Oberon's Grove

TAKE Dance @ Dance Theater Workshop

Thursday July 30, 2009 - Takehiro Ueyama (above), the former Paul Taylor dancer, and his troupe TAKE Dance have opened at Dance Theater Workshop for the first of four performances. My companion for the evening was one of Take's Taylor colleagues Richard Chen See, now director of the New York International Ballet Competition. I was always a fan of both Take and Richard as dancers since I first saw them performing with the Taylor Company up at Jacob's Pillow in the 1990s. The Taylor connection is further enhanced by the presence of two current Taylor dancers who also dance with TAKE: Amy Young and Francisco Graciano. Take, Richard, Amy and Francisco exemplify Paul Taylor's eye for beauty and individuality, and TAKE Dance continues in that vein: a collection of dancers who bring their distinctive dance personalities to Take's works. 

First I want to again thank my young dancer-friend Sophie Bromberg who 'introduced' me to TAKE Dance; without her helpful hint I wouldn't have discovered TAKE (or at least not so soon as I did). TAKE Dance was one of the first companies to welcome bloggers to their rehearsals and performances.  When I first saw TAKE Dance in the studio, it was the beginning of a re-connection to modern dance for me: something I had neglected since moving to NYC. The TAKE/Taylor link brings me back mentally to the many trips to Jacob's Pillow we made each summer when I lived in Hartford.

The evening opened with LINKED, a vibrant Take creation to the infectious rhythms of Pat Metheny's score. The energized opening and closing movements bookend a peaceful central section danced in silence.

LINKED begins with a quartet: Jill Echo and Kile Hotchkiss (above) along with Amy Young and Take move thru the fast-paced combinations with joyous abandon. Partners switch, and the mood is playful. The movement never stops...until it does.

The four dancers freeze in a diagonal and are joined by others in a calm adagio section in which the only sound is their breathing. There is a ritualistic feeling in unison port de bras and a sense of communion as they gaze out at the world. Photo: Gina Ianni, front left, Amy, Milan Misko and Sharon Park.

Then the bubble of silence bursts and everyone erupts in a swirl of colour and motion as the Metheny music drives LINKED to its conclusion, evoking a whooping response from the sold-out crowd.  Above, Amy Young, Sharon Park and Jill Echo.  

On my first visit to see Take working in the studio, I was captivated by two of his most charismatic dancers, Nana Tsuda and Kile Hotchkiss. Nana's delicate features and unusual sense of the poetic are complimented by Kile's blonde good looks and his quiet authority as a partner. Using music from French cinema, Take created a set of three duets for Nana and Kile (titled LOVE STORIES) which evoke the famous Magritte painting The Lovers. The couple begin dancing in a relaxed, young-romance mood: Kile's shirt is open and Nana's red dress seems to signal a passionate young woman.

In the second duet, they are more buttoned-up and Kile is wearing a tie. Undercurrents of discord pulse beneath the surface: moments of ennui or restlessness. They seem to be together out of force of habit. There are aborted attempts at the old tenderness and sense of unity but though they dance together they seem apart.

They have stayed the course but the relationship has altered drastically; they appear for the last duet wearing the white hoods - their emotions hidden and their passions masked. In the end Kile collapses; Nana removes his mask and then her own as the light fades. Usually when I see a dance work that really moves me, I start thinking of who else I would like to see dancing in it; but I really can't imagine anyone other than Nana and Kile in LOVE STORIES. It belongs to them.

SHABON ("Bubbles") is a frothy, fun work set to Steve Reich in which bubble machines fill the air with shiny, fragile globes. Sharon Park strolls across the stage like a captivated child, innocently blowing bubbles of her own. The dancers are clad in whimsical playclothes by Cheryl McCarron.

Mariko Kurihara and Kristen Arnold have a duet as the back panel changes colour. Bubbles cascade into the playing area from all directions throughout the piece.

And then with a sense of a small girl on a big adventure, Mariko walks along the shoulders of her friends. SHABON seems to me an evocation of the innocent fantasies of childhood.

After the intermission, darkness falls and we are transported into the brooding, shadowy world of FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW, set to Arvo Part's pensive, spiritual music. It's a complex work in a cold, misty setting which draws us to contemplate the mystery of death and what we leave behind in passing. Opening with a beautifully-danced duet for Gina Ianni and Take to the otherworldly sounds of Part's Spiegel im Spiegel, the work further features an expressive solo for Nana Tsuda who lets the haunting music flow right thru her fingertips.

A duet passage for Milan Misko and Kristen Arnold shows off the amplitude of these two tall dancers as Kristen makes a slow, spacious backbend over Milan's back. In a solo which caused murmurs of disbelief among the crowd, Francisco Graciano collapses to the stage in an un-broken fall, rising in a state of trembling agitation only to fall again.

Moments of tenderness and consolation (Amy and Jill, above) are threaded into the funereal fabric.

Mourners pass thru the terrain which comes to feel like a cemetery in winter. Yet for all the desolation, there are glimmers of hope and tranquility.

I've seen FOOTSTEPS evolving since its initial showing at the New School in 2008. There's a great deal to absorb, both musically and in terms of the dancing. Its solemn beauty appeals to me and I look forward to seeing it again and to delving deeper into its layers of meaning.

Above, Amy Young in FOOTSTEPS. In the three works in which she appeared tonight, Amy's speed, her sense of abandon and the utter clarity of her every movement stood out in an outstanding Company of dancers. Her Taylor colleague Francisco Graciano likewise made a very fine impression with his polished dancing and handsome presence.

We stayed after to say hello to Take and his dancers; the girls in their party frocks all looked so lovely and I especially enjoyed seeing Elise Drew again; Elise is a former TAKE dancer who is now in Chicago dancing with Luna Negra Dance Theater.

Tonya writes about TAKE Dance here. And a new-to-TAKE-Dance viewpoint here.

All photos: Kokyat. Click each image to enhance.

MORPHOSES at Vail

Watch a slide show of MORPHOSES preparing for their appearances at Vail International Dance Festival.

TAKE Dance: Footsteps In The Snow

Opening tonight at Dance Theater Workshop, TAKE Dance present the world premiere of FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW, an darkly evocative work set by Takehiro Ueyama to music of Arvo Part. Kokyat and I attended the dress rehearsal last night, and here are some of Kokyat's photos. Above, center: Francisco Graciano. Click on each image to enhance the view.

In the opening movement, a sustained duet for Takehiro and Gina Ianni (above), Take uses the same music that Christopher Wheeldon used in the pas de deux from AFTER THE RAIN: Part's Spiegel im spiegel ("Mirror within a mirror'). It's always fascinating to see what images the same music will evoke from different choreographers. 

Above, the TAKE Dance ensemble. In addition to FOOTSTEPS, the programme offers a light-hearted New York premiere, SHABON ("Bubbles") as well as the three-part Magritte duet LOVE STORIES and the swirling colours and movement of LINKED dance to Pat Metheny. The opening on Thursday is sold out; repeat performances on Friday and Saturday nights as well as Sunday afternoon. I'm going three times and I have a different hot date for each.

All photos: Kokyat. My thanks to him for staying up late last night to send me these advance images. 

Sogno Di Una Notte Di Mezza Estate

I've been watching the recently-released DVD of Balanchine's MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM from La Scala 2007 featuring Alessandra Ferri and Roberto Bolle. As with the previous releases in this series (SWAN LAKE, BAYADERE and GISELLE), the ballet is lovingly filmed with a 'you-are-there' immediacy and the Scala musicians play superbly. Interestingly, the vocal soloists and chorus sing in heavily-accented English.

Patricia Neary, Sara Leland and Nanette Glushak staged the work for La Scala. Luisa Spinatelli's settings are quite different from those used by NYC Ballet: she merges elements of Grecian architecture with giant flowers and leaves to create a fantasy effect. Most of the costumes are attractive, though the 'wings' on the long capes worn by Titania and Oberon are fussy and distracting.

Fabrizio Ferri's photo of Alessandra Ferri...so lyrical! Signora Ferri makes such a lovely impression in the Ashton setting of THE DREAM, an impression amplified by her performance in the Balanchine.The role suits her so well, and how lovely she looks slumbering in her cockle-shell. Her dancing is easy and fluent, her expressions ranging from queenly to bemused. I regret not having seen Ferri dance very much during her years with ABT. One Kingdom of the Shades stands out in my memory.

Roberto Bolle is of course an extraordinarily good-looking man and just watching him in that regard is very pleasing to the eye. He also dances the role very well indeed and he basks in audience adulation during the curtain calls. He and Ferri have a special rapport though their contact in this ballet is quite limited. In her main pas de deux, Ferri is very nicely partnered by Massimo Murru.

Riccardo Massimi (above) is an energetic and endearing Puck, a clear audience favorite. With his impish characterization and easy technique, he threatens to steal the show while avoiding excessive cuteness. Sophie Sarrote is a breezy Butterfly and the mortal couples are well-played, with the men wearing their natural longish hair rather than the silly wigs of the NYCB production.

Marta Romagna and Mick Zeni give a lovely performance of the Act II pas de deux, and Puck's final ascent is achieved with flower-garlanded still-rings rather than attached fly-wires. There are curtain calls after Act I and a long set of bows at the very end.

Part IV: In The Studio With TAKE Dance

TAKE Dance, founded by former Paul Taylor dancer Takehiro Ueyama, open on July 30th at Dance Theater Workshop. From our recent visit to Take's studio, more of Kokyat's photos. Above: Take with John Eirich.

Nana Tsuda and Francisco Graciano.

Amy Young and Kile Hotchkiss.

John Eirich and Kristen Arnold.

Kristen and John.

John Eirich and Jill Echo.

Mariko Kurihara and Kristen Arnold.

Take with John Eirich.

All photos: Kokyat. Click images to enhance.

Summer Days

Kokyat had been posting many photographs from his treks to various locales in Our Great City. He covers everything from botanicals to kissing to garbage (tong sampah) at his photoblog ONE DAY IN NEW YORK. Click on the above photo to enlarge.

Part III: In The Studio With TAKE Dance

Opening July 30th at Dance Theater Workshop, TAKE Dance recently invited Kokyat and me to watch their studio rehearsal. Here are some of Kokyat's photos of the dancers in the Company. Above, Nana Tsuda.

Amy Young and Kile Hotchkiss. Amy is a member of Paul Taylor Dance Company who guests with TAKE Dance.

Milan Misko.

Gina Ianni.

Mariko Kurihara.

Kristen Arnold.

All photos: Kokyat. Watch for more photos from Take's studio here in the next few days.

Moment of Happiness

Can you recall moments of pure happiness in your life?  I'm not speaking of those times - such as weddings, births of babies, falling in love - when one expects to feel really happy, but rather just times when you are doing ordinary things and you suddenly become aware that you feel inexplicably happy?

Early in the summer of 1992 I had met a Venezuelan boy named Nelson Alvarado in Provincetown. He was there with his much-older friend, staying in the same guest house as I was. We flirted but only actually spoke as I was packing to leave P'town; we exchanged phone numbers and when I got back to Hartford I found messages on my machine from him. I decided on a whim that it would be fun to spend some time with this kid. Kenny and I had split up and I was kind of lonely, and very sick of my job at the insurance company which paid well but was very stressful. I needed a diversion.

Nelson took a bus to Hartford and the next day we took the train in to NYC where we took a room at my old haunt, the Colonial House on West 22nd. I had a ticket for a performance of TURANDOT at the NYC Opera and easily procured a second ticket so he could come with me. 

August 15, 1992: I can remember the date because I still have the cast page from the opera Playbill. We spent the day sunbathing on the infamous roof of the guest house and wandering around the Village. In the late afternoon we were sitting on a stoop, he on the top step and I one step down. He put his arms around me and rested his head on my shoulder. People passing by smiled at us; we weren't talking, just resting. I slowly became aware that the cares of life and the concerns about my work had seeped away and I was totally - and blissfully - happy.

It only lasted a few minutes; we had to get back and get ready for dinner and the opera. He loved TURANDOT and later I wrote to the soprano who had sung Liu and asked her to send me an autographed photo for him, which she did. She had made Nelson weep.

Nelson came to see me a few times in Hartford; we also met in Boston (above) once and the following summer in P'town. Then we simply drifted apart and lost contact. But I've never forgotten that short interlude on the stoop; I pass by the spot sometimes and recall it so vividly. Just the thought of it reminds me of the possibility of that kind of feeling.

Met PAGLIACCI from 1964

Dmitry recently gave me a copy of an exciting performance of PAGLIACCI from the Old Met. I remember very well listening to this broadcast (April 11, 1964) and the recording brings it all back - all but the massive applause (which is faded out before the curtain calls even begin) and the sometimes bungling but always sincere narratives of Milton Cross.

Franco Corelli (top photo) was on prodigious vocal form that afternoon, reveling in the ease with which he was able to project his powerful voice into the house (it was a voice - like Nilsson's, Tebaldi's, Cossotto's and Rysanek's - that you had to experience in the House. And if you had, you could always make adjustments when listening to it on the radio or a recording: realizing what was being compressed out of it and spinning it back in via the imagination). Such was Franco's command of his instrument in those days that he could easily dare to sustain the soaring phrase "A venti tre ore!" with almost playful insouciance...and the fans cried 'Bravo! as the music rolled on. Tearing a passion to tatters was something all the great stars did and Franco suffers Canio's humiliation and heart-break before turning to revenge, spending the voice with reckless generosity.  

Lucine Amara as Nedda - one of her best roles - is also on top form here. The voice is clear, steady and even from top to bottom; it's an almost girlish timbre in a way. She never skimps musically: before the melody of the Ballatella starts, Nedda must trill twice and swoop up to top notes like a caroling bird. Some sopranos fluff the trills and merely make a passing swipe at the high notes; Lucine really trills and then sustains the notes at the top of the phrases. She always had wonderful dynamic control and she uses it to fine effect in the duet with Silvio, plucking piani out of mid-air. And she has the passion and gleaming top notes for the final scene. 

As with many house singers from the 50s-70s, we took Amara for granted. Some of my friends really avoided her performances and would go into little snits if she replaced someone on a night they were there. I was sort of a closet Amara admirer, actually. She was my first Liu (at the Old House) and I was thrilled by the way she floated her high-lying phrases. Later I was at an AIDA where she and Carlo Bergonzi sang the Nile and Tomb Scene duets with such beauty of tone and such a satiny polish on all their phrasing; I played my house tape of it til it disintegrated.

While I was working at Tower, RCA re-released the commercial recording of LOHENGRIN with Lucine as Elsa and Sandor Konya in the title role. I was playing it one afternoon on the overhead speakers when a group of older German tourists came in. They began browsing but after a while they all stopped chatting and stood listening to the bridal chamber duet. "Please, who is this soprano?" one of them asked. "Lucine Amara!" and I handed him the booklet opened to her bio. He perused it briefly and said, "Why we have never heard of her? She has big career? No one can sing Elsa like this!"

Anselmo Colzani is another singer I was crazy about; would that we had someone like him today. He came to the Met in the aftermath of Leonard Warren's death and sang there is a wide variety of roles for many years. He was a superb verismo baritone and also very successful in Verdi - he was the Falstaff when Bernstein conducted that masterpiece at the Met. Colzani's Scarpia, Gerard, Michonnet, Jack Rance, Alfio and Barnaba were among his best achievements and I especially loved the sense of humanity in his singing. As Tonio, he sings the Prologo in the grand style basking in the security of his registers - top to bottom - and in the beauty of the Italian language. The climactic high notes are generously sustained; the applause is faded out but as I recall Colzani had to bow two or three times before the opera could continue. 

Calvin Marsh is a vocally resplendent Silvio and Franco Ghitti a fine Beppe with a slight flutter in his tone that is appealing.

Nello Santi, who we later lovingly nicknamed Il Duce, always managed to wring an extra dash of passion out of these old Italian warhorses - as if the music weren't passionate enough to begin with. I had the pleasure of meeting him when I worked at Tower - the old-school manners and a disarming touch of the buffo in his conversation.

Listening to Corelli 'live' again makes me think of his most passionately devoted New York fan: Maria Grimaldi. Does anyone else remember this tiny, feisty woman who screamed herself hoarse at (seemingly) every performance Franco sang at the Met?  Surely she relished the night when Corelli - after singing an electrifying Enzo to the only Met Gioconda of Milka Stojanovic -  won one of his most tumultuous ovations after sustaining an unwritten top-C in the final act. The curtain calls were wild, with giant roars whenever Franco stepped out. Finally the tumult died down and we were packing up to leave the House when from high up in the gallery someone shouted "Bravo Gigli!" and immediately came the retort: "Gigli's Dead! Bravo Franco!!!" and then a huge shouting match erupted. Cries of "Bravo Franco!" went up from all over the House; the applause resumed, the bow lights came on and the singers came out once again. They just don't make evenings like that anymore. Or tenors like Franco Corelli.

Part II: In The Studio With TAKE Dance

From the studio, more of Kokyat's photo of Takehiro Ueyama's TAKE Dance in preparation for their coming season at Dance Theater Workshop which opens July 30th. Above, Kile Hotchkiss in the air, coached by Take. Click on each image to enlarge.

Take with John Eirch. John dances with both TAKE Dance and Taylor 2.

Sharon Park, Kristen Arnold, Gina Ianni.

Sharon, John, Kristen, Jill Echo and Gina.

Mariko Kurihara walks along a human pathway.

Kile Hotchkiss and Francisco Graciano. Francisco dances with Paul Taylor Dance Company and is guesting with TAKE Dance.

All photos: Kokyat. More to follow!