miliosr

My copy of Lynn Garafola's magisterial new biography of Bronislava Nijinska (titled La Nijinska) has arrived. I skipped ahead to Chapter 16 where Garafola discusses the Royal Ballet's major revivals of Les Biches and Les Noces in the mid-60s. In Garafola's retelling, Frederick Ashton comes across as the real hero of these revivals as he commissioned them at a time when Nijinska's fortunes were at a very low ebb. Garafola quotes this lovely communication from Ashton to Nijinska in 1964 before she arrived in London to restage Les Biches: "It has always been one of my favourite ballets and I look forward with extreme pleasure to seeing it again, and to having you among us . . . To my way of thinking it is essential that the Royal Ballet should have a masterpiece in its repertoire from one of the greatest choreographers of our time." Ashton signed it, "Your ancient pupil, Freddie." The source notes for Chapter 16 mention that Les Biches was programmed with Les Patineurs and Marguerite and Armand at the first performance. At subsequent performances, Les Biches appeared on the same bill as Les Sylphides and The Dream. How about those as mixed bills at the ballet?

I wonder if a "big name" is the route management will take. I think of the former Ballet Mistress Clotilde Vayer (who has assumed leadership of the troupe at Teatro di San Carlo) and the current Ballet Master Lionel Delanoe. Neither one is the flashiest of names but they know the repertory inside-and-out and, more importantly. they understand the Paris troupe and its ways. (That was Benjamin Millepied's undoing.) When Millepied resigned/was pushed out, then-Opera director Stephane Lissner already had Aurelie Dupont lined up as Millepied's replacement. We'll know soon if there's been a successor waiting in the wings to replace Dupont.

Excluding Brigitte Lefevre's directorship (which lasted for 19 years), the average length of a Paris Opera Ballet directorship since 1958 (when Serge Lifar's second tour-of-duty at the helm ended) is only 3 years. So, Aurelie Dupont's tenure is in line with that trend. In fact, she did better than most. Her stay at the top is comparable to Raymond Franchetti's and Rudolf Nureyev's and better than those of such bold-faced names as Claude Bessy, Violette Verdy, Rosella Hightower. Patrice Bart and Patrick Dupond. The reality of the Paris Opera Ballet is that the troupe is notoriously ungovernable and can push back hard against a director. Benjamin Millepied discovered that to his detriment. (Lefevre's lengthy tenure speaks to her very astute management and political skills.) The challenge with the Paris Opera Ballet is that it's really two companies - a heritage company and a contemporary company. There are many dancers at the Opera who only ever appear in contemporary works. Strong emphasis on the heritage side of things is possible but it would take time and would be akin to changing the direction of an ocean liner.

ABT has a bigger problem on its hands. In its present slackened state, can it field even one complete cast equal to the dramatic demands of a work like this?

I don't know what to make of this interview Susan Jaffe gave about American Ballet Theatre's (ABT) future: I can appreciate Jaffe's belief that ABT has been coasting too long on an aging audience and that it needs to cultivate a new one. In the short term, though, audience rebuilding does nothing to fill the immensity of the Met at a time when the common complaint is - "there are no stars at ABT". (Ironically, the same complaint that was made about ABT's roster during the 1980s when Jaffe was a principal.) Of the younger principals, only Aran Bell has that old-time star quality. There are many fine dancers at ABT but not a lot of obvious stars capable of packing the Met with the faithful. ABT's audience would be a strong contender for "most conservative" ballet audience in the United States; conservative in the sense that it is historically resistant to new work and is perfectly content to watch the multi-act story ballets over and over and over again. Is ABT's current audience really crying out for more new works when the new works it commissions now last one season and are then never seen again? (It will be interesting to see if the upcoming mixed bill [George Balanchine/Alonzo King premiere/Jessica Lang] and the Alexei Ratmansky New York premiere draw an audience or if ABT is faced with acres and acres of empty seats at the Met.) There's nothing in the interview mentioning productions (Giselle, Swan Lake) that are long past their sell-by dates or if Jaffe has any intention of restoring the Antony Tudor reportory to a pride-of-place at ABT.

But it's precisely that judgmental criticism of elite professionals which separates a Margot Fonteyn from Margot Fonteyn's friend from the conservatory who also danced professionally. Ultimately, criticism is the means by which the practitioners, the professional critics and the audience arrive at a rough consensus as to who is truly extraordinary and who isn't. Arriving at that consensus may not be pretty but it's better than its alternative where praise is distributed indiscriminately and ends up having no meaning. As the American dance critic Edwin Denby (perhaps the finest dance critic the United States has ever produced) wrote: "Criticism is a conversation that the audience has with itself, and if the performer wants to eavesdrop on the conversation, he does so at his own risk." I understand how people (professional critics or audience members) making criticisms need to be responsible (i.e discussing matters of weight) but, ultimately, I prefer a "rude" conversation where all voices are heard to one where only a self-appointed priestly caste is allowed to comment. The latter is only one step away from hagiography and from there - stagnation ("all is as it ever was").

In the United States, San Francisco Ballet (SFB) has always had a tight connection to George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet (NYCB). Lew Christensen, who was part of Balanchine's precursor companies to the NYCB and was a member of the company during its earliest days, was artistic director and and then co-artistic director (with Michael Smuin) of the SFB from the early-1950s to his death in 1984. (There was a huge schism between Christensen and Smuin in the period before Christensen's death which ushered in Helgi Tomasson as artistic director). Christensen always maintained the Balanchine works as a central part of the SFB's repertory. When Tomasson took over in 1985, he too emphasized the Balanchine repertory and brought in central works from the Jerome Robbins repertory. This was a natural development as Tomasson spent 15 years (from 1970-85) as a principal at the NYCB after Rebekah Harkness disbanded the first version of Tomasson's prior company, the Harkness Ballet. Basically, Tomasson came in and threw out all of the works that Christensen and Smuin had built up over the years, and instead rebuilt the repertory around the Balanchine and Robbins works. A central element in this refashioning of the repertory has been programming the works of other choreographers who emerged aesthetically from the NYCB(Christopher Wheeldon, Justin Peck) or had an important connection to it (Alexei Ratmansky). So, in effect, the SFB has spent the last 60 years of its existence informed by developments at the NYCB. (I should note that Tomasson was also the American artistic director who programmed the works of William Forsythe and Mark Morris in a big way.) What is the point of all this history? Merely to say that Tamara Rojo represents a break in the SFB's history as she has no strong connection at all to the NYCB and its aesthetic. Rojo made her name in a different type of repertory and her own programming decisions at the English National Ballet suggest her interests may lie elsewhere. Where her interests and Tomasson's converge is with the Forsythe repertory. If you're a William Forsythe fan at the SFB, my guess would be that you can sleep soundly regarding him maintaining his place at the SFB. As for everything else, we'll have to see how much of a refashioning Rojo is prepared to engage in and how much leeway the board has given her to do so.

Regarding Balanchine, Ratmansky and Robbins, Helgi Tomasson may be predicting the future for the San Francisco Ballet under Tamaro Rojo. I don't think of her as a firm adherent to any of those individuals' works. So, we may see a situation where the San Francisco Ballet in the 21st century evolves out of the New York City Ballet's orbit. We'll see in a year. I don't know what to make of the next@90 Festival. Will it actually sell based on the names involved?

San Francisco Ballet has announced its season for 2023: 2023 SEASON - San Francisco Ballet (sfballet.org) next@90 Festival 'A' - Jan 20-Feb 11, 'B' - Jan 21-Feb 8, 'C' - Jan 25-Feb 7 NEXT@90 - San Francisco Ballet (sfballet.org) Giselle (Helgi Tomasson) Feb 24-Mar 5 Program 5 (Helgi Tomasson/Myles Thatcher/William Forsythe) Mar 14-19 Cinderella (Christopher Wheeldon) Mar 31-Apr 8 Romeo & Juliet (Helgi Tomasson) Apr 21-30 Tomasson programmed this season and, as I understand it, will oversee the next@90 Festival. So, we won't have any ideas about Tamara Rojo's plans for quite a while.

Leafing through my copy of the 1987-88 ABT season program, I see that ABT debuted Mark Morris' Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes in addition to premiering Tippet's Bruch Violin Concerto. The company also launched new productions of Antony Tudor's Gala Performance and Leonide Massine's Gaite Parisienne (w/ the Christian Lacroix costumes) and staged a company premiere of George Balanchine's Ballet Imperial. So, there was a lot going on that season in terms of world-company premieres/new productions!

Today's Dance Links has a link to a blog post by Alastair Macaulay discussing women leading ballet companies. Part IV of the post addresses the challenges Susan Jaffe has ahead of her trying to bring coherence to the repertory and the performing style at ABT. I won't try to summarize all of Macaulay's remarks but one thing that caught my eye was his commentary about the Antony Tudor repertory. ABT is supposed to be the custodian of the Tudor rep. But, as Macaulay notes, that rep has been reduced to Jardin aux Lilas, Pillar of Fire and The Leaves Are Fading in a once every three years performance rotation. You never see Dark Elegies or Gala Performance at ABT any more. Kevin McKenzie used to talk about reviving Tudor's one-act The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (which George Balanchine said was the best version of Romeo and Juliet he had ever seen) as part of a Shakespeare triple bill including Frederick Ashton's The Dream and Jose Limon's The Moor's Pavane. Nothing has ever come of that project. (McKenzie's commissioned a lot of big budget bombs instead.)

As I posted elsewhere, opportunities to shape the principals roster will present themselves to Susan Jaffe based on the march of time alone: Gillian Murphy is 43. Herman Cornejo turns 41 next week. Misty Copeland turns 40 in September. There's also a whole cohort of principals who are past 35: Isabella Boylston, Thomas Forster, Cory Stearns and James Whiteside. The biggest problem for Jaffe will be one that is peculiar to ABT: The ratio of dancers developed in-house vs. guest stars. This has ever been the bane of ABT's existence as there's a faction within its audience that wants to see talent developed from within and there's another faction that wants to see guest stars from around the world holding forth "in the grand manner" at the Met. Getting that ratio right has always plagued ABT directors. Lucia Chase pursued the guest stars policy in the 1970s and that decade is rightly remembered as ABT's Golden Age. But her policy also caused morale problems at the corps and soloist levels. Mikhail Baryshnikov went in the opposite direction during the 1980s and he promoted talent from with. But there was a not inconsiderable part of the ABT audience that decried the Baryshnikov era with the charge of "There are no stars!" (a charge, by the way, which included Susan Jaffe). Kevin McKenzie did a fine job during the first half of his tenure by utilizing the talent he had inherited from Baryshnikov, going out into the free market and hiring talent, and developing talent from within. The second half of his tenure has been less successful in that regard and this resulted in some fairly serious morale problems at the company during the first half of the 2010s. The secondary problem for Jaffe is what to do about replacing Irina Kolpakova as ballet mistress to the female principals once she is gone. Kolpakova will be 89 this month and, like the Queen of England, she isn't going to last forever. So, Jaffe will have that succession problem to contend with.

This news should come as a relief to the ABT faithful. Jaffe spent her entire performing career at ABT and she knows the company's repertory and ways well. She also held herself to high technical standards during her career so she will be unbendable on that point. The big question will be what she does with the roster she's about to inherit. Angel Corella took over the Pennsylvania (now Philadelphia) Ballet and generated a raft of bad press for himself by dispensing with most of the then-current roster. My guess would be that Jaffe will move slowly and let retirements and departures present opportunities to her to shape the roster. We'll find out soon enough.

With the passage of 37 years, it's easy to forget that Helgi Tomasson's directorship began in 1985 with a nearly complete break from the roster, repertory and performance style established by the preceding directorship (Lew Christensen and Michael Smuin). With the exception of a handful of dancers and the Balanchine repertory, Tomasson discarded most of the rest. Jim Sohm was a dancer under both directorships and he has said that he had to learn a brand new repertory and take on classical technique after Tomasson took over as director. So, based on history, Tamara Rojo may feel she has more freedom to make changes than might seem immediately apparent. [Full disclosure: I'm also a Ballet Alerter.] Due to the pandemic and injury, I don't think Mackay ever established himself deeply within the company. The true people to watch are the principal dancer Joseph Walsh, the ballet master Felipe Diaz, and the school director Patrick Armand, who are all central to the company as it exists presently. Whether they stay or go will give a better indication of how radical the change will be. Freemantle's departure (for whatever reason) is the biggest loss because he's young, came out of the school and is at home equally in the classical, neo-classical and contemporary repertories.

Julian Mackay has posted more about his departure on his Instagram feed. (Sorry - couldn't get the actual Instagram post to imbed properly.)

Since the thread which discussed Tamara Rojo's new position as Artistic Director of the San Francisco Ballet (SFB) is now closed, I thought I would start a new thread on the subject. Two principal dancers - Sarah Van Patten and Ulrik Birkkjaer - have already announced they are leaving. Two more principal dancers - Julian Mackay and Benjamin Freemantle - have announced on Instagram this week that they are leaving, So, even with Isaac Hernandez joining as a principal dancer, SFB will be down three principals by the end of this season. Rojo will certainly have an impact on the roster sooner rather than later.

No revival of Les Noces at its centenary is indeed depressing. The revival in 1966 at the Royal Ballet was such a triumph for Ashton's directorship. I recently bought the catalogue from a 1986 exhibition dedicated to Nijinska by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Just reading the section of the catalogue devoted to listing Nijinska's repertory makes for a sad read. As Lynn Garafola (who has a biography pf Nijinska out this year) noted in a recent interview with Fjord Review: How many ballets did she make in total? About 50, 60. And how many are extant? Two, “Les Noces” and “Les Biches,” in authoritative productions. A few other ballets have been reconstructed, such as “Le Train Bleu” by Frank W. D. Ries and “Bolero” by Irina Nijinska and Nina Youshkevitch for the Oakland Ballet. The “Three Ivans” from the last act of “The Sleeping Princess is also extant.” But that’s about it.

Based on the announced rep, I would say the Paris Opera Ballet doesn't know what it wants to be - a classical company or a contemporary company. There are five contemporary programs (six if you count the Maurice Bejart evening as contemporary) to three programs with a "white tights and tutus" bent: Rudolf Nureyev's Swan Lake, George Balanchine's Ballet Imperial (Balanchine evening) and Harald Lander's Etudes.(Patrick Dupond tribute).

It's not clear from his Instagram post announcing his departure from San Francisco Ballet (SFB) after this season what his exact plans are. He just wrote, "[I]t's time for new adventures." The roster for 2022-23 should be locked in soon in terms of contracts so we'll see if there will be more turnover. My guess would be that this time next year will be more important in terms of who stays and who goes. I think some of it will depend on how much flexibility the SFB board has granted Rojo to "refresh" the roster. The company has had some bad publicity in recent months and I don't know that the board wants a Philadelphia Ballet-style bloodbath on its hands.

Longtime lurker . . . first time poster Sarah Van Patten and Ulrik Birkkjaer have both announced that they will be moving on after this season. So. Rojo will already have opportunities to start shaping the roster in 2022-23.