Mother Ginger: The Outtakes
Ok here are some of the shots (by the talented Gwyneth Muller) that did not make it onto the initial ‘Mama G’ post. Some are too funny to leave out, while others are simply just too frightening to stop staring at . Enjoy
A NBA basketball player’s Tendu Efface
Disgruntled Mama G (make-up removal process)
Gwyneth [the flower] and Me [the, uh, er, drag queen?]
There you have it.
Laugh, Cry, Eat, Drink, Be Merry
Mother Ginger
I would have never imagined that I would be earning a salary by parading around stage in full drag make-up with 8 kids hidden underneath my oversized woman’s dress. But hey, anything is possible.
It turns out that this Nutcracker season at the New York City Ballet, I have been cast to perform the role of Mother Ginger. Here are the bizarre and unusual circumstances that involve playing the part, with photos shot by the beautiful, talented, and air-biting Gwyneth Muller:
Step 1: 40 minutes of make-up.
Each show I have to head down to the make-up room to get my gorgeous “face” painted on by make-up guru Michael Avedon (the head of the make-up department at NYCB who has a gift for the art of make-up application). This involves a heavy caked-on layer of foundation, painfully intricate eye lining and shadowing, and layers upon layers of outrageous fake eyelashes (step-by-step pictures of the process are shown below). I find getting my make-up done by another person to be unexpectedly therapeutic. However, I definitely don’t enjoy the added weight and discomfort of having fake eyelashes prodded and pasted onto my eyelids. Once the make-up is completed, I have my wig+bonnet strapped on before heading down for stilt application…
Shots of the Process:
Me, petrified of the make-up extremities to come
An ace bandage is tied around my head to cover up my hairline and for eye brow application
thick layer of base. My eyebrows have to be covered with bee’s wax and then painted tan in order to hide them
LASHES
The raised eyebrows
Final Product
Step 2: Stilts
The stilts are actually a fun perk of performing ‘Mama G.’ They give me an added 2 feet on top of my 6’1” body height, making me feel at home with the likes of Yao Ming, Lebron James, and Shaquille Oneal. The stilts themselves are actually more like metal platforms, and are surprisingly easy to walk on. I always do a warm up lap on my stilts around the backstage area, as sort of a good-luck routine, before heading over to the wings to watch a bit of the second act. I’ll just put it this way: no one standing in front of me in the wings will EVER obstruct the views of an 8’1” super-giant.
Step 3: Dress (I feel pretty)
I’m not quite sure how heavy the dress is, but it feels like its around 50 pounds. Its strapped onto my shoulders and upper torso using a harness, and sits at hip level. There is a top that goes on separately, and gives me the appearance of having a ‘D’ cup bra size (Sexy, eh?). There are all kinds of fun props attached to the dress to play with on stage, which include a tambourine, a mirror, a powder puff, and a fan.
Step 4: Oh, kids these days……
So there are 8 little girls that travel with me under my dress, as I attempt to maneuver the 50 pound, 9 foot long dress around the stage—all while on stilts. I’m always cautious of stepping on the kids, being as I have no way of seeing where they are under my dress, but the occasional child-squashing does occur (don’t worry though, no severe injuries to date).
Step 5: Choreography
NYCB is surprisingly relaxed about what sort of choreography one does on stage for the part of Mother Ginger. What they do is give some general guidance regarding cues and placement in relation to the music. All of the time in between, though, must be filled with one’s own creativity and imagination. Therefore, I am attempting to throw in new por de bra choreography for each performance, based on a new famous ballet each time. So far, I have incorporated the likes of Ballo Della Regina, Serenade, and Tombeau De Couperin (all Balanchine ballets). More to come soon!
So there you have it. A day in the life of an 8-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide, extremely fertile (8 kids! Ah!) drag queen. If anyone is interested in catching a performance of my Mama G, the days I am performing the part are listed in the casting section of NYCBallet.com.
Back to the Grind
Yesterday, New York City Ballet moved back into the New York State Theatre to begin our season of endless Nutcrackers (48 to be exact), and after that, one of our busiest Winter Seasons (which will include many Jerome Robbins classics, Martins’ Romeo and Juliet, and a revival of the two-act Double Feature). Its always comforting for many of us dancers to set up at the Theatre again, as it acts as sort of a second home. Since we are there for practically more time then we spend at our own apartments, they try to make things comfortable by providing cots in the dressing rooms for napping purposes, as well as various lounges located around the vast reaches of the Theatre.
Winging for the Winger
Dancers in our dressing room playing nintendo to pass the time in between rehearsals
Yesterday night, we opened with the Winter Season Gala, which happened to include one of the most beautiful works that I have seen to date—Wheeldon’s Liturgy. For some reason I had missed its premiere when Jock Soto and Wendy Whelan danced the part a few years back. This time around, Whelan danced it once again, with Albert Evans supporting her. Both artists were absolutely striking. With that said, it would have been nice to witness Jock Soto premiere the ballet (I have idolized him since I was a kid training at S.A.B.). Nevertheless, the images created for the dancers in respond to the divine score (by Arvo Part) were dynamic, expansive, and multifaceted. The other pieces on the Gala program were the Rose Adagio & Garland Dance from Sleeping Beauty, a new Peter Martins ballet, an excerpt from Western Symphony, Life of a Tsar, and an interesting video preview of the film version of Opus Jazz, which some of the dancers in the company are working on creating.
Fred Kelly and Gene Astaire
I’m currently working on a presentation on a comparison of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire for my Dance Criticism course I am taking at Columbia University. I’ve stumbled upon this clip from the film The Ziegfield Follies of them dancing side by side, and figured it would definitely be worth sharing with you all.
I love the vibe of nonchelance they have in relation to dancing with each other. The witty banter present in the song and the healthy competitive vibe present allow for an interesting scope into the comparison of the two legends.
Its Raining Dogs
Well, since we’re all in such a gung-ho dog mood at the moment……
I have two amazing dogs at home w/ my family: Sasha and Tasha (there names are so similar that we only have to call one of their names to make them both come, ha)
The Crucial [Unofficial] Member of New York City Ballet
Emma Redpath, New York City Ballet’s newest apprentice, will make her debut this season, dancing in ballets such as Carnival of the Animals and the Firebird, as well as understudying the principal “yappy dog” role in the second act of Double Feature!
Ok, fine. Maybe she’s not the newest dancer with City Ballet, but she is sort of the unofficial mascot of the company. She’s a companion of one of the ballet masters here, and can be found socializing with dancers in the dancers lounge, strolling the hallways of the New York State Theatre, lunching at Fiorello’s with her colleague Biscuit (a dog friend who belongs to one of the pianists), and even overseeing important rehearsals (pictured above, giving principal dancer Andrew Veyette some pointers on his Jerome Robbins repertoire).
NYCB Dancers on Lay-Off (The Little Things in Life): Food-Shopping Edition
To those of you who aren’t familiar with New York, Fairway Market is as much an NYC staple as Tompkins Square Park, STEPS on broadway, the Chelsea Piers, and Time Square (Okay fine, definitely not as well-known as time square—but that’s probably a good thing, as Time Square is simply one giant cesspool that is tourism). For those of you who are familiar with New York, you might know how frantic, chaotic, and jam-packed Fairway Market on 74th street of the Upper West Side can be (we all know not to even bother with going on a Sunday, as Fairway then feels very much like Time Square during its rush hour—and what true New Yorker would have any interest in experiencing that?).
The truth is, everyone simultaneously wants a bargain as well as quality. That’s exactly the idea behind the creation of Fairway, to provide quality food products for cheap. Unfortunately, this combination causes every New Yorker [and their mother] to aggressively flock to it like pigeons around a crazy homeless man with plenty of stale bread to spare. (In fact, I’ve even heard stories of little old ladies coming to Fairway on Sundays with brick in their purses to use as combat weapons against the vast seas of people. Truthful? Who knows…)
New Yorkers: have no fear, because I have found the solution—the market surreptitiously placed a few subway stops north that is FAIRWAY UPTOWN!! (cue the heroic music). I discovered it one glorious day while accompanying one of my fellow dancers of the New York City Ballet (Tess Reichlen) to do some down-home grocery shoppin’.
Now, contrary to popular belief, 1 in every 5 dancers do eat! I know, I know, comes as a shock to many, but its very much true. So therefore, grocery shopping for me, and Tess, and any other dancer out there is an obvious necessity. The beauty that is Fairway Uptown is that it maintains having all the great quality food for cheap, AND is about 3 times as big with about half the amount of people as the normal Fairway on the Upper West Side. Let me just put it this way: its big enough and empty enough to accommodate a perfect execution of coupé-jeté leaps down the cereal aisle. Which gave plenty of space for some crafty dancer photo-ops…
Headline: New York City Ballet dancer tour-jetés into a sea of bagels, inspiring a series of reworked full lengths: Bagel Lake, Romeo and Bagelette, and La Bageldere
The infamous Freezer Room—an entire room that is refrigerated. I loved how they provide coats for walking through it
Barefoot conTESSa??
A Fairway Tendu Derrière
Beauty. Grace. Line. Heal-click.
That’s about it for now. What I meant by this post was just to let y’all know that I’m currently enjoying all the little things in life, thanks to the long summer lay-off that comes with dancing for City Ballet. Also, these past 2 weeks I have participated in the New York Choreographic Institute, which I feel was very well received by its private audience. I had a lot of fun collaborating on a new ballet created by Stuttgart Ballet dancer Douglas Lee. The NYCB rehearsal period officially starts back tomorrow, thus resulting in the rate of my life to shift from horse-and-buggy pace to NASCAR pace. Deep breathes…
Fall For Dance: Matt’s mystery guest comes forth!
Hey Readers! Alright, so I guess most of you know that I was Matt’s “mystery” guest at Fall for Dance last night (Wingers of the world, UNITE!). So yeah, we have a fun time watching the variety of dance that the festival had to offer. Also, they totally opened up the nose-bleed seats at City Center (which was where we sat)! I’ve never seen that happen before.
Matt and I—maybe a step up from the ‘Golden Girls’ photoshoot from Matt’s post (Maaaatt! You told me that if I dressed up as a 70-year-old woman, you would keep those photos private!)
One thing that I noticed was the immense support the audience seemed to have for all of the acts throughout the evening. I’m not sure if it was because of the tickets being just $10, or maybe because the entire audience truly loved every piece (somehow unlikely), but either way I think its great that there was such unconditional support from the audience. From a performer’s point of view, it really does make a huge difference and gives off a satisfying feeling of accomplishment.
Anyway, enough chatty-talk, here’s my recollection/review of the evening:
An Evening of Dance Tapas, for just $10
By Justin Peck
October 5, 2007
Each Fall For Dance performance at City Center showcases several dance companies back-to-back over the course of one evening. At yesterday’s performance, the Festival continued to present an exciting, wide-ranging variety of high with the low, sweet versus spicy, and even downright fresh as opposed to dieing-on-the-vine.
The evening began with Ligeti Essays, which was danced by the Armitage Gone! Dance Troupe. It was a series of modern dances set to Gyorgy Ligeti’s music that had poetry spoken along with it. The setting was an empty white stage with a blank, white tree mounted off-center, all of which conveyed a “Waiting for Godot”, existential type mood. The choreography, which includes a series of typically contemporary solos and pas de duex, was oriented towards expansive movement, but very often fell short of reaching its potential.
Following Legeti Essays, Inventing Pookie Jenkins, a solo danced and choreographed by Kyle Abraham, was performed. The solo was danced to rap music by Dizzee Rascal. The choreography combined an eclectic mix of hip-hop, ballet, and street dance. It began in silence with an adagio variation and progressed towards wholehearted movement involving Abraham’s entire body and soul. Although Abraham has some interesting conceptual ideas involving the fusion of multiple dance forms, the piece itself lacked the essential structure necessary for a dance act to be wholly effective.
If the first two pieces of the evening had any sort of main purpose in relation to the evening, it was to frame and accentuate the final dance of the first act. After the Rain, performed by Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company (Christopher Wheeldon’s new company, which is independent of New York City Ballet), was powerful and memorable. The piece consists of a contemporary pas de duex set to a serene adagio by Arvo Pärt.
Craig Hall and Wendy Whelan floated through the pas de duex with a true viscous quality. Although Jock Soto cannot be replaced (it was choreographed by Wheeldon specifically with him in mind), Craig Hall performed well as a tender partner and provided grounded support for Whelan at all the right moments. The only shortcoming was that the entire first half of After the Rain (the “rain” section) was excluded, thereby eliminating the significant, chaotic set-up prior to the tranquil pas de duex.
Act II began with Spanish Dance by the Trisha Brown Dance Company. It is set to a Bob Dylan rendition of “Early Morning Rain” by Gordon Lightfoot. Five girls stand in front of the lowered stage curtain swaying back-and-forth to this Bob Dylan song until they reach the right stage wing. The piece itself was light, breezy, and simple, although it didn’t convey much of an idea with respect to exactly what the strengths and overall style of this company is. I would have preferred Trisha Brown selecting a piece that more compellingly showcased her company.
The final dance of the evening was by the Noche Flamenca & Soledad Barrio. The piece, titled Martinete y Solea, was a sensual flamenco dance that took the audience on a journey through Spanish culture. These flamenco dancers were gushing with talent and could easily give Savion Glover a run for his money. The music, accompanied by Miguel Perez on the guitar and vocals, was very much fiery and alive. Adam Gabel provided effective lighting that made the entire venue feel more like a Spanish night club then an Opera House. Martinete y Solea was a perfect closing performance for the evening’s very much mixed smorgasbord of dance.
Nightminds
When I was a student at SAB, Daniel Baker (now of the Miami City Ballet) choreographed this ballet called Nightminds on Maira Barriga (also now of the MCB) and myself. It was a haunting, sensual pas de duex filled with relatively intense apprehension and desperate human emotion. It was such a cool piece that MCB ended up commissioning him to stage it on the company this past year.
dance analysis
One of the courses I am taking this semester at Columbia is Dance Criticism. It is of particular interest to me, as it is provided an entirely new way of observing and analyzing dance. I am so used to viewing dance, and especially ballet, from a first hand perspective, so it is refreshing to look at it from a new angle. I am learning to pick up on specific subtleties of dance, evaluating the subjectives versus the objectives of art in general, and getting to know the writings of some of the greatest dance critics of the 20th century.
I have a particularly strong interest in the writings of Edwin Denby. He was a true poet, thus causing his analysis and criticism of dance to flow as brilliantly as the execution of Balanchine’s Serenade. Denby was a genuine devotee to the art of dance. He even danced himself for a number of years when he was younger. He was able to combine these keen elements in order to become one of the greatest critics of dance.
Much of the reading for this course is extensive, though very interesting. One aspect of it that especially excites me is that I work with a lot of the dancers that are analyzed and critiqued in my assigned writing (including Merrill Ashley, Kay Mazzo, Peter Martins, etc.). I think its kind of fun to be able to read about people that I know on a personal and professional level. Also, there are several works I have read already that really pick apart ballets that I have had the opportunity to dance. I think that [hopefully] this type of study will not only further educate me on the art of dance, but will also add depth and sophistication to my own dancing and interpretation of choreography in City Ballet’s repertoire.
Those are all the sporadic thoughts I have time for. Back to reading for now…. More to come though!
A semester’s reading in Dance Criticism
DENSE
