The astonishing thing about the women of New York City Ballet is that even with the retirement of two of the company' most magnificent dancers, the bench of remarkable women is still deep. The six-week winter season that just ended brought this home to me.

Needless to say, I will miss Jenifer Ringer and Janie Taylor enormously. They are both pure poetry, Jenifer in her warmth and joy, and Janie in her mysterious coolness and waiflike sexuality. In the case of Ringer, we can hold onto her a little longer through her terrific book, Dancing Through It. And Taylor will be designing costumes for Tom Gold Dance and for Justin Peck’s upcoming premiere in May.

(Left) Jenifer Ringer in Alexei Ratmansky's Namouna; photo by Paul Kolnik, courtesy New York City Ballet. (Right) Janie Taylor in costume for Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun; photo by Matthew Karas for Dance Magazine.

But it takes only a few nights at the Koch Theater to realize the richness of the remaining top women. And these dancers are onstage a lot. Only the hardiest make it through a season without an injury.

Sara Mearns is a tour de force in Wheeldon’s DGV: Danse a Grande Vitesse. She has an intensity wherein her face and whole body bear down and you simply cannot turn away. But she can also be incredibly light in the floating lifts that Wheeldon has given this interesting ballet. In Balanchine's Union Jack she really does seem like she could command a whole fleet. In Balanchine’s Walpurgisnacht Ballet, she rips into her steps, especially in the finale when she (literally) lets her hair down. Whatever the role, Mearns charges the space around her with electricity.

Sara Mearns in costume for Wheeldon's DGV. Photo by Sarah Silver for Dance Magazine.

Ashley Bouder, another powerhouse, can rev up the heartbeat in Balanchine's Tarantella or Stars and Stripes. This season she seemed to take on a new luxuriousness in the premiere of Liam Scarlett’s Acheron (which I found more interesting on second viewing). In this clip of the Dance Magazine Awards from December, you can see her famously crisp ebullience in Square Dance.

Ashley Bouder in Tarantella. Photo by Paul Kolnik, courtesy New York City Ballet.

Sterling Hyltin is quickly expanding her range. As Spring in Robbins’ Four Seasons, partnered by the supremely classical Tyler Angle, she’s a warm breeze. And she brings a terrific kinetic edge to the zig-zag, stop-start rhythms in Peter Martins’ Calcium Light Night.

Sterling Hyltin in costume for Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements. Photo by Nathan Sayers for Pointe magazine.

 Maria Kowroski is super-strong and sharp in Mauro Bigonzetti’s Vespro, funny and goofy as the Girl in Green in Robbins' Dances at a Gathering. (I wish she had more opportunities to showcase her comedic prowess, which delighted audiences in Wheeldon’s Variations Sérieuses and Stroman’s Double Feature.) In the 2012 gala pieces that Peter Martins made in tribute to Valentino, she was the only dancer who looked naturally elegant in Valentino’s extravagant (and body-obscuring) gowns.

Maria Kowroski in Balanchine's Serenade. Photo by Paul Kolnik, courtesy New York City Ballet.

And Tiler Peck continues to be a paragon of virtues, both musically and dramatically. As the Pink Girl in Dances at a Gathering, she radiates humanity and tenderness. In Preljocaj’s premiere Spectral Evidence, she really made something of the questionable role of an accused witch. As Fall in The Four Seasons, she energizes the whole stage, ending the ballet on a high. And she made a stunning debut this season in the simple but celestial After the Rain duet by Wheeldon.

Tiler Peck in costume for Robbins' The Four Seasons. Photo by Matthew Karas for Dance Magazine.

The strength, power, and subtelty of NYCB’s women makes one eager for the next season—to begin April 29. And stay tuned for a blog on the up-and-coming women of NYCB from Margaret Fuhrer.

It’s well known that the powerful Russian conductor, Valerie Gergiev, looks down on ballet. As general director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, he has threatened his musicians by saying, “If you play badly, I’ll send you to play for the ballet.” (Ballet Review, Winter 2008/09) Now it seems he is trying to destroy Russian ballet at its very foundation: the legendary Vaganova Ballet Academy.

 Gergiev wants to combine the Mariinsky Ballet and the affiliated school, the Vaganova Academy, and have them both under his own control. The longtime rector of the Vaganova Ballet Academy, Vera Dorofeeva, wrote a letter objecting to this plan. She refused to let him take over the school’s space. Then, on October 28, culture minister Vladimir Medinsky announced that the former Bolshoi dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze is now acting rector of the Academy, supplanting Dorofeeva. And that Uliana Lopatkina, who is still performing as a Mariinsky principal, will be the artistic director, replacing the supremely lovely, devoted, and smart Altynai Asylmuratova. No one at the academy was given any advance notice.

The "acting" rector of the Vaganova Academy: Nikolai Tsiskaridze

Tsiskaridze is often referred to as a Bolshoi star, but his flamboyant, sloppy performances with Kings of Dance have been markedly devoid of starlight. He has, however, attracted another kind of media attention by constantly criticizing the Bolshoi on television and elsewhere. Bolshoi general director Anatoly Iksanov accused him of fomenting the kind of negativity that made the tragic acid-throwing attack on Sergei Filin possible. For his constant negativity, Tsiskaridze's contract with the Bolshoi was not renewed by Iksanov. And then Iksanov lost his job. They've been dropping like dominos.

 Tsiskaridze has friends in very high places, and they’ve found him this new job. Although he is known to be a good coach, I can’t imagine a worse person to oversee this great school. He seems to ooze negative energy and an outsized narcissism. Many are outraged.

Diana Vishneva, the most famous of the Vaganova grads still performing, courageously spoke out against the appointment: “The rector of the Vaganova Academy needs to be a person who has the necessary education for this. It should not be forgotten that this is a school for children and its leader should be morally irreproachable.”

Diana Vishneva in La Bayadère (right)

Mariinsky soloist Ilya Kuznetsov has also spoken out, saying that by removing Dorafeeva and Asylmuratova, "the bureaucrats have ripped out the heart and soul of the academy." He’s circulating a petition that calls the appointment “legally unauthorized…and harmful to the fate of the Academy.” He threatened to quit, but has now thrown his hat in the ring to compete with Tsiskaridze for the permanent position as rector.

Ilya Kuznetsov (left)

To remind you of the storied past of the Vaganova, it produced many of the greatest dancers in the world: Pavlova, Ulanova, Balanchine, Baryshnikov, Makarova, Asylmuratova, Kondaurova, and most recently Smirnova. I was fortunate to attend the Vaganova’s 275th year celebration.

I remember very well that when I interviewed Tsiskaridze a few years ago he showed disdain for both St. Petersburg and the Mariinsky Ballet.

According to trusted British source Ismene Brown, who translates from Russian media coverage, the firings were a “fee” for Gergiev’s promise to not subsume the Vaganova and Mariinsky together.

At the press conference, attended by many teachers, Tsiskaridze assured the teachers that the Academy will maintain its independence. Dorofeeva announced that she agreed to leave her job at Vaganova only on the condition that the school would remain independent.

But just today culture minister Medinsky suggested another sort of merger: that Tsiskaridze would combine Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet School and St. Petersburg’s Vaganova Academy into one organization.

How could all this be happening? How could there be so little oversight or discussion of this takeover? The New York–based Russian producer Val Golovitser says, “Gergiev is a friend of President Putin so he has a green light for everything.”

Gergiev’s previous idea was to merge the Vaganova Academy with St. Petersburg’s music conservatory and art institute. Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker, says the problem with Gergiev is his “worldly power.” His annual income is about $16.5 million—at a time when Mariinsky dancers are famously underpaid. Ross contends that Gergiev is stretched thin and the quality of his performances is getting spotty.

Gergiev claims that the Vaganova Academy is no longer producing dancers of the highest standards. So his solution is to replace all those in leadership.

But noted dance photographer Nina Alovert, a Russian émigré since 1977, said that the lower number of outstanding graduates is due to a larger cultural shift. “The Ballet in Soviet times was very popular," she explained in an email. "The theaters in Soviet Russia replaced the church, especially the ballet. The ballet was the keeper of morality and beauty. Also, dancers at that time were privileged people: They could travel to the West, see the world, buy fancy clothes, and have international recognition. Now, people can go to the West more easily. Parents prefer for their children not to have so difficult a life, especially the boys. They would like to see their boys as businessmen or something like this. The less boys in the school, the less possibility to have talented students. The girls are still coming to the school.”

Asylmuratova’s counter accusation is that Gergiev has neglected the ballet. While the Mariinsky Opera has had eight premieres in the last year or so, the ballet has had none. And that some of the Academy's best graduates are going over to the Bolshoi and other companies, where the conditions are better.

Dorofeeva says the real reason Gergiev is trying to take control is that he wants to use the Vaganova building, which she and Asyluratova have resisted. Alovert says, “I think Gergiev hopes that Tsiskaridze will be more flexible.”

The crazy part (or one of the crazy parts) to me is that Tsiskaridze, in order to keep up the pretense that he has been put in charge for artistic reasons, says he plans to hire teachers more familiar with current styles. But in the past he has lambasted the Bolshoi for being too influenced by contemporary styles outside of Russia and ignoring the great Yuri Grigorovich. He claimed that other countries are laughing at Russia for not using this national treasure more. Perhaps Tsiskaridze hasn’t noticed that very few other ballet company outside of Russia have asked for a Grigorovich ballet. (The choreographer's Ivan the Terrible performed by Paris Opéra Ballet in 2003 is available on a Naxos DVD.)

Tsiskaridze has another rival in Alexei Fomkin, currently the Vaganova’s well respected vice rector. The author of a hefty book on the Vaganova technique, Fomkin is the person who opened the Vaganova archives to Elizabeth Kendall for her terrific book, Balanchine and the Lost Muse, about the choreographer’s time as a student at the Academy. Kendall told me that she sent a letter of support to Fomkin, expressing her respect for what the Vaganova Academy has accomplished under the Asylmuratova/Dorofeeva/Fomkin leadership.

The Academic Council will meet at the end of this month to set a date for the election for a permanent rector. According to Academy rules, all the faculty will get to vote. I am hoping that Tsiskaridze's well-placed friends will find him a more appropriate job, and that Gergiev will leave the Vaganova Academy alone.

I think Anna Halprin is immortal. She was there before the beginning and will be there after the end. The beginning of what? Of postmodern dance, or improvisation as performance, of collaborating with wild artists in other fields, of dancing to heal communities.

She still has energy, insight, and curiosity. In this “Teacher’s Wisdom” she recalled how when she studied anatomy, human muscles looked like fish to her. She also talks about the need for each of us to integrate our polarities, our opposites, and become part of an environment.

We can see her in action in a wonderful documentary on her called Breath Made Visible. I wrote about the film in this blog post, in which I said that Halprin is a national treasure.

The photo above is from a piece Halprin choreographed called Prophetess in 1955, probably performed at the ANTA Theater in NYC. She told me that she was rehearsing in Martha Graham’s studio, and Graham helped her make the headress. And it turned out that they were both prophetesses.

Long Live Anna Halprin! —Wendy Perron

Photo: Anna Halprin, 1955, by Imogen Cunningham from Dance Magazine Archives, reprinted with permission of Imogen Cunningham Trust, at www.imogencunningham.com

New Yorkers are getting revved to see this company, which hasn’t come to the U.S. in 16 years. We know they are elegant, refined, and highly technical. But isn't that true of any ballet company? What, really, sets them apart? Most of the dancers come right out of the POB school, but what does that training emphasize? It’s not the Balanchine style of moving large and fast; it’s not the big bravura leaps of the Bolshoi or the ethereal port de bras of the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet. What does POB have that's unique?

We do know that Paris Opéra Ballet has incredible étoiles, which is a source of excitement in itself. As artistic director Brigitte Lefèvre says about the étoiles in our cover story on Marie-Agnès Gillot: “They have something from the au-delà [the other world], at the same time beautiful and fragile.”

POB in Pina Bausch's Orpheus and Eurydice. Photo courtesy Lincoln Center Festival.

I will be indulging in étoile-watching this week when POB comes to Lincoln Center Festival. (And by the way, Gillot really is a special creature on the stage.) But I will also be looking to see if I can discern a POB style. Stay tuned for my blog on this, and for dance historian Lynn Garafola’s review, which will be posted on our reviews page after the season is over.

POB in Maurice Bejart's Boléro. Photo courtesy Lincoln Center Festival.

A favorite dancer in the U. S. since 1995, Angel Corella will retire from American Ballet Theatre this spring. Audiences have been elated by his exuberance, his astounding leaps and pirouettes, and his warmth in classical roles from the Slave in Le Corsaire to all the prince roles. He has also created roles in works by Tharp, Wheeldon, Stanton Welch, and Mark Morris. Companies where he has been a guest artist include the Kirov Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The Australian Ballet, and La Scala.

In Dance Magazine's cover story on him in November 1995 (cover below), Elizabeth Kaye wrote: "In class other dancers gather around him when he does 20 pirouettes from a single preparation."

For his farewell performance on June 28, he will dance Swan Lake with Paloma Herrera. (I hope Nina Ananiashvili comes to his farewell, because I have a fabulous memory of Corella at her farewell.)

Corella will continue to lead Corella Ballet, both as artistic director and as principal dancer. The company, now known as Barcelona Ballet, appears at NY City Center, April 17–20.

At Dia:Beacon this weekend, Trisha Brown placed her Group Primary Accumulations with Movers into the Michael Heizer Gallery, whose floor has four huge, deep canyons carved into it. The four women were lying on their backs serenely performing the simple, sensual accumulation: lift the right arm from the elbow; do it again and then lift the left arm from the shoulder; do that again and brush your hair behind your ear. And on and on.

Soon each woman was interrupted by two men who picked her up and carried her to a new spot. She did not look at her new surroundings but blithely continued her sequence, hoping they haven’t placed her too close to those canyons. The audience stood behind plexiglass barriers because nobody wants visitors falling into big deep holes. From where we stood, we could not see through to the bottom. I wondered how I would feel being carried to who-knows-where and it could be near a precipice. Trust is key.

Another amazing spectacle was seeing Figure 8 (which I used to perform when I was with Trisha’s company in the 1970s) strung out in the very long, Walter de Maria gallery with eight dancers instead of the usual five. This time it was Serenity in the Face of Higher Math. With the right arm they are counting 1; 1,2; 1,2,3, etc, while the left is counting 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 etc. with the simple motion of bringing the fingertips to the top of the head. It’s a diabolical coordination, done to metronome—with eyes closed. Diane Madden, rooted in place, led the group (though with all eyes closed, there was no such thing as following).

Opal Loop, as I’ve said in a previous blog, is a beautiful essay on seeing and not seeing, and bringing nature to the stage. And have I mentioned that Dia: Beacon is an ideal place to see Trisha’s work—both its huge, daylit indoor spaces and the surrounding grounds.

The novelty of the day was that Trisha herself danced. At 73, she is lithe but fragile. She slowly intertwined limbs with one female dancer at a time. It was moving to see how each of the four dancers interacted with Trisha and supported her gamely, inventively, and lovingly.

I am not sure what happens on this day, but let's all think about dance together. We think about it all the time anyway.

Every year on this day, a different well-known dance artist writes a message to…everyone. Today’s International Dance Day Message is by
Julio Bocca:

"Dance is discipline, work, teaching, communication. With it we save on words that perhaps others would not understand and, instead, we establish a universal language familiar to everyone. It gives us pleasure, it makes us free and it comforts us from the impossibility we humans have to fly like birds, bringing us closer to heaven, to the sacred, to the infinite.

It is a sublime art, different each time, so much like making love that at the end of each performance it leaves our heart beating very hard and looking forward to the next time." (translated from the Spanish
by Marcia De La Garza) 

UNESCO and the International Dance Committee of the International Theater Institute started International Dance Day in 1982, choosing April 29 to mark the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), the great-grandfather of ballet as we know it. 

Richmond Ballet
The Joyce, NYC
April 6–11, 2010
Reviewed by Wendy Perron

Colin Connor's Vestiges. Photo by Aaron Sutten, Courtesy Richmond Ballet.

While other companies scramble to acquire works by the hottest choreographers, Richmond Ballet has quietly commissioned a number of pieces that have endured. The company brought six of these to New York. (Program A presented works by artistic director Stoner Winslett, Jessica Lang, and Mauricio Wainrot.) If there was an overall theme of Program B, it was that men and women need each other to get through hard times—or just to feel whole.

Val Caniparoli’s Violin opens with five men in a circle with one arm stretched on a high diagonal, wrist bent like a hairpin. A lone, ignored woman in dimness outside the circle walks downstage and off right. The men are strong, grounded, and lifted. The next section, for the women, is lighter and swifter. Wonderful duets ensue, with intricate lifts where the men sometimes take a step back to arch deliciously and send out that one arm with hairpin wrist. That motif, which at first expresses strength, curiosity, and idiosyncrasy, was repeated way too many times. But Violin was well-crafted and, like other Caniparoli works, had a satisfying coherence. Naturally the piece ended with the men and women together in the circle, blending qualities.

William Soleau’s Misa Criolla (titled after Argentine composer Ariel Ramirez’s music) focused on a central couple that seemed to be mourning—perhaps for the loss of a child. The four other couples engaged in spirited partnering, making good use of some benches. Misa Criolla had a more gracious, earthy quality than Violin but was less inventive. With the muted colors, women’s long skirts, and Latino choral music, the piece seemed influenced by Nacho Duato.

The pace stepped up for Vestiges, by Colin Connor, to pulsating music by Michael Nyman. Phillip Skaggs dashed on from stage right to left, stopping dead in his tracks to stare at a circle of light on the floor. Other dancers raced in, building the kinetic excitement. Again, in this ballet, the women helped the men out of whatever trouble they were in. At the end, all the dancers ran through that very circle of light that had stopped them cold in the beginning.

In this highly professional company, a few dancers stood out magnificently. Maggie Small positively glowed, no matter how small or large her movement was. Thomas Garrett, with his long and energetic body, sliced through space with flair. Skaggs, who was not especially articulate in Violin, sizzled in Vestiges.