K took me to my first visit to NYC Ballet this season. There is only one all-Ballanchine program (entitled Balanchine's World), which is unfortunate because it is very difficult to sit through a Martins ballet and Robbins' work is often tedious and obvious and derivative. But it was great to see four very different Balanchine works.
We sat in on our old row in the 4th circle. Everyone is familiar to us there as now we've been coming for years.
The evening started out with "Le Tombeau de Couperin." Boring. Much of the dance is at a funereal tempo, and it is constructed so that none of the four couples is featured over another. Yet the dancing from the corps lacked uniformity and accuracy and one wished for an old and cruel ballet mistress with a whip rehearsing the piece over and over in order to make it exact and martial as well as egalitarian.
"Tarantella' was frisky, yet once again the male lead, the newcomer Gonzalo Garcia missed some of the beats with his tambourine, though he did dance with a rakish charm. In fact, I would even say that Balanchine overused the tambourine in the choreography--its sound became a bit tedious and the device too gimmicky.
After the intermission the show really began. "Bugaku" was a spellbounding drama that weas shrouded in ritualistic orientalism yet at its core revealed a sweaty, sexy pas de deux, danced with steadfast tempo and virtousic intensity by Maria Kowroski and Albert Evans. I even thought that this piece might not be danced during a matinee as it was too sexual for the children. Choreographed in '63, this piece had a sexuality to it that transmitted so radiantly from the stage--one was watching the lovemaking of two Japanese nobles, and the increasing open-ness of Kowroski, responding to Evans' plaintive and urgent touches, walked the line between suggestive eroticism and overt pornography. Not one for the displays of heterosexual couplings, I'd have to say it was hot.
The pas de deux is surrounded by a dance that includes three other men and women. The entrances and exits were most exciting and so soft, and although one could find fault with the stereotypical Japanoiserie of the movements and the makeup and the set, it was exciting to watch the female dancers walk on their heels so softly, yet with the determination to involve themselves in a solemn ceremony. Balanchine's use of the flexed foot, particularly with the men, combined his interest in angularity and awkward posings with his investment in finding balletic movements that matched the Japanese sonorities of the music. It was a riveting piece.
The night finished with "La Somnambula" (as all nights should, though it is a very sad piece). When I say this is my favorite piece of Balanchine's I should say I love its last half, after the entrance of the sleepwalker herself (the beginning is tedious to me now and I just wish I could fast forward through frothy shenanigans at the court to the good part--the tragic, unlikely love story between a poet and a woman who may not be awake yet it is entirely responsive). Wendy Whelan was once again transcendent--part spectre, part ethereal Goddess--as Nikolaj Hubbe gently directed her about the stage in her state of sleep that allows her to be aware of her beloved but only in an unconscious way. As light as Whelan is in her dance on point, one arm outstretched to permanently holding a candle, she is intensely strong as she carries the very large body of the murdered poet (Hubbe is by no means skinny and he is surely over 6 feet tall) at the end of the ballet. K and I were once again undone by her performance and the power of her mourning. I did a "Hillary" and tears welled up in my eyes.
K and I raced down to the souvenir desk to see if any "Wendy Whelan" ballet slippers were for sale--with no embarrassment. The woman told us when they might become available--they are the hardest ones to get.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Yoko Ono is in Brazil
I saw two exhibits of Yoko Ono's work in Brazil. One is Sao Paulo, the other in Rio. One planned, the other by chance.
At the almost abandonned museum of modern art (a brutalist dream/nightmare of curvilinear concrete that lacks the tropic utopianism of Oscar Niemeyer that is usual of Brazilian modernism) near the small airport in Rio (along the harbor). And the Banco do Brazil Cultural Center (a belle epoque mansion with lots of frilly embellishments) in Sao Paulo. I cried when I walked into the room that held the installation Endangered Species, 2319-2322; I felt the need for peace reverberate through me, both shocking and reviving.
So though I live in the same city as Yoko Ono, I encountered her in Brazil in a way I never had before (though I loved her outdoor concert with DJ Spooky and Thurston Moore in Battery Park). I thought a lot about her under-recognized place in art and politics and I spent dynamic time discussing her with my friends there. I wrote the following in the Marian Palace Hotel in the rather deserted downtown of Sao Paulo. The hotel is a mid-century fantasy. The furniture in my room would have sent E-bay dealers in a tizzy and the simple deco lighting fixtures in the room were iconic and pure. The large window opened up onto a breathtaking urban vista dominated by a dalipadated church in the foreground and skyscrapers in the background. I woke to church hymns and traffic and Brazilian voices. The morning light was caffeinated.
I wrote these instructions in homage to Yoko and the arc of her lifework and they also cite my recent memories of Rio-its beaches, sunsets, and the ways in which people assemble and gain expression by being physically and emotionally close to each other:
imagine Yoko, not as the center but as the periphery
imagine her laugh
remember there are two superpowers in the world, the US and humanity.
light a candle
sit and look at the flame
blow the candle out
imagine the light inside
encounter the sound of water as it meets land
imagine yourself as that sound
disappear into your senses as you emerge as one as many
surrender to a smile
look at the sweep of the beach at sunset
let the light quiet you
see the moon rise as an experience inside yourself.
hold hands
decide that tomorrow you will clean a place in your room
sleep
listen to the language being spoken around you.
decide it is nonsense but full of meanings
recognize that all language twists the tongue
say obrigado/a over and over
thank the gods and saints for Brazil
think of nice things to say about your friends
remember to treat a person
with the dedication and awe in which you treat your most beloved objects
and remember any object can always be replaced and is already a copy
but your beloved is an original
remember how fun it is to clap your hands
stomp your feet
snap your fingers
and sing
look out the window
go to the wall
remember the view
paint it
dance:
1. stand still
2 on one leg
3 than the other
4 stretch your arms out then up then out then down without telling your body what to do
5 stare at the roadmap of your hands and plan your route
6 abandon it and just move
At the almost abandonned museum of modern art (a brutalist dream/nightmare of curvilinear concrete that lacks the tropic utopianism of Oscar Niemeyer that is usual of Brazilian modernism) near the small airport in Rio (along the harbor). And the Banco do Brazil Cultural Center (a belle epoque mansion with lots of frilly embellishments) in Sao Paulo. I cried when I walked into the room that held the installation Endangered Species, 2319-2322; I felt the need for peace reverberate through me, both shocking and reviving.
So though I live in the same city as Yoko Ono, I encountered her in Brazil in a way I never had before (though I loved her outdoor concert with DJ Spooky and Thurston Moore in Battery Park). I thought a lot about her under-recognized place in art and politics and I spent dynamic time discussing her with my friends there. I wrote the following in the Marian Palace Hotel in the rather deserted downtown of Sao Paulo. The hotel is a mid-century fantasy. The furniture in my room would have sent E-bay dealers in a tizzy and the simple deco lighting fixtures in the room were iconic and pure. The large window opened up onto a breathtaking urban vista dominated by a dalipadated church in the foreground and skyscrapers in the background. I woke to church hymns and traffic and Brazilian voices. The morning light was caffeinated.
I wrote these instructions in homage to Yoko and the arc of her lifework and they also cite my recent memories of Rio-its beaches, sunsets, and the ways in which people assemble and gain expression by being physically and emotionally close to each other:
imagine Yoko, not as the center but as the periphery
imagine her laugh
remember there are two superpowers in the world, the US and humanity.
light a candle
sit and look at the flame
blow the candle out
imagine the light inside
encounter the sound of water as it meets land
imagine yourself as that sound
disappear into your senses as you emerge as one as many
surrender to a smile
look at the sweep of the beach at sunset
let the light quiet you
see the moon rise as an experience inside yourself.
hold hands
decide that tomorrow you will clean a place in your room
sleep
listen to the language being spoken around you.
decide it is nonsense but full of meanings
recognize that all language twists the tongue
say obrigado/a over and over
thank the gods and saints for Brazil
think of nice things to say about your friends
remember to treat a person
with the dedication and awe in which you treat your most beloved objects
and remember any object can always be replaced and is already a copy
but your beloved is an original
remember how fun it is to clap your hands
stomp your feet
snap your fingers
and sing
look out the window
go to the wall
remember the view
paint it
dance:
1. stand still
2 on one leg
3 than the other
4 stretch your arms out then up then out then down without telling your body what to do
5 stare at the roadmap of your hands and plan your route
6 abandon it and just move
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