sandik

Although the practice might change with a new artistic director, casting at PNB has never seemed to be bound by rank distinctions -- corp and soloist dancers often perform "above" their standing.

One of my favorite sections of Karsavina's memoirs is about her time in Italy, studying with a former ballerina from La Scala (I cannot remember the name right now, and can't find the book to double check) who taught from a chair, sometimes eating a leg of chicken. She was known for her strength on point, and was able to impart that wherever she was sitting...

I saw Flatley in a recent arena tour of Lord of the Dance. It was programmed a couple of days after Janet Jackson, in her Velvet Rope show, and I remember thinking that LotD was a very similar kind of event. It made me think of the old court ballets, full of animal performers and special effects, but with the kernals of what has become real ballet inside them. Underneath the paraphernalia of the spectacular, Flatley was still an astonishing performer in a very specific and arcane dance style. I don't know if he's still able to dance at that level, but he was then, and I'd be more than willing to endure the pretentious scenarios and overblown production values to see him try again.

Some very interesting thoughts on the repertory, but in light of the recent hullabaloo with the company and the board, I found this comment very sad: "The current performance standard is superb. After the company’s troubles of the last decade, the fight to regain the rights to perform its own dances, and its legal victory in 2002, these dances feel more precious than ever. That the company has two Graham divas, Teresa Capucilli and Christine Dakin, sharing the title of artistic director is fascinating. And it seems to be working." Not any more, apparently.

This was organized around Diamond's "Rounds" (see other post above) and is well worth listening to the archived piece. They made the point that, as a relatively cheerful piece, it was rather unlike Diamond's other work, and his usual temperament! I'm going to go hunt out my recording of "Rounds" later...

I was intrigued by Rockwell's championing of improvised social dance, as here: "the new popularity of ballroom dancing suggests a possible decline in free-form, solo self-expression on the dance floor. A Bush-era rejection of the dreaded 60's, if you will. To be sure, John Travolta's disco dancing was plenty rehearsed, plenty flashy. But dancing by yourself, opposite a partner but only sketchily interacting with that partner, is a lot easier than learning a real partnered dance, and hence more democratically open if less artistically interesting." I may be reading more into this that exists, but it seems the implication is that there is no freedom of expression in structured dances.

I want to add my thanks all round as well. I was talking with a colleague about a web project we're involved in, and I kept saying "it's just like the links on Ballet Talk" -- taking for granted this extremely useful and entertaining service. This has become a standard part of the day for me, and for many, many other people, and we are all very grateful.

I wasn't able to see this from the beginning, so my experience is limited to last week. On the one hand, I'm fascinated, as I am with all dance, but this is more in line with watching a car wreck than anything else. I've not seen American Idol, which I understand was the model for this show, but the general tone of the comments seem like an in-joke (based on something that everyone else but me knows) and are pretty nasty. The dancing itself is quite interesting -- I have very mixed feelings about competition ballroom dance, but the pro-am nature of this setup leads to some very intriguing comparisons.

I've seen the company on tour since the resolution of the court case, and thought they looked excellent -- very strong, and very much working in the tradition of the style. This new development makes me sad, as much for us and our access to this unique body of work as well as for the company and the school. If nothing else, this is an extremely awkward situation -- I'm stunned that it's come to this with Francis Mason at the head. He is much more skillful than this hullabaloo would lead you to think.

Don't have a cow? I haven't heard that phrase in years! It's a nice site -- many thanks for the link. They've got that old Dance Theater of Harlem program with Lester Horton's Beloved. Such a spooky dance.

tangential "Oughties" I hadn't heard that yet -- I'm still giggling.

http://www.pnb.org/season/silverlining-casting.html There's very little change throughout the week -- the ballet uses everyone in the company, and I imagine it's hard to move people around in it. Only real changes are in the Saturday matinee.

Yes and No. Just looking at the two big ballet companies in NY -- NYCB was, through its various incarnations, primarily a vehicle for Balanchine's work (yes, there was Robbins on and off, yes there were other choreographers both in residence and as guests, but they were tangential to the main thread) ABT started as a rep company, and even when they had significant choreographers in the organization, they stayed a rep company (as I understand it, Feld left, in part, because they would not commit the time and resources to him that he wanted). Joffrey and Arpino made a big chunk of the initial repertory (mostly because you can usually get yourself to work cheap) but the company was concieved of as a multi-choreographer repertory organization (Joffrey apparently was making shopping lists even when he was still a ballet student) This idea of a curated institution is an interesting one -- in the last half of the 20th c, that's the question that got asked of alot of orchestras, as they became increasingly uncomfortable playing the music that was being written at the time. Dance was having a fertile time, so didn't really have to grapple with the issue, but we're certainly there now -- complicated by the difficulties of maintaining dance repertory (and the continued controversies in restagings/revivals) and the relative lack of the big dancemakers we were accustomed to before.

(full disclosure -- I know Jody through my dance history life) Her work is certainly worth the effort -- she has done significant work as a reconstructor and restager of older dances, but she's also done some very interesting work "in the style of," which is a fascinating and delicate place. She's a lovely performer and a very smart woman. I'd recommend her both as a dancer/stager and as a lecturer/teacher.

I don't know Lamy's work well enough to have an opinion about the timing of her retirement, but I imagine that, as the company deals with moving into a larger house and the strains that places on the ensemble, there may be more decisions of that nature for whomever becomes director.

I paged through the company and there were around four or five of dancers that were sponsored by individuals and a couple by family organizations. The rest were split between charitable trusts and foundations, and corporate sponsorship, though there are very few details about how individual dancers were chosen for the different sponsorships. I did think it was rather sweet that several of the corporate sponsors were companies that could easily incorporate dancer sponsorship in their ad campaigns: NZ Van Lines -- World Wide Movers Peugeot NZ Post And then there was Two Paddocks Wines -- wasn't it Balanchine who kept comparing dancers and thoroughbred horese?

Adding my dropped jaw to the collection here -- this seems very rushed to me. Does anyone here remember the process when Kudelka was hired? I don't recall an interim director between Reid Anderson and Kudelka, but it was awhile ago. And how much notice did Anderson give? Curiouser and curiouser...

Thanks for the eyewitness comments on Patricia Barker's appearance with Boston Ballet -- living over here on the other side of the continent, I was curious to know how it went. There are good arguments on both sides of the equation about guesting. The Ruby Keeler/42nd Street model ("...you're going to go out there a nobody and come back here a star") is a powerful one, and it can offer an unexpected chance to someone in the company that might otherwise have a long line to wait in for those kind of roles. We had something like that happen here earlier in the year, when an injury to another dancer put Lucien Postlewaite into Prodigal Son (he was an understudy, but not originally scheduled to perform), and he had an excellent debut in a wonderful role. But it's also a thrill to see someone new, someone from a different place or style that can bring a piece of their home base with them. And as fewer and fewer companies are able to tour, guesting is one of the ways that we can see other artists. (I had a brainwave the other day, when talking about the lack of touring, that while in the early part of the 20th c dance companies did the touring, now at the beginning of the 21st, it's the audience that's mobile -- according to some studies, arts tourism generates more revenue that people who travel to see sporting events.) In the 1980's there was a brief attempt on the parts of Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, and Houston Ballet to create a regular, three-way touring circuit, where each company would tour to the other two over the course of a couple years. It didn't get off the ground, money being the perennial problem that it is, but when I heard that Barker was guesting in Boston, I was kind of pleased with the echo of that original idea.

And a good thing, too -- it makes dancing very hard. (ducks and runs)

http://www.oupress.com/bookdetail.asp?isbn=0-8061-3134-9 Lili Cockerille Livingston wrote "American Indian Ballerinas," a biographical study of four Native American dancers including both Tallchiefs, Rosella Hightower, and Yvonne Chouteau.

I've been mulling over the news that Ballet Internationale is hoping to move from Indianapolis to LA, to become a resident company at the Music Center. Aside from the generally bad history of ballet companies in LA, what about the relationship with their current home? What kind of connections will they be severing if they move across the continent? (I bring this up knowing very little about BI's institutional history -- can anyone here speak to their recent development and their current relationship with their city) I know that ballet companies are almost exclusively made up of people who come from somewhere else, who move to a city in order to take a job, and often will pick up and move to another city for another job. But does the institution itself have the same kind of mobility? Some companies have managed to do this successfully (more or less), the Joffrey being the first that comes to mind (though they themselves tried the LA idea and failed), but the ground is littered with groups that have not been able to transplant themselves. Is ballet like baseball, where teams pick up sticks and move around, or is it more like something else?

As is often the case when you report back on something, I wish I'd been there. This: "Bold's expansive joy" is such an interesting comment, since he's really had to work hard on his expressive qualities while he's been here. He's always been quite strong technically, but the emotive part has come slower. I'm wondering now if I'd see more of that in a smaller venue (like the Guggenheim) rather than an opera house setting (though I do sit pretty close usually)

Adding my thanks to the rest here -- it's tough to transcribe that kind of interview. Some very nice anecdotes. We've had a little Bournonville here in Seattle. Perhaps we will get more.

I certainly don't think that either Kaiser or Farrell would characterize that relationship as dictatorial, but I would be very surprised if they did not discuss balancing the SFB programming with the rest of the Kennedy Center's season. I live out in the "other Washington" and so don't follow the permutations of the theater very closely, but if the KC is a partner in any way with SFB (rather than booking the ensemble as they might any other touring group) they would certainly have input on the programming.

I can't say that I invent plots, but I'm always trying to figure out who people are and why they're doing what they're doing -- what their relationships are to their environment and each other.