NYPress.com - New York's essential guide to culture, arts, politics, news and more » Dance

Downtown Dance Center to Disappear?

Our Town Downtown — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:04:24 +0000

Dancers Warm Up Photo by Amy Eley

Lower Manhattan’s Dance New Amsterdam in danger of closing

By Amy Eley

On the second floor of Dance New Amsterdam’s downtown studio, a dancer balances his weight on his palms while extending his legs into the air. An arm’s reach away, a woman practices her pirouettes. This studio, often referred to as DNA, is an epicenter of the city’s dance community.

“There is nowhere else in New York City for dancers to have space and time to develop their craft,” said Martha Chapman, chairman of the board. “DNA is an integral linchpin in the community.”

But this linchpin, which has been part of the Manhattan dance scene since 1984, is at risk of becoming loosened from Lower Manhattan’s culture scene within the coming weeks.

The nonprofit organization, at 280 Broadway, lost a major sub-leaser of studio space in the summer months, leaving the organization with a $150,000 rent deficit. The studio has been able to gather $50,000 to pay part of the past due rent, through earned revenue, fundraisers, silent auctions and donations.

Still, Catherine Peila, executive and artistic director of DNA, says the group is in crisis mode to produce the $100,000 difference.

“It’s a working beehive, and everyone is buzzing,” said Peila. “There isn’t a lazy bone in the house.”

Peila is not exaggerating; the studio swarms with activity. It houses six dance studios, a 150-seat theater and approximately 140 classes each week. On a recent evening, a teacher pounded a drum in studio one, providing eight dancers with a tempo as they dipped their torsos to the floor with their hips centered to stretch. The neighboring room teaches Gaga (no relation to the pop star), an Israeli-based choreography. And at the end of the hallway, the sound of handclaps and feet pattering on wood floors fills the air during a flamenco class.

Even local politicians are providing support for the studio, including Julie Menin, former chair of Community Board 1 and a candidate for Manhattan borough president.

“It brings a real support of arts to the area,” said Menin. “People from all over the city come to attend.”

State Sen. Daniel Squadron says the studio is a driving force in downtown’s efforts to recover from 9/11. In June, Squadron helped DNA reach a new lease agreement before the sub-leaser abandoned the nonprofit.

“DNA has been an integral part of Lower Manhattan’s recovery, and critical to our neighborhood’s emergence as one of New York’s burgeoning cultural centers,” said Squadron.

Phone calls to the studio’s landlord were not returned.

The studio’s disappearance will be a loss to the city’s dance culture, eliminating what many in the industry say is an essential stepping-stone for performers on the road to professional dancing, says Peila, the executive director.

For aspiring dancers, the loss of the studio will cut deep. Fresh out of college in 2008, Anna Adams Stark, now 26, began taking dance classes while also getting involved with DNA’s production apprenticeship program that teaches participants the ins and outs of producing a show. As a result, Stark says she has learned skills both on and off the dance floor that have led to paying jobs. After meeting modern dancer Alexandra Beller at DNA, Stark became her rehearsal stage manager.

“Most of my jobs I’ve gotten are through people I’ve met in class or in the hallway at DNA,” said Stark. “It really is a community. People really want to be here. People really want to learn. These are my people.”

Up with Tutus

Jay Nordlinger — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:48:52 +0000

Ballet music—one man’s evolution

The older I get, the smarter, wiser and more talented Verdi becomes. Funny how it works that way. When I was about 15, Verdi was basically a purveyor of corny tunes accompanied by oompah-pah. How had he managed to compose that masterly requiem, amid those silly operas? These days, I stand in awe at almost the least of those operas.

It is similar with the ballet. From a musical point of view, ballet was the bottom of the barrel, as far as I was concerned. Ballet music was the equivalent of tutus: frilly, insubstantial, kind of ridiculous. Romeo and Juliet was a masterpiece, no doubt—but I thought of that as an orchestral work, rather than something to be danced to.

Giselle, in particular, I considered a joke. Its composer, Adolphe Adam, scored a hit with “O Holy Night,” but the ballet was something else: a perfumed sleeping pill. Only later did I realize the joke was on me. Giselle, which has lived since 1841, may live to 2141 and beyond, and rightly so.

These thoughts and memories are occasioned by a visit of the Paris Opera Ballet to the Lincoln Center Festival. Attending Giselle, I appreciated the score anew. It is a piece of “program music,” in a way, helping to tell a story. It has coyness, intimacy, anxiety, pomp, gaiety, pathos and, of course, ethereality. It also has longueurs and mediocrity, to be sure—but the gold compensates for the dross.

The next day, the Parisians performed, among other ballets, a work called Suite en Blanc, whose music is taken from Lalo— Edouard Lalo, whom we know almost exclusively for his violin-and-orchestra piece Symphonie espagnole (and also, maybe, for the overture to his opera Le roi d’Ys). I was glad to get to know this music—new to my repertoire.

One reason for my prejudice against ballet music was that I so often heard it performed badly. Who among us hasn’t snickered at ballet orchestras? They are often the Appalachian League of the orchestral world, the bottom rung. Onstage, you will have surefooted dancers, and, in the pit, you will have clumsy instrumentalists.

Years ago, I asked Valery Gergiev, the conductor, “Why do people make fun of Puccini, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff?” He said, among other things, “You can perform anything in an insipid way. Even Mozart. But then the fault is yours, not the composer’s.” Exactly so. Giselle will be hopelessly la-di-da, if you play it that way.

Doing the honors for the Paris Opera Ballet was the New York City Opera Orchestra, a group that has not had much work lately, given the fortunes and misfortunes of City Opera. At worst, the orchestra played respectably, and, at best, impressively. Boléro’s rhythm was imprecise, which was a shame, because the piece is so dependent on rhythm. But not much harm was done.

Some ballet music, I still contend, is beyond hope. During its recent season here, the American Ballet Theatre put on Le Corsaire, whose score is cobbled together from five composers (including Adam). Act I is like a parody of ballet music, invented by ballet haters. But Swan Lake? Honestly, I could see and hear it once a week. Probably twice.

The CityArts Interview with Baroque Dance Legend Béatrice Massin

City Arts — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:53:49 +0000

By Joel Lobenthal

Béatrice Massin is a specialist in Baroque dance. She was co-choreographer of Lully’s Atys when the opera was presented by Les Arts Florissants at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last fall. She has choreographed for several films and directs her own dance troupe, Compagnie Fêtes Galantes, and school, the Atelier Baroque. She brings her company to Bard College July 6-8 to perform Massin’s work, Let My Joy Remain.

What drew you to baroque dance?
I think two reasons. First, I was a contemporary dancer before. I worked with a lot of people. When I discovered the baroque, I had the sense that music and space were together. The dancers, the dance was showing the space of the music. And the second thing [is] the idea that this dance is not an old dance—that if I was able to really go to the fundamentals, the way to move from the inside, I will find the contemporary dance. And that’s my big project: to show something so clear, not so much connected to the story, with the history, but connected really to the way of moving in the body.

No one was more influential to baroque dance and the genesis of classical ballet than Louis XIV. How was it performing at his old stomping grounds at Versailles?
Of course it was incredible. But for me, it’s more important to perform baroque dance in the streets than in Versailles, because in Versailles we are waiting for this kind of dance. But how to bring it, for example, here in the streets? To have the difference between the buildings, the contemporary way of life, and this dance? How is it possible to bring them together?

It’s interesting that even though the pace of Atys was very slow, the attention level was high at BAM. The audience was able to respond to stately rhythms and tempi. How do you develop that kind of performing capacity in your studio, the Atelier Baroque?
By a way of working with the floor, using the floor, using the idea of the volume of the body. That’s something very important in the baroque period, this idea that the body is not flat but is really a volume, like in sculpture. It has to do with a way to move in the space, bringing out all the volume.

Which creates dynamism also— even in stillness you have a sense of a potential.
Yeah, moving inside.

Which you’re supposed to have in ballet, but you don’t see it a lot today. Perhaps everyone in ballet should spend some time at your school! Maybe they need to go back to the basics.

Read more by Joel Lobenthal at Lobenthal.com

Legendary Russian Dancers Featured In “Treasures Of The Russian Ballet”

City Arts — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 09:38:21 +0000

Bolshoi and Kirov vitality preserved

Legendary Russian dancers show why they are legends in the new DVD Treasures of the Russian Ballet (ICA Classics/Naxos). It contains performances by Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet and (then) Leningrad’s Kirov filmed by the BBC in London from 1956 to 1963, some on stage, some in the television studio.

The longest excerpt in the anthology is Act 1 of Yuri Grigorovich’s The Stone Flower, recorded during the Kirov’s debut London season in the summer of 1961. Yuri Soloviev was 20 and Alla Sizova 21 at the time they were filmed here. But for once we’re privy to young dancers not trying to merchandize their youth, but instead experiencing it. They create a portrait of young love that is irrefutable not only visually but artistically.

Alla Osipenko dances the role of a mythical mountain dweller who bewitches Soloviev’s character. Her role is filled with jumps to suggest ferality and brittle full stops enabling her unsurpassed arabesque to imprint itself. The preserved performance is a fitting birthday tribute to Osipenko, who turned 80 last week.

The Bolshoi’s Raissa Struchkova and Maya Plisetskaya: call them the Life Force ballerinas. Filmed here in excerpts from Cinderella, Struchkova is a quintessential embodiment of the vitality for which the Bolshoi was celebrated. Dancing Kitri in Don Quixote, Plisetskaya transcends soubrette clichés—or is what she’s really doing instead a revelatory distillation of the charm and power of the archetype? Her partner, Vladimir Vasiliev, like Soloviev, and the Bolshoi’s Maris Liepa and Mikhail Lavrovsky, show in this DVD the way they revealed to the world new possibilities for male ballet expression.

Galina Ulanova was a product of the Kirov but was transferred to the Bolshoi at the end of World War II. At 46, Ulanova is quite astonishing in the White Swan adagio from Swan Lake, captured during the company’s debut season in London in 1956. Her performance is technically imperfect by the standards of her day or ours, and yet at any calendar age or historical epoch Ulanova would be the kind of artist about whom quibbles are irrelevant. Every step she takes demonstrates a personal and masterly way of shaping a step, a phrase, a role, a larger metaphor.

Indeed, it’s not possible here to mention, let alone do justice to all the great performances in this collection—let me just say that everything on it is crucial viewing!

Read more by Joel Lobenthal at Lobenthal.com

Natalie Lomonte Keeps Spider-Man in Step

NY Press — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:02:42 +0000

By Angela Barbuti
The first Broadway show Natalie Lomonte ever saw was The Phantom of the Opera. She was visiting New York for the first time with her mother’s dance studio. After purchasing last-minute tickets, they were seated in the 11th row, in the spot where the infamous chandelier comes crashing down on the audience.

This may have been a sign that two decades later, she would be cast in another infamous show, Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark. Now 31, Lomonte has been appointed to dance captain of the spectacle, which celebrated its one-year anniversary on June 14. On Mondays, her day off, she can be found at home on the Upper West Side, working on her computer with a Spider-Man mouse pad. We spoke to her by phone last week.

Since the choreographer is not there all the time, the dance captain is there to make sure the intentions of the choreographer are carried out and the integrity is maintained to the standard it was originally intended. I cover auditions and rehearsals and train new cast members.

How did you get started in dance?
In my bio, I say that I began dancing in the womb, because that’s what my mother tells me. She’s a dance teacher and owned a school in Sugarland, Texas. When she was pregnant, she claims that when she put on a record in class, I would start moving around. She continuously tested me by pulling the needle off the record, and I would always stop.

There has been much media coverage of the accidents that plagued the set. How has that affected the dynamic of the show?
When we started our first three months of previews, there was a feeling in the air that people were coming just in case an accident happened, because they wanted to be there to witness it. It was very surreal.

How is Spider-Man different from other Broadway musicals?
Because it was such an expensive production and Julie Taymor, Bono and Edge were involved, the show was a celebrity itself. I feel like we were on the map before we got started, and a lot of people decided whether they were for or against us from the beginning.

How much interaction does Bono have with the cast?
He works more closely with the creative team. But, as ensemble members, Bono and Edge were present for a few musical rehearsals or when we were putting a new song on stage. Once we opened for previews, they invited us out to dinner.

Which celebrities would you like to see in the lead roles eventually?
Wow, that’s a really good question. [Aside] Who would I like to see in the lead roles if they were to go the celebrity route?

Did you just ask someone for help?
I did! [Laughs] I asked my boyfriend, Christopher Tierney, who is also in the show. Alan Cumming was originally cast as the Green Goblin, which would have been a much different direction. Perhaps our show, being based on the Marvel comic, doesn’t have the same immediate need for a celebrity, as others do, in order to sell tickets.

When you look into the audience, who do you see?
You have the occasional kid with his face painted to look like a Spider-Man mask or my personal favorite, a pajama Spider-Man costume with a built-in muscle suit. We have a lot of little kids waving to us when we are bowing. Because it’s about such an iconic character, we definitely have people there who otherwise wouldn’t be interested in seeing a Broadway musical, from tiny kids to grandparents.

Who are some famous people who have been in the crowd?
Heidi Klum came with her children. Bill Clinton, Jay-Z and Beyoncé, David Ortiz, Al Pacino, Alicia Keyes. A lot of the Yankees.

Did you ever think the show would close?
I always kept the idea that anything could happen. We were working so hard, for so many hours a day, for so long. In the middle of it, when things were really chaotic, if it were to close, I don’t know that any of us would have been completely surprised. But I never felt pessimistic. In my heart, I thought it would succeed. I can’t tell you why exactly, but I felt like we weren’t going through this for nothing.

That’s probably why your show did succeed—because of the cast’s positive outlook.
I do think that has a lot to do with it—the attitudes of the people on stage and even backstage. Everyone in our original cast was just absolutely incredible. It’s a very unique vibe in the group; we’re really lucky. We just stuck with it and made it happen.

Australian Ballet Makes Big Impression in New York City

Susan Reiter — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:27:08 +0000

Fifty years is a milestone definitely worth celebrating, and the Australian Ballet’s anniversary programming includes its first New York performances since 1999. Now led by former principal dancer David McAllister, the company is bringing two new programs of works to its repertory.
The mixed bill, entitled Infinity, includes the latest collaboration with Bangarra Dance Theatre, the prominent indigenous dance company, as well as a sleek 2009 work created for the troupe by the in-demand Wayne McGregor and a retrospective compilation of pas de deux interspersed with video montages.
The weekend program, Graeme Murphy’s 2002 version of Swan Lake, may feature the familiar Tchaikovsky score, but little else about it will resemble any other Swan Lake you’ve seen.
“It seemed like the right time to come back—and with this repertoire that we hadn’t brought to North America but that we’ve taken to a lot of other places,” McAllister said last fall during an interview in an Upper West Side diner.
The upbeat, youthful-looking artistic director, 48, was in town with four leading Australian Ballet dancers who performed Glen Tetley’s Gemini at City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival. That work, often performed by American Ballet Theatre during the 1970s, had been revived for the anniversary season as an example of works created for the Australian company.
The Australian Ballet is truly Australia’s national company, performing regularly in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and other cities. As with many classical troupes, full-length works occupy at least half of the programs, but its mixed bills have been adventurous, and the company has cultivated two resident choreographers: Stanton Welch, now the artistic director of Houston Ballet, and Stephen Baynes.
Both will be represented in Luminous, the anniversary retrospective McAllister has staged for the New York season. Along with excerpts from their ballets, it will incorporate celebrated classical pas de deux from Giselle, Don Quixote and others. “We’re doing a short history of the company in one piece,” McAllister said. “We have a lot of archival material, and I’m working with filmmakers with whom we have a long relationship.”
McGregor is the Royal Ballet’s resident choreographer, whose works have been turning up in many repertories, including that of New York City Ballet. He created Dyad 1929, set to Steve Reich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet, in 2009 when the ballet world was celebrating the centennial of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes as a tribute to the innovative spirit of that legendary enterprise.
The Australian Ballet and Bangarra Dance Theatre have collaborated on four works over the past 15 years, all choreographed by Stephen Page, Bangarra’s artistic director. The combined forces of the two troupes—including all 14 of Bangarra’s dancers—will perform Warumuk—in the dark night, which had its premiere in February.
“It’s the first piece Stephen has done for us where he’s actually drawing from indigenous stories.,” McAllister said. “There’s a whole beautiful series of stories about the night sky—dreaming about what happens during the night.”
David Page, the choreographer’s brother, composed the original orchestral score. (All Australian Ballet performances will feature music performed by the New York City Ballet Orchestra, conducted by music director Nicolette Fraillon.)
Murphy, who created the striking and unusual Swan Lake, is best known here for his decades as director/choreographer for Sydney Dance Company, a contemporary ensemble. But Murphy started out as a classical dancer, spending five years as a member of the Australian Ballet, before veering off in a new direction. Eventually he came full circle and created a Nutcracker for the company in 1992 that has remained in its repertory. His Swan Lake was the first work McAllister commissioned when he became artistic director in 2001.
“I said to the board, ‘Either this will be a big success or I’m going to have the shortest tenure of any artistic director,’” said McAllister. “I knew it was going to be unusual. But I thought the idea was so strong that it would work. It was a big gamble, but it worked.”
This Swan Lake, he asserts “is definitely not Petipa. All of the choreography is new. But it’s all on pointe, and there are still four acts. Graeme worked with the 1877 musical score, so music associated with the “Black Swan’ in Act 3 is now in Act 1. He wanted to make sense of the whole idea of the swans, rather than having this magician who turns a lot of maidens into swans. He wanted the swans to actually be believable.”
According to the synopsis, Odette is a young maiden whom Prince Siegfried marries only to lose him to the Baroness, a rival who combines elements of both Von Rothbart and Odile. The fragile Odette, confined to a sanatorium where she “could only find escape in a frozen dream where swan-like maidens, much like herself, would calm her fevered mind and where, for a brief time, it seemed as if Siegfried loved her alone.” McAllister suggests that “the swans are basically facets of her personality.”
He’s clearly putting this production front and center as his company’s calling card—a distinctly Australian spin on a classic, and a chance for the Australian Ballet to present New York audiences something that is uniquely its own.

Australian Ballet
June 12-13: Infinity, mixed bill; June 15-17, Swan Lake; David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, davidhkochtheater.com/events.html; times vary, $29+.

Two Choreographers Come Together at Joyce

Susan Reiter — Thu, 31 May 2012 18:02:21 +0000

If you’re a freelance choreographer, you go where the work is. For Peter Quanz, that has meant trips to Cuba, Siberia and Hong Kong. Jodie Gates’ choreographic assignments have taken her to Berlin and many U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C., Denver and Philadelphia. Both have found a home base from which to coordinate and balance their travels, and this weekend, both are getting a brief but significant New York showcase for their recent works.
The enterprising Gotham Dance Festival has paired these two choreographers for a Joyce Theater program that gives three different companies a chance to be seen by local audiences. Quanz’s Q Dance is affiliated with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB), performing programs of his choreography in between seasons by the main company. Q Dance will offer two of his recent works: Luminous, to music by Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich, and In Tandem, to Steve Reich’s Double Sextet. Gates’ half of the program will feature her two most recent works: Embellish, performed by Colorado Ballet, and Delicate Balance, performed by the Philadelphia-based BalletX.
In separate phone interviews, the two choreographers spoke admiringly of each other and the process of planning the program; they look forward to finally meeting at the Joyce this week. Quanz spoke from Winnipeg, his home base since he formed Q Dance in 2010, while Gates was in her office at University of California at Irvine, where she is a professor in the dance department. She also founded and directs the annual Laguna Dance Festival.
Both have been increasingly busy choreographing over the past decade, but most of their work is seen outside of New York. Quanz did create Kaleidoscope for American Ballet Theatre’s 2005 City Center season, and In Tandem was made for the Guggenheim’s Works & Process series in 2009. Gates’ work has been seen here in the repertory of ABT II and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet.
Quanz, a Canadian in his early thirties, trained at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, where he began choreographing very early, and danced with Stuttgart Ballet. But he always knew choreography was his passion, and it has been his focus since 2002.
He has made works for such eminent companies as the Kirov Ballet and National Ballet of Cuba, and last year made a full-evening work for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. But with Q Dance, which makes its New York debut with these performances, he has established something special.
“Q dance is basically a lab for me to develop repertory that may or may not enter the RWB repertory,” he explained.
When he graduated from the Winnipeg school in 1999, he didn’t expect the city to become so central to his creative life. But after earlier choreography for the company, he developed an association that led to this unique arrangement, an opportunity to work with up to 25 Winnipeg Ballet dancers and cultivate an ongoing connection, rather than the fly-by-night experiences he has as a guest choreographer.
“Having this really intimate knowledge of this group of people allows me to go into material in a far deeper way than I ever could as a guest,” he said. “I have grown tremendously from this company, from this group of dancers—and I really believe in them.”
In Tandem was made with RWB dancers, and four of the original six will perform it here. Having created it for the intimate, uniquely shaped theater at the Guggenheim, Quanz has since developed and adapted it further. He also staged it for a program of his work by a Siberian company that performed it on the Bolshoi stage.
Quanz’s Luminous, a work for eight dancers made for the Hong Kong Ballet, takes its inspiration from Mozetich’s “very emotional” music and a quote from Michael Onddatje’s The English Patient. “Each dancer has two duets with different partners. I’m trying to show how each partner brings out different qualities of those dancers,” he said.
Gates’ two works showcase contrasting sides of her choreography. A leading dancer with the Joffrey Ballet from 1983 to 1995, she went on to perform with Pennsylvania Ballet and Frankfurt Ballet before leaving the stage in 2004, so her work incorporates many varied influences.
“For BalletX—a wonderful company with well-rounded dancers—I made a very contemporary work for all 10 company members to scores by various contemporary composers,” she said. “The Colorado Ballet piece, for 12 dancers, is more neoclassical: on point and utilizing the ballet idiom. I had never choreographed to Mozart, and I chose selections from a variety of his scores. The ballet is whimsical; I had a wonderful time playing with classicism.”
In these two complimentary recent works, Gates feels she’s found her own choreographic voice. “Yes, I’ve been influenced by many great master dance makers whose works I performed. But I think these works really represent more distinctively who I am.”

Peter Quanz & Jodie Gates
June 2, 8 p.m. & June 3, 2 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave. (at 19th St.), www.joyce.org; $10–$39.

Boylston Lands her ‘Dream Role’ Dancing in ‘Swan Lake’

Susan Reiter — Tue, 22 May 2012 22:14:59 +0000

This is Isabella Boylston’s big bird season. The engaging American Ballet Theatre soloist, who has been injecting a vibrant personality and crisp virtuosity into her roles since joining the company in 2007, is taking on two big new assignments: those iconic ballet birds, the Swan Queen and the Firebird. She makes her debut as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake on June 27 and will dance the title character in Alexei Ratmansky’s eagerly anticipated new version of The Firebird June 13 and 22.
The Idaho native has plenty more to keep her busy: this week, she performs the demanding role of Gamzatti in La Bayadère (a New York debut), and next week reprises her impressively personable and confident performance as the Ballerina in Ratmansky’s Bright Stream, a work brimming with humor and warmth.
Choreographers creating works for ABT have tended to cast Boylston in their premieres; last year she was in the cast of both Christopher Wheeldon’s 13 Diversions (which returns this season) and Ratmansky’s Dumbarton. But having proven herself as a very contemporary ballerina, responsive to a choreographer’s vision, she is gradually taking on the more tried and true roles that are the barometers by which ballerinas are evaluated and compared.
Recently, she was rehearsing the opening scene of Swan Lake’s famous second act, in which Prince Siegfried, weary of the social pressures of castle life, escapes into nature to hunt and encounters Odette, a maiden trapped by an evil sorcerer’s spell. Both Boylston and fellow soloist Daniil Simkin will be making debuts in the ballet, and as they worked under the watchful eye of ballet master Clinton Luckett, all illusion of ease vanished.
There was frequent pausing to gasp for breath between attempts, and intricate parsing of minute details. “I can’t find those arabesques,” Boylston said plaintively at one point. “They’re better than yesterday,” Luckett offered by way of encouragement, adding, “Those are two of the hardest steps in the repertory.”
Shortly after rehearsal, Boylston sat down for an interview in ABT’s conference room, plopping her powder-blue practice tutu on the table. She recalled that when she learned last fall that she’d be dancing Swan Lake, “I was overwhelmed. It’s my dream role. I feel like out of the classical ballets, it’s what I would be most suited to. I think at my core I’m more of a lyrical dancer, but lately I seem to have found more strength in my technique, so I’ve been given a lot of technically challenging roles.”
She has performed the famous third-act bravura pas de deux on its own before, but learning the entire ballet has been a consuming process. She has watched many videos of different versions and interpretations of the ballet.
“Now I’m trying to leave that and just go be Odette. There are still so many sections that I’m really unhappy with, so I have a lot of work. With Swan Lake, there’s a lot of freedom, because there are so many different interpretations.
“It’s amazing when you see a dancer and they’re able to really do the choreography and make it look spontaneous—like it was just created for them. To me, that’s the goal. So many people have done so many ballets so well, but I want to try to make every role that I do my own,” she said.
She has that chance as one of the three ballerinas Ratmansky chose to interpret the title role of his new version of The Firebird. The ballet had, in essence, a February out-of-town tryout in Orange County, Calif., and Ratmansky has continued to develop the production in the intervening months. From the start, Boylston said, he worked equally with all three Firebirds (Natalia Osipova and Misty Copeland also perform the role), allowing each to find her own interpretations.
“He didn’t want to pigeonhole anyone; he seemed to like how different each of us was from the other and wanted to draw out our unique qualities, rather than make us all conform to one idea. The Firebird is a wild exotic creature, really powerful, like a force of nature, as well as mysterious. I really want her variations to be physically and dynamically, and musically, quite brilliant—to have a lot of clarity as well as freedom. In my first performance, it came together in a way it never had in rehearsal. So I was very relieved. But I’m still finding the role—and he’s still developing it.”
Working with Ratmansky, ABT’s artist in residence since 2009, has been particularly challenging and stimulating for Boylston. They developed a positive rapport while he was creating his 2010 Nutcracker for the company. “He seemed to really push me. I feel like Alexei really brought a lot out of me that I hadn’t tapped into before.
“I always feel that when I’m in the studio with him, I really bring my A game. I feel comfortable, but never relaxed. With him, more than anywhere else, I feel I’m really pushing myself and trying my best to produce his vision, because I really believe in it.”
The season promises to showcase many aspects of Boylston’s talent, as she takes the stage in both iconic 19th-century roles and bracingly contemporary ones. “I’m loving all the opportunities that I’m getting and the variety of it,” she said happily. “I feel very lucky not to be pigeonholed into classical or contemporary; they seem to find me suitable for both, so I’m really happy about that. I would feel incomplete doing only one or the other.”

American Ballet Theatre
Through July 7, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, www.abt.org; times

Company Highlights Choreographers Who Are Less Well Known

Susan Reiter — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:39:03 +0000

Visiting companies coming to town often offer programs featuring what might be termed the usual suspects—works by the same few choreographers tend to appear in many repertories. But one of the youngest local troupes, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, is also one of the most individual in its point of view and repertory choices.
In particular, its artistic director, Benoit-Swan Pouffer, has his finger on the pulse of contemporary European choreography, and regularly invites up-and-comers from the continent to work with the 16 versatile Cedar Lake dancers, who seem to be ready for any stylistic and technical challenge.
The two programs that Cedar Lake is bringing to the Joyce Theater through May 27 feature works by choreographers from Sweden, Canada, France, Israel, Norway and The Netherlands. Except for Angelin Preljocaj’s 1995 Annonciation, which Cedar Lake first performed in 2008, the repertory consists entirely of new works created specifically for the company. Four are New York premieres and one is a world premiere.
Asked whether he intentionally avoids American choreographers, Pouffer (who was born and trained in France before dancing with the Alvin Ailey company for seven years) said, “I try to bring an awareness to a body of work by choreographers who don’t have a chance to come, to create work for another company or to bring their own company to America. Cedar Lake is the vehicle for those choreographers to show their work.”
Speaking at the company’s spacious studios and offices in Chelsea, which also includes a 199-seat theater, Pouffer continued, “Cedar Lake is not just a ‘European’ company. But because I’m European and I have a lot of ties to Europe, it made sense for me to start there.
“For these past seven years I’ve been trying to find choreographers I really feel are relevant—and I wanted to find something that we don’t see so much in the States. I felt it was important to bring these choreographers to work with the Cedar Lake dancers. Now if I can find an American choreographer—a New York choreographer—I’m very open.”
His focus is on making a serious commitment to choreographers, giving each an unusually generous eight or nine weeks to create a work. In most cases, he will first invite a choreographer to restage—or adapt—an earlier piece, then, once the dancers have a certain familiarity with their style and approach, have them create a premiere.
That has been the case with most of the choreographers whose new works will be seen at the Joyce. Alexander Ekman, Crystal Pite, Hofesh Schechter and Jo Strømgren have all worked with Cedar Lake at least once already.
In making his choices, Pouffer explained, he considers the existing repertory, then looks for “what will complement or contrast the work. It’s very important to see what I already have, so I can build a program. I contact a choreographer maybe two years in advance, and we start talking about the needs of the company. I also send them tapes of the current repertoire, so they have an idea of what they’re going to be with.
“I don’t give them an assignment; it’s more a conversation between them and me to see where they are artistically and what they want to create. I try to be really aware of their work—point out what I like and why, why it will help our company to have a piece that brings this type of energy.”
The Oslo-based Strømgren, whose Necessity, Again will have its world premiere on next week’s program, first worked with Cedar Lake in 2007. “What I like about Jo is his sense of theatricality. He has a sense of dry humor that I love,” Pouffer said.
“He’s a theater director as well as a choreographer; he has his own theater company, which is very influenced by movement. Because we, as a group, had such a good experience with his first piece, I felt it made sense to invite him again,” he continued.
Cedar Lake’s dancers are employed 48 weeks a year, and the company tours 15 weeks a year. Pouffer looks for dancers who are “eclectic and open”; for the women “it is a requirement that they have a true understanding of pointe technique.” This season’s rep includes one work, by Dutch choreographer (and Cedar Lake first-timer) Regina van Berkel, in which the women dance in pointe shoes. (In others, they may be barefoot or in socks.)
This is Cedar Lake’s third Joyce season in under three years, so they’re clearly establishing a regular local presence, even while keeping busy all over; they have an ongoing residency in Los Angeles and upcoming performances at the Spoleto and Montpelier Festivals. Still, there was intense expectancy as the company runs prepared for the Joyce. “A New York season means a lot—it’s home. The dancers are so excited. They always say they want to perform more in New York.”

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
May 15–27, Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave. (at 19th St.), www.joyce.org; $10+.

Company Highlights Choreographers Who Are Less Well Known

Susan Reiter — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:21:19 +0000

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
May 15–27, Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave. (at 19th St.), www.joyce.org; $10+.