Barnett Serchuk - Page 10

Just a quick note to say that the spring season is upon us. Look out for more extensive coverage from Broadwayworld Dance including reviews on New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, NYLA, Nederlands Dans Theater, Apollo Theater, Baryshnikov Dance Center, plus interviews and information about new dance venues.

I recently attended a performance of La Bayadere. The dancing was excellent, but the music by Ludwig Minkus was excruciating. I realize that it has a jump, a bounce, danceable adagio notes, but after three hours of listening to it my head was spinning. I went home intending to wash Minkus out of both my hair and brain by listening to every note that Shostakovich and Prokofiev ever wrote. If I want to hear music, let's not settle for anything less than best and, many times, the brilliant.

MEMORY PRESERVED: GLASS PLATES PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ROYAL CAMBODIAN DANCERS, an exhibit of rare images of five principal women dancers from the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, will be on display in the United States for the first time at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center (Shelby Cullom Davis Museum, Plaza Corridor Gallery). The exhibition runs from today, March 28th to May 11th, 2013.

A just-opened multimedia exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center is a love letter to flamenco in the Big Apple. It features over 150 historical and contemporary prints, photographs, performance programs, album covers, newspaper and magazine articles, books, costumes and performance regalia, oral histories, music, and rarely seen film and video clips chronicling the artistic and personal lives of Spanish dancers who came to New York and the art form they embraced and changed. The exhibit, a collaboration between the LPA and Flamenco Vivo, one of the country's premier flamenco and Spanish dance companies, and its Artistic Director Carlotta Santana, will be on display at the Library's Shelby Cullom Davis Museum, Vincent Astor Gallery until August 3, 2013.

Jane Pritchard, the curator of the dance collection at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, was responsible for much of the success of its 2009 Exhibition, Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. This exhibition, or parts of it, continues to travel around the world. Anyone with an interest in the history of ballet owes it to themselves to get even a small glimpse of what Ms. Pritchard and her colleagues assembled for that magnificent event.

Paul Taylor has always been one of my favorite choreographers. For over half a century he has choreographed works that have entered the repertoires of ballet and modern dance companies around the world. With a mind, spirit and quest to choreograph works not only in the purest Balanchine sense, as it were, but to address issues that confront and confound modern society, he has blazed a path that no other modern choreographer can match. We go with high expectations and are ready to be amazed.

It's always a better place when the Paul Taylor Dance Company comes to New York-a bona fide sign of excellence in the dance world. Not that the program was perfect; I had some reservations about two of the pieces, but overall I couldn't ask for a better place to spend a cold March evening.

MEMORY PRESERVED: GLASS PLATES PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ROYAL CAMBODIAN DANCERS, an exhibit of rare images of five principal women dancers from the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, will be on display in the United States for the first time at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center (Shelby Cullom Davis Museum, Plaza Corridor Gallery). The exhibition runs from March 28th to May 11th, 2013.

Pacific Northwest Ballet is and should always be welcomed in New York. It has a long history with the works of George Balanchine, so what better way to present its opening program than with three classic Balanchine works. Although we have seen these ballets millions of times in New York, what balletomane doesn't like to shop, compare, argue or discuss?

A Month in the Country, considered one of Frederick Ashton's most affecting and beautiful ballets, premiered on February 12, 1976. Based on the late 19th-century play by Ivan Turgenev, the ballet tells the story of the hopeless love of Natalia, the bored wife of a wealthy landowner, for her son's tutor, Alexei, in mid 19th century Russia.

February 2, 1954 marks the 59th anniversary of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker. Wasn't the ballet presented in December? No, you are wrong. It was first unveiled by the New York City Ballet in 1954 for a few performances. It proved so popular that the company presented the ballet for an extended December run in 1954. It's been like that to this day.

Antony Tudor's Jardin aux Lilas (also known by its American title Lilac Garden) was first presented by Ballet Rambert on January 26, 1936 at the Mercury Theatre in London. Set in the Edwardian era to music by Ernest Chausson the ballet depicts the story of a young woman who is engaged to a man she does not love, pitted against her passion for the man she cannot marry.

Maria Tallchief, the first Native American to win acclaim as a prima ballerina, was born on January 24, 1925. While she worked with many companies and choreographers, she is most renowned for her collaboration with George Balanchine, first at the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and then, most importantly and famously, at the New York City Ballet. She was married to Balanchine from 1946 until 1952, when the marriage was annulled. Despite this interruption in their private lives they continued their professional association.

On this date in 1898 Raymonda premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. The production had music by Alexander Glazunov, choreography by Marius Petipa and an all star cast (for its day) that included Pierina Legnani, Sergey Legat, Olga Peobrajenska and Pavel Gerdt.

January 17 marks the anniversary of two famous George Balanchine ballets, Stars and Stripes and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Tanaquil LeClercq was one of Balanchine's most famous ballerinas from the late 1940s until 1956. Unfortunately we don't have much footage of her in full length ballets, so here's one that spotlights her immense gifts not only for dance, but comedy as well.

"Like Emma Livry!" cried Janine Charrat,a French dancer in 1961, as her costume caught fire. She survived, but Livry, one hundred years earlier, had not. So begins "Ballerina," a new book by Deirdre Kelly, who vividly describes the treatment of women in ballet from a historical perspective. Ms. Kelly examines the dance form's roots as an amusement of kings (in France, in the 15th and 16th Century), to today's amusement for anyone who can afford a ticket.

New Year's Day afforded me the opportunity to watch four hit Broadway musicals that had been adapted for the screen: My Fair Lady, Camelot, Funny Girl and Hello Dolly. My Fair Lady and Camelot had a number of things in common: same director, lyricist, composer, leading lady, supporting male actor and, most important for me, the same choreographer: Hanya Holm, the modern dancer from Dresden who came to the United states to open a school and stayed for the rest of her life, dying at the age of 99!.

For nearly four decades (1957-1994), Martha Swope was America's pre-eminent photographer of theater and dance, her discerning eye chronicling hundreds of classical ballets, modern dance, and Broadway performances and performers. But she also went behind-the-scenes, documenting what audiences never get to experience-the creative collaborations that make the magic on stage possible: rehearsals.

Since December 28th was my birthday I looked around for something interesting to write about. And I did. But it happened on December 27, the same day Show Boat opened. But Show Boat opened in 1927 and this one in 1944. It was a musical titled Sing Out Sweet Land. What? Yes, I know that no one remembers it, let alone hearing about it), but after looking at some very impressive credits I saw that Charles Weidman had choreographed the production.