According to Dance Beat magazine, US and World Standard finalists Anna Mikhed and Victor Fung have broken up. Though not technically the best in the world, I’ve often found this couple just oozing with charm and charisma, as have others — they’re kind of America’s Sweethearts. They placed third in the world this year and they’ve long been second in the US Nationals. I don’t get it — first Mirko Gozzoli and Alessia Betti — well, and before them, Karina Smirnoff and Slavik Kryklyvyy– these couples break up when they’re on top.

Anna tells DB she’s “thoroughly enjoyed these last 6 years of dancing with Victor,” saying they’ve grown individually and as a partnership. “There was no incident that took place, just a recognition, perhaps mostly by myself, that our paths in partnership and in dancing were going in different directions.”

She tells fans to watch for each individually, and DB says Victor has begun looking for a new partner. Still, I’ll miss seeing them together.

Here they are Viennese Waltzing in Hong Kong earlier this year:

(photo from PBS.org)

How funny — I was just going on in my last post about how I fell in love with the Paris Opera Ballet through Frederick Wiseman’s currently-showing film La Danse, and now I receive news that two etoiles with that company — Aurelie Dupont (in photo above, taken from Bailarinas) and Mathias Heymann — will be performing with New York City Ballet in their opening night gala, on November 24th. In exchange, NYCB’s Ashley Bouder and Gonzalo Garcia (both SLSG faves) will perform with Paris Opera Ballet, on November 12th. Both couples will dance the “Rubies” section of Balanchine’s Jewels.

Additionally, NYCB’s opening night performance will include Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH (my personal favorite of his) and a premiere by Peter Martins set to John Adams music and starring all of the company’s principal dancers.

Photo of DSCH by Paul Kolnik, from NYTimes.

NYCB’s Nutcracker season begins the Friday following opening night, November 27th. Visit the website for tix and info.

Most exciting though about the dancer exchange. I’ve never seen Heymann perform live and I’ve only seen Dupont dance Trisha Brown, not full-out ballet.

Here are a couple videos of Heymann I found on YouTube: first as Bluebird in Sleeping Beauty and second in a contemporary solo:

And here is Dupont as Kitri in Don Q:

Sorry, you guys, I’m just so into videos these days!

(photo taken from here)

Since seeing Frederick Wiseman’s excellent film La Danse a couple days ago — a documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet — I have not been able to get the fascinating etoile (star, highest level of dancer over there), Laetitia Pujol, out of my mind. The film is basically a series of rehearsals with some actual performance footage thrown in, and, unbelievably, it’s absolutely mesmerizing. If anyone’d described it that way to me beforehand — a bunch of rehearsal footage — I would’ve thought I’d be bored out of my mind, but it’s so incredibly interesting watching these dancers rehearse with top choreographers like Wayne McGregor and Angelin Preljocaj and Mats Ek. And the performances — omg - -that company does everything from the aforementioned contemporary choreographers, to Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater, to Petipa to Balanchine. Parisians are so damn lucky! We get either Petipa or Balanchine over here… not at all fair…

Anyway, Pujol blew me completely away. I’d never seen her dance before and somewhere in the middle of the film she’s rehearsing and she does the most mind-blowing series of turns all over the damn room. I’ve spent the past couple hours searching YouTube and, yay, finally found what she was doing! It’s Etudes, here:

For some reason, the spins looked a slight bit faster in the film, but you get the idea.
Here are a couple of others of Pujol:
The first, Le Baiser, which I love,

And Giselle, with Nicolas Le Riche:

One odd thing about the movie is that it’s a documentary, but there are no captions, so you have to try to guess who all the choreographers and dancers are. There are credits at the end, but you can’t possibly figure out who is who at that point, when there are all these names filling up the screen. At first I thought this was kind of a discredit to the artists not to list their names and titles or bios when they are shown in the film, but then I thought, well, it would kind of interrupt the flow of the action; this made it seem more like a narrative film, like one of those narrative films that’s shot with a handheld camera or the like to make you think you’re eavesdropping on someone’s actual life — which, it turns out, you are! Interesting filming device…

The real-life rehearsals do have their moments of (probably unintentional) humor, such as when one of the choreographers is describing to a young dancer learning the role of Medea that she’s portraying a god, a person whose intense, other-worldly powers make loving fraught with danger, and she says “Oh, like Edward Scissorhands.” At times, though, people laughed at seemingly odd things, like when a young dancer new to the company tells the director she longs to dance like Pujol and the director tells her, “Well, she has her own personal intelligence.” People in the audience seemed to think that was funny, but clearly, Pujol does have “her own personal intelligence”; dancing isn’t just about excellence of technique, it’s about using your brain. And these dancers are so fascinating because they’re so clever, they’re such powerful performers.

Go see this movie if you at all can. In NY, it’s at Film Forum.

Tonight three dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will be on SYTYCD! My favorite modern dance company :D  Linda Celeste Sims, Clifton Brown, and Constance Stamatiou (above, left to right, in photos by Andrew Eccles) will perform excerpts from Ulysses Dove’s Episodes, which, if I remember correctly, I found very intense and rather haunting.

(Linda Celeste Sims and Matthew Rushing in Episodes, photo by Paul Kolnik)

If you’re in New York, it’s almost time for Alvin Ailey season here. They open at City Center December 2nd. The season lasts for a month and this year they’re celebrating Judith Jamison’s 20th anniversary as artistic director (last year they celebrated the company’s 50th anniversary).

I so love it when great dancers are on TV!

There’s some real talent on the show this season — mainly, imo, Jakob Karr (above) and Russell Ferguson (who I blogged about before). I also think Karen Hauer is a true performer who can do just about any kind of dance, and will thus go far.

I was sad to hear Karen announce tonight that she and Matt are getting divorced. They taught at my former studio and I always thought they were a sweet and very in-love couple.

I liked Karen and Kevin’s disco routine, but I again thought Karen sold it; I could hardly watch Kevin! It was a rather Latin-y disco, which shows how much Karen made it her own, and did so very well.

But my favorites of the night were Jakob and Ashleigh’s jazz and Russell and Noelle’s Afro-jazz. More Afro-jazz on this show please please! I thought both did amazingly with that latter routine, although they weren’t quite as good as those dancers in Fela! on Broadway (review coming soon!), who just really really floored me and made me so want to learn African. I have never ever seen people move like that before! But Russell and Noelle’s routine was African combined with jazz and so should have been a little jazzier, less pure African.

Still, though, to me, no one can really touch Jakob. I mean, he always has these stunning leaps in every routine, but it’s not only that, it’s just his whole form is such perfection. They way he’d round his shoulders and kind of hunch over that cane tonight was so creepy — but it was so creepy because it was so real because his whole form transmogrified when he made that shape, you know what I mean?

I agree with the judges that Mollee and Nathan’s salsa wasn’t all there. It looked clumsy at times; it looked like they struggled partnering each other, though I think she in particular would have done fine on her own.

I also agree with Nigel and Mary that Ryan and Ellenore’s hip hop wasn’t so swift. They tried too, but to me they just didn’t make the swagger believable, and they were really out of sync on the side-by-side work. They were also both lacking in precision I think.

I agree with the judges as well on Pauline and Peter’s Quickstep, though I loved the sailor smitten with Hula dancer story! Go J.T. and Tomas! So happy they’re choreographing for this show now. (I also know them — or at least J.T. — from my old studio.) I do think both dancers were good on their own, and sold it quite well, but the technique wasn’t there at all — the shaping in closed handhold was all wrong, the runs and running jetes were sloppy and not in sync. But still, it was fun and they acted it well and sold the story.

I disagree with the judges about Kathryn and Legacy’s Broadway though. Well, the judges liked him — and so did I — I thought he nailed it, especially for a b-boy. The choreographer did use his strengths with the handstands and back flips. I thought she was good too, though in terms of the movement — the way she circled her pelvis at him, trying to get his attention. I thought she acted it fine — she was cute as opposed to angry and demanding, but I think she made it her own thing. She is rather sweet-faced and that’s what she used to try to grab his attention.

I agree though with the judges about Victor and Channing’s contemporary, and I can’t even put my finger on why it didn’t blow me away emotionally like I feel it should have. It was a story about a couple arguing, struggling, and ultimately breaking away from each other. They danced it well, they danced it with passion and intensity, and yet it didn’t make me feel all that much. Maybe it is just because they’re a new partnership this week. I have to say, I think Victor is an excellent dancer. I can tell that from his solos. His solos touch me the way Jakob’s dancing does. But for some reason he doesn’t seem to be able to take that with him to the duets …  though it looks like he’s trying hard to.

Oh cool — apparently, Winona Ryder, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are to star in a film called Black Swan, a thriller that follows the story of a fictitious NYCBallet dancer who may or may not be having delusions about a rival. All actresses play dancers with the company, and supposedly, there is some kind of “extreme” sex scene between Portman and Kunis. Hmmm… Can any of them dance, or will they have doubles to do the dancing, I wonder. Or will there actually be much dancing?

Directing is Darren Aronofsky, who last directed The Wrestler, and filming is expected to begin in New York next month, with a release date sometime in 2010.

Anyway, I managed to watch DWTS last night. Thing is, I’m really so not into it; even if I wasn’t busy with my book, I’m so not into blogging about the show this season. I think Mya is overall the best contestant on the show right now, and so she probably deserves to win. But she just doesn’t do that much for me. I liked both her Quickstep and 70s Samba last night — I thought her Quickstep was actually pretty basic and technique-focused so I’m not sure why Len didn’t like it, and the Samba was fun — a lot of people dance Samba to disco music since it’s so hard to find good authentic Samba music around here.

I think overall I like Aaron the most though, even though he’s not as good as Mya. Still, he’s getting less and less fun, for some reason, as the season goes on. His over-the-top-ness is not enough to compel me to watch the show anymore. I liked but didn’t love his 90s Latin routine last night — wait, was it  Jive? I don’t even remember? But I was annoyed with Karina that she didn’t let him do his fun boy-band moves. Why did she cut him off like that — I think it would have been hilarious. And what is with everyone getting sick? (Both Karina and Aaron had the flu at various points this week apparently…)

I thought all the Standard routines were pretty bland last night. I thought Donny’s Viennese Waltz was the best, mainly because Kym was so beautifully fluid. But during the Latin round, his 80s Paso wasn’t all that interesting. The costumes and music (I used to love Spin Me ‘Round) were far more fun and flashy than the actual dancing.

And I feel the same way about Kelly as I do Aaron. I liked watching her learn and grow early on but now it seems she’s stagnating and it’s not that interesting anymore. I thought her 60s Jive was cute and I love that Louis, unlike Karina, let her put her own Monkees-esque moves in.

I feel like Joanna really dances like a paper doll. She has no grounding, no weight, no strength or firmness in her body. You need that for ballroom, even for the Standard dances. You need that for any kind of dance. You need that to do fouettes and pirouettes in ballet. Not that I don’t dance exactly like that — that was always my problem: I looked emaciated and completely substanceless. I used to think it was just about being thin, but it’s not. There are very thin dancers who are very rooted and have a great deal of strength in their bodies. She’s a really really pretty paper doll, but a paper doll nonetheless and I can’t for the life of me understand why the judges fawn over her so.

I know, as Katrina had commented earlier, that seasons may collide, but I still so want Yankees to be on the show.  Come on, A-Rod can dance with Smirnoff and Derek with … Lacey maybe. The World Series was the most exciting thing to happen since Roberto Bolle (look look, new pic from Weber book!) came to town. I’ve been a bit bored and depressed since it ended…

One more thing about the Yankees: they had a little dance segment at the City Hall celebration — did anyone watch it? The dancers were teenaged schoolgirls, apparently, from Staten Island, called the LA Dancers — something like that. They were okay, but you know… Why don’t they have a real dancer, like Ashley Bouder? I think she’d be perfect — she’s cute and extremely athletic and would be very attractive to the average baseball fan. And she’s a NYCBallet dancer… Come on! Next year…

Photo of Bouder by Gene Schiavone, taken from Bailarinas; photos of A-Rod and Jeter taken from here and here respectively.

(left to right: Ashley Bouder, Antonio Carmena, Russell Janzen)

All photos of Ashley Bouder, Antonio Carmena and Russell Janzen by Matthew Murphy.

Review by Michael Northrop

Avi Scher & Dancers debuted the dynamic new piece “Touch” at the 2009 Contemporary Dance Festival at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center Saturday. The music, Aphex Twin’s “Blue Calx” performed by Alarm Will Sound, fit right in on a mixed bill that ranged from quieter balletic moments from the host company, Thang Dao Dance, to some entertaining, Pilobol-esque body-stacking from Phoenix Project Dance Theater.

That was it for fitting in, though. Everything else about “Touch” stood out, starting with the dancers. New York City Ballet corps member Russell Janzen, soloist Antonio Carmena, and principal Ashley Bouder were tremendous, and the choreography made the most of the trio’s athleticism. This was not a timid exploration of the stage. Whenever there was a question (a half step, a reach), the answer was yes (continue, embrace).

Janzen and Carmena came out shirtless in bike shorts. Aesthetically, this highlighted the physicality of the piece, which included some exceptional lifts. (Psychologically, it just made every guy in the audience feel like a toneless dumpazoid—or perhaps I project? In either case, it was a big hit with the row of teen girls behind me.)

Bouder, dressed in black, was marvelous. She reminded me of that great line, that great scene, from Geoffrey Rush’s Oscar-winning 1996 movie Shine: “Boldness of attack.” In the movie, Rush, as a brilliant pianist, has to be prodded to it. On Saturday, Bouder was committed to it from the start. Her pointework was precise but bristling with power.

Anyone who saw Scher’s work at the City Center Studios in June or the Ailey Citigroup Theater in September knows that he has a real flair for physical, crowd-pleasing pieces set to contemporary music. This fierce, fresh piece manages to both fit right in with that and, again, stand out.

Anyway, when I first started blogging there were practically no YouTubes of any of my favorite dancers, but that’s thankfully now changed. So, here are several of Marcelo, still SLSG’s favorite ballerino!, dancing with some of SLSG’s favorite ballerinas.

Here, with Alessandra Ferri in Lar Lubovitch’s gripping Othello pas de deux:

Here with Veronika Part in Swan Lake (video quality is not the best, but oooh, the music!)

Here, his Albrecht variation from Giselle, which is timely since ABT is currently in Ocean County, CA, performing that ballet:

Here, as the wickedly sexy Von Rothbart in Swan Lake:

Here, with Gillian Murphy at the beginning of SL (again as Von Rothbart):

The guy who’s dancing the swamp-creature persona of Von Roth, above, is Isaac Stappas, whose new headshot, coincidentally, I was just sent by the amazing Jade Young, who is practically becoming ABT’s portraitist in residence!

I’ve posted it previously, but here is Marcelo’s which he did a while back:

And one more, with Gillian Murphy again in Coppelia:

I know, the videos are nothing compared the live versions, but the first, of Othello, comes kind of close, no? And the last you can see pretty well, especially around the 4 minute mark when the great one begins his solo.

Went to my local bookstore last night and couldn’t find it, but apparently it’s now available for sale in online (European) bookstores at least.

In addition to original writing by Weber and Bolle, it includes text by D.H. Lawrence, and illustrations by Paul Cadmus! Hmmm…

(all photos by Weber and taken from teNeues)

He would be fun! Or Derek Jeter, or A-Rod, who, by the way, on the night of the second World Series game, my friends and I saw at Blue Ribbon at 6 Columbus, where we went after seeing Morphoses (review of the program B still to come!) He was with Kate Hudson, and an entourage of course. We also saw Wallace Shawn there. Such a cutie — and he got more requests for autographs than A-Rod!

I mean, why are there never any baseball players on the show? Only footballers?

Anyway, this week’s show (which I realize I’m very late with now — don’t even ask; crazy crazy week): my favorites were Aaron and Karina’s Jive, Mya and Dmitry’s Foxtrot, and and Donny and Kym’s Quickstep. I thought Aaron’s Jive was downright professional-looking — I do think those athletic training courses she had him do beforehand so he’d get the kicks and flicks right — helped immensely. I thought Mya’s Foxtrot was very golden-age Hollywood, very glamorous and beautifully danced. And I thought Donny’s Quickstep showed excellent showmanship and very good footwork. I disagree with the judges who were critical of him — I thought he did an excellent job with that QS. And I missed the supposed mistakes!

I disagree with the judges on Michael and Anna’s Foxtrot, and Kelly and Louis’s Salsa. I thought Michael did much better last week with the Samba, and in this week’s group Paso — I think the Foxtrot just isn’t him. He didn’t look fluid and elegant and didn’t really have the rise and fall right, though it looked like he was trying hard — and the judges likely recognized that. I thought Kelly looked totally stiff in her Salsa though! She got better as the dance went on, but she looked really nervous and almost seemed like she was just going through the motions in the first third of it. When she did that twisted dip, Louis almost didn’t catch her and had to find his footing. But by the last third of the dance, she’d found her confidence and it was much more all-out. Funny thing is that this seems to be what she does every week, so I didn’t really see improvement on that front, though I still like her.

I also didn’t like Joanna and Derek’s Rumba. She looked like a paper-doll trying to be sexy, if you ask me. Everything seemed superficial — both the emotions and the hip action.

And I didn’t like Mark’s Samba. I didn’t really think it was a mess like the judges said but I don’t think it’s a dance that naturally looks good on him. He did much better with the group Paso. But I can see why he was the one to be booted last night.

I didn’t actually see the show last night (was out seeing FELA! on Broadway, which was excellent! Definitely go see it if you’re in NY — it’s such a “real” musical — you’re really taken back to the 70s, to Nigeria, to Fela Kuti’s nightclub, to the police brutality, to the music and dance, to his world; you really feel like you’re there, which, to me, doesn’t often happen with musicals. And it has Bill T. Jones’s mark of choreographic excellence all over it!) Anyway, regarding DWTS, I missed Derek and Mark singing. How were they?

Above photo by Kathy Willens, Associated Press.

Photo by Bill Cooper of the mesmerizing Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk in Lightfoot Leon’s spellbinding Softly as I Leave You, which is on both Morphoses programs (currently at City Center) and which I’ve been going on about in my last post, here, and earlier here.

And look — finally an American critic has something good to say about it!!

Says Lisa Jo Sagolla of Backstage magazine, “Lightfoot Leon’s Softly as I Leave You, a stunningly inventive duet involving a frightening coffinlike wooden box, is so fiercely emotional that its impact is universally chilling.”

I couldn’t find any YouTube clips of Jacoby and Pronk in Softly but, if you’re unfamiliar with them, here are a couple of others I found: the first a sexy little music video and the second is of them rehearsing with Mia Michaels.

Review coming soon of Program B, which includes Christopher Wheeldon’s new Rhapsody Fantaisie, which I liked.

Performance photos coming soon; in the meantime please enjoy another BRILLIANT photo by Kyle Froman.

Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphoses opened its NY season last night at City Center and I felt it was the best program they’ve done in their three years of existence. (At least Program A was; tonight I’ll see Program B). It’s a varied program with work by four different choreographers: Wheeldon himself; Bolshoi A.D.-turned ABT resident choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, whom all the critics downright worship; Australian Tim Harbour; and the Dutch husband and wife team Lightfoot Leon.

I must talk first about the third piece on the program, that by Lightfoot Leon, Softly As I Leave You. This is one of the most riveting pas de deux I’ve ever seen and it’s performed by the absolutely mesmerizing Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk. Every single person who is not a professional critic was absolutely spellbound by it, could not stop talking about it. This happened at both the Fall For Dance Festival, where the work premiered (which I wrote about here), and last night. It’s simply about a couple, one partner’s decision to leave the other, and it’s a harrowing decision. After the lights went out on the final poignant image, the elderly woman on my left, whom I didn’t know, grabbed me and said, “Oh my God, that was so good!” And from my friend, who thinks the Arvo Part music used (Spiegel im Spiegel) is completely over-used and was expecting not to like it for that reason: “Oh my God, that music actually worked here!” she exclaimed, open-mouthed. She agreed it was one of the best duets she’d ever seen. And people were going on and on about it during intermission, both here and at FFD.

So why in the world do the critics hate it so much??? They ALL do. ALL OF THEM. It’s like in order to be a professional critic there are certain things you’re required to hate and this is one of them. And yet audiences are so overwhelmed by its power. Clement Crisp rants, “I can find not one iota of merit in its vulgar posturings.” Guardian critic Luke Jennings calls it “slick surfaced” and replete with “glib insincerity.” I can’t remember Alastair Macaulay’s exact words after its FFD premiere, but he hated it too. And a Ballet.co critic whom I spoke with at an ABT Guggenheim event (and who was the only non-Brit of the lot) complained how awful he thought it was as well.

This happened — I’m sorry, I’m getting off on a tangent — but this happened with practically every Fall For Dance piece, and with ABT’s recent season: EVERY SINGLE CRITIC hated every single one of the pieces the public adored (Barton, Millepied, Mark Dendy’s BRILLIANT Afternoon of the Fauns) and loved those they found least compelling (Ratmansky). I mean, more on this later, but what do you do if you’re an artistic director or choreographer? Do you cater to the critics — the “important people” or do you trust us, the commoners?

Anyway, mine and my friend’s second favorite piece of the night was Tim Harbour’s Leaving Songs. Guess what: all the critics hated it. I need to move to Europe… This dance had such emotional depth. It was about the cycle of life, death and rebirth — though I’m not sure you’d know that if the choreographer hadn’t said so in a little film clip shown before the program. But that doesn’t matter; you can come up with your own meaning anyway. The movement was kind of a combination of modern, classical and what looked to me to be African, and the music, by Australian composer Ross Edwards, is equally varied, at points sounding classical European, at points more percussive and African-sounding.

There were several striking moments, such as the point during a pas de deux where a man puts his hands around a woman’s neck and she falls before him. It kind of seems as if he’s strangling her out of anger, but then her arms flutter about beautifully, almost-bird like. It’s a combination of violence and grace. And there’s a moment where the group is dancing in ensemble and the movement is very wavy and undulating, very African, and everyone’s moving in unison and the music slows and the dancers slow, almost like they’re approaching death. Then the drums start pulsating and the dancers come to life and begin sidling cautiously but with intention toward the front of the stage. There are also several very sexually suggestive scenes with women’s legs splayed in the air. No tights are worn, and my friend and I couldn’t stop wondering how in the world they keep those leotards from shifting…

Anyway, I found the Harbour very compelling. And Rubinald Pronk really stood out here as well. He has so much fluidity and expansiveness in his body, and I don’t think anyone has more intense eyes.

(photo from Vail website)

Alexei Ratmansky’s Bolero was enjoyable too, largely because of the familiar Ravel music. For me, Ratmansky is one of those artists whose work doesn’t jump out at you and hit you over the head with its brilliance. Rather, I’ll need to see a dance of his several times before I get a sense of what it’s about, before I can fully appreciate it. Wheeldon’s work is the same. The critics seem to think this is the mark of a good choreographer — that it grows on you and you notice new things with each viewing, and I suppose it is. But for the average consumer, going to the ballet so often to see pieces over and over again to understand and appreciate them more fully can get prohibitively expensive. Dance art is not like a museum or art gallery where you can stand there for as long as you like.

Anyway, in Bolero, there are four pairs of women and men, each person wearing a number on his or her top. The women wear white tops and little skirts, almost like cheerleaders and the men wear black. If the women were cheerleaders, the men didn’t seem to be any kind of sports players though. They danced in groups divided between male and female, almost as if they were competing with each other, or as if their movement was some kind of back and forth dialog. And then toward the end, they began to partner each other more, the crescendo of the music complemented by various lifts that I found at points to be a little humorous, though it may have just been me. For example, when those trombones (I think that’s what they are anyway; maybe they’re tubas), are blaring kind of off-key at the end, the men lift the women over their heads, upside-down and the women do these upside-down developes, their legs splaying along with the warped trombones. I thought it was funny but I might be the only one.

And then the first piece on the program was Wheeldon’s Commedia (photo above by Erin Baiano), which was made in homage to Ballets Russes and was premiered last year. I wrote a bit about it here and here.

Here’s an excerpt from the company performing Commedia at the Vail International Dance Festival:

Also, this season marks the company’s collaboration with the young orchestra (most players are under 30, Wheeldon said), Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, founded and directed by the very entertaining, energetic Alondra de la Parra — yes, a female conductor OMG! The evening opened with Wheeldon giving a little address and then the orchestra playing on Overture to Estancia: Malambo by Alberto Ginastera. At the same time the orchestra played the Overture (this was their first time playing in a pit for dance, and not centerstage, by the way), a screen was dropped over the stage and a delightfully humorous film was shown of the dramatic conductor directing her crew, the violinists all swaying dramatically in unison at points. It was a lot of fun. Whole night was very good.

Just a reminder that this Monday night, November 2, is the America Dances! gala fundraiser for Career Transitions for Dancers at City Center. This year’s gala performance will honor Patrick Swayze (who will be given a posthumous Rolex Dance award), and include performances by Desmond Richardson, Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette of NYCB, Stephen Hanna and Tony winner Kiril Kulish of Billy Elliot the Musical, Dancing With the Stars dancers (who are as of yet unspecified), and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, amongst others.

Career Transitions for Dancers is a very important organization that helps dancers (who retire young and often without much education outside of dance) to transition into other careers. Swayze strongly supported the organization and was planning to attend the event and receive his award before he passed away.

For more info, go here.

Anyway, here are a couple of clips I thought you all might enjoy. First is one of my favorites of his, From Before, and second is from Griota New York, which they performed at the Jacobs Pillow Festival last year.

Practically all of SLSG’s NYCB favorites who were not already principal dancers in the company have just been promoted: the always magical Kathryn Morgan (above, with Seth Orza in Martins’ Romeo + Juliet), heartthrobs Robert Fairchild and Amar Ramasar, the always dramatically compelling Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle, and the statuesque Teresa Reichlen.

Here are Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild rehearsing Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun for the Vail International Dance Festival over the summer.

And here are Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle performing the adagio from Christopher Wheeldon’s Mercurial Manoeuvres at said festival:

All promos are from soloist to principal, except young ‘un Morgan who was moved up from corps member to soloist.

All of the new principals will make their debut as such at NYCB’s winter season opening night gala, on November 24th, in Peter Martins’s new ballet set to John Adams’s Naive and Sentimental Music, which will make its world premier that night.

Visit Oberon for more dancer pix and info.

Above photo by Paul Kolnik from Voice of Dance.

I don’t have much time to write — book issues! — but I just wanted to say how much Russell Ferguson blew me away last night on So You Think You Can Dance with his krumping solo. Holy crap! Now I know what krumping is!

Oh my gosh, I’m so glad the judges had him do that solo so we could all see such excellence. I don’t think they were really seriously thinking about kicking him off; they just wanted to let us see his immense worth to the show, just in case people (like moi) didn’t watch auditions

Ohhh, I just want to see him do that again and again and again!

I can’t seem to find any videos of him doing that solo on YouTube. Can anyone else? Here he is dancing his Foxtrot last night with Melanie LaPatin (who replaced last minute an injured Noelle).

My other favorites from last night were Jakob Karr (duh!) and Kathryn McCormick, and I thought Pauline Mata was lovely in her beautiful Waltz, choreographed by Jason Gilkison. I also liked Victor Smalley but am going to have to see him more before I form a definite opinion. Of course I’m really really really upset about Billy Bell having to leave the show over an illness. I hope he’s okay. He’d said that Juilliard had given him the year off to take part in the show so I hope they extend that another year. Otherwise, I’ll definitely be looking for him in the larger dance world.

Oh, and also, Wade Robson’s group routine from Monday night was just about the best I think I’ve ever seen on that show. Go him.

Above image of Russell Ferguson taken from Rickey.org.

Here are a few more pictures of the Broadway show Danny Tidwell’s currently in, Memphis.

The photos (all by Joan Marcus) should give you a sense of what fabulous fun some of these musical numbers are. In the bottom photo Danny Tidwell is on the right side of the picture, in the gold pants.

So Memphis tells the story of Huey (played excellently by Chad Kimball), a poor white southern guy who falls for “black music,” along with a diva (Felicia, played well by Montego Glover) in a local black nightclub he frequents. It’s the 1950s and racial segregation is in full swing but Huey is far ahead of his time and believes, naively and without question, that white mainstream audiences will come to love the music as well as he, and that white society will accept his and Felicia’s relationship. The first he’s right about, the second he’s not — and Felicia pays the price for his insistence on making their relationship public.

The story begins with Huey’s being fired from his record store job for playing the hip-swaying, soulful music he’s so enamored of, though customers seem accepting of it. He then finagles his way into a local radio station, gets the station owners to give him a spin in the deejay booth, and once there, he locks the door and blasts away with his music. Just as the station owners break down the door and throw him out, the calls praising the music start pouring in. Though the station owners are still suspicious of the music, they’re also good capitalists and capitalism trumps racism, so Huey lands himself a new job. Huey soon introduces his audiences to Felicia, who sings live on his show; audiences adore her. Eventually the radio station becomes the most popular in the city, bringing in oodles of money, Huey becomes rich and buys his poor, practically worked-to-death mother a mansion, Felicia becomes famous, and Huey is offered a national TV show.

That’s the first act. It’s a happy, almost fantastical story where things seem to happen too easily; the characters have little struggle. The second act is still mainly upbeat but it’s not quite so syrupy sweet and the characters gain more depth. This is where I thought Kimball in particular excelled.

Felicia, Huey and the dancers and singers of Beale Street (the local nightclub where Huey met Felicia) are now in the North, in New York, where Felicia is on the verge of scoring a big record deal, and production on Huey’s TV show (which kind of resembles Soul Train or an early Dick Clark program) is beginning. Felicia is successful, Huey is not: the TV-show producers are not quite so open to change as the those of the radio show and they insist he replace all the black dancers and singers with white ones. The brave soul he’s always been, Huey tells the TV producers where to go.

“When did I become more black than you,” Huey cries to Felicia as she tries to get him to reconsider. This scene, which takes place in Felicia’s dressing room as she is about to go onstage for an important career-making performance, could have been the most poignant in the play, but Glover is way too sweet. She responds with something along the lines of, “I’ve had to struggle all my life.” But she’s far too nice; she wants way too much to please him after he’s said such a horrendous thing to her. She should have really smacked him, let him have it, driven home to him just what racial privilege means.

Huey returns to Memphis and resumes his local fame at the radio station, and Felicia goes on to become a national sensation. At the end they have a bittersweet reunion in which Kimball practically broke my heart. I haven’t seen this actor in much, but he gave what’s mainly a cute, feel-good story with fun dance numbers as much depth as it would allow. I’ll definitely look forward to seeing him more.

The dancing and singing is tremendous. Danny completely blew me away in every number he was in. All of the dancers are very good, but, I mean, he is just Danny Tidwell He’d do a splits jump and, oh good lord… I really really really want to see him front and center. That’s where he so deserves to be.

Another one who blew my friend and I away was James Monroe Iglehart (center in bottom pic above). He plays well a very lovable character, and, okay, especially for someone who doesn’t exactly have the traditional “ballet physique”, damn can that man dance!

I didn’t go to the stage door to meet the cast members, but here is a link reader Jeanette sent me of her meeting the great one.

Thank you to reader Jonathan for sending me this. On December 22nd, for one night only, Mary Murphy (of So You Think You Can Dance of course) will dance with the Broadway cast of Jason Gilkison’s Burn the Floor. Very very significantly, she will be partnered by SLSG longtime favorite Vaidotas Skimelis (nicknamed Vaidas), a U.S. National Latin finalist whom I’ve long thought of as the Marcelo of ballroom.

How excellent!

Above, Skimelis dancing with partner Jurga Pupelyte in America’s Ballroom Challenge, photo by Jeffrey Dunn; top photo of Murphy from Broadway World.