A YEAR AT THE BALLET

By Steven Woodruff

It’s been just over a year since I started writing reviews of concert dance and classical music performances.  It seems worth it, after fifty pieces, to look back at the year and comment on what has happened.  The title is a little misleading.  While I wrote about many performances of companies performing both classical and contemporary ballet there were also reviews of contemporary, modern, theater dance, street dance companies and chamber music. The first performance I reviewed, Method Contemporary Dance was beginning a weekend of performances for an evening length piece then see if you still love us. They are exponents of a technique you could call hyper dance which causes the dancers to buckle and crash to the ground unexpectedly, sometimes after soaring, risky jumps which can be a shock.  It can be audibly and visibly punishing. I was reluctant to write the story but having just lost a long standing teaching position I needed to think about moving on. I’m sure I was also feeling a little nervous about thinking in public.  The Los Angeles Times, which had become a pretty rotten newspaper after having been, for a while, just a miserable newspaper, had ceased coverage of all local dance companies as part of its arts beat. If you went by what appeared in the paper you could convince yourself that there was no dance in Los Angeles which is of course not true. Even smaller companies on the  New York dance scene are covered by the New York Times so I convinced myself that, at least for a time, I was supplying a community service. Over time, many of the local companies were very appreciative. I still continue to cover them.

The Method Contemporary Dance   performance was in a black box theater that had a bar and a performance stage in the lobby for presenting indie bands. It is in a gritty, downtown industrial sort of place in a neighborhood of torn up streets ( the streets  are still torn up more than a year later) , corner bars with an early morning stumble home kind of crowd and Central American, storefront  Pentecostal churches. I briefly mentioned those things in the review, because it seemed to fit in with the kind of rough and ready dance on the program. Most recently I sat in some excellent seats in Orange County at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts to see two performances of the Royal Danish Ballet. One of the programs was Nikolaj Hubbe’s   up dated production of Napoli. I have reviewed many programs in that theater and the publicist has always made two excellent seats available. For Napoli the tickets were in the one hundred twenty dollar range.  The theater complex and grounds are perfectly kept and there is a towering, rusted bent steel sculpture by Richard Serra installed on the plaza. Sitting behind me, one of the series patrons said to a friend, “I’ve been in this seat for twenty years”.  The two concerts represent something of an arc I suppose:  one, a down and dirty venue in a blighted, urban neighborhood, watching the new wave  of Los Angeles dance, and the other, the best seat in the house watching big time ballet, among those who own their place in the hall like burghers with a prime piece of real estate.

I have thought often about what ought to be in a review and how to accomplish that without making it seem too formulaic. There ought to be also some room to go out on a limb from time to time.  It’s better to keep that thinking vague. I find many ask me following a performance if I liked it, as if somehow it might provide a clue to their own enjoyment. I think this is the least relevant piece of information. Lots of people come to the theater and they all are capable of deciding whether they liked something or not. I look at a review like a news story. That’s why it’s in the newspaper. Mostly it should say something relevant concerning what happened at the performance. Additions through context and comparisons are fine as long as they don’t devolve into a history lesson.  Mostly, it ought to give the reader a taste of what it was like being there, which includes commenting on the choreography, lighting, costumes and sets, and of course the dancers themselves. The music is as important as the dance elements. The New York Times dance critic, Alastair Macaulay frequently goes on for paragraphs before there is any mention of anything specifically related to that evening’s performance.  You feel as though he is auditioning chapters for a book rather than writing a review. From him we learn about things that happened thirty five years ago in another country and how swell those times were. We may also hear about the shabby condition of the soloists compared to five seasons ago or before so and so retired but little about what happened today, except that he is unhappy about it. He writes intelligently of course but I imagine those reading along who suddenly grow weary of all the balletomane jabber and the disappointments.  A recent review of The Sleeping Beauty (ABT)  covered  only the two pairs of star soloists. What of the other fifty dancers on stage?  What of the orchestra? So much writing, so much left out.

I think reviews are mostly for those who were not there rather than those who were. For those absent, it’s a way to be present, maybe an inducement to show up at a performance sometime soon, or to learn what’s going on with local and touring companies. Learning about new choreography is also a good reason to have some kind of a reporter present.  I avoid being snarky as this helps no one and serves only to make the reviewer seem evil hearted.  There was recently a review of this sort by Claudia La Rocca covering ABT’s Lady of the Camellias. The insults rolled on like a swelling tide. In the end, La Rocco looked as bad as the dancers, choreographers, and directors she was raking over the coals.   

 I did write one highly critical review. It’s not my general style but the concert was truly a misery, mostly due to hopelessly amateurish production values and slapdash choreography.  During the day that I lived with the piece, I kept whittling out damaging lines and finally removed one more after I had sent it off to the publisher. I had, in the end, a very short review.  I ended up retaining  a comment about the dancers leaving the stage offhandedly at the conclusion of one piece saying  it looked like they were hustling themselves off to another more important gig.  I left it in because it seemed the best explanation of what happened in a very diffidently performed piece of choreography. There were three  works (out of ten) on that program that had value and I commented on them  at length in order to make up for the deletions and to soften the blow. The company complained bitterly to the publisher and asked to have the article taken down. Someone told me people don’t want to read critical reviews about poor performances so eventually I permitted them to delete it. I’m sorry I did because there was some good writing in it about one piece, Three Gershwin Songs, choreographed by Mark Morris and danced by a former company member. It was atypical of the evening.  Eventually I reposted it on my blog.  Shortly after that, a woman had remarked to me how she just hated it when reviewers picked things apart. That is also instructive because at any given concert there are many more people who are not experts than those who are. What of them?  Somehow they deserve to be reached, and with a gentle hand. This is not easy to do.  

The review that I wrote for State Street Ballet’s performance of Appalachian Spring was more emotionally involving than most. The new setting by William Soleau was based on the music from the suite. The chamber version is not licensed for any dance company other than Graham’s. There were some important links for me with that performance. As a kid, the Copland recordings by The New York Philharmonic were my favorites and much later I had a chance to play that music with a conductor I liked very much. The other was dancing in a short, original vignette of Appalachian Spring with a choreographer who himself had danced and studied with Graham in the 50s. William Soleau’s choreography was generous, open hearted and captured the American spirit of the piece with understandable movement you could believe in. He used just once, a memorable movement from Graham’s original ballet, a slowly falling, outstretched arm.  It was risky business to take on an iconic piece of music with so much dance history attached to it. Soleau made it a different kind of pioneer story but one that kept comparisons at arm’s length, while still embracing family, community and the independent spirit of a central couple poised to strike out on their own. The Santa Barbara Symphony supplied great music for that performance with excellent tempos and a glowing sound.  All the elements spoke deeply to me and as an American expression it felt good to be able to embrace it and acknowledge the reverberations that Copland and Graham set in motion nearly seventy years ago.

There were some funny things that happened during the year. When Kenneth Copper came to the Colburn School to put together a concert of all the Brandenburg Concertos with students at the conservatory I decided I would come to the rehearsals and listen as the pieces took shape. During one of my interviews with Cooper he said, ”I don’t see why there are concert reviews in the first place”.  He is the kind of guy who can say something like that and not offend you. He is in the habit of saying surprising things in general. He reckons, for instance, that Bach is really twentieth century music because the current, collective memory of Bach’s compositions are all due to recorded performances that begin with the era of the LP. He made use of a good line tuning up the orchestra one afternoon saying, “Let’s tune to the New York a. You all know the New York a, right.”  Silence, and finally Cooper says, “439”. It’s not the joke, but knowing when to use it that counts. Musicians are all about timing.  After he told me that he thought reviews were for the birds he handed me a copy of his excellent recording of The Goldberg Variations. I listen to it a lot, mostly very late at night.

Hubbard Street Dance Theatre performed works from their Euro Zone inspired repertory in concerts at the Ahmanson Theatre. It seemed odd to me then and still does, that a company from Chicago with its tent pitched out there in Sandburg’s city should be so obsessed with presenting European work.  Sitting in front of me was a row of twenty something dancers who had come as a group.  I got the feeling they were having a tough time with the choreography. At one point one of the girls leaned toward a friend of hers and said, “Tell me again why these guys are so good”.  It was a good question, aptly put, and in the end, I too found the evening a little disappointing.

At one performance at Segerstrom Hall an older woman noticed me writing. She finally asked me if I was writing down all the steps. It never occurred to me that anyone would ask such a question. I looked at her seriously and said,” Yes, every single one of them.” But then I smiled and told her I was writing a story about the show that would be published on line.

“Aren’t they simply marvelous”, she said.

“They have some excellent dancers”, I replied.

 “I’m glad you’re giving them a good write-up, they deserve it”, she concluded.

I had the good fortune of seeing an installment of the Merce Cunningham Legacy Tour, but in my least favorite building in Los Angeles, Disney Hall. They were doing Roaratorio, an hour long piece which aims to give some kind of an approximation of Joyce’s, Finnegan’s Wake done up in dance. It is a challenging work especially the music which is a combination of traditional music, recorded sounds from locations mentioned in the book and fragments of the book read aloud. Originally, all of it was an improvised performance but for the revival, the company was using a recording from a German radio station broadcast done in the mid-eighties. The sound was pretty badly mangled in the hall and if you happened to be sitting near one of the speakers you might be deafened by a roaring motorcycle or the sounds of the loading dock at the Guinness Brewery. The music became so troubling that about halfway through when it was clear that it wasn’t going to get any better, people started hauling out their ipods and phones and cued up their own music. I had to think that John Cage, who composed the music, would have loved the gesture, maybe. It was a very short concert that was lengthened both before and after the dancing by a couple of aging modern dance mavens who harped endlessly about Cunningham and Cage. Sometimes modern dance can be tedious but sitting around talking about it can actually kill you under the right circumstances. Quite possibly this piece is now gone forever.

One of the big angles covering dance during the year was the music. There were shocking discoveries, dear reader, and the problems are not going away anytime soon. Even many of the big touring companies now travel with canned music. It is even more disappointing to find that for these performances the orchestras, instrumentalists and conductors are not acknowledged in the programs. On the Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon program, one music credit was listed as follows:  music—Bach.  One of those pieces was the Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor along with two other concerto movements which I couldn’t identify. I asked one of the company directors for additional information but they were clueless. There were at least three different orchestras and recordings represented. None was acknowledged.  On that same program the music was played at deafening levels. It never works when you try to replace real with really loud.

On two occasions live music was ruined by sound engineers, who decided to enhance music that didn’t need enhancing. One was at a Nutcracker performance by the Long Beach Ballet. The house technical staff actually tried to tell the company Artistic Director that no such thing was happening when it was perfectly clear that it was. It turned into a bit of a dust up. The second time around was at the star vehicle Reflections concert featuring a cast of star Bolshoi dancers, in which a suite of Vivaldi movements thundered like an amplified 1812 Overture at the Hollywood Bowl. It was painful to listen to. In both cases a mustache was painted on situations that were better left alone.        

I have reviewed the Nutcracker by Los Angeles Ballet which they have done regularly since the company began five years ago. They recently opened with their new Giselle. Both are budget versions with no orchestra which for the big classical ballets is something that hurts rather than helps the cause. John Clifford says that the use of “live music is expensive but mandatory” and that you can’t really count yourself as a happening classical company unless you show up with real music. You have to love his decisiveness. The live music issue is perhaps better pursued by creating choreography that uses chamber sized ensembles. John Malashock choreographed a beautiful piece for his company using Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence. Graham and Copland made out well with 13 instruments in their chamber sized Appalachian Spring. It was originally downsized to fit a very small theater when it was first premiered.  Paul Taylor, Mark Morris and others have made great pieces with chamber ensembles. That still leaves you out in the cold though, when producing the romantic story ballets. If the economic  realities of live music and dance have got you down, it seems a judicious choice to go with the small ensemble or as some local companies have done, create dedicated, computer driven scores. 

On one concert two of the choreographers seemed to know almost nothing of the music they had used.  One was unable even to tell me the title and composer of the piece. She did know the name of the ensemble playing the piece so onto the program went: music—Ahn Trio. Another had used Arvo  Pärt’s  music (the stand alone movement titled Mozart Adagio)  but seemed to have little understanding of the integration of the old and the new. Again the credit read: music—Arvo Pärt. The attribution  issue seemed to me to reflect a disturbing lack of knowledge about classical music ( or songs as they were sometimes called) and an ongoing lack of interest in crediting performances or recordings as well as the composition itself.

The bright spots tended to be very bright indeed. Among them a truly fabulous version of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso  ed il Moderato for Mark Morris Dance Company. The music was supplied by the L.A. Opera chorus and Orchestra conducted by Grand Gershon. It was the best single thing I heard all year. I have already mentioned Appalachian Spring. The biggest surprise was the contemporary music for Act II of Napoli (The Royal Danish Ballet) written by Louise Alenius. She also added her own voice to the music for those performances during the company’s tour in Southern California. It was just one of the modernized elements of that production which has taken a fair amount of heat for playing fast and loose with the nearly 170 year old ballet. I took a chance and sent her an email while I was writing the review and unbelievably she called on the phone about an hour later. I put much more into the review about her music as a result and I think it made the whole thing more interesting.

Earlier in the year I had the pleasure of writing about two programs at New York City Ballet. Two pieces on those programs stood out. One was the Barber Violin Concerto played by Arturo Delmoni. It sounded great even from the upper balcony. Faycal Karoui conducted.  The other work was Ginestera’s  boisterous  Estancia ,which I heard twice. It was written during the era of American pioneer ballets and was originally a commission for Balanchine. He never got around to making the choreography.This Estancia was choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon.   Clotilde Otrano conducted each time. I had struck up a conversation with two Texans who were about to walk out on the performance.  I said,  “If you’re from Texas you’re going to want to see this one.  It’s an Argentine cowboy ballet”.  They thanked me later for requiring them to stay.

The first of the music reviews was for The Tokyo String Quartet.  The chamber series at the Collburn School paired established chamber groups with students from the conservatory to play some of the bigger and less often heard pieces in the chamber repertory. It turned out to be a great idea and I reviewed three of the concerts. The TSQ played the Souvenir de Florence and the Mendelssohn Octet. I posted the review on a dance website called DancePlug which is mostly geared to commercial and media dance contexts. I introduced the review itself with a long section about music for dance and raised some of the issues I mentioned above. As it turned out the reception for that concert turned into an impromptu jazz event with some of the students and teachers from the conservatory playing a combination of Brazilian standards and Django tunes. It was unexpected but I put the moment into the story because it seemed to be what that evening was all about: the young and the old, the formal and the informal and a decidedly less pretentious atmosphere than usual. It was a slightly different sort of review. It turned out to be the most widely read of the music reviews.

The last thing I expected was to have to write an obituary for my mother. She in died unexpectedly in March and I wrote a story that focused on her career as a dancer in New York. She had danced with one of the incarnations of the Denham era Ballet Russe as well as the Met Opera Ballet and the Radio City Ballet. She always kept very quiet about her life as a dancer. We went to many ballet performances together.  During the last performance of the Nutcracker I was watching her when she started to cry during the grand pas de deux. It had been 65 years since she had been on stage as a dancer. I was glad for that moment and am happy that in writing this story I could mention it. There were lots of black and white photographs from her Met album that ran with the story which was published by Robert Abrahms at www.exploredance.com.

Lastly, I should thank Glyn Grey and Anh Dillon at www.DancePlug.com , who published some of the reviews covering local companies.  I especially want to thank Arsen Serobian who published all the ballet and touring company reviews on www.DanceChannelTV.com  and www.seedance.com  . These people have graciously given my stories a home. And thanks to all of you who have read these pieces during the year and responded with your comments.