E-Mail This Article to a Friend Noted! Bits and pieces on the Boston Ballet, plus Blue Man Group and the 16th annual Best Music Poll

Editor’s notebook: Boston Ballet 2004-2005?

In the spring, many a dancer’s fancy not so lightly turns to thoughts of whether there’ll be a promotion for the following season. The four pieces of "Drink to Me . . . ," the repertory program that Boston Ballet staged last weekend (see Marcia Siegel’s review in Arts), gave many company members a chance to stake their claims.

For one principal, unfortunately, Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes provided just the opposite: Lorna Feijóo broke her finger in a freak collision at the beginning of Wednesday’s dress rehearsal. Although she went on in that piece opening night, she wasn’t able to perform her scheduled duet with Yury Yanowsky to the slow movement of Val Caniparoli’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion; the company will be hoping to have her back for Lady of the Camellias this weekend and Swan Lake next month.

When he’s in his collegial mode, Morris’s choreography emphasizes pattern rather than personality, and that’s true of Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes, a witty interaction with Virgil Thomson’s Etudes for Piano. It seems to invite casual performance, but Saturday evening, Larissa Ponomarenko, with her classical precision, located the piece’s inner child, doing every moment just so and inviting her fellow dancers to copy. And though she doesn’t have the explosive body movement that the Jorma Elo world premiere, Plan to B, seems to require, she compensated by giving not just precision but ballon to Elo’s geometry; when, carried by Jared Redick, she "swam" across the stage, her being was so incredibly light, the audience laughed in tribute.

Plan to B and George Balanchine’s Duo Concertant were the starmakers. Soloist Melanie Atkins followed her affecting portrayal of Marguerite in Lady last weekend with an idiomatic performance in the Balanchine duet, her body weighted and sexually open (almost fragmented, in the Cubist sense), her limbs extended and articulate. Corps member Sabi Varga was big and loose and attentive in partnering her; Peter Martins would have been less loose, but the resemblance was there. All speed and sparks, Atkins and Varga repeated that success as the lead couple in the first movement of Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, and if Atkins was less droll than Ponomarenko in the second cast of Plan to B, she’s nonetheless put in two weeks that a principal might be proud of. Varga was part of Plan to B’s "A" team with Ponomarenko, Redick, Sarah Lamb, Joel Prouty, and Raul Salamanca; one moment he’d be galloping across the Wang stage in three strides, the next he’d pull up into a demanding cat’s cradle of limbs with Ponomarenko. Prouty drew a gasp from the opening-night audience by attempting a double revoltade at a 45-degree angle and landing it; the one he did Saturday evening was marginally less breathtaking, but then he and Salamanca threw in matched doubles a few moments later. Would visiting balletgoers believe they’re only corps members? No one would have any trouble believing Sarah Lamb will be a first soloist at the Royal Ballet next season; she was electric in Plan to B, where just her first five seconds gave off more energy than all of Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes, and passionate with Pavel Gurevich in the slow moment of Caniparoli’s Sonata.

The other Duo Concertant couple, soloists Romi Beppu and Jared Redick, were more contained, Beppu classical as against Atkins’s Balanchinean baroque, Redick less effusive and vulnerable than Varga. Redick was the least eye-catching of Plan to B’s first cast, but he held his own, no mean feat. Dancing with Nelson Madrigal in the first movement of Sonata, Beppu was likewise less overtly sexual than Atkins; like Madrigal, she hints rather than shows. Madrigal, like Prouty, is an anchoring presence, full of easy grace and chivalry, strong but not bitter (think of Spanish coffee). Saturday afternoon, two corps members, Luke Luzicka and the newly arrived Seh Yun Kim, danced Sonata’s slow-movement duet; they were creditable but not memorable in the wake of Lamb and Gurevich.

And next season? The company now has only three male principals — Yury Yanowsky (who didn’t have much last weekend, being put out of Sonata by Feijóo’s injury), Madrigal, and Roman Rykine (just back from season-long injury and as yet seen only as Duval père in Lady) — so there’s room for promotions (or new arrivals). Soloists Michael Cusumano and Miao Zong were absent from last week’s program, and only Zong appeared in Lady (in the small role of Gaston, which he danced well); one wonders whether they’ll be back at all. Jared Redick gets good marks for Duo Concertant and Plan to B but didn’t have much to do in Lady; high-flying Christopher Budzynski had even less these past two weeks. The likeliest principal candidate would seem Pavel Gurevich, a James Bond–commanding Armand to Atkins’s Marguerite in Lady and not overmatched by Lamb in Sonata. Mindaugas Bauzys is tall and lean and can jump, but it’s not clear why the company brought on a new soloist mid season when Varga, Prouty, and Salamanca all seem due, if not overdue, for promotion from the corps. As for "senior artist" Viktor Plotnikov, his Duval père in Lady reminded one that "senior" can mean "older" but also "better."

On the ladies’ side, Lamb’s departure will leave as principals Ponomarenko, Feijóo (get well soon), Pollyana Ribeiro (Olympe in Lady, not much last week), and Adriana Suárez (expecting her second child soon). Soloist Barbora Kohoutková brings a European earthiness and softness to everything she touches, but it’s Beppu and particularly Atkins who’ve been getting the major roles. It will be interesting to see whether either is cast as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake.

— Jeffrey Gantz

Out of the Blue

The news that Blue Man Group has added "a few new twists and turns" to the second half of its long-running show at the Charles Playhouse (enhancements that are also being added to the productions in New York and Chicago) might well have had you thinking, "It’s about time!" For those desert-island strandees among you who never saw the original live show, which began running in Boston in 1995, or caught the performers on the Intel commercials on television, Blue Man Group is that trio of insect-eyed, cobalt-coated humanoids who wander around the stage, and into the audience, playing with food, drums, PVC pipes, paint, and unwitting spectators while in a trance that half-suggests childlike wonder and discovery and half-suggests an in-your-face attempt to fuse high-art pretension with lowbrow stadium rowdiness. Phil Stanton, Chris Wink, and Matt Goldman originated BMG as a side project (they all had day jobs) in 1987 with a series of salon-esque "happenings" in Manhattan. They opened Off Broadway in 1991 and have since mushroomed into a cottage-industry/pop-culture phenomenon, complete with Obie and Lucille Lortel Awards, a Grammy-nominated album, a rock-concert DVD of a 2003 North American summer tour, and a foothold in the American capital of kitsch, Las Vegas, where Blue Man Group — Live at Luxor began in 2000. A Berlin edition of the show is set to open in May.

The original troika performed every New York show for the first three years, but now, with ongoing shows in four cities, the three oversee a company with more than 500 employees, 33 of whom are Blue Men who have mastered the trio’s trademark trick of catching candy pitched into the mouth. Those who know the show — and many know it well, as it has a cult following, with people attending over and over — will be happy to know that the new skits haven’t replaced the hallmark sketches. You’ll still see the Blue Men making spin art by spitting paint on canvases they twirl on their fingers, indulging in a genteel dining session with Twinkies, chomping on Cap’n Crunch cereal in syncopated rhythms, and ridiculing the sanctity of postmodern art. But to keep their social commentary au courant, they’ve added a bit about Internet cafés, with a jab at the corporate coffee conglomerates that have sprung up since Blue Man began, and an instructional skit with animated video accompaniment that leads you on an interactive virtual tour of "howtobearockstar.com."

Blue Man Group continues to beat its drums at the Charles Playhouse, 74 Warrenton Street in Boston, indefinitely. Tickets are $46 to $56; drop in to the Charles box office or call (617) 931-2787.

— Liza Weisstuch

Best Music Poll

It’s that time again: the 16th annual FNX/Phoenix Best Music Poll is under way. In the News & Features section, you’ll find a ballot where you can choose among your favorites for Best National and Local Acts: Coldplay, Cave In, 50 Cent, Norah Jones, Missy Elliott, the Dresden Dolls, Mission of Burma, Dropkick Murphys, Belle & Sebastian, and many, many more. There’s also room for write-ins. You can vote on-line at www.thephoenix.com or www.fnxradio.com. or clip and send us the paper ballot. All votes are due by Wednesday April 28. And stay tuned to the paper and the radio station for news about our Best Music Poll party on Lansdowne Street June 3.