Opening Night ABT Los Angeles July 12, 2007 at 7:30 pm This was a sold-out performance for ABT, and I believe that the audience was well-pleased upon leaving the theater at the end of the evening.

The first piece was called Symphonie Concertante with Choreography by George Balanchine. The corp de ballet was perfect. They were well suited in body form as well as talent and emotion. Yuriko Kajiya stood out as exceptionally gifted and talented. I didn't have to worry about them doing something wrong. The principal dancers Michele Wiles, Gillian Murphy and Maxim Beloserkovsky were all truly brilliant. I say this in the sense that we all know that doing a classical ballet is very constraining on the new modern and ballet trained dancer, however, I think that's why we keep going back to Balanchine to remember and to do it correctly. Well, ABT does it exquisitely. The vocabulary is modest, though well thought out and very eloquently spoken through the body language of ABT. Though still a theater, they still do not speak. The chosen pas de deuxs were truly awesome to watch with Maxim Beloserkovsky and Michelle Wiles and then with Maxim Beloserkovsky and Gillian Murphy.
The solos were all done superbly.

The next piece was "Le Corsaire." This was casted with Irina Dvorovenko and David Hallberg. I thought that Irina Dvorovenko stood out as such a beautiful "fawn." She could definitely be the next Juliette. David Hallberg was great in power and strength and let me know that ABT is in the house.

The next piece was "Manon" with Stella Abrera and Herman Cornejo. They were the perfect comedic act and you know this critic does not even like comedy. He was drinking and finally got through with that and starting chasing women, especially ones that were too tall for him. This piece really worked for me and still does as I write about my experience.

Don Quixote was danced by Paloma Herrere and Jose Manuel Carreno. Paloma was very strong and well poised and balanced. She performed impeccably and partnered very well. She owned the stage when she was on there by herself. She has magnificent stage presence. I thought that Jose was brilliant and stunning and that he brought the ABT to the top with his performance.

Rodeo was a well choreographed, well costumed ballet theater that brought Ballet to the West. The scenes were very entertaining and the dancers all looked very good. The Cowgirl Marian Butler has to be highly commended for her very high level of acting and also for bringing so much god emotion into the show.

Thanks so much for the review.

Was anyone else from CD there?

I was there last night, too! I agree with the above post - it was a very pleasant evening.

Symphonie Concertante was great for ABT, the corps looked lovely and Michele Wiles and Gillian Murphy were gorgeous. It's not the greatest Balanchine, IMO (very repetitive), but it's very pretty to look at and perfectly pleasing. The pas de deux choices were strange for a gala-type program: the Corsaire bedroom pas de deux and Lescaut/Mistress pas de deux from Manon are hardly the memorable dances from their respective ballets, and they're very short too. They showed of nothing for the dancers, though Dvorovenko turned the Corsaire pas into a gymnastic show-off. I wish they had chosen something that showed off Hallberg as well. The Mistress/Lescaut thing came off totally randomly, even if it gave a few laughts watching Herman Cornejo stumble around drunk. Don Q was its usual flashy self, though I though Paloma Herrera looked oddly subdued and not like her usual Kitri. Carreno showed off well enough, but his partner was unengaged. Herera came to in time for some perfect fouettes, so the audience still had fun. Rodeo was a charming cap to the evening.

I was there last night, too. BTW, Art's being too modest: you can check out his blog for a fuller review and some pictures:

http://artsplace.blogspot.com/2007/07/a ... night.html

I also found it much more pleasant than I expected, but I went in with low expectations after experiencing their gala two years ago, and their fairly terrible Sylvia and Giselle.

In retrospect, Symphonie Concertante was probably the best piece of the night, though the two girls danced like soggy, wet fish in the 1st movement, and didn't really pick things up until Maxim showed up. I thought they progressively improved towards the end. The ending of the 2nd movement with its Serenade-like parade was the best moment of the piece. The corps was really on, especially for ABT. I don't think I've ever seen them this precise before.

The 3 pas in the middle part of the evening were pretty random for me, too. I was hoping to see David Hallberg dance, but he maybe got to point his foot once, and otherwise was just lifting the very lovely Irina Dvororenko around. I think I enjoyed Don Q more than Art did --- I never realized how beautiful Paloma's feet were until last night, and I loved J-MC's stop-on-a-dime pirouettes. He has got to be one of the most beautiful turners out there.

Since we're talking tricks, I was disappointed that Paloma's fouette turns weren't much different than before: doubles for the first 10 or so, and then singles for the rest. I love how Tamara Rojo and a couple of other ridiculously accomplished turners do theirs: during doubles, she opens her fan and fans herself, closing it when she whips her leg around. That laissez-faire attitude during really difficult steps is very appealing.

Rodeo was fine, but I preferred SFB's I saw last summer at Stern Grove. Character development of the cowgirl and her relationship with the two guys was more believable with SFB. Marian Butler did a really outstanding job as the cowgirl, touching in her emoting, but ABT's staging seemed more cartoonlike in its emotional development: one moment she likes one guy, and as soon as the other guy kisses her, she falls for him.

Nevertheless, I walked out of the theater smiling, and that's certainly much better than previous ABT visits.

--Andre

Reviews of the opening night follow below. I'm not sure what show Lewis was watching, but my impressions line up more with Laura's.

Mods, can this thread's title be changed to reflect all of ABT's SoCal performances this year?

Here're some previews of Sleeping Beauty below. Interesting comments in the OC Register article about the production still undergoing revisions after its lambasting by NYC critics.

I saw Othello last night with Gomes, Kent, Cornejo (who was replaced Blaine Hoven after act 1 due to an unspecified unjury to Cornejo) Radetsky, and Abrera, and frankly I was blown away!

First the negatives: Radetsky is not a good Iago. He's more like a Mini-Me to Parrish Maynard's original: a slightly comical parody that just doesn't work. For some reason, I also kept thinking about Chris Kattan from Saturday Night Live. I don't think he has the looks or gravitas to play Iago without looking like a parody.

The ending of the ballet always struck me as too abrupt. Emilia tells Othello, and he immediately kills himself. The cast looked a little tired by the 3rd act, too.

Besides those caveats, the ballet was fantastic, climaxing dramatically in Gomes's amazingly physical, totally committed solo in act 2. Julie Kent is wonderful as Desdemona, but I always feel like that's a secondary role playing straight man to Othello's descent and his relationship with Iago.

Hoven did a great job stepping in on short notice to replace Cornejo as Cassio, and Abrera was also wonderful as Emilia. In fact, in her duets with Radetsky (and the two of them are apparently a real-life couple making the pairing even more interesting), she came across as the more interesting dancer with deeper felt and completed movements.

The set design is fantastic, with lots of symbolic tie-ins to the plot. The cracked glass and the spider web of ropes all reflect Othello's state of mind.

But for me, the star of the show last night was the music and the orchestra. Very rarely do we get to hear such full-blooded, muscular symphonic music with a post-Romantic emotional angst probing deeper than most other ballet music, which tend to be superficial and third-rate (eg. all of Drigo) or very abstract (Stravinsky). Tchaikovsky comes closest in Swan Lake with its psychological inferences, but as great as his ballet music is, it never lays bare the human psyche like Goldenthal does with his score. I wish we could get more ballet to music as raw as what Goldenthal made for Othello.

--Andre

I went to see Othello on Saturday afternoon, and the performance really worked for me because of the dancers. American Ballet Theatre is giving a committed, convincing performance of it right now, so much so that I see through the rather muddled narrative and the extraneous ensemble dancing. Lubovitch's ballet is not without it's faults, but when he focuses it down on just the few essential characters - late Act 2 and the full of Act 3 - things can get downright dramatic and exciting. Especially in these dancers' hands - I barely recognized David Hallberg and Maxim Beloserkovsky from their usual princely selves, and Gillian Murphy's strong woman presence gave a different dimension to the usually waifish role of Desdemona. Lubovitch's Othello is dark, depressing and long, but these dancers made a big difference in it. I do have to say I did very much like Gregory Tsypin's sets for the ballet - visually stunning, with the shattered glass panels and moving background.

(Thanks, sneaky Andre, for posting a link to my blog posting!)

The Othello reviews are in, and the LA Times and OCR both review different casts: