Nijinsky Awards 2002, Monte Carlo

[Kevin Ng]

This year's Nijinsky Awards will be held in Monte Carlo from 10-14 December 2002. There are four categories - best male dancer, best female dancer, best emerging choreographer, and best production. The final list in each category, based on the nominations in May by the members of the jury from all over the world, are on the website of the Nijinsky Prix. Members of the public can vote as well.

http://www.mddf.com/poll/polls/fr_FR/

Female Dancer - Diana Vishneva, Alina Cojocaru, Tamara Rojo, Nina Ananiashvili, Aurelie Dupont, and Lucia Lacarra. (Sylvie Guillem was the winner last time in 2000.)

Male Dancer - Nicolas Le Riche, Carlos Acosta, Julio Bocca, Vladimir Malakhov, Dominique Mercy (Wuppertal Theater).

Christopher Wheeldon is a nominee for the category of emerging choreographer.

[Natalia]

Thanks for posting this, Kevin. That's quite a who's-who listing of today's ballet royalty, among the Best Female & Male principal nominees! I'm just sorry to see that no ballet-competition winners have been included. Just kidding...every one of the nominees won a major IBC-style competition medal in his/her youth. [Not that all competition winners grow up to become great principals in top companies, of course.]

The Royal Ballet is very well represented on that list, too. NYCB is represented in the 'emerging choreographer' category (Wheeldon).

Too bad that the ceremonies won't be televised, a-la-Oscars and Tonys. I'm sure that the 'fashions' worn by Nijinsky nominees will be an improvement over those worn by celebs attending those gawd-awful MTV Awards!

[Kevin Ng]

Thanks Jeannie. I heard that the Nijinsky Prix ceremony on 14 December will be broadcast live on the French TV channel Mezzo.

[Natalia]

That's great news, Kevin. I'll be sure to correspond with my French Video Connection about this!!

[Lovebird]

Lucia Lacarra has not won any IBC prize.

[Kevin Ng]

The voting section for members of the public is now in English, as well as in French.

http://www.mddf.com/poll/polls/en_GB/

[Kevin Ng]

Here is the list of the winners announced at the ceremony last Saturday evening:

Female Dancer: Lucia Lacarra

Male Dancer: Vladimir Malakhov

Choreographer: William Forsythe

Choreographic Production: La Belle, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, Jean-Christophe Maillot

Emerging Choreograper: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

[Petra]

I watched the live broadcast. It was quite an entertaining and unusual awards ceremony, very different from the usual Oscars-based model. First of all, it was short and sweet, less than an hour and a half long. Also, many of the speakers, both those presenting the prizes and those accepting seemed to have come unprepared and it sounded like they were making the speech up as they went along. There was no one ceremony language - some spoke in French, some spoke in English and some in both!! It was all very informal in a glamorous kind of way - with Richard Cragun coming on stage halfway through Marcia Haydee's speech. An excellent homage to Nijinsky was a clip to the music of 'L'Apres midi d'un Faune' showing the ballet but with different interpreters through the ages, from Nijinsky through Lifar to Nureyev to Charles Jude, including Charlie Chaplin !! (I would love to know what movie that's from?)

The only disappointment was that there was no ballet dancing - the danced interludes were all danced by Savion Glover and his company, tapping their way through Stravinsky to Kurt Cobain.

[Mel Johnson]

The Chaplin version of the pastorale was called "Sunnyside" and was a tribute to both Nijinsky and Pavlova. It was produced by First National, the same company that did "The Kid" and "The Pilgrim".

W.C. Fields used to refer to Chaplin as "that damned ballet dancer!";)

[Petra]

Thanks. I'll try and find it on video.