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SenseDance @ Peridance

Above: Erin Ginn of SenseDance

Sunday November 24th, 2013 – Henning Rubsam’s SenseDance in a programme of new and older works at Peridance. On a frigid evening I trekked across The Village to attend this performance in which several friends were involved. The performance, which played to a full house, started late which put me in a grumpy funk. As the evening progressed, the dancers slowly dispelled my cranky mood.

Much of the programme was given over to duets, well-danced, in many different styles. The first two of these were from past works: Sarabande from MERCILESS BEAUTY (2006) is a straight-up ballet pas de deux to Bach danced by the lyrically lovely Erin Ginn and and her partner, Nathan Bland; it ends with the girl borne off in a sustained overhead lift. On a more playful note, Save The Country from the 1997 Laura Nyro tribute ART OF LOVE found Jacqueline Stewart and Oisín Monaghan rolling around on the floor.

Three premieres sustained the duet motif: in the first – RUSSIAN LESSON – to a ‘spoken’ score, Juan Rodriguez and Matt Van overcome a language barrier with some athletic sparring mixed with some cozying up: it feels like they are headed for a hotel room. This piece could be sub-titled Found In Translation.

Above: Temple Kemezis, photo by Matt Murphy

Spoken word features also in BORDERS, a stylized and other-worldly duet danced by Temple Kemezis and Henning Rubsam; this displayed Mr. Rubsam’s choreography at its most impressive, and Temple, with her unique look and potent dancing, seemed wonderfully at home in this dancescape.

Above: Oisín Monaghan, photo by Kokyat

Oisín Monaghan then joined Heidi Green in a ‘young romance” duet – AN EINSAMER QUELLE – set to music of Richard Strauss. Some dancers are blessed with a unique and instantly identifiable ‘signature’ and Oisín is surely one of these. To date, no choreographer seems to have truly captured Oisín’s essence in dance – several have come very, very close – but perhaps it is exactly that elusive quality that keeps us fascinated. Here he and Ms. Green gave an attractive performance.

Henning Rubsam’s HALF-LIFE is something of a signature piece for the choreographer. RELOAD has now been added to the title, and the cast has expanded from four to seven. I felt the original quartet setting to be preferable – our focus is now drawn in too many different directions as the dancers come and go. I missed the clarity and crispness of the original. Nevertheless, the ballet was very well-danced tonight with an outstanding performance from Matt Van.

The evening’s final new work was SARAO, a jazzy pas de deux to music by Ricardo Llorca. This piece featured some of the evening’s most imaginative partnering and was finely executed by Erin Ginn & Matt Van.

Above: Lloyd Knight, photo by Nir Arieli

Making a guest appearance with SenseDance, Lloyd Knight of the Martha Graham Dance Company joined Temple Kemezis in CAVES, a 2006 duet to a Ricardo Llorca score with a Spanish guitar ambiance. The two dancers brought both their physical prowess and their strong personalities to bear on this work which seems to alternate between allure and antagonism. Ms. Kemezis executes deep pliés in second and a sort of crab-walk reminiscent of Wendy Whelan in Christopher Wheeldon’s MORPHOSES. Lloyd Knight’s authoritative partnering, keen feeling for dynamic tension, and tantalizing torso all meshed into a compellingly charismatic performance. In this suggestive’ battle of the sexes’ duet, the woman wins – doesn’t she always? Sustained applause followed this pas de deux, though the bows were saved for the end of the evening.

Excerpts from Henning Rubsam’s 2012 BRAHMS DANCES closed the evening on a romantic note. Duets for Ms. Stewart with Matt Van and Ms. Green with Nathan Bland had a nocturnal feeling, and then a large ensemble passage which evoked a waltz-filled ballroom.

November 24, 2013
New Chamber Ballet: Baecher and Magloire

Saturday November 23, 2013 – New Chamber Ballet‘s 2013-2014 season continued this evening with a program featuring a Miro Magloire premiere and a revised version of a Constantine Baecher ballet. As always at New Chamber Ballet, live music was an essential component of the performance: pianist Melody Fader and violinist Doori Na were in their element, particularly in the very demanding (commissioned) score by Michel Galante for Miro’s new ballet.

In Miro’s “A Present” which opened the evening, three women (Elizabeth Brown, Holly Curran, and Amber Neff) go to great lengths to have and to hold onto a necklace which has been sent them by an unknown admirer. A note is enclosed with the gift, but we never learn who it is from or what it says. After some under-handed pilfering and a frantic chase, the bauble is destroyed and the note torn to shreds. Doori Na played a suite of melodies from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, arranged for solo violin, while the three girls fought for possession of the mysterious gift.

Another conflict ballet comes in the form of Miro’s “Sister, My Sister” wherein dancer Amber Neff is annoyed – to the point of becoming homicidal – by her sister, soprano Charlotte Mundy. The Morton Feldman score calls for Ms. Mundy to vocalize on single, sustained notes. This gets under her sister’s skin. Melody Fader and Doori Na (unseen) played the angular Feldman score as the two women battled it out.

“Stay With Me”, the new Magloire/Galante collaboration, is perhaps Miro’s finest achievement to date. There are narrative undercurrents but no specific scenario is suggested: the ballet is essentially two duets – the first for Holly Curran and Traci Finch and the second danced by Ms. Curran with Sarah Atkins. The girls wear simple tights and halter tops. In the first duet, Holly and Traci dance an entwined mirror-image adagio; Traci at one point executes a wonderfully fluid backbend. Sarah Atkins silently observes the end of the Traci/Holly duet and then she takes Traci’s place – as the latter walks away – and continues the dance with Holly. The choreography presents a stylized language of intimacy, and the mystery of who these women are and what they mean to one another remains unsolved as the ballet ends.

Above: dancers Holly Curran and Traci Finch in a rehearsal image by Amber Neff

The Galante score for “Stay With Me” is fascinating and it challenges the two musicians in terms of both technique and stamina. The piece opens with both piano and violin playing in the highest range. Doori’s violin slithers up and down rapid chromatic scales or lingers for measure after measure on a single pinging tone, while Melody at one point produces a series of sweeping downhill glissandi covering the full keyboard; elsewhere the piano writing favors ethereal high shimmers. Kudos to these two musicians for their spell-binding performance. “Stay With Me” is a ballet I will want to see and hear again soon.

Constantine Baecher’s “Allow You To Look At Me” was originally a sort of joint-biography of Mr. Baecher and dancer Elizabeth Brown and their long-time association. In tonight’s revision, now titled “Allow You To Look At Me Again” that intensely personal element has been discarded in favor of a more generalized narrative about what it means to perform and to expose oneself to public scrutiny. Narrator Jonathan Parks-Ramage now reads the biographies of each of the three participants – Ms. Brown, Holly Curran and Mr. Baecher – rather than the former poetic story of Constantine and Elizabeth’s mutual admiration. At the piano, Melody Fader plays familiar melodies which underline the personal facets of each dancer’s self-view. The solo for Elizabeth Brown, danced to Debussy’s ever-poignant Clair de Lune, was the evocative apex of the ballet and a lovely portrait of this dictinctive dancer. The work, though now less personal, remains powerful.

November 23, 2013
Columbia Ballet Collaborative @ MMAC

Above: Audrey Crabtree-Hannigan of Columbia Ballet Collaborative; she appeared tonight in works by Dan Pahl and Donna Salgado

Friday November 22, 2013 – Columbia Ballet Collaborative danced for a packed house at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center tonight; extra rows of chairs were set out to accomodate an over-flow crowd which included many dancers and choreographers. Enthusiasm ran high for the six new works which were offered: well-contrasted pieces in a well-lit production and featuring an energetic ensemble of dancers, many of whom appeared in more than one ballet.

Claudia Schreier’s Harmonic opened the evening: yet another success for this choreographer who has an instinctive gift for movement and musicality. Her pas de quatre, to vividly danceable music by Douwe Eisenga, was well-danced by John Poppe, Rebecca Green, Sarah Silverblatt-Buser and Claire Wampler, each of whom has a solo passage woven into the fast-paced ensemble; John partners each of the girls in turn. Strong individual performances and good eye contact between the dancers held our focus, with excellent use of space and interesting patterns evolving in this seamless dancework. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing this piece again.

Dan Pahl set his new work The Sum of Its Parts to music by The Shanghai Restoration Project. The score opens like a giant machine, progressing to elements of rock, electric fiddle, and club music. Six girls filled the space with so much energy that they seemed like a dozen dancers: some really fine individual work here. Wearing metallic silver tops, the girls look like contemporary Valkyries with a suggestive sway in their movement. Two chairs are sat in, danced on and vaulted over; there’s quite a bit of floor-work and it’s very well integrated into the ballet’s overall structure.

Above: Rebecca Walden danced in ballets by Ja’ Malik and Richard Isaac

Ja’ Malik created an on-pointe ballet to Philip Glass’s exciting four-part suite ‘Company’; the ballet is entitled Brief Company. Ja’ makes excellent use of the classic ballet vocabulary in a contemporary setting and his dancers met all the demands of Ja’s choreography with both energy and artistry. Rebecca Walden opens the ballet in a beautiful solo passage; clad in pale aquamarine, she then begins to circle the stage in silence. In the darkness she comes upon the prone body of a man: guest dancer Joshua Henry. He rises as if from deep sleep and they dance a duet with complex partering motifs. Mr. Henry, tall and powerful of physique, was a good match for the impassioned Ms. Walden. Four girls form an integrated ensemble around the central couple. Mr. Henry’s expressive solo is danced in a patch of light, and then the ballet seemed poised to end in an agitated ensemble movement; but instead Ja’ interestingly clears the stage, leaving Ms. Walden to circle the space, resuming her silent, questing walk as darkness falls. Ja’s ballet elicited a whooping ovation from the crowd.

Richard Isaac has created a contemporary ‘white ballet’ with its title Night Music drawn from Mozart’s immortal ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’. The piece has a formal feeling, the dancers stepping out of a line-up to perform solos in the opening passage which is set to an Alexander Rastakov Mozart-hommage. As the lights blaze up, a spacious quartet ensues, danced to the Nachtmusik proper. After a structured walkabout the dancers re-group in a row before erupting into movement again. An especially intriguing segment finds Rebecca Walden being manipulated like a doll by her fellow dancers (Dan Pahl, Delaney Wing and Ms. Silverblatt-Buser).

Above: Rebecca Green appeared in new works by Devin Alberda and Claudia Schreier

A relentess pulsing rhythm marks the opening of Devin Alberda’s pas de trois entitled Sissy Fists, the title a play on ‘Sisyphus’ but loaded with other implications. To music by Anna Meredith, two tall boys – John Poppe and Taylor Minich, in sleek body tights – are joined by Rebecca Green, dancing on pointe. The boys seem to be bonding but Ms. Green tends to intervene. Tension and traces of levity thread thru this dancework; as the music turns ominous, the boys’ mutual partnering becomes more fervent. The choreography’s dynamics reflect the music; there’s a darkening quality that I really like. It’s a ballet I want to see again.

The evening’s largest piece, A Portrait of Growth, is an all-female ensemble work by Donna Salgado to music by the husband-and-wife duo Houses, is the programe’s finale. Exploring the development of self-identity, this dancework seems especially suited to a college-based company. The ten girls break from unison passages to individual expression; solos danced by Audrey Crabtree-Hannigan, Julia Davis-Porada and Melissa Kaufman-Gomez draw us to their distinctiveness. And there is a line-up from which each girl momentarily steps forward in a brief phrase with a personal hue. The ballet reflects a period of time when life seems fulls of promise and possibility.

November 22, 2013
Celebrating Britten @ The NY Philharmonic

Thursday November 21, 2013 – The New York Philharmonic‘s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Britten was a lovely fête which brought forth the composer’s familiar Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and the less-frequently-performed Spring Symphony.

The performance took on added drama when the scheduled tenor was forced to withdraw for health reasons literally on the eve of the concert. This caused the Philharmonic to launch a desparate search for tenors who could 1) sing this demanding music and 2) were available on such short notice. Things turned out very well indeed, with a disarmingly attractive performance of the Serenade by Michael Slattery and a thoroughly impressive rendering of the Spring Symphony by Dominic Armstrong who, as Maestro Alan Gilbert told us, had never so much as looked at the score til the morning of the performance.

The richly emotional Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings opens and closes with solo passages for horn which are played without use of the valves that stabilize pitch. The instrument is difficult enough to play as it is – I know: I played horn in high school – but Britten throws in this extra complication to render the sound with a ‘hunting horn’ ambiance. Thus the Philharmonic’s formidable principal horn, Philip Myers, appeared onstage with two horns – one for the Prologue and Epilogue, and the second ‘normal’ horn for the remaining movements of the work.

Britten sets the Serenade’s poems, which span five centuries of English verse, in the upper range of the tenor voice; this gives the music an air of rather eerie innocence, yet the singer must also show great maturity in terms of both technique and sensitivity to the texts. The vocal movements are: “Pastoral” (with text by Charles Cotton), a hymn to sunset which sounds like a lilting lullabye; “Nocturne” (to words by Alfred, Lord Tennyson), where the horn calls echo as evening falls over the land; William Blake’s “Elegy”, which addresses a dying rose and is tinged with plaintive melancholy. In the Serenade‘s most unsettling passage, to an anonymous 15th-century text, the “Dirge” is a fugue of relentless, creeping madness evoking the fires of Hell which will ‘burn thee to the bare bone…and Christ receive thy soul’ (this song haunts me for days everafter whenever I hear it). In sharp contrast, Ben Jonson’s “Hymn” is light-hearted and upbeat, bringing the singer’s task to an ‘excellently bright’ conclusion. As the voice falls silent, the offstage horn closes the Serenade on a benedictive note.

I had heard tenor Michael Slattery (above) often during his time at Juilliard, and was pleased to be present at his impromptu Philharmonic debut tonight. Slender and boyish in his elegant tux, Michael took the high tessitura in stride, with many felicitous passages of vocal color and inflection: his diction was clear and touchingly expressive. Philip Myers played with gleaming, burnished tone and exceptional power in the phrases that serve as a counter-poise to the voice. Maestro Gilbert drew evocative playing from the string ensemble, and the entire performance had a nocturnal incandescence that was truly pleasing. Michael Slattery reacted with disarming sincerity to the audience’s warm applause, being called out with Mr. Myers and the conductor for extra bows.

The Spring Symphony was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and is dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra though it was actually premiered at the Conncertgebouw in Amsterdam during July 1949 before its American premiere the following month at Tanglewood by Koussevitzky and the BSO. Britten calls for a huge orchestra, adult and children’s choruses, and three vocal soloists. The score is dazzling in its range of instrumental colours and textures, and the texts include both hymns of praise to the coming of Spring and some charming moments of levity in depicting day-to-day happenings. This work is quintessentially British: the poems invoke English pastoral imagery and the deftly ‘sudden’ ending – “And now, my friends, I cease” – is punctuated by a plump C-major chord.

Maestro Gilbert marshalled his forces for a thoroughly impressive and enjoyable performance: a special “hurrah” for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus who are called upon to both sing and whistle. The ‘save the day’ performance by tenor Dominic Armstrong revealed an attractive voice with mastery of dynamics and colours as well as of textual incisiveness that belied his unfamiliarity with the work. The slender and very pretty soprano Kate Royal has a feather-light lyric soprano and sang charmingly while the distinctive voice of Sasha Cooke – heard only two days earlier at Chamber Music Society – stood out for glowing tone and poetic resonance.

This was my first time experiencing the Spring Symphony – I’d never even heard it on a recording – and it was a very good idea of Maetro Gilbert’s to choose it as a birthday salutation for the composer, for it is not often performed.

I must register one tiny complaint – nothing to do with the music or the musicians – but I do wish that plastic water bottles could be banned from the concert stages. In the ‘old days’ small tables were set next to the soloists’ chairs with glasses of water which the singers could sip decorously between numbers. Now we have a distracting ritual of bending over, uncapping the bottle and gulping away like basketball players on the bench. The ‘old way’ of hydrating is much more elegant, and far less conspicuous.

November 21, 2013
Martha Graham’s ‘Hérodiade’

Above: Miki Orihara in Graham’s Hérodiade

Wednesday November 20, 2013 – Two of today’s foremost interpreters of the works of Martha Graham – Miki Orihara and Katherine Crockett – appeared tonight in a studio showing of the great choreographer’s 1944 work Hérodiade. As a splendid prelude, Ms. Crockett also danced Spectre-1914. It was an evening that resonated for me in so many different ways.

Martha Graham Dance Company‘s artistic director Janet Eilber welcomed an overflow crowd to this second of three presentations of this programme. The Company’s spacious studio/theater on the eleventh floor of the Westbeth complex had been hung with black drapes, and after Ms. Eilber’s brief remarks, the majestic Katherine Crockett appeared to dance Spectre-1914, the opening solo from Martha Graham’s Chronicle.

Above: Katherine Crockett, photographed by Matt Murphy

Chronicle, dating from 1936, is Graham’s powerful statement on the devastation and futility of war; it is a great masterwork for female ensemble and it opens with a magnificent solo in which the dancer manipulates a voluminous skirt lined in red fabric to evoke both the bloodshed and the flames of war.

Spectre-1914 had all but passed from memory until 1994 when it was researched and reconstructed by Terese Capucilli and Carol Fried, using film clips and still photos by Barbara Morgan. May Terpsichore bless these women for their efforts, for Spectre-1914 is as powerful a dancework as may be found, and it was danced tonight with marvelous amplitude and a deep sense of consecration by the marvelous Katherine Crockett. The audience beheld the dance in an awed state of pin-drop silence.

Above: the Isamu Noguchi set pieces for Martha Graham’s Hérodiade

After the Noguchi setting had been swiftly installed in the space, we watched a full performance of Graham’s ballet Hérodiade. Set to music by Paul Hindemith and commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for the Library of Congress, the ballet was originally called Mirror Before Me, and was first seen on October 30, 1944, at the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Writing of that performance for the New York Times (November 1, 1944), critic John Martin said: “Miss Graham has created a powerful study of a woman awaiting a ‘mysterious destiny’ of which she has no knowledge…into it she has poured a somber tension that is relentless and altogether gripping. The music is rich and dark in color and the action on the stage meets it magnificently on its own terms.”

That music, scored for chamber orchestra, was written by Paul Hindemith, a composer perhaps best-loved in the dance world for his superb Four Temperaments, choreographed by Balanchine.

When I received the announcement that Hérodiade would be performed this evening, I suppose my natural reaction as an opera-lover was that it would be a dance about the Biblical princess Herodias and her daughter Salome and their conspiracy to have the prophet John the Baptist executed. But that is not the case: there are no allusions to either the Strauss or Massenet operas, nor to the Bible, nor to Oscar Wilde who penned the famous play Salome – Salome does not figure in the Graham work at all.

Martha Graham had been interested in the poem Hérodiade by Stephane Mallarmé and in creating her ballet, the choreographer eschewed a specific narrative and instead turned to an abstraction of the character. Herodias is never named; she is simply referred to as ‘A Woman’. In Graham’s description, we see “a glimpse into the mirror of one’s being,” and she refers to this Woman as ‘doom-eager’, going forth with resolve to embrace her destiny.

The Hindemith score is in eleven short movements, and we watch with intense interest as the radiant Miki Orihara, as the Woman in a deep violet gown, and the more austere Ms. Cockett, her Attendant in simple grey, move about the space. The choreography is restless and urgent, the Woman clearly obsessed with whatever fate awaits her while the Attendant seeks to comfort or forestall her mistress. The two dancers were simply engrossing to behold: Miki often in rapid, complex combinations moving swiftly about the stage while Katherine deployed her uncanny extension with mind-boggling expressiveness.

In the end, Miki steps out of her rich gown and is revealed in virginal white; the Attendant withdraws and the Woman, taking up a black veil, contemplates her destiny. Mysterious, and all the more powerful for the unanswered questions it raises, Hérodiade is breath-taking.

November 20, 2013
The Virtuoso Clarinetist @ CMS
Above: clarinet virtuoso David Shifrin

Tuesday November 19th, 2013 – A delightful programme of music celebrating the clarinet was featured at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The Society gathered a distinctive ensemble of artists tonight, among them one of my favorite singers, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. This week I have the pleasure of experiencing Sasha’s artistry twice, for she follows up tonight’s chamber evening with performances of Britten’s Spring Symphony with the New York Philharmonic.

The Society’s Wu Han greeted us with irrepressible, energetic charm; she explained that she had left the evening’s programming up to Mr. Shifrin and then turned the stage over to the musicians. A packed house seemed eager to hear everything that was offered: again, CMS is the place to be for serious music-lovers.

The evening commenced with an unusual Mozart adagio for two clarinets and three basset horns (K. 411) which the composer purportedly arranged as a sort of entree for the members of the Masonic lodge which he had joined in 1784. The piece is brief, with organ-like sonorities.

Above: Sasha Cooke, photo by Rikki Cooke

In the splendid aria “Parto, parto…” from Mozart’s penultimate opera, LA CLEMENZA DI TITO, Sasha Cooke’s timbre seems to have taken on an added richness since I last heard her. The singer’s expressive qualities were, as ever, to the fore, and the power and beauty of her interpretation made me long to hear her at The Met again where lesser artists hold forth in roles that would suit Ms. Cooke to perfection. Be that as it may, her singing of the aria tonight, graced by Mr. Shifrin’s polished roulades, was a thoroughly engrossing musico-dramatic experience. The Opus One Piano Quartet’s first-rate playing of this chamber arrangement was an ideal compliment to the singer and clarinetist.

Leaping forward from the 18th century to the 21st, Sasha Cooke displayed her versatility in the New York premiere performance of Lowell Liebermann‘s Four Seasons. In setting poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, the composer seems to me to have crafted a contemporary masterpiece: his highly evocative, coloristic writing summons visions of the changing seasons with spine-tingling textures. There are several remarkable passages – the transition from Spring to Summer was especially marvelous – and the composer set The Death of Autumn twice, with the singer’s poetic response to the text varying in mood between the two. A chilly misterioso motif depicts swirls of snowflakes at the singer intones the beautiful ‘What lips my lips have kissed’ and the work closes with the poignant recollection of lost love: ‘But you were something more than young and sweet and fair – and the long year remenbers you’.

Sasha Cooke, with her gift for communicating not just words but emotions, gave a sublime performance of this fascinating new work; Mr. Shifrin and the musicians of Opus One – Anne-Marie McDermott, Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom and Peter Wiley – produced a glowing soundscape in which the voice was heard in all its affecting radiance.

Following the intermission, Stravinsky’s Berceuses du chat were performed by Ms. Cooke and three clarinetists: Mr. Shifrin, Romie De Guise-Langlois, and Ashley William Smith. These wryly charming lullabies were sung with soulful ‘Russian’ tone by the delightful Sasha.

The evening’s second New York premiere, Christopher Theofanidis‘ Quasi una fantasia is dedicated to Mr. Shifrin and was performed by him and fellow-clarinetist Chad Burrow, with the Opus One Quartet. Facing one another, the two clarinets engage in a musical conversation and sometimes blend in duet; the ensemble provide commentary and pulsing rhythmic motifs.

Sasha Cooke’s lovely rendering of four contrasting Mendelssohn lieder – accompanied by Ms. McDermott – was followed by the composer’s melodious Concertpiece No. #1 which was lovingly played by Mr. Shifrin with Mlles. De Guise-Langlois (on Basset horn) and McDermott at the Steinway.

A rarity, Ponchielli’s Il Convegno (The Meeting), which featured Mr. Shifrin and Miss De Guise-Langlois in a gentle virtuoso dialogue backed by the ensemble, ended the evening. All was well – and beautifully played, of course – though I did feel that the Mendelssohn and Ponchielli were too similar in mood to be played back-to-back. I think interjecting the Stravinsky songs after the Mendelssohn Concertpiece might have set the two ensemble pieces in higher relief.

The Program:
- Mozart Adagio in B-flat major for Two Clarinets and Three Basset Horns, K. 411 (1782)
- Mozart “Parto! Ma tu ben mio” from La clemenza di Tito, K. 621 for Mezzo-Soprano, Clarinet, and Piano Quartet (1791)
- Liebermann Four Seasons for Mezzo-Soprano, Clarinet, and Piano Quartet (2013) (New York Premiere)
- Stravinsky Berceuses du chat (Cat’s Cradle Songs) for Voice and Three Clarinets (1915)
- Theofanidis Quasi Una Fantasia for Two Clarinets and String Quartet (2013) (New York Premiere)
- Mendelssohn Concertpiece No. 1 in F minor for Clarinet, Basset Horn, and Piano, Op. 113 (1832)
- Mendelssohn Selected Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano
- Ponchielli Il Convegno (The Meeting), Divertimento for Two Clarinets and Strings (1868)
The Artists:
Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano

Opus One Piano Quartet, piano quartet

Bella Hristova, violin

Kurt Muroki, double bass
Chad Burrow, clarinet

Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet

Wai Lau, clarinet

David Shifrin, clarinet

Ashley William Smith, clarinet
November 19, 2013
MADboots Prepare for ACADEMY

Tuesday November 12, 2013 – Photographer Matt Murphy and I dropped in at New York Live Arts today to watch the MADboyz of MADboots working on their latest creation, ACADEMY.

Jonathan Campbell and Austin Diaz, the founders of MADboots, were joined last season by Eli Bauer; and now the trio have embraced another new dancer, Garth Johnson, and also have a guest artist for this work: David Norsworthy. ACADEMY will be presented at the 92nd Street Y on December 7th and 8th, 2013. Information here.

ACADEMY will stand as a counterpoise to the boys’ most recent previous creation, blue, which will be sharing the bill at the 92nd Street Y. Whereas blue is lyrical and intimate, ACADEMY is dynamic, intense and madly physical.

My first thought when I heard that the MADboys were creating ACADEMY was that it would be about life at a prep school or first-year college – like something out of Maurice or Another Country – where young men would be experiencing both academic and athletic competition whilst at the same time grappling (sometimes literally) with their awakening sexuality and forming their first relationships. But in fact, it’s more like a military academy or a police training program: rigorous, sweaty, boisterously masculine, and highly competitive.

Calisthenics and running dominate the action, laced with poignant or disturbing moments of physical contact in which a transient glimmer of tenderness can be followed by almost violent abuse. The five dancers gave a full-tilt run-thru of the piece for me and Matt, and their generosity was much appreciated.

Here are some of Matt’s images from the studio:

David, Austin and Eli

Jonathan

Austin, David

Garth

Jonathan

Garth

David, Austin, Eli

David, Eli

David

Garth (foreground)

My thanks to Austin and Jonathan for giving me a preview of ACADEMY, and to Matt Murphy who managed to find a free hour in his madly busy schedule to come and photograph this rehearsal.

November 18, 2013
Score Desk for NORMA @ The Met

“Il sacro vischio a mietere Norma verrà?”

Monday October 28th, 2012 – Angela Meade is one of the most talked-about sopranos in New York City these days. Having not – to date – been really impressed by the performances of her’s that I have seen, I was still curious to hear (though not to see) her Norma, so a score desk was the place for me tonight.

In a Met ERNANI, I felt Meade’s voice un-sorted and a bit shy of the needed power (she had no help from the conductor in that regard); in Rossini’s MOISE ER PHARAON at Carnegie Hall she sang quite beautifully. As Leonora in a Met TROVATORE, the soprano had some lovely turns of phrase and vocal effects, but was dramatically nil, especially when she got down on the floor in the duet with di Luna and floundered around, provoking titters from those around me. Her Bellini Beatrice di Tenda at Carnegie was mostly attractively sung – though somewhat tremulous of tone and a bit under-powered in places – but a breach of stage etiquette near the end of the first half dissolved any atmosphere that had been created, and we headed for the exit as soon as the act ended, while a woman seated behind us hauled out her cellphone to tell someone: “This Angela Meade is sensational, she’s so much better than Joan Sutherland!”

So we come to Norma, a daunting role under any circumstances; having just seen Sondra Radvanovsky give a very impressive performance of the role, I approached this evening with mixed expectations, hoping Ms. Meade would come thru with flying colours.

Meade commenced with an authoritative rendering of Norma’s opening recitative “Sediziose voci…”; the voice was ample, and her pacing and use of words marked a fine start to this arduous role. But in the “Casta diva” the innate flutter in Meade’s tone began to intrude on my enjoyment of her singing. This is simply the nature of her voice, not really a technical flaw, and you are either going to like it or not. For me, it became increasingly irritating as the first act of the opera progressed.

Aside from some smudgy fiorature here and there, Meade had all the notes well in hand. Her use of pianissimo in the high register is so frequent that it’s predictable, however attractive the effect might be. In the scene and duet with Adalgisa, Meade had many lovely passages but the flutter (there is no other word for it) in her voice undid any pleasure I was deriving from the evening. As the act surged towards its conclusion, the cognoscenti were expecting a high-D from the soprano; when it didn’t materilaize, at least one famous fan showed his disappointment by gesticulating wildly. I could almost hear him saying ‘Phooey!’

Jamie Barton’s been in the news lately as winner of both the opera and lieder prizes at this year’s Cardiff Singer of the World competition. It’s a fine instrument, clear and warm and even, though as yet not a truly individual sound; one might be tempted to say it’s a baby-Horne voice. She sang very well and was clearly the audience favorite tonight; we’ll see how she develops in terms of distinctiveness. I sense a bit of tension in her upper register but otherwise the instrument seems very well-placed. The news that she’s going to sing Fricka feels a bit premature (RHEINGOLD, fine; WALKURE, probably not a great idea at this point) but hopefully she’ll stay on a steady course: it should be a long and interesting career.

Aleksandrs Antonenko seemed in better voice than in the earlier performance I saw (with Radvanovsky) and he tackled and sustained the written high-C in his aria, not prettily but emphatically. James Morris was a bit below his current best form but still held up his corner of the vocal quartet well enough. The orchestra and chorus seemed to thrive under Maestro Frizza, who was very supportive of his principal singers.

I left at intermission, knowing now that there’s no real need for me to attend future Angela Meade performances, unless she just happens to be singing on a night I am going. She has plenty of admirers to sustain her, come what may.

Metropolitan Opera October 28, 2013
NORMA Vincenzo Bellini Norma...................Angela Meade Pollione................Aleksandrs Antonenko Adalgisa................Jamie Barton Oroveso.................James Morris Flavio..................Eduardo Valdes Clotilde................Siân Davies
Conductor...............Riccardo Frizza

October 28, 2013
Joshua Beamish @ Ailey Citigroup Theater

Above: choreographer Joshua Beamish

Saturday October 26, 2013 – The planned New York City premiere presentation of Joshua Beamish’s PIERCED at Ailey Citigroup had to be abandoned on very short notice due to extenuating circumstances. A combination of dancer injuries and a delay in obtaining visas (a result of the recent US government shutdown) caused the Canadian choreographer to assemble a new programme, literally on the spur of the moment. The evening proved rewarding in its own right, thanks to Joshua’s charismatic personality, his gifts as both choreographer and dancer, and the assistance of two of Gotham’s loveliest ladies: Deborah Wingert and Cathy Eilers.

Cathy introduced the evening, describing how she fell under Joshua’s spell right from her first meeting with him at Joyce SoHo a few years ago. A film of a pas de deux from PIERCED was then shown, performed by Harrison James (National Ballet of Canada) and Jo-Ann Sundermeier (Smuin Ballet). The music is by David Lang, and the title PIERCED refers to Cupid’s arrow.

Live dancing started with a solo that followed: Joshua – as the self-described ‘guardian of love’ – danced with hypnotic fluidity: his clarity of movement and caressive port de bras enhance his god-given handsomeness, creating a distinctive self-portrait.

In an interview that followed, Deborah Wingert posed just the right questions so that we got to know Joshua – his process and his way of thinking – without compromising his personal mystique. Many dance interviews fall flat, but Deborah’s thorough understanding of dance from the inside out – as dancer, teacher, choreographer, stager and coach – assured an articulate and meaningful dialogue with Joshua, one coloured by honest emotion.

For now we must put PIERCED on our wish-list and hope that a future opportunity will bring Joshua’s MOVE: the company to New York City in full force.

Tonight’s performance continued with Jacklyn Wheatley of The Ailey School performing a new Beamish solo, Some is Lost, to music by Hauschka. The movement here is a feminine counter-poise to the solo Joshua danced earlier in the evening.

Music from Bach’s cello suite #1 set the stage for Joshua’s expressive dancing of a solo from his 2011 work Allemande. Sticking with the music of the great masters, Vivaldi was then summoned for a particularly satisfying performamce of an extended excerpt from This Black Vale which premiered earlier this year. Davon Rainey, totally at home in Joshua Beamish’s flowing movement style, danced a solo and then a duet in which Joshua kept coming and going, their relationship a mystery. Davon’s second solo was a more animated piece, and then, as the music seemed to fracture, Joshua re-appeared for the evening’s final solo.

Joshua Beamish will be dancing a duet he choreographed for Wendy Whelan and himself at The Joyce as part of Wendy’s production Restless Creature April 1st – 6th, 2014. Further details will be forthcoming.

October 26, 2013
Robin Becker’s INTO SUNLIGHT

Above: the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC

Friday October 25th, 2013 – My association with Robin Becker’s dancework INTO SUNLIGHT, set during the Vietnam War era, stretches back to November 2010 when my dancer/friend Paul (Oisin) Monaghan suggested that Kokyat and I drop in to one of Robin’s rehearsals. I was immediately drawn to Robin’s movement style and to the theme of the work.

Inspired by Pulitzer prize-winning author David Maraniss’s book THEY MARCHED INTO SUNLIGHT,
Robin Becker has crafted an hour-long dancework with a musical score by Chris
Lastovicka. While the events depicted –
the ambush of a batallion of American soldiers in the Vietnam jungle and
the protest against Dow Chemical at the University of Wisconsin – took
place on two consecutive days in October of 1967, INTO SUNLIGHT
resonates far beyond those specific incidents, and will continue to
resonate as long as mankind resorts to warfare as a way of settling
religious and idelogical differences – differences which will never be settled anyway.

INTO SUNLIGHT was shown in June 2011 at the 92nd Street Y; now it has come to
the Florence Gould Theater. For the most part, the leading dancers have
retained their roles from the original cast: Nicole Sclafani, Yoko Sagimoto-Ikezawa, Lisa Clementi, Oisin Monaghan, Chazz Fenner-McBride and Edwardo Brito. Sarah Parker is new to the Company and makes a beautiful impression.

Over the two years since I saw this dancework, the original dancers have matured: in physique, technique and stagecraft, they now give the work more nuance and complexity while maintaining their individual appeal as personalities. This developmental process has given INTO SUNLIGHT a more polished and compelling look, without sacrificing freshness. The Company are supplemented by an ensemble of nine young dancers who bring their own faces and forms into play.

Among the most vivid moments of INTO SUNLIGHT are
two duets: in one, Nicole Sclafani and Paul Monaghan depict the dream a
young woman had of her brother’s horrific death from a massive abdominal
wound – a dream which came true. Later – in the work’s most poignant passage – Yoko Sugimoto-Ikezawa visits
the grave of her beloved (the ensemble dancer Ricky Wenthen) where she seeks to
connect with his spirit.

There is also an animated trio for three soldiers – Oisin Monaghan, Chazz
Fenner-McBride and Edwardo Brito – recalling the innocent rough-housing of their younger days while dealing with the realities of serving in a war in a far-away land and watching their buddies being killed or maimed. Chazz also has a physically demanding solo depicting the moment that West Point football hero Don
Holleder rushed heedlessly onto the battleground towards his vanquished
comrades only to be gunned down. The three boys are distinctive stage personalities: Oisin, pale and enigmatic; Edwardo with his easy moves, handsome torso and expressive face; and Chazz, who has lost his puppy-dog boyishness and is now a muscularized young man, moving with compelling energy.

The work shifts between solemn rites and more animated emsemble passages; only near the end does the balance go off somewhat: the final two movements are perfomed mostly in slow-motion, the dancers re-arranging themselves in structures which then dissolve and re-form. As lovely as this is to watch, after a while it can’t sustain us visually and our focus begins to falter. Some compression here would make for a more powerful experience as the work moves to its pensive conclusion.

But despite this concern, INTO SUNLIGHT is beautifully performed: it’s a dancework that is thought-provoking and meaningful, even as civilization continues to blunder thru war after war. I congratulate Robin Becker, Chris Lastovicka, and everyone involved in bringing this work to the stage.

October 25, 2013