Carlos Acosta: A Leap into the Unknown

From Time

It is Carlos Acosta's 37th birthday, and the greatest ballet dancer of his generation — a man dubbed "Air Acosta" for his legendary leaping ability — is pleading with me to hold our interview on the ground floor so he does not have to walk up a flight of stairs. "Seriously, man," Acosta says in his Cuban-accented English. "I don't think I can make it."

An aging ballet dancer cuts a particularly tragic figure and, grimacing as he settles into his chair, Acosta says he can sense that his time for performing the great virtuoso roles of classical ballet — Albrecht inGiselle; Romeo; Siegfried from Swan Lake, a part he revolutionized as the first black man to play the prince on the world's major stages — is almost up. When pressed, he says he suspects 2012 may be his final year at the Royal Ballet, where he is the principal guest artist. But Acosta is convinced that the end of his ballet career will mark the beginning of an exciting new chapter. Now he is hard at work reinventing himself as a choreographer and modern dancer, shifting to a type of dance that is more fluid and easier on his body. On July 28, Acosta stars in Premieres, a show at the London Coliseum that combines ballet and modern dance — and allows him to start moving away from the form that has made him famous. "When you put on the white tights, and you see some other 20-year-old kid leaping about, you ask yourself, 'Why would I carry on? I've done it so well, for so long.' When is it time to say, 'Enough'?" he asks. "I'm battling with myself all the time."

Time is a crappy magazine, but whatever--this profile is pretty solid, if only because it allows Acosta to speak. Another dancer that I want to write about, alas. I'll be curious to see if his new venture succeeds, too. The apostate ballerina. Does he really feel that way? Hmm, I wonder...

Dance - Natalia Makarova’s ‘Bayadere’ at Ballet Theater

From the NYT:

"Remarkably, since Ms. Makarova’s sole experience of staging was setting the “Shades” act for Ballet Theater in 1974, she mounted the elaborate production for Ballet Theater, where she was a principal dancer, almost single-handedly.

On the opening night she danced the main role of the bayadere Nikiya for the first time, with the British dancer Antony Dowell as Solor, the warrior who loves her but is compelled to marry the Rajah’s daughter Gamzatti.

“When I was dancing in Russia, I never prepared for this,” Ms. Makarova said this month after rehearsals at Ballet Theater’s studios near Union Square.

“But I had come to America, I was dancing all these modern works with Ballet Theater, and I looked at the company, at the people, that eclectic repertoire. At that time dancers didn’t know the differences in port de bras, epaulement, the right line, using the whole body in harmony. I had a desire to give to them what I know.”"

All of this is gold, gold, gold. Another dancer to add to my series. I don't care if the ballet itself is terrible--can't we make something of the same allowances we make for opera?--but I do care that there are dancers like this still in the world today. I think we could do worse than let ballerinas be priests. They speak of the spirit and the body more convincing than any other person--and certainly any other artist.

Was Legendary Ballerina Involved In Coup Attempt?

From ArtsJournal via BBC:

"Dame Margot Fonteyn, one of Britain's most famous ballerinas, was 'up to her neck' in a coup plot in Central America - along with Fidel Castro, according to government files released today at the National Archives.

Fonteyn, one of the greatest assolutas of the twentieth centuries, was a wonder. Her biography is almost as outsized as her talent. Somehow, then, her involvement in a coup--she was married to a Panamanian diplomat who was part of it, too--doesn't surprise. There is a great photograph of her on stage after she's just been told her husband has been shot during said coup attempt. (He was left quadraplegic; she, I believe, cared for him for the rest of his life.) Not too long ago, the Times of London reported on an exhibition of photographs that documented a young Fonteyn taking part in a wartime ballet troupe.

This is all to say, I have wanted to write a poem on her for ages. I have her autobiography around here somewhere, and when I finally get to it, I will write that poem. Really, I want to do a whole series on dancers/choreographers, like Nureyev, Nijinsky, Balanchine and his girls, Jimmy Slyde, Isadora Duncan, Fred Astaire, Merce Cunningham, Pina Bausch. I have done a few pieces on Martha Graham, but the rest, I am afraid, will have to wait.

Darci Kistler Exits the Stage

From WSJ:

"The nurses told Darci Kistler that she couldn't go into George Balanchine's hospital room, it was past visiting hours. It was Friday evening, April 29, 1983. He had been in Roosevelt Hospital for many months with endless numbers of doctors and specialists parading in and out of his room, unable to diagnose the 79-year-old choreographer's condition. Ms. Kistler started to cry, sat down the hallway and refused to leave. Finally, one young nurse, who knew Balanchine would want to see her, let her slip into the room."

This is the most beautiful obituary I have ever read, and it's not even, strictly speaking, an obituary. Tonally perfect, anecdotally rich, humane, sensitive, elegiac, fiercely, finely principled--it is less a consideration of Balanchine and his last ballerina, Ms. Kistler, as it is a poem pressed into the service of a dance.

Dance Review - Savion Glover Taps at Hummingbird Speed at the Joyce

From NYT:

"The tap choreographer-dancer Savion Glover is a puzzle. He is the most famous tap dancer to have emerged in decades. He has been hailed as the greatest tap dancer who has ever lived by people well qualified to pass such judgment. He is the man who has done most to make tap a youthful genre again. But it is hard to think of a celebrated dancer performing today who is more tedious, more devoid of stage sense, more undancerly and more lacking in musicianship."

An interesting contrary view on the famous tap dancer--and proof, if proof was needed, that we are no more eloquent than when we are articulating aversion. And we are no more passionate on behalf of what we do admire. In hate there is love.

"Trisha Brown is the Sexiest Dancer Alive," says Petronio.

From Dance Magazine:

"The men in Trisha Brown’s company never got to do Spanish Dance, that slowly advancing line of swaying hips and spooning bodies. So yesterday at my last talk on Trisha at DTW, six post-Trisha choreographers and I did Spanish Dance to “break the ice” before our talk. No one had access to the Dylan song, so we used part of Bizet’s Carmen. Stephen Petronio, Keith Thompson, and Stacy Spence finally got their wish to sway, pelvis to pelvis, along with us girls. It was bumpier than usual, but lots of fun. You should try it.

So, the talking part of this 'Talking About the Work' series: Here are some quotes from the six panelists' responses to my question: What did you get from working with Trisha that you could put into your choreography?"

I know next to nothing about dance, but I love reading about dancers. I love they way they talk about their craft and each other. I love to imagine a performance as it unfolds in the Times. I even admire dance criticism, having been exposed to the incomparable work of Edwin Denby a few years back.

Each response to the question has a choice phrase, but the best quote, for me, is the headline which, in the article, also includes: "and no one talks about that." Even better.

Dance Review - Poetry in Motion by Anne Carson and Rashaun Mitchell

From the NYT:

"“Nox,” by contrast, investigates areas of personal despair and pain, with many images that suggest different aspects of trauma, loss and psychological disturbance. Here Ms. Carson’s starting point is the classic elegy (Poem 101) by the Roman poet Catullus at his brother’s grave in Asia Minor. She links this poem to the challenges of translation and the complexities of verbal meaning; to different aspects of history, ancient and modern (including memoir); and, recurrently, to the death of her own brother. She and her collaborator Robert Currie are onstage, listening and projecting lights, but her voice is recorded (at one point over itself); so is music for multiphonic guitar and alto saxophone by Ben Miller."

I've heard of poems being paired with music in performance, but not dance. I like the idea, to be sure, but am skeptical of the product. This sounds beautiful, however, and Anne Carson is about the best poet going, so if anyone could make it work, it makes sense that it would be with her work.