| | Posted by Alex Wong

SO! Let me first of all just say Happy New Year to everyone and hopefully this year is a great year for all! I’ve been super busy with non-stop rehearsals and performances for the past few weeks, so it’s just been crazy! I went back home to Canada for my short 9 day christmas break, which was great! Ate lots of food, did lots of nothing… lots of those days where you can be “nowhere at no time”. Anyhow, knowing that I had a hard program coming up basically right when we returned to work in January, I needed to take a few classes while I was back home to keep my body in shape so I wouldn’t rip in half the day I got back to work!

Now that I’m long back from the holidays we’ve already started performing Program 2 which consists of “Agon” (Balanchine), “Afternoon of a Faun”(Robbins), “Liturgy” (Wheeldon), and “In the Upper Room” (Tharp). In The Upper Room seems like the ballet of the past 2 seasons like every company has been doing it! ABT, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Washington Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pennsylvania (I believe…) and probably some more! Well let me tell you, this ballet is psycho! I’m sure you all heard from David that this ballet was absolutely insane, in which he is very right. The ballet is just a freaking marathon.

Let’s see, ok there are 9 sections in the ballet. It is all set to music by Philip Glass (which is absolutely AMAZING by the way, if any of you get a chance, you can pick up the cd at your local Barnes & Nobles or something, however it will be missing a few tracks). There are the Stompers and the Ballet people. The stompers wear sneakers, and ballet is well… ballet. The ballet consists of…

3 Male Stompers, 3 Female Stompers, 2 Ballet Women (Bomb Squad), 3 Ballet Men, 1 Ballet Woman, 1 Crossover Woman (Stomper & Ballet) = 13 Dancers

Simply put, section 1,3,5,7 are basically stomper sections and Section 2,4,6,8 are pretty much the ballet sections and in #9 we all dance together. The piece runs about 40 minutes long and let me tell you, by the end everyone is just crawling on the floor. This is one of those ballets where you are SO tired that many of the dancers actually feel sick afterwards. You push so beyond your limit that you cant even see straight anymore. It’s insane… and before every performance of this ballet, I’m thinking to myself… “in 25 minutes… I am going to be so exhausted, almost to the point of dieing… yet I’m going to continue with this…” haha, it’s almost incomprehensible. Like you know when you do things that you know are wrong… yet you do it anyways? That’s almost what I feel like with this ballet, not that I think it’s wrong, because it’s crazy, and I LOVE dancing it, but it’s SO tiring… but yet I go back for more everytime… why? hahaha

The reason why this ballet is called “In The Upper Room” was because after Twyla choreographed this, it was evidently so hard on the dancers that they were so called “in the upper room” after they finished dancing this piece. Like so “in shape” that they were “in the upper room”. Get it? Haha, we always joked that we felt more like we were in the basement after dancing that, hahaha, but let me tell you, anyone who does this needs to be in top shape! Back in the day when Twyla choreographed this, she was very into the Yoga/aerobics sort of thing, so you’ll see alot of the choreography being influenced by those organic movements.

Here in the photo are the 2 Bomb Squad women who dance (during #4). This picture was taken during a dress rehearsal.

Here is the stompers dancing in #5 which I would call the “jogging section” or something like that. We basically jog around the whole time, have near misses and dodges, and do some triple partnering where the girls are all holding on to each other. You can’t see it too clearly from this photo, but there is ALOT of haze. The lighting for this piece is amazing. To start off there is haze everywhere, 50% of the entrances from the back so therefore the “backdrop” is really a curtain with slats, so we all slip through. It’s sort of a secret of upper room, because you cant really see the slats with all the haze and it looks like we appear from nowhere.

These 2 pictures are #7 where just the 3 stomper men dance. This section is insanely hard and well, simply put… “fierce”.

Also on this program was Afternoon of a Faun, Liturgy and Agon.

I didn’t manage to get any pictures of Liturgy, but it is a wonderful pas de deux choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon set to music by Avro Part. The shapes and suspense this ballet creates is wonderful and breathtaking!

Agon is one of Balanchine’s most famous pieces set to music by Igor Stravinsky. The work has 12 dancers who interact in both symmetrical and asymmetrical arrangements of the number 12, and the music, which is composed on the 12-tone scale, develops its own 12 sided patterns. The heart of the work is an extended pas de deux where tension builds offering images of a bond that is tested but no broken.

2 little pictures of me doing agon this weekend!

Finally, one of my favourite pieces in the program is Afternoon of a Faun choreographed by Jerome Robbins. This piece is a pas de deux set in a ballet studio, and is about a fleeting encounter between a young man absorbed by his reflection in a mirror and a woman who enters the studio and interrupts his reverie. It’s set to wonderful music by Claude Debussy. Throughout the whole piece they are dancing facing the “mirror” which is in reality the audience.

What I love about this piece is how 2 people can do this piece so completely different. There is a kiss at the end of the pas de deux and although it is just a kiss on the cheek, certain casts give me the biggest goosebumps ever as a tear rolls down my face… (weak moment!) hahaha

Those 3 pictures are just pictures from Afternoon of a Faun with Jeremy Cox and Katia Carranza dancing. This has to be one of my favourite ballet’s! I hope everyone gets a chance to watch this in their lifetime! And one more thing I think I might add is that it was Edward Villela (The artistic director of Miami City Ballet) that inspired Jerome Robbins to choreograph this piece while he was still a student (about 14 or 15 years old) in SAB, one day when he was just futzing around facing the mirror. This is what Jerome said:

“My eyes were caught by the marvelous strange figure of a very young chap who was exploring some inward dream. He was leaning relaxed against the bar. He seemed like some animal: young, beautifully shaped, and ready at any moment to develop into a young man. Then something happened. Slowly, he pushed his arms against the bar and stretched his legs backwards carefully, slowly, not paying any attention to the exercise given to the others. He stretched way back, first one side then the other. Then he turned around and slowly stretched his back fully. Then he twisted his body around himself from side to side. I was caught by the sight of a 14-or 15-year old kid who had lost himself or found himself in a kind of stretching… ‘Where are you?’ I asked him when his eyes settled down once more and he recognized the lay of the land again. His eyes wandered around and he grabbed the bar again. ‘I dunno, just futzing around.’ He didnt know anything. But it was truly wonderful voyage to me who was already an unknown choreographer, he was just trying out, not consciously - just making up something really - just playing with it. Finding his way around. Well, I thought, I’m going to keep an eye on him.”

Anyways! I think that’s enough for today! We’ve got loads of performances coming up soon, and loads more of upper room. I’m quite certain I will be dead by the time this program is over. Hahaha

-Alex

| | Posted by Alex Wong