The third season of INNOVATIONS opens May 21st and runs through May 29th at the Rose Wagner Theatre.  Company artists Michael Bearden, Megan Furse and Aidan DeYoung will create pieces as will international choreographer Helen Pickett and Charlotte Boye-Christensen who is the Artistic Director of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.  I’m sure this will be the best INNOVATIONS yet, so get your tickets before it sells out!

Aidan DeYoung directing rehearsal of his new piece.

Owen Gaj, Katie Chritchlow, Alexander MacFarlan, Aidan DeYoung, Lindsay Duerfeldt and Rex Tilton

Beau Pearson, Annie Breneman, Charlotte Boye-Christensen and Thomas Mattingly

Pictures of Helen Pickett, Megan Furse and Michael Bearden to come!

-Mark

The Utah Ballet which is the dance company of the University of Utah offered a very special show last night at the Marriott Center for Dance on the University campus.  The program honored retiring Associate Professor Conrad Ludlow.  Conrad Ludlow was a Principal Dancer with the New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet before joining the staff of the University and becoming the Artistic Director of the Utah Ballet.

Ballet West’s Artistic Director Adam Sklute received permission from the Balanchine Trust for Ballet West principal artists Christiana Bennett and Christopher Ruud to perform Balanchine’s  ’Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux’ and for soloists Annie Breneman and Thomas Mattingly to perform the pas de deux from ‘Stars and Stripes’.  Both of these works are closely connected to Ludlow’s stage career.

Conrad’s wife Joy and their sons received generous applause as did special surprise guest Jacques d’Amboise who spoke on the stage after the dancing. Mr. d’Amboise talked about how his children used to ask him why his hair was always a mess after he danced and Conrad’s was always perfect. A reception was held in the lobby after the performance.

Adam Sklute and Conrad Ludlow

Bene Arnold, Conrad Ludlow, Joy Ludlow and Jacques d'Amboise

Christiana Bennett and Christopher Ruud in Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux

Annie Breneman and Thomas Mattingly in the pas de deux from Stars and Stripes

Jacques d'Amboise tells Conrad stories

Conrad waves good night

-Mark

Christiana Bennett, Christopher Ruud, Annie Breneman and Thomas Mattingly will perform on stage at the University of Utah tomorrow night in honor of Conrad Ludlow. Christiana and Christopher will perform Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and Annie and Thomas will perform the pas de deux from Stars and Stripes.

Christiana Bennett, Sharee Lane and Christopher Ruud

Conrad Ludlow had an illustrious twenty-year career as a principal dancer with both San Francisco Ballet and New York City Ballet, where he was especially known for his skill in partnering. He established exciting partnerships with such well-known ballerinas as Violette Verdy, Melissa Hayden, Maria Tallchief, Allegra Kent, Suzanne Farrell, and Patricia McBride.  Mr. Ludlow joined the University of Utah Ballet Department (Salt Lake City) in 1985 as resident choreographer.

-Mark

BRAVA HEATHER!!!

Ballet West: Utah-trained dancer Heather Thackeray waltzes her way to a staff career – Salt Lake Tribune

-Mark

It was exciting to take part in the Balanchine legacy by rehearsing and performing his magnificent works, and by working with his former dancers Victoria Simon and Elyse Borne. Because I am new to ballet history, including many of the key works and personalities, working with these wonderful women and watching the ballets come to life in the studio inspired me to read some of the early reviews of Serenade, Agon, and Stars and Stripes. I took the following information from the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Daily Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times (all citations come from the NYT unless stated otherwise). Enjoy!

Serenade

• “The American Ballet Company, organized in October, 1933, will give its first New York season at the Adelphi Theatre beginning Feb. 28…” (7 Feb 1935).
• “Edward M.M. Warburg is the director of the company, George Balanchine, the ballet master, and Alexander Merovitch, the booking manager” (22 Feb 1935).
• “The outstanding event of the week is, of course, the first New York season of the new American Ballet, which makes its bow on Friday night at the Adelphi Theatre, after preliminary trials at Hartford and Bryn Mawr” (24 Feb 1935). The ballets scheduled for opening night were Serenade, Alma Mater, and Errante. The principal roles in Serenade were to be danced by Charles Laskey, Elena de Rivas, Heidi Vogseler, and Katherine Mallowney.
• New York Times critic John Martin had reservations about Serenade—“It is a serviceable rather than an inspired piece of work.”—but he was very favorable towards Balanchine’s Reminiscence, set to music by Godard, which he described as “the real delight of the evening”. The review ends with a warning that “The only thing that such a thoroughly promising and attractive young group needs to guard against at the moment is too attentive an ear for applause” (2 Mar 1935).
• In his review on March 10, 1935 Martin, otherwise critical of the young company, described the American Ballet technique as “clean and simple and has the dignity and purity of the classic style at its best. There is nothing overly pretty about it, no flopping hands or marshmallow softness.”
• The American Ballet Ensemble performed Serenade in their Metropolitan Opera House debut on February 9, 1935; and “This terpsichorean invention was greatly to the liking of the large audience, which greeted it with prolonged applause” (10 Feb 1935).
• “Marie-Jeanne [Pelus], who danced the leading role of Serenade when it was produced by the former American Ballet a few years ago, will appear in that ballet as guest artist for two performances [with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo]” (Christian Science Monitor, 14 Oct 1940). She was one of Balanchine’s favorites and the first American ballerina to perform with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
• The Chicago premier of Serenade was given by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo on December 27, 1940. Cecil Smith, critic for the Chicago Daily Tribune, called it “a modernized Les Sylphides, with a franker element of romantic love, costumes of classical influence in place of billowy tulle, and steps and patterns characterized by a typically crisp, accentuated, slightly geometric Balanchine style.” He added that “the form of the dancing achieves an exceptionally satisfying symmetry. The relation of the dance figures to the music is marked both by a sensitive feeling for musical phraseology and by an interesting refusal to let the choreography be too greatly enslaved by the regular measurement of Tschaikowsky’s music.” Mia Slavenska received a wonderful review for her turns, leaps, and “a new depth of sentiment and poetic fantasy in her movement and in her facial expressions.”
• I think it is very interesting that the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performed Serenade on the same bill as the Nutcracker and Poker Game on January 3, 1941. What a combination!
• Isabel Morse Jones wrote after a Ballet Russe performance that “Serenade is a ballet of classic simplicity. The group formation and the accent of figures against sky-blue nothingness proved effective…. Youskevitch, the sensitive artist, and the illusive Mladova, phrased their melodic passages with taste and musical feeling” (Los Angeles Times, 6 Feb 1941).
• In 1942, the Ballet Russe performed Serenade with the Nutcracker and Massine’s St. Francis.
• Claudia Cassidy wrote that “It is a beautiful ballet, strong, fluid and rippling in long diagonals and curves as supple as the bodies of the dancers. Its emotion is like Tschaikowsky’s own, a little moonstruck, intensely personal, wrapped in the sable of its own melancholy” (Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 Oct 1943).
• John Martin must have softened towards Serenade by 1944: “This charming and characteristic little work was created for the quondam American Ballet in its very beginning and as a result it has about it predominantly the qualities of youth. It should accordingly be an ideal piece for the present company [the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo], which has youth as one of its outstanding virtues” (15 Apr 1944).
• Then, on September 14, Martin wrote that the ballet “is for the greater part of its length one of Mr. Balanchine’s happiest creations, and when it is presented with the youth and spirit which pervaded it last night its virtues become especially apparent.” I wonder if widespread enthusiasm for the work finally swept Martin off his feet, or if he was finally satisfied with the quality of the performance.

Agon

• “It was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein for the New York City Ballet…. Stravinsky will conduct the European premiere in Paris next October. Two-thirds of the score of Agon was composed in the summer of 1954…. It was completed on April 27, 1957—an important date in Stravinsky’s life, for it was the 50^th anniversary of the first public performance of any of his music…. At 75 he is still as prone to experimentation and the exploration of new resources as when he startled the world with his first major work, Firebird, at 28…. He is one of those composers who, like Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner and Debussy, periodically ‘freed’ music” (Albert Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times, 9 Jun 1957).
• “It will be seen first in a special preview on Nov. 27, when the entire house will be taken for the benefit of the March of Dimes. The first regular performance is set for Dec. 1. The music was commissioned for the New York City Ballet in 1954 under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation” (1 Nov 1957).
• For the premiere, “Principal roles will be danced by Diana Adams, Melissa Hayden, Todd Bolender, Roy Tobias, Barbara Walczak, Barbara Milberg, Jonathan Watts and Arthur Mitchell” (24 Nov 1957). On November 28, following the premiere, John Martin wrote that they danced “magnificently…. [A]nd they all deserve some kind of Congressional medal.”
• John Martin also wrote that “There is no man alive who, after one contact with it, can tell you what there is in it, for it is complex, ingenious and fantastically off the beaten path formally. But there is nothing fuzzy or turbid about it, and even at first sight you can get from it all you can possibly absorb, and be teased into having a wonderful time while you are at it…. Mr. Balanchine in a program note has compared it to ‘an I. B. M. electrical computer.’ ‘It is a machine,’ he says, ‘but a machine that thinks.’ But he is wrong, for not even the I. B. M. has yet attempted a machine that deals in high wit. Agon certainly does” (28 Nov 1957).
• Balanchine described the collaboration with Stravinsky as “a precise collaboration which combines sound and gesture, using every division of time, both silence and sound” (1 Dec 1957). Stravinsky said that “His plastic realization matches my architectonic music.”
• Margaret Lloyd from the Christian Science Monitor wrote this: “But there is no agony in the ballet [“agony” is one of the meanings of the word “Agon,” in addition to “protagonist,” “struggle,” and “contest.”], unless it be in the dancers’ struggle to master the intricate steps. And no sign of contest, either, except, perhaps, in each individual’s effort to outdo himself” (7 Dec 1957).
• Now, back to John Martin: “Agon is the kind of work that on the face of it is ‘highbrow’…. What it achieved was instead a rousing popular acclaim” (2 Feb 1958). He added that the point of departure is “a set of old social dances in a midseventeenth-century French dance manual…. Ancient courtliness has simply been disintegrated and reassembled in a new set of dimensions. It is full of comment and humor; but it is in no sense a satirical or a funny work by nature or intent.”
• On November 26, 1960, Martin called Agon “deeply humorous and incredibly difficult…and it no longer holds terrors for anybody.” The performance he was reviewing was danced by “Diane Adams, Melissa Hayden, Carol Sumner and Francia Russell and Arthur Mitchell, Richard Rapp, Edward Villella and Jonathan Watts.”

Stars and Stripes

• The premiere was scheduled for January 2, 1958, according to the New York Times (1 Nov 1957).
• “The fourth work of the season, Stars and Stripes, proved to be a knock-down-and-drag-out riot” (2 Feb 1958).
• “The first Stars and Stripes of the season had Violette Verdy in the second movement, dancing it adorably, and with plenty of comment. Here is Balanchine in another mood—an American, but definitely American mood. Indeed, what with his drillings and drum-majorettes and Sousa marches and sensational pas de deux, all he has omitted are a cheeseburger and a glass of chocolate milk” (1 Dec 1958).

Jared Oaks is Rehearsal Pianist/Music Librarian/Conductor for Ballet West.

-Mark

Annie Breneman and Thomas Mattingly in Stars and Stripes

Christiana Bennett in Serenade

Alexander MacFarlan, Jacqueline Straughan and Christopher Sellars in AGON

Artists of Ballet West in Serenade

Artists of Ballet West in STARS and STRIPES

-Mark

What an exciting opening night!  Upon entering the Capitol Theatre one could purchase Dean Spear’s book “On Technique” and have it signed by the author and Bene Arnold.  Then one could listen to “Warm Ups” given by Adam Sklute and New York Post critic Leigh Witchel.  Then the Governor spoke on stage in front of the curtain to commend Ballet West on its high level of artistry and ability to bring tourists to Utah.  Then came “Balanchine’s America”.

Dean Speer and Bene Arnold

Warm Ups with Adam Sklute and Leigh Witchel

Curtain calls for Stars and Stripes

-Mark

Ballet West offered a free lecture last night before dress rehearsal, in the lobby of the Capitol Theatre.  Noted dance writer and New York Post dance critic Leigh Witchel was in from New York City and he spoked eloquently about Balanchine and interestingly the effects living in New York City had on Balanchine’s creativity.  Balanchine Ballerinas Victoria Simon (the first to stage his ballets) and Elyse Borne both members of the Balanchine Trust then joined Leigh for a Q & A which was moderated by Adam Sklute.

Leigh Witchel, Victoria Simon, Elyse Born and Adam Sklute

New York City Ballet Star Conrad Ludlow and his wife Joy attended the event.

Guest Lecturer Leigh Witchel

-Mark

I asked my good friend Carol Shults to write about Balanchine and the three ballets that Ballet West will present later this week when we open “Balanchine’s America”.  Once again Carol has written a superb article for dance lovers.  Enjoy!

Carol Shults

Serenade, Agon and Stars and Stripes

Dear Mark,

What a wonderful program Ballet West has coming up in April. These three Balanchine ballets show the great choreographer in three completely different moods and together will make a wonderfully satisfying evening.

Serenade

Mark, did you know Serenade is my desert island ballet? I’m certainly far from unique in this; the ballet has been beloved for generations, and is performed all over the world. The first ballet created by Balanchine in America, it was created for a student performance of the brand new School of American Ballet in June 1934, but unlike most other Balanchine ballets, it took many years to become the work we love today. That has to do partly with costuming – It’s just impossible now to imagine it on stage without the diaphanous, long blue costumes – but they were only created by the great Karinska in 1947. The previous productions had short skirts for the women! The relatively few number of men is a reflection of conditions in 1934 – male students were few and their attendance at rehearsals sporadic! There are famously iconic moments in the ballet that are the result of accidents during the creative process: the fall of one girl (who originally also began to cry), the late arrival of another.

Megan Furse with Artists of Ballet West

When I mentioned how long it took for Serenade to achieve its completed form, which seems so inevitable to us today, I was thinking largely of the very audacious rearranging of Tchaikovsky’s original score that Balanchine hit upon in the end. There is very little written about this, I find, and he didn’t speak of it, except to imply that it is what it is! This consists of the reversal of the third and fourth movements of the Serenade in C for Strings. In 1934 the ballet consisted of the first, second and fourth movements. Only in 1940 when he staged it for Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, did he add the third, the “Elegy.” When you hear the music in its concert or recorded form, you are not hearing the ballet! From my point of view, Balanchine’s rearranging of the score is definitive. The profoundly moving quality of the ballet was brought home to me in early October 2001, when it happened to be the first ballet on the program of Oregon Ballet Theatre’s fall season.

*Note for your audience: New York City Ballet’s orchestra has recorded the music as it exists for the ballet: “A Balanchine Album,” conducted by Robert Irving. In addition to Serenade it includes Agon, The Four Temperaments and Emeralds.

Agon

Agon means contest or struggle in Greek. Created for New York City Ballet by Balanchine in 1957 to a specially commissioned score by Igor Stravinsky, the ballet takes us to a different universe from that of Serenade. Instead of the lush melodies of Tchaikovsky we have the complex rhythms of Stravinsky, who loved creating this work with rigorously precise timing and unusual instrumentation in close collaboration with the choreographer.

Many people see in this ballet a response to the speed of life in the great urban metropolis. In creating the ground-breaking pas de deux in Agon, Balanchine was stretching the dance capabilities of two unique artists: Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell. The result, a modernist masterpiece, is stark and spare, but also erotic and witty! Lincoln Kirstein, the monumentally important figure in 20th century ballet, who was responsible for bringing Balanchine to America in the first place, wrote: “the innovation of Agon lay in its naked strength, bare authority, and self-discipline in constructs of stressed extreme movement….It was an existential metaphor for tension and anxiety…”

Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell

Christiana Bennett and Beau Pearson

*Audience note: I would suggest taking a look at some of the following to get a feel for the artistic ambience of Agon’s mid-century period: Architecture – Philip Johnson, Mies Van der Rohe, Le Corbusier; Painting – Pollock, Picasso, de Kooning, Kline; Film – Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.”

Stars and Stripes

Just a couple of months after the premiere of Agon, Balanchine shifted gears completely, and with his usual ease made the wonderfully engaging ballet Stars and Stripes (January, 1958). Always aware of the audience’s need for a “balanced diet”, and with absolutely no apologies ever for being “entertaining,” he set about making a ballet to the marches of John Philip Sousa, in an arrangement done especially for him by Hershy Kay. He had always loved this familiar music, considering it essentially French in derivation, and imminently danceable. Inspired by his gloriously American lead male dancer, the tall, athletic, and quite young Jacques d’Amboise, he created a virtuosic showcase for the whole company – a great “closer!”

Jacques d'Amboise

Annie Breneman and Christopher Ruud

*Audience note – A fairly recent film, the documentary, “Every Little Step”, features d’Amboise’s daughter, Charlotte, a star dancer on Broadway. It has a charming scene with Jacques speaking of aspects of his career with Balanchine. There is also an excellent DVD available with fascinating footage of some of his most vivid roles: “Jacques d’Amboise, Portrait of a Great American Dancer.”

Mark, this program does it all: It gives your dancers tremendous technical and artistic challenges, at the same time as affording audiences the opportunity to engage with one of the greatest creative artists of any time. I wish I could be there. Best wishes to you all. Carol

Ballet West’s annual Salt Lake City audition was held today.  As you can see, a large crowd was in attendance. Ballet West’s Artistic Director Adam Sklute was pleased to see such a large number of talented young artists expressing interest in a position with Ballet West.

About one hour after the SL audition, Maestro Kern lead the first orchestra read through of AGON.

-Mark