New York City Ballet: Stop Changing the Channel!

I attended last night's opening night gala for the New York City Ballet's fall season and while the evening certainly had some highlights, I felt as if I was watching TV with someone who likes to watch a channel for a couple minutes but then always moves on to the next channel. The flickering snippets of disconnected ballets did not leave much of an impression, not even the opening snippet of Chichester Psalms featuring a full chorus, an army of dancers including thirteen men in off the shoulder gowns (as pictured) and a cherubic child with an angel voice. Just at the moment where it started to get interesting (although I had seen the full ballet before and wasn't that impressed then), the channel changed and on we moved to a very lackluster snippet from the Barber Violin Concerto featuring Martins' choreography and Martins' wife, Darci Kistler, now brunette and looking awfully close to retirement. The first half of the performance also featured Robbins and Balanchine choreography (Ives, Songs and The Unanswered Question respectively) although again the very short, slow, selected segments were not very accurate representations of two interesting works. The segment from The Unanswered Question at least featured some of the beautiful movements of the piece but overall, the immense talent of the featured principal dancers was wasted in scant minutes of material (you dragged the fabulous Wendy Whelan out for that?). The first half concluded with Martins' first ballet, Calcium Light Night but although it was a brief segment, Sean Suozzi and Sterling Hyltin actually managed to squeeze in a little showstopper before the intermission (a photo of an earlier iteration of that ballet is pictured).

The second half flowed much better than the first, helped along by a consistent, stellar accompaniment by the Julliard Jazz Orchestra. In the excerpt from Martins' A Fool For You, Andrew Veyette had a standout part which got the biggest reaction of the night. And although the piece is slight, Susan Stroman's Blossom Got Kissed (which my mom's neighbor worked on) was an adorable break in the evening featuring an awkward classical dancer who needs the cute triangle player to break into the world of swing (you know, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing). So long as the jazz music was jumping, the channel changing feeling faded away and I was able to just appreciate whatever dance snippets I was given.

One thing was clear from the evening - the New York City Ballet's young men is the most exciting part of the company right now. Daniel Ulbricht, Andrew Veyette, Amar Ramasar and Sean Suozzi were definitely the standouts of the evening and here's hoping that they are given a lot more meaty material in the future.

Finally, I must note that the guest of the evening was David H. Koch, who is according to the New York Times, New York's richest resident (thank you oil and gas). He has given $100 million to completely renovate the New York State Theater which is being named in his honor (a temporary tarp sign to that effect was already attached to the theater's front wall). Now that is a very generous donation which will be greatly appreciated for many years to come and it was certainly worth the effusive attention it received in speeches from Peter Martins, Earl Mack (former U.S. ambassador to Finland) and New York's senior senator Chuck Schumer. However, the more the trio of speakers went on and on and on about Mr. Koch and his kind heart, generous spirit and boatloads of money, the only thing I could think about was this (the first couple minutes makes my point and then just sit back and enjoying the part about dry cleaning):