11 replies to this topic

[dirac]

A review of the "Degas and the Ballet" exhibition at the Royal Academy by Jackie Wullschlager in The Financial Times.

http://www.ft.com/cm...l#ixzz1XxSmvbjC

This exhibition is full of the contrasts and arguments that make Degas so intellectually exciting. Monet is famous for working in series, but Degas as shown here also operates through dialogue, juxtaposition, elaboration. Of more than 200 ballet pictures, fewer than a fifth take place on stage: instead, ballet’s defining, classical tension between ideal and real is enacted in a debate between the transcendent beauty of performance – the majestic curtsying star in lilac in “Dancer with Bouquets”, the spotlit ballerinas against a dense, tapestry-like backcloth in “Three Dancers, Landscape Scenery” – and the daily grind of practice and application necessary to achieve such ephemeral perfection.

Edited by dirac, 14 September 2011 - 01:44 PM.
Error in date - it's still September! Thanks to Renata for pointing that out. :)

[dirac]

Sarasota Ballet has a new managing director.

http://sarasota.patc...-a-new-director

Servian has served as the business director of the Sarasota Ballet since June 2010 and was chosen to take on this position by the board of directors at the recommendation of Director, Iain Webb.

According to the release, Servian will oversee the budget and finances of the Sarasota Ballet, development and marketing strategies, and all other administrative aspects of a company that is growing in nearly all ways.

[dirac]

Q&A with Misty Copeland in The Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingto...-_n_962318.html

How do you address the notion that the bodies of black girls and women were not made to be ballerinas?

I speak about it all the time. My body is very different from most of the dancers I dance with. I might not have the stereotypical "black body," but I definitely am more curvy and have a more athletic build from most ballet dancers. I actually have a dance-wear line coming out especially for curvy women, because most dance wear is made for professional dancers who are very petite with small busts and no real curves. I also have a plus-size line coming out that focuses on support of the bust, while still being very fashionable and elegant.

[dirac]

A review of Houston Ballet by Mandy Oaklander in Houston Press.

http://www.houstonpr...t-ballet-great/

Song of the Earth is the main draw of Return of the Masters, because it's so rarely performed and so masterful a musical work. Gustav Mahler wrote Song of the Earth as his last and most personal contribution, following the death of his daughter, his firing from the Vienna Opera and his diagnosis with a fatal heart problem, according to Houston Ballet director Ermanno Florio. The piece is dark and ruminates deeply on death, which Sir Kenneth MacMillan incorporated as a central theme in his choreography that premiered in 1965. The work employs five ancient Chinese poems, sung in German by two opera singers with the 63-piece orchestra. Even the large-scale musical production doesn't overshadow the ballet. The choreography is so different and intricate, it's hard to close your eyes to solely enjoy the music. It's all best experienced together.

[dirac]

Miami City Ballet offers two preview screenings of its new PBS special at no charge.

http://southfloridac...ng-pbs-special/

Produced by New York public television station WNET, the program features three works from recent MCB repertoire. George Balanchine’s Square Dance melds traditional square dance movements to the Baroque music of Vivaldi and Corelli. Balanchine’s Western Symphony is a lavish, high-kicking spectacle in the Radio City Music Hall tradition, set to Hershey Kay’s pastiche of Western tunes. Twyla Tharp’s The Golden Section combines ballet and modern dance with an original score composed and performed by pop star David Byrne.

[dirac]

A review of New York City Ballet in "Swan Lake" by Alastair Macaulay in The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.c...eview.html?_r=1

In the double role of Odette-Odile, Ashley Bouder gave the most staccato delivery of the choreography I have ever seen, hammering steps and phrase endings like nails into a coffin. She lacks neither virtuoso technique nor dramatic feeling, and yet both here are drastically misapplied. The ferocity of her attack, often in tiny details, changed the ballet’s winged imagery; this was not a swan but a hornet.

The ballet’s greatest moments of expansiveness came not from her or from the female corps de ballet but from Andrew Veyette as Prince Siegfried. He is not an exemplary stylist in all respects of line, yet the sweep and spaciousness of his dancing here lift the heart.

[dirac]

The Appalachian Ballet Company kicks off its fortieth season.

http://www.blounttod...ritish-invasio/

This is the eighth year for Blue Jeans and Ballet, which has a different theme to compliment the overall one each year. Meet the British Invasion includes the show, dinner and drinks for a $55 ticket price. Dinner and drinks will be served at 6 p.m. on the Plaza and the show will follow in the Harold and Jean Lambert Recital Hall.

“We have a great menu this year. I just met with Andy Safewright (director of dining services) at the college, he and Chef Paul Kampwerth have come up with a really good menu for us with honey-stung chicken breast, bacon cheddar mashed potatoes, Asian cole slaw, salad and a dessert,” Morton said.

[dirac]

A look at the new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts by Steve Paul in The Kansas City Star.

http://www.kansascit...man-center.html

For example, the draped cable system that girds the huge glass lobby and anchors the two performance halls to a long, below-ground concrete wall amounted to an enormously complicated, nearly perilous piece of engineering for Safdie’s design team, including BNIM of Kansas City and Novum Structures, a Wisconsin-based specialist in glass systems.

And the work of making acoustically rich and physically exciting performance spaces has been a constant exercise in vision, precision, flexibility and craftsmanship. (Here Safdie was buttressed by consultants and designers from Theatre Projects and Nagata Acoustics.)

[dirac]

A preview of the Australian Ballet's new 'Swan Lake' by Debbie Cuthbertson for ABC News. Video included.

http://www.abc.net.a...-ballet/2882606

While Murphy puts the finishing touches to his production, giving principal dancers Kevin Jackson and Madeleine Eastoe direction on the precise angle at which to lean in to each other, Isogawa works behind the scenes, ensuring his costumes look just so under lights.

Isogawa and the Australian Ballet's 20 full-time costumiers have created more than 300 pieces, some of which took up to 80 hours of sewing to create, made of thousands of sequins and crystals and more than 5,000 metres of fabrics such as tulle and silk organza.

[dirac]

A story on Mikhail Baryshnikov's new theater venture, "In Paris," by Elaine Sciolino in The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.c...y-in-paris.html

For the first time, Mr. Baryshnikov, 63, is speaking his native Russian onstage. He hasn’t spoken much Russian for years (he defected in 1974), and his use of out-of-date expressions has amused the Russian members of the team. “He speaks in old-style Russian,” Mr. Krymov said after the premiere. “Not like before the Russian Revolution, mind you, but perhaps a little un-contemporary.”

Mr. Baryshnikov invested $250,000 of his own money in the project and solicited another $250,000 from a close Russian friend in New York. “I did this out of fun,” he said. “I’ll never get my money back. This is just out of love.”

[dirac]

A review of New York City Ballet's 'Swan Lake' by Leigh Witchel in The New York Post.

Starting out as the white swan Odette, Bouder is a tough bird. The role isn't natural for her, but she's intelligent, and knows how to make it work through her expressive back and musical timing. She's fast and sharp in what is usually slow and sorrowful, and the orchestra also keeps the familiar score moving briskly.

If she's constrained as Odette, she was born to dance the evil, scintillating black swan Odile. She's fatal from her first entrance, giving her victim, Andrew Veyette's Prince Siegfried, a hungry leer. As they dance, Bouder leisurely and seductively unfolds to reveal herself -- she runs the show, and he's just a snack. Veyette is better in contemporary roles; he manages the occasional Byronic pose and some emoting, but misses the nobility.

NYT slide show of the production.

[dirac]

A review of the Bolshoi Ballet by Patricia Boccadoro for Culturekiosque.

http://www.cultureki..._pbocca641.html

The results at the Palais Garnier in Paris recently were mixed. Four performances of Don Quixote, in the new, 1999 version by Alexei Fadeyechev, were programmed. Originally created for the Moscow public in 1869 by the French choreographer, Marius Petipa, at the beginning of his career, Don Quixote is a light-hearted piece full of fun, ideally suited to bring out the brilliance and sensational technique of the Russian dancers. Taken from the second volume of Cervantes' novel, it is centred around the love-affair of Basilio and Kitri and their attempts to avoid Kitri's arranged marriage to the foppish but wealthy Gamache.