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.

An American View of the London Nutcrackers

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I have not been to any of the productions of The Nutcracker that I previewed in The Good Nutcracker Guide 31 Oct 2016 other than the live screening on 8 Dec 2016 (see The Royal Ballet's Nutcracker in the Merrie City 14 Dec 2016) but Roslyn Sulcas of the New York Times has and she does not seem to have been too impressed (see Roslyn Sulcas London Nutcrackers Defy Logic, and Still Delight 28 Dec 2016 NY Times).

She begins her article with the observation:

"LONDON — It hasn’t always been an inevitable truth here that 'The Nutcracker' plays during the holiday season. But things seem to be changing, perhaps influenced by the belt-tightening in British arts funding and the moneymaking powers of this ballet: For the past few years, the English National Ballet and the Royal Ballet have both had long December-into-January runs of 'The Nutcracker.'”

After summarizing the traditional scenario derived from Hoffmann's tale of The Nutcracker and the Mouseking she discusses the way the story has been adapted by different choreographers in the past. She observes:

"The English National Ballet and Royal Ballet versions are no exception to the choreographic desire to mess about, even if they do keep the period setting of a prosperous 19th-century German household and the basic structure of the plot."

She is particularly critical of Sir Peter Wright's version which is said to reconstruct parts of Petipa's scenario and Ivanov's choreography:

"But Petipa certainly never imagined an incomprehensible back-story for the ballet that involves Drosselmeyer’s nephew, Hans-Peter, being turned into the Nutcracker doll by a wicked Mouse Queen as punishment for his uncle’s invention of a mousetrap that has killed off half the rodent population. (Yes, read that again. I always have to.)"

Unless you have read this is the £7 programme (it is a long time since I last visited the USA so things may have changed but on all previous visits to the theatre in that country programmes were included in the ticket price), Ms Sulcas points out, you are unlikely to understand

"why Drosselmeyer is gazing longingly at a portrait of a young man in his study, or whether the perky ginger-haired assistant has anything to do with this (she does not), or that Drosselmeyer gives the Nutcracker doll to Clara in order to free his nephew from his wooden imprisonment. What’s more, the breaking of the spell needs the love of a young girl as well as the Mouse King’s defeat. Why the king, then, if the queen had cast the spell?"

Now that the critic mentions it, I did wonder whar was going on when I saw the opening and closing scenes of the ballet in the cinema.  She concludes:

"Drosselmeyer’s reunion with his nephew ends the ballet; we haven’t lived through a child’s magical dream, but an adult soap opera."

She concedes that she may be griping - and if and to the extent that she is I have every sympathy because I don't like change for change's sake either. However, I don't think Sir Peter Wright is the worst culprit by a long chalk. I have seen far worse, believe me.  Ms Sulcas notes with a hint of exasperation that "London audiences and the British dance critics love Mr. Wright’s (sic) version."  Maybe it is a case of faute de mieux.  I should love to know what she makes of shillelagh-wielding wilis or bikes in Swan Lake.

Ms Sulcas is a little kinder to Wayne Eagling's version for English National Ballet. She says that "under Ms. Rojo, the English National Ballet seems to be improving from production to production". But not even that production escapes criticism:

"The Mouse King (a valiant James Streeter on Thursday) just can’t be killed, which rather obviates the reward trip to the land of sweets, and he doesn’t stop popping up in Act 2 until he is — with a strange lack of theatricality — put to rest offstage."

Ooh! That irritates me too.  The Bolshoi is just as bad in that regard by the way (see  Clara grows up- Grigorovich's Nutcracker transmitted directly from Moscow 21 Dec 2014). Ms Sulcas does not seem to like Clara's morphing into the Sugar Plum:

"And then there is the fact that Clara is a child in Act 1, but changes into an adult dancer (the wonderful Alina Cojocaru) halfway through; and Drosselmeyer’s nephew (Cesar Corrales, a new star) and the Nutcracker (James Forbat) incomprehensibly keep switching places as they partner her."

That's another thing that the Bolshoi does and I don't like it either.

Next Christmas it may be worth Ms Sulcas's while taking a trip to Edinburgh to see Scottish Ballet perform Peter Darrell's version of The Nutcracker for that's a real treat (see Like meeting an old friend after so many years 4 Jan 2015).

Ballet as a Brand? How to bring More Money into Dance for Companies and Dancers

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On 20 Nov 2013 The New York Times published an article by Michael Cooper and Roslyn Sulcas entitled "Ballet Dancers as Brands". The opening sentence was as follows

"A wave of international ballet stars are increasingly leaping from company to company, creating their own brands and becoming more like world-traveling conductors and opera stars."

Alina Cojocaru was quoted as saying:

"Ballet careers are relatively short and require years of training that pose the risk of injury, yet the world’s top dancers earn far less money than their counterparts elsewhere in show business."

Less money? Well according to Cooper and Sulcas only three dancers at American Ballet Theatre earned more than US$190,000 and  the étoiles at the Paris Opera earn on average, around US$125,000 a year. Now bearing in mind how long it takes to become a principal and how few dancers actually reach the top that is not a lot of money. It may allow a reasonably comfortable standard of living for a few years while the dancer is at the peak of his or her career but it does not allow him or her to plan, save and invest for a comfortable retirement or other priorities like private education for his or her children.

What to do about it? Well I don't think dancers can expect very much more from  their companies. The arts in the United Kingdom at any rate rely on grants, ticket receipts and corporate and individual sponsorship for their income. Can that be increased? A bit perhaps but not by much.  There is a limit to what the public will pay whether as taxpayer or theatre goer. Especially in hard times.

So is there anything else that can be done? Well perhaps. As the Bailey's Nutcracker commercial showed last Christmas ballet can sell. Maybe advertising, merchandising and endorsement. A few companies are already making a little extra money from advertising. The Royal Opera House shop offers a wide range of merchandise bearing the Royal Ballet name and crest such as books, calendars, greeting cards, t-shirts and videos. Other companies sell t-shirts. A website called Balletgifts, which appears to be based in New Cross. markets various items of clothing and other merchandise for the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky. Many companies hire out rooms in their studios or their orchestras. Most also have schemes by which businesses and individuals can become friends or patrons of a company or sponsor individual productions or dancers.

What about individual dancers? A few superstars like Carlos Acosta and Darcey Bussell have websites through which they market branded merchandise. Acosta offers clothing and posters and advertises his book with links to Amazon and Waterstones. Bussell markets a range of children's dancewear, books and games and DVDs from her site. But not every principal of the Royal Ballet does that and a few do not even have websites or social media accounts. I think more could be done in that regard by other dancers because many ballet goers are loyal almost to the point of obsession referring to artists whom they hardly know and in most cases have never met or are ever likely to meet by their first names. Ballet tickets are not cheap yet some fans see the same work albeit with different casts in the same season. Moreover the audience for ballet and thus the fan base will expand massively with HDTV broadcasts to cinemas around the world.

If companies or dancers want to exploit such goodwill they have to protect and manage it in the way that sports stars and indeed other entertainers do. Company names and indeed the names of individual dancers are valuable assets and should be protected by trade mark registration. Last night I made a number of searches on the Intellectual Property Office databases and was surprised to find that not every major company in the United Kingdom let alone every dancer had registered their names and logos as trade marks. They really do need good advice on IP and licensing strategy and no doubt tax planning and pension advice as well.  If there is sufficient interest from dancers and their companies to discuss these issues I would be very happy to organize one and speak for free as my gift to those who have given me so much pleasure in the past.