ABT 2015 Fall Season, times two!

I love how, when the weather changes, it seems as if it's time for some ballet!  When it's warm around here, time for the spring season at the Met.  And when the chill stays in the air and the leaves start to fall, time to head to (the formerly known as) the State Theatre for the fall season.  Yippee!  I went to two performances last weekend, one purchased full-price and one via TDF, and had a grand time at each.  So I guess this will be a long post.  Grab a cup of coffee and have a seat...

When the schedule was announced, I knew that I wanted to see the new piece choreographed by Mark Morris (I enjoy his work and Gong from a few years ago is a particular favorite) and Le Spectre de la Rose featuring Herman Cornjeo.  I also wanted to catch Monotones, choreographed by Frederick Ashton, and The Green Table, starring Marcelo Gomes.  To fit all those in, I had to go twice, but really, when do you have to twist my arm to see two ballet programs?  Unfortunately, the ushers at (the formerly known as) the State Theatre are a little cranky, so I got no curtain call shots.  Drat.  I've used some production photos I found on the internet and will remove them if so asked.

photo credit: Rosalie O'Connor

Friday night, I sat in the third ring, just off center, and had great sightlines for the first three pieces on my 'must see' list.  The evening started with After You, Mark Morris' new ballet.  Set to music by Johann Hummel and featuring lovely costumes by Isaac Mizrahi, After You is all gorgeous lightness and airiness personified.  There are trios and duets throughout, with repetition, locked arms, quick feet and hand-holding.  It seems as if the title of the piece refers not only to someone saying 'after you' and then they follow, but also an 'after you' referencing the next person you're with.  So there is a longing and desire underneath the seemingly simple loveliness of the steps.  There are twelve dancers in the piece and all have importance throughout, though I admit to a special fondness for whenever Stella Abrera and Calvin Royal III danced together.  He dances with such joy and freedom and she is all precise elegance - together, they bring out the best in each other and also expand their excellence.  And the ending of the piece is brilliant.  But, really, the whole ballet was gorgeous and I'm already dying to see it again.

photo credit: Marty Sohl

After intermission, there were two short pieces, both classics in the ballet canon:  Le Spectre de la Rose (choreographed by Michel Fokine and first danced by Nijinsky in 1911) and Valse Fantaisie (choreographed by George Balanchine).  Both ballets get more across in short running times than many longer ballets do in twice the time.  Le Spectre de la Rose is a gorgeous piece about a young girl who dreams of the rose in her hand coming to life.  Herman Cornejo was spectacular as the Rose - the way he used his arms, to indicate the rose's perfume wafting through the air, was gorgeous, as was the lift and quickness of his leaps and turns.  He truly seemed to be floating on air.  Sarah Lane, as the young girl, was also stunning.  She has the loveliest arms, and in the portions where she's dancing in her sleep, her precision and elegance was exquisite.  Cornejo and Lane have wonderful chemistry and their pas de deux were just stunning.  And Cornejo's exit - wow!  I've been watching other versions on YouTube all weekend, but seeing it live just takes the cake.  This was just a glorious ballet.

Valse Fantaisie was also gorgeous, with such precision in the choreography.  You can immediately tell it's a Balanchine ballet.  Hee Seo and James Whiteside were the lead dancers, with four female soloists dancing alongside.  This had such quickness and airiness, using the tinkly music by Glinka to wonderful effect.  All the dancers moved beautifully and elegantly.  If I found Hee Seo a little stiff, oh well.  I enjoyed seeing this tiny little morsel of loveliness and hope to see it again.

photo credit: Rosalie O'Connor

There was a very long intermission before the final piece of the evening, The Green Table.  I'd read about the ballet as an anti-war piece, choreographed by Kurt Jooss in the aftermath of WWI, but had never seen any of it performed before.  Although I really wanted to see Marcelo Gomes dance it, I was happy that my ABT MVP/character dancer favorite, Roman Zhurbin, was on board for the performances without Gomes.  I'm actually glad I saw Zhurbin do it first (I did see Gomes do it Sunday afternoon, more on the that in a bit).  The Green Table, subtitled 'a dance of death in eight scenes', lasts about a half hour and is a powerful, scary experience.  The pieces open with a table surrounded by diplomats, wearing eerie masks, moving to a creepy tango-like piece of music, symbolizing the disinterest of the powers-that-be in the aftermath of a declaration of war, they're happy to start something they have no intention of participating in.  Suddenly, at the end of their first appearance, they lift guns out of their pockets and shoot them, a startling beginning to the war. 

After that beginning, we then see Death, powerfully and emphatically choreographed as a stomping automaton, ready to devour everything in his path.  He is in the background, foreground or at the side of every scene that follows - the solders' farewells, the battle, the survivors, the brothel and so on.  Each scene is so detailed and specific, with amazingly graphic shapes and spaces to tell the story with complete clarity.  Each dancer was a type, given stark life through the complex choreography.  I was especially taken during this first viewing of Skylar Brandt as the Young Girl and Daniil Simkin as the Profiteer, a slinky sinister thief who also uses war for his own gains.  And always haunting the stage was Zhurbin, so rigid and terrifying, almost like Death possessed.  His first scene is an athletic marvel - he keeps his arms moving up and down, along with a repetitive motion with his legs and feet, throughout an entire scene.  My limbs ached, and my heart ached, from watching.  I thought The Green Table was brilliant.



Seat neighbor-wise, I was in the third row of my section - the gentleman in front of me in the first row had an annoying habit of leaning over the railing, which obscured part of the stage for everyone behind him.  The gal in the second row, right behind him and in front of me, would go absolutely batshit every time he leaned.  I can understand her frustration, but she would just lose her mind and move around so much that no one could see anything!  Why she just didn't calmly tap the gent on his shoulder and ask him to lean back is beyond me.  That is an accepted piece of theater etiquette.  At least I think it is.  I've certainly done it before.  Though I couldn't tap on her shoulder and tell her to calm the bejeezus down...

Sunday afternoon, my TDF ticket was in row twelve of the orchestra!  It was awesome!  At first I thought it would be too close to be able to make sense of all the choreography, but I actually really enjoyed being up close for these three pieces, most especially for my second viewing of The Green Table.  I noticed so many things that I hadn't noticed before and mainly because I was so close.

First up was the Paul Taylor piece Company B.  I think I've seen this one before, though it has been a long time.  First off, has anyone ever represented pure joy through dance better than Paul Taylor?  I don't know.  I just know that his dance pieces make my heart sing.  This one had joy, with a shadow underneath - often, while a dancer was performing buoyant steps in front, there were characters in the back enacting wartime rituals, like shooting rifles, falling in pain, or while a young girl was dancing in longing for her lover at war, you could see shadowy figures in the background walking away.  There were a lot of levels in Company B and they were all tremendously danced.  I especially enjoyed Jeffrey Cirio's amplitude and expression during the "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" section, but everyone was terrific.  There seemed to be a bobble in one of the pieces, where a girl's belt got caught on the belt of the boy who caught her, but they handled it well with a couple of extra turns until they were free.  They had a cute moment during the curtain call where the boy apologized to the girl.  A little personal interaction is always appreciated.

photo credit: Andrea Mohin

Next up was the Ashton duo, Monotones I and II, with music by Erik Satie.  I didn't know these pieces at all, so I was thrilled to experience them.  I practically held my breath throughout them both, they were so exquisitely danced.  They are just pure dance pieces, no bells and whistles, only superb dancers moving slowly through space.  They were almost like artists who draw in one line without their pen ever leaving the page.  The first section had two ladies and one gent, the second had two gents and one lady, and all three of whom moved in sync in each section.  Their phrasing was detailed and the shapes they made were gorgeous.  There was a juxtaposition between steps that thrust the dancers further into the stage, and the lifts and leaps that put them in midair.  The whole thing just flowed and was so gorgeous.  I loved them.

photo credit: Marty Sohl

The last piece was my second viewing of The Green Table and, as I said earlier, I got so much more out of the piece.  I knew what to expect, so I could look at more details and shading.  The despair of the Young Girl (danced this time by Sarah Lane) as she surrenders her dreams, the inevitability of Death capturing most of the people during wartime - there was one moment when you were sure Death was going to take one person and he suddenly turned and took another.  From the orchestra, it was much darker and scarier when Death appeared out of the shadows.  I guess I could see him more easily from the balcony, so downstairs he just suddenly appeared and made his character even more scary.  Marcelo Gomes was masterful as Death, and so different from Zhurbin.  They both were amazing and in totally different ways.  I can't really describe it - it's as if Gomes chose to behave as he did and Zhurbin had no choice.  Does that even make sense?  They were both fantastic.  I'm so glad I saw it a second time.  I hope I get to see it again sometime.  Oh, and I should mention the music by F.A. Cohen was brilliantly played by two pianists at both performances, David LaMarche and Daniel Waite.

Another seat neighbor report - the gent to my right knew EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING.  I felt sorry for his date.  She apparently knew nothing about anything.  I thought about correcting his egregiously wrong statements, but I thought better of it.  The woman behind me was a camel, I think, because she kept asking her date, in her outdoor voice, for her bottle of water.  I shudder to think why she couldn't hold it herself.  And the couple to my other side were big fans of the Andrews Sisters music used during Company B.  I know this because they sang along.  Sigh.  But I wouldn't let anything dim my appreciation for the wonderful dancing.  As I always say (and quote Ed Kleban) "everything is beautiful at the ballet"!  Though I do make a sad face that I won't see more ballet until the weather turns warm again.  No Nutcracker this year, darn it.  Well, maybe I'll have to try NYCB's Nutcracker this year.  Ballet withdrawal is a very sad thing...