Ballet – Page 12

Review: Dutch National Ballet’s The Nutcracker And The Mouse King

September 28, 2012 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

Oh, Nutcracker. Few things in ballet are as adored, as abhorred, as pervasive, as cherished, or as misunderstood. Nutcrackers are often deplored for their lack of plot cohesion (or of plot, period) and lack of originality. Dutch National Ballet’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is above reproach on both counts. It is a real story ballet that can stand on its own without needing the Christmas season as an excuse to exist.

This film version was produced in 2011 from a live recording that same year. The stage production premiered in 1996, with choreography by Toer Van Schayk and Wayne Eagling that is tastefully classical while still being excitingly athletic.

Van Schayk and Eagling depart considerably from the traditional Nutcracker story, always for the better. Set in Amsterdam on St Nicholas Eve 1810, the ballet opens in a cozy upstairs bathroom where oft-stilted young Clara, lovable troublemaker Frits, and their frivolous teenage sister Louise prepare for the St Nicholas party. The Party Scene includes some delightfully magical stage effects: a slide projector, a mechanical cat, and a walking Nutcracker doll, all of which appear in huge scale later in the ballet. The dances flow seamlessly as natural elements of the plot and provide a great deal of foreshadowing. The shapes of the choreography are pleasantly surprising, and the crispness of the Dutch style is evident in the dancing of children and adults alike. That crispness carries over to all of the mime sequences, making an already-sensible plot even easier to follow. [Read more…]

Student Spotlight: Charlotte Jeffery

September 26, 2012 by Ashley David

Next in our “Student Spotlight” series, meet Charlotte Jeffery…

1. Can you tell readers how you became involved (and continued to be involved) with dance?

The start of my dance love affair began with ballet. Like hundreds of thousands of little girls across the world, when I was four, my Mum asked me if I wanted to do ballet, I said yes and it spiraled from there.

I began my ‘training’ (if we can call it that) in a drafty school hall with good toes, bad toes and winning little silver cups for my brilliant portrayal of a Siamese cat. I took all my ballet exams, and jumped around from syllabus to syllabus, I even spent one summer school at the Royal Ballet School, at White Lodge and was a Junior Associate of the Arts Educational School in Tring.

I was a ballet girl for a very long time (and still am in reality) but started contemporary when I was twelve or eleven – this incredibly cool teacher came to teach at our school (where we had dance as part of the curriculum) and introduced contemporary to all of us.

It was only natural therefore that when I continued dancing into GCSE and A level that I would take it higher into degree level. I have just graduated from Middlesex University with a 2:1 in Dance Studies.

While I was there I had the most incredible opportunity to study abroad. I traveled to the east cost of the USA, to Goucher College, in Baltimore where I stayed for four months and continued to train. I can honestly say now, that although it was one of the hardest four months of my life, emotionally and physically, it was also one of the best!!

Training in the states opened up yet more options for me and more choices for career paths. I trained in aerial dance (very scary but amazing) took contemporary, ballet, pointe work, a very intense choreography course and even got to work with some underprivileged children in the poorest area of Baltimore helping them to learn how to read and write by using movement as a tool for learning.

Now as a recent graduate I have decided to take the freelance route. I feel that there are far too many options for me, and I want to do so much, that I’m going to try and do it all; I call myself a freelance teacher, writer, community artist, dancer, arts administrator, choreographer… and the list is growing!

This has meant that even since I’ve graduated I’ve written reviews for up and coming companies, am currently in rehearsal for the opening ceremony of the Paralympics (29^th August 2012), I have taught workshops at primary schools, and as of this week (until about Christmas time) I am working at the Royal Ballet School as an Interim Development and Publicity Coordinator. (See I told you I was a real ballet bod at heart!) As of September I will add a new title to my belt, Artist in Residence, at a school in Buckinghamshire teaching lots of the extra curricular dance and some admin there too.

2. What do you find you like best about dance class? [Read more…]

10 Questions With…Michael Levine

September 17, 2012 by Ashley David

Meet Michael Levine…dancer, teacher, app creator…yes, I said app creator…read on to find out more…

Michael Levine

1. How did you become involved in dance?

My mother. Isn’t that what we all say? My Mother was a recreational ballet dancer and attended performances while living in San Francisco. When I was younger and jumping around from activity to activity, she put me in “ballet”. I took to it and progressed fairly quickly beyond the level that my small town could support. I was lucky to have two parents that were willing to drive me further afield to get better training.

I ultimately left school early to attend the San Francisco Ballet School as a full time scholarship student. I was never a dancer because of the pretty parts: tutus and tights, etc. I loved the physical, the theatrical, and the transformative. Interests that expressed themselves throughout my career.

2. Where did your career take you?

Artistically or Physically?

Artistically it took me far beyond what I dreamt possible for me. The roles that I have portrayed and the ballets that I have gotten to be a part of still amaze me. Part of what I loved about being at Joffrey during the time that I was there was the mix of contemporary and historic ballets that we were doing at the time. When I look back at the roles that really strike a cord with me they are all theatrical in nature. For example: Romeo from Cranko’s Romeo & Juliet; Death from Kurt Joos’s The Green Table; and the Lover from Tudor’s Lilac Garden. Romeo and Death because I saw both of those ballets as a kid and loved them, but I never thought I’d do them, much less the leads. The Lover because it was the first time that I was moved beyond myself in the role I was portraying.

Physically my career took me all over the world. I was lucky while I was in both Joffrey and ABT that both companies were traveling a fair amount. I always found it fascinating how people in different countries would react to performances. In the end I was fortunate to travel to the Mediterranean several times: Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Egypt. I was on multiple tours to Europe, Asia, Middle and South America. I was fortunate to work with my wife for most of my career and we took advantage of the travel. After one tour to Australia we stayed on in New Zealand for 10 extra days (we considered that our honeymoon even though it was years before we got married). It was a fabulous way to see the world and I feel very blessed to have all those memories.

3. What are you doing now? [Read more…]

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Holiday Ballet Besides The Nutcracker

September 14, 2012 by 4dancers

by Risa Gary Kaplowitz

A few days ago, I asked my students at the first ballet class ever held at The College of New Jersey if any of them had ever seen a ballet before. A few of the females raised their hands. “Which one?” I asked. Three of them said almost in unison, “The Nutcracker.” Then one rolled her eyes and added, “of course.”

I had expected that answer. What other performing arts field has a website devoted entirely to one theatrical story such as the one titled, “Nutcracker Ballet”? The site’s 2011 listing for New Jersey shows at least forty-two productions of Nutcracker. And that doesn’t include productions in the Philadelphia area or in New York City, which are close enough for us Jersyians to easily attend.

The start of the Nut season (as it’s affectionately or not so affectionately called by the dancers who must perform it morning, noon, and night for days on end) is officially upon us. My inbox is filled with “Get Your Nutcracker Seats Now!” pleas, audition announcements, and unsolicited queries from unemployed professional ballet dancers looking to perform in a Nutcracker.

The deluge prompts me to ask a question. With American ballet company directors and boards lamenting the low status of ballet in the minds of the general public, I wonder what would happen if our ballet companies offered more options during the holiday season—the one time of year when both balletomanes and new patrons spend money to see shows. How on earth did we get ourselves trapped in a can of Nuts?

Nutcracker was first performed in Russia in 1892. Based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s, The Nutcracker and The Mouse King, its premier was not a success. But by the second half of the twentieth century, The Nutcracker had spread from two successful American productions: Willam Christensen’s 1944 production for San Francisco Ballet and George Balanchine’s for New York City Ballet in 1954. Considered the bread and butter of nearly every ballet company, Clara’s journey to the Land of the Sweets brings in the funds to keep ballet companies and their more obscure offerings afloat.

But like real bread and butter, the ballet—of which there are hundreds of versions— is easy to digest but usually offers little substance. Indeed, most audience members leave a Nut performance satiated with enough sugary dancing to last a whole year before needing to see another ballet performance, which is usually The Nutcracker again.

Yet, there have been some interesting versions of late, which may entice their viewers to return to the theater for more ballet sooner rather than later. Septime Weber’s version for The Washington Ballet casts George Washington as the Nutcracker. Those lucky enough to have made it through snow storms to the Brooklyn Academy of Music may have seen Alexei Ratmansky’s magical version for American Ballet Theatre or Mark Morris’ telling of a different part of the original story, The Hard Nut:

[Read more…]

DVD Review: Ballet and Orchestra of the Lyon National Opera in Maguy Marin’s Cinderella

September 12, 2012 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

There’s the saying that if you want to hide something, you put it in plain sight. By dressing her dancers as dolls—wigs, masks, and full-body stuffed suits—Maguy Marin places the un-reality of the fairy-tale as such in plain sight. It is not about a girl and a boy feeling specific things in response to specific events governed by the norms of a specific time and place. Joy in response to love, sadness because of loss, fear of despair and isolation—none of these things are character- or situation-specific to Cinderella. They are simply human, and this staging of Cinderella brings them front and center.

Visually, the work is wonderfully strange with plenty of irony and, sometimes, downright silliness. The Sisters and Stepmother are pitifully rude, comic at times and sinister at others. Their torment of Cinderella is violent—thank goodness for the padded costume! Some of the same partnering elements are used later and more gently among Cinderella and the Good Fairies, effectively contrasting the Sisters’ roughness with the Fairies’ care.

Most touching in this work is Cinderella’s awakening solo in Act Three. After attempting to console herself with a broomstick version of her beloved prince, she collapses to the floor in utter despair. Who hasn’t felt so hopelessly wretched upon losing the things most dear to us: love and affirmation?

Marin incorporates play in a very literal way—the Gavotte contains plenty of flat-on-the-back falls for Cinderella as the Good Fairies encourage her to dance, and the ball scene includes guests sliding down the stairs and games of hopscotch and jump-rope. The pas de deux between Cinderella and the Prince features a shy game of paddy-cake and the “airplane,” with her supported off the ground on his feet. All this happens without seeming contrived; the exuberance and joy build naturally. After all, we are dealing with the language of young children, which is widely understood without any words at all.

Also striking about this version of Cinderella was the collision of old-fashioned and futuristic elements. The plaster-face doll masks reminded me immediately of dolls I used to play with at my grandmother’s house. The little girl through whose imagination we witness the story is dressed in vaguely Victorian clothing. Yet, the construction of the dollhouse is minimalist, the Fairy Godmother is an androgynous robot, and Cinderella travels to the Ball in a miniature car. The ballet concludes with a parade of Victorian pull-toys and a clear cellophane film descending as a scrim would. It seals the dolls in their house, as if reminding us that projections and interpretations are just that, real though they may seem. They exist both uniquely for each of us and commonly for all of us.

Ballet and Orchestra of the Lyon National Opera in Maguy Marin’s Cinderella. ArtHaus Musik GmbH, 2012. 87 Minutes.

Assistant Editor Emily Kate Long began her dance education in South Bend, Indiana, with Kimmary Williams and Jacob Rice and graduated in 2007 from Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s Schenley Program. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007. She also has spent summers studying at Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive, Miami City Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, and Ballet Chicago.

Ms Long has been a member of Ballet Quad Cities since 2009. She has danced featured roles in Deanna Carter’s Ash to Glass and Dracula, participated in the company’s 2010 tour to New York City, and most recently performed the title role in Courtney Lyon’s Cinderella and the role of Clara in The Nutcracker. Prior to joining Ballet Quad Cities Ms Long performed with Milwaukee Ballet and MBII in Michael Pink’s The Nutcracker and Candide Overture, Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadére, Balanchine’s Who Cares?, Bournonville’s Flower Festival in Genzano and Napoli, and original contemporary and neoclassical works by Tom Teague, Denis Malinkine, Rolando Yanes, and Petr Zaharadnicek.

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