Author: Philip Gardner

At the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC

Gina Ianni of TAKE Dance, photo by JR Cook.

When I mentioned to my friend JR that TAKE Dance would be performing SAKURA SAKURA at the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC on March 26th, I thought it would be something that she’d enjoy watching. But she decided to try her hand at dance photography (for the first time) and arranged with the Festival to shoot the performance. Here are some of her images:

Gina Ianni, Nana Tsuda Misko

Nana & Gina

Gina Ianni, Lynda Senisi

Nana Tsuda Misko, Marie Zvosec

Kristen Arnold

Jill Echo, Marie Zvosec

Nana, Marie, Lynda, Jill, Gina

SAKURA SAKURA (Cherry Blossoms) was created in 2005 by Takehiro Ueyama and is set for six women to traditional Japanese music and Mozart; it’s a perfect Festival piece for its ritualistic feeling and its clarity of expression.

TAKE Dance will premiere their newest work, SALARYMAN, at Dance Theater Workshop May 18th – 21st. Information here.

March 27, 2011
John Mark Owen’s Sonatae II

Saturday March 26, 2011 – Choreographer John-Mark Owen invited us to watch a rehearsal of his newest work, Sonatae II, set to music of Alexander Balanescu. The duet will be shown at the 92nd Street Y on Sunday March 27th at 3:00 PM. The dancers are Jennifer Goodman and Josh Christopher, above in Kokyat’s photo.

When Kokyat and I arrived at the studio, Jennifer and Josh were putting the finishing touches on the duet.

They worked in silence with John-Mark and all the movement seemed so expressive. With a performance scheduled for the following afternoon one might have expected an atmosphere of urgency or even panic in the studio but instead there was an air of calm with the dancers taking their time to perfect the small nuances of gesture and expression that John-Mark was looking for.

With the studio time running out, John-Mark played the Balanescu music and what had been an attractive series of danced passages took on a deeper and more intense feeling altogether.

The music is just so poetic, and the dancing took wing on it.

As soon as the run-thru finished the dancers quickly bundled up and packed off to the Y for further rehearsing. All photos: Kokyat.

Jennifer Goodman is currently dancing a featured role in performances of Strauss’ CAPRICCIO at the Metropolitan Opera.

On May 6th and 7th, John-Mark Owen’s Sonatae I will be performed by Jesse Marks at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center on a programme shared with the Island Moving Company of Newport, RI.

March 26, 2011
MORPHOSES 2011: The Company

Jonathan Ollivier and Gabrielle Lamb (photographed by Kokyat, above) are among the dancers who will appear with MORPHOSES in their current season which will feature the New York City premiere of Luca Veggetti’s BACCHAE in October.

Kokyat and I were invited to the final afternoon of the audition process where he photographed some of dancers who will be part of the MORPHOSES Company for the Veggetti project:

Willy Laury and Yusha-Marie Sorzano

Luca demonstrating with Gabrielle Lamb

Luca working with Jonathan Ollivier

Luca coaching Sarah Atkins

Jonathan Ollivier, Gabrielle Lamb

Willy Laury, Yusha-Marie Sorzano

On March 20th two of the other Company dancers, Frances Chiaverini and Emma Pfaeffle (above) participated in a demonstration of a special platform that will be part of the MORPHOSES staging.

The complete roster of dancers for MORPHOSES 2011 will be:

Sarah Atkins

Yusha-Marie Sorzano

Brittany Keefe

Frances Chiaverini

Gabrielle Lamb

Emma Pfaeffle

Christopher Bordenave

Brandon Cournay

Willy Laury

Morgan Lugo

Jonathan Ollivier

Kokyat and I plan to follow the various stages of the creation of BACCHAE for my blog and we are very grateful to Lourdes Lopez and Luca Veggetti for opening their studio doors to us.

March 24, 2011
Loni Landon/Gregory Dolbashian @ The Playground

Thursday March 24, 2011 – The Playground was founded by Loni Landon (above) and Gregory Dolbashian as a dance laboratory where choreographers and dancers can meet in an informal setting to explore movement ideas and share in a creative process, all at a price so reasonable that it’s almost impossible to resist. Over the past few weeks at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center some wonderful young dancers have reaped the benefits of working with choreographers like Bennyroyce Royon, Alexander Ekman and Emery LeCrone. I went once a week, always wishing that I was participating rather than observing.

It’s great to walk into a studio and see so many familiar faces; aside from Gregory and Loni, Cat Cogliandro, Christopher Adams, Giorgia Bovo, Marie Zvosec and Lynda Senisi (both of TAKE Dance) and Lauren Birnbaum were all taking the class.

Gregory started things off with a slow warm-up, commencing on the floor and then having the dancers rise to “awaken the space and fill it…”: what a nice image that evokes.

In small groups, a tactile passage got everyone on the same wave-length…

…then Loni and Gregory (above) started with phrase-making; it was a large class so it took a few run-thrus for everyone to get into it. IBroken down into smaller groups the movement began to illuminate the individual dancers.

Lauren Birnbaum and Giorgia Bovo trying out the phrase.

Gregory and Loni then split the group in two and commenced on an exercise called Adjective/Action. Half the dancers were assigned adjectives and the other half were assigned specified actions. Each dancer had time to work out a movement-sentence based on their word or activity and employing the stylistic tone of the phrase they’d just been taught.

Lauren Birnbaum working on the improvisation.

Then the dancers were called to the center of the floor in pairs – one ‘Adjective’ and one ‘Action’ per couple. They each ran their improv standing a few feet apart; then they were told to transform them into an intimate duet. The results were exciting to watch, with some real chemistry and energy flowing between the participants. Contemporary-style dancers are so good at improv and I found out from talking to some of them afterward that they really love doing it.

It’s been a great run for The Playground @ MMAC this month. I appreciate the access that Loni and Greg gave me and wish I could have gone more often. Here are a few more photos from today:

Cat and Lynda did a teriffic improv-duet. Sorry the photo is so fuzzy.

March 23, 2011
Balanchine/Martins/Robbins @ NYCB

Sunday February 27, 2011 matinee – Today’s programme at the New York City Ballet featured a Balanchine/baroque masterpiece, a visually striking Martins ballet (photo above) set to a fascinating contemporary score, and the festive Robbins/Verdi FOUR SEASONS as a finale. The Company now leave for a week of performances in Hong Kong, and will be back at Lincoln Center for their Spring season opening on May 3rd.

SQUARE DANCE: M Fairchild, Huxley

MIRAGE: Somogyi, J. Angle, Laracey, Finlay, Pereira, Huxley (solo violin: Lydia Hong)

THE FOUR SEASONS: JANUS: J. Peck; WINTER: Janzen, Pereira, Alberda, Tworzyanski; SPRING: Muller, Mearns, T. Angle; SUMMER: Anderson, Reichlen, R. Fairchild; FALL: Seth, Bouder, Veyette, Carmena

The opening SQUARE DANCE again featured Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley in the leading roles. This is ideal casting of the ballerina role; it could have been created just for Ms. Fairchild as it shows off her polished technique and lovely presence to perfection. Anthony Huxley was again very impressive both in his allegro work and in the slow, expressive solo with its deep backbends and silky port de bras. He and Megan showed a more intense connection with one another than at the earlier performance, and both separately and as a partnership they offer a highly enjoyable vision of this vivid and demanding Balanchine ballet. Excellent corps work.

Ashley Laracey (Joe Anderson photo from the NY EXPORT: OPUS JAZZ project) is a dancer who always stands out among the bevy of City Ballet’s corps ballerinas and I am always so happy to see her in a featured role. In MIRAGE she danced with Chase Finlay, the Company’s rising young cavalier; they looked great together and Ashley showed off her beautiful extension, swift pirouettes and a lyrical style that is uniquely her own. Chase was excellent here, confirming his ascendent trajectory.

Jennie Somogyi’s innate dramatic quality instills a sense of urgency into her duets with Jared Angle, always the perfect partner. It’s been great to see Jennie so often this season, and Jared shows her off superbly in this ballet. Erica Pereira’s technical clarity works wonders in a contemporary setting and Anthony Huxley followed up his beautiful SQUARE DANCE with a fine performance in the Martins, notably his airy opening solo. The four corps couples deserve special mantion, both for their fine dancing here and for their uniform excellence all season: Callie Bachman, Brittany Pollack, Kristen Segin and Mary Elizabeth Sell with Ralph Ippolito, Troy Schumacher, Andrew Scordato and Christian Tworzyanski.

At its premiere, the composer Esa-Pekka Salonen had conducted his own score for MIRAGE; tonight Andrews Sill had the complexities of this dense, colorful work well in hand and Lydia Hong played the demanding violin part – a real physical workout – with complete command.

In THE FOUR SEASONS, set by Robbins to neglected ballet music from Verdi operas, Justin Peck summoned the seasonal deities – Russell Janzen, Gwyneth Muller, Marika Anderson and Henry Seth – who in turn escorted their respective courts onto the stage. Erica Pereira made a very pretty impression as the shivering maiden in Winter, with Christian Tworzyanski and Devin Alberda as her cavaliers. Sara Mearns swirled serenly thru the many pirouettes of Spring and looked luscious while her partner Tyler Angle gave an excellent performance with some majestic grand jetes. Their four back-up boys – Giovanni Villalobos, Allen Peiffer, Austin Laurent and Ralph Ippolito – looked handsome and danced handsomely. The tall and radiant Teresa Reichlen was provocative in Summer and Robert Fairchild was ideally cast as her cavalier, a new role for him this season.

Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette tossed off the spectacular technical fireworks of Autumn with boundless supplies of energy and pirouettes, and Antonio Carmena’s sexy and ingratiating Faun followed Bouder’s lead and tucked in some Plisetskaya kicks in addition to his other virtuoso feats.

A very sizeable audience today and nice to see so many of the faithful on the Promenade at intermssion.

February 27, 2011
More Paul Taylor @ City Center

Saturday February 25, 2011 evening – DUST, set to Francis Poulenc’s Concert Champetre. opened the evening at City Center as Paul Taylor Dance Company continued their exciting season there. In the collage-photo above by Tom Caravaglia, the dancers are Laura Halzack, Jeffrey Smith, Michelle Fleet and Parisa Khobdeh.

In this work, first performed in 1977, Taylor hobbles his dancers with various physical infirmities. While the movement suggests struggle and despair, the Poulenc music with its eerily tinkling harpisichord – which the great Wanda Landowska who premiered the piece in 1929 said made her feel “insouciant and gay” – sounds in direct contrast of mood to what we are watching onstage. This is one of those cases of a choreographer going against the grain of the music and making something unique out of it.

One of the most memorable sequences in the darkly unsettling DUST is a solo danced by the majestically lovely Laura Halzack where she is surrounded by blind people moving hesitently around her. There were extraordinary performances by Annamaria Mazzini and Amy Young as well, with the ensemble completed by James Samson, Robert Kleinendorst, Michelle Fleet, Jeffrey Smith, Eran Bugge and Jamie Rae Walker.

One of Paul Taylor’s newest creations, THREE DUBIOUS MEMORIES, evolves around a romantic triangle. Anyone who has ever been involved in one of these three-sided relationships knows that each party will have his or her own take on the situation: how it started, how it is kept going and how it might end. Taylor, using a multi-faceted score by Peter Elyakim Taussig (photo above) entitled Five Enigmas, sets his new work so that we see the story told from each point of view: from the woman’s and from each of the two men. Each of the men – Sean Mahoney in blue and Robert Kleinendorst in green – see the other man as the interloper while the woman – Amy Young wearing a bright red dress – seems to think the men are actually attracted to one another and she is the unwitting third party. This third vignette brings a humorous vein to a basically serious and thoughtful work.

Amy Young (above in Tom Caravaglia’s photo) gave a wonderfully expressive and beautifully danced performance as the woman while the two men duked it out in stylized fist fights. When Sean and Robert were later depicted as happy and relaxed gay lovers, Amy gave a decisive portrayal of a woman scorned. To all of this a chorus of dancers led by James Samson made visual comments on the action. The work is complex and each of the three stories is set to music with a different feeling: pulsating rhythms for the man in blue, chant-like spitituality for the man in green, and minor-key jazzy for the woman’s narrative. I’m glad that I’ll get a chance to see this new work again next week; now that I know the premise and structure I will be able to savor the details. On first viewing the last minutes of the work, after the three tales have been told, seemed a bit long but maybe that will sort out in future encounters.

I rate CLOVEN KINGDOM (created in 1976) very high among my favorite Taylor works, not least for its fusion score. So I had no problem seeing it two nights in a row (with a third viewing set for next week). This evening the four men in the cast gave a teriffic performance: Michael Trusnovec, Robert Kleinendorst, Francisco Graciano and Michael Novak. The four women in mirrored headwear were also superb: Amy Young and Laura Halzack – in an interrupted duet that picks up where it left off – along with Aileen Roehl who, in diagonals of spirted jumps, pursues the enigmatic Eran Bugge who is clad in lime green and balancing a silvery globe on her head. Annamaria Mazzini, Michelle Fleet, Parisa Khobdeh and Jamie Rae Walker weave beautifully in and out of this mysterious ballroom where things are not always as they seem.

February 26, 2011
Paul Taylor Dance Co @ City Center

Friday February 25, 2011 – Above, Tom Caravaglia’s photo of Amy Young and Robert Kleinendorst in Paul Taylor’s CLOVEN KINGDOM, the closing work on tonight’s programme at City Cente,r danced compellingly by the beautiful people of the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Two works from 1976 bookended the newest Taylor treat, PHANTASMAGORIA.

POLARIS, tonight’s opener, is probably unique among all dance works in that the same choreography is danced twice by two sets of dancers, the second group replacing the first as the music goes forward. Staged in an open cube of white metallic piping, the two sections seem so different even though the steps are the same. Each group is led by a Taylor diva: Amy Young in Part I and Annamaria Mazzini in Part II. Though dancing the same solo, Amy and Annamaria each make their own imprint on the music. In Part I, Eran Bugge, Aileen Roehl, Sean Mahoney and Michael Apuzzo looked striking in the simple black/white costuming. In Part II, their counterparts were Michelle Fleet, Parisa Khobdeh, Michael Trusnovec – a god of the dance if ever there was one – and Jeffrey Smith. I hadn’t seen POLARIS for many years and it looked and sounded (Donald York score) really fantastic tonight.

Taylor audiences are among the best on the New York dance scene: in general they are very attentive – even reverential – and they shower the dancers (and the works) with warm applause throughout the performance.

The new PHANTASMAGORIA (Tom Caravaglia photo above) is a sort of salade of unconnected vignettes woven together wittily and superbly danced. It opens with some rustic Flemish peasants – the men in exaggerated codpieces – having a romp. They reappear throughout the work, weaving in and out of the dream of dances. Parisa Khobdeh and Sean Patrick Mahoney, in lavish East Indian garb, re-tell the Adam and Eve story; Ms. Khobdeh’s big green stuffed serpent is playfully used as a phallic symbol. Their dance is interrupted by the most gorgeous nun ever to emerge from a convent: Laura Halzack. Sister Laura reappears from time to time, to admonish or to be tempted. In a tour de force, Michelle Fleet suddenly materilaizes to perform a brilliant Irish step-dance which the audience loved.

Laura Halzack made a quick costume change to appear as one of the Isadorables along with Annamaria Mazzini and Amy Young. In their wafting white Grecian tunics and with peonies in their hair, the three women drew amused chuckles from the audience; on the other hand, I thought how lovely it would be to see these three beauties dancing some serious Duncan. But then Robert Kleinendorst stumbled in as a Bowery bum, swigging whiskey from a brown bag. In a final scene, Michael Trusnovec infected everyone with a dose of the St. Vitus virus. PHANTASMAGORIA, set to Renaissance dance tunes, may not go down in history as a Paul Taylor masterpiece, but it is certainly a charming interlude and gives the dancers opportunities to shine in diffferent styles. (In Tom Caravaglia’s photo above the Isadorables are Annamaria Mazzini, Laura Halzack and Amy Young)

CLOVEN KINGDOM has been one of my favorite Taylor works ever since I first saw it a quarter-century ago at Jacob’s Pillow:

Tonight CLOVEN KINGDOM seemed ever-fresh and alluring as the women in their flowing evening frocks and the handsomely tuxedoed Taylor men move with a mixture of ballroom-style sweep and primitive, almost animalistic grace as the work deepens beyond the mere pleasantries of watching attractive people in a social setting. (Dancer Francisco Graciano talks about doing this athletic choreography in a tux here). Mirrored headdresses cast shards of white light into the auditorium while the score mixes the Baroque elegance of Arcangelo Corelli with the vastly different soundschemes of Henry Cowell and Malloy Miller, often with an hallucinatory effect created by jagged editing. The cast of twelve provide great oppotunities for Taylor-watching; these are some of the greatest movers on the planet.

It’s always a joy to see Paul Taylor come out for a bow at the end of a performance: he doesn’t always, but tonight he did and the entire house rose in tribute to the great man.

It was great running into our young dancer-friends Michelle Puskas and Yon Burke this evening.

In Spring 2010, Kokyat had the oppportunity to photograph Taylor luminaries Laura Halzack and James Samson as they rehearsed for a guest appearance with Amy Marshall Dance Company. You can view the images here.

February 25, 2011
Millepied/Balanchine/Robbins @ NYCB

Wednesday February 23, 2011 – A really nice evening at New York City Ballet tonight with two beautiful Balanchine masterworks as the centerpiece, opening with a recent work by Benjamin Millipied and ending with a Jerome Robbins classic that still feels quite contemporary even though it’s a quarter-century old. Top photo: Sterling Hyltin & Tyler Angle in Benjamin Millepied’s PLAINSPOKEN, photographed by Paul Kolnik.

PLAINSPOKEN: Hyltin, Taylor, Reichlen, Somogyi, T. Angle, Marcovici, Ramasar, J. Peck

VALSE-FANTAISIE: T. Peck, De Luz

SQUARE DANCE: M. Fairchild, *Huxley

GLASS PIECES: Laracey, Hankes, Lowery, Whelan, Finlay, Thew, Tworzyanski, Hall

The curtain rose on the Millepied and I felt certain I was going to like it much better than I did the last time I saw it. The music is very good (especially the ‘Sterling Hyltin’ section), and the eight dancers looked great. But as the work progressed I found my interest fading, despite the high level of dancing and the individual personalities of some of the Company’s best and brightest stars. The audience applauded dutifully at the end but failed to muster a call for the dancers before the curtain. My feeling is that we won’t see PLAINSPOKEN again; as well-danced as it is, there is nothing in the ballet that really grabs the viewer either musically, emotionally or technically.

Thereafter the performance soared steadily upward with superb dancing from Tiler Peck and Joaquin de Luz in VALSE-FANTAISIE. Backed by a lovely quartet of ballerinas – Amanda Hankes, Ashley Laracey, Gretchen Smith and Lydia Wellington – Tiler gave a stellar performance where her musicality, technical wizardry, personal beauty and her elegant joy in dancing Balanchine’s steps combined in perfect measure to delight the audience. Joaquin tossed off the virtuoso passages with his accustomed brilliance. Watching Tiler and Joaquin is one of the great pleasures of ballet-going these days and they were at their finest tonight.

In SQUARE DANCE, Megan Fairchild has one of her most appealing roles. Whether wafting into balances or embroidering the stage with her fancy footwork, she gave a wonderful performance. Her partner was Anthony Huxley, debuting in his role with impressively precise technique. His quiet lyricism in the expressive slow solo kept the audience engaged, and he and Megan swept thru the allegro passages with easy charm. The audience responded enthusiastically to their dancing, calling them out three times before the curtain: a well-deserved success. The ensemble of twelve was comprised of excellent dancers from the NYCB corps and they all deserve mention: the ladies – Likolani Brown, Alina Dronova, Lauren King, Meagan Mann, Kristen Segin, Mary Elizabeth Sell – and the gentlemen: Devin Alberda, Cameron Dieck, Ralph Ippolito, Austin Laurent, Troy Schumacher and Giovanni Villalobos. They added so much to the pleasure of watching this beautiful Balanchine creation.

Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall danced the adagio of the concluding GLASS PIECES with cool intensity; the audience scarcely breathed as these two gorgeous dancers cast their spell, abetted by the mystery of the Philip Glass score. An excellent sextet of demi-solistes – Ashley Laracey with Chase Finlay, Amanda Hankes with Joshua Thew, and Savannah Lowery with Christian Tworzyanski – made a vivid impression in the first movement, and of course the finale of this ballet is a treat for corps watchers.

It was nice to see the house packed to the rafters tonight. Perhaps the sold-out SWAN LAKES this season have generated a desire among newcomers to the ballet to see more of the Company’s rep and more of this great troupe of dancers. I hope the management are planning a couple weeks of SWAN LAKE in the Autumn: strike while the iron is hot! In addition to generating good box office and buzz, there are some potential Swan Queens and Siegfrieds in the Company who I’d like to see have an opportunity.

February 23, 2011
Images from the Reichlen/T Angle SWAN LAKE

Teresa Reichlen and Tyler Angle of the New York City Ballet recently made their joint debuts in the Peter Martins production of SWAN LAKE, a sold-out performance that I wrote about here. The Company have now provided two photos by Paul Kolnik from this performance: Tyler and Tess in the Black Swan pas de deux, above…

…and Tess as Odette, above.

February 22, 2011
David Grenke’s VESPERS/Rehearsal

Sunday February 20, 2011 – Kokyat and I went out to Brooklyn where Shannon MacDowell, a young dancer we have met thru her work with Amy Marshall Dance Company and isadoraNow was rehearsing a duet by David Grenke, VESPERS, with her partner Brian Runstrom in preparation for the upcoming performances at the Cedar Lake theater by Dancers Responding to AIDS.

David Grenke, a former principal dancer with Paul Taylor Dance Company, created VESPERS in 1992. Set to the Tom Waits song ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues‘, the duet portrays a man attempting to raise his beloved from the dead.

You can hear the music here; If you aren’t familiar with the voice of Tom Waits – described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car” – it might take some getting used to. In the context of David Grenke’s dancework, the singing is strangely haunting.

As soon as Shannon and her partner Brian Runstrom began the rehearsal today I recalled seeing a film of this work up at the Pillow at the time Grenke was creating it. They were showing various dance clips on a screen in the Pillow’s visitors center and I remember some women were watching it; one said: “This is so sexist, I hate it!” and another asked: “Why is he abusing this poor woman?” I said aloud, “She’s dead. He’s not abusing her, he’s trying to wake her up!”

It was a powerful experience to re-encounter the duet today, danced to the raspy invocations of Waltzing Matilda. Shannon and Brian had been learning the duet from a filmed version and this was their first time actually being in the studio with David. The dancers have the basic moves and structure down, the choreographer was detailing their work and bringing it into focus.

The piece is intensely physical and full of body contact. “Don’t let it get sexual!” David admonished: “That’s not what it’s about.” Shannon and Brian responded keenly to all that David asked of them. Sometimes the choreographer would step in, taking the place of one of the dancers to show how he wanted something to be done. But he also let Shannon and Brian bring their own personalities into play.

Shannon MacDowell and choreographer David Grenke

Brian Runstrom, Shannon MacDowell

The light in the studio was quite evocative; Kokyat shot the duet in the available light and though we were there for less than an hour, the atmosphere of VESPERS radiated strongly as David and the dancers kept their focus on the process. Looking forward to seeing their finished work at the Cedar Lake performances.

All photos: Kokyat.

February 21, 2011