sandik

Your lips to the gods' ears!

Since that's how he made most everything, I usually just turn the sound off on the television when I watch a video. For those who have been following the company for a long time, this methodical demonstration of possible combinations seems a bit obvious, but watching the dice tossed on Saturday night made it easier for my son, who is not familiar with Cunningham's processes (expect what I've babbled on about!) to see how the operations operate.

I like Blast-Ended Screwt -- it expresses what so many people feel about technical troubles.

Thanks so much for the help -- that seems to be the trick.

I envy you Antic Meet and Sounddance! Julie C wasn't performing here, but it looks like everyone else has been here.

I think I've found a glitch, or perhaps this is just the way it has to work now. When I used the "link" function to link to another website (in a posting on the PNB lec-dem) there wasn't a box to let me label the link something other than its actual url. What did I do wrong?

The best part about waiting until Helene has posted something about an event (here) is that I can just wave my hands enthusiastically and say "yes!!" I think we all understand that there has been a certain amount of adjustment over time as these canonical works have been staged and staged again, but I was gobsmacked at how much change there was even in a fairly short amount of time. The side by side Florines only represent a few years and a handful of different stagings (original to Sergeyev with the Royal Ballet, and then from the Royal to Ronald Hynd at ENB and then to PNB) but they were vastly different -- in timing, in vocabulary, in the level of virtuoso material -- it was astonishing. Doug F said that they've been invited to do this program at the Guggenheim next spring, and it is likely to be web-broadcast (as their Giselle lec-dem was last year) I will keep a lookout for more information on that -- I am looking forward to seeing this presentation again, and think that many followers of this website would be fascinated by it.

A local art house ran the DW Griffiths film this week. I'd seen it before on video, but this was the first time I'd seen it on a full screen. Part of my curiosity about it is dancey -- as I understand it, Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn staged the dance scenes in the Babylonian section, and it was even more over the top on a large screen. Lots of crowds surging across the screen, lots of "exotic" poses and watered-down world dance. Silent film directors liked to work with dancers at the time, rather than actors who had learned most of their craft on stage. Dancers were more physically subtle, and more in control of small gestures. As people began to develop workable skills for screen acting, they took a lot of material from dance training.

The company is here in Seattle this weekend -- I'm between performances right now. They performed XOVER, Quartet and BIPED on Thursday and the audience was very warm. It was pure pleasure to see the company -- they have always danced with great integrity in my experience, but of course these performances are very fraught, so I can't really give a very objective report. All i can say is to repeat a friends observation -- In general, Cunningham didn't assign meanings to his work, but Biped could certainly be an example of paradise. More tonight, including Rain Forest. The last time I saw that work live, one of the Warhol pillows floated out into the audience, and hovered over us for the rest of the performance. I'll be looking up again tonight.

It will take me awhile to click around on the changes -- I'm a slowpoke -- but many thanks for all the work you've been putting into board development and maintenance. Without your efforts, we would all be in our individual showers, talking vehemently to ourselves.

The Swan Lake excerpt certainly has a familiar feel. May I ask what animation software you're using?

Fiddlesticks! I thoroughly enjoyed the two of them in the last rep, especially in Wheeldon's Carousel.

Before Marley floor, yes, but often large productions would have groundcloths, sometimes decorated as a part of the overall scenic design, but pragmatically to keep people from getting splinters.

I started rolling my eyes, but I have to say I appreciate the fact that they edited the photos to work with the score, and they played almost the entire section, rather that cutting things off in mid-phrase or endlessly looping a part of the work! Of course, the dialogue balloons don't help at all.

Absolutely -- it's a gigantic job, full of pitfalls.

The general assumption is that the NYCB contracts with their various unions makes film and video projects too expensive to be commercially viable -- the archive films that go into the the various collections fall under a different set of copyright rules because they are not for commercial distribution and so probably skate under some of the contract language. The part of this puzzle I find the most frustrating is that since most of the available video of the company and the repertory is at least 20 years old, the image that people outside the current NYCB audience have of the group is of that older version. One of the myriad things that film and video can do in the current world is help create and reinforce the general perception of your ensemble -- when I show students my old videos of Balanchine's works, with dancers who have long since retired, it looks like NYCB is a historical artifact, not a living entity.

And the company is unusual enough that this kind of simultaneous feed doesn't feel as radical as it might if this were another group. It occurs to me that, while there's usually a blackout on television broadcast of sports events in the same city where they're happening, if the game sells out sometimes they lift the ban -- they're already got as many people into the arena as they're going to get, why not get some broadcast visibility as well (not to mention the ad revenue)

Over on Arts Journal, they've got a short clip of Soloviev in Corsaire excerpts. Black and white and grainy, but very lovely. here

They of the much-discussed "Aboriginal Dance" costume with war paint and foliage. That couple? Wow! Skating may be a tiny world, but dance is pretty damn small too. And yes, the trailer is quite hot.

Mine came last week, but I haven't had time to watch it yet -- they're using that overhead shot again? I thought it was pretty silly in that triple bill program that was making the film festival rounds a couple years ago (Firebird, Sacre and one other I can't remember off the top of my head) -- the effect was interesting in Sacre, where floor patterns mean something, but just a gimmick in the other works. June Taylor Dancers!

If you haven't already seen Helene's report on the recent PNB lec-dem on changes pre and post Petipa, you might want to take a look here Doug Fullington did a stellar job of collecting and framing examples of reconstructions from old notation scores of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, and comparing them to contemporary productions of those works. The evening was very illuminating, but my particular favorite was the side-by-side Princess Florine example, with Sarah Ricard Orza and Rachel Foster performing the woman's solo from the Bluebird pas de deux, Orza dancing the original choreography and Foster dancing the Ronald Hynd/English National Ballet staging. The thing that was the most thrilling, as Helene points out, is that both versions are theatrically satisfying, and I think her observation is an important one for the conversation here. The older versions of these foundational works are not only museum pieces, they are legitimate theater.

I'm afraid I don't know this group -- where are they based, and where did you see them?

You tell me these things just to get me all wound up! Oregon Ballet Theater did Facade a few years ago, not long after Christopher Stowell came in as AD. It was a charming piece of work. It's possible to see this stuff, but it takes a much bigger travel budget than I have access to.

These dancers might be too young to have seen Tallchief in person, but their coaches are not. There's a chunk of film out there right now that would be a big help as well.

I haven't really been following along with the new Footloose, so I haven't seen any footage. This does look like fun, although I thought the editing was a bit jumpy. (but trailers are always really punchy) I'll be very curious to see what this new version does with the whole "learning to dance" montage, which I thought was particularly effective in the original film. I'm wondering if this will spark another surge in country line dancing, like Urban Cowboy did previously.