volcanohunter

The credits listed Naxos and medici.tv. I assume that eventually there will be a DVD/Blu-ray and that the film will be added to the Medici library. I can understand why Pathé Live did not want to dilute the audience in any way yesterday. It's been two years since it last presented a ballet, and it has to persuade cinema chains that there is an audience for it. With the exception of a single specialized cinema in Toronto, Canada hasn't seen a Royal Ballet cinemacast for years. The largest chain, Cineplex, had dropped the Royal Ballet (possibly because the ROH insisted on screenings of operas as well, but the chain has a contract with the Met, so that was impossible), but continued showing the Bolshoi. (In my experience, attendance for both companies had been equally modest.) During the 2020-21 season the Bolshoi was open, but cinemas in most of the world were not, so there were no new broadcasts. Rather than showing the repeats Pathé Live was offering, in the autumn of 2020 Cineplex opted for several Australian Ballet performances from the single season of cinema presentations the company attempted a few years earlier. (But which was not continued, presumably, because the audience was too small to make the enterprise profitable. Those films are now in the Medici library.) Cinemas were open in my neck of the woods, but while I attended those Australian Ballet screenings (wearing a KF94 mask in a sparsely occupied auditorium), I can't imagine that they were especially profitable, because most cinemas in the country were closed. By December 2020 they were closed in this area as well. I've added this long preamble to say, that when Bolshoi cinemacasts returned (briefly) in 2021-22, the Cineplex chain did not carry them. Ballet simply disappeared from Canadian cinemas, so even this Giselle was not a given.

Interesting. I would be extremely surprised if anything filmed for broadcast in 2023 were not HD or Ultra HD. I looked at the description of a forthcoming National Theatre presentation, and it doesn't say anything about being filmed in HD either. I assumed that was a given. I also wish a full cast list were available. The credits zoomed past too quickly at the end. I have always thought that watching ballet on a cinema screen comes closest to recreating the kinetic energy of a live performance. I got a very visceral sense of this during the first variation of the peasant pas, and it felt fabulous. I hadn’t seen a ballet in a movie theater since the autumn of 2020. In between I watched a lot of streams at home, and I'm grateful the option exists. But watching at a cinema is a far more exciting experience. There were also about a dozen viewers at my screening in an auditorium that accommodates 65 people, including wheelchairs. When I last attended an opera in the same auditorium, I'd say there were about 30-35 viewers, which is up from a year ago. But as I mentioned upthread, the opera played at two other cinemas in the area, and I don't know what attendance was like there. I'm perennially disappointed that I don't see young bunheads at these screenings. In my day, we didn't have classes or rehearsals on Sundays. Presumably they weren't dancing today. P.S. But it has to be said there were very few people at the multiplex, period. It was snowing, my tires were struggling to get any sort of traction, the parking lot was nearly empty, no one was standing in line for popcorn...

Yes, the voucher system is handy for people who don't want to deal with rigmarole of refunds. Although I'm sorry to say that I've received quite a few vouchers along the way.

I'm sorry to read that. I encountered the same thing during the Osipova-Acosta Giselle. Twice! There were no problems at the multiplex, where I attended. In the immediate vicinity there are three cinemas that typically show Met broadcasts, and Giselle played at the smallest among them. There were about a dozen people in attendance, mostly people in their deep retirement years who braved snow and icy roads. The credits listed both Medici TV and Naxos, so I assume at some point the ballet will end up streamed on Medici TV, and Naxos will distribute the DVD, although presumably it will be released on the Bel Air Classiques label.

Mark Monahan interviews Cojocaru.

I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that you will share your impressions of the performances.

The National Ballet of Ukraine has just begun a tour of Canada, with a program similar to the one it presented in Florida in 2022, featuring soloists and a small corps. The tour is raising funds for the Olena Zelenska Foundation toward humanitarian war relief. Quebec City - January 15 & 16 Montreal - January 17-20 Ottawa - January 21 Toronto - January 24-27 Winnipeg - January 29 Regina - January 31 Saskatoon - February 3 Vancouver - February 5-7 Edmonton - February 10 Calgary - February 11 https://nationalballetukraine.com/

Oh yes, the backstage area at City Center is almost nonexistent. The building wasn't designed to be a theater, after all.

Yes, there's no reason why Ailey should make any sort of changes or concessions. Judging by diagrams, the largest performance space there seats about 450 people and has no orchestra pit, so I have doubts about its suitability for a Nutcracker.

Today marks the centenary of Roland Petit's birth.

As the Royal Ballet prepares for a 50th-anniversary run of Kenneth MacMillan's Manon, the company streamed a public rehearsal, with Laura Morera coaching Yasmine Naghdi and William Bracewell in the post-card game duet, and Joseph Sissens in Lescaut's solos.

A performance of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Noetic, Faun and Bolero, the last choreographed with Damien Jalet, filmed at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva. The video will be available until 10 July 2024.

So she plans to retire on her 48th birthday. Remarkable longevity!

My memories of the films with Le Clercq, Alexopoulos (Dance in America) and Jaffe are very strong, so the next time around when I saw the ballet with a young Sara Mearns in the rondo, the breakneck tempo just about gave me whiplash. At that point I thought that NYCB's quest for speed had gone too far.

Also Susan Jaffe from ABT

Well, it is a crapshoot, and I say that as a former modern dancer.

It will be interesting to see how Ratmansky deals with those pieces of music, which are very slow and not emphatically rhythmic. When choreographing Wartime Elegy he decided to use not only Silvestrov, as originally intended, but added some archival dance music to speed things up a bit. It's difficult to imagine a Ratmansky ballet without allegro.

On the one hand, the stream on January 9th is a great way for those who haven't seen the production to familiarize themselves with it. But from the point of view of the distributors of the new film, the timing is unfortunate. I suspect a lot of people would rather watch at home free of charge rather than trek out into the snow, big screen and Olga Smirnova notwithstanding.

Yes, the AARP site indicates that this is the Giselle from 2009 starring Anna Tsygankova, Jozef Varga, Igone de Jongh and Jan Zerer, with Michele Jimenez, Maia Makhateli, Mathieu Gremillet and Artur Shesterikov in the peasant pas. https://watch.aarp.org/aarptheater/play/65679f809567650044d0c703

This may be the earlier film of the same production with Anna Tsygankova, Jozef Varga and Igone de Jongh (on balance a stronger cast, actually).

It certainly helps to have a dancer like Shale Wagman to anchor the piece. The ballet was more literal than I expected, but definitely successful.

The link to the stream when it goes live:

I have a feeling that Potskhishvili alone is worth the price of admission.

Certainly it was Bel Air Media that chose to distribute this film. It could have elected not to distribute it. It's dipping its toes back in the ballet-in-cinema market after a two-year hiatus, but it hasn't yet gone full-in by broadcasting a complete season from the Dutch National Ballet (which I would welcome!) or by broadcasting the ballet live, the way it broadcasts the Comédie-Française live. Then there's the marketing, with a poster of Olga Smirnova and her name across the top, and the Dutch National Ballet logo in the lower left-hand corner. And the blurb begins with the text "The ultimate romantic ballet, performed by former Bolshoi Ballet principals Olga Smirnova and Jacopo Tissi, who fled Russia and joined Dutch National Ballet, where this ballet is filmed." Never mind that Tissi was a Bolshoi principal for less than two months, that's how the film is being sold to audiences. Although I would have certainly attended, does anyone honestly think that Bel Air Media would have broadcast a performance starring Jessica Xuan and Davi Ramos? Actually, the published clips don't make me inclined to see Smirnova's performance. But I will be there with bells on, not just because I like the production, but because ballet-in-cinema is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. It's frustrating and heartbreaking that the Royal Ballet no longer has distribution in the North American market. The Paris Opera Ballet disappeared from American cinemas almost as soon as it appeared. If this reboot fails, it's unlikely that American distributors or even Pathé Live will try again.

A number of clips have been posted: Giselle - Olga Smirnova Albrecht - Jacopo Tissi Myrtha - Floortje Eimers Hilarion - Giorgi Potskhishvili https://www.giselleballetcinema.com listings for Canada: https://www.cineplex.com/movie/giselle