Ballet Beat June, 2014 a Newsletter from for Art’S Sake Vol
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Ballet Beat June, 2014 A Newsletter from For Art’s Sake Vol. 17 No. 1 Welcome to Saratoga Springs and the 49th season of have mastered her combination of crystalline technique and the New York City Ballet at the Saratoga Performing Arts expressive range, and her fi nal Saratoga performances will Center. carry a special poignancy. As Ballet Beat goes to print for the 17th consecutive Two of the world’s most exciting young talents have year, SPAC and NYCB have announced a restoration of a created new works for NYCB. Soloist Justin Peck, whose two week residency for 2015! This is wonderful news and we Year of the Rabbit proved 2013’s runaway hit, returns with congratulate both organizations for their work in making an even grander work, Everywhere We Go, to music by Rabbit this possible. Mr. Balanchine’s vision goes on! composer Sufjan Stevens (July 9, 10m, 12m). Created for 25 dancers, it features seven of the company’s best, including NYCB’s Saratoga 2014 Season— Maria Kowroski, Sterling Hyltin, Tiler Peck, and Teresa Reichlen. A Week of Welcomes and Farewells The other new ballet, Acheron, to Poulenc (Gala, Though once again limited to a single week, the 2014 July12), comes from English whiz Liam Scarlett, who retired New York City Ballet season at SPAC comes crammed with from dancing at 26 to choreograph. Like Peck, Scarlett has wonderful dancing, ballets by two brilliant young a keen musical ear and a gift for moving groups of dancers choreographers, and a farewell to a world- strikingly about the stage. Scarlett also plumbs emotional class ballerina. depths in his pas de deux. Wendy Whelan, who has made In addition to twenty-fi rst century work, the week summers sparkle in Saratoga since includes fi ve ballets by company co-founder George joining NYCB in 1986, will Balanchine, the twentieth century’s greatest choreographer. retire this fall. Her last SPAC In a season that also brings the Bolshoi Ballet to SPAC, appearances come in Jerome Balanchine’s Raymonda Variations, to Glazunov (July 8, 11), Robbins’ Glass Pieces, and in advertises NYCB’s exciting American-accented version of two pas de deux Christopher Russian classicism. “America,” Balanchine insisted, “is now Wheeldon made for her, home of classical ballet.” A late Balanchine, Walpurgisnacht This Bitter Earth Ballet, to Gounod’s ballet music from Faust (July 8, (performed 10m, 12m), evolves from classical order in the opening July 10 and movements to a wild rampage, dancers crisscrossing the at the July stage in great crashing waves. 12 matinee) Balanchine’s love of both America and England inspired and the second two big ballets. He spent much of the late 1930s and early half of After 1940s choreographing for Broadway and Hollywood, and the Rain (Gala, his 1970 Who Cares? (July 8, 9, 10m) uses 16 great Gershwin July 12). For songs to fl aunt his show-biz side. Robert Fairchild and Ask la 2012’s This Bitter Cour will lead the festivities. In 1976, Balanchine celebrated Earth, a densely melancholy dance, Max Richter composed America’s bicentennial in typically droll fashion, by paying a synthesized string setting of Clyde Otis’s rhythm and tribute to Great Britain. Union Jack, which concludes the blues song, borrowing Dinah Washington’s vocal. In the British-themed Gala (July 12), pulls together thrilling 2005 After the Rain, to Arvo Pärt, Whelan’s duet follows military precision marching, joky music hall turns, and an an opening in which balletic poses—legs thrust in the exhilarating set of naval dances into an irresistible ballet for air, for example—undergo modernist meltdowns. The 72 dancers. pas itself ranges tenderly from the tentative to the bold, The fi nal Balanchine work, which plunges us into with overhead sideways lifts. The pair feel naked, almost childhood, offers an ideal chance to acquaint your favorite precognitive, like new creatures setting out into a strange young person with ballet. His version of Andersen’s The new world. Steadfast Tin Soldier (July 8, 12m), comes from his 1955 Over nearly three decades, Whelan has brought us the Bizet ballet, Jeux d’enfants, and its romance between the tin ferociousness of Jerome Robbins’ The Cage, the psychological soldier and the toy ballerina has great charm and a little and sexual profundity of George Balanchine’s Agon and heartbreak. Young balletgoers will also love Jerome Robbins’ Stravinsky Violin Concerto, the classical dazzle of Balanchine’s Circus Polka (July 10m, 12m). Stravinsky’s romping music Symphony in C and Diamonds, the romantic Balanchine in La originally accompanied a ballet Balanchine made for circus Sonnambula and Mozartiana, and much more. Few ballerinas elephants. In 1972, Robbins used it for a ballet with 48 girls, other. The entire cast of both ballets danced their hearts from teens to tweens to teenies. A top-hatted ringmaster out in tribute to their friend and colleague. Jon says “It was cracks his whip and puts them through their paces, a an overwhelming display of love and support and I am so funny commentary on ballet school. The girls spell blessed to have so many wonderful people around me”. out a special set of initials at the end—whom will What is it about storms and Fayette retirements? they honor this year? Anyone who attended James’ 2005 SPAC retirement will Robbins’ other work, the 1983 Glass Pieces remember a torrential downpour that doused the audience (July 9, 11) includes one of his greatest and performers and caused a power outage, while James and dances, the middle movement, Façades, his wife Jenifer Ringer kept dancing which Wendy Whelan will dance with oblivious to anything but each other. Adrian Danchig-Waring. A haunting So a snow storm on February 9th was woodwind melody, backed by no surprise as Jenny’s retirement day circuitous strings, accompanies their arrived. She chose two ballets that perfectly mysterious pas de deux, performed captured the many facets of her talents. Dances before a silhouetted line of women at a Gathering was a ballet Jenny knew intimately, advancing slowly across the back having danced all fi ve female roles over her career. of the stage, against a graph-paper It was, fi ttingly, a gathering of friends dancing grid. The opening movement contrasts together one last time but also, through the pedestrian movement—hordes of dancers evolution of role after role, the perfect closure walk across the stage in all directions—with to this remarkable ballerina’s struggles and four dancers attempting to make contact and triumphs during the course of her life. As discover meaning, while the closing section the pink girl, Jenny could be sweet and turns Glass’s percussive music into a modern playful or free and tempestuous. ritual. Her pas de deux with Jared Angle Three rarely seen works round out the brought me to tears. “Dancing this pas season, one from NYCB ballet master in chief Peter Martins, de deux will be an everlasting joy to me. I was privileged whose 2005 Todo Buenos Aires, to Astor Piazzolla, whisks to dance it with Jared Angle, my friend and one of the best us to Argentina for some hot tango on pointe (July 10, partners in the company, and I was able to truly trust him 12m). Angelin Prelocaj’s 1997 La Stravaganza (July 10, 11) and relax into the peacefulness of the pas de deux without brings the baroque into collision with today, using music worrying that anything would go wrong….it was as if we by Vivaldi and several electronic composers. And Vespro were alone in another world.” In her fi nal ballet, Union (July 10), Mauro Bigonzetti’s 2002 evening piece to Bruno Jack, Jenny’s delicious sense of humor as the Pearly Queen Moretti’s music, explores desire and suffering in a series was able to shine through. But the joke was on her when of pas de deux, with a libretto drawn from the writings of the playbill erroneously referred to her role as the Pearly Michelangelo. King opposite Amar Ramasar’s Pearly Queen! It was evident Though once again a small package, many wonderful by her radiant smile, exuberant high kicks and occasional things come in NYCB’s too-brief season. It will go by in a come-hither fl irting that no one enjoyed the occasion more fl ash, so it is not to be missed. than the Dancing Queen herself. Jay Rogoff Best wishes to Jon and Jenny in their new careers and personal transitions. Jon will still be within the New York The Humble Prince, The Dancing Queen and City Ballet “family” as Ballet Master and teacher at the The Pearly King Bid Farewell School of American Ballet. In August, he will marry NYCB It was fi tting that Jonathan Stafford chose Memorial soloist Brittany Pollack. Jenny will be busy in Los Angeles Weekend for his retirement performance because it was as the Dean of the new Colburn Dance Academy (husband truly an event to remember. Dancing in the Emeralds and James will be the Associate Dean), and mom to Grace and Diamonds sections of Jewels, Jon was able to demonstrate Luke. From coast to coast, the future of ballet is in good his superb partnering, a skill he says “I always loved and hands. spent my whole career trying to master.” The Emeralds Mary Anne Fantauzzi section became extra special with Jon’s sister Abi and friend Ashley Bouder dancing the leading female roles. Emeralds Music was one of Jon’s fi rst principal roles as a young company This year at SPAC, an astonishing number of works member.