Somehow I kept thinking I was going to have time to get caught back up on things... now all of a sudden there are Christmas lights in all the store windows and I'm planning a skype call with the family during their annual Thanksgiving Day kickball game. When did that all happen?
So, some of the quick highlights:
As soon as we finished La Reine Morte, we had Jean-Pierre Frohlich come for two weeks from New York City Ballet, to stage MOVES by Jerry Robbins. It's going to be part of the mixed-bill program at the end of January called "New York Dances," featuring 4 NYC choreographers in different styles. Firmly in the neoclassical category, Jerry was Balanchine's second in command at NYCB for decades, but is probably better known for his Broadway musicals, West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof. MOVES is a silent ballet, sans musique as we say here, which meant lots of long rehearsal hours in almost silence, with Jean-Pierre's instructions and the sound of pointe shoes hitting the floor, and various slaps and counts to try to keep us all in perfect rhythm to an imaginary beat. It's going to be really fun, I think, once we get on stage; there's something incredibly powerful about controlling both the dance and the timing. Not being tied to music raises the weight of each movement, because it has to stand alone. As it stands we have about a cast and a half, meaning I'll do every show. It's a ballet with six couples, and lots of smaller sections, so they'll change out the soloists who do the pas de deux's, but keep as many people as possible the same so we can really get used to feeling each other as a coherent group. Originally done in 1959, there are parts that feel a little dated, but there are also sections that are still brilliant 50 years later. More news to come on that as we get closer to the end of January.
After Jean-Pierre left, Elaine Kudo arrived to teach the next piece of the mixed bill, Twyla Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs. Feel free to check out Elaine and Baryshnikov in their younger days doing a version for film, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHn7JbamF0U&feature=fvwrel. They're pretty bad ass. I grew up watching Twyla, and particularly Sinatra Songs, at PNB and always looked forward to my chance to learn her movement style. Seven couples in long dresses and heels (new kind of foot pain from rehearsals, great!) embody different sides of relationships from Something Stupid to That's Life to All The Way, the pas de deux I'm learning with Julian. It's normally a dance for the tall principal couple, representing mature love, with a bunch of tricky partnering and lifts and using each other for balance that has to look easy and natural and smooth. In heels. ;) We're second cast to Valerio and Paola, the two Italian principals, which is great, because Paola did it before, and they're both super helpful about guiding us on where exactly to put hands and weight and which way to launch yourself hoping he'll be there to catch you.... We started the second rehearsal by playing a "game" -- take your partner, grab right hands, and squat down leaning out so you have to use the other person's weight not to fall over; come back up and switch hands, and keep going back and forth until you have a good sense of the resistance that the other person gives you, so then you can do all that turning and in heels and with a leg up in the air behind you. Fun fun fun.
And naturally, tis the season for Nutcracker, so we're fitting in Snow and Flowers rehearsals around the edges as well. We don't open until I think the 23rd of December, and do only 7 shows, which for a girl used to 45 shows spread out from the Friday after Thanksgiving through the end of December, is pretty much a dream. It's nice to have those rehearsals to run the dances a few times a week to keep our stamina up, especially because all the Tharp work is in heels instead of pointe shoes, so it's easy to get out of shape pointe-wise quickly. Besides, it wouldn't quite feel right if we weren't rehearsing Nutcracker, now would it?
In other news... US Congress has decided tomato paste on pizza counts as a vegetable, Occupy movements around the states are being raided by police, Egyptians are back in Tahrir Square, and these are some really pretty pictures ;)
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/11/national_geographic_photo_cont.html
There just continues to be something stunning to me about Elaine Kudo, who danced this with Barysnikov, who worked on it with Twyla Tharp, who Barysnikov specifically picked to dance it with him, teaching it and staging it directly with you, hand to hand, touch to touch, movement to moment. I understand that virtually all art builds on others, of course, but this direct passing of story beyond words and without artifact from person to person, particularly from/with those who have lived it at the highest level, to this next generation ... it is just mesmerizing to me....
ReplyDeleteHow cool is it to be in that process with a legit bad ass? What is it like?
(By the way, for anyone looking at the video, the specific dance that Taisha is doing in this show is from 2:55 to 5:15 on the video)