costumes are for the most part gaudy and overwrought. A few insipid ones only make matters worse with their mistaken concept of gentility.

The dancing was generally fine throughout, showing what must have been fastidious coaching on Kirkland's part. Michelle Wiles, an amazing, no-nonsense technician, took on a softer grace than usual as the Lilac Fairy and tried hard to make her movement say something. Overall, the dancing suffered from rather too much exactitude, but it is sure to relax and bloom with further performance.

The most mesmerizing of the soloists was Herman Cornejo as the Bluebird; one could almost sense the powerful, beating wings as he soared. The most disappointing was Martine van Hamel as Carabosse, the wicked fairy responsible for Aurora's century- long sleep. An unforgettable Lilac Fairy at the height of her career, van Hamel was herself cursed here with new choreography that made her look like a bourgeois harpy in a costume from hell.

``The Sleeping Beauty'' runs through June 9 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Broadway at 65th Street. Information: +1-212-362-6000 or http://www.abt.org.

© 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.