New York City Center Season

[femmina]

NY City Center Season to Feature Wheeldon, Colker Ailey and More
By PlaybillArts Staff
27 Jul 2009




Christopher Wheeldon, photo by Paul Kolnik / New York City Ballet

New York City Center has announced the lineup for its 2009-2010 season of dance and theatre. The year kicks off Sept. 22 with the sixth annual Fall for DanceFestival, featuring 20 companies in 10 nights of dance for only $10 per ticket.


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The season also includes the third season of acclaimed choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s dance company Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company and premieres by resident companies Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The New York Flamenco Festival will celebrate its 10 anniversary year with mesmerizing performances with renowned dancers and musicians direct from Andalusia, Spain, and visiting companies will include Tanguera – The Tango Musical and Companhia de Danзa Deborah Colker.
Manhattan Theatre Club will present New York premieres by Lynn Redgrave and Polly Stenham, and The Pearl Theatre Company will present a season of four classic plays on City Center Stage II. Theater highlights also include the seventeenth season of New York City Center’s Encores! series, opening on November 19 with Girl Crazy, followed by Fanny, opening on February 4, 2010 to become the 50th Encores! production since the series began in 1994.
The complete schedule of the 2008-09 season is as follows:

FALL FOR DANCE FESTIVAL
September 22 – October 3
On Sale Sep. 13
The sixth annual Fall for Dance Festival will feature 20 companies in 10 nights of dance and will pay tribute to the 100th Anniversary of the Ballets Russes. Festival will once again offer all tickets for only $10. Tickets will go on sale Sunday, September 13 at 11:00 am.
The 2009 Festival features 20 American and international companies presenting an eclectic mix of contemporary styles alongside classic pieces, in five unique programs over 10 nights. For the first time all programs will be repeated twice to satisfy the demand for tickets. Several companies will present works that pay tribute to the legendary Ballets Russes, either with reconstructions of original Ballets Russes works or with a contemporary look at Ballets Russes classics.
Tickets: $10

TANGUERA—THE TANGO MUSICAL
October 7 – 18, 2009
On Sale Now
Fresh from Argentina, Tanguera is the first tango musical ever. A provocative, sensual and visually entrancing production, Tanguera tells a story of unrequited love in turn-of-the-20th-century Buenos Aires through a unique combination of song, music, and dance. Celebrated after its premiere in Buenos Aires, this innovative musical has dazzled audiences in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Tokyo.
Tickets: Tickets start at $45
Petrobras presents

COMPANHIA DE DANЗA DEBORAH COLKER
October 22 – 25, 2009
On Sale Now
4 POR 4 is a collaboration between dance and visual art. Works by Brazilian artists of different times and genres are transformed into dance. Cantos (Corners), based on Cildo Meireles; Mesa (Table), Chelpa Ferro; Povinho (Some People), Victor Arruda; and Vasos (Vases), Gringo Cardia, are choreographies that bring images to life.
Tickets: $25, $45, $60

MORPHOSES/THE WHEELDON COMPANY
October 29 – November 1, 2009
On Sale Sep. 8
The third annual season of Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company will feature two unique programs including U.S. premieres by Artistic Director Christopher Wheeldon and Australian choreographer Tim Harbour, as well as works by Lightfoot Leуn, Alexei Ratmansky and Mr. Wheeldon. The engagement will feature live music performed by the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, with the opening night conducted by the orchestra’s founder and music director, Alondra de la Parra.
Tickets: $30, $50, $95, $110

CAREER TRANSITION FOR DANCERS
AMERICA DANCES! Celebrating our Sparkling Heritage—Broadway, TV & Film
Monday, November 2, 2009
On Sale Now
AMERICA DANCES! celebrates a variety of entertainment that defines our American Culture—past, present and future. The evening honors Lawrence Herbert, Patrick Swayze, The Lloyd E. Rigler - Lawrence E. Deutsch Foundation, and features special appearances and performances by Laura Benanti, Bob Fosse’s Dancin, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Crazy Legs & Rock Steady Crew, Charlotte d’Amboise, Dance Times Square, “Dancing with the Stars,” Nicole Fosse, Lombard Twins, Lori Belilove & The Isadora Duncan Dance Company, Kathleen Marshall, New York City Ballet’s Ashley Bouder & Andrew Veyette, “So You Think You Can Dance,” a Tribute to Duke Ellington plus more stars and surprises.
Tickets: $45, $55, $75, $130 (Show Only)

ENCORES! GIRL CRAZY
November 19 – 22
Single Tickets on Sale Sep. 8
The Gershwins’ fanciful depression-era musical Girl Crazy (1930) is the tale of a sophisticated New Yorker marooned in a dusty Western cowtown with no one who understands him but the Yiddish-speaking cabbie who brought him there and no one to love but the only woman within 50 miles. The show gave birth to one of the all-time flashiest Broadway scores, featuring “I Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” and “But Not For Me” among others. The original production put a hot jazz band in the pit, led by cornet virtuoso Red Nichols, and included such jazz greats as Glenn Miller, Gene Krupa, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden.
Tickets: $25, $50, $95

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
December 2, 2009 - January 3, 2010
On Sale Sep. 8, 2009
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, recognized by U.S. Congress as a vital American “Cultural Ambassador to the World,” returns to the stage of New York City Center with exciting performances that have become a joyous holiday tradition. Led by the renowned Judith Jamison, and commemorating her 20th year as Artistic Director, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater inspires in a universal celebration of the human spirit using the African-American cultural experience and the American modern dance tradition. Ailey’s extraordinary artists will move audiences with a diverse repertory by a variety of choreographers that includes classic favorites like Alvin Ailey’s signature masterpiece Revelations, a must-see for all Americans.
Please visit www.alvinailey.org for complete details.
Tickets: Starting at $25

ENCORES! FANNY
February 4 – 7, 2010
Single Tickets on Sale Sep. 8
Fanny, based on Marcel Pagnol’s trilogy Marius, Fanny and Cesar and set in Marseille, is among Broadway’s greatest love stories – a tale of a young girl’s passion for a young man so in love with the sea that he leaves her, little realizing that she is pregnant with his child. Her marriage of convenience to a wealthy older man desperate to have an heir is complicated by the sailor’s return years later. Joshua Logan and S.N. Behrman provided an earthy book, and Harold Rome’s score contains some of the most ardent and sweeping melodies ever written for the theater, including the title song, “Restless Heart” and “Never Too Late For Love.”
Tickets: $25, $50, $95

NEW YORK FLAMENCO FESTIVAL
February 11 – 14, 2010
On Sale Sep. 8
New York's annual flamenco celebration, now in its 10th year, features mesmerizing performances with renowned dancers and musicians direct from Andalusia, Spain!
Thursday, February 11 at 7:30 pm: Gala, artists to be announced Friday and Saturday, February 12 and 13 at 8 pm: Compania Maria Pages
Sunday, February 13 at 7pm: Compania Rocio Molina
Tickets (Feb 12 & 13): : $35, $45, $65, $80

KINGS OF THE DANCE
February 19 – 21, 2010
On Sale Now
The critically-acclaimed Kings of the Dance are back onstage at New York City Center! After a triumphant 10-city Russian tour in 2007-2008 that included sold-out performances in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Ardani Artists presents a new program that will include David Hallberg (USA), Jose Manuel Carreсo (Cuba), Joaquin De Luz (Spain), and Nikolay Tsiskaridze (Russia), as well as new Kings Marcelo Gomes (Brazil), Dennis Matvienko (Ukraine) and Guillaume Cote (Canada). The three-act performance will include choreography by Frederick Ashton, Josй Limуn, Nacho Duato, Roland Petit, Anton Dolin, Boris Eifman, and Christopher Wheeldon. New York City Center is first stop on the upcoming four-week world tour of Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
Tickets: $35, $50, $75, $100

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY
February 24 – March 14, 2010
On Sale Sep. 8
Two New York premieres – Also Playing, a comic tribute to Vaudeville, and an untitled work set to Debussy – head a season celebrating Paul Taylor's 80th birthday. Other highlights: last season's mega-hits, Changes with songs of The Mamas and The Papas, and Beloved Renegade, "best new choreography in 2008" (The New York Times).
Tickets: $10, $25, $35, $55, $75, $95, $135

CORELLA BALLET CASTILLA Y LEУN
March 19 – 21, 2010
On Sale Sep. 8
Corella Ballet Castilla y Leуn will make its U.S. debut with four performances that will feature the U.S. premier of String Sextet, Angel Corella’s first choreography, performed to music by Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky. The four-performance engagement will feature three other pieces to be announced.
Tickets: $25, $60, $75

ENCORES! ANYONE CAN WHISTLE
April 8 – 11, 2010
Single Tickets on Sale Sep. 8
Stephen Sondheim’s and Arthur Laurents’ experimental mid-‘60s satire of any and every target on the American cultural scene of the moment – conformity, psychology, race relations, greed, religion, politics – divided the critics, thrilled the emerging counter-culture, baffled the masses and closed quickly, becoming an instant legend that has grown over the years as Sondheim’s reputation has soared. The title song and “With So Little to Be Sure Of” have survived as cabaret classics, but the rarely heard complete score is a riot of jazzy, show-biz razzmatazz, waltzes, gospel numbers and Broadway pastiche, as full of variety and surprise as the show that gave it birth.
Tickets: $25, $50, $95

MANHATTAN THEATRE CLUB
For more than three decades, Manhattan Theatre Club has been the creative and artistic home for America's most gifted theatrical artists, producing works of the highest quality by both established and emerging American and international playwrights. New York and world premieres created under MTC's auspices travel across America and the world. MTC's plays and musicals challenge, inspire, entertain and provoke audiences. MTC’s City Center season includes the New York premieres of Lynn Redgrave’s Nightingale, Bill Cain’s Equivocation, and the young British playwright Polly Stenham’s That Face. (Note: MTC will present three plays additional plays at the Friedman Theater on Broadway).
Please visit www.manhattantheatreclub.com for complete season details.

THE PEARL THEATRE COMPANY
The Pearl Theatre Company’s award-winning Resident Acting Company will present its 26th Season of classics at New York City Center Stage II. The season includes the eccentric, spirited comedy The Playboy Of The Western World by J.M. Synge, directed by incoming artistic director J.R. Sullivan; Bernard Shaw’s giddy comedy Misalliance; a whirlwind adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times by Stephen Jeffreys; and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Subject Was Roses by Frank D. Gilroy.
Please visit pearltheatre.org for complete information
Tickets: $30, $40, $50
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For more visit New York City Center.

[femmina]

A Look Ahead at New York City Center Dance 2010–2011
By Susan Reiter
13 Oct 2010

Alvin Ailey Dancer Jamar Roberts, photo by Andrew Eccles


Susan Reiter previews the upcoming dance offerings at New York City Center. Offerings include the return of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake and visits from the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, among others.

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Reopening after its first phase of renovation, City Center launched its varied dance season at full throttle with the seventh annual Fall for Dance Festival.
Following the festival, Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake returns to New York for a four-week run at City Center. When Bourne’s innovative and surprising version of the beloved ballet came to Broadway for a Tony Award–winning run in 1998, it captivated audiences who might never venture to see Swan Lake in an opera house. Though the plot outline and superb Tchaikovsky score were familiar from more traditional versions, Bourne created a frisson of excitement and an added air of danger with his ensemble of male swans. Add in Bourne’s more contemporary setting and smartly delineated characters, and you had a fresh Swan Lake that respected the past while speaking to the present moment.
From October 13 to November 7, City Center welcomes back this acclaimed production, which has become a classic in its own right. New Yorkers can see a new generation of dancers take on its challenges, with two alternating casts in the central roles of The Prince and The Swan. There are key roles for women as well. Nina Goldman, a native New Yorker with major ballet and Broadway credits on her resume, performed in the original Broadway company as The Prince’s Girlfriend. At City Center, she will move into the role of The Queen.
“There are different journeys. The Prince is someone who’s trying to fit in, who is an outsider in his own life,” Goldman said. “The Queen was raised a certain way—that everything is for the public. When it comes to her private life, she doesn’t know how to connect and express herself.” Working with Bourne, she noted, “The dance is important, but all of the movement always has an intention behind it. It’s always about telling the story and making a character clear.”
No one can imagine December without Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which returns December 1 to January 2 with a wealth of new and familiar works. A younger generation of choreographers is represented by Christopher Huggins, a former Ailey dancer who will create a world premiere set to music by Moby and Sean Clements, as well as by Camille A. Brown and artistic directordesignate Robert Battle. Major revivals include Geoffrey Holder’s 1968 The Prodigal Prince and two rarely seen Ailey works from the 1970s: Mary Lou’s Mass and Three Black Kings. Artistic Director Judith Jamison’s ritualistic Forgotten Time will also return to the repertory.
For one special week, the company will be joined by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performing Duke Ellington’s score for Three Black Kings and Dizzy Gillespie’s music for Billy Wilson’s The Winter in Lisbon. If that isn’t enough to celebrate, there is also the 50th anniversary of Ailey’s timeless classic, Revelations, and a tribute to Jamison for the company’s final City Center performance of her 21-year tenure as artistic director.
New this season is Flamenco Hoy, which comes to City Center February 16 to 20. The show, a project of famed film director Carlos Saura, offers a historical journey through dances and music from Andalusia.
The exemplary Paul Taylor Dance Company can be counted on to lift our spirits as winter winds down, and its February 22 to March 6 season promises particular excitement, with revivals of two major Taylor works. The return of Orbs, a 1966 dance set to Beethoven’s late string quartets, is particularly noteworthy, since it hasn’t been performed for 28 years. Speaking in Tongues, an expansive, challenging 1989 work, probes the hold that a charismatic, possibly dangerous “man of the cloth” has over his community. In addition to two Taylor premieres, the rich repertory includes Promethean Fire, Black Tuesday and The Word, as well as the beloved classic Esplanade.
Last, but not least, are two notable events anticipated by dance lovers year after year: Career Transition for Dancers’ Gala, hosted by Angela Lansbury on November 8, marks the organization’s 25th anniversary. And later in the season, Youth America Grand Prix, March 21 and 22, showcases the leading youthful contenders from its global ballet competition along with luminaries from major ballet troupes.
Susan Reiter covers dance for New York Press and contributes articles on the performing arts to the Los Angeles Times and other publications.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Jamar Roberts, Antonio Douthit and Clifton Brown in Alvin Ailey’s Revelations
photo by Andrew Eccles

[femmina]

Ailey Season Celebrates a Milestone and Honors a Departing Leader

By Susan Reiter
02 Dec 2010


Judith Jamison and Artistic Director Designate Robert Battle photo by Andrew Eccles

No one would ever accuse Judith Jamison of holding back in terms of generosity or enthusiasm. She is brimming with both as she discusses the final City Center season that Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will perform under her artistic direction.


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Jamison has planned surprises, special events and exceptional musical performances, as well as a world premiere, two company premieres and several significant revivals. In addition the company will celebrate in a variety of festive ways the 50th anniversary of an Ailey work that has become the troupe’s beloved calling card around the world: Revelations.
Two seldom-seen Ailey works from the 1970s, Three Black Kings and Mary Lou’s Mass, will return to the repertory. Both are of particular musical importance and demonstrate Ailey’s interest in portraying the essence of historical as well as biblical figures through dance. The inimitable Geoffrey Holder has supervised a new production of The Prodigal Prince, a 1968 work of fantastical pageantry.
Men and women get equal time in two company premieres. Robert Battle—announced as Jamison’s successor earlier this year, he is now the Artistic Director Designate—adds another striking work to the Ailey repertory with The Hunt, a fierce, ritualistic dance for six men. Camille A. Brown’s The Evolution Of A Secured Feminine will offer several Ailey women the chance to explore contrasting moods and emotions in a three-part solo. And a former Ailey dancer comes full circle with Anointed, a world premiere by Christopher Huggins, who has created works for Ailey II and the Ailey School.
Live music—always a highly valued, if sometimes financially prohibitive, component of dance performances—is very much on the menu. A special week of “Ailey/Jazz” performances will have Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra performing the Duke Ellington score for Three Black Kings and the Dizzy Gillespie music for Billy Wilson’s The Winter in Lisbon. And the unique female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, who so vividly shared the stage with Ailey dancers in Hope Boykin’s Go in Grace, return to sing for selected performances of Revelations.
Their participation is just one of many ways the company is celebrating the half-century of that seminal, timeless Ailey dance. Jamison herself will be in the pit to conduct a full choir at certain performances, and a supersized cast of 50 dancers (Ailey II members and School students joining the regulars) will take the stage for selected shows. In addition, a short documentary film by Emmy winner Judy Kinberg, including footage of Ailey himself dancing in Revelations, will be shown before each performance of the piece.
Jamison vividly recalls the impact of seeing Ailey and his early company members dance Revelations, the first time she encountered the company in the early 1960s. She was a dance student at the Philadelphia Dance Academy, attending the performance with her fellow students. “It’s indelibly in my mind, seeing Alvin do ‘Wade in the Water,’ and also Minnie Marshall, Thelma Hill, Jimmy Truitte, Ella Thompson. That performance in Philadelphia, that’s what did it for me. Those images have stuck with me my entire life.”
There’s a lot that could make Jamison nostalgic this season as roles she created return to the stage. She was in the original casts of Mary Lou’s Mass (1971) and Prodigal Prince (196, and Cry— the solo that solidified her reputation as a unique star of the dance world— will also be back this season. She recalls helping to create the musical score for the Geoffrey Holder work—which he composed and designed, as well as choreographed— in which she portrayed the goddess Erzulie, one of the dramatic figures in the life and imagination of Haitian painter Hector Hyppolite, the dance’s central figure.
“Everything was bigger than life in that piece, but we were working on a shoestring, as usual back then,” Jamison says. “We all felt we were participating in the creation. Geoffrey made you feel so much a part of the world that he was creating.”
Three Black Kings, set to Ellington’s last major score, had its premiere as part of the company’s memorable Ailey Celebrates Ellington season in 1976. Its three contrasting sections focus on seminal figures in black history: Balthasar, King Solomon and Martin Luther King, whose widow introduced the work at its first performance. “Ellington is an American treasure, and so is Alvin. The two of them getting together was a divine combination,” Jamison says. “Alvin put Mr. Ellington on a pedestal.”
She had a chance to observe the collaboration between these two artists while assisting Ailey on his 1970 ballet The River. The choreographer brought her along for a meeting at Ellington’s apartment. “He looked like the most elegant man you’ve ever seen, even in his robe and slippers. I could see in what regard Alvin held him, just by the way he acted around him—like he was around somebody who was extraordinary and special.”
One more significant revival this season is Jamison’s own Forgotten Time, which she made for her company The Jamison Project in 1989, just before taking over as AAADT artistic director following Ailey’s death. Set to the haunting folkloric recordings by Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, it entered the Ailey repertory the following year.
“When I heard the music, I was driving, and I had to pull off the road because I had never heard anything like it before,” she recalls. “There’s such a primordial sound to it. The tonal quality and the layering of chord structure are phenomenal. This dance has a lot of stillness in it, and now I’ve got a whole new generation of young artists who are amazing to watch. They’re just exquisite in their understanding of stillness.”
It will be hard, if not impossible, to put a final punctuation mark on Jamison’s more than two decades of inspired and influential Ailey leadership. But since this is the last time the company will perform at City Center under her direction, they will pull out all the stops— and attempt to surprise her—with the season finale on January 2. “There will be people showing up you haven’t seen for a while,” she promises.
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Susan Reiter covers dance for New York Press and contributes articles on the performing arts to the Los Angeles Times and other publications.

Constance Stamatiou, Renee Robinson and Matthew Rushing in Revelations
photo by Andrew Eccles

[femmina]

Swan Lake Returns to New York City Ballet in February


09 Dec 2010

While The Nutcracker was the third and last of Tschaikovsky’s great ballet trilogy, this winter New York City Ballet will also present the first, Swan Lake, for eight performances only beginning Sunday, Feb. 13.


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First performed in Moscow in 1877, Swan Lake, like The Nutcracker, was not an instant success. Tschaikovsky’s death in 1892 brought about a thorough re-evaluation of the ballet, and in 1895 Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov restaged the entire ballet for St. Petersburg’s Maryinsky Theater. This production was a huge success and provided the basis for most productions that followed.

Peter Martins’ full-length staging was created for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1996, and first performed by NYCB in 1999. The production features sets and costumes by the acclaimed Danish painter Per Kirkeby and has been called “an art lover’s dream.”
In true New York City Ballet fashion, where the dancing comes first, this is also a streamlined version of the classic full-length work that retains the complete Tschaikovsky score, while eliminating much of the mime sequences, as well as two of the ballet’s three intermissions, for a fast-paced and seamless evening of theater.
For more information, or to purchase tickets visit nycballet.com

Sara Mearns in Peter Martins’ Swan Lake

[femmina]

13.12.2010, 19:51:12
Дженифер Рингер. Фото ©AFP

Балерина простила критику замечание о лишнем весе

Балерина труппы New York City Ballet Дженифер Рингер простила критику высказывание о ее лишнем весе, сообщает Associated Press. Как заявила Рингер в эфире популярной телепередачи "Today" на канале NBC, ее тело - это лишь форма для искусства, поэтому любая критика уместна.

Замечание о лишнем весе Рингер было сделано критиком New York Times Алистером Маколеем в рецензии на балет "Щелкунчик", опубликованной 28 ноября, и вызвало скандал в балетном мире США. В постановке Рингер танцует роль феи Драже и, как написал Маколей, "фея Драже выглядит так, будто она переела драже".

После этого заявления на Маколея обрушился шквал критики, несмотря на то что прямо о лишнем весе Рингер критик не говорил, и его замечание некоторые трактовали как указание на флегматичность танцовщицы. Сама балерина заявила, что Маколею платят за высказывание его мнения на страницах газеты. По ее словам, мнение двух тысяч человек, сидевших в зале вместе с критиком, не совпало с его впечатлениями.

Балет Чайковского "Щелкунчик" труппа New York City Ballet танцует с 1954 года в постановке знаменитого хореографа Джорджа Баланчина. Именно благодаря Баланчину традиция показывать на Рождество именно этот балет распространилась по всей территории США, и сейчас в этой стране "Щелкунчик" считается неотъемлемой частью праздника.
Сайты по теме
- Труппа New York City Ballet

URL: http://lenta.ru/news/2010/12/13/weight/

[femmina]

Американский балетный театр в Нью-Йорке представил премьеру балета "Щелкунчик" в постановке Алексея Ратманского

23.12.10 13:17


фото



Спектакль, который постановщик определил как "маленькая история с большими эмоциями", будет идти на сцене Бруклинской академии музыки.

«Щелкунчик» - первая полноформатная постановка Ратманского на сцене Театра американского балета после того, как он покинул Большой театр и перебрался в Нью-Йорк.

Добавим, что "Щелкунчик" обошелся постановочной группе в пять миллионов долларов. Дизайнером костюмов выступил известный художник Ричард Хадсон.

http://www.cultradio.ru/doc.html?id=379480&cid=44

[femmina]

"The Quintessential Ballet": Tschaikovsky’s Swan Lake

By Robert Sandla
03 Jan 2011

Charles Askegard and Maria Kowroski in Act III Martins’ Swan Lake/ photo by Paul Kolnik

Peter Martins’ production of the full-length classic Swan Lake returns to New York City Ballet this February. Robert Sandla further discusses the origins of the iconic piece.


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Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky, its composer, confessed that he wrote the score “partly for the money.” Pauline Karpakova, its ballerina, inserted steps and routines to music from her previous hits. Julius Reisinger, its choreographer, was a genial hack. And the story was an overheated affair revolving around a dreaming Prince, a sinister sorcerer, a deeply romantic Princess somehow turned into a swan, and a scheming temptress, all set in some vaguely medieval Nevernever Land. The ballet is, of course, Swan Lake. But not the Swan Lake we know today.
The first version of Swan Lake, which premiered in Moscow in 1877, was, if not an absolute failure, then a thin and ungainly affair. Far from the innovative reinvention of traditional ballet that Tschaikovsky had hoped his first ballet score would be, Reisinger’s Swan Lake was performed 33 times at the Bolshoi Theater until 1883, and subject to endless tampering.
Tschaikovksy’s death in 1893 brought about a thorough revision of Swan Lake. By then, Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, ballet masters at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, had worked hand in hand with the composer to create The Nutcracker (1890) and The Sleeping Beauty (1892), and had propelled the art form forward. Tschaikovsky had been widely loved, and his death sparked fresh interest in his music. A memorial performance of excerpts from his works was mounted at the Maryinsky in 1894. The performance included scenes from operas, as well as Act II of Swan Lake, newly staged by Lev Ivanov.
Swan Lake suddenly looked good, and in 1895 the Maryinsky restaged the entire ballet. Petipa staged Act I, set at Prince Siegfried’s 21st birthday celebration, and Act III, a string of divertissements centered around a showstopping pas de deux for Siegfried and Odile. Ivanov choreographed the wild poetry of Act II, the lakeside scene where the Prince and Odette first meet and fall in love, and Act IV, full of storms and portents and doom. Together Petipa and Ivanov created a choreo– graphic structure that mirrors the work’s great themes: innocence and knowledge, responsibility and rebellion, good and evil.
The St. Petersburg premiere in 1895 was a triumph. Same essential storyline, same vaguely medieval setting. But the resonances were profound. Ivanov built Acts II and IV on musical principles, following the symphonic surges of the score. The corps de ballet was deployed not just in variously picturesque groups—a sort of human garland around the principals—but as an echo of Odette’s mood, a shadow of her soul. Ivanov’s poetry was balanced by Petipa’s opening scene and the feverish glitter of Act III, complete with a breathtaking display of sheer virtuosity.
Today, Swan Lake is, if not the ultimate, then certainly the quintessential ballet. It has entered popular culture and like any durable classic, Swan Lake has frequently been altered to reflect the temper of its times. We’ve seen thoughtful Princes and callow Princes, sad Princes and gay Princes, introspective, Hamlet-like Princes and crazy, Ludwig-of-Bavaria Princes. We’ve seen psychological Swan Lakes and Soviet Swan Lakes, postmodern Swan Lakes and Broadway Swan Lakes. But even through the scrim of extraneous details, Swan Lake always shone through.
In 1951 George Balanchine choreographed a one-act version of Swan Lake that retained the essential Ivanov and captured the fire of the complete work, in a 35-minute production that many feel saves the soul of Swan Lake while jettisoning such extras as the mime sequences. Balanchine revised the piece over the years, restoring the original entrance, deleting the 19th century arranger Riccardo Drigo’s musical interpolations, expanding the role of the corps. And the production has been given different scenery and costumes.
As part of the Company’s 50th Anniversary season, in the spring of 1999 New York City Ballet danced the first complete Swan Lake in its history, choreographed by Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins, after Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov, and George Balanchine. Martins originally choreographed this production in 1996 for the Royal Danish Ballet, from whose repertory the work had long been absent. The program credit—Martins, after Petipa, Ivanov, and Balanchine—speaks volumes about roots and succession, continuity and change.
Like Petipa and Ivanov for the 1895 production, music was the motivation for Martins’ Swan Lake, which returns to NYC B’s repertory this winter. “This music belongs in this house,” says Martins. ”It’s a great score, with music that breaks your heart. This is Tschaikovsky’s house, as well as Balanchine’s.”
“Just as I did with The Sleeping Beauty, I did extensive research in preparation for Swan Lake,” says Martins. “I read everything that was written about Swan Lake. I got every videotape known to man of every production, from the Bolshoi, from Britain, from France— from everybody. And I studied them. And what became clear very quickly was that there’s very little Petipa in most productions of The Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake. Ironically, it appeared that Russian productions discarded more of their work than Western ones. I wanted to retain what I considered the best of Petipa and Ivanov. At the same time, when there were things that I thought could be updated a little more I introduced myself. And obviously, Balanchine was a major influence on me with respect to Tschaikovsky.”
“In Act II, for example, there are passages that you will recognize as being the Balanchine treatment of Ivanov’s Act II,” Martins continues. “I did not want to compete with Balanchine because his treatment is best. Balanchine’s Swan Lake is basically Ivanov. He kept the essence of Ivanov and enhanced it. I took Balanchine’s enhancement of Ivanov. So our Swan Lake has gone through many hands. I kept certain things, like the four pools of dancers in Act IV, with Siegfried going from group to group, but at a different pace and with different timings. But it’s Petipa’s and Ivanov’s vocabulary, so it will look like a Petipa or an Ivanov dance.”
Where the new production departs most noticeably from tradition is in the costume and scenic design by Per Kirkeby, a leading Danish artist with a big international career. The look is spare, abstract; the backdrops, awash with paint that drips like nerve endings, setting a melancholy emotional tone.
Kirkeby’s costumes also announce a personal vision of the ballet. “There are some very bright colors here and there,” Martins says. “We wanted to make this Swan Lake distinct from other productions in its palette. The traditional browns and grays of Act I set the pace. But I wanted it to be bright and sunny—updated in terms of colors. The Prince is the only person in that act who doesn’t belong psychologically. He wears his own palette of colors. He doesn’t match. Those decisions were very conscious.”
Swan Lake’s ending has always been particularly flexible. Sometimes Odette and Siegfried perish. Sometimes they vanquish von Rothbart and live. Sometimes they are subsumed mystically into the lake and are glimpsed sailing into an ethereal distance together. Sometimes they leap to their deaths, only to be apotheosized as they rise heavenward. In Martins’ production, Odette is fated to remain a swan forever. The Prince is left alone to confront his failings.
“I thought this a much stronger ending,” Martins says. “Siegfried falls in love with the White Swan and then falls in love with the Black Swan. So the moral tale here is that you’ve got to choose. You can’t have it all. And when the curtain falls, he has to start all over. Does he learn? This we don’t know. Do we ever learn? The dramatic impact has to be there, I realize, but the most important thing for me was the music and making dances. I’m not reinventing Swan Lake, I’m listening to Tschaikovsky.”
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Robert Sandla is editor in chief of Symphony, the magazine of the League of American Orchestras, and writes frequently about the performing arts.

The corps de ballet in Peter Martins’ Swan Lake
photo by Paul Kolnik

[femmina]

Susan Stroman: A Ballet and Broadway Bouquet

By Terry Trucco
19 Jan 2011

Susan Stroman rehearsing her new work
photo by Paul Kolnik

Susan Stroman, the Tony Award-winning Broadway director and choreographer, created a new work for New York City Ballet in 1999. Nearly a dozen years later, she premieres the follow-up to Blossom Got Kissed Jan. 28


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When Stroman was invited to create Blossom Got Kissed, she never dreamed she’d be asked to fashion a companion piece.
“There are no companion pieces on Broadway,” she says with a laugh. But if ever a ballet called out for a one-act accompaniment, it’s Blossom Got Kissed, Stroman’s first piece for the Company which was originally created as part of the three-part ballet Duke!, which also featured choreography by Garth Fagan and Robert La Fosse. Called “a perfect balleticized musical in miniature” by The New York Times, Blossom lasts just 14 minutes, and is danced with a full jazz band on stage. Those restrictions made it difficult to perform the piece with any frequency and prompted Peter Martins, NYCB’s Ballet Master in Chief, to ask Stroman to create a 15-minute companion. “Of course I said yes,” she says.
The result premieres on January 28, when Frankie and Johnny...and Rose joins Blossom Got Kissed as a two-part one-act ballet called For the Love of Duke.
Though Stroman is best known as the director and choreographer of Broadway hits like The Producers, the dance driven Contact, the 2000 revival of The Music Man and, most recently, The Scottsboro Boys, she’s no stranger to NYCB. Double Feature, her effervescent, Broadway-style story ballet depicting two silent films, made its debut in 2004 and was performed most recently in 2008.
Still, choreographing a companion to Blossom proved unlike anything Stroman ever attempted. “It was great to have this kind of puzzle,” she says. She began by isolating two elements the ballets would share -- a love story theme and jazz music. Blossom is a fanciful tale of a ballerina who doesn’t have rhythm until she gets kissed. “It’s about innocence and sweet love, so I thought what if we did a more adult love story for the new piece?” she says.
Blossom is danced to two Duke Ellington songs—“It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing” and “Lotus Blossom” (hence the name of the lead character). To create continuity, Stroman once again looked to Ellington’s sophisticated jazz. “It makes you move,” she says. After selecting the lyrical standard “Love You Madly” and a delicate, little-known ballad called “Single Petal of a Rose,” she heard Ellington’s rollicking arrangement of the old song “Frankie and Johnny.”
”I decided to have my own story of Frankie and Johnny but with three characters,” she says. “The ballet begins with Johnny and Rose dancing. And then Frankie comes home. And comedy ensues.”
The richness of expression and variation in Ellington’s songs allowed Stroman to blend key elements of ballet and Broadway to impart her story. That meant classical pointe work for the women in the lyrical pas de deux danced by Frankie and Johnny and Johnny and Rose as well as synchronized rhythmic ballet when the three characters dance together. The music also inspired Stroman to indulge in moments of choreographic time travel. “The music has a 1930s feel to it, so there are also a few dance steps that recall that era,” she says.
On a crisp autumn day, light streams into a NYCB rehearsal studio at the Rose Building at Lincoln Center where Stroman, her suede boots tucked under a chair, stands before the dancers in her black socks and demonstrates an intricate phrase. The rhythmic steps are swift, and at one point the dancers collide. But by the rehearsal’s end, the steps have been mastered, and Stroman is smiling. “That’s it for today,” she says, followed by a blithe curtsy to her dancers.
Stroman, who grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, studied ballet but was always drawn to musicals and theatrical dance. “As a child, my parents took me to movie musicals, and I think it was that idea of being able to sing as well as dance that attracted me to the theater,” she says.
She made her Broadway debut in the ensemble of the musical Whoopee! in 1979 but switched to choreography early in her career, working her way from off Broadway productions to New York City Opera, where she did dance sequences for Don Giovanni. “I loved dancing and still do when I make the dances up,” she says. “But for me, the thrill has always been more about making dance that complements the music rather than performing.”
In 1992, she choreographed her first Broadway show, Crazy for You and won her first Tony Award for Best Choreography. Among those impressed by Stroman’s dances was Martins, who decided to invite her to choreograph for NYCB
In addition to her work with NYCB, Stroman has created dances for Pacific Northwest Ballet and the Martha Graham Dance Company. The difference between choreographing Broadway musicals and ballets is pronounced, she says. In theater, the choreography must support a lyric and dialogue. “Here it’s all about the music and the dance,” she explains. “And that gives me greater freedom to complete what’s necessary to tell the story without all the other elements.”
Ballet allows her to put the women on pointe “and play up the romance a lot better,” she says. She can also take advantage of the formidable technique professional ballet dancers command. “In my world, we’d have triple pirouettes, but here we pirouette seven, eight, nine times,” she says.
Though Stroman choreographed abstract works for PNB and the Graham Company, she has created story ballets for NYCB. She enjoys seeing ballet dancers in character and watching them act. “For me, the idea of having a dancer on pointe and then acting out a real live character looks unique,” she says.
She also enjoys watching ballet dancers stretch their talents, particularly in the realms of comedy. To prepare her dancers for Frankie and Johnny...and Rose, she sat them down before rehearsals began, told them the story and walked them through what they’d be doing. She sent them home with CDs of the music. When her dancers arrived at rehearsal the first day, each was in character.
“It’s a little bit of my world coming to them and their world coming to me, and I love it when those mediums cross over,” she says. “It’s exciting.“
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For The Love of Duke performances during NYCB’s 2010-2011 Season:
Winter
Jan. 28 at 8:00 pm
Jan. 30 at 3:00 pm
Feb. 3 at 8:00 pm
Feb. 4 at 8:00 pm
Feb. 5 at 2:00 pm
Feb. 6 at 3:00 pm
Spring
May 25 at 7:30 pm
May 28 at 2:00 pm
May 28 at 8:00 pm
May 29 at 3:00 pm
Susan Stroman rehearsing Sara Mearns, Amar Ramasar and Tiler Peck in Frankie and Johnny...and Rose
photo by Paul Kolnik

[femmina]

City Center Opens the Door to Dance

By Susan Reiter
14 Feb 2011

Ailey II’s Solomon Dumas
photo by Eduardo Patino NYCA

lvin Ailey American Dance Theater performed 39 times in December to enthusiastic packed houses, but there was a special quality to the cheering with which an equally large—but significantly younger—audience responded one Thursday morning during the season.


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Through New York City Center’s Education Department, more than 2,000 public school students, mainly from grades 4 through 12, were introduced to Revelations by the dancers of Ailey II. For many, it was their first experience of a professional dance performance. And as loud and excited as their response was when the house lights dimmed, their rapt attention during the hour-long performance of Thang Dao’s Echoes and the complete Revelations was a cut above most audience behavior in theaters these days.
This special student performance—a comparable event will be offered this month for Flamenco Hoy, and next month for Paul Taylor Dance Company—is just the most visible aspect of the Young People’s Dance Series, one of the programs offered by City Center’s enterprising and busy Education Department. About half of the students attending the performance were from schools whose participation in YPDS includes a day of professional development for teachers whose students will be coming to the theater. They then join their students for enriching pre- and post-performance workshops, with a pair of the company’s dancers visiting the school to introduce movement ideas and encourage the students to create their own choreography based on what they learned.
At the heart of the various programs is “the process of looking at what’s on the stage—talking about it, interpreting and analyzing it, and then taking the material and doing something creative with it,” explained Arlene Jordan, City Center’s dynamic Director of Education since 2005. As with the expansive and imaginative programs her department offers in conjunction with Encores!, YPDS aims to provide the tools and environment needed to stimulate growth, knowledge, and creative discipline in the arts.
Having worked in a New York City Department of Education district office for many years, and having created educational programs for the Roundabout Theater Company, Jordan draws on her deep familiarity with the schools to design YPDS programs. “We craft something to meet the needs of each school, according to where the kids are developmentally, where the school is financially, and what the school culture is like,” Jordan said. “Also whether the kids have studied dance before, or if they’re new to dance. We try to get a sense of it and build from there.”
It can be a gradual process. Take P.S. 129 on West 130th Street, a new participant in YPDS, which sent students to see Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake in the fall (they were among some 400 students from various schools who attended a regular Wednesday performance). Afterward, Jordan suggested to the principal, Odelphia Pierre, that “it would be great if we could go deeper and connect to the kids in a way where they’re participatory. They could have close contact with the artists that grace our stage, and really hear about their unique aesthetic and culture.” The school found the money in its budget to take part in the full YPDS program—not always a given in these difficult times—and sent two teachers to the next professional development workshop.
About 30 teachers participated in that workshop, which began with former leading Ailey dancer Nasha Thomas-Schmitt (now co-director of Ailey’s Arts in Education & Community Programs) leading a 90-minute movement class. By the end of it this group—which ranged from dance teachers to math and history teachers— had learned a significant portion of “I’ve Been Buked,” the opening section of Revelations. Next, teaching artists Susan Thomasson and Jessica Nicoll led them in an investigation of the 1930s Dust Bowl era in which Ailey grew up. After viewing a video and examining books, the teachers formed small groups to create tableaux evoking an aspect of that era, and then shared and discussed them with the full group. And that was just the morning session; in the afternoon, further exploration, revision and evaluation took place.
“Unless there’s some essential shift in the teachers’ perception or engagement, there’s no real change in the students,” Thomasson observed during the lunch break. “So I think they have to go forward in tandem.” The workshop is meticulously planned and each year focuses on a specific aspect of the dance being learned. “What we’re looking for is a broader investigation into ways to cross over from the curriculum to a work of art and back again,” Nicoll explained. “It’s about researching and finding connections embodying the ideas that came out of the research—making artistic choices, letting questions lead you into further investigation and discovery.”
A few weeks after the workshop, P.S. 129 teacher Roberta Hairston observed her sixth-graders as they took part in a session with two members of Ailey II—as hundreds of students citywide were doing just prior to attending the student matinee. Asked by the dancers whether they had heard of Alvin Ailey, her students gave eager responses; she’d had them read a book about him in their literacy class.
Hairston, who worked in theater before becoming a teacher, said, “I didn’t have any idea what [the professional development workshop] would be like. The dancers came out, and I was just open—which is how I’d like the kids to be, open to all new experiences. A lot of them say, ‘I don’t want to try that; I’m afraid I won’t look good, or it will be wrong.’ The thing about the arts—there’s no right or wrong answer.”
A few days later, several of the P.S. 129 sixth-graders spoke after the student matinee about what they’d just experienced. Christian Bermeo, for whom it was his first live dance performance, was impressed with the men’s abilities to lift the women, and sensed that a particular male solo “was about slavery—he was by himself and he tried to get out of it.” His classmate Nicole Garcia added, “You could see that they showed their emotions in the dances.” Chyna Lynch, who studies ballet, was particularly moved by “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” in Revelations. “The way they danced, it was like they were dancing for the song, and the song connected to them,” she said. “Everything was connecting, and that’s why the dance was just perfect.”
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Susan Reiter covers dance for New York Press and contributes articles on the performing arts to the Los Angeles Times and other publications.

Ailey II dancers lead a workshop at P.S. 3 in Manhattan
photo by Jennie Miller

http://www.playbillarts.com/features/article/8518.html