MOVIE REVIEW-HELMUT NEWTON: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL OPENS FRIDAY JULY 24 AT CHICAGO'S MUSIC BOX VIRTUAL THEATER

MOVIE REVIEW: HELMUT NEWTON: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL

Directed by Gero von Boehm, Opening July 24 in Chicago’s Music Box Virtual Theater at musicboxtheatre.com

“Everybody remembers a bad picture. Nobody remembers the pain you went through to get a good picture.” Those were the immortal words of the great, celebrated and somewhat off-beat fashion photographic genius Helmut Newton, the subject of director Gero von Boehm’s expressive documentary Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful. It opened Friday July 24 in Chicago’s Music Box Virtual Theater at musicboxtheatre.com.

The film is an Official Selection of the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival.

Helmut Newton is considered one of the most important and controversial photographers of the 20^th Century. His photographs appeared regularly in in Vogue, both in the USA and internationally, Elle, Playboy and Marie-Claire, among others. He was the subject of numerous international solo exhibitions and established his own museum in Copenhagen.

“World famous photographer Helmut Newton died today in a car crash in West Hollywood,” an off-screen narrator intones early in the film. Dead at 83, Newton left behind a plethora of unforgettable, sometimes shocking images that lept from the pages of Vogue and other publications, creating the images that were the calling cards of  fashion legends Karl Lagerfeld and Yves St. Laurent, among others.

Legendary Vogue Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour explains:

“In Helmut’s visual world, the women are everything. “

Helmut Newton liked to explain it thusly, “Men are just accessories, like hats and gloves.

 Famed Italian actress and frequent Helmut model Isabella Rossellini sums it up best; “Helmut doesn’t just look at women as a sexual object. It’s much more complicated than that. A Helmut Newton woman is strong, provocative and in charge.

“At the same time, the photos are an expression of machismo, but also an expression of a culture.  Men are attracted to women. At the same time, they are also angry at them. Because they ARE attracted to them, it makes them (the men) vulnerable, and that makes men resentful!”

That psychological conundrum sheds some light on the iconic photographs that Newton took with perhaps his most controversial subject, the performance artist and singing legend Grace Jones. Newton photographed Jones lying nude with a knife in her hand, poised to attack some unseen assailant.

“He seemed a little bit perverted,” Jones said of her first impression of Newton . “But, so am I. So it’s allright! His idea for the photo was erotic, but with dimensions. it had depth. It told a story.

“ I watched everything he did, because he took the picture so quickly.  He was waiting for just the right moment, when the light was coming down.

“ I remember I was lying there naked on a cot, and he put a knife in my hand. The way that the light cast a shadow as it was moving, at one point it covered just over this part here ,” she says, pointing to her private area.  “ But there was never anything vulgar about it. It was beautiful. It was done as if it was something to add to the story. “

She continues. “He (Helmut) waits just until the light hits the knife before he takes the picture. But there’s no one else in the picture, so it leaves the rest to your imagination. You’re still wondering, because it tells a story.”

Helmut loved to photograph celebrities from all walks of life; from politicians and Hollywood icons to social trend-setters. His errant lens fell on everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Dennis Hopper and Liz Taylor to Playboy’s Hugh Hefner.

“If I’m going to do a portrait,” Newton intones, “it has to be something with people that have power. Either political power, financial power, or sexual power. They make pretty good subjects for my camera,” he says offhandedly with a laugh.

Fashion editors competed to throw assignments his way.  So much so that they accepted even his wildest conceptions without reservation.

 For some reason, Newton had an obsession with chickens. That obsession resulted in a series of fashion shoots involving uncooked chickens splayed with raw provocation on a counter juxtaposed with a model wearing expensive jewelry or clothing.  Helmut Newton tells the story of this odd fixation. “So I’m going through this kitchen and the cook has prepared a chicken to be put in the oven. It was lying there, just as in my photo, with the legs spread out and lying next to it, the string to tie the legs together as if it was looking at me. And then came the ‘moment’.

“I was given an assignment to shoot some expensive jewelry for Bulgari.  When the people there saw the photos in the magazine, they almost passed out.  They said, ‘How can this guy photograph our million dollar rocks with this bloody mean chicken, that is lying so provatively on the table?’   The photo shows the hand of a woman and she is wearing very expensive jewelry. But, she is obviously in the kitchen and she is preparing the chicken. And I said to them…’Why not?’ I find these two opposites madly exciting!”

 Vogue Editor and photo stylist Phyllis Posnick tells another amusing Helmut ‘chicken’ story. “So I called him and said that we were doing an article on Fried Chicken and would he be interested in doing a picture. There was a long pause, and he said, ‘I’ve always wanted to photograph a chicken in high heels!” So we got a tiny pair of heels from the Doll Museum in Paris and flew them straight from Paris to his apartment in Monte Carlo. His assistant walked  me up the hill to his butcher and I picked out the chicken with the best looking legs and took it back to him and he shot the picture in his kitchen.”

Helmut Newton was born Helmut Neussaedter in 1920s Berlin. He legally changed his name to Helmut Newton in Melbourne in 1946. He says that growing up in Berlin, he became acutely aware of the perils of being Jewish in the throes of growing Anti-Semitism. He tells this story with wry humor. “As a teenager, I was thrown out of the local park for trying to undress a girl underwater in the pool. The park had a sign at the entrance that read ‘No Dogs Or Jews allowed.’

Helmut dropped out of high school and took an apprenticeship with a local fashion magazine run by a woman who went only by the name Yva. “I worshipped the ground she walked on,” Helmut recalled joyfully. “Through her, I learned everything…lighting, composition. I was truly an apprentice in every sense of the word.  And I loved every minute of it.”

At that time, fashion magazines only used sketches of imaginary models to show off the latest styles. Yva revolutionized that concept for  the entire industry by becoming the first to use live models in her fashion spreads. Helmut would become her star photographer. Sadly, Yva would die in a concentration camp, presumably in 1942.

When the Nazis rose to power in 1938, Helmut fled to Trieste and jumped aboard a steamship bound for China ( “I remember the name. It was the Conte Rossa),   He had gotten a job as a foreign correspondent for.  “I was a terrible reporter,” he laughs.  “By the time I got my rig set up, the story had passed. Everybody was long gone. I got fired within two weeks, and wound up stranded on the streets of Shanghai without a penny in my pocket.”

In time, he made his way to Australia, and that’s where he met a young gallery assistant named  Judy, who would become his wife and life partner in his photographic studio. The two were inseparable and magical. She was both his manager and his muse. She inspired him and gave flight to his wildest ideas.

Throughout his career, fashion editors clamored for a ‘Helmut Newton.’ His name had become synonymous with bold, arresting images capable of putting a product and a publication on the map.  Vogue USA’s fierce Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour. “Everyone wants a real ‘stopper’ in their magazine . Something iconic that really stands out. Even disturbing.” With that, director von Boehm cuts to Newton’s photo of a pair of shapely legs wearing a fetching pair of stilettos sticking out of a body bag on a rocky Cannes beach. Signature Newton.

“Most movies about photographers are boring,” Newton shouts over his shoulder as he climbs the stairs to his lair at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood Hills. To be sure, in Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful, he is anything but.

MOVIE REVIEW: RED PENGUIN DOC, A 'DISNEY ON ICE' DREAM GETS ZAMBONI'D BY THE RUSSIAN MOB

MOVIE REVIEW- “RED PENGUINS”: A TRAGI-COMIC LOOK AT PRO HOCKEY  DREAMS IN RUSSIA'S 'WILD, WILD, EAST

By Dwight Casimere

Chicago-bred, award-winning director Gabe Polsky takes a penetrating, tragic-comic look at the world of Russian professional hockey in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. His documentary film, Red Penguins, premiered to critical acclaim as an Official Selection at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. Released by Universal Pictures, Red Penguin is available to Rent or Own Aug. 4.

As seen through the eyes of ambitious New York marketing whiz-kid Steve Warshaw, the film charts his wild scheme to transform a flailing Olympic Gold Russian Hockey team, into a sports promoter’s dream, complete with beer guzzling dancing bears, stripper “cheerleaders” and a multi-million dollar promotion deal complete with an ‘icing-on-the-cake’ (pardon the pun) Disney movie deal. All this takes place against the backdrop of the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian mob boss threats, and unbridled corruption, or as Steve Warshaw puts it, “The rule in Russia is that there are no rules!”

Filmmaker Polsky is no stranger to the world of Russian professional hockey. His Sony Classics Pictures documentary Red Army premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews and was given its hometown debut at that year’s Chicago Film Festival. Red Army was a much more sober look at the development of the Soviet Union’s Olympic Gold winning titan of the ‘70s and ’80 and its rigorous training program. Potential stars were nurtured from their pre-teen years right through to the pros in an all-pervasive world, separated almost entirely from family and friends, living in total isolation. These players would have survived well in the current ‘bubble’ atmosphere U.S. pro teams are attempting to create, with halting success, in the current COVID era.

Shortly after the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia took on the atmosphere of the ‘wild, wild East. Steve Warshaw got wind that the NHL was interested in starting a franchise in Moscow. The league had already been importing star players from the Soviet Union, which had taken over all the top spots in the league.

At the outset, the Russians don’t quite know what to do with the curly-headed Jewish kid from New York and his wisecracking, backslapping ways and kooky ideas. His jocular demeanor and adventurous spirit is completely foreign to the tightly wound, controlling world of post Cold War Russia. The Russians also don’t quite trust him, but they find him fascinating and disarming in an amusing sort of way. They even give him a nickname that roughly translates to ‘an asshole with a handle.’  You had to be there to get it.  In spite of it all, Warshaw gets what he wants out of the Russians and more. His disarming humor and ability to forge ahead through the towering inferno of entangled Russian intrigue while wearing asbestos blinders makes him seemingly invincible. Nothing shakes Warshaw, not even the atmosphere of spontaneous and ever-present violence that swirls around him. ‘What me worry,’ is the seeming motto of this Mad Magazine Alfred E. Newman transplant.

Nothing like the Red Penguins had ever been seen in Russia before. Nor have they ever experienced a personality in the likeness of Steve Warshaw.

  When Warshaw first gets the idea to buy the floundering team in Russia, his business advisor thought it was just crazy enough to work, so he gave the go-ahead. When he approaches his Russian partners in Moscow, he says, brazenly, ‘I can fill this arena in six months” They respond, ‘Not even the Resurrection of Jesus Christ can fill this arena!”

Warshaw quickly proves them wrong. He starts by giving away free American Beer (Penguin Brewing, of course, from Pittsburgh), advancing to dancing bears from the Moscow Circus acting as Beer Meisters on ice, then moving up to an intermission show complete with scantily clad cheerleaders, borrowed from the local strip club conveniently located in the arena’s basement to a grand finale intermission time fan giveaway of a luxury SUV. Before it’s all over, there’s a sponsor partnerships with likes of Nike and Disney that even includes production of the film Mighty Ducks 5, a natural shoo-in to the blockbuster film franchise.

Warshaw quickly learns that in the new day Russia, nothing happens without intervention from the mob. “To live by the rules of the underworld,” Warshaw observes wryly, “is to live normally.”

Red Penguins is a sweeping saga of a doc that rollicks between the worlds of comedy, tragedy, murder and intrigue, with real-life scenes of a modern-day insurrection thrown in for good measure. Although a scant 80 minutes long, it covers a lot of territory and gives you about as complete a picture of the forces that shape modern-day Russia as any lecture series at your local chapter of the World Affairs Council, only it’s a lot more entertaining. For more information on seeing the film on your home screen, visit redpenguinsmovie.com

MOVIE REVIEW: "DRIVEWAYS" A QUIET FILM WITH A RESOUNDING MESSAGE

“DRIVEWAYS” A QUIET FILM WITH A STRONG MESSAGE

BY DWIGHT CASIMERE

Brian Dennehy’s final film, Driveways, is a case study in quiet resolution. As Del, a widowed Korean War veteran consumed in his own deluge of self-pity and grief, he conveys a depth of emotion without speaking a word. Director Andrew Ahn makes full use Dennehy’s towering talents to contrast his character against those of his new next door neighbors, a Korean American single mom, Kathy (Hong Chau of HBO’s “Watchmen”) and her disarmingly charming 8 year old son Cody (Lucas Jaye). 

Driveways is available to stream or download on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Cable On-Demand, and Google Play.

The story of Driveways develops slowly, but powerfully. Del sits stoically on his front porch, licking his lingering emotional wounds in silence, while Cathy and Cody confront the whirlwind of confusion and uncertainty that is their current state of affairs. Kathy is charged with clearing out and selling the house of her recently deceased older sister Alice.  The gravity of the situation is further weighed by the shocking disarray of the house; a stunning reflection of her late sister’s emotional decay. Alice was a hoarder who lived in isolation. The discovery of her dead cat only served to punctuate the desperate state of affairs. With no place else to go, Kathy and Cody are reduced to sleeping on the deck. The curious Cody makes his way to Del’s front porch and each, in their halting ways, come out of their separate protective cocoon’s of personal pain and loss, and work their way into each other’s hearts.

“Whose Vera?, Cody asks innocently, spying a discarded piece of old mail on Del’s porch. She is Del’s deceased wife, and so begins the unraveling of layers of protective emotional gauze covering a series of deep and unhealed wounds in both.

Driveways, in its quiet way, speak volumes in this age of crisis and isolation. It is the perfect bromide to this troubled time and worthy of more than a single viewing. Besides the subject of social and emotional isolation, it also tackles the issues of aging, such as the onslaught of dimension and the perils of economic displacement along the way. These are issues that are playing out with greater resonance with each passing day.

Driveways is also a shining example of a simple story well told. Director Ahn is masterful at allowing his characters to speak with resounding authority in their quietest moments. The fact that Dennehy’s character is a Korean War veteran and that Kathy and Cody are Korean Americans adds further subtext in these racially charged times. It is also a much-needed bromide of human bonding in a time of prolonged social isolation due to the pandemic.

Driveways has been streaming for a couple of months on VOD. I first viewed the film just prior to its premiere on May 7. It has taken on even greater meaning a second time around.

57th NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL-AN AMERICAN TRIAL: THE ERIC GARNER STORY

By Dwight Casimere

 Eric Garner's widow-Esaw Garner Snipes

The Judge portrayed by Isabelle Kirshner-Criminal Defense Attorney

Unless you are a salamander living under a rock or a consistent viewer of Fox News, you must be aware of the Eric Garner story. To refresh your memory, Eric Garner was strangled to death on the afternoon of July 17, 2014 by NYPD officer Anthony Pantaleo and a gang of his fellow New York officers on a street corner in Staten Island. Garner was allegedly targeted by police for selling 'loosie's,' illegal single cigarettes, at most, a  ticketable offense. A Staten Island Grand Jury refused to indict Pantaleo and a later federal probe was inconclusive. The Garner family eventually received a $5.6 million dollar settlement from the City of New York.  Roee Messenger's film American Trial: The Eric Garner Story posits the question; "What if there had been a trial?"

The film immediately takes us away from the viral cell phone video of Garner's gruesome death and the street protests and rhetoric  right into the courtroom. So widespread were the protests that LeBron James and the LA Lakers even took to the practice court wearing warmup shirts emblazoned with the phrase "I Can't Breathe.' 

The film uses a mix of fact and fiction to create an imaginary trial for Pantaleo, something the legal experts call 'moot court.'  The particulars of the case are hashed out in gruesome detail with actual legal experts such as Alan Dershowitz and a parade of retired police officers including Det. Carlton Berkley of the 100 Black and Latino Police Officers Organization who gives a blood-curdling  frame-by-frame description of what transpired in the Garner viral video.

The film uses actual people instead of actors in the courtroom drama, including Garner's widow and James Knight, his close friend who was with him the day of the murder. The only actor in the film is Anthony Altieri, who portrays Pantaleo. His words are taken from public statements and an interview with his defense lawyer Stuart London.  

The trial dramatization features Garner's widow Esaw Garner Snipes, who after holding up a severely deformed arthritic hand to be sworn in, gives a testimony wracked with bitter tears. We learn that Erioc Garner was a family man. They were married 26 years and have 4 children. She has yet to recover emotionally  from her loss. Her pain is palpable, even in the fake courtroom setting. In fact, at the end of the film, we see her in a backroom having an emotional breakdown over the experience of reliving her husband's death through her testimony. Coincidentally. the filming occurred just on the heels of losing her daughter, Erica Garner, to cardiac arrest.  Expert witnesses also include Dr. Michael Baden, the former NYC Chief Medical Examiner, who  performed the second autopsy on Eric Garner in the civil case. 

Officer Pantaleo was finally fired by the City of New York in the summer of 2019 after an internal Police Commission investigation and stripped of his pension.   The grand jury transcripts have never been revealed and there are no future plans for an actual trial.

 Roee Messenger's American Trial: The Eric Garner Story envisions a justice that the Garner family, the nation, and, indeed, the world, will never see. The viral video of Garner's death is shown several times in the film. Its painful to watch, no matter how many times you see it. The fact that his case has never been brought to justice, as the film reminds us, causes it to become a gaping social wound that has yet to be healed. 

57TH NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT, WORLD PREMIERE MARTIN SCORSESE'S THE IRISHMAN SEPT. 27 2019

THE IRISHMAN IN LIMITED THEATRICAL RELEASE NOVEMBER 1, 2019,
STREAMING ON NETFLIX NOVEMBER 27, 2019

by Dwight Casimere

More than 300 scenes, 108 days of shooting, 117 locations, and a decade of planning culminated in the multiple Oscar-worthy masterpiece,  Martin Scorsese's  The Irishman, in theaters in limited release Nov.1st  then streaming on Netflix beginning Nov. 27. 

Produced by Scorsese with Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro and their TriBeCa productions, among others, this is a film that should not be missed. It is particularly so  in light of events that are now unfolding in our nation's capitol. The Irishman speaks to the moral dilemma of our time. Clocking in at just under three and a half hours, the film's content is so absorbing that the time is of no matter.  With a production budget of $159 million, it is one of the most expensive films of  Scorsese's career. Cost and running time notwithstanding, this is a film that commands your full attention throughout.

The Irishman is a 2019 American epic crime film produced and directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Steven Zaillian.  Based on the 2004 memoir I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, it purports to trace the life of the man responsible for the murder and disappearance of Teamster Union boss Jimmy Hoffa. The film traces his simultaneous rise through the ranks of the union and the mob to become Hoffa's right hand man and confidant. As he is handed the coveted ring, marking him as the highest rank of "made" men ("there are only three of these," he is told by the Joe Pesci character, crime boss Russell Bufalino,  "you are the only Irishmen to get one of these." Hence, the film's title). But, with that honor, comes a heavy price.

"This movie is not so much about the actual events, " Scorsese told a news conference after the films World Premiere screening at the 57th New York Film Festival, "but about what happens to us emotionally within. Yes, we know its all going to happen, no matter what, as the Pesci character points out, but how it weighs on us, and the regret it fosters. This is paramount throughout the film."

Digital effects by Industrial Light and Magic and visual effects supervisor Robert Legato along with a posture coach allowed the characters to age and de-age as the film's narrative time-shifts.  "I was playing Jimmy Hoffa at the age of 39," Pacino told the critics assembled at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall for a  pre-festival screening.  "They're doing that on a computer. We went through all these tests and things (recreating a scene from Scorsese's earlier film Goodfellas) You're 39, some sort of memory of 39, and your body tries to acclimate to that." The result upon  viewing  the film is seamless. The special effects alone are worthy of an Oscar nod for their aesthetic achievement. 

The all-star cast is punctuated in a bravura performance by  Al Pacino as embattled union leader Jimmy Hoffa. I have memories of Hoffa's appearances at Union rallies in Chicago,  where attendance was mandatory for two of my relatives, who were both union members and organizers. His fiery rhetoric and bombastic delivery were his signature and Pacino captures it perfectly in this film. Hoffa pulled no punches in his speeches and his troops were merciless in enforcing his iron will, which was his eventual downfall. (One  particularly vivid memory is that of a union 'scab' being shot as he attempted to pull his Mack truck out of a neighboring driveway in the pre-dawn hours during a Teamsters' strike. My father immediately darkened the house so that no one could see that we had witnessed the travesty).

 "There was a lot of film and old TV footage of Hoffa that I could draw from," Pacino told the news gathering.  Scorsese chimed in, "You could also see Al walking around the set with an earpiece in his ear the whole time, listening to audio of Hoffa's speeches!" Joe Pesci as crime boss Russell Bufalino gives another tightly wound performance. The superb front-line cast is rounded out with Harvey Keitel as Angelo Bruno and a surprisingly scintillating performance by Ray Romano as the crime family's 'consiglieri'  Bill Bufalino. 

The film is pure genius and a virtual primer on what good filmmaking is all about. It should win many Oscars. 

The Irishman

Directed by	Martin Scorsese
Produced by	Martin Scorsese Robert De Niro Jane Rosenthal Gastón Pavlovich Randall Emmett Emma Tillinger Koskoff Gerald Chamales Irwin Winkler
Screenplay by	Steven Zaillian
Based on	I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt
Starring	Robert De Niro Al Pacino Joe Pesci
Cinematography	Rodrigo Prieto
Edited by	Thelma Schoonmaker
Production companies	TriBeCa Productions STX Entertainment Sikelia Productions Fábrica de Cine
Distributed by	Netflix
Release date	September 27, 2019(NYFF) November 1, 2019(United States)
Running time	209 minutes[1]

ABT SWAN LAKE 2019: A TIMELESS CLASSIC IS RENEWED

Superb dancing by Principals and Soloists and a precision ensemble
elevates a time-honored classic to new heights

ABT Spring Season
June 24-29, 2019
Metropolitan Opera House
New York, NY


by Dwight Casimere

 Misty Copeland dances the role of Odete-Odile

 The Swans at the Lakeside

 Scenes from ABT's Swan Lake

Swan Lake is the ultimate ballet. Composer Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsy's  famous creation is, without question, the most well-known and performed ballet of all time. There isn't a budding ballet dancer alive who has not danced at least one scene from this master creation. It's music has been used in every genre there is from ballet, to film, to popular music. Its even been sampled in commercials, and, yes, you might even find a bar or two buried somewhere in the background track of a rap litany. 

It is, therefor, fitting that American Ballet Theatre would choose to include this repertoire mainstay in the final weeks of its Spring Season at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. No matter how many times you may have seen this or any other production, there is no mistaking that the June 24-29, 2019 performances were so vital and fresh that, even for the most jaded viewer, it was like seeing the ballet for the first time.

Principal Dancers Hee Seo as Odette-Odile, the Swan who is transformed into a beautiful princess, and Cory Stearns as her pursuer, Prince Seigfried, have made the roles their own. 

The scenery and costumes by Zack Brown, with lighting by Duane Schuler, makes the production a delight to observe. Maestro David LaMarche's spirited conducting from the Company Orchestra pit sheds new light on the composer's shimmering melodies and lush orchestrations. 

Like some many pieces that are regarded as mainstay's today, Swan Lake was met with less than enthusiastic criticism at its premiere in 1877 at the Bolshoi. The music was considered too complicated to be performed or appreciated by audiences of the day and the dancers found it impossible to keep step.  It faded into obscurity until it was revived decades later by the legendary dancer and choreographer Marius Petipa and his collaborator Lev Ivanov. It is this iteration that serves as the Holy Grail of today's productions.  Kevin McKemzie's further reworking for ABT transforms this timeless classic into a spectacle for the ages.

Known for its technical demands on the dancers, ABT makes the various scenes flow like an endless dream. All of the dancers perform complex feats with ease, moving with such precision the entire Corps de Ballet of Swans move as one. The Great Hall scene, which features spirited solos from the likes of Courtney Lavine as the Spanish Princess and the masterful ensembles that were the Czardas and the Spanish Dance troupe were the highlights of Act III. The Black Swan Pas de Deux by Hee Seo and Cory Stearns at the end of Act III was, without question the highlight of the evening. Soloist Thomas Forster as the wicked sorcerer von Rothbart made for a commanding and artful presence. 

ABTs Swan Lake was a spectacle to behold.  Breathtaking and beautiful it left one almost speechless. As Odette-Odile and the Prince ascended to their new life in the emerging dawn, the soul almost rose to meet them in mid-flight.

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE-ABT-MANON GAINS NEW LIFE ON BALLET STAGE

ABT 

Metropolitan Opera House

New York, NY

June 22, 2019 2:00pm

Part One: Manon

Stella Abreara in the title role

 Principal Dancers Misty Copeland and Cory Stearns in Manon

by Dwight Casimere

American Ballet Theatre ABT ended its Spring Season at New York's Metropolitan Opera House with ballet productions that epitomized its standing as  the nation's preeminent ballet company. Those who saw Manon and Swan Lake, were treated to a ravishing display of classic ballet at its pinnacle. Sleeping Beauty was the season finale.

Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Manon, which received its World Premiere at The Royal Ballet in 1974, was presented with all of its dramatic import and scenic glory intact. Adapted from the 1731 novel of the same name my Abbe Prevost , the story of the rise and fall of a woman born into poverty working her way through the misogynistic ethos of the era to fleeting wealth only to fall victim to its imbeded traps, is the ultimate tragic tale.

 In Manon's world, she is bartered like a piece of chattel by her greedy brother, Lescaut to be passed between the hands of the older gentleman she is traveling with and the wealthy Monsieur GM. When she arrives in Paris in the courtyard of the inn where her brother and GM await, she meets the handsome young student Des Grieux among the glamorous habitués and demimonde of Paris, and instantly falls in love. 

The opera's score is a pastiche of music gleaned from more than a dozen of Massenet's operas, orchestral divertissements and piano works (one recognizes themes from Thais, Don Quixote, Le Cid, Cleopatre, Cendrillon, among others). The themes are beautifully spun out like gilded threads by members of the Company Orchestra. Principal Conductor Charles Barker imbued the score with an air of depth and clarity.

Manon is one of the most enduring tragic stories in all art. It is a tome that has found its way into the pages of literature, to the opera stage, and then to the ballet.  It follows the path of a fallen heroine, a theme which lies at the heart of so many great operatic tragedies. In fact, when MacMillan first proposed his new ballet to his principal dancers at The Royal Ballet, he presented them with a double volume that included a novella of that most eponymous of all tragic heroines, Carmen.

Those who saw several productions of Manon during its run at the MET were treated to a cornucopia of superlative performances from ABT's principal dancers, who brought differing levels of dramatic tension and choreographic nuance to the characters and the ballet's expertly staged scenes. It is hard to believe that all of the principals were appearing in their role debuts, as their performances were so in sync with their partners. 

The matinee performance of Manon featured Principal Dancers Isabella Boylston and David Hallberg in the title roles of Manon and her ardent suitor Des Grieux. Principal Dancer Christine Shevchenko danced the role of Lescaut's Mistress and Soloist Blaine Hoven was Lescaut.

When we first meet Manon she is on her way to a convent,  Boylston's 

gossamer moves aptly reflected her innocence. Her transformation from ingenue to operator to oppressed victim was seamless and convincing.

Things heated up quickly in Act I.  Once  Manon spied De Grieux they instantly fell in love. The ballet and the performances by Boylston and Hallberg  then moved into high gear. 

The party scene which opened ACT II was a masterpiece of stagecraft. The costumes and scenery were a glory to behold. Lighting by Thomas R. Skelton underscored the gaiety of the moment and portend the gravitas to follow.

With Massenet's glorious themes swelling from the orchestra pit, the ballet soared to  theatrical and balletic heights. 

The party scene was  where the principals and soloists began to shine. The pas de deux between Manon and Des Grieux was danced by Boylston and Hallberg to the apex of seduction. Sir MacMillan's ingenious choreography was expertly danced by the pair. 

Ultimately, it was Manon's journey that served as the dramatic arc of the ballet. Artful dancing and exceptional staging made for an indelible experience. 

There's plenty of 'storm und drang' in this ballet, complete with stabbings, murders and passion to spare. 

Staged by the team of  Julie Lincoln and Robert Tewsley, the Scenery and Costumes by Nicholas Georgiadis, as  recreated by ABT, brilliantly depicted the  razor-thin delineation between great opulence and absolute degradation. Manon's fall from grace as a bejeweled courtesan and the object of Des Gireux's ardor, to her subsequent arrest as a disgraced woman charged with prostitution and her banishment to the wilds of the Louisiana Territory are portrayed with stunning clarity. 

Manon's story is the ultimate dramatic tragedy. It inspired not only Sir Kenneth MacMillan's ballet, but two  grand operas; Jules Massenet's Manon and Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut. As one who has seen both opera versions numerous times, it was refreshing to see it transposed to the balletic stage. ABT's presentation of this classic once again proved the enduring power of dance.

ABT Principal Dancer Isabella Boylston (r)