Washington Ballet

We see the Washington Ballet doing a program called Genius. Eh. It’s all fairly modern and leaves me generally if not quite cold then let’s say tepid.

What I do appreciate about the first two acts, Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, music by Virgil Thomson (Etudes for piano), choreography by Mark Morris, and There Where She Loved, music by Frederic Chopin and Kurt Weill, is that they’ve got live music, pianist Glenn Sales over there on the left. The second also includes soprano Kate Vetter Cain and mezzo soprano Shelley Waite. Note that the Chopin and Weill songs alternate; they apparently never collaborated on anything.

I especially try not to much like the third act, Nine Sinatra Songs, choreography by Twyla Tharp. But, despite even having seen it before, it’s still pretty irresistible. My absolute favorite piece is One For My Baby (And One More for the Road). I’m not a huge Sinatra fan to begin with, and I’m even less of a Bette Midler fan, but I always remember her singing this to Johnny Carson on his last or next to last night, and then she ran offstage crying. But then also not only is it Erin Mahoney-Du dancing in it, but it’s her first appearance back since her maternity leave. She’s so great to see again. And especially in this, where she and Luis Torres play sort of drunk but not too drunk. And there’s this one move, where she sets and then leaps backwards for him to catch her, that just thrills me for some reason.

I wait for it and thrill to it again in the last piece, My Way for the second time, where the entire cast returns to perform their variations all together. It’s right at the end, and she leaps back to him and then he dashes off stage left with her.

One thought on “Washington Ballet

Comments are closed.