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JARED'S GUEST POST: Liebeslieder Part I

9/30/2015

I am thrilled to present Jared Angle’s first post on Thoughts from the Paint. I have been begging Jared to write about ballet since before the site even launched. I cannot say publicly what I had to threaten to get him to finally do it! I have known Jared for 20 years; he is one of my very best friends as well as my most annoying next door neighbor. In addition to being an amazing artist, he is incredibly insightful about music and dance and hopefully I’ll have enough blackmail material to keep him writing for some time to come! I would like to wish him a happy ballroom birthday!

Liebeslieder Walzer, photo by Paul Kolnik

October 1st is apparently World Ballet Day, when various ballet companies will give behind-the-scenes access to their inner workings on YouTube. Coincidentally it happens to be my birthday, when I will have the privilege of dancing George Balanchine’s Liebeslieder Walzer as part of New York City Ballet’s Fall Season at Lincoln Center. I can think of no better birthday gift than appearing in this wonder of a ballet. Since YouTube cameras will not be transmitting my morning ballet class with the customary “Happy Birthday” tribute played by the accompanying pianist (usually after a tip-off from a colleague), or the inevitable final dress rehearsal of Liebeslieder, I thought I could offer an insider’s perspective of dancing in this ballet which continues to reveal itself in more depth every time I encounter it.

Liebeslieder, choreographed to Johannes Brahms’s Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 52 and Neue Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 65 for four voices and four hands at the piano, is an outlier in Balanchine’s canon. Most of his ballets are set to fuller orchestral scores. And except for some short vocal sections in Mendelsohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and the children’s chorus in the snow section of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, there are no others in which we get to dance Balanchine’s steps to the sound of the human voice. The mis-en-scène is also atypical for Balanchine, who often preferred

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Swan Shots

9/24/2015

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My colleague Devin Alberda captured some beautiful shots of Teresa Reichlen and Russell Janzen in rehearsal for Swan Lake. They make their debut as a tragic couple in just a few hours!

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Swan Queen Q&A

9/20/2015

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Teresa Reichlen, photo by Henry Leutwyler

When someone asks me what I do, and I respond that I am a ballet dancer, invariably the first thing they want to know is, “have you seen Black Swan?” The answer is yes, yes I have. All dancers have. The second thing they ask is if the ballet world is like the movie. Not exactly. I think Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a great horror movie, and I think Natalie Portman is fantastic in it. But it is a film that wraps every single ballet stereotype up in one woman, which is not very realistic. However, this inevitable line of inquiry with strangers does make plain that when most laypeople think about ballet they think of Swan Lake. Therefore, I think it is safe to conjecture that the dual role of Odette/Odile is probably the most famous in all of ballet.

The fame is justified. The role is incredibly difficult—both technically and emotionally. The Swan Queen dances throughout three of four acts of the ballet—the only one she gets off is the first, which isn’t very helpful! She must excel in the lyrical adagio passages of the White Swan—the plaintive backbends, the languorous passés and attitude balances. The she must tackle the brisk challenges in the third act Black Swan pas de deux, including its treacherous 32 fouetté turns—which come at the point when she is at her most tired.

The acting demands are no less daunting. She must convincingly act out a preposterous story: that she is the princess Odette trapped by the evil sorcerer Rothbart in half woman/half bird form who falls in love at first sight with a man who is trying to shoot her. Then she must become the villainous and seductive Odile (who is pretending to be Odette) who convinces the prince to swear his love to her instead. While she embodies Odile she must be enough like Odette so that the Prince is sold, but different enough so that the audience buys that she is a different woman entirely. Then she does another about-face and turns back into Odette, mourning her prince’s betrayal by the cold dark lake. In the finale she must not appear schizophrenic as she quickly reunites with her lover, forgives him, and pledges undying love to him which vanquishes her captor. For her efforts she is damned to an eternity of lonely swandom. To say that this is not the easiest of character studies would be an understatement. Natalie Portman rightfully won an Oscar for the task. Michael Keaton was nominated for an Oscar for a rather similar feat in Birdman.

My friend NYCB Principal Dancer Teresa Reichlen has been kind enough to answer a few questions about dancing such a demanding and storied role. Tess is one of those rare birds (sorry!) who is a perfect fit for the role. She has the height, length, and flexibility for the adagio work, as well as a sensational jump and the smooth turns requisite of the Black Swan. Next week Tess returns to the role of Odette/Odile in Peter Martins’s Swan Lake. She will be dancing with soloist Russell Janzen who is making his debut as Prince Siegfried. I’ve had a few glimpses and they are killing it in rehearsals. I cannot wait to see their shows!

Q: First of all Tess, have you ever seen Black Swan? If so, what did you think of it? (wink wink)

A: I have seen Black Swan. I think that it is a psychological thriller that happens to be based in the world of a ballet company and like any movie of that sort should not be accepted as a relevant representative of what happens in the real world.

Q: Great, moving on. Swan Lake is so iconic, but it is not exactly what the NYCB is known for. Did you dream of dancing Odette/Odile as a young dancer? Or was this something that came as a surprise in your career?

A: When I was younger I just wanted to be a dancer, I didn’t have any overarching dreams about specific companies or roles that I wanted to do. After I joined NYCB and started to do a few solos and began to realize how much I loved what I was doing there were specific things that I started to hope that I would one day get to do, including Swan Lake. I actually understudied the role for quite

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Women Aflame

9/8/2015

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Flaming June, by Frederic Leighton 1895

I caught Frederic Leighton’s Victorian masterpiece, Flaming June, at the Frick Museum over Labor Day weekend. The painting’s shock of orange, the palpable heat of the sun, and the dreamy languor of the lady create a stunning effect. The woman’s furled positioning is beautiful, as is the way her crossed foot juts out through her translucent gown. She made me think of Jerome Robbins’s too seldom performed ballet Antique Epigraphs. She also reminded me that there’s nothing quite like a ginger beauty in a bright color. I thought of so many iconic redhead moments: Nicole Kidman in chartreuse Dior at the Oscars, Ann Margaret in yellow in Bye Bye Birdie, and Rita Hayworth and Lucille Ball in so many blazing, technicolor images.

I also thought immediately of Moira Shearer, whose saturated crimson tresses matched her red satin slippers in the film The Red Shoes. I love this movie, as I think so many dancers do. Coincidentally, this summer I stumbled across Moira Shearer’s 1987 biography of George Balanchine, Balletmaster. It is an odd piece of literature. She barely knew Balanchine, and she quotes frequently from Bernard Taper’s definitive biography from three years prior. She fully admits her outsider status, though, like when she recounts an awkward tête á tête with Lincoln Kirstein. He demanded of her: “How can you write? What do you know? You don’t know the repertory.”

The book is out of print and it’s easy to see why. Although there are several details that were new to me, it is often a regurgitation of other sources. She is at her best when she tells stories from her (clearly extensive) interviews with Balanchine’s exes Alexandra Danilova and Brigitta (Vera) Zorina, and longtime secretary Barbara Horgan. She is at her worst while hypocritically criticizing critics like Edwin Denby. She even rewrites a passage of his “excessively flowery” review of Apollo in

Nicole Kidman in Dior

Ann Margaret in Bye Bye Birdie

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JARED'S GUEST POST: Liebeslieder Part I

Swan Shots

Swan Queen Q&A

Women Aflame

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