Retirements;; La Source; After the rain; Stravinsky VC
He retired from performing the year this ballet was made; she's still the one i just saw dancing it.
Performance started with a short ceremony on stage for three principal dancers and a conductor who left this spring season. They gave their last performances and had more elaborate good-byes earlier at Lincoln Center, but I guess also wanted to do a little something at the summer theatre. Peter Martins talked a bit about all of them, and let the orchestra in a drumroll/cacaphony for the conductor (and then had the conductor do his last one for the dancers). Yvonne Boree will teach at SAB; Philip Neal is going to travel to stage Balanchine rep; Albert Evans has become a ballet master of the company! don't know what the conductor's doing, presumably mostly retirement. Anyway, they all got a standing ovation~
La Source - misleading program notes-- thought it might include stuff from Sylvia, but it just had different music from the same thing Sylvia's music is from. But! There was this one variation in it I love- the second variation of the lead girl- it's fast and full of little hops and pretty cute. And the finale music was familiar from somewhere... It ends in that inexplicably popular thing where the girl's sitting on the guy's shoulder in a pretty pose and her tutubutt hides his face, his entire head, from view and he's just got one poor arm held out 'ta-daaa!'- style on the other side of the giant tutubutt. seriously what kind of ending is that for the guy.
No video of this, and like only one picture.
After the rain - LOOOOOOOOOOOVE this, and i so needed it now. 1st mvt is very nice, quietly powerful blue-grey dance with some really cool movement patterns - it's not strictly classical, but also not the stuff you're used to seeing called modern ballet, and it didn't seem 'un-ballet'. And the 3 couples moved in sync very well.
It's the second movement that's most wonderful. Two dancers, one violin, and one piano on the stage (i would call the music sublime but i think my words are getting out of hand here... it's nice, anyway, by a minimalist Estonian composer). And. this isn't really the kind of comment i usually have on a ballet, but. Something - in the choreography, and in the two dancers performing it- was absolutely the perfect relationship dynamic for me.. like, i'm absolutely in love with this thing they have going on together.
A performance, a different company with different dancers, but shows the choreography polished up on stage...
The two i saw, this is a rehearsal quite a while ago, but even like that worth it to see it with those dancers; truly, i love this:
Stravinsky violin concerto- Nothing new to say about this, really. Great music, of course. One of their classic simple 'leotard ballets', pure dance. And one of the ballets where extensions past 180° look good.
large (clickable!) photo, beautiful curvy lines full size:
i think i might have a video of this tucked away on a spare hard drive somewhere, and there's this of a different ballet company (pas de deux at the beginning, then everyone in a bit of the last movement):
i was going to kind of rant about the audience, because they don't know how to behave and i'm old-fashioned and fussy and therefore often need to rant about audiences, but i found something better to be ineffectualy sleep-deprivedly worked up over, so--
Article on the girl from After the rain, begins as follows:
"Wendy Whelan, a veteran New York City Ballet principal dancer, is just that[a muse to famous artists]. She doesn't think of herself as a ballerina whose body conforms precisely to conventional norms*. Lithe and incredibly buff, with the killer abs and bottom I dream of, Whelan transcends perfect line and step to being a vessel of pure sensuality who knows how to fit just so into the arms of the men who partner her, and anticipate their every move.
All I can think is: she must be great in bed!"
Fuck I'm sick of hearing that, especially in what's meant to be journalism rather than like casual conversation. Yeah sure, women who do ballet are so flexible and so feminine&compliant, we must all be great in bed; what a stunningly insightful person to have discovered that property of the dancer! Plus it's kind of totally not classy or appropriate to comment on stuff like that in an arts&culture article on a classical dancer. :| And. I'll just shut up now, whatever, the problem's obvious.
*she's got significant scoliosis, i believe this is referring to
Performance started with a short ceremony on stage for three principal dancers and a conductor who left this spring season. They gave their last performances and had more elaborate good-byes earlier at Lincoln Center, but I guess also wanted to do a little something at the summer theatre. Peter Martins talked a bit about all of them, and let the orchestra in a drumroll/cacaphony for the conductor (and then had the conductor do his last one for the dancers). Yvonne Boree will teach at SAB; Philip Neal is going to travel to stage Balanchine rep; Albert Evans has become a ballet master of the company! don't know what the conductor's doing, presumably mostly retirement. Anyway, they all got a standing ovation~
La Source - misleading program notes-- thought it might include stuff from Sylvia, but it just had different music from the same thing Sylvia's music is from. But! There was this one variation in it I love- the second variation of the lead girl- it's fast and full of little hops and pretty cute. And the finale music was familiar from somewhere... It ends in that inexplicably popular thing where the girl's sitting on the guy's shoulder in a pretty pose and her tutubutt hides his face, his entire head, from view and he's just got one poor arm held out 'ta-daaa!'- style on the other side of the giant tutubutt. seriously what kind of ending is that for the guy.
No video of this, and like only one picture.
After the rain - LOOOOOOOOOOOVE this, and i so needed it now. 1st mvt is very nice, quietly powerful blue-grey dance with some really cool movement patterns - it's not strictly classical, but also not the stuff you're used to seeing called modern ballet, and it didn't seem 'un-ballet'. And the 3 couples moved in sync very well.
It's the second movement that's most wonderful. Two dancers, one violin, and one piano on the stage (i would call the music sublime but i think my words are getting out of hand here... it's nice, anyway, by a minimalist Estonian composer). And. this isn't really the kind of comment i usually have on a ballet, but. Something - in the choreography, and in the two dancers performing it- was absolutely the perfect relationship dynamic for me.. like, i'm absolutely in love with this thing they have going on together.
A performance, a different company with different dancers, but shows the choreography polished up on stage...
The two i saw, this is a rehearsal quite a while ago, but even like that worth it to see it with those dancers; truly, i love this:
Click to view
Stravinsky violin concerto- Nothing new to say about this, really. Great music, of course. One of their classic simple 'leotard ballets', pure dance. And one of the ballets where extensions past 180° look good.
large (clickable!) photo, beautiful curvy lines full size:
i think i might have a video of this tucked away on a spare hard drive somewhere, and there's this of a different ballet company (pas de deux at the beginning, then everyone in a bit of the last movement):
i was going to kind of rant about the audience, because they don't know how to behave and i'm old-fashioned and fussy and therefore often need to rant about audiences, but i found something better to be ineffectualy sleep-deprivedly worked up over, so--
Article on the girl from After the rain, begins as follows:
"Wendy Whelan, a veteran New York City Ballet principal dancer, is just that[a muse to famous artists]. She doesn't think of herself as a ballerina whose body conforms precisely to conventional norms*. Lithe and incredibly buff, with the killer abs and bottom I dream of, Whelan transcends perfect line and step to being a vessel of pure sensuality who knows how to fit just so into the arms of the men who partner her, and anticipate their every move.
All I can think is: she must be great in bed!"
Fuck I'm sick of hearing that, especially in what's meant to be journalism rather than like casual conversation. Yeah sure, women who do ballet are so flexible and so feminine&compliant, we must all be great in bed; what a stunningly insightful person to have discovered that property of the dancer! Plus it's kind of totally not classy or appropriate to comment on stuff like that in an arts&culture article on a classical dancer. :| And. I'll just shut up now, whatever, the problem's obvious.
*she's got significant scoliosis, i believe this is referring to