Where do I start?
So the MET season is over, and the stats are 24 shows over the period of 8 weeks in 11 different roles for me personally.
It was fun, tiring and enriching, but most importantly I felt the sensation of growth in various aspects, which is quintessential for being happy…or so I hear.
Currently we’re in LA performing Alexei Ratmansky’s ‘The Bright Stream’ at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I am performing this Saturday evening and then the following show on Sunday afternoon. After that we fly to Japan for a marathon of shows. My show of Basilio in Don Quixote on July 23rd will be recorded and then broadcasted on July 30th on national TV Channel NHK, so in case you’re in Japan at that time, tune in.
Anyway, enjoy the pictures! Cheers.
Oh and PS. I was filming an abbreviated version of ‘Les Bourgeois’ for the TV Show ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ yesterday. It was a prerecording and the airing should take place either tonight or at some point in the near future. I’ll keep you up-to-date on my Twitter.
Hi everyone. Once again one a half months passed since I last wrote. Many things (as always) happened, one of them being our ABT tour to Moscow, Russia. We premiered the new Benjamin Millepied ballet TROIKA, which we’ll also perform at the MET this summer.
So, well, we had a rehearsal period before Moscow, then the tour and then a week off, in which I managed to take a much needed metaphorical breath before we plunged into the current rehearsal period, which lasts for 5 weeks and then adjuncts to our MET season. After the MET season we’ll go straight to Los Angeles to perform for a week at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion and then for two weeks to Japan.
Exciting new debut and roles this season include Basilio in Don Quixote (first time with ABT), Franz in Coppelia, ‘The Boy with the matted hair’ in Tudor’s Shadowplay, ‘the classical ballet dancer’ in Ratmasky’s Bright Stream and the aforementioned Troika from Millepied. Our opening night at the Metropolitan Opera takes place on May 16th and we perform through July 9th. Check out ABT’s Calendar in case you will be or planning to be in the city during that time.
Speaking of Shadowplay, I’ll be dancing in Mr. Baryshnikov’s costume.
If you missed my twitter posts check these pics out:
Besides all of that I am seriously considering going back to (academic) school and starting the LEAP program to, at some point, achieve a Bachelor’s degree for Performing Arts…oh well, we’ll see.
…And as promised, here are is the Moscow album. Click on the small picture below to go to the page with the pictures. I updated the gallery function of the website, which changed the way the galleries display.
Damn. It has been almost 3 (!) months since my last post. Seems like a long time, and indeed a lot of things happened… We (ABT) premiered Alexei Ratmansky’s new Nutcracker at BAM in Brooklyn, rehearsed for two weeks, then premiered Ratmansky’s Bright Stream in Washington DC at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in the end of January, rehearsed for a week back in NY and then performed for a week at Sadler’s Wells in London (beginning of February). There I debuted in Balanchine’s Theme & Variations and had a company-debut in Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.
After London I took 10 days off visiting friends and family in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Essen, Munich and Vienna and after that stopped by in Kiev to get new costumes tailored. Now we are rehearsing Shadowplay, Coppelia, Don Q and creating a new ballet by Benjamin Millepied for our tour to the Bolshoi theater in Moscow in the end of March.
So here I am sitting on a Sunday night after having watched the Oscars with friends, writing this blog entry and editing the pictures from Taipei this summer. I don’t have much too say except that I’m doing well and trying to live my life as well as it gets. So many things are happening right now that I try to live day by day, moment by moment, task by task…so far, so good…
…damn, this all sounds so self-conscious…almost as much as the Oscars…but oh well.
All is well. After a lot of traveling I’m about at half of my ‘summer break’ from ABT. My shows in Vail, Tokyo and Taipei went very well and 10 out of about 21 flights are done. Currently I’m with my family in Germany to rest and recharge before I’m off to a brief visit back to New York and then Indianapolis, Berlin, Paris and Moscow.
Anyway here is an interview brought to you by Dance Pulp. I kinda sound a bit too egocentric by using I and I and I and I way too much. Besides that I repeat myself about 4 times saying the same thing in the end of the interview, but oh well… enjoy anyway…
I’ll be back with photos from my travels very soon. Stay tuned. Oh… and cheers!
Well, what can I say. I am sitting here at 4am, packing for my various trips and cannot sleep… We are traveling tomorrow with ABT to LA and then I am off to various other places on the globe, but let me first recollect my experiences here in New York.
The season at the Metropolitan Opera, which always lasts 2 months in the year in the summer here in the currently hot and humid New York, is on the one side my favorite time of the year… on the other side I feel like all of us dancers at ABT definitely grow a couple of extra gray hairs in the process.
I feel extremely privileged to perform on such a special stage in front of up to 4000 viewers each night. Every week we perform different ballets, which means we rehearse one ballet and perform another one (or even various roles) in the evening (which differs from the usual European system…) To a certain degree there are times when everyone is on edge, physically and of course mentally. To put it in concrete terms, I performed in 11 different things in the course of this season. In the middle of it I suffered a minor ankle injury (from which I am still slightly recovering). I cried… I laughed… and I felt every and anything in between.
Nevertheless it is a special kind of sensation (and I’m trying now not to be too clichée ) to be finished with the season. When it begins it seems it’s never-ending. When it ends, it seems like the time flew by like nothing.
To be honest I feel I cannot express myself in words well enough. I’m not a words person. I appreciate the written word, but am incapable of creating something worth of what I am trying to say. I better stop and go to sleep. Enjoy the pictures. They hopefully capture a teeny-tiny-little bit of my life.
No more, no less.
) to be finished with the season. When it begins it seems it’s never-ending. When it ends, it seems like the time flew by like nothing.
