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Marga

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  • Connection to/interest in ballet** (Please describe. Examples: fan, teacher, dancer, writer, avid balletgoer)
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  1. R.I.P. So happy to hear Marc Platt lived a long life. I love that 7 Brides videoclip and have watched it so many times throughout the decades. I always follow Jacques d'Amboise around in it, although he doesn't have as much dancing to do as a few of the others. Now I've got Marc Platt to watch, too.
  2. I always sit in the side parterre. In fact I just bought my tickets online an hour ago for the coming season. I have sat in the extreme side parterre boxes and I like them, but you are not able to see what's going on on the extreme side of the stage that is on the same side as your seat. This time I was able to buy tickets in the third box from the stage, my favourite. I don't remember missing out on too much sitting there. Even sitting in the very first box, you see most of the stage. You never have to worry about seeing only half the stage! I consider the ballet before I choose a side. For Giselle, for example, I sit in the right side parterre (right as you face the stage) so I won't miss seeing the action at Giselle's house in the first act and at her grave-site in the second. If the front seats on my chosen side are taken, I buy seats in the left side parterre. Never buy second row seats in the side parterre! You'll be bobbing and weaving in order to see around the people in the three seats in front of you. The boxes closer to the center have an unobstructed view but cost twice as much. And, they're further away. Never my choice.
  3. Marga

    Locating dancers

    How nice to hear from another former Dance Academy student! As you mentioned, the studio is different. It hasn't been the Dance Academy for 20 years. I think it is/was called Silva. I took my 28 year old daughter there when she was just beginning ballet in hopes she could take some ballet classes (Silva advertised them) while we were visiting back home for the summer. We watched a ballet class and I found it terribly lacking. The two studios had been renovated into one large, gleaming studio with tables and chairs on one side for dining or something. It was indeed geared toward ballroom dance. Only when I went to the bathroom (the ante-room of which was newly decorated) and stepped through the door to the commode did I feel like I was in the Dance Academy I knew and loved. I never went back inside the studio on any of my subsequent visits although I still drive past it when I'm in the States.
  4. Marga

    Locating dancers

    Hi gggoodgggirl! It's gratifying to get a response. I check Ballet Talk every day so am always reachable here. The only other female ballet teacher from my time that I remember was Alice Green (or Green-something, sorry!). Otherwise it was Karl and Marie who taught ballet. You started at the Dance Academy the same year I entered Adelphi University as a dance major, so our paths just missed intersecting. I think about Karl Klauser quite often and would still love to know what he did and where he went after selling his studio to Marty Morginsky.
  5. I tried with my internet research skills to find out who she is but only came up with more pictures and a mangled name which brought no results on google. She certainly looks like a very dynamic teacher!
  6. Alexandra, thanks so much for linking to Project Plié so we can donate to a fund that meant something to Carley. That's a great picture of her, too.
  7. It's so nice to read the remembrances of those whose lives intertwined with Carley's, as mine did. I am still in shock and slept restlessly as thoughts of Carley entered my dreams and were my first thoughts on waking throughout the night. Her sister Betsy has posted the coordinates for Carley's memorial service: "Carley will be honored and remembered at a 2 p.m. service on Sunday, March 2 at the Plaza Jewish Community Chapel, 630 Amsterdam Ave., NYC." The chapel is located in Carley's beloved Upper West Side - UWS - where she lived. She was passionate about ballet, politics, just causes, pets, and her neighbourhood, among other things. The love in her heart will no doubt be felt at the Jewish Community Chapel on Sunday afternoon.
  8. Earlier tonight, Carley's sister, Betsy Broder wrote: "Surrounded by family, Carley died earlier this afternoon. She died peacefully and with no pain." Carley was always an intelligent, friendly presence on Ballet Talk, welcoming new members and answering questions, moderating discussions with wisdom and professionalism. She was a good friend and an avid balletgoer who attended performances of ABT and NYCB almost daily. Her sudden death is a great blow to her family, friends both in real and virtual life and all who knew her. My heart is broken.
  9. I am so happy to be seeing (and hearing) so much ballet and ballet music in the opening ceremonies. No matter what else one has to say about the politics of this Olympics, there has never been a more satisfying opening. No horrible rock music, no pop culture of the West, just the enduring popular culture of ballet and beautiful music in Europe.
  10. My daughter loved American Girl books when she was young before all the hoopla with the dolls and accessories began. She enjoyed acting out stories by learning the lines in the script books about the different dolls (and getting her little brother to learn the boy parts). Now 28 and a professional dancer, she was overjoyed to be chosen to dance in the American Girl 2014 movie. The dancers rehearsed and filmed in Toronto from May to July and were treated royally by the producers and staff. Their choreographer was a Vaganova teacher (who has her own ballet school) whom my daughter had once taken class with as an 8 year old. All the dancers were excellent - top-notch ballet dancers (the audition notice called for "National Ballet of Canada" caliber dancers). The dancers were worked very hard (they performed the Nutcracker) and received very good pay. My daughter said that the level of training of the young girls who are the movie's "stars" is very high. NBoC first soloist Tanya Howard was their AD in the film and has a speaking role. The experience was for my daughter one of the highlights of her life.
  11. The Nutcracker is playing on the radio as I type and it reminded me that I always love hearing it. Even after going through more than a decade of watching Nutcracker rehearsals and performances as my daughter became a dancer, it never grew old for me. Before I had children in ballet, I'd light the candles on the Christmas tree sometime around midnight or 1 am when the house was still and I was the only one up, pour myself a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and put my Nutcracker record on the stereo. Sitting in the glow of the candlelight, I was transported to one of my favourite places in the world...
  12. The above quote is taken from writer's comment about Precious Adams, NOT Joy Womack. I am responding to only that. I do have a trained eye and watched all five videos (thanks for mentioning that there are videos). Miss Adams, while long-limbed and trim, not only doesn't have a strong enough technique, she is lacking in any Russian technique nuances that students of the Vaganova method have ingrained in them. Granted, the videos are over a year and half old, but she was still old enough to have attained, at the very least, the "Russian look". She dances, in her videos posted in early 2012, like a pretty good dance student with far to go. I can also see, in the video with the Russian teacher coaching her in a Don Q variation, that the teacher is not very interested - more vexed than pleased - and rises from her armchair only a few times to walk toward Miss Adams, her student, in order to give corrections. We see the most attention given in the last run-through of the variation, ending with a curt curtsy (no smile, or God forbid, a hug) by the teacher to indicate the coaching session is finished. Even in the quick port de bras the teacher demonstrates herself during one of her corrections, you see the very Russian-ness of her movement, which you never see in Miss Adam's movements. At that stage of development, technique among Bolshoi students is usually pretty much in their back pockets and they are working on artistry and fluidity of movement. Miss Adams performs a series of steps when she dances - in the way of many an American student who doesn't consider the variation as a whole or think about the meaning of the movements. And she struggles with many of the steps. Without going into any other part of the issue, I offer my opinion solely on the quality of her dancing.
  13. Even Pointe Magazine is sure that Joey Gorak is on the threshold of stardom. I quite agree! http://www.pointemagazine.com/issues/2013/september http://www.pointemagazine.com/issues/octobernovember-2013/prince-waiting
  14. Veronika's father is Estonian, hence the name "Part" which means "duck" (as in the bird). She was raised, however, as Russian and doesn't speak Estonian at all (but has been seen at NY's Estonian House where she performed The Dying Swan to a SRO Estonian audience).
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