Week in review

Martha Graham at the Joyce (OK, it was last week) was unidiomatic and rather sad. To the point that most reviewers noticed. When Graham dancers seem to be auditioning for ABT, or actually dancing Corsaire, you know something essential has been mislaid.

Fall for Dance at City Center on Thursday was terrific.

• Taylor's Arden Court reminded what Mark Morris has gotten from Taylor: the tight interweaving of music and movement, a certain dispassionate stance of the choreographer. Lovely stuff.

• I would be happy to see Ratmansky's Middle Duet again and again, especially if danced (again and again) by Ekaterina Kondaurova and Islom Baimuradov. We were sitting in the GT, so we saw the projected squares of light (a prison cell?) that the dancers movements were confined in during the first part of the work. The music is ... ominous tango? totalitarian tanz? And Ratmansky's response to it is perfect. And Kondaurova, tall, lanky, with glorious feet (a rarity in St. Pete recently) dances and acts out the unspecified but enveloping drama. X says NYCB has this work (from 1998!) in its rep, but in a version with more dancers, and nowhere as strong. Thank you, City Center, for showing us the Real Thing.

• After the intermission, Shantala Shvalingappa danced "Varnam," an excerpt from GAMAKA, choreographed by this dancer and actress who looks a bit like Callas. I wish there had been a libretto or surtitles of the lyric of the live accompaniment. She was clearly telling us a story, but it was like watching an unfamiliar opera in an unrecognizable language: you only wish you understood some more of what you were watching.

• The last item was Deuce Coupe by the Juilliard company. I still can't decide what I think of Twyla's work. It was the only work of the evening in which the tight and unironic connection between the choreographer and the music was broken. One feels that Twyla gets ideas and then rummages for the soundtrack on which to play those ideas out. Dunno.

Friday attended a 7 pm dress of Nozze. The first cast Suzanna was indisposed, but the (?) cover was excellent and no, I didn't catch her name. The Figaro of Erwin Schrott was italiente, big round voice, nice piano, good actor, but sometimes losing the conductor or about to fall off the cliff vocally. The Cherubino was fine but ... Flicka she wasn't. Things went well or well-ish until the Countess flounced in, from another century and another repertoire. Hei-Kyung Hong could do Verdi, but yikes she was wrong for this piece and this ensemble and this production. Her acting was coarse. The finale of act 2 was a shambles. I was surprised the conductor, Philippe Jordan, didn't call for a redo. Reader, we left at intermission.