ABT 2013 - Sylvia

Last night was the last ballet in my subscription series - Sylvia.  I've only seen Sylvia one other time and it was quite awhile ago, so it was almost like seeing a brand new ballet.  :)  I was excited because originally Osipova was supposed to dance, but she got injured earlier this week and Xiomara Reyes took her place.  It was Xiomara's debut in the role.  I'm glad I knew about the change beforehand, I could get over my disappointment and then look forward to Xiomara's performance.  I could hear a lot of "oh no!" exclamations happening around the house before the show started, so clearly the word didn't get completely out and about beforehand.

 

(I have again borrowed some photos from the ABT Facebook page.  The one at left is by Andrea Mohin.)  Sylvia has a bit of a boring plot - Aminta loves Sylvia; she mocks love and shoots Aminta; Eros shoots her with a love arrow amd brings Aminta back to life; Orion kidnaps Sylvia; Eros rescues Sylvia; Sylvia and Aminta are reunited.  The actual plot could be resolved in probably fifteen minutes.  So not much excitement there, but there's lots of excitement in the dancing and in the music.  Especially for Sylvia - she has wonderful choreography with lots of leaps, turns and fast footwork.   And Delibes score is spectacular.  I had forgotten how much of it is already familiar to me.  The powerful horns that announce Sylvia's first entrance are so exciting.  The music is strong and propulsive, but even the slower sections move the action forward. 

 

Xiomara Reyes made an impressive debut as Sylvia, in my opinion, though the role may not be the best fit for her.  She's rather tiny and not very imposing, whereas Sylvia is a huntress and is used to ordering people around.  Xiomara is more flirtatious, rather than imposing.  But her dancing is superlative, with quick feet and impressive leaps.  Her best work was in the seduction scene, I thought.  I mean, she was great, don't get me wrong.  But the role may not be the best representation of what she can do best.

 

Orion has huge leaps and powerful agressive choreography, since he's the villain of the piece.  And Ivan Vasiliev surely exceeded expectation.  Some of his leaps were so big, there were audible gasps in the audience.  For Orion, this kind of bravua dancing is completely appropriate.  I liked Vasiliev very much.

 

Herman Cornejo was spectacular as Arminta.  Admittedly, he doesn't have much to do, but when he's on, he commands our attention.  Arminta's solos are lovely, with beautiful soft leaps and extensions.  No one leaps and extends like Cornejo.  And he was a delightful partner to Xiomara, acting as if he was almost afraid to touch her, she was so beautiful.  Their acting together was lovely, though there may have been one tiny bobble, where it seemed as if Xiomara came off pointe.  But it certainly didn't diminish the overall impression of their work together.

 

The rest of the cast was also excellent.  Daniil Simkin was terrific as Eros - very regal with beautiful lines and airiness to his dancing.  And his miming in the comic section was very funny.  Simone Messmer was gorgeous as Terpischore and Stella Abrera was so lyrical as Ceres.  But really, everyone was good, and the orchestra sounded especially inspired.  I'm so glad I saw Sylvia again and I hope it's not long before I can see it again.  I can't believe my ballet season is over!  I'm crossing my fingers that some Sleeping Beauty tickets somehow fall into my lap next week, but if they don't, this year's ABT subscription made me so happy.  Thankfully, ABT has already announced what they're doing for the fall season, so there's even more gorgeous dancing for me to look forward to...

Review - The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin

I lucked out last night and received a last-minute comp ticket to the final preview performance of The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin by Steven Levenson.  It opens tonight at Roundabout Theatre's off-Broadway house, the Laura Pels.  I knew I wanted to see the show, since I'm a huge fan of David Morse - his performance in How I Learned to Drive is one of my very favorite performances ever, and hello, he was Jack on St. Elsewhere.  Love.  I hadn't heard much scuttle on the show, so I went in with an open mind.  I have been reading some online commentary today, which I've been finding interesting...

I will say, though, that I went into the theater last night in a bit of a bad mood.  Although the day started with happy tears over the defeat of DOMA, there were some frustrated, sad tears when my Roger lost at Wimbleon.  Argh.  I may do a separate post on trying to move on from that.  And to make things worse, getting to my seat about twenty minutes before curtain meant I had to listen to the guys behind me talk about how Roger is through.  Seriously, who talks about tennis in the theater?!?!  I mean, I think about it, but what are the odds I'm going to have to be subjected to men just twisting the knife in my heart a little more?!  By the time the show started, I was worn out.  I was also tired of my seat neighbor on the right hogging my armrest.  I need to learn new armrest etiquette, or how to protect my personal armrest space, I guess.  Anyway.  I digress.  As usual.

 

I enjoyed The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, though I will admit that I wasn't quite sure how it hung together as a play.  But each scene had fascinating character development and realistic, smart dialogue.  I was completely engaged during each scene, but when I think about the play as a whole now, I'm not quite sure what I was supposed to get from it.

David Morse plays Tom Durnin, a former attorney who is returning home after five years in prison.  Christopher Denham played his son, James, with whom he stays for a bit.  Lisa Emery is Tom's ex-wife, Rich Sommer is Tom's son-in-law and Sarah Goldberg is a quirky young woman James meets in community college.  The production is well-acted across the board - David Morse does a good job of keeping the audience guessing his intentions.  I felt sorry for him, then hated him, then felt sorry for him.  It was an interesting tightrope walk.  He did terrible things, destroyed his family, then comes back and feels he should re-take his rightful place at home.  The way he goes about it, though, shows that the last five years (hey!  that would make a good title for a musical!  ha ha) in prison have given him a hardness and a way of dealing with people that probably isn't appropriate 'on the outside.'  You can see his survival instincts kick in whenever he feels threatened, and some of what he does is truly evil.  But is it justified?  Should he be forgiven?  It's a question that permeates the piece, but there's no real throughline to get a satisfactory answer.

 

A lot of the online chatter mentions that Christopher Denham plays his role in a monotone way.  Well, yes, he does, in a way, but I completely understood how this young man had been completely destroyed and demoralized by his father's imprisonment and his mother's despair.  He is trying to rebuild his life, and you see bits and pieces of it in his interactions with his new community college friend, but his father's return is bringing it all back to him.  I got the whole generational slacker/entitlement/questioning thing, but it had a deeper resonance for me that I bought.  But I guess I can see how if you're not really engaged in his journey, you wouldn't really enjoy the actor's methodology.  I guess.

 

Lisa Emery is her usual wonderful self, bringing so much seething rage to her role as the wronged ex-wife.  But you can also see her hope and attempts to move on with her life.  Both of her scenes are charged and quite good.  Rich Sommer is terrific as the ineffectual son-in-law and the scenes he plays with Morse are fantastic, especially the ones that take place in the back seat of a car.  You can feel the claustrophobia and sweat.  Sommer is trying to do the right thing, but he's also weak, so he just sort of dithers along.  Which raises Morse's temperature a little higher each scene.  It's really good work and they exhibit excellent acting chemisty.

 

Sarah Goldberg is a little too quirky for my tastes, but I did mainly enjoy her performance as the troubled young woman in James' community college class.  Though the costume designer needs to get rid of those tinkly bracelets asap.  They drove me INSANE.  And if the point was to make the character more annoying by adding the bracelets?  Didn't work in a character way, sorry.

 

So, on the whole, excellent acting, terrific writing in each scene, plus an interesting story line made The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin an enjoyable evening for me.  Even if I don't quite get how the whole play added up.  I had a vaguely terrifying moment on the way out of the theater though: there were quite a few people who were having trouble navigating the stairs out of the house, so there was a pileup trying to get out.  Fine, no hurry, we'll all take our time.  But the people behind me started pushing to get out.  I suddenly had an image of a Who concert in an Ohio town.  I had a brief moment of panic that if a fire started, I would be crushed.  Thankfully, the Laura Pels isn't that big of a theater.  The crowds opened up and I maneuvered my way out.  I don't think I unduly jostled anyone who was having difficulty with the stairs.  But maybe there needs to be a better escape plan the next time I go...

 

 

Wading Through the Smells...

I've always been rather sensitive to strong smells, but in the past few years, it's gotten more intense.  Heavy perfumes, especially, give me a headache and make me sick to my stomach.  Once, when I was at Carnegie Hall, I had to ask the house manager to move me, because the gal sitting next to me had taken a bath in Obsession or Compulsion or something.  I knew I wouldn't be able to enjoy the concert with all that strong scent lingering in my nose and in my throat.

 

New York in the summer is a particularly odorific time of year.  However, yesterday was terrifically smelly and the biggest offenders took place indoors.  First, I don't know what goes on in the ladies' restroom in my office building, but there are people who think that spraying fourteen gross tons of perfume is preferable to other bathroom odors.  Yesterday was the worst it's ever been.  I was choking and I had a taste in my mouth of that horrible perfume.  It lasted for HOURS.  I've tried putting signs up (this sign is from 2009 and gets reused periodically), but nothing seems to work.  It was so bad yesterday that the building cleaning staff had to prop the bathroom door open to air it out.  Blech. 

 

After work, I went downtown to the Vineyard Theatre.  I love the Vineyard.  I love the work they do, the theater space is great, but, oh my.  I think something has died in that building and they can't get it out.  The horrible odor in the lobby and the ladies' restroom is almost more than I can bear.  Thankfully, it doesn't seep into the theater itself.  My seat neighbors, on the other hand, perhaps jogged all the way from New Jersey before arriving in their seats, so they were a tad more odorific than they might have ordinarily been.  It was a theme, I guess.  Before I talk about the glorious event that took place at the Vineyard, I'll just mention that the R subway line could use a thorough summer cleaning.  With bleach.  That's all I'll say about that.

 

Whew.  Let's move on and talk about wonderfulness.  Last night, I went to a benefit reading of Craig Lucas' The Dying Gaul, starring the original cast.  I believe I've mentioned, many many times, how much I love Craig Lucas and his work.  I've never seen The Dying Gaul on stage, though I have seen the film.  Even done as a staged reading, this play packs a powerful punch.  And the cast was just as amazing as I'm sure they were fifteen years ago. 

 

The Dying Gaul is about a writer, Robert, who gets thrown into situations and relationships he never imagined after he sells a screenplay.  There's satire about Hollywood and the film business, and the play is hysterically funny throughout, but it turns dark and scary when the online chat room component takes over.  There's such beauty and truth in all of Craig's dialogue, as always, but there's also a terror and a rage that happens - you almost have to cover your eyes and ears.  How this man unravels and devolves into who he becomes by the end is just amazing.  You never see it coming.  At least I didn't.  The photo at right is of the statue The Dying Gaul (got it off the internet, of course).  The metaphor is beautiful and sad, at the same time. 

 

I've had a girl crush on Linda Emond forever and she was again amazing.  She's so composed and elegant, but you could see the crushing anguish underneath.  The moment she finds out something she wasn't supposed to know is breathtaking.  Cotter Smith, as the film producer, is all silky charm and conflicted desire; Robert Emmet Lumney as the therapist is (purposefully) ineffectual and well-meaning; and Tim Hopper was sensational as Robert.  Seriously, he found (again) so many layers - awkward need, rage, regret, loneliness, intelligence.  Just fantastic stuff.

 

I think this play is frigging brilliant.  It says so much - about hope and fear, love and hate, understanding and forgiveness.  And anger.  Lots and lots of anger.  Maybe that's what I responded to.  I frequently have unexpressed anger.  Not that it manifests itself in terrifying ways like the ones in this play, but still.  I have an acknowledgement and understanding that leads me into the play very deeply.  I don't know.  Maybe I just love Craig Lucas and his work too much.  But seriously, any play that has the line "You can do anything you want.  As long as you don't call it what it is.  You understand?"  automatically gets my attention...

 

ABT 2013 - Swan Lake, times two

We're winding down to the end of ballet season, darn it, and I decided I needed a little extra beauty.  Because of my recent trip to Chicago, I exchanged my regular ticket to Swan Lake for one Friday night.  I was looking forward to it, since audience favorite Herman Cornejo was dancing Siegfried, with Alina Cojocaru as Odette/Odile.  Then I saw that my uber-favorite ballerina, Julie Kent, was dancing the Saturday matinee with Mr. Perfection, Marcelo Gomes, so yes, I picked up an extra ticket for that one as well.  May I just say I ADORED my weekend immersion into Swan Lake.

Friday night, there was a cast change - Alina Cojocaru was injured, so she was replaced by a guest artist from the San Francisco Ballet, Maria Kochetkova.  I was disappointed not to have seen Alina, I loved her in Sleeping Beauty a couple of years ago.  But it's always fun to see someone new, too.  Herman Cornejo was a fantastic Siegfried - he was boyish and fun in the beginning, as if he hasn't quite accepted his responsibility as prince.  When he danced, he danced for himself and not for his subjects.  But I felt like, for the first time, I understood why he had to leave the party in the first act and head for the swans.  As life swirled around him, he finally realized he didn't want to be alone.  And his disinterest in his crossbow gift from his mother was another interesting (and different) choice.  I just thought his acting was outstanding and completely equalled his spectacular dancing.  No one jumps and spins like Cornejo.  He was an attentive partner to his Odette/Odile, as well.

 

I enjoyed Maria Kochetkova, though she didn't really stand out to me.  Her technique is perfect and she was very musical and engaging.  But she also seemed a little careful and tentative, which makes sense since she was dancing with ABT for the first time.  But it took some of the excitement out of the pas de deux.  I wasn't as excited or moved by the ballet as a whole as I wanted to be.  Oh well.  At least I had another one to look forward to.  As for the other dancers, I was very taken with Joseph Gorak again - he was a sunny and open-hearted Benno and was lovely in the pas de trois.  But one of the gals of the trio had an unfortunate habit of dancing a little too perkily.  All I kept thinking was "don't pop your head, Cassie!"  Which is never what you want to be thinking during a ballet.  :)  I enjoyed Jared Matthews as Purple Rothbart very much and thought Sarah Lane as the Spanish Princess was exquisite.  The swans were lovely and in unison and the cygnets garnered much applause.  So, all in all, it was an enjoyable evening, just not a transcendent one.

The transcendence came on Saturday afternoon.  Julie Kent and Marcelo Gomes gave me a Swan Lake I'll never forget.  (both these photos were borrowed from the internet)  I was swooning and crying throughout - the dancing and the acting and the music and the emotion was nearly overwhelming.  I was almost sobbing at the end (much to the chagrin of my seat neighbor who was clearly only there to get to third base with his young date). 

Whatever diminishment there is in Julie's technique is more than made up for with her complete and total commitment to musicality and characterization.  I have seriously never seen a ballerina so in touch with her 'swan' side before.  Her arms and back were breathtaking and I swear I saw the moment she turned back into a swan.  I'm actually getting a little teary just writing this, she was so beautiful.  And Marcelo was, of course, the perfect partner for her.  Princely, gentle yet virile, with spectacular dancing.  He is the real deal.  Their first pas de deux was so gorgeous - it had all the emotion I was looking for.  The complete and utter commitment to each step and to each other, done to its absolute fullest, yet with no disconnect from characterization.  It was glorious. 

 

And I'll admit to being a little worried beforehand about the Black Swan pas de deux, but I needn't have worried.  Julie's acting again carried the day, plus her dancing was fast and focused.  She was seductive, quicksilver and reveling in her power over Siegfried.  She even exercised power over her father, Purple Rothbart (interestingly, the night before, Maria was more under his spell, which was also an wonderful take on Odile's character).  I just loved Julie's take on Odile.  I thought James Whiteside brought a spark to Purple Rothbart, though he fizzled a bit by the end of his solo.  After he does the role a few more times, I'm sure he'll just be all over it.

 

Pain and regret, love and forgiveness - it was all there.  The last scene was just heartbreaking.  Odette is intent on killing herself to free herself, and Siegfried keeps trying to stop her, until suddenly, together, they realize what they need to do.  Their death leaps were spectacular.  I just can't say enough about how powerful their performances were - I've seen Swan Lake a number of times, but this was truly unforgettably beautiful.  I feel so lucky to have been there. 

Seat-neighbor-wise, I will never sit in the last row of the Dress Circle again.  I paid a little extra to sit a little closer, so yay, but that last row is right in front of the standing room row.  The standing room people show little to no restraint on talking during the ballet.  I guess because they're standing.  No amount of shushing was working with two of the ladies.  And one of them was wearing a sleigh bell on her wrist (as opposed to a bracelet), so that was annoying as well.  Thankfully, I was so entranced by Julie and Marcelo (and the whole cast, really), that I barely noticed the annoyances.  But I did notice them a little.  I also noticed the crying babies - one actually started shrieking right before Julie's first solo as Odette and there was chuckling in the audience.  That was unfortunate, but Julie was so amazing, even the baby quieted.  ;)

 

I can't believe my ballet season is almost over.  I only have one more ballet to go - Sylvia -and that's it.  Though, I don't know, if I win the lottery or something, I'm sure I could be coaxed into more more more...

 

One Day in Chicago - a photo essay

I recently spent a little over 24 hours in Chicago for work.  As always, I had a good time with good food.  The work went well, too!  Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip - enjoy!

I think the wine glass indicated this was my hotel room

 

even American Airlines loves Roger Federer!  :)