skygiants

I've seen two Boston Ballets in relatively quick succession over the past month, both combo programs featuring two pieces; the first was "The Rite of Spring" (Elo's, not Nijinsky's) paired with Pite's "The Seasons' Canon," and the second was a premiere, Stromile's "The Leisurely Installation of a New Window," paired with Ashton's "The [Midsummer Night's] Dream."

Breaking with the actual curation of the productions, I'm going to talk about "The Rite of Spring" and "The Leisurely Installation of a New Window" together because they both came first in their productions, they had kind of similar vibes, and I experienced similar feelings of mild disappointment about both of them that were not technically the fault of the productions. I was really excited about "The Rite of Spring" because I wanted to see some ballet dancers do a dramatic ritual sacrifice, and I was really excited about "The Leisurely Installation of a New Window" because I wanted to see some ballet dancers slowly install a window. Instead, both of these pieces were kind of abstract explorations through dance of the Relationship between the Individual and Society, and I think both would have been enjoyable for fifteen minutes but ran a bit long at half an hour.

The description for "Window" in the playbill reads:

Eighteen dancers inhabit the work through distinct but interdependent roles. The Seeker stands close to tradition, moving with discipline and clarity. The People operate within shared systems, attentive to both order and its quiet tensions. The Reformers introduce disruption, not as spectacle, but as pressure applied from within.

This did help me understand better what was going on in the dance, as the Seeker stalked around holding a book and then portentously passed it off to some dueting Reformers, but also made it feel a bit like a LARP that I was not participating in. On the other hand Reeves Gabriel of The Cure was There and Participating in Ballet Music (and every bit of marketing wanted you to know that Reeves Gabriel Of The Cure was There and Participating in Ballet Music) and occasionally the music would get very thrillingly electric guitar and you'd be like "Hello, Reeves Gabriel of The Cure!" So it's not that I didn't have a fine time, I just would have been okay with somewhat less of that time.

However, after these very mildly disappointing openers, I loved both "The Seasons' Canon" and "The Dream" very much! The Seasons' Canon is, justifiably, a known Boston Ballet showstopper -- a huge piece with a huge cast, and as you guys know I often have trouble with a piece that is not trying to tell me a story but this piece is truly just Humans Make Big Shapes and it's riveting. Could not take my eyes off it. The trailer here gives a bit of a sense but of course is not that much like seeing it Actually On Stage, but it does let you see one of the things I found most striking about the piece which is how extremely non-gendered it is -- everyone on that stage is dressed identically in pants and nude tank that makes them look topless, the whole corps looks like one and moves like one and there is nothing to distract you from that. Really, really cool experience.

And "The Dream" -- look, I'm a simple soul, and what I have discovered is that I love Ashton's silly panto-esque ballets. They are fun and they are funny and I love it when people get to be funny in dance! Dance jokes are good actually! Titania ballet-hopping her way towards Bottom in a way that manages to be simultaneously fairy-like and hilariously sultry, the arguing lovers constantly picking each other up and pirouetting a partner firmly Away from them Thank You, the rude mechanicals!! we wanted more rude mechanicals but I was so glad we got what we got. A+ Midsummer Night's Dream, would see again.

genarti got us season tickets to the ballet this year, and the last of this year's performances was last night. I honestly know very little about ballet except what I have gleaned from the anime Princess Tutu so these are only going to be the briefest notes of things that struck me from this season, but I will not remember what I have seen unless I note it, so here goes:

Fall Experience: I missed it! this is just a note to myself in case I ever ask, what did I think of the 2023 Fall Experience? well, I didn't.

Winter Experience: long enough ago that I don't remember it well at this point but I also don't think I found it very memorable generally; the first half was a couple of pieces by Helen Pickett and the second half was Mikko Nissenen's reimagining (and shortening) of the classic ballet Raymonda. The Pickett pieces I think were both pretty but were also both set to the very floaty kind of synth music that unfortunately immediately makes me start getting sleepy .... then what I remember best about the Raymonda was one part where a couple came out and danced a mazurka of some sort and were IMMEDIATELY and visibly having so much more fun than everyone else that it woke me all the way up.

Cinderella: fun and goofy and a good time but by far the most notable part of this ballet is the fact that Napoleon? and Wellington?? are there during Cindrella's ball??? Wellington is very prim and Napoleon is the shortest dancer in the troupe; there's some wig-related comedy; each of them is cajoled into dancing with a stepsister and then one stepsister just picks Napoleon up and carries him off stage, never to be seen again. Apparently this has been an established Bit in Ashton's Cinderella choreography for decades. Extremely funny, raises many questions, what are the implications of the events of Cinderella for the Napoleonic Wars?

Carmen: This was prefigured by a performance of Kingdom of the Shades, a ghost sequence by Florence Clerc after Marius Petipa, from the classical ballet La Bayadère, with a directorial note about how La Bayadère is too racist for them to want to do it but Kingdom of the Shades has fun choreography and stands alone. This is completely fair as a decision, but as aforementioned I personally do not tend to like choreographic set pieces sliced out of classical ballet with no context very much and though I do like ghost sequences this was not ghost enough to hold my interest.

HOWEVER, I extremely enjoyed Jorma Elo's Carmen. Apparently in this ballet version Carmen is supposed to be a fashion model, Don Jose is a business man of some sort and Escamillo is meant to be a Formula One driver -- I'll be honest, I did not really get any of that from the staging (and was a bit disappointed not to get a racecar on stage at any point) -- but the dancing was all extremely intense and compelling and emotional; it's the first time I've heard people gasp out loud at the ballet! this audience did not know that Carmen was going to have murders! and Ji Young Chae, who was standing in for Carmen the night we saw it (I think it's usually Lia Cirio) is one of those dancers I am now watching for every time we go -- no matter what she's doing she always looks like she is just having a fantastic time dancing, which is a really fun energy for Carmen in particular, I think.

Spring Experience: The three shorts on this one were Ken Ossola's "The Space Between," William Forsythe's "Blake Works III: The Barre Project," and Jiří Kylián’s "Bella Figura". The first was apparently inspired by Michaelangelo sculptures, which I read in the program and then immediately forgot while watching it -- the thing that struck me about it was how often the dancers were moving like they were being piloted around by the joints on their elbows and knees, which I think is not incompatible with 'sculpture themes' probably. I liked it but it ran a little long for me; I sort of lost the ability to continue focusing on it after about twenty minutes.

I loved "Blake Works III," which uses music by James Blake, a "post-dubstep" artist whose stuff I had never heard before and frankly don't think I would like much out of this context, but the shifting/jarring/sweeping electronic sounds with big stops in between worked really really well for me as paired with the choreography -- when everything came together right it managed to make it feel like the dancers were creating the music with their movement and I dug that very much.

"Bella Figura" sort of half worked for me and half didn't; it's a very experimental/structural piece, I told genarti afterwards that it felt like it was posing questions that I didn't have the context to answer. Why is there fire on the stage at the end? WHO COULD SAY. NOT ME. But there's one bit where all the dancers are topless and wearing the same enormous big red skirts on the bottom, the only visual difference on stage is that some of them have breasts and some don't, and there's a bit when there's just three of them on stage -- a female dancer in front, a male and female dancer behind her, all of them doing the same choreography -- when I did feel like I understood part of what I was being asked to look at, like it was encouraging me to look in a different way at these different kinds of human forms that are so often in ballet doing very different things, which I thought was very cool.