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2012/2013 Mariinsky Ballet Season: General News, etc.


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Yes, I understood your raised eyebrow, Birdsall--and understood that you think of Shirinkina as an ingenue/soubrette. (I feel that neither the adjective 'lovely' nor the adjective 'beautiful'

could ever be applied to the abominable and psychotically ill-behaved Battle, whose career finally all but ended due to a) her dreadful, incompetent, and unprepared 'singing'

and b) her indescribable attitude--WELL documented, ad nauseam, all over the web and in reality.)

I am hoping you will find that Shirinkina has far more virtues than her coloratura, so to speak. biggrin.png

You are so lucky to see Big Red (Kondaurova) in anything--although Bizet Adagio would be better, smile. Have heard great things about Osmolkina *and* Vasnetsova--

and Tsar Saltan is a very diverting and spicy rarity which I think you'll love....

I am sure everyone on the board is jealous of you seeing that Beauty, which should be sumptuous.

Thanks, Jsmu! I am just now catching up on my reading. I somehow missed your comment. I am looking forward to seeing everything.

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Birdsall: Looking forward to reading about the performances you attend.

I will try to post while there but who knows if I will have the patience to type posts on my phone. I am an actual typist knowing home row keys, etc. so resorting to one finger punching on the iphone is sometimes annoying! LOL

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read on a russian forum that there will be a Romeo& Juliette broadcast on March 1st at http://mariinsky.tv enjoy

Thanks, YID. The Feb 28 & Mar 1 R&Js are being filmed for HD DVD release, as discussed earlier. Thank you for mentioning some of the additional castings. Osmolkina as Juliet's friend! Finally something else on DVD by this great artist...although I would have preferred seeing her Juliet. However, Vishneva is a principal and better-known name, so the casting for a big DVD release is understandable. It could have been worse (guess who).

The two R&Js mark the start of the Mariinsky Festival. Thank goodness, Saturday's Don Q will feature Evseeva (w/ Kim Kimin), not Kampa. Skorik will dance Dryad Queen.

The one program of the Festival where I would think that Kampa and Skorik would look their best -- the Forsythe triple bill -- does not feature them. 'Modernists' like Pavlenko and Novikova will be featured. (Skorik will be saving her evergies for Nikiya in Bayadere, later in the Festival.)

The Festival's Giselle will be Zakharova, with Lantratov (Bolshoi principals). Amazingly, Myrtha will not be danced by Kampa, who was given the role umpteen times this past fall; instead, Petushkova will be Myrtha.

YID, will you be catching Lopatkina's Titania in Midsummer Night's Dream?

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These tapes of dancer screw ups can be misleading and in that sense do call for comment. Kampa may or may not be a disaster--that she is being over-promoted, over-quickly seems from the outside to be the case But let's say she is a disaster: even so, the tape of a fall or bad slip (and completely w/o context) is nearly meaningless and a good example of why youtube is something of a distortion machine when it comes to judging dancers. Bouder? A famous "faller" -- by all accounts takes a nasty slip practically every season. Do experienced NYCB fans (familiar with the best of the "old days") think she doesn't deserve her status? Far from it. Gelsey Kirkland: in my head I have a tape of several of her falls, at the very height of her career when she was in good health and dancing performances I never expect to see equaled. I'm not defending what's going on at the Mariinsky or Kampa, but I do have strong reservations about the "youtube-ification" of the judging of dancers and their progress.

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Exactly, Drew. Dancers of all ranks and abilities fall.

Pacific Northwest Ballet has a season-end party for the dancers in which one of the highlights is the "blooper" video, although this weekend's entry was the opening of Tharp's "In the Upper Room', when, with the two Principal female Stompers downstage center waiting to start, the music from the afternoon's "Hansel and Gretel" started to play for a few seconds instead of the Glass.

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I was astounded, though perhaps I shouldn't have been, one can never underestimate people enough, it seems, that anyone would go so far and be so mean as to not only post the film of her falling, but cut it there and not include the fact that she did very professionally get up and keep going and finish. I don't necessarily think she should be doing Kitri, but falling is not the reason. I have seen Nina Ananiashvili, Natalia Makarova Susan Jaffe and Eleanor d'Antuono make epic falls. It doesn't mean a thing, just that someone was being cruel and arch in framing it for Keenan Kampa that way. Says more about the poster than the dancer.

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Is it my eyes, or are there some edits starting at 0:19?

She fell, but up until 0:18 her fouettes look very good, as they have in all the other clips. They look secure and she doesn't wander all over the stage. Her doubles look easy. She may have issues, but fouettes are the least of them.

It does seem like a mean-spirited clip.

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Kampa's fall does has particular feeling. It doesn't look like a regular fall where suddenly the ballerina is on the floor while running or either loosing a silly balance in a slow sequence. This is a fall during fouettes-(something I personally have NEVER seen), and one can tell that her face ever since starting the sequence is just permeated with terror. It would had been a miracle that she didn't fall. I don't think she is prepared for the speed and complexity of the sequence. Falling was a natural thing right there. Kenen is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time right now.

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This clip is spliced together -- you can see where the splice is at 0:19, so it's actually two performances put together. Just sayin'.

I am almost hesitant in going to watch youtube clips of Mariinsky performances nowadays because I find many of the clips are these edited "vendetta" clips where the poster is promoting or dissing a certain dancer. The comments sections are filled with numerous comments from various claque members and it's really quite unpleasant.

That being said, I've seen some of the very best dancers take nasty spills, including Ashley Bouder and Alina Cojocaru. Kampa's other clips of her Kitri (that I've seen) are more problematic than this edited clip of her fall. From the OTHER clips it seems she doesn't have the high energy, terre a terre skills of the best Kitris. She might make a better Dryad Queen at this stage of her career.

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She has far more potential in adagio than these soubrette roles that require snap, flair, and personality. Dancers are like athletes, and we should keep in mind that many rookies make mistakes that they use as learning experiences. I think in the days before youtube and phone cameras, most of the flubs were never mentioned except by audience members to friends at work the next Monday. Now the whole world gets to see the edited broadcast.

I'm reminded of the Michael Jordan quote:

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
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The proof is in the clip. Sometimes the truth hurts. But this is a profession and this happened at The Mariinsky, not some Dolly Dinkle academy. THE Mariinsky.

I found this clip only because it is so commented on in Russian fora as 'exhibit A' of Fateev's casting incompetence.

Speaking of doctoring - see the official version of the full pdd, also on YouTube, which conveniently deletes the fouettes...just like in Commie days, 'the truth' was deleted. [Ermakov is quite amazing - deservedly principal material - in that full tape.]

There is absolutely no comparison with Bouder or Terioshkina, two natural virtuosas who were famous for taking risks and sometimes falling in their early years. Kampa is absolutely not in their league.

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The proof is in the clip. Sometimes the truth hurts. But this is a profession and this happened at The Mariinsky, not some Dolly Dinkle academy. THE Mariinsky.

I found this clip only because it is so commented on in Russian fora as 'exhibit A' of Fateev's casting incompetence.

Speaking of doctoring - see the official version of the full pdd, also on YouTube, which conveniently deletes the fouettes...just like in Commie days, 'the truth' was deleted. [Ermakov is quite amazing - deservedly principal material - in that full tape.]

There is absolutely no comparison with Bouder or Terioshkina, two natural virtuosas who were famous for taking risks and sometimes falling in their early years. Kampa is absolutely not in their league.

I agree with you - sometimes the truth hurts, and yes, it is unpalatable and unpleasant, but the fact is, as you say, this is the great Mariinsky we are talking about, and Miss Kampa is neither a student nor even now a debutante in this role. I, too, have seen the doctored version on YouTube, with the faulty fouettes conveniently edited out. Mistakes can, of course, be forgiven, but this is a major one and Miss Kampa seems to be following in the footsteps of Oxana Skorik, who also can do no wrong in management eyes and keeps on being cast in roles for which she is entirely unsuited, no matter how mistakes she makes. This disastrous slip-up is bad enough, but when one allies it with Kampa's other shortfalls - her lack of fluidity, her stiff arms and upper body, her lack of expression and indeed air of ill-ease every time she steps on the stage, any ballet lover must surely say "Enough! Where are the true Mariinsky ballerinas?" The answer is very clear - they are in the corps or coryphee ranks, but they are just not being given the same opportunities as either Miss Kampa or Miss Skorik. Batoeva, Stepanova, Nikitina, Krasnokutskaya, Petushkova ... all would be wonderful Kitris, but where are their debuts in this role?
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