![]() Seo (Saturday evening) first danced Gazmatti in 2010. Copeland (Thursday) and Simone Messmer (Saturday afternoon). ![]() Boylston (Wednesday evening and, replacing Ms. ![]() Three of the four women I saw dance Gamzatti, all drawn from Ballet Theater’s roster of soloists, were making their New York debuts in the role: Ms. ![]() Then Natalia Makarova, reconstructing Petipa’s lost final act for this production, added a more ambiguous solo for Gamzatti, as well as a dramatic quartet in which she and Nikiya’s ghost are rivals as the tension builds before her wedding. Petipa meant Nikiya to be the ballet’s chief dancer, but Soviet Russia built Gamzatti up into a powerful, hard virtuoso: a flinty Odile to Nikiya’s suffering Odette. The role of Gamzatti is problematic in another way. She has the particular gift of making each night’s partnership seem momentous you want to see her dance with both Mr. Her opening dance really is one of religious invocation as a dead Shade in Act II she combines weightlessness and attack the beauty of her stage manners easily conveys love, anguish, forgiveness and resolution, as the story demands. Cojocaru, features of the story and choreography take on fresh meaning. Cojocaru) and some finger turns with Gamzatti (Isabella Boylston, replacing Natalia Osipova) inconvenient.īut the title of “La Bayadère” reminds us that this ballet is about a ballerina. The only chinks in his armor are some features of partnering: Though he is chivalrous to his partners in manner, the shoulder lift in the Shades scene is uncomfortable for him (his Nikiya was Ms. Other things that make this dancer a rare artist: He carries his head with a particular pride in this role, and acts with a burning seriousness. In the Shades scene, when he circuits the stage in a series of double-turning jumps, his are the most tightly wound. In the betrothal scene the intensity of his pirouettes and the sharpness with which he opens jumps are electrifying. Whether either has any valuable individuality, we have yet to see. Muntagirov has more to give than this role allows him to show, but he is the more discreet of the two. Matvienko both executed all the turns and jumps with more than sufficient flair both are skillful partners. (In terms of subtle steps and phrasing, two of the supporting men in Act I, Scene 3, are choreographically more interesting.) Mr. Solor is a role largely limited to conventional male bravura. Moving Uptown: After starring in a production of “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” a long-overlooked Lorraine Hansberry play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan are bringing the show to Broadway for a surprise run.Taking on Performative Progressivism: The Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse is making her Broadway debut with “Thanksgiving Play,” a satire about a “culturally sensitive” show.Jodie Comer Finds Her Light: The one-woman show “Prima Facie” is the “Killing Eve” star’s first stage role.A Spiritual Performance: “Tu nombre verdadero,” a multimedia performance from the novelist and musician Rita Indiana, immerses the audience in experiences of death and illness, particularly as they relate to artists.He suddenly took the breath away with the urgency of a couple of deep-arching backbends on bended knee, especially at the end of a variation. ![]() In what followed, his leaps were astounding, his turns radiated force, and he covered more space in circuits of jumps than anyone else. When he played Solor on Thursday, we didn’t need telling about that tiger: His energy, his stance, his weight had already said so much within a few seconds. Ivan Vasiliev, though not tall, is total testosterone. In simple mime gestures, he declares, “I killed that with my spear!” Hardly has the ballet begun when he arrives, soon followed by the carcass of a tiger. Differently arresting each time was the entrance of the hero, Solor. It’s a credit to American Ballet Theater, which I watched in five “Bayadères” between last Wednesday and Monday at the Metropolitan Opera House, that each rendition brought, as well as the visual loveliness of the celebrated Shades scene, individual rewards. The choreography, by Marius Petipa and a number of successors, ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous the music, by Ludwig Minkus, is often trivial the narrative is melodramatic and the storytelling repeatedly hammy. To watch successive performances of the three-act ballet “La Bayadère,” no matter what the company or in whose production, involves its trials. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |