Bluebird

Reversing expectations

American Is to Join the Bolshoi Ballet

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY and DANIEL J. WAKIN

Published: September 20, 2011

Exactly 50 years after Rudolf Nureyev grabbed the world’s attention as the first major Soviet dancer to defect to the West, another symbolic journey is taking place — this time in reverse.

EAndrea Mohin/The New York Times

David Hallberg performing in the "Kings of the Dance" program at City Center.

 

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

David Hallberg partnering the Russian ballerina Natalia Osipova in "Giselle."

David Hallberg, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater, is becoming the first American star to enlist permanently with the fabled Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow. Mr. Hallberg, 29, who was born in Rapid City, S.D., will hold the coveted status of premier, the Bolshoi term for principal dancer, even as he continues performing with Ballet Theater.

“Personally, I feel a sense of responsibility as an American,” Mr. Hallberg said on Tuesday, adding that he was proud to join such a historic company. “I will be bringing something different to the company, but I will also be respecting their traditions as well.”

He said he was aware of the unique responsibility entailed in being a first. “There will be people watching,” he said. “I have to do it justice.”

Many Russians have headed westward since Nureyev’s defection at a Paris airport in 1961, most notably Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1974. The end of the cold war later erased the phenomenon of defecting dancers. It also made it easier for Westerners to go to Russia, but the Bolshoi and the Kirov Ballet of Leningrad, now the Mariinsky of St. Petersburg, had no need for imports, churning out carefully cultivated stars from their own rigorous schools.

Few foreigners joined, and no stars. “They don’t need ’em,” said Jane Hermann, a longtime dance agent who once represented the Bolshoi. “That’s the main reason. Until recently the Russians have been turning out some of the best dancers in the world.”

But in March a new artistic director, Sergei Filin, took over at the Bolshoi, and he had different ideas. He had seen Mr. Hallberg perform during a “Kings of the Dance” tour in Russia, as well as during a Ballet Theater visit.

“He is a remarkable romantic and classical dancer,” Mr. Filin said in a telephone interview from Moscow on Monday.

Two weeks after becoming artistic director, Mr. Filin invited Mr. Hallberg — then in Moscow on that Ballet Theater visit — to lunch, and offered him a position as either guest artist or principal dancer.

“I was both amazed and alarmed,” Mr. Hallberg said in another recent interview. “But Sergei was very reassuring,” and promised he could continue with Ballet Theater. “He said: ‘I don’t want you to be in a golden cage — I want you to be free. But I do want you to make a commitment to the Bolshoi. I’m very serious about this.’ ”

Indeed, if any American dancer were to make the leap, it was likely to be Mr. Hallberg. He is perhaps the world’s foremost example of the “noble” genre of male dancing, a natural for ballet’s princely roles because of his bearing and style. His purity of line and phrasing surpasses that of most dancers today.

“ ‘Noble’ dancers like this are very rare at any time in history,” said Kevin McKenzie, Ballet Theater’s artistic director. “David certainly is one, but he has never wanted to be pigeonholed that way. He’s willing to make a fool of himself” in rehearsal, to experiment.

Mr. Hallberg also trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School and Ballet Theater’s intensive summer sessions. He joined the company’s corps de ballet in 2001.

Mr. Hallberg, who does not speak Russian, will start at the Bolshoi on Nov. 4 in “Giselle” and then in productions of “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Don Quixote.” He will return to Moscow in January and February.

Mr. Hallberg said he would have to cancel four engagements with Ballet Theater over this season. But he said he would still appear at company performances, including its Brooklyn Academy of Music “Nutcracker;” the Metropolitan Opera May-through-July season; and tours in Chicago and Orange County, Calif.

While the Bolshoi has never before hired an American principal dancer, Mr. Hallberg is one of a line of distinguished Western dancers who have appeared with it and the Mariinsky as a guest.

Part of the appeal of joining the Bolshoi was the chance to dance with Natalia Osipova, the Bolshoi’s phenomenal ballerina. He first partnered her in New York with Ballet Theater in 2009 and later at the Bolshoi in 2010.

He said that experience, along with dancing with the Mariinsky, was revelatory.

“I have never anywhere encountered such seriousness and depth about ballet,” he said. “Everywhere you go in Russia, you feel that dancing is valued as a high art. And inside the companies the work is so intelligently and beautifully approached. My one performance at the Bolshoi was amazingly intimidating. The company’s record is so historic. But I grew a little because of it.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Hallberg said he spent months agonizing over the decision, consulting family members and Ballet Theater colleagues, including the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, himself a former artistic director of the Bolshoi.

Apart from resuming his partnership with Ms. Osipova, he will also partner the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina Svetlana Zakharova.

“The Bolshoi style is bigger and more emotional, in a way that I love,” Mr. Hallberg said. “It has the freshness and intensity that is like what I’ve tried to achieve in my dance-acting roles.”

There are other benefits to being in the company. Each lead Bolshoi dancer, as at the Mariinsky, has a former company dancer as a full-time coach. Mr. Hallberg’s will be Alexander Vetrov, who has worked in America and speaks English.

When asked if the Bolshoi would now invite other Western dancers to join its ranks, Mr. Filin said, “They should be really, really good!”

The dresser in the dark

It’s All About Holding Hands and Stitching Hems

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Bruce Glikas, Broadway.com

Julien Havard, with Broadway star Sutton Foster, has left life as a dresser on Broadway to focus on his art in Hyannis, Mass.

 More Photos »

By ERIK PIEPENBURG

Published: June 24, 2011

When Sutton Foster won the Tony Award for best actress this month for her performance in “Anything Goes,” she began her acceptance speech by thanking the usual suspects: co-stars, teachers, director, boyfriend. It wasn’t until she thanked her dresser, though, that Ms. Foster’s composure broke, and the waterworks started.

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Slide Show

Clothes Call

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Red Carpet at the Tony Awards

“He’s the world’s greatest artist, and he’s moving to Cape Cod, and he’s going to be amazing, and I love you so much!” Ms. Foster gushed about Julien Havard, her voice drenched in sobs.

Tears of joy for an encouraging parent or beloved teacher is one thing. But for the guy who stuffs bras and cinches girdles?

“We’re like best friends, brother and sister,” Ms. Foster said during an interview in her dressing room, Mr. Havard seated next to her, a few days after the Tonys. “He sees the best, the worst, the good, the bad. There’s no one in the world I’m more comfortable with than him.”

Ms. Foster and other performers who have worked with a particular dresser for many years say actor-dresser relationships are more spiritual than transactional. They often transcend workday boundaries, especially in the theater, where emotions (and bodies backstage) are exposed. Patti LuPone said Pat White, who has been her dresser on and off for over 20 years, provides her with more than just costume changes; she’s a therapist, confidante, cheerleader, life coach, personal assistant, stylist and repairman.

“Pat instinctively knows what I need, whether it’s physical stuff or space or a laugh or how to negotiate people coming in and out of the dressing room,” Ms. LuPone said. “I call her the general.”

Depending on the size of the cast, a Broadway show can have anywhere from one to as many as 15 dressers, whose daily tasks — ironing costumes, sewing hems, repairing shoes — can take place in and around the dressing room up to 90 minutes before curtain time. Star dressers are usually assigned to oversee the costumes for one actor. (They may also dress stars for appearances in public or on television.) The typical weekly salary for a Broadway dresser ranges from $1,100 to $1,400 a week, depending on the amount of work, and all Broadway dressers are members of the Theatrical Wardrobe Union.

Once the actor is in costume, dressers “run” a show, meaning that they’re backstage to help actors quickly change costumes during the performance. In “Anything Goes” Mr. Havard greets Ms. Foster when she exits the stage and escorts her to her entrances to help her execute all 11 of her costume changes. He carries lozenges, throat sprays, water and other remedies that Ms. Foster, a big-throated tap machine, may need.

Touching, consoling and cajoling an actor during eight shows a week can sometimes escalate into something like parental tough love, Mr. Havard said.

“You’re the one in the dark naked with them when they’re crying because it’s their first show, and there are 1,500 people out there,” he said. “You’re just like, ‘Whatever, put on your pantyhose.’ ”

Dressing is almost motherly, Ms. White said.

“Sometimes I’ll say, ‘Patti, did you eat?’ ” she said. “She’ll say, ‘No, I’m fine,’ and I’m like, ‘No, you’re going to eat.’ ”

Ms. LuPone said, “What you want backstage is someone who knows you beyond your responsibility in the role.”

Victoria Clark has been friends with Vicky Grecki, her dresser in the Broadway musical “Sister Act,” for some 30 years. Around her waist Ms. Grecki wears an apron filled with hairpins, tiny lights for seeing in the dark backstage, bandages and other sundries. Essential for any good dresser are lightning-quick skill and James Bond-like stealth.

“She will notice that the hem is dangling, and it’s done,” Ms. Clark said during an interview in her dressing room, Ms. Grecki at her side. “She’ll notice if the lace has started to fray, and it will be replaced.”

Broadway stars like Ms. Foster, Ms. LuPone and Ms. Clark all negotiated their contracts to include a star dresser.

“Vicki’s very popular, and I can’t always get her,” Ms. Clark lamented.

Sticking with the same dresser for years, show after show, can help an actor remain in good spirits, which can help brighten the outlook of the rest of the cast and crew.

“If you’ve got a great dresser, then you’ve got a really wonderful backstage atmosphere,” Ms. LuPone said. “If you have a real lousy dresser, then people are bitching.”

Actor-dresser bonds often extend beyond the stage door. Ms. LuPone said Ms. White had been to her family’s home in South Carolina. Ms. Grecki made an outfit for the christening of Ms. Clark’s son. Ms. Foster has several works by Mr. Havard, who is also a visual artist, in her home and isn’t above going out to get takeout for him on two-show days. (Ms. Foster’s Tony tears came just days before Mr. Havard moved to Hyannis, Mass., where he will be artist in residence at the Hyannis Harbor Arts Center.)

Dressers are essential to, and share in, their stars’ success.

“I enjoy making things go,” Ms. White said. “That’s my job.”

Ms. LuPone interjected: “It’s like a pit crew for a Nascar race. I’m the driver; they’re the pit crew. When they get the wheels on, and they don’t fall off on the track, the pit crew congratulates themselves.”

Ms. Grecki said that when Ms. Clark took her bows, she participated in the stardust.

“I’m very proud to see Victoria onstage looking as well as she does,” she said. “It’s part of me out there too.”

Perfect song and ad for a long holiday weekend

Classic Ad: Volkswagen’s Blue-Sky Beetle

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May 28, 2011, 7:00 am

By ROBERT PEELE

It’s Memorial Day weekend, a time to rise from the cubicle, hop in the car, put the top down and take to the open road.

Sadly, the office-bound hero of this week’s classic ad can only dream about such things. The ad, a 2002 spot for the Volkswagen New Beetle convertible, follows a young corporate drone through several iterations of his tedious daily routine, as Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky” offers an ironic commentary. Salvation for this proto-Jim Halpert is suggested by the appearance of the New Beetle Convertible, though the viewer at home sees only the briefest glimpse of the car’s retracting top.

A commercial that doesn’t show the product being advertised can be a risky proposition, as Infiniti’s highly conceptual and widely ridiculed “rocks and trees” campaign proved back in 1989. But Volkswagen gambled on the iconic status of the Beetle, and came away with one of the most memorable commercials of the last decade.

Japan's scramble

Japan's orderly Shibuya Scramble

The 10-lane traffic interchange in the Shibuya district is flooded at rush hour by 2,500 pedestrians, and then completely emptied, with each change of a traffic signal. 'It's an unrehearsed choreography,' says one observer. 'It's a dance.'

 

Pedestrians navigate the Scramble in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. (Tom Miyagawa Coulton, For The Times / May 9, 2011)

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

May 23, 2011

Reporting from Tokyo—

Everyone waited, the pressure building, potential energy set to become kinetic.

Suddenly, the light changed and vehicles vanished from the vast intersection in Tokyo's Shibuya district. For one eye-blink, the crossing was a no man's land.

Then, on cue, the pedestrian masses on the four corners surged forward. Seen from above, they were great armies entering battle, each moving with determination toward their point of contact.

But there was no clash. In the middle, they came together in fluid movement, like cards shuffled in the hands of a Vegas dealer, each sliding seamlessly past the other.

For nearly a full minute, the intersection was a sea of humanity. Slowly, the crush trickled out and the asphalt was again almost empty, only a few stragglers rushing to beat the light.

Then it reverted to the throb of vehicle traffic, another cycle of Shibuya synchronicity complete.

"It's an unrehearsed choreography," said Tsuyoshi Yamada, an unofficial expert on the history and idiosyncrasies of the crosswalk. "It's a dance."

Twice each weekday, on his way to work and home again, Yamada negotiates the intersection, perhaps the most peopled and yet most orderly one on the planet.

It's known as the Scramble, and for good reason.

The crossing, a 10-lane traffic interchange half the size of a football field, is in the heart of the youth-dominated Shibuya, a barometer of this city's edgy teen culture with its ever-shifting fashions and often-wacky trends. At its rush-hour height, the Scramble is flooded by 2,500 pedestrians — some pink-haired and nose-pierced, others in conservative skirts or suits — with a single change of a traffic signal.

But in this polite nation, the passing bodies seem less chaotic than in, say, Beijing or New York, moving with the cool predictability of a stopwatch. Despite so much humanity inhabiting such a confined space, there's rarely a collision, sharp elbow, shoulder-brush or unkind word.

For Yamada, 64, a white-haired veteran in the Shibuya district government office, the Scramble is something of a singular calling: He's a student of the crossing's place in Japanese culture, likening its ballet to North Korea's Mass Games, in which thousands of gymnasts take part in a spectacle of rhythm and order.

"It's more than just a feat of engineering," said Yamada, a deskbound records-keeper with the title of data management officer. "It reflects the pulse of Tokyo."

Yamada said that Japanese seem as proud of its smooth inner-workings as they are of any Toyota or Honda. "It's elegant and works well, and I think people here like that," he said.

On recent afternoon, television photographer Yuzo Yamamoto set up his camera on a sidewalk at the Scramble's edge. He was shooting a summertime feature on new styles of sunglasses and said there was no better place to get the story.

Yamamoto said the Scramble captures the contradiction of modern Japan: Although so many young people seek to stand out in the crowd with the latest, zaniest fashion, their upbringing still demands civility: They may look counterculture, but they're still bound to step back and offer a stranger the right of way.

"I just like to stand here sometimes and watch the bodies flow," Yamamoto said. "It's amazing, really."

Shibuya's Scramble is just outside the area's bustling train station, near the popular Hachiko dog statue, memorializing the dog that waited daily at the spot for years for the arrival of his dead master.

Although there are 300 Scramble crossings nationwide, the idea isn't Japanese, Yamada acknowledges; the notion was born in the 1940s when a Denver traffic engineer sought to reduce car-people collisions. Henry Barnes' idea was to alternate the right of way between cars and pedestrians: One minute autos would take charge of an intersection, walkers the next.

Users called it the X-crossing, diagonal crossing and even the Barnes Dance, because pedestrians were reportedly so happy with their newfound freedom, they danced in the streets. In his 1965 autobiography, "The Man with the Red and Green Eyes," Barnes said the idea came to him while watching his daughter make a dangerous dash to school across the street.

"As things stood now, a downtown shopper needed a four-leaf clover, a voodoo charm and a St. Christopher's medal to make it in one piece from one curbstone to the other," he wrote. As far as I was concerned — a traffic engineer with Methodist leanings — I didn't think that the Almighty should be bothered with problems which we, ourselves, were capable of solving."

As Yamada tells it, a Tokyo city official saw a TV documentary and marveled at the simplicity of the solution to handle pedestrian traffic in bustling Tokyo.

The city's first Scramble was established in the Ginza district, followed by Shibuya. Yamada isn't sure what year, but by comparing old black-and-white photographs, he's narrowed it to sometime between 1970 and 1976.

Since then, Shibuya's Scramble has become a symbol of the habitability of a metropolis of 35 million. In recent years, the crossing has become a mainstay in tourist guidebooks and has played a cameo role in such popular Tokyo-based movies as "Lost in Translation."

Hundreds of times a day, pedestrians threading the Scramble's needle make visitors wonder how they pull it off.

"Foreigners are amazed by the smaller scale of things here," said William Bodiford, a UCLA professor of Asian languages and culture. "Natives get used to negotiating tighter spaces. They're raised to be very aware of one another, notice their surroundings."

Such spatial negotiation doesn't come easily. "It took me a long time to realize why I felt so clumsy in Japan and not nearly so in America," Bodiford said. "The desks and ceilings are lower, the spaces cramped. It's so much easier to bump into things."

Not for the travelers of the Scramble, where on a recent weekday, the easy ebb and flow was apparent. As the traffic passed, several hundred pedestrians slowly congregated on one corner of the interchange, collecting in groups of twos and threes. At choke points across the way, similar groups poised for action.

In Japan, where pedestrians religiously adhere to traffic laws, there were no jaywalkers or mad traffic dashes.

Then, yet again, the light went green and the masses surged into motion, a public ballet uniquely Japanese.

john.glionna@latimes.com

H.B. Martha G.

Martha Graham: 117th birthday celebrated with dancing Google doodle

Martha Graham, a dancer, choreographer, and icon of Modern Dance, gets a Google celebration on what would have been her 117th birthday.

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Modern dance icon Martha Graham receives a 117th Birthday salute through a today's Google Doodle.

Google.com

 

   

By Alicia Pflaumer / May 11, 2011

Google unveiled a dancing doodle today to celebrate the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham.

 

The dancer in the animation uses her body – in five different dance movements – to spell out the search engine's name. The doodle is the creation of artist Ryan Woodward, who wrote on Twitter this morning, "Check out Google.com. I worked with the Martha Graham Dance Company [the oldest American dance company] and created an animated Google Doodle. Hope you guys like it!" Indeed, the extra web attention crashed both of Woodward's own websites.

 

Martha Graham worked as an American dancer and choreographer from the 1920s up until her passing in 1991.

The Martha Graham Dance Company, launched in 1926, broke down the meaning of the individual dances portrayed in the doodle, on its website. The dancer begins with Graham's signature solo 1930 piece "Lamentation" forming the letter "e." Then sweeps into an "l" with "Satyric Festival Song" from 1932. She falls to the ground, with "Appalachian Spring" from 1944, and swishes up with a kick to form the "g." Then with a jump forms the "oo" like in "Contraction" from 1947, and finishes with "Frontier" from 1935 to form the "G."

Graham once said, "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable."

IN PICTURES: Martha Graham: Dancer and choreographer