sandik

In case you were wondering where he went after PNB, he's in Los Angeles now, performing with the new LA Ballet in their Nutcracker (was in Indianapolis in the meantime...) LA Times

So it's the number of posts you still have in the archive, and not the total for your whole time here? I've wondered how this is calculated.

Oh, this is terrible news -- I have to go listen to something.

I clicked US under Locations and Tickets, but can't find a screen that lets me scroll through a list of venues -- what magic did you perform?

I didn't realize that there were changes from opera to opera -- many thanks for pointing this out!

I'm sure that's part of it, but I'm still very curious to know more about how the theaters were selected/volunteered themselves... Does anyone know how we might find out?

Ok, I live in Seattle, which is not New York of San Francisco, but isn't a slouchy opera town. The closest 'theater near me' is in Springfield, Oregon. Not only is that almost 300 miles away, but it's a much smaller town -- does anyone know how they chose the theaters?

Oh, I love that ballet. I do wish that we might get it here -- perhaps this is a good omen.

This has got to be one of most self-defeating practices around. All it does is to encourage people to tape off TV and to make pirated copies, Speaking as a pirate queen (all within Fair Use!) I totally agree. It's only been recently, though, that people seem to have figured this out. There was a certain amount of arts programming that was created with general distribution in mind when laserdisks were developed (my sister still has her player and I've got a couple things that I bought specifically for that) but for some reason, the broadcast people didn't really think in terms of retail sales. Even after PBS began to coin money from selling its Masterpiece Theater and Mystery programming in the 90's, it took them quite awhile to wise up to the possibilities for performing arts. Which left Corinth and Kultur to try and mine European sources for most of their start-up catalogs. I think things are improving right now, at least in terms of historical stuff -- the Bell Telephone and Firestone programs have done pretty well, and I have the impression that the Ballet Russe film is doing quite well in DVD -- perhaps this will leverage more access for the future. The dog work, though, would be to go back and renegotiate rights for the programs they've already got in their vaults. Fortunately, the Balanchine Dance in America shows from the Nashville years seem to be trickling along, but as always, I'm a greedy girl -- I want more! Let's hope that they're paving a road, not striding forward into the wilderness with no one following behind.

This is a perennial topic of discussion around the dance world, and will get even more play as web-based video continues to grow. The difficulty isn't with the broadcaster, but with the original contracts that the artists making the film/video signed off on. Just as an author is paid based on the projected sales/circulation of their writing, the dancers and technicians who work on a dance program are paid based on the intended distribution of the final product. A project in the US for the public broadcast series "Dance in America" will probably be shown on television only two or three times, and then put away. Some of them are available for purchase, but most are not, and in order to change that, the producers would have to go back and have all the original participants sign new contracts to permit the change. A project that was originally intended for a wider distribution, possibly including video sales, will have to say that explicitly in the contract. It's very unfortunate, since it severely limits access to film/video materials, but this is the way that the copyright laws in the US are written.

I'm from Seattle, and we are very wimpy about snow and cold weather!

Thanks Leigh and Carbro for the details -- I don't know Weese well at all, though it looks like I'll get a chance to see more. Peter Boal is committed to bringing guest artists, which is a change for the company and the audience, but I think there will be some interesting performances come out of this. and no, I think Circus Polka wouldn't be a good fit...

From the post in the NYCB thread "Following NYCB's 2007 winter season, Ms. Weese will appear as a guest artist with Pacific Northwest Ballet for the remainder of that company's 2006-2007 season." So what's up, do you think? I wasn't able to see her last year in Ancient Airs -- what is the opinion of people here who did?

Thanks so much for the detailed report on the production -- I appreciate your specificity!

I was flirting wildly with Chicago in February, in part because of Cotillion, but also for Presages and Green Table. One of the most valuable tasks the company performs is to maintain parts of the Ballet Russe rep, and though you can argue that Apollo is a part of that heritage, it's so much more available than Cotillion that I am a bit sad about this substitution. Having said that, Apollo is one of the keystones of the ballet rep, and if you haven't seen it yet, hustle on out there and get a ticket.

Golly. The chest plate was pretty impressive too -- was that supposed to be leopard skin? I've read about this production before, but these were the first photos I've seen. I can understand why everyone was talking about the second cast singer who came on in shirt and jeans...

The Wild Boy? The Wild Boy! I thought it was gone forever...

Oh, it is not fair to make me laugh this hard when my back hurts!

Carole Beers, who was the dance writer for the King County Journal, has recently retired -- I don't know Doug Margeson (the byline on this preview) and so can't guess if the error lies with him or with the editing process. I'm quite sure that Milov would not have told someone that he performed with NYCB, though he may have mentioned that company as one of the reasons he came to the US from Bulgaria (I believe that Pittsburgh was directed by Patricia Wilde at the time he danced there, and PNB has always had a very strong connection to NYCB). If Mr Margeson isn't familiar with the dance world, it's an easy, though unfortunate, mistake to make. Especially since the premise of the article is the quality of dance in this suburban ensemble. And yes, I saw that reference to Lauren Anderson and felt so sorry for her.

It sounds like a great program -- I thought that the company would thrive in The Golden Section, and I'm so glad you had the chance to see it. And yes, there's a very high hunk-factor in the company, isn't there...

And here I thought it was December, but obviously it's August wherever Alexandra is!

No kidding about the plastique -- look at all the torque in that Giselle photo, both his body and his costume. That's just stunning.

I seem to remember having part of this conversation (a series of single program concerts through the year v multiple weeks of mix-it-up rep) recently, that time having to do with the differing challenges on the performers. Bart puts his finger on it when he mentions the growth patterns of most dance companies. The first option is far more popular in the US, except for a few groups like NYCB and ABT, that have concentrated seasons where they keep multiple ballets in rehearsal. In Seattle, PNB tried a variation of this several years ago, where they presented two different programs in a performance slot, then presented the same works again in the next slot -- the idea being that subscribers in one group would see "A" first and then "B," while subscribers in the other group would reverse the order. I wasn't a subscriber at that time and so don't know how it was promoted to them, but if I recall correctly it didn't last more than a year. One of the elements that goes into making these choices has to do with the available venue. Frequently ballet shares a theater with opera, as well as other large proscenium groups, and the rhythm of the performances has to match in some fashion. In San Francisco, the opera uses the theater in the autumn, so that SFB opens their non-Nut season in January and runs almost non-stop until late May. In Seattle and Portland, the ballet companies alternate with the opera (and other tenants), so both ballet and opera seasons start in Sept/Oct and last until May/June, with sometimes as much as four weeks between programs (that is, between ballet programs -- if you go to both ballet and opera the turnaround is much quicker). The current assumption about subscribers is that they would rather spread their art events out during the year, rather than a shorter, more intense experience. People will come to festival events (a different show every couple evenings, like a Ring cycle), but anything longer than a week is difficult. PNB is doing a festival in April (focussed on choreographers from the Northwest), essentially bridging the time between two different regular rep programs, and it will be very interesting to see how those performances sell (and to whom). The other part of the equation that Bart mentions is how companies add performances of a rep as they grow. With luck and good marketing, the multiple venue structure could work for this new LA group, as it has for Miami. Generally, the lack of additional venues keeps a company in a single location, and they have to find ways to bring audience to them.

Oftentimes, a 10 block schlep feels longer than a 3 hour plane ride.

It's hard to pry people and dance apart for me -- dance has been organizing my life since I was in my late teens (and I'm 50 now) so many of my friends and colleagues are wrapped up in my dance life. So I'll go to NYC for a dance conference, see performances, talk shop with friends, go to the library -- it's not just travel for a performance, but it's certainly all related. Tangentially, I live in a town where the opera company produces the Ring cycle every four years or so. And those performances are certainly full of people who have travelled specifically to sit in those theater seats for those four nights. Many of them know each other from different Rings in different places -- in some ways it's like a convention!