Word: cranko
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Montague and Capulet. John Cranko and Sir Kenneth MacMillan. The Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theater. Verona and Washington, D.C. Romeo and Juliet...
There are sound reasons for such a project. Full-length ballets do better at the box office than evenings of shorter pieces. The Joffrey, never a company in robust financial health, turned naturally to the work of the late John Cranko because the Joffrey had success when it staged his Taming of the Shrew. Similarly, A.B.T. went to MacMillan, who signed on five months ago as "artistic associate" to Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov. Each organization claimed ignorance of the other's plans until it was too late to change them. The result is that audiences in Washington, Los Angeles...
...pity that A.B.T. did not give this extraordinary galaxy of talents something more interesting to do. Milwaukee-born Neumeier, 33, was a disciple of John Cranko, the late artistic director of the Stuttgart Ballet. Cranko's tender Romeo and Juliet and rollicking The Taming of the Shrew showed that good ballets can be based on Shakespeare's plays. Hamlet Connotations proves that choreographers can make bad ones as well. Set to a trio of astringent pieces by Aaron Copland, Neumeier's stripped-down, expressionistic dance is simplistically Oedipal: Mother Gertrude seems as much in love with...
...John Cranko, founder of the Stuttgart Ballet in 1961, molded it into a company of world rank with his ballets on great classical themes: Romeo and Juliet, Eugene Onegin, The Taming of the Shrew. Cranko's traditional style stressed drama and athleticism. Ballet audiences were therefore stunned when, after Cranko's sudden death in 1973, American Choreographer Glen Tetley was appointed his successor. An iconoclast of the dance, Tetley, 49, raises conservative eyebrows high with his infusion of modern dance idioms into ballet. Again, unlike Cranko, he has always been known for relatively small dance pieces that concentrate...
...Like Cranko, Tetley pushes his dancers to outer limits, interweaving distended limbs and torsos in intricate patterns. Ballerinas jet up like natural gey sers in grandiose one-handed lifts, only to plummet a moment later in balletic kamikaze dives. This is not orthodox story ballet. But the choreography is fluent, strong, and from the beginning moves with the propulsion of a Metroliner. Tetley's Daphnis and Chloë should be a Stuttgart staple...