Word: cranko
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Such divergence from the stereotyped passion often associated with Bizet's opera is characteristic of Choreographer John Cranko and his Stuttgart Ballet. Last week the company presented its new Carmen as part of a six-week stand in New York that will be followed by a road tour lasting until August. Cranko had sat through scores of Carmen operas, and he says "I always thought they were all wrong. If you see in Carmen nothing but a nymphomaniac who meets a tenor, seduces him, gets tired of him, then meets a bullfighter-it's a bore." Instead...
Dissonant Morass. Not everybody liked it-and with reason. As one expects of Cranko, the ballet had dramatic cohesiveness. Settings, cleverly suggestive of Goya, managed to be both beautiful and forbidding at the same time. In Marcia Haydée (Carmen), Richard Cragun (the Toreador) and Egon Madsen (Don José), Cranko could field a trio whose ability to project feeling into narrative ballet can hardly be matched. What went wrong was the music. Scorning Bizet, Cranko got German Composer Wolfgang Fortner to produce a dreadful, cacophonous "Bizet collage" incapable of sustaining any nuance of emotion. Worse, the score picked...
Near Perfection. The failure, though disappointing, will hardly dampen the Stuttgart's tour. Ever since Cranko, now 43, took over the company ten years ago, he has been building a formidable repertory of splendid, full-length dramatic works. Romeo and Juliet was his first success, done to the traditional Prokofiev score. Typically, Cranko stripped the story of many a nonessential, involved the whole town of Verona in the clash of families, including a market-square fight with tossed oranges. He skipped the implausible intricacies of Romeo's exile and Friar Laurence's muddleheaded planning and then...
...Apollonian suavity, superb condescension and sheer sexiness cause all the trouble, Edward Verso turns a comic role into a major characterization. One rude criterion for establishing a ballet's worth is the impulse to dance that it stirs in an average member of the audience. By that standard, Cranko's Poll must be judged a hopping success...
John Keats, it is said, used to take pepper just for the delight given by a freshwater chaser. Perhaps with a similar contrast in mind Jeffrey treats audiences to Pineapple Poll, a rarely seen romp created 19 years ago by John Cranko, now the director of the Stuttgart Ballet, to music of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Cheerful girls in peppermint stripes and ruffled panties collide with beerful British tars from H.M.S. Hot Cross Bun. Pineapple Poll herself appears and falls helplessly in love with Captain Belaye, an officer who combines the best qualities of Ralph Rackstraw, Captain Corcoran and Sir Joseph...