7 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Nikolai Tsiskaridze is questioned regarding the attack on Sergei Filin.

The Guardian

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Police said they questioned Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a principal dancer, as a witness in the assault on Sergei Filin on Wednesday.

"Employees of the Bolshoi Theatre, relatives and acquaintances of Filin, have also been questioned," they added in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.

The Telegraph

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"I was questioned as a witness, although a witness to what I don't understand," Mr Tsiskaridze told a Moscow radio station. The dancer admits that he and Mr Filin, 42, had differences of opinion over the theatre's artistic direction but he passionately denies any involvement with the assault and has condemned it as "a terrible crime which must be harshly punished".

News.com.au

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Tsiskaridze, a flamboyant figure with flowing black hair who regularly appears as a judge on TV talent shows, last year lashed out at the Bolshoi's leadership for not giving him enough lead roles.

The Izvestia daily said Tsiskaridze had aroused the attention of investigators with his repeated criticism of the Bolshoi management.

[dirac]

A story on the appointment of Benjamin Millepied to the directorship of the Paris Opera Ballet in The Guardian.

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"I will keep the things that seem strong and solid and I have the chance to rethink certain other things," Millepied told Le Figaro.

The Paris Opera Ballet, founded in the days of Louis XIV, is the oldest ballet company in the world and known for its respect, bordering on reverence, for traditional repertory.

Comment on the appointment from Judith Mackrell.

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Yet reports of the press conference Millepied gave after his appointment suggest that he's not short of ideas. One that seems to have endeared him to the incoming general director at the Paris Opera, Stephane Lissner, is to develop ways of bringing opera and ballet companies into closer collaboration (a project also launched by the Royal Ballet in Wayne McGregor's stagings of Purcell operas, although arguably not yet carried through).

[dirac]

Sports photographer Rick Guest talks about photographing dancers of the Royal Ballet.

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Guest, 45, has spent his career photographing Manchester United stars, the England rugby team and athletes from diver Tom Daley to Jessica Ennis for advertising campaigns. Dancers, he says, “can repeat their moves time and time again in a way footballers can’t because they’ have no 3D visual awareness of what they’re doing.”

[dirac]

An interview with John Neumeier by Sid Smith in The Chicago Tribune.

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He's talking about three late Chicago figures who greatly influenced him as a young man after leaving Milwaukee: dancer-choreographer Sybil Shearer and teachers Bentley Stone and Walter Camryn. Neumeier studied with the latter at their Stone-Camryn School of Ballet here and performed with Northbrook-based Shearer and her company.

"From the point of view of movement and movement invention, from a sense of inner concentration, Sybil is my greatest inspiration," Neumeier said. "I didn't realize it at the time. Sybil was slow-working; she prepared and prepared something and then would shelve it to work on something else. As a young man, I was impatient. But in retrospect, I deeply appreciate what she gave me...."

[dirac]

The English National Ballet collaborates with Vivienne Westwood for its new campaign. Slideshow.

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The ballet company has been going through a rebranding since Rojo’s appointment and Westwood’s creations — from both the archive and the spring/summer 2013 collection — were chosen to underline an unconventional-yet-classical image.

[dirac]

Reviews of San Francisco Ballet's gala performance.

The San Francisco Chronicle

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Premiering Thursday was "In the Passerine's Clutch" by Myles Thatcher, a Ballet corps member and promising choreographer who has previously created work for the company school. This enigmatic piece for Dores Andre, Dana Genshaft, Joan Boada, and Jaime Garcia Castilla, set to music by Wojceich Kilar, is Thatcher's first work for the main company. The choreographic impulse here was more semaphoric than expressive, and yet the sinuous lines of necks and backs and fitful movements had an appealing hypnotic effect that referenced the avian quality indicated in the title.

The San Francisco Examiner

A new star, soloist Sasha De Sola (promoted from the corps last year) was notable in the evening’s first number, Balanchine's "Tarantella" with the wonderful Pascal Molat, and the program-closing excerpts from Serge Lifar's 1943 "Suite en Blanc," to Eduard Lalo's music.

Related.

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On Thursday night, the San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House was alive with a crowd that included socialites, dancers and San Francisco's avant-garde at the ballet's gala and performance. Guests could also spot a few famous faces including George Lucas, Larry Baer, Dede Wilsey, Joy Bianchi and Wilkes Bashford.

Once the curtain rose, a worldly selection echoed the theme of the evening: "Moving the Compass," a nod to the company's international partnerships.

[dirac]

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

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In “Serenade,” the moment when the heroine loosens her hair has become absurd with both Janie Taylor and Sara Mearns. I’m one of those who’ve far preferred “Serenade” as danced without loose hair in the closing Élégie and as it still is in a few productions. And my case is supported by ballerinas who spend whole seconds undoing their voluminous hair onstage before falling to the floor.

Does any of the above sound nit-picky? I’m happy to find nit-picking going on within the company too. On Thursday the conductor Andrews Sill prefaced “Diamonds” with an invaluable “See the Music” talk about the Third Symphony’s opening movement and the rhythmic, structural and thematic reasons Balanchine may have omitted it. He then led the orchestra in a deftly cut version of this movement.

[dirac]

An interview with Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer re their reconstruction of "The Rite of Spring" by Paul Hodgins in The Orange County Register.

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That triumph was 16 years in the making, the result of a chance 1971 meeting between company founder Robert Joffrey and Hodson, who was then a graduate student at UC Berkeley, where the company was in residence.

"He would come and see me every evening after the show," Hodson recalled. "He told me about conversations he'd had with Rambert in the 1950s about ('Rite'). He was fascinated with the work. I told him I had this dream of trying to recreate the ballet. He said, 'That's a very exciting idea and you have to call me when you're ready.'"