Donna Salgado’s Continuum Contemporary/Ballet appeared at Jacob’s Pillow earlier this summer as part of the festival’s Inside/Out series. Photographer Michael Darling provides these images from the Company’s performance. Click on each picture to enlarge.
Laura DiOrio
Sarah Atkins
Eric Williams
Virginia Horne & Eric Williams
Laura DiOrio & Eric Williams
Ensemble
Friday August 17, 2012 – Alison Cook Beatty (with Michele Wiles and Jason Reilly in the above photo by Paul B Goode) is choreographing a new work for Ballet Next; entitled TINTINNABULI, the ballet is set to Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa. Today I stopped in at the DANY studios to have a look at this new creation, which will have its premiere during Ballet Next‘s upcoming season at The Joyce.
The dancers were having a breather when I arrived but after a few minutes they gathered their energies (they’d already been rehearsing for 2 hours) and ran thru the new ballet’s completed first section and the nearly-finished second part.
TINTINNABULI begins with the women on a diagonal (watch a rehearsal sample here) which evolves into a solo for Michele Wiles – stylized, mystical movement but highly emotive in expression. Her solo is observed by Jason Reilly – principal dancer from Stuttgart Ballet, guesting with Ballet Next this season – a charismatic dancer and excellent partner. As their pas de deux commences, there’s a nice chemistry between Jason and Michele Wiles, even though for the longest time they don’t actually touch. But when they do, it’s luminous. Jason has a dynamic solo passage of his own.
Alison Cook Beatty, Michele Wiles and Jason Reilly in a Paul B Goode photo, above.
The quartet of soloists form chains with joined hands; they crouch is a circle. Their linked, ritualistic movements evoke images of Matisse and Balanchine as they move along the diagonal. The girls of the ensemble – Lily Balogh, Lily Di Piazza, Kristie Latham, Tiffany Mangulabnan and Erin Arbuckle – each bring a distinctive element to the work while functioning as a unit.
Michele and Jason resume their duet, really gorgeously set on the music, and they give it a strong emotional context even though it’s just a rehearsal. A brief flurry of virtuosity follows.
Alison went on from the finished passages, exploring possible phrases as the ballet moves to a conclusion. I’ll have to go back one of these days and find out how she resolves things.
Charles Askegard is a wonderful presence in the studio, supportive of the young choreographer and offering meaningful suggestions without intruding on the process. At one point, a lift was being pondered and Charles suddenly swept Alison overhead with the signature effortlessness of a prince among cavaliers.
Really nice atmosphere in the studio, and I look forward to seeing Alison’s ballet costumed and lit at The Joyce. My special thanks to Paul Goode for his evocative rehearsal images.
You can catch Ballet Next at the 92nd Street Y in the Fridays at Noon series: Friday October 19th at 12:00 noon. It’s free!
Likolani Brown and Russell Janzen rehearsing The Man I Love for tomgolddance; photo by Brian Krontz.
tomgolddance are heading to Spain to perform at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao on August 1st. Photographer Brian Krontz and I stopped by at the City Center Studio to take a look at the dances Tom’s taking across the Atlantic. When we arrived, they’d just finished running thru Tom’s Faure Fantasy which will open the programme in Bilbao. Brian found his corner from which to shoot and the White Swan pas de deux commenced.
Above: Simone Messmer in the White Swan pas de deux
Earlier this year, I was at an ABT SWAN LAKE in which Simone Messmer appeared in the Spanish dance at the court festivities. I found myself constantly drawn to her, even when she was simply standing on the sidelines, observing. I kept thinking: What a Swan Queen she would be! Today, that thought became a reality as Simone danced Odette, with New York City Ballet‘s Jared Angle as her prince.
In their practice clothes and making mini-corrections along the way, Simone and Jared (aboove) created a distinctive impression in this familiar pas de deux. Simone’s lyricism, coloured by a restless energy pulsing beneath the surface, finds a perfect compliment in Jared’s noble bearing and poetic expression: he’s ardent without being fussy or melodramatic. Such an intriguing experience to watch this partnership; now if we could just find a way to have them dance the whole ballet together.
Amanda Hankes in SHANTI.
SHANTI is Tom Gold’s colourful ensemble ballet set to an exotic-sounding John Zorn score; it will close the programme in Bilbao. Tom gives all the dancers in this piece ample chance to shine, with high-energy combinations for Devin Alberda and Russell Janzen and some sinuous moves for Amanda Hankes and Likolani Brown; Amanda also has a nice and zesty fouette combination. Abi Stafford, Simone Messmer and Jared Angle weave in and out of the ensemble in skillfully-managed partnering passages while Tom gives himself some virtuosic feats to pull off.
Tom Gold
Russell Janzen and Devin Alberda
Whenever I’m watching New York City Ballet I always find myself thinking that the dancers in the corps de ballet could step into principal roles with ease. We had a glimpse of that today as Likolani Brown and Russell Janzen (above) danced The Man I Love from Balanchine’s WHO CARES?
Likolani is a beautiful dancer, someone I love to keep an eye on in the corps and who always makes the most of her demi-soliste roles; she has a warm, Springtime quality and she’s a sophisticated mover. Russell, one of the tallest men in the NYCB family, has the partnering well in hand. Together they brought a young-love feeling to this classic Balanchine duet.
Abi Stafford and Jared Angle (above) in the Act II pas de deux from Balanchine’s MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, one of the choreographer’s most ravishing creations. Bringing to mind their intoxicating partnership in Emeralds, Abi and Jared have the clarity of technique and the gentle combination of courtliness and romance to give this duet its special perfume: there’s really nothing else quite like it in the Balanchine canon.
All photos by Brian Krontz; an additional gallery of images from this rehearsal will be found here.
The Bilbao audience are in for a treat with this programme; and tomgolddance have another exciting tour stop on their itinerary: in October, the will dance in Cuba!
More images by Brian Krontz from the July 27th, 2012 studio rehearsal of tomgolddance; read about the session here. Above: Jared Angle and Abi Stafford.
Russell Janzen
Flying thru Tom Gold’s SHANTI
Russell Janzen, Abi Stafford, Devin Alberda in SHANTI
Tom Gold, Abi Stafford
Simone Messmer and Jared Angle: White Swan
Simone and Jared
Simone and Jared
Likolani Brown and Russell Janzen: The Man I Love
Likolani and Russell
Abi Stafford and Jared Angle: Midsummer Night’s Dream
Jared and Abi
All photos by Brian Krontz.
Wednesday June 27, 2012 matinee – Alas that the performance I most wanted to see during ABT‘s week of SWAN LAKEs fell on a Wednesday matinee. I knew it would be a bad audience experience and I was right about that; actually, considering the vast number of children in the audience it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. But of course seated right behind us were a mother and her three kids who whispered and squirmed and ate and drank their way through the matinee. Eventually I gave up my excellent seat and moved to the balcony boxes so I could concentrate.
ABT‘s SWAN LAKE is overall rather dull; the ‘traditional’ parts – especially the first lakeside scene – are of course quite lovely but there’s a whole catalog of tedious bits that detract from the focus of the narrative. Nonetheless, it serves ABT‘s purpose as a producton into which each principal ballerina and danseur can be plugged for their annual go at Odette/Odile and her Prince. Today, though, the casting was fresh: soloists Isabella Boylston and Daniil Simkin (photo above) tackled these iconic roles for the first time at The Met and scored a resounding success.
Daniil, point blank, is a dancer I love. Although I don’t go to ABT all that frequently, I am always happy to find Daniil dancing on a day that I am there. And so when he was listed for his first Siegfried, I immediately put this matinee on my calendar. Having seen many 30-to-40 year old Siegfrieds over the years (not that I’m complaining: they’ve been wonderful!) it was really refreshing to witness Daniil’s youthful elegance in the role. Carrying himself with inborn dignity, Daniil brought a sense of true innocence to the ballet. Heart on sleeve, he went bravely into the uncharted territory of first love; that his passion would lead to his eventual doom never entered his mind. Throughout the performance, his boyish figure and expressive face kept us strongly focused on Siegfried’s story. Daniil’s dancing was fleet-footed, immaculate and supremely musical.
Isabella Boylston’s Odette/Odile was a lovely creation, beautifully danced. She hasn’t quite found the quality of mystery that will eventually make her Odette truly impressive, but her interpretation is already well-formed and she is quite a sparklingly powerful Odile. Boylston had the crowd with her from the start, reaping a burst of cheers for her fouettes and a huge shout of approval at her solo bow.
Jared Matthews was superb in Rothbart’s ‘hypnotic’ solo – an unnecessary passage, but Jared made it eminently worthwile. Kristi Boone and Karen Uphoff were luxuriant as the leading swans, but the idea of casting three soloists among the four cygnets didn’t come off: each ballerina seemed to be in her own world and the result was lack of coordination and a rather bumpy traversal of the space. The Act I pas de trois was finely danced by Joseph Gorak, Devon Teuscher and Christine Schevchenko.
In the Black Swan act, the national dances are lamely choreographed but I did very much like Simone Messmer in Spanish and thought – watching her watching the proceedings with her own personal mystique in play – what a fascinating Swan Queen she would be.
Simkin and Boylston taking their bows here.
Above: Eric Williams and Sarah Bek in Cherylyn Lavagnino’s Ménage. Photo by Kokyat.
Since we weren’t able to attend their performances at St Mark’s Church on these final days of June 2012, Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance very kindly invited Kokyat and me to watch/photograph their dress rehearsal. The performance space at St. Mark’s is really impressive: the high ceiling, the polished floor, the wrap-around mezzanine, the stained glass windows.
The three danceworks were beautifully lit and the overall atmosphere was tranquil, well-suited to the lyricsm of Ms. Lavagnino’s choreographic style.
The opening work, Ménage has a Degas feeling; it is set to music by Scott Killian, Jacob Lawson and Jane Chung.
Here is a series of Kokyat’s images from Ménage:
Selina Chau, Sarah Bek, Laura Mead, Claire Westby
sarah Bek, Claire Westby
Eric Williams, Justin Flores
Eric Williams
Selina Chau, Eric Williams
Laura Mead, Justin Flores
Laura Mead, Justin Flores
Sarah Bek
Eric Williams, Sarah Bek
Laura Mead, Josh Palmer
Josh Palmer and Laura Mead in Ménage.
The pas de deux entitled Deux en Peu was created to the Andante con moto from Franz Schubert’s Trio in E-flat major. In the photos below, the dancers are Selina Chau and Josh Palmer.
All photos by Kokyat. A second gallery featuring images from Cherylyn Lavagnino’s Triptych (a premiere) appears here.
Above: Kokyat’s image from Lydia Johnson’s CROSSINGS BY RIVER
Sunday June 24, 2012 matinee – Seeing a vast number of dance performances every season – to say nothing of the invitations I must turn down due to my packed schedule (and sometimes – admittedly – due to my sheer lack of interest) – I’m always glad when the annual performances by Lydia Johnson Dance come round. Lydia’s programmes are rewarding on so many levels: her musical choices are astute; her danceworks are thoughtfully crafted and pleasing both to the eye and the spirit; her dancers – whether those long associated with her style or guests invited for specific projects – are invariably beautiful, committed and moving. Lydia steers wonderfully clear of empty theatricality, and of vapid sentimentality, and of the twin dance crimes of cleverness and cuteness (which is not to say that playfulness is abjured, nor wit for that matter). Her works resonate with a direct emotional link to the music and with an expansive view of the human condition, whether they be imtimate domestic dramas, or reflections of the rites of community, or simply abstract visions of the sheer joy of the human body in motion.
In what I now consider to be her most beautiful work to date, Lydia opened her engrossing programme today with a piece for female ensemble entitled CROSSINGS BY RIVER. Set to mystical sacred music by Osvaldo Golijov, this dance – so expressively executed – gave me those deep tingles of emotional response that come but rarely these days, indicating that the choreographer has taken the music – already striking in its own right – and given it a visual aspect that seems inevitable.
Having watched this work evolve from one of its earliest rehearsals, I found the experience of seeing it staged and lit to be extremely moving both in its innate spiritual quality and in the serene and dedicated dancing of the five women: Laura DiOrio, Lisa Iannacito McBride, Jessica Sand, Kaitlin Accetta and Sarah Pon. Putting me in mind of the ritualistic works of Martha Graham, CROSSINGS BY RIVER carries on the great dance tradition of memorable works for female ensemble. It needs to be seen and savoured.
Here is a gallery of Kokyat’s images from this Golijov dancework:
Laura DiOrio, Lisa Iannicito McBride, Jessica Sand
Jessica Sand
Jessica Sand, Lisa Iannacito McBride, Kaitlin Accetta
Sarah Pon
Lisa Iannacito McBride
Kaitlin Accetta
Laura DiOrio
Jessica Sand, Laura DiOrio, Lisa Iannacito McBride
Jessica, Lisa & Laura
The costumes for CROSSINGS BY RIVER – soft, satiny skirts and lacy black bodices – were designed by Jessica Sand. The photos are by Kokyat, taken at the dress rehearsal.
More about this evening of dance here, with still more to follow.
Above: Reed Luplau of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in a guest appearance with Lydia Johnson Dance @ Peridance. Photo by Kokyat.
Haunting and unique, Lydia Johnson’s SUMMER HOUSE is set to chamber works by Philip Glass. In this dreamlike piece, a man and three women recall a period of time spent together in a small Summer cottage far from the world’s hustle and bustle. There is no set narrative, and we do not know who these people are or how they came to be in the same space at the same time. Cross-currents of desire, despair and jealousy weave thru the dance though we can never be sure whose point of view we’re experiencing at a given moment. Thus SUMMER HOUSE leaves much to the imagination of the viewer, and for me – who once spent a marvelous summer in an old Victorian house on Cape Cod – it stirs up all sorts of memories.
Reed Luplau gives a deeply poetic performance in SUMMER HOUSE. Though he interacts with each of the three women, there’s no way of telling where his heart lies; it may in fact lie elsewhere altogether. Reed uses his entire body as an expressive instrument, keeping the physicality of the movement ever-flowing and with his beautiful face illuminated by the emotional colours of the music.
The three women dancing in SUMMER HOUSE – Laura DiOrio, Lisa Iannacito McBride and Jessica Sand – are steeped in Lydia Johnson’s style. Maintaining the mystique that surrounds the piece, we do not know if the girls are sisters, longtime friends or simply strangers who have come together for a brief span of time. Though each relates to the male character individually, there’s also an undeniable bond between the three of them. Thus another layer of enigmas wraps itself around the SUMMER HOUSE. The questions remain unanswered as the lights fade at the end.
Here are some of Kokyat’s images from SUMMER HOUSE:
Jessica Sand & Lisa Iannacito McBride
Laura DiOrio & Reed Luplau
Reed Luplau
Reed Luplau, Jessica Sand
Laura DiOrio, Lisa Iannacito McBride, Jessica Sand
Reed Luplau
Reed Luplau
Reed Luplau
Laura DiOrio, Reed Luplau
Laura, Reed & Lisa
Reed Luplau in Lydia Johnson’s SUMMER HOUSE. Reed will soon be appearing in the feature film FIVE DANCES, written and directed by Alan Brown.
All photos by Kokyat.
Above: Max van der Sterre and Kerry Shea in Lydia Johnson’s FALLING OUT, photo by Kokyat. This dancework, set to Philip Glass’s 3rd Symphony, was created in 2006 and revived for Lydia’s 2012 season at Peridance. FALLING OUT centers on a romantic triangle in which the tranquility of a domestic relationship is threatened by the appearance of another woman who captures the roving eye of Max van der Sterre.
Kerry Shea (above) portrays Max’s established lady love…
…and Jessica Sand (above) is the woman who, at first perhaps unwittingly, causes the disruption by her mere presence.
In a complex pas de deux which is a continuous thread throughout the work, the central couple veer from tenderness to outright antagonism.
For a brief moment the man seems close to making a choice, yet he is continually drawn back to his longtime lover.
In the end, though Max and Kerry are still together, the situation remains unresolved.
FALLING OUT provides a sustained and demanding central role for the male dancer in which Max van der Sterre’s magnetic stage presence and the compelling security of his partnering make a vivid impression. Kerry Shea, looking striking in a cerise frock, captures both the strength and vulnerability of the woman whose peace of mind is threatened: beautifully danced, Kerry’s performance is marked by subtle shifts in facial expression that reveal the insecurities beneath the surface of a long-established relationship. Jessica Sand, in the physically demanding role of the ‘other woman’, spends quite a bit of the piece facing upstage; her upper back, shoulders and neck become expressive instruments even when we cannot see her face.
A quartet of women provide a sort of chorus for the work; at first they remain on the sidelines doing synchronized moves either prone or seated. Later they take a more active part in the drama. They seem to represent the man’s past loves – no longer essential to him, but still unforgotten.
More of Kokyat’s images from FALLING OUT:
Jessica Sand
All photography by Kokyat. Read more about this performance here, with more to follow.
Sunday February 26, 2012 matinee – Lydia Johnson Dance presented two works at Peridance this afternoon. The performance marked the first full presentation of Lydia’s new, as-yet-untitled work to music of Osvaldo Golijov as well as a revival of her 2006 piece to music of Philip Glass: FALLING OUT.
Kokyat and I have been following the creation of the Golijov work from its earliest days, visiting the studio periodically to view the work’s progress. Lydia is so generous in sharing her creative process, giving us an extraordinary insight into how ideas become danceworks.
Click on each image to enlarge:
In the Golijov, a trio of women first appear in soft golden gowns; their black-lace bodices provide a Spanish feel. Remaining in place, they perform a gestural ritual implying both spirituality and cleansing.
Quietly they move in a circular pattern…
…which is expanded by the entry of two more women.
With an unexpected juxtaposition of calm and urgency, the women continue their mysterious rites as the music takes on a soulful expression.
Images of silent despair and of consolation are evoked…
…blended with uplifting gestures of unity and hope.
The final movement of the Golijov is marked by themes of rocking as each girl in turn swoons into the arms of her sisters to be gently lulled.
In this work, choreographer Lydia Johnson seems to be telling a story yet the mystique of the five women – who they are and what their rituals mean to them – is left to the imagination of each viewer. One of the things about Lydia’s work that I most appreciate is her unerring taste in music: she always seeks out the best, whatever genre she might decide to work in. Here, the religious themes of the Golijov pieces she uses offer a wide range of interpretative images, from the earthy to the sublime. Darkly handsome in atmosphere, this dancework resonates with the bonds of sisterly unity and affection; it steers clear of sentimentality, thus striking a deeper chord.
Always a choreographer’s greatest good fortune: to have dancers who understand and communicate the imagined nuances of a given work. The lyricism and grace of the five women dancing in the Golijov maintained the spirit of the music and movement from first note to last. They are (above): Sarah Pon, Lisa Iannacito McBride, Kaitlin Accetta, Laura DiOrio, and Jessica Sand.
Details of the afternoon’s second work, set to music of Philip Glass, will appear here shortly.
All photographs by Kokyat.
Oberon's Glade 