What's onstage & some tea.
Welcome to The Dance Lens Volume 1.
In this volume you’ll find:
What’s Onstage (featured performances)
The Tea (international edition)
What’s Onstage?
Frida Khalo: “Broken Wings”
Frida Kahlo, the emotionally charged, rawly surreal artist, whose paintings deliver us a witness and catharsis for our own heartbreak, is the subject of a new (relatively speaking) ballet:
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Broken Wings”, onstage at San Francisco Ballet through April 18th,(double bill with Marguerite & Armand).
Frida Kahlo’s work exists in the the halfway point between reality and its opposite where ballet is at its best- in dream states and narrative surrealism. Her work and life were framed by 2 pillars, her trolley accident when she was a young girl and her relationship to famous painter Diego Rivera, although posthumously she has become the true icon between them.
Ochoa’s 1 act ballet takes us into the mythic surrealist world of Kahlo’s paintings and psyche. Many new story ballets have plots that are far too complicated to organically be told through dance, here we are spared the clutter of too many narrative details. We can simply follow and get swept along with the story and the tarot like imagery of Kahlo’s paintings.
-Can you see it live in San Fran? Tickets are here.
-Want more Frida Kahlo? Here’s a great Kahlo doc on Marquee TV.
If you’re an educator or a student Marquee has great discounts starting at 50% off here.
“Two Fridas” 1939
Photo Paul Kolnick
The Waltz Goes On: Vienna Waltzes
First gaining popularity in the late 18th century, the waltz was a dance form George Balanchine returned to time and again throughout his career—but never with such sweeping scale as in his 1977 Vienna Waltzes. This ballet is Balanchine’s tribute to the elegance and opulence of a bygone era. The work transitions through a series of lush visual worlds: from a forest glade to a lively ballroom, on to a stylish café, and ultimately to a grand, mirror-lined hall. Each shift in scenery reflects the evolution of the waltz within society, echoed by the corresponding music. The ballet’s costumes were the final designs made by Barbara Karinska, the legendary costumer and Balanchine’s longtime collaborator at New York City Ballet.
-Can you see it live in NYC May 8-11? Tickets Here
-Here’s a link to a section on YouTube with the OG and the inimitable Suzanne Farrell.
Tea Time:A(nother) Bolshoi Scandal
Did you know one of the world’s best ballet companies, the Bolshoi has never not been a politicized institution rife with corruption? When said corruption is revealed to a pearl clutching press, scandal ensues.
The latest is Maria Shuvalova’s debut in a lead role in Anyuta, a ballet based on a short story by Anton Chekhov. Igniting “concerns” over political influence in the arts. Critics called her “clumsy and vulgar, lacking in technique”, and claim to have been offered payment to review her positively. Her father is Igor Shuvalov, a prominent Kremlin figure and head of a state-owned bank.
This is just the most recent in a string of bad PR the company has had over the years. Recently they took a ballet about the legendary dancer Rudolf Nureyev out of the rep because it promotes LGBTQ rights. If you go a little further back you’ll find career ruining acid attacks (!), bribes for roles, artist erasures and the list goes on and on.
I’m not sure if Ms. Shuvalova merited her lead casting, I am sure that even if she didn’t, it would simply be a continued Bolshoi tradition.
MORE COMING SOON:
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