CINDERELLA AT ABT/XANADU ON BROADWAY
I attended three American Ballet Theater shows over the past month: ROMEO AND JULIET, SWAN LAKE, CINDERELLA. I've been trying to expand my critical vocabulary by seeing more opera, dance and music stuff over the past few months, which can be pretty tough. But one thing I've found with ballet in particular is the trouble describing - and analyzing - what I see when I myself lack a solid education in ballet dance.
I think I came upon a revelation seeing CINDERELLA, which was pretty bad. When I saw ROMEO and SWAN LAKE, I thought each was pretty beautiful and enjoyable, but I wondered whether I was missing some kind of critical forethought. But with CINDERELLA, which was gaudy and just downright bad and misconceived, I re-realized that the key for any good critic is - no matter what you're reviewing, just trust your gut instinct, and expand from there. In other words, trust how you feel, and go from there in explaining and describing and justifying everything else.
I doubt that I'll have time to review more dance stuff in the fall, but I will continue to make time for Met operas.
Tonight was XANADU. My original press night was like two weeks ago, but was then reassigned to tonight due to James Carpinello's injury and the ushing in of Cheyenne Jackson. As of the moment, I can't really yet discuss my like it-or-not opinion on it, but I am pondering whether it really was a musical. Is it something else? Like a camp concert a la ROCKY HORROR? At one point, Jackie Hoffman's character joked that it was children's theatre for 40 year old gays. Perhaps, but that sounds a little harsh. Kenita R. Miller was also out tonight, who is a featured dancer. And in one of the more interesting moments, Tony Roberts began his first scene of dialogue, and his body mic was obviously out. So, Cheyenne eventually roller skated to the side of the stage and brought him out a hand-held mic. I assume this is not a regular part of the show???
