Category: Uncategorized

Jaume Plensa’s ECHO is currently on display at Madison Square Park. The giant sculpture strikes me as a contemporary take on the ancient stoneworks on Easter Island. Read about the artist here.

Saturday May 28, 2011 – After watching Roman Baca’s HOMECOMING aboard the USS Intrepid, Kokyat and I went over to the DANY Studios where dancers from 360° Dance Company were in rehearsal for their upcoming performances at Dance Theater Workshop. The Company will present five works including a New York premiere entitled What was Still Is choreographed by Martin Lofsnes. Choreographers from Mexico, Norway and Italy will be represented. The performances are June 2nd – 4th. Information here.

New York is a city filled with beautiful dancers and today we had the pleasure of meeting two of them, Martin Lofsnes and Danelle Morgan, for the first time. Martin Lofnes has danced with the Martha Graham Company from 1993 to 2006 dancing principal roles in the Graham classics; he has also worked with Pearl Lang, Matthew Bourne and Maurice Bejart, and he serves on the faculty of The Ailey School.

Martin spoke to me briefly about choreographer Jane Dudley and then launched immediately into a solo created by Ms. Dudley in 1934 entitled Time is Money. Set to a spoken text, the solo looks as fresh and meaningful as if it were just choreographed this morning. Martin’s spacious and fluid style seizes the imagination at once.

Martin Lofsnes rehearsing Jane Dudley’s Time Is Money.

In the duet Que Color Tiene El Amor (What Is The Colour of Love?), choreographed by Ricardo Flores, the strikingly attractive Danelle Morgan was a splendid match for Martin in terms of vivid lyricism and dramatic nuance. I’ve seen an awful lot of wonderful dancers at close range in their studios these past couple of years but Martin and Danelle really had something to say to me today. Their dancing continually gave me those little rushes of emotion that make my quest of pursuing the city’s best movers and shapers so rewarding.

The programme for 360° Dance Company’s performances at Dance Theater Workshop further includes a second work by Jane Dudley: Cante Flamenco, and Alessandra Prosperi’s Satsang. The new Lofsnes work, What Was Still Is, is set for six dancers to a score compiled from Middle Eastern, Mexican, Spanish and American works.

Rehearsal photos by Kokyat.

Monday April 25, 2011 – I went to The Met box office the day after tickets for the 2010-2011 season went on sale and tried to get seats for the new productions of RHEINGOLD and WALKURE. The man at the ticket window informed me that all the RHEINGOLDs were already sold-out; I was lucky to get tickets for a WALKURE, and by the time I got back home and went on line The Met website showed all the WALKUREs had sold out also. Fortunately my friend Lisette was able to get me a ticket for the RHEINGOLD dress rehearsal (in which she was singing Woglinde); actually I was really lucky because right after she’d picked up her pair of seats for the dress The Met decided to close the rehearsal because the production was experiencing technical difficulties. So only a very limited number of people were in the House. 

The chance to see a new production of the RING Cycle here in New York City comes but rarely and ticket demand was high; despite not liking the RHEINGOLD much and wishing some of the roles in WALKURE could be re-cast, I was really excited about seeing this second RING installment: WALKURE is one of my top-five operatic scores and it’s the Wagner opera I’ve seen most often.

Reports from the premiere of WALKURE indicated that the stage machine was functioning far more smoothly than it had for the Autumn RHEINGOLDs. Musically, the news that James Levine was able to conduct after health concerns forced him to renounce several recent engagements was a major plus. A mid-opera cast change – Margaret Jane Wray stepping in for debuting Eva-Maria Westbroek as Sieglinde after Act I – and a slip-and-fall from the Brunnhilde (Deborah Voigt) were among the first night news items.   

Metropolitan Opera House
April 25, 2011
New production

DIE WALKÜRE
Wagner

Brünnhilde..............Deborah Voigt
Siegmund................Jonas Kaufmann
Sieglinde...............Eva-Maria Westbroek
Wotan...................Bryn Terfel
Fricka..................Stephanie Blythe
Hunding.................Hans-Peter König
Gerhilde................Kelly Cae Hogan
Grimgerde...............Mary Ann McCormick
Helmwige................Molly Fillmore
Ortlinde................Wendy Bryn Harmer
Rossweisse..............Lindsay Ammann
Schwertleite............Mary Phillips
Siegrune................Eve Gigliotti
Waltraute...............Marjorie Elinor Dix

Conductor...............James Levine

I must say right off I was glad that James Levine was on the podium tonight, especially in view of the likely alternative. Maestro Levine has been dealing with major health issues in recent weeks, forcing him to miss some Met performances and to give up his position at the Boston Symphony. He was back at The Met for a tremendous WOZZECK earlier this month and he and his orchestra seemed in fine fettle tonight. The great score was laid out with grandeur, passion and tenderness and the individual players shone whenever solo moments cropped up. Levine unleashed voluminous waves of sound at times and let the singers fend for themselves; elsewhere, as in the opening minutes of the Todesverkundigung, the maestro had everything under solemn, finger-tip control.

Now that we’re half-way thru this RING I must say, the enterprise seems a colossal waste of money. The reported outlay of $20 million for the production plus the small-change invoice of another half-mil to reinforce the stage floor to bear the weight of The Machine seems the height of theatrical vanity. The RING is basically a series of dialogues; there’s very little ‘action’ really. As a setting, you basically need to create something that is pleasing to the eye without intruding on the drama and hopefully come up with a bit of excitement in those well-spaced-out moments when a visual coup is desired.

Flywires, mechanicals and the occasional stagehand are visible from time to time in the Lepage setting, preventing an illusion of magic. The planks rise and fall and fan out to modestly interesting effect, but placing the action on a bare Wieland Wagner disc would have been equally convincing and cost a hell of a lot less.

The basic setting of grey planks is both innocuous and dull. Absolutely nothing happens on the back panel in terms of lighting, film or other effects: it’s deep blue throughout most of Act I of WALKURE (with snowflakes falling) until the moment when Siegmund annouces the arrival of Springtime when it turns…green! How thrilling! I could have provided that idea for a coup de theatre for 99 cents.  

The singers are left to their own devices (M. Lepage ‘doesn’t do character work’ reportedly) and so we have Siegmund collapsing on the dinner table when he first barges in, and Sieglinde producing various dishes and utensils from her kitchen cabinets conveniently installed under the lower of the two panels. When she fixes the sleeping-potion for her husband, she decides an extra dose of herbs will do the trick. (Why didn’t she simply poison him? That would have spared her and Siegmund a world of troubles.)  The pulling of Nothung from the tree is a non-event though one can imagine Sieglinde thinking “My, what a big weapon you have!” as she fondles her brother’s blade. 

Act II has lava flowing just under the surface of the rocky terrain as Wotan greets Brunnhilde. Fricka appears in a ram-drawn sedan chair and seems tethered to it. During Wotan’s monolog, a plastic ‘eye’ appears on which are projected dim shadows that have no relationship to anything. Brunnhilde is intrigued by this but it disappears as inexplicably as it appeared. It looks really cheap, by the way.

The appearance of Brunnhilde to summon Siegmund to Valhalla should seem like a dream, with the Valkyrie hovering in the mist above the ill-fated lovers. Instead Brunnhilde simply walks on from stage right and gives out her unhappy tidings. The fight scene is badly botched: Brunnhilde and Wotan appear too ‘humanly’ on the scene, and Hunding’s spear-thrust is so lame and contrived that I laughed aloud. Hunding’s death-fall is replaced by his swoon into the arms of his henchmen (who have watched the fight with their decorative lanterns: a not unpleasing effect). The sudden fall of a black curtain negates Wotan’s rage. 

The Ride of the Valkyries has been staged elsewhere on flight-wires, on a carousel, as a bungee-cord and trampoline fest, or with Earth-bound warrior maidens dragging the naked bodies of fallen warriors hither and yon around the set. Mssr. Lepage places each of the eight sisters on a separate plank of The Machine and they ride ’em like bucking broncos. This ludicrous idea trivialized the scene and was simply one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen on any stage. Luckily the girls sang lustily. Then they slid down to the surface where they picked among the bones and skulls of a few dead men strewn on the abandoned battlefield.

As Brunnhilde told Sieglinde to escape into the forest with her unborn child, I signaled to Dmitry that it was time for us to escape also. I suppose it would have been amusing to see Brunnhilde roasting upside- down during the Magic Fire Music, but I’d had enough.

Of the singers, Bryn Terfel’s Wotan took top honors. After years of having a basso-oriented Wotan (James Morris) it was a pleasing change to have a higher-lying sound in this music (no disrespect to Morris, he was superb in the role in his prime years). Bryn was in fine voice and made the monolog an absorbing stretch of singing, with beautfully modulated phrasing and a dynamic range from whsper to thunderbolt. He did what he could physically on the silly set. I would love to have heard him sing the final scene but I didn’t think I could endure any more of Deborah Voigt’s unpleasant vocalism.

The other capital singing of the evening came from Hans-Peter Konig as Hunding; with his authentic Wagner-basso sound, Konig scored every single vocal moment to rich effect. If he looked more like a genial Santa Claus than a mean-spirited thug, that was not his fault.

Eva-Marie Westbroek was neither here nor there as Sieglinde; the voice has a vibrato – a not altogether unpleasant one – and there were many attractive phrases. But there’s no individuality of timbre and the top does not bloom and billow in a way to make the character’s music as thrilling as it should be. The soprano seemed vocally tired in Act III but since she has apparently been ill, we should give her the benefit of the doubt.

Good looks and convincing movement were plusses for Jonas Kaufmann who sang well as Siegmund (where did he get that Mithril shirt though?) but his vocalism for the most part was all of one colour. It’s a lyrical sound – though darkish – and he has enough volume to be heard at all times but the memories of Vickers, King and Domingo – and even of the younger Peter Hoffmann – in this music set a high standard to which Kaufmann seemed only a handsome but overall merely serviceable contender.

As Fricka, Stephanie Blythe, generous of voice and of derriere, tried to do more with text and shading than she had in the same role in RHEINGOLD but her mostly loud complaints and her frumpy figure made Wotan’s wanderings understandable. He must have wondered if she was worth losing an eye over, perhaps thinking Freia with her tasty apples might have been a better choice for a wife.

Deborah Voigt’s Ho-Jo-To-Ho was some of the worst singing I’ve ever heard at The Met. Terfel goosed her with his spear, perhaps to create an excuse for her screechy top notes, some of which were flatter than pancakes. Through most of the evening Voigt wore a smug little smile on her face; she’s never been much of an actress but now she just coasts along – do the job, collect paycheck, repeat. 

However, at the start of the Todesverkundigung – singing in mid-register at medium volume – Voigt reminded us of the beauty and warmth her voice once possessed and of the promise that she once held of being a top-flight Isolde and Brunnhilde, a promise dashed by her absurd genuflecting at the altar of The Black Dress. As the scene progressed, she had to start applying more volume and venturing high, and the annoying metallic shrillness reappeared.  But in those few minutes Voigt and Jonas Kaufmann made some beautiful music together, wonderfully abetted by Levine and the orchestra.

The Valkyries sang so well – notably Molly Fillmore and Wendy Bryn Harmer – that one regretted the foolish staging of their Ride all the more.

Although the performance was sold out, an increasing number of empty seats appeared with each intermission. It’s usual for a few people to drift away during Wagner nights but if the production was all it’s cracked up to be, you’d think people would be riveted to the stage. I suppose we will be stuck with this RING for the rest of my lifetime and probably beyond. How amazing that they can find this kind of money to throw away.

View a page of production photos here.

My dear friend Resurreccion Purisima Sacdalan, known to everyone as Rose, with her mother Hermingilda Purisima at the wedding of Rose’s daughter Michelle (my god-daughter) in Simsbury, CT on April 23rd.

At the multi-cultural ceremony (the groom Abrar is Muslim and Michelle’s family are Catholic), Rose shows off her henna tattoo.

Rose and her husband Lorenzo. Rose and I struck up a great friendship from the day she began working with me at the (now defunct) Covenant Insurance Company in Hartford, Connecticut. She had petitioned to bring Lorenzo here from the Philippines and the process dragged on; finally a letter from senator Chris Dodd helped seal the deal. I threw a party for Lorenzo when he arrived in the USA and every single person from my office showed up.

Would you believe I didn’t get a single photo of the bride and groom from this wedding?  But here (above) is the bride’s twin sister, Melissa, as matron-of-honor.

The ceremony was held at the chapel of the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Connecticut. After a reading from the Koran, there was a lovely ritual in which a veil was placed over the bridal couple; and later the mothers of the bride and groom each lit a candle from which the couple jointly lit a single candle symbolizing the unity of their two families.The groom’s mother, a strikingly attractive woman in a traditional Indian gown, performed a ceremonial blessing. Then the actual vows were read by a Justice of the Peace.

The ceremony began with an orchestral setting of the old Cat Stevens ‘hymn’ MORNING HAS BROKEN; later music of Pachelbel and Chopin was performed. 

We adjourned to The Farmington Club where food from both the Indian and Filipino cultures was served buffet-style…

…before the cake was cut.

Two of my former co-workers from the insurance company, Emily Friend and Chita Taylor. I worked with these young ladies for years and we had so much fun together despite all basically hating the job of handling insurance claims.

Chita and Rose with someone I don’t know in the middle.

It wasn’t until we were leaving that I finally got to embrace my god-daughter – whom I hadn’t seen for nearly twenty years – and to meet her husband Abrar. Someone snapped a ‘god-parents’ photo; I hope Rose remembers to send me a copy! 

It rained heavily during most of the day of the ceremony; that’s supposed to mean good luck for the wedded couple.

The next morning the sun started breaking thru, the temperature rose and the world seemed to blossom. This seemed like an excellent omen for a happy marriage.

Two ‘lost’ scenes from Act II of GISELLE will be reconstructed and incorporated into Pacific Northwest Ballet’s upcoming new production of the Adam classic which opens on June 3rd.

Watch a video of the Company rehearsing the rediscovered scenes here. Read about the Works and Process presentation about this production at The Guggenheim earlier this year here.

Photo: Amanda Clark by Angela Sterling.

Photographer Kristin Lodoen Linder provides a beautiful set of images from New Chamber Ballet’s recent performances at City Center Studio. Read about the April 1st showing here. Above: Victoria North and Alexandre Blacker in SCULPTURE GARDEN.

Maddie Deavenport, violinist Erik Carlson and Katie Gibson in TABLE.

Katie Gibson in a solo from TABLE.

Lauren Toole and Katie Gibson in NIGHT MUSIC.

Katie Gibson, Maddie Deavenport and Lauren Toole in NIGHT MUSIC.

Lauren Toole in SKETCHES OF A WOMAN REMEMBERING.

Alexandra Blacker in SKETCHES OF A WOMAN REMEMBERING.

Victoria North in SKETCHES OF A WOMAN REMEMBERING.

All photos by Kristin Lodoen Linder.

New Chamber Ballet‘s next performances will be June 24th and 25th, 2011 at City Center Studio when works by Miro Magloire and Emery LeCrone will be performed.

Sunday March 27, 2011 – Down at the DANY studios recently I ran into Alison Cook Beatty, a young dancer who told me that she’s working with C Eule Dance and suggested we might like to watch them rehearsing sometime. I got in touch with director/choreographer Caron Eule who told me that her company are preparing for their upcoming tenth-year anniversary performances at Peridance in June. She invited Kokyat and me to drop in at her studio this evening. 

Sometimes I think that Kokyat and I must have seen all the beautiful dancers New York City has to offer, but tonight walking in to Caron’s studio we found still more we had not previously met, aside from Alison. When we arrived they were working on passages from a new piece ALTERED FIDELITY, set to music of Amir Khosrowpour, which will be featured on their June programme at Peridance.

Meanwhile, costume designer Arturo Vera and costume assistant Megan Grogan were busily measuring and putting finishing touches on the costumes for the new work which were being tried out today. The dancers slipped into this rich-coloured apparel and continued to dance as Kokyat snapped away.

Here are some of his images:

Steven Melendez

Chie Mukai

Aaron Atkins

Gisela Quinteros

Alison Cook Beatty, Faith Kimberling

Chie Mukai and Steven Melendez

Gisela Quinteros, Steven Melendez

Gisela, Chie, Alison and Faith

Alison Cook Beatty

Chie Mukai

Women of the Company

Chie & Steven

Gisela Quinteros

The hour in the studio slipped by so quickly but hopefully we’ll get to go back for another studio visit prior to Caron’s performances at Peridance in June.

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.

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.

Kokyat’s images from the December 19, 2010 photoshoot at The Secret Theatre in Queens. Above: Bennyroyce Royon.

Paul Monaghan and Justin Lynch

Paul Monaghan and Justin Lynch

Justin Lynch

Justin Lynch & Bennyroyce Royon

Justin Lynch & Bennyroyce Royon

Bennyroyce Royon

Paul Monaghan and Christopher Ralph

Justin Lynch

All photos by Kokyat. Click on the images to enhance.