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Alexandra Ansanelli departs...


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I was just struck by Ansanelli’s implication that to leave with another job in place would in some way be morally wrong or self-dealing. She is indeed fortunate that she is in a position where she presumably has the financial and professional luxury of not doing so, and my point was that most people don’t have said luxury.

It is most likely that Ansanelli has never had to look for a job yet. Her entire professional life has been as she herself said (to paraphrase) 'in the family'.

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Alexandra Ansanelli as Giselle! Now that is a performance I would love to see!! I first mention PNB, but SFB is also a choice. There is alot of good companies in this country that would love to have Ansanelli, but I think we maybe limiting ourselves. Y'know Ansanelli could just as easily join a European company. The Royal Ballet, The Royal Birmingham Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, etc. All of them have Balanchine in their rep and of course they dance the classics. I'm not certain if Ansanelli has an international reputation but seeing that she was one of the promising and exciting young ballerinas at one of the world's leading ballet companies, I'm sure she wouldn't have a problem going into talks with them.

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Well, you know Ansanelli is rather a unique Ballerina.

The body is most unclassical. In fact it's an extremly difficult body. Particularly the frequently locked up and twisted back. The lack of turnout one can live with. There are many un-turned out dancers who are great. But the random stiffness in her back is something else. And the history of weakness in her feet although she's somewhat overcome this in the last few years.

All the same, Ansanelli has always had to "fake it" a little physically in her dancing. She does it every time out. She has to, given how awkward the basic physique is. And she will continue to have to do this at moments.

But what has been so amazing and lovely has been precisely to see her transcend these same physical limitations. She throws herself so violently at those limitiations in her dancing, she is extremely difficult to partner, the way she throws herself around. She attacks the limits and finds a way for her to do it. I've seen her do some great things that way. Her first Allegro Brilliante two years ago for example was one of the finest Allegros I've ever seen.

She is also an amazingly charismatic dancer. She is hungry and open for and to the audience. Wherever you may be sitting in the theater, she seems to find you individually with her eyes. She can break your heart. She believes in herself as this rare creature, the Prima Ballerina, and ultimately, because of that, you believe in her as that.

If she lands with a company dancing evening length story ballets I think she will be very well suited to it. Drama is what Alexandra is best at. She will deliver the goods and please the crowds as Giselle, Kitri, etc. That audience is not too discerning anyway about whether the Italian Fouettes are strong or whether the upper body is delivering a karate chop during Odile's black swan finale. If you seem to do the 32, and throw yourself at them with passion, you get the flowers thrown at you.

I really cannot see her going to another Balanchine based company on the other hand. She has already pushed that envelope. She might as well have stayed where she was.

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My fondest memory of Ansanelli is New Year's Eve 2003 when she gave a great demonstration of her charisma. As most of you know the dancers have traditionally used that performance of the Nutcracker to pull a prank on one of the dancers. That night she was dancing Dew Drop and the company picked on her. In the finale one of the Teas dropped her wig on the stage as she came out. She charged down the stage, scooped up the wig and held it up to the audience like a trophy. She continued dancing with the wig in her hand. As she leapt off the stage she threw it in the air. The audience just loved it. It may be unrealistisc, but my wife and I hope ABT picks her up so can continue to watch her dance.

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Dirac, you're right...i am sometimes so naive I have no respect for myself the next morning.

But I burn candles to Squat, the goddess of parking and SO MANY OTHER THINGS, like how to get down off your high horse..., and thank Helene once again for pointing me in the right direction.

SFB DOES have a lot of classics in the rep -- Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty in respectful productions, Don Q in a version that's really well put-together, La Sylphide, Giselle, and (it's not a classic, exactly, but it IS a dramatic ballet in 3 acts) Helgi's version of Romeo an Juliet.... and we could use another charismatic star.

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But I burn candles to Squat, the goddess of parking and SO MANY OTHER THINGS, like how to get down off your high horse..., and thank Helene once again for pointing me in the right direction.

Okay, so you two made me google Squat, the goddess of parking. I had never heard of such a thing before! It seems to be connected to paganism. If that is true, I'd be afraid to use the term, lest I be thought to know more about such practices. But if it is a free range idiom, I can't wait to use it! Please elucidate for a moment. Sorry to veer this thread off-topic, but I just have to know!

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Sorry folks this is OFF_TOPIC -- But I have to confess, I don't know squat about Squat except that my little magpie heart jumped for joy when I saw that word in Helene's post and discovered that she was goddess of parking. I immediately invented a cabillion other domains she could have sovereignty over, and am in fact sketching out a little ballet for Squat and hte seven little Scruples... in the pas de deux, I think Squat will do all the supporting but none of the liftng; some of her court will have wonderful lapses -- cool ways of falling. I haven't gotten very far. at least one should slink, and another could enter on skates and climb the rigging in some curious way, there could be a down-at-heels scruple who could do a 3-legged walk ( the kind like Bill Irwin does where you wear a trenchcoat and there's a fake leg but the audience can't tell which one it is) to some music with an irregular metre, sort of hoboish but charming....

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Yes, she was at the Ballerina Symposium. I didn't attend, but I was giving a tour of the Nutmeg Conservatory (where the event was held) to two of our very own alertniks :) who were in town. We peeked our heads in and saw her sitting at the table. :yahoo:

She and Damian Woetzel performed "Who Cares?" at Dansereye that night. I'm a huge Ansanelli fan but Woetzel stole the show. He clearly was enjoying himself immensely.

I don't believe, from conversations with others who were there, that Ansanelli spoke about her current and future plans.

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This was posted in 'Links' here on this forum, but in case anyone missed it there was a story in the Hartford Courant on 17 August about the "The Ballerina in the 21st Century" Symposium held at the Nutmeg Conservatory.

Story from 17 August Hartford Courant

"The two generations of dancers disagreed regarding professional opportunities. Emily Patterson, soloist at the Joffrey Ballet, and Alexandra Ansanelli, principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, spoke of dancers' difficulties in finding places to forge a career. "I feel I am lucky to have a place to dance," says the Harwinton-born Patterson. However, Gregory and D'Antuono felt there are now more companies for dancers to perform than when they were starting out. "Now you don't just have to go to New York City anymore," said Gregory."

I wonder what Ansanelli was arguing it's not clear from this story.

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Yes, I attended. I am not particularly good at being a critic, so I'll keep this short. As much as I have liked Wheeldon's work in the past, I found an evening of all Wheeldon / all Ligeti "too much of a muchness". By the time we got to the third piece ("Continuum", performed by SFB dancers), I was very much looking forward to the end of the evening. Maybe it's all that fairly dissonant chord-crashing; maybe it's Wheeldon's choreographic response to the chords. Whatever it was, I ended up feeling that "Polyphonia" and "Continuum" were twins separated at birth - but raised in houses next door to one another.

The dancing itself was mostly good, though I kept wishing for Jock Soto (replacing him in "Polyphonia" was Sebastian Marcovici (not a kindness to Sebastian) and replacing him in "Morphoses" was Albert Evans). And I realized how well Ansanelli fit the roles in those 2 ballets.

Most unfortunate, however, was the Miller Theater. We sat upstairs, where there appears not to be a single seat with adequate sightlines for dance (what with railings and support poles). And the entire theater, including the orchestra, was exceedingly hot.

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