Just Some Pics

While waiting for Tuesday to start working on Creative Conversations, I thought I would share a few pics from Don Juan over thee next couple of days.

Stephanie Maiorano in a moment from the Gypsy Camp at the end of Act 1. She is in a penche attitude position I have always been quite fond of. I used to put it in dances for myself quite often. As I mentioned before, her part appears as various characters throughout the ballet. This is the third time she pops up. She has a very fast, dynamic solo that kind of puts her into the Athene, goddess of war slot in the Judgement of Paris type decision Don Juan has to make. The Judgement of Paris is a well known allegory where a shepherd has to choose who the loveliest is between Hera (the Queen of the Gods), Athene (The Goddess of wisdom and battle), and Aphrodite (the Goddess of Love and Beauty). Paris chooses rightly chooses Aphrodite (and thereby sets up a sequence that will take us through the Iliad and the Odyssey). By the Don picking Stephanie's more aggressive character to dance a pas de deux with, I wanted to highlight the idea that her was still making choices that were not in his best interest.

Jessica Conniff in the "Queen of the Gods" gypsy solo. I have always been fond of this solo. Some parts are extremely musical and some parts are almost anti-musical. The music as well has moments where it seems to want to rev up into something and then it decides to stop and become ore conversational. It really does have a bit of a "lecture" feel to it. Lots of "statements." And the choreography mirrors this. It DOES have one of my favorite ending diagonals. Just a series of small enveloppes en tournant. But the music ritards... and then accelerates... and then ritards. So the dancer has to be sensitive to that in order to get the right effect. And Jessica did so beautifully.

From earlier in the ballet. Elizabeth Tapia and Marshall Whitely as the Mistress of the House and Don Juan. This picture to me just highlights one of the truths about this art form. It is a VISUAL art. And it is a visual art in both aa aesthetic and dramatic sense. Aesthetically, the harmony between the two bodies is evident. Her right arm and his left make one long line. Additionally. if you include his outstretched left leg and her bent right leg, with their two bodies, they now make an expansive X. As a counterpoint, you can seethe 3 strong parallel directional rays created by her left arm, his right hand and her left thigh. All good stuff, but... In terms of dramatic sense, in performance, ballet does not use words to qualify what you are seeing. We cannot drop someone onstage and then have another character give us the backstory on all his sexual exploits. Dancers who are playing mothers to other dancers need to look more mature. A character who is meant to be a villain with gravitas, needs a certain physical stature. And if you are playing the seductive Mistress of the House and the Great Latin Lover, it is just better if you are both beautiful. I know "beauty" these days is seen as a subjective term, but storytelling must be clear or it is confusing. And nothing is clearer than the effect that a beautiful man or woman stepping on to a stage has on an audience.