3 posts tagged “ballerinas”
I ran out of steam on my (overlong) previous post. But I thought that some good (bad) criticism would make a nice change.
The retirement of Kyra Nichols and several other prominent ballerinas after relatively long careers this past spring certainly forced many critics into an unusually introspective mode. But the yoking together of these disparate dancers often seemed forced and irrelevant as in Alastair Macaulay's June 10th piece. Were those four ballerinas (especially in the eyes of New York audiences) really all equals?
As usual, a 1996 article by Arlene Croce, Our Dancers in the Nineties (one of her final pieces to appear in The New Yorker), still resonates, and, in touching on a related theme, doesn't leave much that is fresh to be added.
The tribute it contains to Nichols is at once stirring and sad.
To the emergence of the business company we owe the phenomenon of the disaffiliated ballerina – the dancer who seeks artistic completion by freelancing or guest-starring all over the world. Nichols is a disaffiliated star who never left her home company. One could say that it never left her, but there has been no actual rupture between her and Peter Martins. Since they’ve stopped working together, she has if anything found more freedom to maneuver and more challenge and inspiration in her roles. The splendid isolation of Kyra Nichols can even be a dramatic statement. When she enters in Vienna Waltzes, it’s on a high note of resolve: “Alone then!” Head up, erect as only Kyra Nichols can be, she walks into the darkened ballroom.
Croce's writing is so powerful; it either wins you over to her argument or it doesn't. There's no real middle ground. She easily manages to convince the reader that her own viewpoint is reflective of a "Kyra Nichols" true state of mind or attitude.
What comes after the "disaffiliated ballerina" then? It surprised me in the various ruminations on retiring ballerinas I read, that neither Macaulay nor any other critics commented on whether or not they believed that there still would be ballerinas in the future (or ones with careers that lasted over twenty-five years).
My horoscope for the day made special note of my extreme fatigue (quite true) and advised, that if I "must work" to "concentrate on routine tasks requiring very little conscious effort." I've been trying to follow that prescription and spent the first part of the morning sorting through a very disorganized batch of photographs. Some success, but I think I need a breather from even that mundane task. Can blogging "require very little conscious effort"? We'll see.
Went to the ballet yet again last night. I was expecting to see what had been widely rumored to be Miranda Weese's final appearance with the company at the State Theater, in, strangely enough, the program opener, Christopher Wheeldon's Klavier. So it was kind of puzzling when the curtain fell and Weese received no special acknowledgment for her performance--no bouquet, no curtain call, nothing. It was only later that I found out that the casting had been changed for Saturday evening and Weese is now scheduled to appear in that evening's closing piece, Evenfall (another Wheeldon work). Whatever the motivation, it's good that she will get an opportunity to dance with the company once more, and, that, presumably, now more fuss will be made over the occasion (and it was very classy of Jenifer Ringer to give up her spot that evening). I'll be curious to see if NYCB promotes this "event" at all. The cynic in me says, "yes," as it was a very empty house last night.
I left after Klavier, having enjoyed it a great deal more than I had over the weekend, which was surprising, because I was beginning to feel as if I wanted to write Wheeldon off after failing to be impressed by a re-viewing of Carousel: A Dance the previous evening. Possibly it was because I was able to hone in more on the music, instead of being focused on the stage. Undoubtedly as well a great deal of it may have had to do with my being in a thoroughly crap mood on Wednesday, but feeling more lighthearted last night (owing to some good conversation and a late jolt of espresso). But more about that and more about Weese some other time. I already had plans to go on Saturday night and I will attempt to do a proper account of that program and some sort of season wrap-up eventually.
Finally, here is a copy of the insert from Friday night's program for the New York City Ballet with the title, Balanchine and Robbins: Masters at Work (unintentionally ironic, in this context, now that I think of it).
