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The POB has announced casting for the live screening on June 3 of Balanchine's Palais de Cristal and Millepied's new Daphnis and Chloe. This program will not reach most of North America, but it will play in Quebec on October 16 & 26.

Palais de Cristal

1st mvt - Laëtitia Pujol Amandine Albisson, Mathieu Ganio

2nd mvt - Marie-Agnès Gillot, Ludmila Pagliero, Karl Paquette

3rd mvt - Ludmila Pagliero, Valentine Colasante, Mathias Heymann Emmanuel Thibault, Pierre Arthur Raveau

4th mvt - Amandine Albisson Nolwenn Daniel, Pierre Arthur Raveau, Emmanuel Thibault

Daphnis & Chloe

Daphnis - Hervé Moreau

Chloe - Aurélie Dupont

Dorcon - Alessio Carbone Marc Moreau
Lycaenion - Eleonora Abbagnato

Bryaxis - François Alu

In the first link below you'll find a list of cinemas showing the program in France, Austria, Belgium, Germany and Italy.

The program will also reach Australia on July 25, Singapore on July 31, Ecuador on August 12, Japan on September 12 and New Zealand at an unspecified future date.

http://www.fraprod.fr/offre_cinema.php?id=94

http://www.operadeparis.fr/saison-2013-2014/ballet/balanchine-millepied

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I was haunting local art house theater websites. They had something called Dance in Cinema. I clicked on it thinking it would be the usual Bolshoi offerings and was pleasantly surprised. They also carry the San Francisco Opera. That's what I would suggest to you. Just check all the theaters near you.

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I similarly discovered that a local art house was screening Royal Opera productions, which don't reach the primary movie chains owing to the Metropolitan Opera monopoly. But of course the series was advertised very poorly, which is to say not at all, so I missed several screenings before I realized they even existed. These, at least, are listed on the ROH web site if someone goes looking for them. It would be nice if the POB's distributor were to do the same.

If anyone sees the POB playing on this side of the Atlantic, please let the rest of us know!

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What is the difference between Palais de Cristal and Symphony in C? From my reading about it on the Balanchine Trust it sounds like the only difference are the sets and costumes (simplified for Symphony in C). Is this correct? Does anyone know? When I saw Symphony in C at the Mariinsky they wore different colors in the different movements, but they called it "Symphony in C".....is that actually Palais de Cristal?

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There are a few differences in choreography between the Palais de Cristal that the POB used to perform (I saw it in the 80s on a POB tour. There's also been a few YouTube videos of it, which I would suggest people NOT link here because the Trust has been on a purge lately) and Symphony in C (there's even very slight differences between the Sym in C NYCB performs and the one John Taras and others staged for the Bolshoi and ABT etc...). And the costumes more closely kept to the version Balanchine originally created (different colors for each movement) for the POB. However, I think it was about 10 years ago the Balanchine Trust re-staged "Symphony in C" on POB, with the white costumes and Balanchine's New York choreography. From what I understand, this is the version POB now calls Palais de Cristal, which is a shame.

We've had a few threads about this:

http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/13474-le-palais-de-cristal-3e-mouvement/?hl=%2Bpalais+%2Bde+%2Bcristal

http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/15681-symphony-in-c/?hl=%2Bpalais+%2Bde+%2Bcristal#entry126792

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However, I think it was about 10 years ago the Balanchine Trust re-staged "Symphony in C" on POB, with the white costumes and Balanchine's New York choreography. From what I understand, this is the version POB now calls Palais de Cristal, which is a shame.

It's not because this is what the POB wanted.

Beyond Paris,“Symphony in C” has always been a white ballet if ever there was one (though the cavaliers wear black), while “Palais de Cristal” was conceived in the same spirit as “Jewels,” its four movements danced in ruby red, midnight blue (for “black diamonds,” a stone unknown to gemology), emerald green and pearly white, with glints of rose and topaz. For the grand finale, the full cast gathers to troop the colors, a coup de théâtre even more festive than the parting tableau of “Diamonds.”

Balanchine left the rights to “Bizet” to his longtime balletmaster John Taras, who decided somewhere along the line that the jewel tones had to go. The Paris Opera Ballet acceded to his wishes. “It’s weird to think that we shouldn’t dance a ballet that is part of our history in the way it was made for us,” said Ms. Lefèvre, who enjoyed dancing “Bizet” the old way. “C’est le hasard de la vie. Nothing is forever.”

...

An article on Aug. 27 about the Paris Opera Ballet production of Balanchine’s “Jewels” referred incorrectly to the rights history of another Balanchine ballet, “Symphony in C.” Balanchine gave the rights to the dance to Betty Cage, the general manager of New York City Ballet, not his longtime balletmaster John Taras. (Cage gave the rights to Taras and Taras passed them on to the School of American Ballet.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/arts/dance/27gure.html?pagewanted=all

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According to Francia Russell in a PNB Q&A, when John Taras had control of "Symphony in C," given to him by the original person who inherited them [betty Cage], he insisted on his version, and Peter Martins told Taras that NYCB would not perform the work rather than perform that version. Taras relented. Russell was having the same issue, and got special permission to stage a different version for a one-off gala performance, and Taras died months before PNB performed the ballet in Fall 2004 during Russell and Stowell's last season.

I remember the same mid-80's performances of "Palais de Cristal" the same way that Dale did: that there were differences in the choreography. I seem to remember them most in the Second Movement, particularly that the ballerina held arabesque while holding onto the arm of her partner, which was not in the NYCB version, perhaps in place of the developpe in second?

I didn't like the costumes from the 80's, and I look forward to seeing Lacroix's versions. Aside from the "Rubies" skirts, which grown on me more and more, his decor for "Jewels" is my favorite.

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If only to be more confusing, there is a 1963 b&w recording of the Dutch National Ballet performing Le palais de cristal choreography to the title Symphony in C, complete with colored costumes (I checked, the choreography was identical). Makes me wonder when the
"new version" finally settled down enough to be recognizably modern. This was on Youtube but has since been deleted. However, you may be able to find Ghislaine Themar coaching the Movement 2 pas de deux to Ciaravola-Moreau.

The other iconic moment, that of tiny stamping motions en pointe by the ballerinas in the last movement, is completely absent. There is something similar as the dancers promenade forward on a series of dégagés off the music.

In general, the choreography felt more "courtly", especially in the partnered sections, as well as there being more à terre steps — perhaps also a by product of the POB's general legginess — than in the modern version.

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I've been thinking the white costumes appeared when the ballet was staged by NYCB, which, having fewer dancers than POB, had many dancers doubling roles among the movements. With them all in the same color, no one would know. Not so?

I know that's been suggested as an explanation before, but don't know if it's true.

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It has to be, because Francia Russell describes doubling up in the corps for the ballet, and I think Allegra Kent did, too, either in an interview or her book. Once Russell had to do corps and Third Movement soloist and described having to tear one hairpiece out between movements.

Symphony in C has 48 roles: one Principal couple, two Demi-Soloist couples, and six women. That's 36 women and 12 men. I don't even know if Ballet Society had 36 women in 1948.

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...

Symphony in C has 48 roles: one Principal couple, two Demi-Soloist couples, and six women. That's 36 women and 12 men. I don't even know if Ballet Society had 36 women in 1948.

It didn't, but the School of American Ballet had been running for about 15 years. In Repertory in Review, Nancy Reynolds counts the casts:

... in the Paris original, each movement was a different color; in the finale, with fifty-two dancers, the stage was divided into color areas. In New York, Balanchine couldn't have duplicated this for many years because his dancers were so busy doubling from movement to movement. (Although fifty dancers, many of them students, were rounded up for the Ballet Society presentation, during the early years of the New York City Ballet it was often performed with forty or fewer.)
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There was a thread here on Symphony in C and its origins as Palais de Crystal in the (sometimes bad) old days of extended discussions –

http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/15681-symphony-in-c/?hl=sapphire

rg pointed out that –

[Richard] Buckle seems to have had his own sense of the color-coding intended by Fini's design scheme, but it seems her ideas went, in order of the ballet's four movements, according to the following precious materials:
1. The Rubies = allegro vivo
2. The Black Diamonds = adagio
3. The Emeralds = allegro vivace
4. The Pearls [note: NOT diamonds] = allegro vivace

Also the first part of Dominique Delouche's 2011 documentary Balanchine in Paris has a tutorial on Palais de Crystal.

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It would seem that this Palais de Cristal is the original version.

Of more interest is the choreography, which is a departure on several counts from Symphony in C. More traditionally virtuosic, it lacks some of the iconic moments associated with the later piece, particularly in the adagio; its focus is on intricate leg work, and the French accent that is so problematic in other Balanchine ballets is fully justified here.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/27cf29fe-d9b8-11e3-b3e3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz31hc949eE

Some of Lacroix's costumes:

second movement - http://www.resmusica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/6984_13-14-ONP-PALAI-040.jpg

fourth movement - http://www.resmusica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/6986_13-14-ONP-PALAI-062.jpg

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