5 posts tagged “dance”

Who will be this season's winner on SYTYCD?  Although I've been watching pretty faithfully and it's been an interesting season in some respects, I find it hard to get worked up about the results.  Each of the final four has his or her strengths and weaknesses.  If I had my pick, I guess it would be Brandon, who appealed to me from the start and seems to have the most potential to do interesting things with good training and opportunities.  Who do I think will win?  Brandon may still be too gay for America, I'm afraid.  Evan is too polarizing a figure.  And since I don't see either the great technique or performance qualities that so many seem to find in her, I doubt that Kayla will be America's Favorite Dancer.  That leaves Jeanine--who is both "feisty" and bland--as the safest bet.  Fine with me, but it still should have been Janette.

I guess it's encouraging to see the kind of popularity the show has generated.  But has it stimulated an interest in dance?  Would the same audience that filled the huge auditorium in which the finals were staged ever venture into a performance of a mainstream ballet or modern dance company?  I think not.  All in all, the choreography the show presents, and which the viewers go apeshit over, still sucks.  The pretentions of Mia Michaels come closest to "serious" dance.  Her piece last night was boring and derivative (Ulysses Dove?), but it was a relief to hear Steve Reich (and I don't particularly care for that genre) as a break from the rest of the schlock music.  Why is it that the line separating cheese from "art" seems even thinner in dance than in the other arts?

Well, maybe change did happen in other ways too (or I'm just getting weak), but I found the ballet performance far more enjoyable than I was anticipating.  Mark Morris' A Garden was pleasant and, as might be expected, stronger in the group sections than the variations (if you can call them that).  But then again, the same could be said of the other pieces.  Kiyon Gaines' M-Pulse showed impressive use of the stage.  I didn't care for the commissioned score all that much (school of John Adams and all that) -- it sounded like the soundtrack for a movie I didn't want to see.  The biggest surprise was Benjamin Millepied's 3 Movements (Steve Reich music, urgh) -- the first one of his pieces that I actually liked (though I'm having a hard time remembering exactly what I liked about it).  Only the ending is a bit weak, but the music never really resolves into an ending either, so I guess that's understandable.  It perhaps was too soon to see William Forsythe's One Flat Thing, reproduced yet again, but it still held one's attention and the dancers clearly enjoy doing it.  I'm not sure why the audience doesn't seem to "get" it or is even offended by it.  For the first time I noticed the absence of Noelani Pantastico, who brought a sort of insouciance and buoyant sexual energy.  The usually excellent Kaori Nakamura seemed a little too dour and cheerless here.  Maybe it's the height situation.  I couldn't help thinking what if Linda Hunt had played Anybodys in West Side Story (did she?)

Looks as if yesterday really marked the conclusion of my holiday mode.  I can see that I will have to spend the bulk of my time over the next week sorting through the detritus of my life (both literally and figuratively), packing and tossing stuff out.

Not a cheery prospect.  Makes London seem even more distant.

As to the trip itself, I had a really good time.  Though apparently my idea of a good time consists of going to the theatre, wandering around museums, and taking long, long walks.  Unfortunately, when you go for a short time and want to check back in with some old faves, it lessens the possibilities of new discoveries.  I was a little disappointed in myself that I wound up scarcely venturing outside of the West End (and even that mainly owing to the fact that I was staying up in Hampstead).  Still, despite my being there for only five nights, I did manage to attend three plays and one dance performance.

On the whole, I was very lucky with last minute theatre tickets.  I got standing room on the morning of my arrival for the evening performance of Much Ado About Nothing at the National Theatre, which, being a long time fan of Zoë Wanamaker, was a must.  It got the whole day (and journey) off to a good start.  I didn't hold out much hope of getting into the much-hyped and sold out production of Othello at the Donmar Warehouse, but I decided to scope out the queue on my second morning with the thought of trying to get in the next day when I was due to meet up with a friend for pre-theatre drinks and supper (she had tickets to a different show).  After heading out later than I expected, I swung by the Donmar about five minutes before the box office was due to open.  The line was out the door, with about forty or so people.  It looked quite hopeless, but I figured what the hell, see what happens.  I ended up getting the last standing room ticket when the woman in front of me bizarrely rejected it (did she really think she was going to get an actual seat at that point?)!  A spontaneous change in plans.  Both productions were excellent.

My luck did not hold for my final attempts at getting day seats on my last day in London.  I don't know why, but probably because *I* had never heard of it, I assumed that getting into War Horse at the National on a Saturday should be a cinch.  When I got there (late, already about forty minutes after the box office was supposed to open), there was an enormous, slow-moving queue.  I should have just left immediately, but staying the fifteen minutes or so it took before they announced that all seats and standing room had been sold, allowed me to witness yet again the ugly side of human nature.  Some little (American, sigh) turd was trying to scalp an extra day seat he had bought to possible takers at the back of the line at the full price for that section.  At first people were reluctant (though probably because it was only a single ticket), but I could hear him whining that he had gotten there at six in the morning and deserved some sort of compensation for his efforts.  I suppose we were meant to be grateful that he wasn't really jacking up the price even more.  Pretty soon, a woman (probably also an American, or, more likely, a shifty Canadian) succumbed to the offer.  I should have dragged their sorry asses over to security.  Moral and (probably unwarranted) physical cowardice on my part.  At any rate, I was able to get a ticket at the half-price ticket booth to an interesting revival of Edward Bond's The Sea (which another friend had recommended, in spite of its three, count 'em, three, extended monologues) later in the day.

And I suppose it could be regarded as unlucky that I was able to get a very last minute ticket to the Rambert Dance Company's new choreography program at the Southbank Centre on Friday (after my day's outing to Ely).  I did want to see some dance, but there was not all that much going on.  The one Royal Ballet program that was scheduled during my stay was a matinee and featured Chroma (which I was somewhat curious to see), but two other pieces I really did not care to see at all.  I refuse to attend another performance of La La La Human Steps (more of my staunch anti-Canadian bias).  I was finally sold on the Rambert because it promised live music.  I was able to get quite a good seat, close to the stage (it may have been a returned comp because I seemed surrounded by beautiful people).  While I can't say that the pieces necessarily got progressively worse as the evening went on, the first up, Phantasy, an ensemble number by Mikaela Polley, was far and away the most enjoyable.  What I hadn't realized was that the program also included the topical Meltdown, a piece by Hubert Essakow allegedly about the Tragedy of Britney Spears.  Sadly, it was about what you might expect, complete with pretentious quote in the program from William Blake ('Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too?  Can I see another's grief and not seek for kind relief?').  Oy. 

Weirdest possible celebrity sighting. I was convinced that I saw Woody Allen at a Pret a Manger near Covent Garden where I was meeting a friend (I was very glad she distinctly spelled out which Pret she meant).  I mean it really looked like him.  But what's the odds the Woodman would be in a Pret on the Strand at 5:00 reading the londonpaper?

Another opera singer!  Shit.  At least this one has enough weird fun facts associated with it to keep me amused.  Also, it looks like someone already has made a stab at organizing some of it--which may or may not prove helpful.  Certainly it is an improvement over the last collection, which basically was just crap.  I really wanted to take the boxes outside to the dumpster, but we don't go in much for deaccessioning around here.

I'm looking forward to this evening's all Balanchine program at New York City Ballet, which features one of my true favorites, Walpurgisnacht Ballet.  This will be my first time seeing Sara (Wrong for Juliet) Mearns in the part originated by Suzanne Farrell.  This is one of the few works in which I actually saw Farrell perform while she was still in her prime (I was quite young, BTW) and though I've seen many excellent performances of it over the years, no one ever has done it quite in the same way.  Ask la Cour (busy man, these days) is making his debut in the cavalier part, which, admittedly is not a big one.  The centerpiece of the program is Liebeslieder Walzer and the evening concludes with Symphony in Three Movements, which always seems to be performed outrageously well (leaving aside Abbi Stafford's rather blah debut in the pas de deux, but tonight it's back to Whelan and Evans).  And it all ends at a civilized hour (thanks mainly, to the early curtain).

It will be nice to see some live dancing after two days worth of fuming over Dancing with the Stars on television.  I don't know fuck all about competitive ballroom dancing (and don't particularly want to).  I caught a few segments of the first two seasons, and, becoming captivated with Cheryl Burke in season 2, rooted for her and watched more episodes of season 3 (which played out as a battle between the forces of good and evil).  Season 4 is the first series I have watched more or less from the beginning.  And yes, this time around, by week 8, my boyfriend and I were even drawn into the voting, managing to buy Cheryl and Ian Ziering one week more and a trip into the semi-finals.  Even so, that performance was a low.  Regularly underscored, the team even had to resort to inserting props into their routine in order to get a higher score (as Patsy Stone said, "watch out for wigs").  Sadly, it worked, but you're better than that, Cheryl!  I missed last week's penultimate results show and avoided seeing Cheryl actually forced to exit.

I was pretty sure I didn't care about seeing the concluding week once Cheryl was eliminated, but ended up watching anyway.  It's funny.  I don't remember much about any of the dances.  I don't think I even watched that many completely through--in an attempt to avoid the endless commercials and inane filler, I was constantly switching channels while the show was on and often would end up coming back midway through a dance segment or when it was just ending.  Most of what I did see I actually found kind of boring.  So I doubt the appeal of the show lies that much in the dancing.  It's that competitive bullshit that sucks you in.

We threw our votes this week to Laila Ali (though I found her partner distasteful; of the remaining pros I liked Kym the best) mainly in an effort to stave off the inevitable victory of Apolo Anton Ohno.  And she even danced last night the best I had seen her.  But it happened anyway.  Interesting sidenote: Len Goodman (the least contemptible of the judges), declared the conquering Apolo, the "God of War."  Did he just confuse the Greek gods Ares and Apollo?  Or was the mix-up intentional--a subtle acknowledgment that Ohno's real skills were not as a dancer, but as a competitor.  Anyway, Apollo is the leader of the muses; I don't know who the fuck Apolo is.

I know and care even less about short track speed skating than I do competitive ballroom dancing, but Ohno always came across as a (cheating) little turd at the Olympics. On DWTS, obviously he moved well, and probably would make a decent solo dancer, but he was unconvincing in his partnering.  I thought Julianne Hough, his partner, was a good dancer, but the combination of the two certainly grates on one.  The pair embodies that kind of all American arrogance that makes me want to vomit. 

So I guess it was just a day in which evil was meant to (temporarily, we hope) prevail: Congress caved in, the Red Sox kicked the mildly resurgent Yankees asses yet again, and I'm sure lots of other stuff happened too.  Maybe today will restore some harmony.

I don't often give my "professional" magazine more than just a glance before shooting it into the recycling, but this month's American Libraries highlighted a review of the DVD release of last year's Ballets Russes documentary under its regular column, "Vital Viewing."  It was posted by a self-confessed "hard-core balletophobe" (your typical he-man media librarian from Berkeley) who claims to have been converted by the movie.  While I like what he had to say well enough and it's good to see a ballet flick get some notice, you would have thought that a librarian could have put in more of a plug for the role of archives and libraries in collecting, preserving, and providing access to the "bountiful archival performance footage" he enjoyed so much in the film.  It doesn't just happen by magic, dude.