ballet Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

CHQ: Ballet, opera, and more music

Hansel and Gretel

Ballet is not something I attend very often. But when in Chautauqua, do as the Chautauquans do.

My wife and I attended a musical event at 8:15 p.m. each weeknight except for the Wednesday opera at 7:30 p.m. (The music I linked to is NOT the performances we heard.)

Monday, July 22

“The Music School Festival Orchestra and the School of Dance come together for an amazing night of song and dance under the baton of guest conductor Rebecca Tong.” The orchestra is more or less below the dancers, though people in the front row can see them.

Rhapsodic Dances – Choreography by Sasha Janes

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 – Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 – 1943) -Sean Yang, pianist

This looks like what I expect ballet to look like.

Summer Camp – Choreography by Sasha Janes

Symphony No. 38 in C major, Hoboken I/38, 1768 – -Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809) I. Allegro di molto II. Andante molto

This does NOT look like what I expect ballet to look like. The dancers are wearing contemporary clothes. Someone’s even riding a skateboard. This was a lot of fun.

For the Trees – Choreography by Kara Wilkes

Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 – -Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) II. Allegretto

This expresses the natural motif of the title, with lots of greens and browns and dancers portraying seed, soil, sand, mycelium, and other elements. Effective. And the music is among my favorites of all time.

Intermission

Rubies – Choreography by George Balanchine; Staged by Patricia McBride

Capriccio, 1929 – Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971) I. Presto II. Andante rapsodico III. Allegro capriccio so ma tempo giusto. Spencer Myer, pianist

“This performance of Rubies, a Balanchine® Ballet, is presented by arrangement with The George Balanchine Trust and has been produced in accordance with the Balanchine Style® and Balanchine Technique® Service standards established and provided by the Trust.”

The lead male’s face was very expressive.

Dvorak 8

Tuesday, July 23.

Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra: Chia-Hsuan Lin, conductor

Program

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912): [Not to be confused with Samuel Taylor Coleridge] Petite Suite de Concert, Op. 77 (1911) La Caprice de Nanette; Demande et réponse; Un sonnet d’amour; La tarantelle frétillante

Tyzen Hsiao (1938–2015): The Angel from Formosa (1999)

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904): Symphony No. 8 in G major, B. 163, op. 88 (1889). Allegro con brio; Adagio; Allegretto grazioso; Allegro ma non troppo

“Hailed by the Virginia Gazette as a ‘rock solid’ and ‘animated’ conductor, Chia-Hsuan Lin (pronounced ‘jah-shwen’) delights audiences throughout the world with her trademark energy and command. The Associate Conductor of the Richmond Symphony, Lin also debuted in 2023 with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and returns to conduct concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Williamsburg Symphony, and Fort Wayne Philharmonic this year.”

Opera!

Hansel and Gretel, an opera by Engelbert Humperdink (English), [not to be confused with Engelbert Humperdink]

It was more enjoyable than I thought it would be. Even though the dialogue was in English, it was superimposed onto the screens above. The screens also showed scenes of moving through the forest from nightfall to daybreak, looking like a large Jacquie Lawson ecard. It was also used to great effect to show the terrified cookies.

The program, which I failed to copy, noted that the woman playing the mother would also play the witch. However, the woman playing the witch was not the woman playing the mother; the mother in Act 1 differed from the mother in Act 2. I THINK the woman playing the mother in the first act sang the witch part in the second act offstage while the original witch pantomimed the role.

Living composer

Thursday, July 25

Rossen Milanov, conductor

Program

Samuel Barber (1910–1981): Essay No. 1, op. 12 (1937)

Angel Kotev (b. 1951): Rhapsody No. 3 ‘Fateful’ – American premiere

It was lovely to see Kotev beaming after the performance. He and his wife have been coming to CHQ for 5 or 6 years

Béla Bartók (1881–1945): The Miraculous Mandarin Suite, BB 82, op. 19 (1927)

1 act in 8 sections:
Beginning—Curtain rises
First seduction game
Second seduction game
Third seduction game—the Mandarin enters
Dance of the girl
The chase—the tramps leap out
Suddenly, the Mandarin’s head appears
The Mandarin falls to the floor

This time, we decided to sit behind the orchestra. It was great to see the conductor’s face and to note that 47 of the 50 musical scores I could see were paper, not electronic. The downside is that we could not see the horns or percussion.

The Lydster: Her career choices

I saved this Ask Roger Anything question, from Chris, until now:

Do you feel like you’re pushing your daughter towards certain career choices or letting her choose, or both? Do you think you’d be supportive of a career where it would be difficult for her to make a living, e.g. actress or musician?

Oh goodness, no. That’s a function of her needing to figure out what she wants to do. And honestly, I don’t have a strong sense of something I want her to do. I suppose I don’t want her to do something that involves a lot of danger.

Thinking about some of the things she has tried out:

Ballet – did it for two or three years, decided it wasn’t for her. But the lessons she learned have been useful, and she still likes to choreograph her own moves.

Soccer – she did youth soccer for three or four seasons, decided it wasn’t for her. So I was a bit surprised that she signed up for modified youth soccer this fall. What she learned before has come in handy.

Playing clarinet – her mother played, and she seemed to enjoy it. Moreover, I thought she got to be rather good at it, but she suddenly dropped it a couple of years ago. I was surprised when she pulled it out once this past summer. Maybe she’ll go back to it, maybe she won’t.

Things she’s interested in currently:

Art – she’s quite good at it, and she received some local awards for it. She DOES agonize over her work, though.

Clothing design – She’s been taking old clothes, cutting them up, stitching them together. Well not so much in the school year, but it was a business she wanted to look into this past summer.

Law – right now, she says she wants to be a lawyer. She sees injustice on the news on TV and wants to fix it. I wanted to be a lawyer for a time, so that would be fine.

One of the things that seems constant in this narrative is that everything learned has value. Maybe it won’t be applied directly, but it won’t go to waste.

Would I discourage her from a career path that might be difficult? No, and frankly, it would not have occurred to me. Now that I think of it, neither of my late parents EVER said, “you ought to do” X for a living. My father had a varied career, and I doubt it would have occurred to HIM. My mom was easygoing about those things, as long as we were happy and not involved in some criminal activity.

MOVIE REVIEW: A Ballerina’s Tale

Misty Copeland’s potentially career-ending injury was also a major focus.

I was rather familiar with the story of Misty Copeland, largely from this 60 Minutes clip, about how the ballerina, who didn’t even dance until she was 13, became the first African-American woman to be named principal dancer of the legendary American Ballet Theater.

What was interesting about the documentary A Ballerina’s Tale was less about the dancer herself, and more about the social context of her achievement. It wasn’t just her race but her “muscular” body that had precluded someone who looked like her to be the swan. Her potentially career-ending injury was also a major focus, and she showed tremendous resolve getting through it.

I also enjoyed learning about the history of black ballerinas. Her interaction with the apparently legendary Raven Wilkinson – who I had never heard of – was fascinating, in part because Misty too was learning about her dance roots. A group of successful older black women took Misty Copeland under their wings and helped her feel less alone, and that was touching.

This was a Kickstarter film from Nelson George, who I know best as a writer of the book Hip Hop America, and Where Did Our Love Go?, a book about Motown. Before that, he was a critic of the black music scene for Billboard.

Here is the movie trailer.

A Ballerina’s Tale was playing at the nearby Madison Theatre. We thought the Daughter would want to see it the day before Thanksgiving, but she declined. So the Wife went to the 5 pm show, and I the 7 pm viewing; we were the ONLY persons to watch it, and that was a shame because it was worthwhile.

Yet there’s an arm’s length distancing from the film’s primary subject which made her somehow less compelling. The Variety review says it best: “She’s immensely humble and focused on her goals, which makes her an excellent performer and an equally strong ambassador for dancers of color, but a tougher nut to crack as a documentary subject.”

The Lydster, Part 116: Calendaring

Lydia is in the church musical of The Lion King. Not only is she participating, she’s going to play the pivotal role of the young Nala.

Most of the time, I try to come up with a narrative about the Daughter. This time, just the calendar.

This fall, she was playing soccer. Unfortunately, in the very first game, fairly early on, she got kicked in the foot, left the game in pain, and never returned. But she was back in action by the following week. She likes playing defense, and is more interested in protecting her team’s goal rather than making a goal. However, for her homework, she has to write sentences, and she has allowed that someday, she WOULD indeed like to score a goal. That phase ended on November 2.

Both last year and this, there were two weekends where she had soccer, PLUS two rehearsals of the Albany Berkshire Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker, in which she will again be an angel. The performance is Saturday, December 21 at 1 pm in Albany.

Much to my surprise, she wanted to try out for the church musical of The Lion King. Not only is she participating, she’s going to play the pivotal role of the young Nala, young Simba’s best friend. She gets to sing some lines by herself, and make a few dance moves. She has played the soundtrack – this is NO exaggeration – over a hundred times since rehearsals began in September. One day she played it FIVE TIMES, and she always goes to sleep listening to it. The production is on March 2, 2014 at our church.

Then there is the aforementioned homework. I have railed about it in my Times Union blog HERE and HERE and HERE In brief, the new Core Curriculum is making my daughter sad and anxious, and she’s not the only one. It’s not that I oppose standards. I do object though to inane questions (see third link just above) put together by non-educators, which what the EngageNY syllabus adopted by the NYS Department of Education has deemed appropriate. Homework takes too long, and chews up both her and my time. Makes me cranky.

The Lydster, Part 103: In as a clown, out as an angel

She’ll be performing on Saturday, December 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Egg.

What a strange weekend we had in the middle of last month.

On Saturday, I took the Daughter to play her first soccer match. She had gone to the practice on the previous Monday night and been assigned to a team in the U8 (under eight) division. But when we got there for her 11:10 a.m. match, we found that she had been moved to the U10 division, and thus on another team. Worse, because the opposing team in their 12:20 p.m. match was initially shorthanded, she was temporarily traded to the other side. She was more disappointed than unhappy by all of this, but she particularly enjoyed being back on her U10 team when more kids arrived. She was a little bored on defense; her teammates kept the ball at the other end of the field most of the time. But she liked being on offense. And we got to see a bald eagle flying overhead.

On Sunday, the Daughter tried out for the Albany Berkshire Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker. Based on her age, she was supposed to be trying out to be a clown. But based on her height, she was asked to wait around so she could try out as an angel, which tended to be a role that slightly older girls get. At the end of it all, she got the role of an angel. She’ll be performing on Saturday, December 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Egg, a local performing arts venue.

The commonality of these two events was that it took a bit longer than we had anticipated, but ended up with a good outcome.