Off topic: the sleeping prince's awakening

It's been five years since I wrote more than a line here about this publication's official off-topic topic: ABT's Veronika Part.

In that time, all too many of Part's lead performances have been dragged down by the use of New York native and recentish (2011) principal Cory Stearns as her primary ABT partner. As absent as she was present, as callow as she was wholly formed, Stearns -- whose actual steps and jumps, to be fair, have certainly gained focus -- left the balletic tragedienne little-or-nothing to work with. Most of her successes have been in her irregular pairings with Gomes, Bolle, et al.

So it was one of the biggest shocks to find that the man who, in last night's Swan Lake, catalyzed as thorough and profound an expressive triumph as Part has ever had was, in fact, this same Cory Stearns. Or maybe not the same: the man on stage certainly shared a name and body with his predecessor, but he has what that predecessor did not -- a self, a presence, a being on stage fit for the tragic story and its heroine. And it showed even before he began to dance: his bearing even in mime (and now I wonder -- was it his work with Ratmansky in the Russian's new/old Sleeping Beauty that awoke this spirit?) is now simply his own, free from the self-doubt and puppyish wanting-to-please that made him an impossible partner for Part. His Prince Siegfried is still (as he should be) in over his head, but he acts decisively on his own desires, as a man -- even one just come of age -- should.

And with this Siegfried Part's Odette shared her awful secret with a depth and fluidity of expression she has never (as far as I can recall) surpassed. As in a great opera performance, it was the extended spans of concentration that impressed most, as Part wove every gesture and every choreographed step of the couple's Act II and Act IV pas seamlessly into two grand spells of love and loss. In between, Part's Odile played Siegfried with the irresistible shamelessness and confidence she's shown at least since her 2009 promotion.

With the company's most sympathetic conductor -- Ormsby Wilkins -- in the pit, Tchaikovsky's music did its excellent part despite an oboist in a hurry. And if Marcelo Gomes weren't so good as a leading man, I'd want to see him as the villain every time. This season not only his non-swamp Rothbart here but his Carabosse (!) was a big success.

Part is now 37. It's good to know that the company now has a suitable non-guest partner for her, with whom she can give one of those performances that justify a company and art form's existence.

The week in NY opera (December 3-9)

Metropolitan Opera
Aida (M/F), Ballo (T*/SM), Don Giovanni (W/SE), Clemenza (Th)
It's Hui He's turn as Aida, a role she debuted in 2010. Borodina is in imperfect vocal state and Marco Berti has already been replaced by Carl Tanner, but... it's Aida. Ballo and Clemenza are pretty good, but Don Giovanni (see post immediately below) is the best show of the Met season.

* Tuesday's (starred) Ballo is the one just before this Saturday's matinee moviecast, which means that the camera equipment and lights will be out in force. Do not sit in side orchestra, front orchestra, or side parterre -- the house is not interested in optimizing patron experience on these nights, but in making the eventual broadcast go well.

Carnegie Hall
Collegiate Chorale Beatrice di Tenda (W 6pm)
This show (note early start time!) is largely a 2007 Met Council Finals reunion, with the most unjust loser (Nicholas Pallesen) and the most unjust winner (Jamie Barton) joining the singer most benefited by the win, no-longer-quite-immature dramatic coloratura Angela Meade. Throw in fearless American tenor Michael Spyres (remember Huguenots?) and you have the main cast.

Alice Tully Hall
Andreas Scholl recital (SE)
Scholl's voice was no match for the Met auditorium last year, but this much smaller venue may let him better show his musicality.

Morgan Library
George London Foundation recital (Sunday 4:30pm)
Mezzo Vivica Genaux and bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch offer a bunch of solo selections and one duet.

OT - BAM
The Nutcracker (F/SM/SE/SuM/SuE)
The last-act staging gets bogged down and ABT's top men aren't in this run, but seeing official off-topic diva Veronika Part do childlike joy (12/8 and 12/16) is worth it all.

The substitute

As a followup to the last off-topic post, please note that Veronika Part is dancing another (unscheduled) Swan Lake tonight with David Hallberg.

The awakening

(Another year, another post on this blog's official off-topic diversion.)

Tchaikovsky, Vsevolozhsky, and Petipa's Sleeping Beauty is, among other things, a girl's coming-of-age story: the trouble starts when she draws blood, and it's not until true love takes its step that shadows are banished and the couple can be grandly seen off into marriage by the (other) story-characters of childhood. The many young New Yorkers who took in ABT's performances (in a production much improved by editing) last week may or may not have been particularly receptive to the specifics, but I at least (since, as I've noted, I don't actually know anything about ballet) got to thinking on what characters these onstage princesses -- visions of future, past, or ideal youth and maturation, perhaps -- actually were revealing.

Monday's Princess Aurora: Gillian Murphy. She was the most teen-like of the bunch -- a happy and energetic youth, wonderfully decorative in her spirited elaborations, and remaining essentially such through trial and glory. The gravity in this particular show was offered by the Lilac Fairy, Veronika Part. If Aurora shows who a girl is and becomes, the Lilac Fairy -- who deflects and transforms Carabosse's curse and guides the Prince safely to the rescue -- shows what world we live in, by what arts happiness might be conjured. With Part's Lilac Fairy both grandeur and a certain grave wisdom make the joyful ending on which she insists all the more valuable.

On Wednesday night Part was Aurora, one full to overflowing with life and reverence: for the occasion(s), for the other participants, and most of all for the mystery and glory of the young womanhood newly shining from her in Act I, developed and deepened in the dream of Act II, and fulfilled to all promise in Act III. If the girls and boys who attended this show (even the ones who nearly wrecked later acts with poorly-timed whining) find encouragement to grow into such vivid spirits, the city will be a more interesting place.

Friday's Aurora was Paloma Herrera, another energetic youth of a princess -- perhaps (to be unsubtle) more the jock to Murphy's cheerleader/prom queen -- who again held to her basic underlying character in ups and downs. The lyrical but precise authority of Maria Riccetto's Lilac Fairy meanwhile suggested a more elegant salvation.

If Murphy and Herrera were noticeably-teenaged Auroras, Alina Cojocaru's Saturday matinee princess was very nearly a child. The poise and sweet delicacy of Cojocaru's dancing makes the first-act Rose Adagio a wonder, but after that there's nowhere else to go: her persona is not only wholesome but unblemishable and thoroughly virginal (even the offending spindle barely makes contact -- it wouldn't dare, would it?), and in the adult territory of the later acts she's got nothing to work with.

This was, in a sense, a fitting match to Stella Abrera's matinee Lilac Fairy: her victory via niceness and gently pretty dancing came perilously close to reducing the story to its Disney popularization. Abrera's earlier Lilac Fairy -- for Part on Wednesday night -- was a less happy match, with her character receding in the face of Part's huge personality.

Finally, Saturday evening brought Bolshoi star Natalia Osipova (yes, the one who got mugged earlier last week) for her first Aurora anywhere -- and despite the debut (and last-season's somewhat one-note Giselle), a more clear sense of Aurora's path than usual. This princess was the born, radiant belle of the ball -- and the town, and the kingdom -- who learned the wonder of desire in Act II before being overcome by its directed fulfillment in Act III. (Osipova here put her own personal star power to very fine use, taking it as the starting point for the character.) Her happiness was guided by the firm, minimal-nonsense wand of Michele Wiles, whose Lilac Fairy even Carabosse should have known better than to cross.

With two great and memorable danced characterizations by Part and Osipova, it was a better week than most at the Met.

Triumph of the off-topic diva

A reader emailed me yesterday to note that ABT has promoted ballerina Veronika Part to principal. After tribulations that led last year to an announced departure (soon basically withdrawn), this conclusion is glory indeed.

(Amusing, too, that the British dance writers in London gave her a rather fairer shake than the one here in New York.)

In any case, if you have a chance to see her performances this summer -- particularly the Swan Lake with Roberto Bolle -- you should take it.

Miscellaneous updates

Off-topic diva Veronika Part danced her last leads at ABT this season (she is scheduled for a large supporting part -- Myrtha -- in two later performances of Giselle) in two terrific and well-received performances of La Bayadere. As a commenter here noted, however, word on the internet (also dutifully repeated in the papers) is that she may be staying after all. In what capacity? We'll see.
*Last week seems to have woken a number of bloggers (see sidebar links) from slumber, not least Sieglinde at Balcony Box who returns hosting Brad Wilber's invaluable Met Futures compilation. (And bearing belated praise for Johan Botha's remarkable Otello.) ACB, on the other hand, appears explaining a new increase in happy silence.
*Subscribers are now running into the new pre-season exchange policy at the Met, which involves a $5 charge per ticket for everyone. The donor base is not, I think, happy.

Farewell to the off-topic diva

At this point most who care have likely long since seen this interview or simply heard the news: ballerina Veronika Part -- this blog's official off-topic diva -- is leaving ABT after this season.

Her time at ABT was surely frustrating -- if perhaps not nearly as sad and awful as that piece might have us think. Each of her lead roles here has shown her rare expressive and communicative art, but the company -- like her previous home, the Mariinsky -- seems never to have taken her seriously. Was it that she -- tall, not super-thin, more artist than technician -- is too idiosyncratic for these institutions' current shape? Was it poor luck, as the scapegoat for McKenzie's awful Burger King production of Sleeping Beauty (in which she got her one and only production premiere)? Dislike from the New York Times?

Whatever the case, Part has meanwhile earned at least a cult following in the city. And the time here's helped her, if perhaps not as much as it could or should have: Odile in yesterday's matinee Swan Lake showed a cruel and reckless glamour alien to the dancer who first arrived with the Mariinsky on their 2002 tour.

At any rate, I can't write about dance, so I'll only note that there are two more opportunities to see Part before she leaves the company.

Afterwards -- I hope, for myself, that these aren't her last New York performances. But I hope for her, as for every artist, that she finds a situation where she is able to give her best.

Return of the revenge of the off-topic diva

I meant to say something about next season, but first, the official off-topic diversion of this blog.

Although she's been a critical and cognoscenti favorite for years, American Ballet Theatre hasn't much shown off the talent of Veronika Part. Though her art has grown, she has the same "soloist" title at which she came to the company from the Mariinsky (where she was also a soloist), and in recent Met seasons has danced the lead in just single matinees of Swan Lake.

This year, however -- perhaps due to the influence of former ABT legend Gelsey Kirkland, who is helping choreograph the piece -- Part will premiere the company's new production of Sleeping Beauty, as well as dancing leads in La Bayadere, Balanchine's Symphonie Concertante, and that single matinee of Swan Lake. Could a promotion to principal be far behind?

The other ABT event is, of course, the retirement and farewell performances of Alessandra Ferri, but if the name rings a bell you've probably already bought tickets.

Return of the off-topic diva

In his ABT at City Center preview, Joel Lobenthal of the NY Sun writes of star soloist Veronika Part:

But no ABT dancer is more avidly watched at the moment than Veronika Part. At 27, Ms. Part has already lived two artistic lifetimes. In 2002 she left the Kirov Ballet, where she had quickly become one of its most prominent young stars. After a difficult period of adjustment, she has now established herself at ABT. She is tall, voluptuous, and glamorous, and she has impeccable academic credentials. What is most gratifying about her work, however, is the way she molds shapes, lines, and images in a most personal way. She reminds us anew of the way in which strict, severe ballet can be a vehicle for emotional and supra-verbal communication.

It's a sort of communication I'd like to see from more singers.

Part will dance October 26-29 and November 5.


UPDATE (11/1): Much more of Lobenthal on Part in yesterday's Sun.

Off topic

It turns out that the most interesting weight loss at the Met this season wasn't Deborah Voigt's but Veronika Part's. Voigt seems to have sacrificed -- at least for the moment -- her vocal sheen and deep power reserve, but the tall Part, who went from 'normal looking' on the Kirov's '02 tour to her current 'ballet thin,' has been liberated.

Mind you, I don't actually know anything about ballet. But to these eyes Part's become both a more athletic, more technically capable dancer -- her Odile now revels in her physicality -- and a remarkably communicative one. (There was, if I recall, something reserved about her stage persona in the past; that's gone.) If she'll never catch Vishneva in the former aspects of the art, I doubt I'll ever see as expressive and moving a performance from that Mariinsky star as the ones Part's giving us already.

In 2002 everyone was talking about how interesting Part's swan was; today, I think, it's something else. -- Not that I expect Voigt to turn into Karita Mattila or anything.