SUSAN STROMAN AT NYC BALLET

[onceadancer2]

Posted: 1/31/04 at 9:27am

Has anyone seen the new Stroman work at City Ballet? I won't be in NY until May and it won't be shown then.

Miriam

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 1/31/04 at 11:42am

I'm going on Tuesday, Miriam! I'll post my responses.

Great to see you here! Long time no post!

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 1/31/04 at 11:42am

Darn that double-post!

Updated On: 1/31/04 at 11:42 AM

[WOSQ]

Posted: 2/4/04 at 4:31pm

Performance of 2/3, Tuesday which was nearly a sellout except there were 10 adjacent house seats empty and quite visible in the orchestra.

Great fun and an audience favorite already.

Double Feature is just that--two one act ballets based upon silent movie conventions. The NY Times review in the Monday, Jan 26th NY Times is quite fair.

The first one is better than the second although that is to say the second one (Plotwise based closely on the plot of the recent film The Bachelor)is merely very good and the first one is excellent.

What Stroman has done is make a ballet using ballet vocabulary but endow it with a Broadway-show biz sensibility. This will be in the rep for quite a loing time and will make NYCB quite a bit of money.

Act 1 is called The Blue Necklace and it is strictly a ballet. Act II, called Makin' Whoopee, is a comic ballet that uses some modern dance as well. The cast is huge. Makin' Whoopee uses a large corps de ballet and Necklace has a not-as-large one.

Two more performances-Wed (tonight) and Thurs although I wonder if it will be due back in the spring.

Try to plan your trip around it if it is in the schedule.

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 2/4/04 at 6:49pm

I wasn't wild about it. I like Stroman's Broadway work, but this was some thin gruel.

Despite some funny segments here and there, and wonderful music by Irving Berlin & Walter Donaldson in sparkling, sweeping arrangements, I found both acts overlong and disjointed with long stretches of uninteresting space-filling dance - something I don't find in dances by Balanchine or Alvin Ailey. Lots of noodling around to little effect.

The first act ('The Blue Necklace', a tear-jerking melodrama of the Kay Francis school) was by far the better of the two, with a tried-and-true but surprisingly compelling story holding it together. Two terrific little girls (of about 10 years old) were audience favorites, but aside from the extremely funny comic dance set to 'You're Easy to Dance With', the dances were surprisingly uninvolving. But the second, a wan retread of Harold Lloyd/Eddie Cantor shtick, (without the comic drollery of either), seemed endless. It featured a lot of supposedly madcap running around and uninspired slapstick which grew tiresome fast.

Oh, and I LOVED the dog!

[bestofbroadway]

Posted: 2/4/04 at 6:56pm

I tend to find Stroman's more recent work uninspired. I long for the wonderfully innovative choreography of Crazy for You. I also found Contact (with the exception of maybe the third story) quite tedious. I was really hoping that this would prove to be one of her better works.

Posted: 2/4/04 at 9:48pm

An insider from the Ballet tells me they all consider it uninspired stock choreography. Their goal of selling out is achieved but its based solely on selling her name and not for any quality she's brought to the stage.

Yes, it's hearsay but hearsay is admissable in grand jury proceedings when determining whether there is probable cause that someone has commited a crime.

She has.

Bulldog.

[MusicMan]

Posted: 2/4/04 at 11:32pm

Stroman traffics in gimmicks, not ideas, and would be lucky to kiss the lint on the trailing hem of Balanchine's nethermost garment.

[onceadancer2]

Posted: 2/6/04 at 9:14am

Thanks for the information. It;s very much what my friends in New York told me!

Miriam