Category: Dance

Roman Baca’s NUTCRACKER Rehearsal

Saturday October 23, 2010 – Kokyat and I went to watch choreographer Roman Baca working on his upcoming new production of THE NUTCRACKER for Ballet Theatre Company’s annual performances at St. Joseph’s College in West Hartford, Connecticut. A USMC veteran of the Iraq war, Roman presents the ballet as A Soldier’s Nutcracker. Above, Paige Grimard leading the Waltz of the Flowers.

Taylor Gordon would normally be dancing in this NUTCRACKER but following surgery (from which she’s well on her way to recovery) she is serving as ballet mistress for the production. Most of the divertissement pieces are double-cast giving the dancers expanded opportunities.

How many dozens of times have choreographers tackled the NUTCRACKER since Balanchine put it on the map? I really like what Roman is doing with it: very classical in feel but steering clear of the ideas we’ve seen in other settings. For example, his Harlequin (Michael Wright, above)…

…and Columbine (Hope Kroog) do not dance together: they each have a solo in turn.

Roman’s Arabian is probably my favorite from among the set pieces I’ve seen so far for this production: Roman creates a very sensuous and demanding pas de deux. Above: Kimberly Gianelli and Kendahl Ferguson.

Arabian (and many other roles in the production) are double-cast. Above: Michael Wright, Jessica Freitas.

Spanish is a trio: a man and two women. Above: Adrienne Cousineau, Michael Wright and Crystal Danzer ready to start. Marzipan is another trio, all girls in this case. And there are two alternating Dewdrops for the Waltz of the Flowers...

…Mayo Kurokawa…

…and Paige Grimard.

Thru being over-played 24/7 from Thanksgiving til New Year, the music of the NUTCRACKER makes some people nauseous. Me? I love it still and most especially the Waltz of the Flowers – melodies that tug at the heartstrings try as we may to withstand their charms.

The pure dance numbers are being rehearsed here in NYC and the party scene and all the story work are being done up in Connecticut meaning that Roman is trekking back and forth.

Here are a few more of Kokyat’s images from today’s rehearsal:

Jessica Freitas

Michael Wright, Crystal Danzer

Kimberly Gianelli, Kendahl Ferguson

Maddie James

Jessica Freitas, Michael Wright

Adrienne Cousineau

Paige Grimard

Mayo Kurokawa

All photos by Kokyat.

October 27, 2010
Cedar Lake @ The Joyce/Programme A

Tuesday October 26, 2010 – This first of two programmes by Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet at The Joyce provided a tremendously satisfying evening of dance:

Week 1 (October 26 – 31)
“Sunday, Again” by Jo Strømgren
“UNIT IN REACTION” by Jacopo Godani (NY PREMIERE)
“Hubbub” by Alexander Ekman (NY PREMIERE)

Top photo: Jon Bond & Manuel Vignoulle in rehearsal for HUBBUB. View the Company roster here.

SUNDAY, AGAIN (Julieta Cervantes photo, above) is one of the pieces from Cedar Lake‘s repertoire that I most enjoy and admire and I’m very glad for the opportunity to see it again (twice…it’s on both Joyce programmes). This work by Jo Stromgren is set to music of J S Bach and features the entire Company dressed in tennis whites. The theme of the work is: what to do on yet another Sunday spent with the domestic partner.

Jason Kittelberger wants to go out and play badminton and his lover Acacia Schachte wants to stay in. This leads to the work’s tempestuous opening duet by these two magnificent dancers (above) in which the most edgy, risky aspects of dance partnering are displayed. The play of tension between the two dancers and the intensity of their individual personalities make this a thrilling start to the evening.

From there the work evolves into an ensemble piece with the underlying idea of getting a badminton game going. This leads to shifting dynamics between men and women and to witty moments as when Harumi Tereyama draws a shuttlecock out of her mouth and teases Jubal Battisti with it. Later, Gwynenn Taylor-Young pats down Ana-Maria Lucaciu til she finds another shuttlecock. Between these and other duets, the dancers stride across the stage with racquets and nets at the ready. Finally the game begins: men vs women. But all too soon the afternoon’s over and the drapes are drawn.

UNIT IN REACTION by Jacopo Godani is a New York premiere. Six of Cedar Lake’s ultra-powerful and fascinating dancers form the first of two alternating casts who will perform this work during the first week of the current season: Jon Bond, Jason Kittelberger, Oscar Ramos, Ana-Maria Lucaciu, Acacia Schachte and Ebony Williams. In a darkish setting, these dancers move with restless energy in a series of solos and duets which stretch the limits of physical movement. Acacia Schachte and Oscar Ramos seize their moments vibrantly and a duet for Ana-Maria and Ebony is especially potent. Jon Bond, one of the most thrillingly agile and sexy dancers ever to take the stage, is mind-boggling in his solo. Throughout this work with its pounding, fragmented percussion/industrial score, Jason Kittelberger is an ominous, forceful figure. The six dancers won screams and whoops from the packed house as each stepped forward for a bow at the end.

The New York premiere of Alexander Ekman’s HUBUB provided a truly witty and apt finale to the evening. To the relentless clicking of that antique, obsolete apparatus – the typewriter – the dancers, stripped down to the briefest and most revealing of costumes, each have their own metal-frame podium on which they stand, sit or hide under.

In an endless, pretentious monologue the voice of dance criticism reads from the endless sheaf of typewritten pages, telling the viewer what the dance is all about, what it means and how to react to it. In fact, the narrator is saying next-to-nothing and merely stating the obvious in dressed-up language.

Central to HUBBUB is a hysterically funny duet in which the thoughts of two dancers – Harumi Tereyama and Nickemil Concepcion – are heard in voice-over as they perform a pas de deux. Harumi and Nickemil danced this piece with dead-pan expressions as the audience laughed aloud. (Above: a rehearsal photo of the pair by Jubal Battisti).

In the final movement of HUBBUB, the inner thoughts of the dancers are revealed – their mundane likes and dislikes and their secret habits. The music of Xavier Cugat had underlined the opening segments of HUBBUB but here we have one of the Chopin nocturnes, yet another imaginative stroke.

The evening ended with a genuine standing ovation.

Is twenty-six year old Alexander Ekman the world’s cutest choreographer? He has my vote.

So the evening was a great kickoff for the two-week Cedar Lake season. Allthough I have a special fondness for the Company’s home-theatre on 26th Street, the Joyce provides more seats – all occupied tonight – meaning that more people can see this troupe of dancers: some of the most potent and distinctive in Gotham. Ticket info here.

October 26, 2010
Emery LeCrone Prepares For MOVE! @ PS1

Kokyat and I watched choreographer Emery LeCrone working on two very different projects this past weekend. On Saturday we went to the studio at Barnard where she was creating a new piece for the Columbia Ballet Collaborative. And then on Sunday we found Emery again at MMAC where she was rehearsing a fairly large contingent of dancers for a Halloween weekend production which is part of MoMA PS1‘s series MOVE!

MOVE! is a series of performance/installations at the Queens MoMA venue which bring together the realms of the arts and fashion. The current MOVE! project will take place at the museum on October 30th and 31st. Emery’s collaborators will be artist Tauba Auerbach and designers Flora Gill and Alexa Adams of Ohne Titel.

Emery’s piece for PS1 will be performed in a small space, so she blocked off part of the studio so that the dancers would have an idea of what to expect. Click on the above image to see Kat Carter, Erin Arbuckle, Caitlin Dieck, Stephanie Eagle, Ashley Matthews, Jen Barrer-Gall, Kelsey Coventry, Nicole Cerutti, Emery LeCrone, Sakiko Yamagata and Rebecca Azenberg. (Erin, Jen and Nicole were in the original cast of Emery’s FIVE SONGS FOR PIANO at CBC, and Erin and Rebecca are in Emery’s current CBC project). A twelfth dancer, Maddie Deavenport, will also be in the PS1 production.

At PS1 the girls will perform Emery’s ten-minute piece 6 times each day, every hour on the hour. There won’t be any music and they will be sharing the space with their audience. Emery came into the rehearsal with a whole range of ideas and she immediately started whipping up a piece that is entertaining, amusing, mysterious and that will suit the venue really well.

Kokyat and I had one of our most purely enjoyable studio visits ever watching this work come together. It was fascinating to see how quickly Emery worked and how fast the piece developed. The dancers jumped right in; they took each of Emery’s visual motifs and expanded on them, bringing their own personalities into the mix.

Emery uses the dancers’ personal attributes as part of the look…their hair became an expressive device. Erin, Kat and Stephanie, above…

…and Caitlin, Ashley & Jen.

Kokyat circled the room and came up with these images; now it remains to see how it will look when meshed with what the artist and designers have created. We plan to go out to Queens on Halloween and hopefully be able to photograph the finished performance. Meanwhile, just watching Emery and the girls in the studio was pretty much a performance in its own right.

Stephanie, Kat, Ashley and Caitlin

Erin, Kat & Stephanie

Rebecca and Kelsey in the foreground

Jen and Stephanie in the foreground

October 25, 2010