sandik

I'm glad to see he's still in the business, but sorry that he isn't here. And yes, I was so sorry to see Rachel Butler leave. I remember watching her in rehearsal when the company was first learning Sleeping Beauty, and thinking "I'll have fun watching her progress." Alas.

Oh, now that has real potential!

Did anyone here go to this? Signed, curious

I too was disheartened by the paper buying out Dunning's contract. But I am also concerned by the loss of the assignment editor. As a freelance writer, in a town where most dance writing is done by freelancers, I know that a large chunk of my time is taken up by "pitching" work to my editor -- convicing the paper that an event is worth covering. With a dance and classical music specific assignments person gone, decisions about coverage might be made by someone less informed about the beat.

And what is it about Canfield's work that spoke to you -- since you mention him a couple of times, he seems to have made an impression. I only get to see OBT once or twice a year, but given that situation, I think the company has really been growing over the last few years. They've been convincing in existing rep, especially Balanchine, and committed to the new stuff I've seen them in. I particularly liked the Kudelka "Almost Mozart" -- it made the company look very sophisticated and free. I'm still kicking myself that I missed the Forsythe last autumn. Programming for a resident company with a subscription audience is indeed a tricky business. You're right to think that your renewal is like a vote for an incumbent -- you wouldn't come back if you really hated it. But part of what you come back for are the performers, not the repertory. Looking at the company from the outside, it seems that Stowell has worked hard to balance his offerings -- they are almost always doing something that I really want to see. I've been happy to haul myself down to Portland for their work.

Damn, damn, damn. This makes me even more grateful to George Dorris and Jack Anderson, for finding a new pair of editors to carry on with Dance Chronicle, but I'm so sad to know that my subscription list will be smaller next year.

You know -- Sigmund Romberg. Tudor was moonlighting, doing choreography for operettas -- Desert Song, The Student Prince. I understand he made a couple very nice duets for Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in New Moon. (removes tongue from cheek)

It's not ballet, but John Muller, whose book on Astaire and Rogers goes into great detail about the choreography, recorded a commentary track for Swing Time, as well as appearing in an interview in another part of the special features menu. I'm not sure if the DVD is available separately, but it's part of a box set that also includes Top at, Follow the Fleet, Shall We Dance, and The Barkleys of Broadway.

I would certainly recommend them, though I haven't seen them too recently. but colleagues in the Bay Area have been quite pleased with the work.

Oh, I really recommend this one, especially for Pauline Koner's performance of the Friend's Wife in Moor's Pavane. Her byplay with the handkerchief is wonderful -- she really has the distinction between quick and just fast as she snaps it up -- she's like a fox. As someone else mentions here, the process of securing the rights to the work and establishing a caretaker for that repertory has been a long and complex one. I certainly agree that the style is comprehensible to ballet trained dancers (though I've seen productions of MP that were much too lightweight) and certainly the narrative quality is very accessible. Coming off a recent Pacific Northwest Ballet program with Forsythe's table dance I see nothing in the Limon rep that might be off-putting to a ballet audience.

I'm sad as well -- it's been a blast to watch Pantastico's career develop, and I will miss the next stages.

It's the traditional contract time, and the company has announced several changes for the 08-09 season. Probably the biggest one is that Noelani Pactastico will be leaving for the Monte Carlo company. She's been with PNB for about 10 years, and feels that if she's going to make a change, she should do it while she still has a significant amount of career time left. Three dancers are leaving the corps: Rebecca Johnston (at PNB since 98) completed a college degree through PNB’s Second Stage program and is thinking of grad school. Brittany Reid is retiring, and Kara Zimmerman is going to Cincinnati Ballet as a soloist. On the hiring side of things, William Lin-Yee will be joining the corps. He was with City Ballet 2005-07, and is originally from the Bay Area. The company is also bringing on several apprentices, including Sean Rollofson, who was a bug in their film of Midsummer Night's Dream...

The company was in Seattle last weekend, with three different programs. They are emphasizing the 50th anniversary year (including a touching short film at the beginning of the evening) so it feels right to look at the development of the ensemble. Even though Ailey's name is over the door, he considered it a repertory company, and Judith Jamison has certainly maintained that direction. The Friday night program reflected his aesthetic (physical and dramatic virtuosity) even though half the work is new to the company. Maurice Bejart has always had an odd reputation in the US -- when his company toured here in the 1970s they regularly attracted the same kind of mixed response that Boris Eifman has more recently -- some people loved his combination of dramatic hyperbole and sensual ballet-based movement, and some people thought it was dreck. His "Firebird" is over 30 years old now, and what at its premiere might have been radical (casting a pair of men in the title role, shifting the ensemble from a group of Russian maidens to what looks like a cadre of Maoist revolutionaries) no longer feels edgy, but as an example of its time and maker, the ballet works quite well. The Ailey dancers respect the dramatic moments (the circle where each dancer touches hands with the person to their left could have been a maudlin reenactment of 1960s hippie culture in other, less sincere productions) and offer their considerable technique to its sexy virtuosity, so that despite some hit-you-over-the-head symbolism, I was very happy to see it. The main message is that Twyla Tharp should have the Ailey company perform all her work, especially the big ensemble things where the dancers are moving at the speed of light. They looked like the gods they are in "The Golden Section," caroming across the space, head and feet flashing in complicated patterns, multiple games playing out at every moment. Tharp's choreography is the kinetic version of multi-tasking, and the Ailey dancers make it look like a walk in the park, as long as that walk is in the air and up the wall. I get the same feeling of ecstasy from this kind of work that most people get from the Ailey classic Revelations -- for me, this is the secular substitute -- and this gives the program an interesting double climax. Tharp's work was an ascension to an abstract heaven at the end of the first half, while Revelations is the more dramatically specific version at the end of the second. This was my first time seeing Ailey's "Reflections in D" and, programmed right before "Revelations," it was a little glossary of his style as it stood in 1962. It's obviously a showcase solo (Antonio Douthit, the night I saw it) but the structural integrity keeps it from being self-indulgent. The connection to Lester Horton's technique is very clear, especially in the torso. It's easy to assume that the torque in the center of the body comes from the Graham school, but as I understand it, Ailey brought that to NY with him from his years in Los Angeles working with Horton. "Reflections" is full of the extended twisting that is integral to the sculptural look of Ailey, in soloist shapes and especially in partnering. What could have been a charming wander through the Duke Elllington score in less deft hands was a compact exploration of style. By this point I imagine that the company ends all of its touring programs with "Revelations" (it's heavily featured in the anniversary film as well), and its power doesn't seem to be diminished after all this time. There were several photos from what looked like the original production in the film, and it's fascinating to contrast them with the current version. In 1960, "Revelations" was a more intimate work, with a small cast standing in for a whole congregation -- now, the congregation is all on stage. But it still works like a Swiss clock, linking piety and a deep plie so that physical exhilaration is also spiritual cleansing. And in the audience we still all rise at the end, so that we can clap and sway during the encore, all of us one big dance company.

I couldn't let this go by Karsavina! Lilac Garden or Dark Elegies?

You can read both Tobi Tobias and Elizabeth Zimmer, as well as Apollinaire Scherr, on ArtsJournal. Blogging is not the same as print criticism, but it has its charms, and all three writers manage to take advantage of them. Elizabeth Zimmer is Stage Write Tobi Tobias is Seeing Things And Apollinaire Scherr is Foot in Mouth

Good questions, all of them. I think the answers are intertwined -- Tudor was affiliated with ABT for many years, as well as teaching at the Met and Julliard, but he made relatively few ballets, so the raw materials for an extensive retrospective are thinner than they might be for other choreographers. His contributions to the field were as much in the studio as they were on the stage. As beautiful as they are, his works never made up the majority backbone of a company rep as Balanchine and Ashton did. I don't really think that his style is out-of-sync with contemporary tastes -- every time I've seen one of his works performed it seemed to make a big connection to the audience. And he's certainly on the wish list of most critics I know. I don't know about the financial aspect of things -- does anyone here have any information about the fees the estate charges for staging? (I know that kind of information is held pretty closely by most companies -- I'm not asking for deep secrets to be revealed)

Casting for the first week is up on the website PNB Midsummer Carrie Imler is back, as both Titania and Hippolyta, and there are several debuts -- lots to look forward to! There's two weeks of Midsummer, and then a week of the comedy festival, so April is very, very full.

NYT on firing She has been invited to contribute as a freelancer, but they will no longer have a staff position.

I lead a reading group of 6th graders at my son's school, and so have been rereading old favorites as well as some new 'young adult' stuff -- it's been great! Right now, though, I'm almost finished with Nick Hornby's "The Polysyllabic Spree" -- it's list of what he bought and what he actually read for a year, with some very snarky comments. We probably all know the difference between what we flirt with in the bookshops and what we commit to when we sit down to read -- he's very funny about it all. I think that it's an anthology of his stuff from The Believer (I don't read it, so can't say for sure).

I've been thinking about Austen lately, in part because of the series they're running on PBS. I agree, Persuasion is very different than her other works, and Anne is probably her most interesting character. I had very mixed feelings about the new film, but that's a discussion for a different venue. Have you read the 'completed' version of Sanditon -- came out in the 1970s? The style eventually breaks down, and the ending is too sweet for the beginning, but it was hard to tell where the authorship changed -- the "Other Lady" did a very credible job with it.

It feels a bit self-serving, but I reviewed the show here (please note I don't write the headlines) (and yes, I screwed up the number of tables in the Forsythe) I'm afraid I disagree with julip about Sense of Doubt. When I first saw the ballet, I got a very strong feeling of film noir from it, in part from the suspenseful nature of the score and the ominous quality of the lighting, but I think it's also integral to the movement. The opening run, as the two dancers look over their shoulder at whatever they're running away from, sets up a menacing tone that follows along throughout the work -- although it would be a fascinating exercise to swap scores and have this danced to something baroque and upbeat, I don't think that it is without meaning in its original staging. I saw two casts, and liked parts of both of them. Of the two couples, I did think that Imler and Herd gave a more nuanced performance, just through the sense that they seemed to be aware of their movement options and to make specific choices about how they would do things. It's nice to see Imler onstage (I missed her presence during all the Romeos). She often strikes me as a very independent dancer, even in a duet with extensive partnering. I wish that I could see her in the Agon pas de deux -- the moment where the two dancers approach each other at the beginning of the duet, almost like boxers coming out of their corners to touch gloves before a fight, has a very egalitarian feeling, and I can imagine her there. I don't mean to imply that Dec and Cruz were lightweights, but just that they are at different points in their development, and so we see different things in their dancing. Cruz really seems to have made a big change recently, maybe because of his work in R&J. In the past he's seemed just a bit hesitant to step up into the soloist roles -- a bit diffident. Here he was fully present in the part. I did have one tangential concern about the program as a whole -- the first three dances were all staged with dark curtains, black or dark brown costumes and an emphasis on side light (rather than light from the front of the stage) -- by the end of Vespers my eyes felt really strained. There were many things about the Forsythe that felt bracing, and the white environment and bright lighting really enhanced them!

I'm not sure where he is now -- I know he was having knee troubles prior to Boal's first season (he danced a very witty Duo Concertant in an early program that year), but the company didn't make an official announcement about his leaving. I've Googled him a couple of times, but haven't seen any references to his post-PNB work.

Money's book was especially useful when I was teaching dance history, and preparing lectures on that period. Although the photos alone would have tempted me to buy it, the quality and the amount of the scholarship make it so much more.

The company has released a note from AD Peter Boal that Herd is leaving the company at the end of the season, and is going to the Dutch National company. He was a guest artist there last autumn, and has been 'asked back' for a permanent position. This is the first time someone has left the company for another gig (as opposed to retirement) since Boal took over the directorship -- I don't know whether to read anything into that or not.

First week casting is posted on the website pnb casting Three casts for the Liang, and some doubling for the Gibson and the Dove, but not much variation for the Forsythe. It looks like the biggest shift in casting (compared to opening night) comes on the Saturday matinee, in case you're thinking strategically...