Marie Mutsuki Mockett

My husband keeps telling me that because we have a boy, I am going to have to like me some sports.

Uh.

See, I thought I married the perfect guy. A few years ago, we were out for dinner on a Sunday in the Meatpacking District (back when Florent was actually run by Florent), and the waiters were like: "Ooh! Not Super Bowl fans are we?" And I was like: Wow. This guy is amazing. He didn't even know it was the Superbowl.

But he does now. And then there were the recent years during which we had to follow the Mets. I didn't like watching the Mets. I loved some of the players, but overall, I would watch them and I would think: "They do not want to win. They want winning to happen *to* them." And life doesn't work that way.

I don't like sports. I think it goes back to being a dreamy, creative kid who wanted to read a book even on a sunny day, but I'm quite sure the jocks who picked on me in high school were part of it too. I made sure I didn't go to a college where the football team ruled the social scene. And now here we are today and I have a boy.

Last week my husband started to talk to me about this basketball player. He was not "important" and wasn't a star, but was suddenly winning games for the Knicks. He had also tranformed the team. Everyone was suddenly playing better. And he's Asian American.

What? There are no Asian American athletes. We are best at programming computers and going to medical school. But we don't play sports. Sometimes we write books, but there is only so much room for us in the marketplace.

Anyway, I was intrigued. But then, I watched part of a game in which the Knicks were playing the LA Lakers. Even I have heard of Kobe Bryant, though my general impression of him was that he wasn't very nice. Supposedly, when the reporters asked Bryant if he would be guarding against this Asian kid, Bryant said: "Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Actually, he didn't supposedly say it. He said it.



So there they were, the Lakers versus the Knicks. And there was Jeremy Lin. He was determined to win. And win he--and they--did. And he helped them win by doing things like this.



One of the things that has quickly impressed me about Lin--aside from his story which I'll get to in a minute--is his determination to make his teammates feel like they are on a team. In this way, they are all lifted up. They all play better. And this is a reminder to us: we are *all* always capable of *more*. If you think you can't, then you won't. But if you think you can and you focus, then you will. You *can*. The news reports keep talking about how Lin has been playing with a "second string." And yet, that second string beat the Lakers. Because they suddenly knew they could do something.

One thing that has bothered me about sports is the emphasis on money and the poor tolerance of bad behavior on the part of athletes. It's like--oh, here we go again. Someone beat up a woman or is doing drugs or stole money or is caught cheating or whatever, but is paid millions to "stand" for some kind of symbol. I hate this. I am not an idiot. I am not going to applaud some young man who chooses gobs of money for physical feats that are all about *him* in lieu of learning, say, how to think and read and be kind and what it is that makes us human. I haven't liked pro sports for a long time because the purity of the game feels very tainted to me. Then, along comes Jeremy Lin, and the story shifts.

It turns out that Lin is a Christian. And vocal about it. Not vocal in a "I must convert you" kind of way, but in a "I want to lift you up" kind of way. I respect this. Wanting to share your positivity with the world is a good thing. But! This man who is such a gifted athlete, almost didn't get to show his teammates what he had. He was continuously overlooked. The whole "skipping college to go pro" thing didn't happen to him, because his coaches couldn't see how talented he was. Now, why couldn't they see? No one wants to say it, but we all know why. There may have been a myriad of factors--Lin himself says that his game is not best one-on-one, but with a team--but it's impossible to discount his ethnicity. (Oh, if I had a dollar for each time someone has said; "But you just don't seem that tough, Marie.")

No one will say this, of course. But here is what they will say. I find this quote fascinating.

Some coaches have wondered whether Lin, who is of Taiwanese descent, did not receive a closer look by recruiters because of his ethnicity. Coaches have said recruiters, in the age of who-does-he-remind-you-of evaluations, simply lacked a frame of reference for such an Asian-American talent.

What on earth is a frame of reference? You mean, there were no other Asian players to compare him to, so he was compared to black and white players and found lacking? And, despite his stellar accomplishments and the data on his playing, why exactly was he found lacking?

I would like to put forward another idea and this is that there is a different physicality in different cultures. An extreme example would be, for starters, the Japanese ability to use space and the western ability. In her marvelous book, Watching the English, Kate Fox dissects the British tendency to apologize, even if something is not their fault (sound familiar?) To test her theory, Fox devised a "bumping into people" test to see who would apologize if bumped into (not their fault) and who would not. The only people who scored higher on the "will apologize if bumped into and its not their fault" test were the Japanese, who she found almost impossible to bump into. Their sense of physical space was so finely tuned that you could not bump into them.

That's an extreme case of how someone's physical language is different due to culture. I would argue that in his natural "resting" state, Lin doesn't telegraph "aggressive I will score lots of points grrrrr I am extoverted" in a way that is immediately obvious in the west. What he does have, are skills. What he didn't have, was empty flashiness. And so, over and over, coaches missed him.

Now, watch this, the closing from the game last night.



The game is tied. The game will go into overtime unless someone scores. Over and over--in this direct and aggressive way--the Knicks try to score. They can't. Someone throws the ball to Lin. And what does he do? He does not force points. In fact, he puts up his hands and tells his teammates to fall back. He's going to take on his opponent one and one. And then he just stands there and lets the clock run. What is going on? Where is the direct attack?

And then suddenly--bam. He scores 3 points. He has calculated an entirely different way to play and to win the game. And he's lifted up everyone else in the process.

I can't even begin to tell you how much I identify with this story. I've come to accept, for example, that I'm not someone who scores a lot of points at a young age and gets the ball in over and over again. I'm not the best at a direct attack. If I try to behave this way, it doesn't work. I do have a great work ethic--and I've tried to put this into my exercise. I'm going to have to find another way to succeed, if that makes any sense. And sometimes, success takes enormous patience.

Here is what Lin says about the years that he was overlooked as an athlete. He quotes from the Bible (and I am not a Christian and I don't own a Bible, so forgive me if I get this wrong).

1. Suffering builds character, character builds hope and hope never lets you down.

2. In so many instances in my life, God has turned what seemed to be “bad” situations into great ones.

3. "I'm not in a battle with what everybody else thinks anymore."

4. He started every morning with a devotional before heading to the gym to work out. Whenever the anxiety tried to creep in, he whispered a Bible verse to himself:

And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28

I occupy a weird place among my peers. I'm not a member of any organized form of religion and it would probably be impossible for me to join one. But I think about religion a lot and I write about modern spirituality when I can. And this is because I think the toughest questions are always spiritual.

How do I stop eating bad food? How do I forgive? How do I get myself on the damned exercise mat? The answers are usually spiritual in nature. And there's a link between what we do physically, and how we feel emotionally and spiritually. The yogis knew that, and that is why their physical practice has a spiritual element.

Remember: today is a new day. Always.

You can always do more than you think.

You are not stuck in one position in life.

One little thing can change the way you fit into the world, but the change will probably not come because of something that *happens* to you, but because of your efforts. You may have to try several things--you may have to try different diets or different attitudes--to find something that will work for you. When you find something that works, stick with it. Some times you will have to persist through difficult times, but if you are doing your best, then you will never be sorry about the time you spent "suffering." And your persisting will probably be the thing that brought about an eventual change.

Last July, I traveled to Japan for National Geographic. My assignment was to write a "cultural piece" about tsunamis in Japan--the world's most tsunami prone country. There were no firm rules about the piece, and my research and my questions led me to lots of interesting places, and into conversations with many different people.

Ultimately, I ended up writing a more personal piece than I had expected to. You can read "A Time to Run" here, or in the February issue of National Geographic, with the dog on the cover. In this essay, I talk about the childhood journals I kept in Japan. Each night, I'd write an entry under my mother's watchful eye, and do a drawing. It's strange now to see that many of these pictures included waves and the water--but then this is not so strange when you consider that we were often by the beach.

I'm heading for Japan tomorrow, but this will be a personal trip. And quite quick. It's an odd time to go to Japan--the New Year has started and we are still weeks away from any winter festivities and from the first cherry blossoms. But I'm looking forward to some quiet time and some conversations with friends and, of course, relaxing in a nice, big Japanese bath. There are a few things we just don't have in the States--a good onsen is one of them.

Maybe you've read the reports about the iPhone interruption at the NY Philharmonic on Tuesday, January 10th. I was there. I Tweeted about it as soon as I got home. The story keeps building, and there are a few things that are being left out, and so I thought I'd just write up my own feelings about the whole thing here.

Thinking back, I'm pretty sure the phone started ringing *before* the 4th movement. It kept ringing and ringing and ringing. I don't mean it rang 4 times and then shut off and went to voicemail. I mean, it rang at least 10 times. Maybe 20. And then it would stop. And then it would start again.

I thought the phone was abandoned. I thought maybe it was backstage, by the door and had been forgotten by someone who was calling repeatedly to find the phone. I do that sometimes. I can't find my phone in my apartment, and so I call it and it rings and rings and stops and I call again until I can find it. That's what the ringing was like at the NY Philharmonic that night. We aren't talking about 4 rings and then straight to voicemail. We are talking about incessant ringing. For at least a half an hour (on and off. On and off). And this is why I think the ringing started during the second movement.

The woman behind me forgot to turn off her cell phone too. When it rang during the first movement, she jumped and turned it off and was deeply embarrassed. Her son scolded her in between movements. She told him to shut up. Then they were all quiet. This was annoying, but it's a part of going to concerts now. I hate that it's a part of concerts--just like I hate that people seem incapable of *not* unwrapping candies during the opera. I hate that the candies are opened slowly--like that's going to be less of a nuisance (note: unwrap your candies pre-performance, put them in a baggie, and pull them out of the baggie if you need them so badly).

As for the infamous iPhone--the man who owned it made no move to turn if off. There was no lurch to turn off the phone. Why? Why not jump and turn off the phone? Along the way, the orchestra played loudly--here is a clip of how loud Mahler's 9th can get: That's loud enough for most people to ignore the Marimba. But now put the cursor to 9:05 to 9:10. That is not loud enough to cover up a marimba. Note, according to Youtube, that the last movement has now been going on for at least 9 minutest. That's 9 minutes of a constant iPhone ringing.

Some have suggested that Alan Gilbert should not have stopped. But at that point, the iPhone was beyond rude. I was incredulous that it kept on ringing--and that its owner hadn't done something about the noise. I couldn't believe that no one sitting next to him was nudging him or doing anything to get him to shut down the phone. And that is why I thought, initially, that the phone didn't have an owner. That's how bad it was.

During the break, as Gilbert engaged the audience--the phone KEPT ON RINGING. Like-you'd think that as soon as you realized that the orchestra has *stopped playing because of you* that you would *turn off the phone*. The man didn't turn off the phone. We just sat there--waiting for the ringing to stop. That's when someone in the balcony yelled; "Just walk outside." Which seemed like a reasonable suggestion. But the man didn't go outside. And we kept sitting there. While the phone rang.

At last it stopped. But because it had also rung in previous movements, I wasn't sure the hall would be quiet. According to news reports, Gilbert extracted a promise that the phone had been shut off. I didn't realize this. I was just tense and worried for the remainder of the performance (which was a shame, because the orchestra sounded *great*).

And as for Gilbert--he showed he had some cojones that night. I liked him for confronting the audience member--and then apologizing so courteously to all of us. He had balls and class. I remembered years ago when I went to see M. Butterfly on Broadway and a woman came in late to her seat and David Dukes absolutely skewered her. It was uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to have the suspension of disbelief broken like that. It's even worse, I think, that manners have broken down so much. I say this as a relatively "young" person who wasn't even alive during the height of thank you notes and please and thank you. But it really is now as though we all think we are in our own living rooms, and we are not.

On a related note--my next concert going will be to see Lang Lang, the pianist, whom some might remember I talked about for a presentation at the Knitting Factory during my book tour.I had the audience do a blind listening to Lang Lang and Rubenstein doing Chopin. I read reviews of both players, emphasizing the whole "too Asian," "too emotional," "too technical" thing, and then had the audience guess which recording belonged to whom. Finally I will get to hear Lang Lang myself. I can't wait.

Happy New Year.

I've written a piece for Salon.com on weight loss and diet which you can read here. One line:

I wondered about the split in my head: the idea that fun girls are willing to eat and can comfort us with a cozy, permissive warmth and that thin girls are the paragons of a beauty that only a very few can emulate. Who really wants to be so thin if it just makes you bitchy? Or does it?

Food and diet and exercise are rather engrossing topics. I've received more email from this one essay than I have for anything else I've ever written. In a way, I wonder if weight--and all the other subjects that weight touches--isn't one of the most personal things we can ever really talk about.

One thing I will write here--just very quickly. A number of people have written to tell me that their weight gain coincided with some kind of depression or illness. Obviously, I sympathize as this was true of me too (depression). The terrible thing about depression related weight gain is that exercise is often prescribed as a way to help alter your mood--and yet if you are depressed, it's nearly impossible to find the energy to do anything more than what is necessary to get through the day. I get this too, and have absolutely been there. But I do want to say that I have finally found a way to work out at home, and that this really more than anything now is what helps me with my moods, my sleep and my general health.

At any rate--it's my birthday tomorrow! And according to my handy iPhone app, the sun will set at 4:44 tomorrow--which is about 17 minutes more sunshine than December 7th. For me, more sunlight is always a reason for optimism. We have yet again made it through the dark time of the year. I hope you are feeling it--certainly I am here.

With all my best wishes for the new year--the year of the Dragon.

I'm overdue in announcing that my memoir, tentatively titled "Above the Waves," has been sold to Alane Mason at Norton. (Norton!). Publishers Marketplace announced the sale thus:

"ABOVE THE WAVES details the history of Marie Mutsuki Mockett's family Buddhist temple in Iwaki, Japan, (25 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant), and explores the religious and cultural frames within which people in Japan cope with death and disaster."

I'm hard at work now. ;-) Alane Mason has edited some of my favorite writers--people I've admired from afar.

I should also say that I've returned from a trip to Japan in July for a really exciting project, that I don't feel ready to announce publicly, but will when the time comes.

Needless to say, with all this work--and with an adorable 20 month old toddler--I don't have the time to update my blog as regularly as I used to and this means I'll be going on hiatus for the time being.

I've enjoyed making friends via the internet, and meeting so many interesting people. Hopefully there will come a time when I can update this blog again.

Thanks for stopping by and for reading.

That's right, four. That's how many Giselles I've seen this year--three at ABT and one at the Royal. It is not as many as a die-hard balletomane would go and see, but it's still quite a lot. By the time I was going to my fourth Giselle, my husband looked at me incredulously: "You really like that ballet." "It's the casts. The production," I said. "That's why I keep going."

Giselle is a classic. Each time I see it, I learn something new, even if the dancing is not top notch. The themes and the choreography are really that deep. Giselle is an example of that thing they always tell you about storytelling and art--if you go deep, people will see things and find things that you yourself the creator didn't even realize you were putting in the work.

Giselle is about dancing and love and betrayal and ghosts and death. The girl, Giselle, loves this guy Loys, only, Loys is really Albrecht. He's a prince and he's engaged to a girl named Bathilde. At one point, Giselle and Bathilde even meet and despite their difference in class, get all girly with each other and talk about their boyfriends. The hunter, Hilarion, has a massive crush on Giselle and is suspicious of Loys. As it turns out, Hilarion figures out that Loys is really a prince and tells Giselle, who dies of a broken heart. Later, Loys/Albrecht and Hilarion separately go to Giselle's grave because they are sad. Of course, they conveniently go at night, the very best time to visit a graveyard. Giselle shows up as a ghost, but because of the way she died (dancing, before her wedding night), must join band of pissed off ghost sisters called the Willi who force any men they meet to dance till they die. Hilarion dies first. Albrecht looks like a goner, except that Giselle's love saves him and he makes it until dawn when the Willi all disappear.

There's plenty of modern day Twighlight and Gossip Girl sensibility mixed in with a Wuthering Heights type vibe and anything else romantic and tortured in this story. Much depends on the interpreter. For example: is Albrecht just a player? Is he in love with Giselle? Or, is his seduction some kind of game? Here's an interpretation with Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev of the Bolshoi.



Albrecht is kind of like: yeah, I don't want to deal with your crazy when the royals are around.

Now look at this version, fast forwarding to around 1:47. This version stars Natalia Makarova and Baryshnikov.



Here, Albrecht looks like he feels pretty bad. And this is what they say about Baryshnikov--that he changed the way that Albrecht is played. In Baryshnikov's version of Giselle, we the audience are watching a true love story from the beginning. There's another great version on Youtube which I can't embed, but which is from 1956 and stars Galina Ulanova. In that version, Albrecht is actually annoyed by Giselle when she goes mad. Even today, Albrecht is played differently.

Ditto for Giselle, and ditto for someone supporting like Hilarion. The standard ABT version is to have Hilarion and his plodding theme song make him seem like a stalker.

One of the pleasures of the Royal Ballet version which I wrote about here, is that Hilarion comes through as a very human person who just really cared about Giselle. At ABT, most Hilarions behaved creepily--except for Jared Matthews, whose nuanced and sensitive portrayal made me sit up and pay attention. Because he seems like a decent guy, you feel pretty bad in Act Two when he dies.

And then there were the ABT Giselles themselves: Hee Seo, Alina Cojocaru and Diana Vishneva. There are many ways to be a Giselle. Is she, for example, already unhealthy and is that why she goes mad and dies in Act One? Certainly the way that Vishneva played Giselle made our heroine seem unearthly from the start. Or is she an earthly, girlish girl who just loves to dance and feels things a bit too much, like Cojocaru?



Is she healthy? In fact, is she so healthy, she seems a little bit nuts and *that's* why she goes crazy later?



There are countless ways to think about Giselle and to interpret her dancing. And the the choices made in the first act impact the second. Here's Vishneva (I don't have a clip of her from act one) after she is made part of the undead. She's beyond ethereal.



Now Cojocaru.



Differences? For me, Alina is like something out of the spirit world. She's so febrile (I've never actually used that word before because it's never fit anything or anyone until now). At times, watching her dance live, I thought she'd escaped her body. In one very small moment, she dropped a bunch of flowers on her Albrecht, played by David Hallberg and then bourreed off the stage. The movement was the kind of thing I've always read about, but never seen. She skimmed the stage. She practically took off. Toe shoes were invented for that kind of gravity-defying behavior. You always read about how thrilled audiences in the 18th century were to see women skim the ground on their toes. It's rarely thrilling now. Except, when Cojocaru exited the stage, I and everyone else in the audience gasped. It was astonishing.

Vishneva's Giselle is also ethereal, but silky. She is moving through water. She's a beautiful thing from a dream. And this is why Albrecht can't stay away from her and why she goes mad and then appears as a Wili. She's a beautiful and unearthly creature from the start. Vishneva--more than any other dancer I know--is able to be beautiful from the word "Go." She knows how to cast a spell. That's also her downfall, because she can rely on her ability to project beauty and it can hamper her performance (I'm thinking of the time I saw her in Sylvia, where she wasn't able to rely on the whole beauty thing, and her dancing felt flat and false). But she is absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous from start to finish.

Cojocaru's journey in a way is harder, because she starts out very much alive, and then transforms into a spirit. Her artistic choice for me is all about transformation. As such, it's absolutely awesome to behold such a physical change. Her performance was also--to me at least--more uneven. There were moments where she didn't dance, but appeared to just be natural. There were moments when she and Hallberg didn't connect the way that Gomes and Vishneva consistently did. There were moments where I wasn't sure what was happening. But the final transformation was something to behold. And I didn't notice or mind her feet at all--I was focused on her and her dancing.

All the Giselles I saw at ABT were good--and technically stronger than the one at the Royal earlier this year. The Vishneva/Gomes partnership probably had the strongest impact on me--and that is in part because of Marcelo Gomes' strong acting and dancing. In act two, when Albrecht is dancing for his life, Gomes made it really look like he was dancing and was exhausted (but still beautiful). He threw his head back during his cabrioles. He looked at Myrtha, queen of the Wilis, and pleaded with her to let him stop. It was all highly effective. And because Gomes is so confident, so clearly a man who has been in love and understands and can play with sexual attraction, his courting of Giselle and act one was electric. By the time she'd died, I felt and believed in their love. And, because of this, and because of the dancing and acting choices made, I really felt in act two that Albrecht required Giselle's protection. This provided for a drama in the second act that I rarely get to see.

This kind of intimacy is harder for Hallberg to establish in Giselle, mostly because I think he's probably not a cad. It would probably not occur to him to be a cad to someone. His Albrecht comes off more like a Siegfried from Swan Lake--a thoughtful, romantic man in search of something greater and more interesting than what he can find at the palace. Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and even Romeo and Juliet are set up to accommodate princes like this--Albrecht is a bit different. So it was much harder for me to believe that Hee Seo and Hallberg, and Cojocaru and Hallberg were in love.

On the other hand, because Cojocaru has this uncanny ability to really transform from a living, sensitive, alive girl to a dead one who can float, I was able for the first time to really understand that Albrecht cannot see Giselle at first when they meet at her grave. Some choreography:



And suddenly--after seeing so many Giselles (and believe me having seen many more in years past), the story and the choreography seemed novel and genius yet again. I realized you simply can't take in everything that the story has to offer with one go around.

Hee Seo, who is one of my favorite young dancers, gave a strong debut. I didn't love her Giselle as much as her Juliet, which arrived on stage fully formed. The critics have not been so nice about Seo's Giselle and this upsets me, because her Juliet is truly, truly astonishing. Because I know she has such a strong performer instinct, I don't doubt the Giselle will come with time. Watching Seo dance Giselle, I thought to myself what a complex role it really is, how every moment requires not only dancing, but dramatic choices. And watching someone do it for the first time, after watching veterans, I was reminded of just how complex a piece of artistry Giselle actually is.

Finally, a few more thoughts. Here is the way Giselle rises from her grave in the Royal Ballet production:



The ABT version: (you have to ff to 9:30).



And this for me highlights one of the many differences between the styles of the two companies--there was so much care in the storytelling that the Royal puts on. Note the location of the two graves and the eeriness of Giselle's appearance in the first clip--and how it really fits the music.

Other notes: Yuriko Kajiya turned her solo as a Wili in a gorgeously crafted piece of dance. I remember Gabrielle Brown years ago--still in the corps--did the same little solo and we all applauded. She was promoted. I admire everything Kajiya has done this year. Such care. Stella Abrera so impressed me as Myrtha. I know her fans wish she could have a turn as Giselle. Well, so do I. The orchestra might want to slow down a bit in places--Cojocaru is great at playing with tempii and phrasing. It's not a bad thing to think about. I don't like Cojo's hair down in Act 1. It's stringy. I don't mind stringy hair during the mad scene, but wish she had pinned her hair up and brought it down later. Thank God for Simkin's peasant pas de deux. Wonderful jumps. Would like to see him do something more substantial.

Yes, I've been very busy writing about Japan, but I am honoring all my ballet tickets and making it through the very heavy ballet season. I'd meant to write a post about what you should see--if you have kids, if you hate tragedy, if you like to experiment, if you want to see "stars," etc, but simply ran out of time. Maybe next year.

I started out the season by going watch Alina Cojocaru and Jose Carreno in Don Quixote, a ballet I've actually never managed to sit through in the past. But I made myself stay for Cojo and Carreno--this will probably be the last time I'll ever see him dance, which makes me extremely sad as he is a wonderful dancer, partner and performer. All the same, the ballet--even with Cojo's dedication and showmanship--didn't win me over. I felt like I'd been to the circus. Sascha Radetsky was replaced (due to injury) by Gennadi Savaliev, who appeared to be marking the steps. Maria Riccetto is a gorgeous woman in person, but somehow always appears pinched on stage. Why does life do this? It's not fair. Some people who are really good looking in person simply fade on the stage. Others who are odd looking in person come alive under the lights. Cojo was charming and earnest and you could not help but love her good-naturedness. But I needed something more, and this video of Osipova which I've watched repeatedly didn't help make me feel that an opportunity had somehow not been missed.

http://youtu.be/aYB7s-oUh2k

At any rate--I did enjoy seeing Simone Messmer and Joseph Phillips as Gypsies. I'd been curious about both dancers and was happy to have a glimpse of the "edginess" that Messmer is known for. I'd like to see more of her. And Phillips has grown on stage--much more presence than the last time I saw him.

Shallow points--Cojo's feet really bothered me. Much as been said and written about her bunions and how this is not her fault and how she has to wear extra wide shoes as a result. But must she cut the fabric off the bottom of her shoes so a raggedy edge is waving around as she dances and is visible all the way in the Dress Circle where I was sitting? I get that dancers don't have time any more to darn their points, but the raggedy edge was distracting.

With that complaining out of the way, I'll move on to the joy that was the Mixed Program. What is a mixed program? Well, it's a program in which non-related, shorter dances are performed by different casts. It's the way most of New York City Ballet performs. Think of it as a kind of "set list," like if you went to a jazz gig and heard different songs performed by the same band with different players sitting in at different points. It's like that.

First, a piece by Alexei Ratmansky, who's just accepted a 10 year contract with ABT. And just in time too, because the company needs some fresh blood who can choreograph new pieces and show that ballet is a living, relevant art form. And I say this as someone who loves and believes in ballet. Dumbarton, an ensemble work set to music by Stravinksy, featured a mixture of corps, soloist and principal dancers, including a personal favorite, Michele Wiles, who lately seems underappreciated and underutilized to me. Wiles is a virtuoso, but also a performer. She also has a scary and unpredictable quality that Ratmansky brought out in the pas de deux he created for her. This makes me hopeful that he'll continue to bring out what is best in her and that she'll continue to have the chance to dance better and newer pieces. Her Odile/Odette (Swan Lake) is one of the best out there and, again, underappreciated. Go if you can.

Dumbarton, though, is a piece that one needs to see more than once. Like everything Ratmansky does, it's thoroughly musical and while logical--nothing feels like the work of an automaton--it's not predictable. Like the best novel--you feel the story unfolding in an organic fashion but can't predict where it is going--Dumbarton is a little revelation. Most of all, I was just happy to see such great and strong dancing from all levels of the company. It's a sign of what could be and what Ratmansky could bring not just to ABT but to New York. After some trips to see dancing across the street where the men are not so universally strong, I was happy to see such bold and confident movement.

Dumbarton was followed by Troika, a work by Benjamin Millepied. Google him if you need to know who he is and why he has been in the news lately. I was so relieved to see Sascha Radetsky dancing here after missing him in Don Q, and grateful that between the two dances he chose Troika instead. Troika also feature Daniil Simkin, whose dancing and intelligence I've admired in the past and Alexander Hammoudi, a corps member whose athletic but inward quality make him unusually magnetic--like a dark haired Hallberg. I wasn't much of a fan of the choreography. It felt--to use a writing term--verbose. You know how you read a book by a contemporary writer who is getting lots of buzz and that writer talks and talks and talks and after a while you think: Oh, right, you are jabbering away because there is no there there? Well, that's how I felt about Troika. It was there--why? We had to fill the stage with all the movement . . . because? I understand that abstract pieces don't require a plot. And after seasoning my eye a bit with City Ballet, I no longer need a story from dance. But there has to be some kind of structure, or response to music that is still cathartic. While I loved the dancers in Troika, the emotional reason for the piece eluded me. It felt empty. It also felt like pieces I'd seen before.

I don't know anyone who liked the revival of Tudor's "Shadowplay," the third piece. Except for me--I liked it. But I'd just read a biography of Buddha, including the temptation by Mara that Buddha undergoes before his enlightenment. So, for me, the plot of Shadowplay was easy to follow. Also, I've read a lot of Jung to get the very 60s ethos that the piece intended to convey, and I really appreciated Tudor's ambition to try to do so much on stage and through dance--a fable, a psychological stage, an inner life. While I think Craig Salstein is such a wonderful actor--his Puck radiates in Midsummer Night's Dream--he didn't have enough gravitas or virtuosity for this particular piece. I wish I could have gone to see Simkin the following night, but don't have the cash for that.

Most people loved the final work by Christopher Wheeldon at the end of the evening. I loved it too though curiously, I don't remember much any more (the Ratmansky is lingering longer in my head) other than the fact that Isabella Boylston and Marcelo Gomes had a wonderful pas de deux in which they seemed to be asking each other to please, please "see me." It was moving. The lights and costumes were also very good. But beyond that, I now can't remember what I saw, which makes me wonder if the piece had some great moments but relied more on effect. I found myself wishing that Ratmansky had more help with costuming and lighting and learned a thing or two from Wheeldon.

And this is the funny thing about Wheeldon and Ratmansky: I find myself always complaining about Ratmansky's costumes. In Dumbarton, for instance, everyone seemed to wear these odd, post-Communist, drab, shirt dresses that really didn't do anything for anyone. I've complained in the past about his use of celadon green that doesn't pop on stage and the cut of the cap sleeves on his dresses. And here again I hated the costumes. But the dancing, the steps, the musicality were sublime. Of everything--Dumbarton is what I would most want to see again. And if I think back--it's the piece where the dancers looked the happiest.

My piece on Japan and the nuclear disaster appeared in Salon May 14th, 2011. You can read it here.

This Saturday, May 7th, I'll be joining friends for an evening of music and performance at Tenri Cultural Institute in New York to help raise money for Japan. All proceeds will go to the Japan Society's Tohoku Earthquake Relief Fund. It's a great chance to help support Japan and to also hear wonderful music from a number of fine emerging composers, musicians and singers, including my dear friend Tamara Hardesty (I can't believe I get to share the stage with her!).

The Tenri Cultural Institute is located at:

Tenri Cultural Institute
43A West 13th Street
New York, NY 10011

You can also get more information by clicking on the image above, or by calling the event organizer--not to mention talented musician--Sachiko Kato at 646-408-8886. Hope to see you there!