A beautiful gal pal has a friend who works for ABT, so she secured a couple of tickets from him for last Saturday night's performance at City Center! Score! I love seeing different casts in ballets - it's ever so fun to compare and contrast. Plus, since they were doing the new Ratmansky ballet again, I could get a better sense of some of the choreography. AND I would get to see my favorite, Julie Kent, perform in another piece! A bonus all around. 
First, however, we met at PizzArte, a Neopolitan restaurant near City Center. I'd never been to this restaurant before, but my gal pals and I love to try pizza at Neopolitan restaurants around town to see if the food actually compares to the food we had in the REAL Naples! It's a hobby, what can I say. PizzArte's website is rather homey, so I was surprised to see such a spare and modern-looking restaurant. The bar is downstairs and the restaurant is upstairs. I will say that the seats are awfully close together upstairs, which makes walking to and from your table a bit of a pain, but oh well. 
I had a delicious glass of the falanghina, which was quite nice. Then we started with an appetizer called masanielli, which is described on the menu as fried finger dough with cherry tomatoes and basil. Um, anything that calls itself 'fried dough' is ok by me. It was awfully tasty! Then I ordered the Verace pie, which is like a margherita pie, except it had bufala mozzarella. Yum. Now, I know what you're thinking: but MissTari, you don't eat before a performance! Yes, you would normally be correct, but since the ABT chum (and my new best friend) wanted to go out to dinner beforehand, I couldn't subject someone I just met to my weirdo quirks. I didn't eat all day, then I just had a few bites at dinner and took the rest home to enjoy later. Thankfully, we had no ill effects during the performance. :) 
Heading back to City Center, my new best friend from ABT gave us a backstage tour AND gave us swag! Whee! I have two new ABT t-shirts and I got to see some dancers warming up backstage! It was so exciting, I could hardly stand it. It's probably a good thing I didn't see Marcelo Gomes or someone. I may have spontaneously combusted. Our seats in the house were excellently positioned in the center orchestra! Double whee! I rarely see dance from so close! It definitely was a different perspective - you get less of a sense of the choreographic patterns, but more of a sense of the dancers themselves. Either way works for me. The ONLY bad thing about sitting in the orchestra, and it's not really a bad thing, is that I can't get my camera out and take vaguely illegal photos during curtain call. Oh well.
As the house lights went down, a disembodied voice announced that Herman Cornejo had injured himself during the matinee (big groan from the audience) and that Craig Salstein would be taking his place (a smattering of applause). I enjoyed Craig's dancing on Thursday night, so although I was disappointed to miss Herman dance in the Tharp piece, I knew we were in good hands.
First up was the Ratmansky. I enjoyed seeing it from close-up, to see even more of the whimsy put in the choreography. Veronika Part and Roberto Bolle danced the major soloists, and they were terrific. If Polina Semionova was all beautiful back and arms and neck last time, Veronika Part was all gorgeous legs legs legs on Saturday. She has amazing legs and feet. She seemed to push deeper into her knees, whereas Polina seemed to skim the surface. Both gorgeous interpretations of the choreography. Roberto Bolle, like Marcelo Gomes, is just not right, but his loveliness is more naive and youthful, whereas Marcelo is more virile and mature. Again, both quite nice. Actually, nice is an understatement. Stella Abrera and Sascha Radetsky were the other soloists and they were very good together. Much better than some of the partnering issues over the summer. I enjoyed them. If Jared Matthews doesn't have quite the oomph that Herman Cornejo has, well, who does? But Jared acquitted himself nicely in his solos. Thumbs up again for Symphony #9, and I look forward to seeing it again next summer, along with the two other Shostakovich pieces Ratmansky is cooking up.
The second piece was The Moor's Pavane, choreographed by Jose Limon with music by Henry Purcell. I love me some Purcell. Seriously. I've never seen this piece before, but several friends of mine have mentioned that they enjoy it, so I figured I would too. And I did! It's a variation of the Othello story, with Marcelo Gomes as the Moor, Julie Kent as his wife, Cory Stearns as his friend, and Veronika Part as the friend's wife. This is a powerful piece, filled with passion, rage, love, hate, all done in a civilized ritualized dance. The juxtaposition is amazing. Marcelo Gomes, as per usual, was fantastic as the Moor - all smoldering torment and emotion. And he looked fantastic in those regal robes. I'm sure I'm biased, but I also loved my Julie. She was gorgeously delicate and so beautiful. I felt her love and her pleading and confusion. Cory Stearns and Veronika Part were also terrific, very lusty and devious. Each dancer was crystal clear in their emotional life - bravo. I hope to see this piece again soon.
The last piece of the evening was In the Upper Room, choreographed by Twyla Tharp with music by Philip Glass. Good golly, this piece is a ballbuster. It moves at a thousand miles per hour, with that percussive Glass music pounding in your brain (in a good way!) - I don't even know how these dancers can finish the final variation without falling down. Wow. Just. Wow. And the audience went nuts for it. The entrances and exits through the steam were spectacular and so was the energy and verve of the entire cast. I especially enjoyed Simone Messmer and I adored the two gals who were always together, I think they were Skylar Brandt and Nicole Graniero. But, really, everyone was topnotch and it was an exhilarating way to end the evening. Oh, ABT, how I will miss you until I see Nutcracker in December...
Sunday, I went with another handsome dear one to see the NY Virtuoso Singers at Merkin Concert Hall. He has a friend in the company and she generously offered us comps. There was a bit of a contretemps to get into the building, since the union is picking Merkin Hall (like the photo of the rat?!), then the box office didn't have a record of our tickets, but, luckily, the lovely house manager intervened and we got excellent seats to the concert. This was part one of the Virtuoso Singers' 25th Anniversary Concert, and they performed twelve world premiere pieces, commissioned especially for their anniversary. The other thirteen pieces will be performed next March. I know next to nothing about contemporary choral music, but I always love beautiful music and beautiful singing. As always, the story pieces spoke to me more than the abstract ones. I am such a creature of habit. 
Of the twelve pieces, I think I loved two, really enjoyed six of them, appreciated a couple, and disliked a couple. That's probably a pretty good ratio. Next time, though, I will be sure to NOT to read the composers' notes about their compositions in the program beforehand - one gentleman just ticked me off in his bio, so then I was predisposed to NOT enjoy his piece. I need to work on my whole grudge thing. But the piece that opened the second act and featured a beautiful youth choir, brought tears to my eyes. Can't put a price on that, so I'll live with my grudge to get to the tears. :)
After the concert, my handsome dear one and I went to dinner at Emerald Inn, a cute little pub over on Columbus Avenue. It was great to have some alone time to chat with my handsome dear one. I ordered the fish and chips, which were yum yummy. They had some other tasty-sounding food on their menu, so I'd like to go back. And after dinner, we stopped at a new (to us) place called Bomboloni serving gelato and doughnuts! We had delicious gelato (I can highly recommend the chocolate and the coconut) and will have to go back for doughnuts. Hooray for gelato and doughnuts!!
What a wonderful weekend. Even though I was tired before I left my apartment each afternoon (boy, am I tired of feeling tired), spending time with my dear ones and reveling in the beauty and art NYC provides me, made me again so happy and grateful to live in this city. Viva New York!!! :)
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