Saturday night’s performance of the 7th International Ballet Star Gala (第七屆 國際芭蕾舞星在台北) at the National Theater was an evening of unexpected revelations. While all 12 of the dancers were in fine form, the highlights came from principals of two perhaps lesser-known companies.
Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino from the Bayerisches Staatsballett were exquisite in English choreographer Ben Stevenson’s 3 Preludes in the first half of the show. While not a new piece, it was not one I had heard of, much less seen, before.
Stevenson, who headed the Houston Ballet for 27 years, created it for the New York City-based Harkness Youth Ballet in 1969, when he was director of the troupe. It won him the first prize for choreography at the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, in 1972 — and it is easy to see why.
Photo courtesy of Art Wave Inc
The piece, which opens with Lacarra and Dino poised on either side of a ballet barre, was breathtaking both in its simplicity and sheer loveliness. It is set to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 32, No. 10 and No. 9 and Opus 23.
Stevenson’s choreography allows dancers to show their clean lines — especially during Lacarra’s “6 o’clock” split arabesque — and to display their beautiful extensions. The first prelude revolves around the barre, with each dancer largely sticking to his or her side until Dino begins to lift Lacarra up, over and around the barre, making her appear light as a feather.
The barre is removed after the first prelude, unfettering the pair, but the air of lightness and simplicity remained, each prelude building on the previous one. The dancers and the work were proof that you do not need pyrotechnic techniques at a gala — though there were plenty of examples on Saturday — to shine.
The other revelation of the night came from a last-minute replacement. New York City Ballet’s Ana Sophia Scheller was supposed to dance two classical pieces — the Tchaikovsky and Don Quixote pas de deux — with her colleague Joaquin de Luz. However, she suffered an injury on Dec. 30 and was forced to pull out. She suggested Wang Tzer-shing (王澤馨) try to get Misa Kuranaga from the Boston Ballet instead.
Kuranaga’s crispness and quickness brought a freshness to works that have been seen time and again. In retrospect her performances were even more amazing because Wang said after the show that de Luz and Kuranaga had never danced together before they rehearsed the works on Friday.
The talent and professionalism of both dancers was exemplified in the very flashy fish dives in both pas de deux, with Kuranaga hurling herself across the stage, confident that de Luz was going to be in the right spot to catch her.
Another simple piece that delighted the audience was Jessica Lang’s 2007 Splendid Isolation III, danced by former American Ballet Theater (ABT) principals Irina Dvorovenko and her husband, Maxim Beloserkovsky. The curtain opens on a spotlit Dvorovenko, posed with her back to the audience in a white dress with an absolutely massive skirt that is pooled around her on the floor, while Beloserkovsky lies prone off to the right. The voluminous skirt is cleverly used as both a prop and set dressing until about halfway through the work, when it is unfastened and dropped to reveal a short toga skirt underneath. This work also rated a “wow.”
Mariinsky Theatre’s Igor Kolb got a chance to show his comedic talents in Vladimir Varnava’s solo Beginning, which was inspired by a Rene Magritte painting.
The untitled solo choreographed by Yuri Possokhov and danced by Maria Kochetkova of the San Francisco Ballet — which had its world premiere on Saturday night — might have been the shortest work on the program, but it also allowed her to show a comedic side that she does not often get a chance to display.
ABT principal Daniil Simkin has a big fan base in Taipei because of his repeat appearances at Wang’s galas, and, as expected, his followers roared their approval after his reprise of Ben Van Cauwenbergh’s Le Bourgeois, with its “540os” (a 360o revolution plus a 180o). However, his appearance in the final work on the program, partnering Kochetkova in Le Corsair pas de deux, which included another 540o among his spins, was even more impressive and elicited screams of delight from many in the audience.
This story has been amended since it was first published.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless