Plisskin

You can barely find actual dancing of "America's National Ballet Company". They had an opportunity to showcase it here and instead decided to do a commercial. Le sigh. If they don't survive COVID I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe ABT folding would be a blessing in disguise by getting a new AD and board with better artistic vision and integrity. Lord knows ABT has needed it for years now. I feel sorry for the dancers.

To me it sounds more like he'll be a guest artist or "principal" like Bolle who only dances a few times w/ ABT out of the year. Congrats to Daniil. He'll probably have better opportunities to grow further at Staatballet.

Tragic. Veronika isn't my favorite dancer, but compared to the majority of female ABT principals right now who have technical issues or are ungraceful, she is a god send to ABT. What a stupid decision. You could always count on Veronika to give a beautiful and technically proficient performance rather than worrying if she'll not be able to complete the choreography. Shades of Irina whom Kevin also did wrong.

I hope she had different reasons for participating because if not, she proved to them once again that they made the right choice... Which dancer called her out?

I don't really get it either. Misty isn't the only principal on ABT's roster who has weak technique or other deficiencies. And I do agree with you that the only time other black or part black ballerina's are even brought up is to bring her down. Ordinarily though they are not mentioned. It's really not even that serious. When I'm in NY to see an ABT performance their are principals and soloists that I don't like (a few of them are championed to the high heavens on this forum) and I don't really understand their promotion, but I just don't buy a ticket to their performance and leave it at that.

I finally got a chance to watch the Moscow competition and I wasn't overly impressed with Joy to be honest. There were 2 American girls dancing in the junior division who were much better (one of them won the gold). She should stay were she's at and really appreciate her position at her current company. She's not bad but just kind of vanilla. Kinda bland. Not trying to be harsh when I saw that but it's what I think. I've seen much better dancers languishing away in the corp at ABT. I still enjoy her vlogs when she does do them, which isn't as frequent anymore.

Another imported, (short) male principal who can't dance as good as people like Calvin, who've been sitting in the corp for 6+ years. Yay? Congrats to Blaine Hoven, whom it took ABT 13 years to promote to soloist, but as for Cirio I think this is yet another, sad and terrible decision by McKenzie. I feel bad for the dancers they have whom are just as good or better than Cirio, languishing away in the corp.

I wouldn't blame him for leaving. He's a beautiful dancer with gorgeous line and good technique that has been languishing in the corp for years. They'd rather import dancers like Cirio (nothing against him but there is enough good dancers in the corp like Calvin wasting away Kevin could promote to soloist) instead of promoting Calvin.

I found some fan recorded video's on Youtube of ABT's new Sleeping Beauty for those of you who are going to see the new production for the first time and are curious about the choreography and costumes. Vishneva is Aurora and I believe Cassandra Trenary, who is having her debut as Aurora, is Princess Florine but I'm not sure. https://youtu.be/3wMnCLDmfJ0 https://youtu.be/4jCTAJLv1Vo https://youtu.be/Q4EP3R8zcFQ https://youtu.be/QDMqBwXBtGk

We finally get to see another front view of Joy's dancing:

If you have Netflix you can now watch Misty's documentary "A Ballerina's Tale" on there. I'm half way through it and it's really good.

Hmm, a Harvard degree and ballet school isn't really the same.... I consider dancers like Vishneva or Guillem to be a product of their schools. They didn't just get 4 years or 1 year of training (basically finishing schooling) at POB or the Vagonova. More like 7+ years of training, beginning at the young ages of 11. Their foundation is with the school they graduated from, not 1 or 2+ ballet studios like most American dancers. I can see I'm not going to agree with anyone here (this is completely off topic to Harvey's appointment anyway) so I will respectfully disagree and bow out.

If they only studied there for 4 years then no, I don't.

I believe Brandt and Royal got the bulk of their training elsewhere. Royal was only at JKO for only 1 year before joining the Studio Company then not long after joining the company. Brandt I believe studied at JKO for 4 years. Longer than Royal, but I personally wouldn't consider 4 years a product of JKO. I've noticed that ABT likes to claim quite a few of the dancers are products of JKO when their not. I've seen the JKO students and I wasn't impressed. The training method, combining the French, Russian, and Italian schools sounds great, but actually seeing the students I was quite let down. Artistically their is nothing there. And technically they weren't very impressive either. No offense but if I had a child interested in ballet I wouldn't send them there. The JKO students that have impressed me usually didn't come up from from the school but have trained elsewhere prior, like Waski.

Her family seem pretty well off judging from that video where she went home. I was surprised by that when their have been a slew of articles about her over the years where she says she struggles financially.