Vail International Dance Festival

[toursenlair]

Just in case the Vail Festival isn't well known on your side of the pond, I thought I'd share these videos with you. I've just come back from my first trip to Vail (more famous as an upscale ski resort in Colorado) and I completely fell in love with the whole experience.

https://youtu.be/ce0YxtyZIGM 

 

 

https://youtu.be/hVliLqtaUGE 

 

 

https://youtu.be/gLakBprQMZ4 

 

VIDF has remarkably eclectic programming, thanks to its Artistic Director, former New York City Ballet star Damian Woetzel. Memphis jookin rubs shoulders with Romeo and Juliet, 19th century Romanticism meets Alvin Ailey's Revelation, and that one-man versatility machine, Balanchine, is represented in all his guises: black and white, tutu, classical virtuosity, beautiful lyricism, Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky to Gershwin to Sousa. Speaking of versatility, I am convinced that NYCB's Tiler Peck can do ANYTHING and make it look stunningly gorgeous. She took my breath away in both the Midsummer Night's Dream excerpt and in Who Cares? 

 

I've written more about it on my blog.

 

 

[toursenlair]

and here's a nice video of everyone slaying a petit allegro in spite of the altitude:

https://instagram.com/p/6B4Wy8p5Gb/?taken-by=saramearns

[Bruce Wall]

Just in case the Vail Festival isn't well known on your side of the pond, I thought I'd share these videos with you. I've just come back from my first trip to Vail (more famous as an upscale ski resort in Colorado) and I completely fell in love with the whole experience.

https://youtu.be/ce0YxtyZIGM

 

 

https://youtu.be/hVliLqtaUGE

 

 

https://youtu.be/gLakBprQMZ4

 

VIDF has remarkably eclectic programming, thanks to its Artistic Director, former New York City Ballet star Damian Woetzel. Memphis jookin rubs shoulders with Romeo and Juliet, 19th century Romanticism meets Alvin Ailey's Revelation, and that one-man versatility machine, Balanchine, is represented in all his guises: black and white, tutu, classical virtuosity, beautiful lyricism, Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky to Gershwin to Sousa. Speaking of versatility, I am convinced that NYCB's Tiler Peck can do ANYTHING and make it look stunningly gorgeous. She took my breath away in both the Midsummer Night's Dream excerpt and in Who Cares? 

 

I've written more about it on my blog.

 

Bless you for this, Katherine.  I am a huge Tiler Peck fan as well.  Sadly we don't get to see much of her in the UK but I am so very much looking forward to those three weeks in Paris next year.  Moreover, I think that Damien Woetzel is surely one of the most visionary leaders in world dance today.  He knows from where he speaks of course ... and has been so very institutional in bringing so many different dance elements together in a vitally creative fashion and certainly has manfully stretched the strengths of so many of the world's most brilliant dancers (including a goodly few from the UK).  As ever, Woetzel has more than delivered on his promise.  That can but be to the benefit of us all.    

[Bruce Wall]

and here's a nice video of everyone slaying a petit allegro in spite of the altitude:

https://instagram.com/p/6B4Wy8p5Gb/?taken-by=saramearns

 

So lovely to see Joseph Gordon (who's in the NYCB corps) in that clip just behind Herman Cornejo (who'll be appearing in the role he originated in Cheri in the Linbury opening on 29.9).  You can see that the Danish/Stanley Williams influence is still as strong as ever with the NYCB dancers.  It was great also to see Gordon step up to lofty bat in the Tschai Pas with M. Copeland in that clip from the Vail Festival's Balanchine evening as well as being one of the three chaps in the concert version (the one known here) of Who Cares.  (The other two being Cornejo and Tyler Angle who seems to have taken on the mantle of Jock Soto's partnering prowess.    The ever radiant Tiler Peck brought a newly chic nobility to that stunning variation we saw her do in that WC clip ... Bless you, Katherine.)  I think Gordon will go far.  He was wonderful in the second movement of Justin Peck's Rodeo last year.  I very much hope London might have a chance to see him in something at some point during what I'm sure will be a long career.  

Edited August 13, 2015 by Bruce Wall