sandik

Did anyone get to see Olympic Ballet Theater this last weekend -- Vinson was scheduled to dance a SL act 2 with Oleg Gorboulev. I was going to go, but life got lifelike.

Week two casting is up, at the same address.

I have some fond memories of the old version of McCaw Hall (back then just called the plain old Opera House), but they are mostly fueled by what I saw rather than the attributes of the house itself. More Seattle thoughts. Meany Theater at the University of Washington is an excellent dance hall -- stage is wide with clean sightlines, nice open proscenium, not so deep that the upstage corners are in the shade. Not a big orchestra pit, but enough for a fair sized ensemble, and it's continental seating (no middle aisle) which can make for a lot of knees to trip on if you're late getting to your seat and you're in the middle of the row. But it means they don't lose those views, which is a deal I'm willing to make. I've seen a couple of smaller ballet companies there (Ohio B, back in the Heinz Poll days for one) and they look just fine. The Paramount Theater is one of the old vaudeville houses, in the older 'narrow with a couple of deep balconies' style, and the seats are pretty crunchy, but the sightlines are good once you get a few rows back, and the plasterwork around the proscenium is lovely and curly. The Cubans performed here a couple times, and their Giselle looked right at home. The Bolshoi's been as well, but the stage was too small for their Romeo -- very cramped looking. I was afraid during the brawling scenes that the corps guys would fly off the stage into the audience.

What a nice essay -- many thanks for the link.

Oh, Brown was along for the whole ride -- this should be fascinating. Can't remember where I found this quote from her, but it sits on my computer monitor. In reference to the Cunningham company's early performances in art galleries: "We thought, 'Let's not say no, let's say yes.'"

The first week is posted here casting week one! and Miranda Weese is listed, as the sleepwalker in Sonambula Three casts thus for for Sonambula, two for Rassemblement and Polyphonia. Did Carla Körbes perform in Polyphonia in NYC?

or that Ross, too, was a ballet dancer before he was a movie maker. Ross was also a choreographer, which I like to think influenced his work as a director.

Robert Joffrey was very particular about the visual component of these restagings -- his eye for costume and set detail was fierce.

Thanks for the link -- I'd lost track of that particular conversation.

My travel story sits somewhere in the middle -- longer than an hour getting out of the parking garage, but shorter than Leigh's travails. I was thrilled with the program as a whole, and loved big parts of each of the works performed. I'm trying to write a full review, but my Cliff Notes version is the same as Leigh's -- absolutely worth the trip to see it!

I always thought that there was a bit of visual punning going on at that point in the ballet, between "Presages" and its near homonym, "pressage". Ouch!

It's possible that, considering the depth of insider knowledge that the rest of the Times' dance writers have, bringing in a relative outsider to the NYC dance community could be a form of balancing the points of view.

Thank you so much for the update -- I'm not a cold weather girl, so I've been fretting about logistics. I'm really looking forward to this!

There's a typo in the above listing -- the Newberry site is here: Ann Barzel

Oh ouch!

Thanks so much for the heads-up -- I missed this when it was first broadcast.

This is worth looking for -- the interviews with the four of them are quite lovely -- particularly Alonso and Fracci.

This is an intriguing puzzle. Does anyone have a suggestion? It sounds early to me -- maybe The Lord of Burleigh?

PNB has an archivist on their staff list, and they've been collecting materials for several years, although I don't know how accessible those materials are to the general public. The company commissioned a history for their 25th anniversary that includes lists of repertory and dancers, but there's been nothing since then. They've got a list of "active" repertory on their website, but it's not clear to me what that actually means. I don't mean to sound grumpy, though -- this is much more that many other organizations have.

As a dance critic and occasional historian, it's a continuing frustration to deal with the lack of documentation in the field. People don't keep track of casting, repertory, choreographers (guest and otherwise), commissions, stagers, teachers, guests -- the whole collection of elements that go into the history of an organization. When I, a private individual with a basement, have a better collection of programs and press releases than a dance company does, something is seriously awry. My local ballet company has, over time, done well and less well with these things -- other local ensembles (and presenters) often take our recycling ethos much to far with their own records and archives. Thanks for letting me vent -- I feel much better now.

sshh -- you don't want everyone moving here, or the viaduct will be even more crowded than it already is. I think you've made some very cogent observations about Pantastico's dancing -- she is indeed more an Aurora than an O/O (I thought she was a super Aurora last spring), but she's made a great deal of headway in the role since she first performed it in 2003. And Yin was very convincing -- he worked the relationship with his mother extremely well. I saw the matinee today (Nakamura and Postelwaite) and was gobsmacked -- Nakamura has really developed her Odette since I saw her in 03, and Postelwaite made a fabulous Siegfried (this is, I think, his debut in the role) And Kiyon Gaines was dynamite in the czardas. He pounced on every downbeat. It's very interesting to see this production again -- I've changed my mind about some of my first impressions, and noticed things that I think I overlooked before. I've seen Nadeau, Pantastico and Nakamura so far, and will see Korbes and Barker next week -- by that time I expect to be humming the score in my sleep!

Thanks so much for posting about your experiences at rehearsal. Sellen is indeed a very large general contractor -- I cannot remember if they were the general for the McCaw Hall job, but they've certainly done many big projects in town. (my partner used to work in construction, and is now a city plans reviewer for construction projects for the Fire Marshall, so I've been around that world for a long time) In my experience, first-time audiences are gobsmacked by ballet, particularly the physical challenge of it. All those floaty-fairy stereotypes get wiped by the actual thing. I saw Körbes do a smidge of the ballet in the gala last September, but am really looking forward to seeing her perform the whole thing in context -- there's something odd about the 2nd act pas de deux without the rest of the corps there. Oftentimes, someone doing a program-length work won't rehearse the day before they perform -- it's very draining, and they're shepherding their best energy for the performance. But you've also caught another element that goes into these decisions, the person with the least amount of experience in the role will get the most stage rehearsal time and this time around that would be Körbes. I saw Louise Nadeau last night, and will have more to say later, but the short report is that her arms are as amazing as ever.

Another person saying thanks for this distinction. I've been mulling this over as the thread has progressed, and I think one of the difficulties that people are having is based in the physical nature of the art form. Some literary critics seek clues in the life of the author that might illuminate the book, and clues in the book that might illuminate the life of the author. But this is certainly not the only way to approach the book, or the author. In dance, the two elements are housed in the same body, and our responses to the work are felt in our own bodies -- it gets very personal very fast, and it's tricky to detach what they do from who they are, and both of those from how we feel about it. When I write about dance I have to perform this parlor trick, and it can be quite difficult, especially in modern dances where the tradition of personal expression makes you assume that all works are designed to be revelatory.

Even if he'd never written a note of music used for dancing, his contributions to the Spoleto Festival would make him central to the art form. Between this and Glen Tetley and Molly Ivins (I know, an oddball combination) it's been a sad week.

I'm not sure that this is true, but it certainly rings along with some current changes in ticketing. Locally, single ticket sales at PNB are apparently up, and although I don't know that it's a direct correlation to a demographic shift in the audience, I do know that they've really been targeting younger people. Sounds like a chance for a research paper for an enterprising non-profit MBA type!