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Ari

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Posts posted by Ari

  1. I find that I have to start the applause and the audience then often wait for me!

    This reminds me of the eternal Episodes problem. The first part of the ballet is "abstract" dance to atonal music, and the audience invariably sits through it in baffled silence. They have no clue as to when it ends, so there has to be someone in the house who's a ballet veteran, and a fearless one, who is willing to clap decisively at the proper moment. Then the rest of the audience will follow.

    Of course, the opposite problem also occurs. In Liebeslieder Waltzes, despite the fact that the program clearly states that the ballet is in two parts and that the curtain will be lowered between them, many members of the audiences applaud insistently after the first part, expecting the dancers to come out to bow. The last time I saw it, a woman in the fourth ring continued to clap loudly after everyone else had given up, so that I had to whisper to her, "Ma'am, they're not coming out. This is just a pause." She raised her eyebrows but stopped clapping.

  2. Nanatchka, we must be talking about different performances. I've never heard your story before. At the performance I saw in which Kyra Nichols danced Lilac and was replaced by Sherri LeBlanc, Margaret Tracey danced Aurora--all the way through.

  3. Giannina's mention of an ABT video jogged my memory of a Bolshoi video of The Nutcracker that started with, I believe, Maximova and Vassilyev, and ended with Pavlova and Gordeyev. I think it's still being sold.

    I've always suspected that the Bolshoi did this in order to show off more of their stars.

  4. A few years ago during an NYCB performance of The Sleeping Beauty, Kyra Nichols, who was dancing the Lilac Fairy, sprained her ankle during the Vision Scene and was replaced after the intermission by Sherri LeBlanc. (Lilac's wedding scene variation was cut.) In this case, too, no announcement was made, although a non-balletomane acquaintance of mine who was at that performance said to me the next day, "That wasn't the same one, was it?"

    I've always wondered how Sherri got through the act with such ease, considering the fact that she'd never learned the role before.

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