Kyra Nichols in George Balanchine’s “Mozartiana”, photo by Paul Kolnik, 2004
On May 5th, former New York City Ballet principal dancer Kyra Nichols returned to the stage. Not to perform, sadly – it was a pleasure to watch her until she retired in 2007 – but rather to lead a free seminar along with Peter Martins about similarities and differences between the choreography of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. The hour-long discussion was filled with anecdotes and reflections on the two choreographers along with excerpts performed by current company members.
Musicality and partnering were both popular topics. While Robbins wanted the man to fully support the woman, Balanchine preferred for the woman to move independently for as long as possible until the man would swoop in and assist her. Company members Ana Sophia Scheller and Gonzalo Garcia showed an excerpt from Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux during which she does a series of pirouettes. At first Garcia stepped in right away, but Peter Martins repeatedly told him to wait until the last possible moment to support her. The hesitation and slight discomfort among the two dancers was visible as they experimented with Martins’ instructions.
That evening, it was a treat to watch Scheller and Garcia perform the ballet on an all-Balanchine program. I had hoped to see the changes from the afternoon demonstration incorporated into their performance, but alas, they stuck with their old habits and didn’t take the riskier approach that Balanchine preferred.
Another interesting point that Martins and Nichols emphasized was that Robbins wanted his dancers to mark his ballets in rehearsals (meaning not perform them to the fullest), while Balanchine expected the dancers to perform at 100% in rehearsals. This surprised me, as I remember reading and hearing stories about how Robbins was a tough grader and always pushed his dancers for more, which seems to lend itself to the opposite of marking a ballet. “Easy! Easy!” said Martins, imitating the tone that Robbins would take with his dancers. What a joy it was to see Sterling Hyltin perform an excerpt from Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering with such ease and fluidity. I think Robbins would have approved of her relaxed demonstration.
These seminars are always eye-opening. The stories about Balanchine and Robbins as told by the people who were fortunate enough to work with them are priceless. Nichols and Martins shared far too many to list here, but they certainly offered some insight into working with the company’s two most significant choreographers.
Like this:
Opus Jazz on the High Line
September 12, 2010
Still shot of Rachel Rutherford and Craig Hall on the High Line in "NY Export: Opus Jazz"
One year ago, I visited the set of NY Export: Opus Jazz, the film adaptation of Jerome Robbins’s 1958 “ballet in sneakers”. Last March, the film made its NYC premiere and then debuted on PBS’s Great Performances for audiences everywhere to enjoy. This past Friday, I attended an outdoor screening of the film on the High Line, bringing the Opus Jazz journey full circle since the first part of filming occurred there in 2007 (before the High Line became the beautiful elevated park that it is today). Watching New York City Ballet soloists Rachel Rutherford and Craig Hall’s stunning pas de deux in a field of the High Line – with a gorgeous sunset behind them – while sitting on the High Line on a cooler, windier night was pretty magical. So much time, energy, and dedication went into the making of this film, that it must have been a rewarding experience for film producers Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi to witness Opus Jazz presented to a packed audience at the place where filming began. For me, watching the film again and seeing all of the locations in and around NYC captured on camera was a reminder of the city’s vibrancy, wonderfully brought to life in the film along with the cast’s youthful energy and talent.
The DVD of NY Export: Opus Jazz will be released by Factory25 on November 23rd, just in time for the holidays. You can pre-order it online now, and check the film’s website for upcoming screenings in your city.
Rehearsal Footage from Vail International Dance Festival
August 1, 2010
The annual Vail International Dance Festival kicked off last week and continues until August 10th. The festival has excelled at utilizing social networks and sharing photos and videos with the many people who cannot make it to Colorado for the performances, and updating them in a timely manner. I particularly enjoyed watching this lovely collage of rehearsal footage featuring New York City Ballet principals Joaquin De Luz and Tiler Peck, with the festival’s artistic director and former NYCB principal Damian Woetzel. The duo was rehearsing works by Jerome Robbins set to music by Chopin, which they’ll be performing next week.
New York City Ballet’s All-Robbins Program
May 10, 2010
Wendy Whelan and Gonzalo Garcia in "Opus 19/The Dreamer", photo by Paul Kolnik
After last week’s all-Balanchine program, New York City Ballet presented three of Jerome Robbins’s ballets on Friday evening. Opus 19/The Dreamer is one of his most breathtaking works – always a pleasure to watch and always something newly discovered. While 2 & 3 Part Inventions and I’m Old Fashioned have some charming moments, there are definitely stronger works in the company’s repertoire that could have been included in the all-Robbins program. Yet, what was most apparent throughout the performance was Robbins’s use of quirky gestures: sometimes they added delicate humor, while elsewhere they looked silly or – at least in 2010 – very dated.
This was the case in I’m Old Fashioned, a 1983 ballet that paid tribute to Fred Astaire. His duet with Rita Hayworth in the 1942 film You Were Never Lovelier was the inspiration for the work, which begins by showing the filmed dance on a large screen. Following a theme-and-variation format, three couples and a corps of eighteen swayed romantically to Morton Gould’s commissioned score, with occasional moments of old-fashioned, exaggerated humor in the duets and solos. Tyler Angle and Jenifer Ringer were divine in their intentionally clumsy duet, while Rebecca Krohn and Adrian Danchig-Waring were wonderfully elegant. Yet, Astaire and Hayworth’s duet was choreographically more interesting than Robbins’s interpretation, and the concluding section – in which the full cast danced in front of the filmed excerpt – was irritatingly sentimental.
New York City Ballet in I’m Old Fashioned, photo by Paul Kolnik
Fortunately, 2 & 3 Part Inventions offered a spare, simple exercise for eight dancers, all of whom made debuts in this performance. Like Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, this ballet is unfussy and straightforward. Set to Bach’s “Inventions and Sinfonias” for piano (played by Nancy McDill), the piece premiered in 1994 at the School of American Ballet’s annual workshop. On Friday night, the young cast’s clear formations and disciplined movement reflected the uncomplicated music, which ranges from meditative to cheerful. While remaining mostly academic and formal, there were also playful moments, such as when two women clasped hands and pretended to climb up and down a wall. Ashley Laracey filled her solo with lovely lyricism and expression, and Kathryn Morgan, Chase Finlay, and Daniel Applebaum made strong impressions throughout the work.
Wendy Whelan, photo by Josef Astor, Dance Magazine 2003
In Jorge Luis Borges’s short story The Circular Ruins, the narrator reveals the dreams of a man on a quest and at one point says, “In the dream of the man that dreamed, the dreamed one awoke.” This quotation came to mind during Opus 19/The Dreamer, an otherworldly, hauntingly beautiful 1979 work set to Prokofiev’s mysterious “Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major”. Gonzalo Garcia added a breezy quality to the opening section in which he remained distant from the community of twelve women and men that tiptoed behind him. As he dreamt up an ethereal being, Wendy Whelan mysteriously emerged from the swirl of blue-gray costumes, only to suddenly awake from her own sleep and dance with wild abandon as the dream’s momentum built. Garcia and Whelan were alternately mesmerized by one another and swept into each other’s worlds, seemingly longing for something just out of reach. After the whirlwind of gorgeous movement that suggested a restless dream, the ballet ended with remarkable tranquility as Whelan and Garcia rested their heads in the other’s palms. Borges’s story concludes, “He understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him.” This was true in Robbins’s timeless work, as well, for both seemed to be the dreamers.
Architecture of Ballet: Men on Top. Women on Stage.
April 26, 2010
Tiler Peck working with choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti, photo by Paul Kolnik
New York City Ballet’s spring season, a festival entitled Architecture of Dance, includes an astounding seven new ballets. In fact, the company’s recent print brochures, website, and festival mini-site boasts: “7 new ballets. 4 commissioned scores. 1 renowned architect.” That’s a total of twelve creative voices throughout the eight-week season, not to mention repertory favorites by Balanchine and Robbins. After a winter season of mostly story-length ballets, it’s exciting just thinking about all of the new works that audiences will get to see. But of those twelve creative voices, guess how many are women? Just one. Melissa Barak, a former NYCB dancer, will be choreographing her second work for the company.
Balanchine said “ballet is woman”, and while there are plenty of women on stage at NYCB (they make up 53% of the dancers), the gender imbalance among choreographers, composers, set designers, and artistic directors needs some serious even-ing out. Perhaps the company needs to be more proactive in its search for female artists, but the lack of women is not entirely NYCB’s fault. In fact, it seems to be a widespread problem, with more young women focusing on their careers as ballet dancers rather than anything else.
Christopher Wheeldon rehearsing NYCB dancers, photo by Paul Kolnik
About two years ago I wrote about this issue after learning of a choreography initiative for women at American Ballet Theatre – an admirable effort. In my post I referred to a New York Times article by Claudia La Rocco, “Often on Point but Rarely in Charge”, which investigated the lack of women not only choreographing ballets but also directing ballet companies. While the article factors in the scarcity of men in ballet (making it easier for them to rise through the ranks and explore other interests, such as choreographing), male-female inequalities in executive positions across other industries, and different standards that a board tends to have when judging men and women for artistic leadership positions, it was dismaying to read that even some women prefer to have men do the directing. Barak, however, pointed out, “A lot of girls, especially in ballet, are very shy, very sheltered in a way. I think it has to do with that personality type.”
If choreography were a mandatory class – along with ballet, pointe, partnering, character, etc. – at the School of American Ballet and other schools affiliated with large ballet companies, perhaps it would send a message to young dancers that in addition to being future performers, they can also express themselves and have a voice by creating dance. So many young ballet dancers – and young women, in particular – seem to think that if they can’t make it as a professional dancer, they have no future in the ballet world. Not true. There are other options, like choreographing and directing, that need to be presented as valid careers for both women and men.
Melissa Barak rehearsing NYCB dancers in 2009, photo by Paul Kolnik
Several years ago Dance Magazine started compiling a list of active women choreographers, which continues to grow. While it doesn’t indicate the numbers by genre, I’d guess that the total number working in modern outweighs the number of women who identify as ballet choreographers. Likewise, this graphic shows that in 2002, there were more women than men in artistic or executive director positions at major modern and contemporary dance companies.
No matter how many incredible female dancers are at the top of New York City Ballet and other major ballet companies, it’s still frustrating to see the fields of choreography, composing, and artistic leadership so lacking in women. This is not to say that men in these positions should be criticized, and hopefully this post doesn’t come across as an attack on male choreographers or directors. Rather, my hope is to raise awareness of the gender imbalance. More than fifty years ago, “ballet is woman” probably referred to women performing on stage. In 2010, women’s roles in ballet should be spread evenly across the field, and not be limited to what audiences see on stage.
