Miami City Ballet

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With any luck, a member of Team Terpsichore will be in her seat at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach to watch Program 3 of the Miami City Ballet's repertoire by the time this post appears.

Program 3 is a triple bill consisting of:

• George Balanchine's Walpurgisnacht Ballet;
• Christopher Wheeldon's Polyphonia, and 
• Alexei Ratmansky's  The Fairy's Kiss.

Christopher Wheeldon is, of course, English and Polyphonia has been performed at Covent Garden. Walpurgisnacht Ballet was premiered by New York City Ballet in 1980. I have been searching the internet like mad to see whether this piece has ever been performed in England. I can find no evidence that it has. Outside interest in Program 3, therefore, focuses on The Fairy's Kiss which was premiered in Miami on 10 Feb 2017. The New York Times sent the eminent ballet critic Alastair Macauley to Florida for its first performance. In Review: An Old Ballet Is Kissed Into New Life 12 Feb 2017 Mr Macaulay detects weaknesses in the ballet but concludes:

"My guess is that any flaws in “The Fairy’s Kiss” will fade. Already, it proves grippingly imaginative."

Balletomanes in England of a certain vintage will remember Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Le Baiser de la fée which was premiered at the Royal Opera House on 12 April 1960. Svetlana Beriosova, Meriel Evans. Donald MacLeary, Lynn Seymour and Jacqueline Daryl danced in that performance. I can't remember seeing it first time round or when it was re-staged in 1986.  However, I did see an attempt to reconstruct a bit of it in Anna Pavlova's former sitting room by Donald MacLeary for James Hay with the assistance of choreologist Diana Curry on 1 June 2014 (see A Minor Miracle - Bringing Le Baiser de la fée back to Life 2 June 2014.

Miami City Ballet was formed in 1985 with a mission to:

"produce and present the highest level of dance performances throughout Florida, the United States and abroad, train young aspiring dancers, and develop Miami City Ballet School into a leader of dance education."

According to Wikipedia the company has 45 dancers which makes it roughly the same size as Northern Ballet. Its artistic director is Lourdes Lopez who danced with the New York City Ballet.  Miami City Ballet has toured extensively in the USA but appears to have made only two trips here. These were to the Edinburgh Festival in 1994 and 1995.  Its school seems to offer very much the same sort of training to local kids as Northern Ballet Academy offers to our children in Leeds.

Like Northern Ballet Miami City Ballet has Drop-in classes for adult ballet students though it does not seem to cater for the Over 55s unlike Northern Ballet (see Realizing a Dream 12 Sept 2016). Since a lot of people from the North-Eastern seaboard retire in Florida it may be that the Miami City Ballet is missing a trick. North Americans, like us, are living up to 30 years after retirement age nowadays and they need to keep active and busy. A silver swans class could be a nice little earner for the Miami City Ballet.

In the 4 years and a day that this blog has existed, we have posted nearly 900 articles.  We have reviewed performances by the Royal Ballet, the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky, the Dutch National Ballet, the Hungarian National Ballet and the Ballet of the Paris Opera and many other companies but this will be the first time that we will have reviewed a performance by an American classical company in the USA itself. We are very excited about this evening on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ratmansky's Razzmatazz

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Australian Ballet, Cinderella, Coliseum, 23 July 2016, 14:00

I had heard a lot about Alexei Ratmansky but had not actually seen much of his work. I doubted that I had seen any of it at all until Janet McNulty reminded me that Lana Jones and Adam Bull had danced the final pas de deux from Ratmansky's Cinderella at the 45th anniversary gala at The Grand last year (see Sapphire 15 March 2015). In his review of the National Ballet of Canada's Romeo and Juliet at Sadler's Wells (Carrying a Torch for Pure Academic Ballet 22 April 2013 New Your Times) the well kniwn US critic Alistair Macaulay described him as "the most gifted choreographer specializing in classical ballet today."

Ratmansky has created works for the Mariinsky, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Dutch National Ballet New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, The Australian Ballet, the Kiev Ballet and the State Ballet of Georgia but, so far as I can recall, not for any company in this country.  Perhaps we just can't afford him - particularly not in these horizon narrowing and increasingly austere and nasty post-Brexit days. In Working with the Master, one of the notes in the programme, Deborah Jones, mentions his arrival at the Australian Ballet's studios in a Ferrari (or was it a Lamborghini?). Certainly a fabulously expensive motor car obviously chosen to make an impression on the dancers and their management.

This show had everything: ocean liners, express trains, a Citroën Traction Avant prowling the poplar trees of Picardy, bushes that morph into metronomes and the most fabulous costumes with men in what appeared to be tutus representing the planets and the fairy godmother in a bowler hat. There were some breathtaking lifts as well as comic clowning by Cinderella's stepmother and sisters, the narcissistic dancing master (reminding me incongruously of Christopher Marney's dalmatian from Dogs Don't Do Ballet), her wino father and his cronies.  Our emotions were tossed everywhere from outrage as the stepmother and her daughters trashed the portrait of Cinderella's mother to elation as the godmother flashed her image everywhere in the kitchen and hoots after said stepmother and stepsisters made one faux pas after another.

Altogether this was a jolly good show. Perhaps not the best Cinderella.  I've yet to see anything that beats Darius James's for Ballet Cymru (see Ballet Cymru's Cinderella  15 June 2015) though Christopher Hampson (see Scottish Ballet's Cinderella 20 Dec 2015) and Christopher Wheeldon (see Wheeldon's Cindereella  13 July 2015) came close largely, I think, thanks to their leading ladies. Bethany Kingsley-Garner was beautiful in her role and Anna Tsygankova amazing in hers.

In praising those dancers, however, I take nothing away from yesterday's cast. Amber Scott sparkled in her dancing as much as her ballgown under the lights. Ty King-Wall was every inch a prince. Amy Harris was a beguiling stepmother. Last week we saw her as Odile (see The Australian Ballet's Swan Lake - Murphy won me over 17 July 2016). Why was that beautiful young woman cast in the villain's role two weeks running? Last week's Siegfried and Odette, Rudy Hawkes and Robyn Hendricks were planets this week. Ingrid Gow and Eloise Fryer, entertained us as the ridiculous dumpy and skinny sisters. I particularly liked their boxing poses. No messing about with those Sheilas. Jasmin Durham delighted us as the fairy godmother. Great character performances also from Steven Heathcote as Cinders's hapless father and Franco Leo as the prince's doddery retainer.

Everyone involved in this production deserves congratulations. Ratmansky, of course. I can quite see why Macaulay wrote what he did. Jerome Kaplan for his fabulous designs. Rachel Burke for her lighting. Wendell Harrington for the ingenious projections. Perhaps most of all Nicolette Fraillon for the gorgeous music that she delivered so well.  I learned a little bit of ballet etiquette yesterday. When the conductor is a lady it is the premier danseur noble and not the principal ballerina who leads her onto the stage to take her bow.

The Australians have now finished their short season in England. They brought their country's sunshine with them just when our poor, dear country needed it most. I shall miss them. Bon Voyage and come back soon.

Cracking!

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English National Ballet The Nutcracker The Coliseum 11 Dec 2918, 19:30

One of the pleasures of Christmas growing up in Surrey in the nineteen sixties and early seventies was London Festival Ballet's Nutcracker at the Royal Festival Hall. It quickly became part of the London Christmas like the Regent Street illuminations and the Norwegian spruce in Trafalgar Square.  It would appear from Alistair Macaulay's Nutcracker Chronicles in the New York Times when he set out to see 20 versions across the USA in December 2010 that there is a similar tradition elsewhere though not everywhere for Tamara Rojo writes in the programme for English National Ballet's current production that the first time she saw the work was when she was asked to dance in it for Scottish Ballet. The tradition continues though London Festival Ballet has changed its name to English National Ballet and it is now at the Coliseum and not the Festival Hall.

English National's current version of The Nutcracker is by Wayne Eagling and he has made a few changes to Petipa's choreography and Hoffmann's story such as setting it by the Thames rather than somewhere in Mitteleuropa, casting Clara as a grown woman fusing her with The Sugar Plum Fairy and letting the mouse hang on (literally) into the second Act which I am not altogether sure that I like. Turning Clara into an adult in particular takes away some of the innocence and indeed charm of a ballet which for me and many others is about sweets, toy soldiers and rampaging rodents.

Despite those reservations, I thoroughly enjoyed The Nutcracker on the opening night of its Christmas season. It will be at the Coliseum until the 5 Jan 2014.  It is well worth seeing for Daria Klimentova and Vadim Muntagirov's brilliance, for Peter Farmer's designs, for the sparkling Spanish, Arabic and Russian dances and other divertissements in the second Act and the wonderful character artistry by Junor Souza as the Nutcracker and James Streeter as King Mouse. There are some cute touches like a rat in a kilt in Act 1 (which may become a regular feature in English versions if Scotland votes the wrong way in September), using a mousetrap as a catapult and the substitution of a balloon for a sleigh as a transport to the kingdom of sweets and the land of dreams.

In the last 12 months I have seen Northern Ballet's Nutcracker at The Grand in Leeds, Ballet West's in Pitlochry and now English National's at the Coliseum as well as live streaming of the Royal Ballet's version from Covent Garden last year. Nothing like as many as Mr. Macaulay saw in his marathon but still a fair number. Do I have a favourite? Oh please don't ask me that for it is like asking parents to choose between their children. I love them all. I am just so grateful to every dancer who has ever been on the stage for his or her vocation and for sticking at it through years of training and risking injury to bring unadulterated pleasure to millions like me.