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Renee Renouf

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  1. If my memory serves me, Vassiliev was fresh out of the Bolshoi School during the second tour of the Bolshoi to the U.S. He danced the male lead in The Stone Flower, with Timofeeva as the Stone Mountain Maiden and Maximova as the young girl in the earthly regions. Lord, was he young, blond and amazing. I can't remember really much beyond that, except to say that he struck me as exceptional, even if I felt the theme was pretty hokey. It definitely was the era when the Russians were taking U.S. audiences by storm with their technical capacities and emotional conviction. Unfortunately, I never saw him again until he was the Russian juror at Jackson in 1990, and then only with an entourage in off hours. Maximova was to have been a teacher at the International School, but left when the direction failed to introduce her properly. The last I heard about Vassiliev was that he was staging works in Italy.
  2. I was told Ballet Alert had posted Christopher Stowell's inaugural season as artistic director for Oregon Ballet Theatre on its pages. Where would I find it? It is of no small interest to those of us who enjoyed his dancing at San Francisco Ballet, and who remembered his father, Kent Stowell, when he too danced with San Francisco Ballet when it was under Lew Christensen's direction. Thank you.
  3. Swanhilda, there is a website, but I am at a loss to know the URL. I have an old application form somewhere, but I currently am en route to the Mid- West and East Coast and will be able to look it up only when I return to San Francisco. There also is a question in my mind whether the Competition will be possible in 2003, given the enormous devastation of the late summer floods in the Czech Republik. I would think, perhaps erroneously, that funders who might continue to support the Competition would divert some of their funds to support the rehabilitation of some of the historic buildings. But that is only my speculation. I will go back on the forum in early November with the specific address unless someone else is aware of the Competition's address.
  4. Someone did mention to me that Lauren Jonas has had two job offers, but I wasn't aware that she planned to leave Diablo Ballet. What's the story?
  5. That's Terrific, David! With five more days to go, you just may do it!
  6. I learned this afternoon, from a reliable source, that Diablo Ballet's fundraising had reached the $73,000 level, just under half that is needed to continued, with approximately a week left to the September 15 deadline the Board had set to raise the funds. Lauren Jonas, the artistic director, remarked in the initial appeal that if Contra Costa residents gave a dollar for every year they had lived in the area that there would be no problem. Ten or twenty dollars a person could make all the difference, and I am certain five dollars would be cheerfully accepted as well.
  7. While I do not live in Chicago, Ann Barzel, long-time critic and the maker of films at the Auditorium Theatre without sound, is venerable testimony of what a ballet location it has always been. In the deBasil-Ballet Russe days, Christmas or New Year's would usually be observed there, and a New Year's Party was recorded for posterity several years in a row. It also was a place noted for the photographic studio of Maurice Seymour who could make dancers look ravishing, glamourous and everything else to make the heart go pity pat or oh, wow! If you can get ahold of one of the two books of his photographs, you'll understand what I mean.One old de Basil Company member told me that the photographic sessions usually happened after performances and into the early hours of the morning. Hideous thought, but some of our only records of ballets such as Frederick Ashton's Devil's Holiday are the result of Seymour's passion for ballet. When The Joffrey Ballet was regrouping after the fight with Rebeckah Harkness, their shakedown venue was The Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. My understanding is that the company has been always popular there. Somewhere on the letterhead or some other roster, I noticed that a board member, as well as Gerald Arpino are listed as life-time members. After Arpino's fight with members of the Board when the company had a bi-coastal arrangement with Los Angeles, Chicago was a logical choice, and I think that Arpino was very much in favor of the move. As a San Franciscan, I very much miss the June seasons the Joffrey used to have at the Opera House, sponsored by the San Francisco Symphony. It was a fiscal win-win situation when the association began, but by the last season that was not the situation.
  8. Alexandra, thanks for your response. You'll note that there was no silver amongst the junior women. At Jackson there was no gold medal for the senior men and no gold medal for the junior women. I believe it must be a certain gut level gauge of quality. What relieves me is that juries feel they can award or withhold according to what they feel is excellence, and not just give out prizes because they are there to be given and the funds are behind it. I heard discussions about how difficult it was for some Western dancers to be awarded medals when there was a strong West/Eastern bloc orientation. I am just grateful, or else want desperately to believe, that fairness, talent, hard work and basic humanity will rise like cream to the top.
  9. The following information was supplied me by Olga Guardia de Smoak from Paris. Olga is a twenty-five year plus veteran observer of international ballet competitions. Ivan Nagy was chair of the Jury and Jana Kurova was artistic director. The 2002 Prague International Ballet Competition, August 3-10,2002 Men: Junior: Gold Joseph Phillips, U.S.A. (his third this year, a second at Jackson, and still a year to complete his studies) Silver Joaquin Crespo Lopes, Argentina No Bronze Senior: Gold Cesare Morales, Chile Silver Yaroslav Salenko, Ukraine (a finalist at Jackson and a member of Miami Ballet) Encouragement Prize: Altankhuyag Dugarai, Mongola (a finalist at Jackson and a winner at Perm this year) Hyun Woong Kim, South Korea Women: Junior: Gold: Eun Ji Ha, South Korea (a finalist at Jackson) No Silver Bronze: Dhi Yun Lee, South Korea Bronze: Seo Yeon Yu, South Korea Senior: Gold: Irina Kolesnikova, St. Petersburg, Russia Silver: Seh Yun Kim, South Korea (Universal Ballet) No Bronze A second competition is being planned for August, 2003 with subsequent competitions every two years.
  10. Funny thing, my mother's name was Juliet, and in response I'll use one of her favorite cliches: "I bow from the ankles." On my own, I feel you deserve a nosegay!
  11. This is in response to Valerie Burks kind comments regarding my Jackson USA International Ballet Competition coverage. I appreciate them. It is nice to know that there is a forum, based in the U.S.A., where comments can be lodged pro and con on such coverage on a foreign Web Site. I cannot ethically cover such an event in both locations. I have received indirect information regarding some negative reaction to some of my coverage. One I was able to apologize directly for, relating to the Panos accident on stage. The other has remained only faintly subterranean and apparently was exacerbated. I don't deliberately go on witch hunts or gunning for a particular dancer or dancers, contrary to some thinking. So, Valerie Burks, your comments are therefore much appreciated.
  12. Dietmar Seyffert studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov Institute under Pytor Gyusev, and not at GITIS, to the best of my knowledge. This was before his assuming his post as artistic director of the Ballet at the Grand Opera House at Leipzig. Yes, Gregor Seyffert is Dietmar's son and he has been recently named as artistic director of the Ballet Academy in Berlin, his alma mater. As you may also know he won the Prix d'Or at Lausanne in 1986 and most recently, in 1999 (?) was named Dancer Laureat, either by Berlin or the German Government. He is a remarkable artist, and one of his comments which I read was that he was not interested in a peripatetic starring role career, to which his record attests, which has been confined mostly to Europe and largely to Germany. I hope now, in the fullness of his artistic maturity, that he might edit that practice a bit so that the U.S. can see just what an artist he is. He has danced in the U.S., I think, just four times. The most recent was the 1996 Olympics when he represented Germany; in 1994 as a supporting partner at the Jackson Competition; in 1993 at the World Dance Congress in San Francisco; and some time earlier when he studied with Mikhail Baryshnikov during the latter's artistic directorship of American Ballet Theatre.
  13. Alexandra: I can well understand your not knowing about the German choreographers I mentioned. THe Paluccaschule has been outshone by the Jooss establishment in Essen and by Wigman's later students. Gert Palucca was one of the early ones. I am certain there was "modern" training in that Dresden school, but Dietmar Seyffert went into the Staatsoper upon graduation, and he hired Mario Schroeder into a company which did the classics as well as Seyffert's own modern works. Tom Schilling was, for a number of years, the artistic director of the ballet company at the Komische Oper. He also choreographed an extremely interesting pas de deux called "Match" which I saw at a Jackson International Ballet Competition. It had been a choreographic prize winner at another Eastern European competition. Dietmar Seyffert has created several Competition prize-winning pas de deux - the most recent, I think, is Back Home - at the 1994 Jackson Competition and also at Varna - but also Love Song and The Lady and Her Fool. Most of this information I have garnered from conversations with Dietmar Seyffert and the one visit which Enno Morkwort made to San Francisco. But, just as Kurt Joss had an expressive company which enjoyed a classical foundation, so also I think the Paluccaschule and these dancers turned choreographers are thoroughly imbued with the ideal of the dramatic and expressive capacities of dance with a classical foundation. Enno Morkwort, a classmate of Seyffert, is now the artistic director of the Paluccaschule. He previously was in charge of the bureau which channeled dancers' dossiers to various opera houses in Germany, and before Uwe Scholz directed the Leipzig ballet ensemble after Dietmar Seyffert started his choreographic course in Berlin. I did see Mario Schroeder in rehearsal in Leipzig and then in San Francisco and felt there was nothing lacking classically, if not presented in a classical ballet.
  14. At the Jackson Competition there was mention by Anne Marie Holmes that she would be mounting a new production of "Raymonda" for the Finnish National Ballet, and later would accomplish the same task with Boston Ballet. This is a natural tie in for the new Artistic Director of Boston is the Finnish born Mikko Nissenen.
  15. I noticed Schroeder's name as creating a new ballet for one of the Berlin companies. It makes me wish we had the opportunity to see more German choreographers. I was introduced to Mario by Dietmar Seyffert, who hired him for the Leipzig Grand Opera Ballet, after Schroeder's graduation from the Paluccaschule in Dresden. Schroeder was still with Leipzig when Uwe Scholz brought an ensemble to the 1995 United We Dance Festival which San Francisco Ballet hosted in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the United Nations charter. Dietmar Seyffert mentioned at the 1996 cultural Olympics in Atlanta that Mario Schroeder has been one of his choreography students at the Hohlschule Ernst Busch in Berlin. Dietmar gathered the fingers of one hand together and blew a kiss over Schroeder's choreography. Schroeder subsequently has headed the ballet ensemble of one of the smaller Opera houses in Germany, name not remembered. I might also add that Dietmar Seyffert observed that virtually all the significant choreographers in former East Germany,including Tom Schilling, Seyffert, Enno Morkwort,and Schroeder, had gone through the Paluccaschule. Apparently Gert Palucca was a singularly inspiring teacher for nascent choreographers.
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