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Mathilde Froustey


pherank

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Is this significant?: Two of Mlle Froustey's facebook pages state:

"Principal dancer of San Francisco Ballet

Past: Opera national de Paris"

and identify her as living in San Francisco.

I don't think so, Josette - that statement has been up there for a while (in Web time). And of course she does live in SF during the season.

I like the fact that she participated in the farewell performance for Smith and Cintas, rather than jetting back to Paris as she could have done here at the end of the season. She seems to be in Hawaii (Maui) now, judging from her Instagram page.

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Mathilde Froustey has announced that she will stay in San Francisco for the next season on her twitter and facebook.

https://twitter.com/MFroustey/status/480394254284374017

Thanks for the heads up, Naomikage. In the last few weeks it has looked like she had made her decision - she has been preparing with the company for the summer tour.

I'm sure it was a difficult decision for her, with no perfect solutions, but I'm glad to see she will stay put for a while. I'm happy to have a completely Paris-trained dancer at SFB. What I wonder is if she was able to work out anything with POB that would allow her to dance with them on tours, or for guest performances. I know that would make Ms. F. happy.

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Oh, good! So happy to have this confirmed at last! Mlle Froustey will have her Giselle, Juliet, Kitri, and Serenade without any more alternating between principal and corps as she had at POB. Thank you so much for the news, Naomikage. And to the person on Dansomanie who made the comment about American junk food in a posting about Mlle Froustey, please contact me when you come to San Francisco, which has fantastic restaurants (and, yes, I've lived in Paris).

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Oh, good! So happy to have this confirmed at last! Mlle Froustey will have her Giselle, Juliet, Kitri, and Serenade without any more alternating between principal and corps as she had at POB. Thank you so much for the news, Naomikage. And to the person on Dansomanie who made the comment about American junk food in a posting about Mlle Froustey, please contact me when you come to San Francisco, which has fantastic restaurants (and, yes, I've lived in Paris).

Oh yes, SF is a "foodie" heaven. ;) Perhaps Ms. F. decided she could get enough decent foie gras and pate to keep her happy.

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For me that was totally predictable from the very beginning.

Having found that in spite of several étoiles retired her promotion to étoile was no more realistic now than a year ago, staying with one of the top US companies where she has been taken such a good care of is practically the only option for the ambitious ballerina at the height of her career.

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Whatever the reasons, I’m just glad she’s staying. The inevitability of senior ballerinas retiring in the next few years makes a dancer like Froustey (and Messmer, had she remained) a valuable addition - assuming she stays beyond 2015, of course. She isn't perfect, but for me her qualities outweigh her deficiencies, and she seems to fit well into the company and the varied styles it dances (I'd be really curious to see her in something by, for instance, Wayne McGregor).

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Another year with SFB will be a great expereince for Froustey, no matter what happense afterwards. She'll need to get used to the Principal's grind: it's a lot of work.

Interestingly, I've seen no official announcement about Messmer, and she remains on the SFB website as a soloist. Aside from one performance review mentioning that she would leave, there's been no word from SFB, Messmer or anyone else for that matter. It's possible she just needs a vacation to sort things out - and SFB is giving that to her. But will she appear at all on the summer tour?

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Not much can be inferred, I am afraid, from the fact that Messmer's name reappeared on the SFB site: a number of other dancers who we know will not be dancing next season reappeared as well. That may be simply a publicity move before the Summer tour anticipating that many European ballet goers would be visiting the SFB site to learn more about the company.

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Not much can be inferred, I am afraid, from the fact that Messmer's name reappeared on the SFB site: a number of other dancers who we know will not be dancing next season reappeared as well. That may be simply a publicity move before the Summer tour anticipating that many European ballet goers would be visiting the SFB site to learn more about the company.

Sadly, I have to agree. I’ll believe Messmer will be back when I actually see her on WMOH stage. By contrast, Froustey was on the roster as soon as the 2015 roster was put out, so her return was more or less a sure thing from the start.

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A 2nd long interview with Mathilde by Danses avec la Plume (in French) -

http://www.dansesaveclaplume.com/pas-de-deux/mathilde-froustey-je-reste-au-san-francisco-ballet-au-moins-pour-un-an-de-plus/

For anyone not reading French, it's always possible to use Google Translate to get the gist of things. But I can say that it does go into some detail about her decision to stay one more year at SFB, and her situation with the POB. A very interesting piece.

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An excellent interview. It reveals more than pages and pages of (mostly empty) speculations. Froustey's road to the étoile status at the Opéra remains open but she absolutely must do certain things on her own. So much depends on what she does even though she likes to think it doesn't.

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An excellent interview. It reveals more than pages and pages of (mostly empty) speculations. Froustey's road to the étoile status at the Opéra is still open but she absolutely must do certain things on her own. So much depends on what she does even though she likes to think it doesn't.

Pretty great interview, isn't it?

I'll admit to getting 'assistance' from French speakers to understand it, but there's some really interesting remarks about the differences between life at POB, and SFB; how Tomasson behaves towards Froustey and the other dancers; and the very different pressures put on Principals as compared to Corps or mid-rank dancers at POB (or even SFB). And she makes no bones about SF being a tough town to find affordable living in. (I have to think that is one of the major issues confronting any dancer thinking of relocating to the Bay Area.) I'm acutally kind of shocked that the company makes no provisions to help out foreigners trying to find housing in SF.

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Enjoyed her commentary about some of the other dancers in the company. For example:

“Sara [Van Patten] is a great performer. This is one that will make the audience cry in two seconds. It is the drama, she has eyes and a face that take the light. She was great in Giselle.”

Spot on.

But my favorite comment (courtesy of Google Translate):

“The work [at San Francisco Ballet] is much more intense, I am sometimes completely cooked within two hours.”

It really sounds like she’s feeling a lot of conflict: return to Paris, which she loves,; stay here in San Francisco where she seems to have artistic fulfillment. Hard choices ahead.

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There are only three videos on that YT channel, all three one year old. Of her "relatively" recent videos I know only of her SFB gala Grand pas classique and DQ. Those are a few months old. Has anything else appeared recently?

Hi Mathilde K,

I wasn't actually referring to the one channel but all the various videos that come up in Youtube searches. I can remember when I first heard she was coming to SFB, there was nothing to look at to get a sense of her dancing. The newer videos appear on a certain Chinese website, while the Youtube ones are from past years at the POB.

[EDIT] Here is a fun video - Mathilde Froustey and Emmanuel Thibault in, I'm guessing, La Fille Mal Gardée (a ballet I've never seen myself). Is this Ashton's choreography, or?

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/TM34hzuRScY/

And, another performance, with Froustey and Pierre-Arthur Raveau:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JshJMAnYHHo

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