Ballet stats

[papeetepatrick]

Actually, me too, I think I really meant to say that I really just notice it when there's little or no traveling, because there's no way that's not thrilling when it's sharp as a tack like that.

[Davidsbündlertänze]

Yes, but that's résumé, and the dancer is self-tracking, as you've said. Career details like this are rarely made public by ballet companies, any more than a Fortune 500 firm publishes bioblurbs about its COs. Can you see it? "And after 3 hit years with Slimemold, Fenster and Czolgosz, Mr. Jones actually succeeded in downsizing HIMSELF in a personnel model of his own devising!" "In 5 years at Entropy Partners, Ms. Smith became renowned for her mastery of the financial workings of the company, gaining five hundred million dollars in personal salary while accidentally outsourcing all production to Bhutan."

I do know, however, that Robert Joffrey actually used to check on claims on some CVs. He had me make the calls. Sometimes the results were enlightening.

Maybe this is too strange an idea (I seriously don't have enough common sense to know if it is strange), but something like an "Internet Ballet Database" would be very useful like the IMDb. I wonder if that could happen. I used to visit the site "Musical Theatre in Europe" (couldn't find it recently; they must've changed the name) and it had all the stats for opera singers who performed in European halls - easy-to-use & very convenient.

Edited to add: I should have googled "Internet Ballet Database" before writing this post. I guess I'm really behind the times: there seems to have been an IBD - but it doesn't exist anymore?? That's a shame!

[bart]

In the good old days, taking baseball as an example, stats were simple summaries of things that interested fans, number of Home Runs, Batting Average, being among those for hitters, for example. For the last few decades a field called sabermetrics (check out by google or wicki) has taken over, by trying to find measures that give an objective quantification of a player's offensive (for example) contribution, so that true comparisons of player performance (attempting to take out the luck factor of team mate performance) can be made.

Boy, I'm behind the times. Thanks for the information and the lead, drb.

I'd enjoy the kind of stats Amy Reusch brings up, those non-evaluative sorts. How many Swan Lakes did Maya dance, which lead ballerina role has the most arabesques (or attitudes)?

Maybe this is too strange an idea (I seriously don't have enough common sense to know if it is strange), but something like an "Internet Ballet Database" would be very useful like the IMDb. I wonder if that could happen.

I can't even imagine the scale of the job of collecting, digesting, and organizing this kind of data except for certain companies (or dancers) who keep archives of individual performances. It's worth dreaming about, though. It would certainly be interesting to have the career breakdown by role (and number of performances per role) for the most historically significant dancers. Or: Ten Most Frequently Performed Ballets by the major companies. Would there be any surprises?

All we need is a few Ballet Talk members with lot of time on their hands and sizable independent incomes who might get this going?

[Treefrog]

One would have to (and in theory could) scale T and A so that a dancer with (T, A) = (10, 8) would be just as good as one with (T, A) = (9, 9) (18 for each).

I thought ballet was about so much more than T and A. I guess Chorus Line was right all along.

[fandeballet]

One would have to (and in theory could) scale T and A so that a dancer with (T, A) = (10, 8) would be just as good as one with (T, A) = (9, 9) (18 for each).

I thought ballet was about so much more than T and A. I guess Chorus Line was right all along.

I agree with you, but during a perf. of Merry Widow, I noticed someone in ABT's box at the Met taking down notes. That's the box on the parterre, where the artistic staff sits. So are dancers talked to after the perf.? And/or graded?