volcanohunter Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Somehow the Academy's stage seemed smaller on the video. It must be smaller. The Metropolitan Opera lists its proscenium width as 54'. http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/about/the-opera-house-faqs.aspx Link to comment
Amy Reusch Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 Something is up with that... I don't believe the dance space is unusually large... I would have thought 40 something... Hmmm... Link to comment
Ray Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 The Academy stage is plenty large--they recently retooled to admit large Broadway shows. It's all about the way they filmed it; having attended the performance live, I also notices the legs seemed larger than usual for this show--perhaps, again, for the cameras? Link to comment
sandik Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 The Academy stage is plenty large--they recently retooled to admit large Broadway shows. It's all about the way they filmed it; having attended the performance live, I also notices the legs seemed larger than usual for this show--perhaps, again, for the cameras? And that may be the answer here -- you can, by changing the width of your proscenium curtains/legs, make a wider stage more narrow. It's a much bigger trick to make a narrow stage wider! Link to comment
Amy Reusch Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 I should just ask... But I have some memory of a coversation comparing the Merriam with the Academy with someone from the ballet and was surprised to learn the stage width was not that different... But maybe I am grossly misremembering... Link to comment
Jack Reed Posted May 12, 2014 Share Posted May 12, 2014 (edited) Finally, we got the broadest in Chicago this afternoon! Not sure what the thinking was behind showing it at 2 PM on Mother's Day, when the families are taking Mom to a restaurant, aren't they? But I thought even more of the dancing when I could see it bright and clear on my HD TV, instead of in the on-line video. In fact, I wanted even more to see it better, unimpeded by the often-complicated camera-work. Even though I'm not crazy about the POB performances on Opus Arte DVD 0951, I thought comparison might be revealing of something, so I played it after the broadcast - and then I had to have the Pennsylvania performance again! It seems to me that the POB dancing is about clarity, exactness, and finish; their phrases are finished at the expense of momentum, though, and the ballet seems static, a succession of views, while the Pennsylvanians are by no means fuzzy or sloppy, but one phrase "ends" into the beginning of the next - the dance flows as the music does. This helps give it life, the vitality authentic to Balanchine. On the other hand, Pierre Cavassilas's TV Direction of the POB disc is much simpler and more revealing of the ballet than Matthew Diamond's is in the PBS program, though there are still too many "partials" - shots giving a partial view of the person - in the POB pas de deux, while the dancers are moving. There are sequences where we hardly see them in full, and so the expression in their movements is much less full also. (As I remember it, the late (great) Merrill Brockway, the director of the first series of Dance in America programs, would sometimes insert very short, almost "subliminal" partials, but usually when the dancers were stationary, so the dance flow was not intruded upon. I think that if you must have partials, this is the way to do it.) Edited May 12, 2014 by Jack Reed Link to comment
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