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mezzo soprano lorraine hunt lieberson died in July of this year. her death was completely unexpected: she was only 52, but apparently had battled cancer since 2000.  the new yorker has a profile and a commemorative audio piece up on its site this week:

Alex Ross offers an audio tribute to the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

PLUS: From this week’s magazine, Ross remembers Lieberson; from 2004, Charles Michener’s Profile of the singer.

 

Ever since first hearing her rendition of the Bach Cantatas,  I have looked forward to one day see her perform in the flesh. she was reputed for her on stage magnetism and her full, vibrant voice. that day will now never come, but her voice lives on thanks to the few recordings she left.

Find Lieberson recordings on Amazon. 

 

anders, doing his thing 

he new york times taking a stab at European modern dance mannerisms. they do this surprisingly often:

The most complete blend came at the end, in the weakest piece of the night, "Phrases, Now" by Andonis Foniadakis. Mr. Foniadakis spent two years with Maurice Béjart in Lausanne, Switzerland, then six with the Lyon Opera Ballet. Europeans seem to like their music loud and their lighting stark and dark, and Mr. Foniadakis did not disappoint. Set to an annoyingly simplistic (if loud) score by Julien Tarride, the dance consisted of four City Ballet men — Tyler Angle, Craig Hall, Sean Suozzi and Mr. Millepied — and one woman, Ula Sickle, who has worked in mostly modern companies all over Europe.

read the whole thing here. there certainly is a tendency in Europe to consume modern dance that is morbid, stark and primarily intent on shocking (but usually just bores). i'm glad to report there are exceptions: danish choreographer anders christiansen - yes,  i'm a board member for his company! - weaves technical savvy, humor and theatricals into bare sets. his uro mangel last year was a delight - even to my US trained eyes.

 

granted, the idea of bowing to a national arts shrine or "culture canon" is a dubious one and artists are perhaps rightly suspicious of being appropriated for cultural propaganda purposes, but still - the copenhagen post reports danish artists throwing temper tantrums after having their works  nominated "most representative of danish culture". von trier has staged a flag dismembering protest while others have blasted the minister of culture for forcing them to be a part "of that elitist crap"

Come again?

What's this deep-seated, slightly hysterical aversion to recognition, fame, success, public acknowledgment? Where does it come from? Is it Janteloven? Anyone have their own theories? Are Danish artists too well off and coddled by a subsidies friendly government to have a sense of appreciation for commercial and mainstream success? read the full article here:

Film director Lars von Trier prepared a special thank you gift for the minister of culture, Brian Mikkelsen, for including his semi-pornographic movie 'The Idiots' on the list of Denmark's most representative works of culture, unveiled on Tuesday.

'Dear Brian, thanks for nationalising our culture. Here's something in return,' read the opening credits to a video broadcast by DR.

The film began with the Danish flag being lowered to the tunes of the country's royal anthem. It then went on to show von Trier cutting out the white cross at the centre of the flag, then resewing the four panels together.

The film ends with the all-red flag being raised while the former Soviet Union's national anthem is
played.

photo via nytimes 

whelan has (un)officially been anointed america's prima ballerina in a lenghty new york times magazine profile. the anointment is bestowed somewhat obliquely, "the dancer many consider the finest ballerina in America" is the phrase i think, but the drift is clear and the length of the article confims it. whelan came out in the 90s, mid-nineties, when an astounded public discovered what extraordinary shapes and power she was capable of delivering on stage. at one performance, someone in the audience yelled "you go girl!" or "that's our girl" and it perfectly expressed everyone's sentiments there - at least no one audibly objected. she was defiantly different, a bit like new york, unafraid, undaunted. the strong mark she left with her dancing can be gleamed from my notes about whelan and nyc ballet years ago (after watching agon performed by the royal ballet in london):

London performance of Agon danced by the Royal ballet. Well-trained, classical dancers, but not fast or strong enough for the casual speed and steely acrobatics of B choreography. Not that i have seen NYCB perform it, always missed out on Agon for some reason, Agon and Liebesliederwaltzer, those two POLES of his balletic output. The RB dancer was very tall, very long-legged, with the requisite elasticity but too many hyper-extended curves in it. The lines were lost, the clarity of watch me, here I depart, and surprise, here I arrive; the understanding that there should be no trailing along of the spectator into the covert compromises and adjustments needed in-between. Whelan excels in this, because frankly she needs no compromise, her edges, curves, lines are all self-contained, not transition points between two finishes. The RB girl (can’t remember her name) had too much limb to do this and not enough speed to compensate.  There was a wobbliness to the RB dancing, which I could notice even from a distance. The dancing was tentative, the placements never leaping into definition. It all lagged behind Stravinsky’s musical commas and fullstops.

Speed itself is not assurance, even though the lightning moves so characteristic of NYCB could easily be misapprehended for on stage confidence. NYCB dancers, or perhaps particularly Whelan, are sharp. They pull off such straight lines, unyielding curves, that defiance seems ingrained in every movement. Speed, verve, the self-sufficient precision of each motion – that Adams-Mitchell sobriety caught in photographs – build up to convey absolute confidence, and that in turn is where the labels “cool” and “remote” are usually found and applied. Agon is austere. Abstract. It is a concept, not an emotion. It may evoke emotions, but these are not its essence.

What is competition?
Facts: one or more people displaying their prowess.
B dancers: one or more dancers displaying their prowess.

Add disappointment, fear, anger, jealousy and you have a romantic ballet. Not B’s intention. Yet, to say cool and remote, well, it depends. It is a bit like saying that a rational mind cannot love. RB dancers are used to dancing stories. To linger and wring out emotion. A pirouette is a s t o r y – a narrative thread wound around itself, to be tossed with a glossy smile to the public. The public attentively watches the story.
NYCB dancers whip through pirouettes like so many question marks. What could this mean? And what do you think of this?  And what am I doing now?
The public watches the d a n c i n g, studying the movements for cues, paying attention to the details of an outstretched arm, tilted head, flexed foot. It’s a dialogue, but it can be a story – if you want. Or you can just sit and watch the dance, absorb the sheer physical accomplishment. That is why B dancers must be that precise, that sharp, that fast, that transparent.

talk about ballet at ballet alert
backstage at nyc ballet: the winger 

directorial enfant prodige kasper bech holten blogs about the upcoming Ring productions at the Copenhagen opera. it's a pity the site is not promoted better or expanded to a group blog or even a full-fledged royal theatre blog. most arts blogs are independent sites run by arts addicted bloggers who write reviews and comments. but none of the big arts/opera/theatre institutions have come up with an in-house created blog even though it seems an obvious vehicle to create production and brand buzz and engage a digerati audience...

New York City Ballet is returning to Copenhagen for five performances at Tivoli Concert Hall in November. Peter Martins, its Danish director, will again be showcasing several of his own pieces, which to many observers of the company is a form of sacrilege. For those not in the know, Martins took over the New York City Ballet from its founder, Russian expatriate George Balanchine who is widely considered the greatest choreographer who ever lived.

How the quiet, tall Dane came to be entrusted with the famously autocratic ballet master’s legacy is a question that is still debated in ballet circles – especially in the company’s home base, New York. There is a lot of controversy about Martins steering of the one of the world’s largest ballet institutions since Balanchine’s death. Generally, he gets a lot of flack for everything: for hiring the wrong dancers, for not training them well enough, for not being true to the Balanchine style, for being too true to the Balanchine style, but mostly simply for not being Balanchine.

This is unfair, because Martins deserves credit just for being brave enough to take on the task. Many would have thrown in the towel, he hasn’t. But critics may have a point in tearing Martins’ ballet apart, even though it could be done more gracefully. In one of the kinder reviews, the New Yorker admits that “Martins can provide his dancers with an exciting technical workout” but call his choreography “remarkably soulless.” The underlying accusation of all this choreographic criticism is that Martins could be a bit less prolific in putting out mediocre ballets and spend a bit more time encouraging other choreographers, (Mr. Martins did hire Christopher Wheeldon, the current enfant prodige, as resident choreographer). It would free him up, critics argue, to keep better watch on the quality of the dancing and the artistic growth of his dancers.

All this however doesn’t matter much when the company performs in Denmark. The Danes couldn’t care less about Martins’ alleged lack of choreographic skill. When Martins comes home to Denmark, Danes applaud him without reservations, as one of theirs who made it big, who made it global. It is enough to satisfy their nationalism and it absolves them from questioning Martin’s achievements as a choreographer. It’s a palliative Martins probably deserves.

opera or trash?
quintessentially danishleave it to new yorkers to find extreme grounds for disagreement. new york's journalists are apparently deeply divided over copenhagen's musical offering in the city's sleek new maersk sponsored opera mansion across the harbour. the new yorker takes a decidedly dim view of the whole affair: in a review of kafka's trial, the latest opera by danish wunderkind composer poul ruder, critic alex ross calls the piece "stale" and "obvious", but hesitates to deliver a

 a final judgment on “Kafka’s Trial,” because the opera was hobbled by a spectacularly stupid production, which erased the distinction between real life and fiction and buried all the characters in an onslaught of puerile sexual imagery. Both Kafka and Joseph K. became idiots of id, desperate to try out every imaginable sexual act—anal, oral, you name it—with every woman who sauntered past. Watching it was like being trapped at a really gross Eurotrash orgy. There were also four Kafka doppelgängers wandering about the stage; at one point I thought they were about to get it on with each other, which might at least have brought us closer to Kafka’s real sexual issues (........) From the look of things, the management wants opera to be racy, hip, not too deep. Coming next season is a world première by Elvis Costello.

read the full article here.  and for after the bashing, here's an enthusiastic review from the new york times hailing the same piece as newfound opera nirvana.

debating what's next

and showing off babythe european modern danse scene mostly bores me. the pieces are invariably bleak or porn inspired and always set in the visual equivalent of industrial wasteland. denmark's scene is no exception to this trend, with many choreographers content to send out a slew of dancers - always in black - contorting themselves in painful knots of existential anguish. you get the picture. not so with christian andersen who pulls off a rare balancing act between visual austerity and dynamic storytelling in his latest performance at copenhagen's dansescene. andersen is masterly at laying out and developing narrative threads with the use of a minimum of elements: a plane of light,  chairs, homesown puppets, sound. into this sparsity he brings humour and surprise, as he calmly goes about rearranging objects and shifting moods. this is dance theater at its best, never boring, lucid, playful and full of contrasts.